We are only human,

And the gods have fashioned us for love.

That – our great glory, our great tragedy

-G.R.R.M

This was the second of times he wished he would just have been killed. Ramsay awoke to a dream atop the huge sentinel pine he used to climb as a scrawny child. He looked around at the canopy of interwoven tree tops below him. He saw the silhouette of Dreadfort, its crooked outlines against the salmon-pink horizon as the sun's last light slowly ebbed from the sky, revealing a few stars that start to glitter faintly. The wind on his air tasted like licorice, and he closed his eyes wanting to remain there until the end of his days and he never wanted to open them again for when he does he knew it would bring him to another phantasm. He forced his lids to remain shut whilst feeling his spirit float far, far from home and beyond Winterfell.

There was the familiar gossamer of cold droplets trickling his face, and when he looked he saw the white sea that surrounded him. His black cape draped heavily on the snow and the gray-white emptiness, until he perceived the growth of a rose so rare it was blue, out of the snow itself. He never would have thought seeing a winter rose, not even in a dream, and his mind went back to stories of the great war which started with a Prince who chose to lay a crown of such roses on another woman's lap instead of his own wife's.

It took him three lazy strides towards the rose and bent to pluck it but in his hand it turned to a fine tress of red – a woman's hair. He suppressed a gulp and a wonted ache sparked in his gut. He knew only one woman whose hair was bright as ripe autumn and his memories of her fondled his thoughts. He tightened the lock to give it an intimate whiff but his first inhale had discarded his intent for instead of perfume he smelled iron. Quickly his hand was covered in another coat of liquid red: fresh, warm, and putrid.

Before he could fathom whence the blood came from his sight blurred as if he was awaking to another stint. But this time with the image of a man's back facing him and the slurred sounds of his own coughing being pulled back to life. As it came close to clear he took another deep breath and coughed gravely, temporarily calming the pain that settled in his lungs but jabbing pangs on his ribs and stomach.

"Here,"

Ramsay espied the voice to be his father's – monotonous but calculating, and often sending chills down his spine. Roose was looking down at him, handing over a chalice of water in one hand and a cloth on the other and still wearing an apathetic gait. It took several seconds before Ramsay could recon this wasn't a dream anymore. He was pulled back to the nest of problems all over again and it felt like being hurled into a grave alive. Slowly he took the chalice and pretended not to twitch to his side as he pulled himself up. And yet no matter how he tried to hide the flinching on his face from the pains that battered his body, he knew his father had seen them. He gulped the water in careful measurements, chugging down what seemed to be shards of glass through his throat and spilling some from the sides of his mouth to his chest.

When he lowered the chalice he finally knew what the cloth Roose was handing over was for. His hand had been covered in blood, both fresh and old. He touched his nose only to feel the blood that moistened under it. He smelled his own sweat lingering underneath damp smallclothes. Taking the cloth, he gave his discolored cheek and light tap before pinching the remaining blood on his nose and the edges of his dried lips.

"You've slept in for two full days," Roose broke the awkward silence, and Ramsay was still too petrified to speak recounting what transpired between them before his dreams happened. Roose went on, "Maester Wolkan says he has to see yet some sort of mild corruption in your chest."

Ramsay never looked up to meet his father's callous gaze, and his words started to be incomprehensible. He's had enough of the knowledge that he will never be treated a true son much more than his weariness disappointing Roose through his personal satisfactions. As Roose sensed this, the more it irked him. He presumed his father was waiting for words but he was a rock neither wanting to speak nor live. And when, perhaps, Roose Bolton realized it would take them another century to put this conversation kaput he finally fumbled for the reason why he had been there all along. Ramsay questioned for how long his father might have been by his side, hearing his scratched breathing and mumbling amid dreams. The first night? The second? As if it did matter; if he did matter at all.

The bastard heard his father clear a thickened throat. And still he could not look at him. How could he? After revealing the scarred side of him he seemed to lose respect even for himself.

"I hope to see you well on the morrow," Roose Bolton's parting words were clear as he began to see himself off Maester Wolkan's recovery chamber, "I'll have them bring you Milk of the Poppy for the pain, and a change of clothes and linen. By then all you need to do is rest. We still have so much to do. As we speak, Stannis Baratheon might be bridling his horse from Castle Black to take the North from us."

Us. What a traitorous word. Ramsay scoffed in his own brooding silence, a new spark of hatred igniting his blackened soul. Perhaps there won't be an us for long.

"I will see you again tonight,"

It was only then that Roose turned his back towards the exit that Ramsay lifted his gaze at him until he was concealed behind a door. He leaned back, pushing weight on the feather pillows contemplating on one thing he wanted more than lordship and flaying. He knew his father will not see him there tonight.

The setting sun had painted the tower tops a pallid orange, but beneath the walls the night has huddled. The castle was so hushed that he could have believed all its people dead. He did not mind the soldiers and serving girls that slowed down to confirm it was him that was swiftly walking past the aisles, the winding stairs, the courtyard. Their whispers were wind to his ears and their eyes ghosts. He needed to see her – his savior, he recalled. She was his knight for a while, when his knees turned to water and every bit of him exploited. When Maester Wolkan walked into the chamber, carrying a flagon of Milk of the Poppy and the chains around his neck rattling, he found Ramsay pulling on his boots and readying to leave after a quick half-done bath. The old man was appalled as Ramsay asked where Sansa was, and without him even finishing the answer, Ramsay was on his heels, almost flying. His nerves were still wrecked and his abdomen a mess of discolorations, but he wanted to take a whiff of his drug.

Then he found her, his Sansa, standing close to the Weirwood, her black cape about her from neck down, her red hair aflame despite the dusk. She was so still he almost doubted if she was breathing or has frozen from where she stood. She must be praying, he thought. The godswood is a holy ground, a venue for cleansing and oft of marriages. They say her father, the late Eddard Stark, sits here in cogitation, nursing his greatsword and pouring oil over it to purify its blade from the blood it spilt. He wondered how wide a lake of oil he would need if it were him to cleanse his weaponry.

"Ramsay," she called out to him and he stiffed. She never looked back at him; her eyes were fixed on the carved face in the trunk of the great tree, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap strangely watchful. Ramsay summoned every shred of the man he is, the psychopath he was, and everything in between. He waited for her, no, he ached for her calling his name again. And yet he did not answer.

There was Sansa again, "You should be resting."

Ramsay could not answer. His only words were, "I should."

A cold breath of wind shuffled the leaves of the heart tree, giving both of their capes a soft flutter at the edges. Above them the sun was still prying to penetrate an orange glow across the wider darkness. The castle was silent as a funeral.

"Then go," Sansa commanded like he was a stable boy, "Rest if you must."

"I wanted to see you."

He could almost see her smile out of pity. There was none of the spite that used to drip from her being since they married. He only wished she wanted the same of him. He wanted to thank her, but being a Bolton devoid of such humanity there was none in his lexicon enough to show or tell what was waging war in his mind.

"Of course."

He heard her. Sansa went on, "I understand Ramsay, there is no need to redeem yourself. It is enough I know what made you, well – you." Her words were cold. "Had I known earlier…"

Ramsay waited, but there were nothing more that left her lips but a heavy sigh.

"What of me?" he asked and watched her consider. He sensed the many answers crisscrossing over her mind but had the modesty to keep it to herself. And so she said, "It's you to decide."

Once more there was the faint passing of the wind and the silence of them both, and neither was wanting to leave despite the loss of words. Ramsay could, in a way, stay there, in the thick blanket of humus and moss-covered rocks, to stare at her forever.

"Ramsay," Sansa's voice cut through, after much muteness, "Do women like your violence?"

He gave it a thought. "I suppose you talk about?"

"Your violence," she was blunt but steady, "Did you ever make love?"

Ramsay's lips pursed. He reckoned these talks have always kept him interested but to have his lady wife spur this subject have made things a little awkward. He cleared his throat which now itched for wine.

"That was it, isn't it? Our wedding night," she said, "You kept me dead because you didn't know how to calm yourself. You raped me instead."

He sighed, long and deep, tiny fangs of avoidance began to nibble under his skin. He was looking at a mirror of shame.

"Here's a fact of you, Ramsay: you hide behind your vileness as if it were a castle wall."

"Vileness is every Bolton's armor,"

She finally turned to him, face serious, eyes austere and lips unsmiling. Her every word seemed to unarm him further. "I am your wife. You can take off that armor and break that castle wall."

His lips gaped as his heart might have refused to beat as long as her sentence. Whatever she was doing it was leaving him gaunt and spellbound he almost wanted to worship her. There was a still softness in him that began to break and start burgeoning around his veins. She was pushing an anchor through his hell down, down to the imprisoned feeling in his heart and was trying to bait it up to the surface.

He stared at Sansa Stark – no, Sansa Bolton, his wife: a girl of ten and five? Six? Bugger that. He was almost six summers ahead of her but she was no more the girl that everyone had claimed. She was a woman now: face, teats and hips, and it was him who peeled off her innocence but it was him that was beginning to shrink at her words and putting in him a stigma.

"How?" Ramsay found a single word in a pool of many.

There was no trace of blush brooding on her face and her scent again filled his air. She closed the space between them and he found the discomfort when she was staring at his lips. Ramsay was the boy now. He felt small and intimidated, and it awakened a different want for her, a want to be under her paws this time which is truly remarkable since he had always been of want to be on top.

"I want you to have me," she spoke in a low, distinct voice. She looked at him square in the eye before cupping his face on her warm palms, and Ramsay swallowed. This had to be a dream, he clenched his teeth. When Sansa made him promise not to touch her as aftermath of their small stageplay back in Dreadfort he meant to keep it as he knew she will never allow him to touch her again. He thought of so many things, his needs, and how he could be able to satiate them. He thought back of pleasing himself, or take a whore to the corners of the castle and kill her on the morrow after he takes her, or find Myranda and spend in her the wild frustrations of a husband refused to even share the same chamber with his wife. His brows furrowed and immediately heat spread across him like venom.

Sansa lifted her face and touched her nose to his, meaning to kiss him which he willingly anticipated. But she did not, and chagrin gathered on his gut quickly. "Have me… like you mean to please. Like you want me to stay, Ramsay," she whispered hotly. Their lips were less than a sigh apart, and he was half-closing his eyes but she played on him. I do.

She played on him and he did not like it. I want you to stay.

Ramsay caught her warm breaths until she parted away and left him hanging. Slowly she gave him a last look and swayed towards the pond. He was as drunk as hell now and his body wallowed in weakness. The racing on his heart began to retrace and his hand wanted to reach out for help.

"What are you doing?" he croaked, never inching his eyes off her.

Sansa's cape crumpled around her feet, and she was deftly untying the ribbons that held her collar. Once the ribbons on her girdle loosed, Ramsay followed the garment slip from her body, staring at it with mind baffled.

She only had the silken smallgown on. Her white freckled arms were bare and she let loose her hair. Ramsay almost dazed at the smell of the perfume uncorked by her clip. He silently watched her: the traces of her firm and long legs almost peeking through the silk, the well-shaped hips, the lovely curve of her waist, the tip of her nipples traced on her chest, and the waves of her auburn hair has told him something. This girl...this woman is his wife. And he wants her, girl or woman or whatever she is. He is obsessed of her from dusk to dawn – every single fucking day.

She moved forward to touch her toes on the water as she lifted her skirt.

"Come back here," he called out again, almost wanting to reach out but his body stiffed.

Too late. The water engulfed her knees quickly; the rims of her silk floating.

"Come back here, Sansa,"

"It's alright," she turned to him, unsmiling, unhateful too. She was calm and resolute, and her calculating eyes almost challenged. He remembered her on the same pool, days before their wedding night, just after she first met her. He saw her outstretched arms and she looked halcyon with her hair a red halo floating around her head; she was regal, and complexly beautiful.

"I've done this," Sansa moved forward. Ramsay questioned in silence if she might have remembered her catching him spying on her back then.

When he witnessed the water sink her hips, he began undoing the brooch that held his cape. Piece by piece his clothing fell off him as he walked to the edge where the water kissed the mossy rocks: vest, breeches, boots. When his feet touched the water, the iciness stung but he was tougher at the thought of touching his wife. She was looking back at him, at his stark nakedness which unveiled the figurative nudeness of his anima.

Slowly he waded to her who was quite trying yet to avoid him. The water reached his hips as well, and when it touched him there, he felt an unfamiliar wincing. It was a strange feeling he welcomed like an old friend as he immersed deeper; holding his breath, he soused his body whole.

When Ramsay re-emerged affront his woman, he held her stony gaze, but he would never look away. Night has befallen them but his day has just started. She wiped her face with wet palms and silently reached out to swim away, taunting him and wickedly playing catch; but he held her wrist and pulled her close until they were skin to silk.

She was cold as the water, and both their lips were almost colorless, but he could imagine her warmth, and his cock twitched at the even warmer home she had between her legs. His arm circled her waist and pressed against him; he felt the gooseprickles pecked in her arms.

Ramsay's hands made way to the rim of her silks and tugged it up, baring her waist. He expected her to restrain him, but when he raised the silk to expose her chest, she obediently raised her arms until it was completely off her. He had the cloth tangled on a hand and his body screamed against the silence that had been treating them both.

Blue against blue they stared in the eye. Hers still with doubt feigned calmness, and his with a glint of apologetic bliss. He slowly slid a palm from her stomach up between her gaping cleavage, but she held this hand to a pause, and when he ignored her rejection, she consented. He knew, he can smell the want that sprayed across her body; he knew she'd want him either way.

He knew she missed him.

Ramsay grazed his lips against her collarbone and felt her gasp. When he traced kisses on her neck she felt warmer, and on her lips she was radiant with heat. The water felt nothing when he pressed deeper, when she held him gently by the jaws, when they fell into the ease of tormenting their mouths right there and then: with him biting her lower lip and squirming his tongue with hers. Desire filled like the ringing on his ears and pouring on the hardness filling his manhood. It was just them, their heaving heat, and the abyss they call world.

He had never done this underwater, but it was there lest he would lose the chance. Quickly he grabbed her by the waist, lifted her, and forced her legs to wrap around his hips. Sansa shuddered and held back a breath when he took a teat on his mouth. When he felt her fingers clench on his hair, he bit, wanting to hear a gasp. When she didn't, his animalistic instinct took over.

Ramsay pried his hand between their stomachs and quickly slipped two fingers on her entrance. Taking Sansa by surprise always interested him and he found a new way to the list. Lugging her buttocks, he pushed her deep and unforgiving through his throbbing, eager hardness. She threw her head back with a cry.

He set a growl with each push and hunger was dawning on him like a lion to a stag, but then midway he stopped, still hard and buried deep into her.

"Show me," he whispered as Sansa half-smiled before they locked eyes, "How you want it."

He laid his head on their crumpled capes underneath the weirwood like she asked him to. Sansa perched herself and sat on his groin and he could feel the supple sensitivity just above his privates. His abdomen that once pounded hurt felt nothing no longer compared to the satisfaction he was feeling. She was looking down on him like a vulture eyeing a prey, tracing the discolorations on his skin from green to purple, and Ramsay equalled her indifferent stare. Her hair was a mat of messy strands which she pulled back from her face and it ran to her luscious breasts. His neck began to thicken in impatience.

Sansa moved down to kiss him and he hungrily welcomed her, trying to rock his body so she could get the message that he wanted to be inside her now. She lifted her hips and in a slow shift, slipped him deeply within, and was rewarded with an aroused moan. She sat and began to move above him, slow at first, with meaningful words. "You are not the monster you have been, Ramsay." She traced her finger across his lower lip, reminding him to calm. "We are not beasts mating," she whispered, "We are man and wife, baring our souls…"

This was as much as taboo to be straddling in a heart tree but oh gods she felt good. She felt so fucking good. It went on and on with severe passion and anger put to use with two hateful spirits on the brink of ruining each other. Behind the pleasure that was building up he was beginning to feel a sense of security, an excitement driven not by aggravation but by a very strong force whatever that was. Sansa was leading him somewhere he had never been, to a space where he was wanted and longed for, manifested in the way their fingers interweave tightly. And Ramsay spited at feeling the sensation loading on his groin quickly. He bared his teeth.

"Sansa..." He vilely breathed out, reached a hand on her cheek and brushed his thumb on her bottom lip. "Finish me..."

She took his thumb between her lips and gently sucked. Ramsay suppressed an aroused chuckle, this was new, and this was good. This wolf had her own ways. A delicious twitch inside her threw his head back with a hiss – Fuck!

"Feel me, Ramsay," she towered over him, whispering, "Every drop...every pulse," she leaned her hands on his chest. Her movement even dug his tip against her limit and he's finally reached his climax. He groaned. "This is what you've been missing..."

Yes he had been missing so much of the act. The gods made sex a complement for lovers, supposedly, not for whores and empty shells playing come-into-my-castle. And he heard himself roar like he's never done past. Pleasure avalanched his body, searing him, breaking him until he burst out in uncontrollable pulses.

Sansa hurled her head back with eyes closing sweetly, as if feeling his excitement extending to her. She was slowing down, but Ramsay held her firmly by the hips and jolted up with a desire-stricken curse, again and again until her walls tightened and her moans gladly sealed his ears like melody. She shivered above him in an ache that wallowed his body hungrily.

Slowly, everything ceased. As their heartbeats calmed, only their harsh breathings could be heard. Ramsay slowly blinked his eyes that courted sleep. He can see her gorgeously long neck bared as her head still hung back. He stretched a hand to her collarbone and felt her swallow. She was closed-eyes as her hand covered his, and kissed his palm. Those were kisses nothing like he had ever had before, like a mother smooching softly on the face of her newborn babe.

Ramsay pulled her to lie on top of him, his lips meeting hers with fervor.

Everyone at court followed them with eyes inquisitive. They tried to hide, but Ramsay can see the hidden spying, the stolen glances that met as they strode past. It must have been his unruly clothes: mud splattered against the grey undershirt, one sleeve rolled up to the elbow, the other left hanging to his wrist. Dust sprawled on his breeches, dust and moss and cobwebs. Sansa wore both their capes as Ramsay insisted, all muddy and soiled with pieces of moss and dirt. She clutched it on the chest, her hair damp and cold.

When they reached her bedchamber, she stepped in. The soft clucking of her boot heels honestly pained him to let her go. His want to follow her inside pushed an ache in him and he trembled in hesitance, making him swallow thickly.

She faced him, the doorposts hung between them. It took more seconds for them to plainly stare at each other, immobilized by the earlier affair. What the hell just happened?

Ramsay cleared his throat, "Goodnight,"

His wife half-smiled and looked down, almost blushing. "Goodnight...Ramsay,"

Let me in...

He held a breath before he could splutter his words. It was so itchy he wanted to hit the brick walls instead. He then looked away and stepped back with a nod, eyes glittering with vexation. Just this...once...

Ramsay's own heels vibrated against the cobblestones, only waiting to hear her chamber door lock. And when the creaking on the hinges pursued, his mind clamored and wanted to plead. But midway the closing of the door halted.

"Will you stay in your chamber?" Sansa's small voice surfaced. Immediately he stopped and turned. Even when words were void in their stillness, he went back to her and crossed the entrance to her warm room without her bidding, and locked the door behind them. "No."

Callused fingers tightened further around a flagon of Dornish wine. Roose Bolton drained the last content as he watched the candlelight die in Sansa's bedchamber window. He had been standing in front of his study room window too, for hours, on a tower across the other which held her chamber. Spying silently. Meditating like death. He did not know how to make of it. Thinking how his inbred bastard had began losing focus on their aims to maintain claim the North made him want to begin doubting whether marrying him to Sansa Stark was a noble idea after all.

When he learned of Ramsay's whereabouts from a worried Maester Wolkan, he knew what his son was all fueled up again. And he saw him – them – the way Sansa held the bastard whispered a threat to their ambition, unhinging him, from where he stood behind a tall unpruned bush almost covered in poison ivy. He never thought of Ramsay capable of being rained by attention, especially in the arms of a woman. A crow and a dove. Oil and water.

Growing up without a mother claimed the best of his son whom Roose raised to be ruthless and empty of human emotions. What is honor compared to a woman's love? He heard somewhere. What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms? What is, to be exact? He recalled Ramsay a sleeping babe and ready to be tossed into the feral river when the woman he raped had brought him the infant a year later. He was resolved to let go, to see the bundle of cloth crash against the sharp rocks. But when the baby's eyes lazily opened a pale blue light, he was disarmed. When he yawned and breathed the scent of mother's milk Roose almost hated himself. Now he might have wanted the bastard to impregnate the Stark girl, yes, but to completely lose the sharpness of his blades was not too pleasing to hear. Sansa had tamed him, but Roose does not approve of the kindness. Kindness was what killed Domeric. Love led Robb Stark to the slaughterhouse. Love is the death of duty.

And thus before he sees more of his son's defeat under the weirwood he fled off to his own sanctuary, now his mind racing fast with so many possibilities.

A/N: First off I want to thank you for your kindness and fond acceptance of me continuing this. It's summer break. I hope I could keep up. I had to reread from the first chapter to see where I have to pick up pace. Thank you for the reviews as they mean so much to me. I am to reply through private messages. I am also open to quotations or lyrics you might want to contribute but rest assured I am obliged to acknowledge you.

By the way, what did you think of the Season 8 finale? I would like to know if it would be worth a try to share an alternative. :)