I guess I just want to say that I feel emotional about finishing this after so many years. Like...lonely? IDK! Game of Thrones was the craziest thing for me for the longest time! Now, it's kinda over...

This chapter is about twice as long as the others and I write at potato speeds of like one paragraph every three hours, sorry. This is the ending I planned since I started the fic in 2012. I will go back and clean up some typos and stylistic errors in the earlier chapters and make a final note. Everybody who read it, thank you so much! SanSan forever xx

CHAPTER 50

SANDOR

Sandor's arms burned from the strain of holding himself up. He was chained to the dungeon wall at Castle Cerwyn. Harry and his Vale knights had brought him here after they knocked him off his horse and threw a sack over his head; and beat him, but Sandor could take a beating. They had bullied their way past the peasants left to man it and kept him as their prisoner, removing the sack just to hoist him up and torture him until he passed out. They left him chained to the floor until he regained consciousness, then strung him up and started the torture again.

"Let me explain it to you one more time," Harry said as he tugged on a pair of leather gloves and took hold of a whip from the gaoler. He looked so clean otherwise, in his starched doublet with polished fastenings. "Sansa is guilty of a myriad of crimes. Blasphemy. Adultery. Treason. Confess against her; Gregor will capture her and take her to King's Landing for a trial, and Winterfell will be given over to the Lannisters. Think about it—her people might even hand her over once they get this silly idea out of their heads that she can rule."

Sandor only grunted in response. His shoulders hurt from the burden of his arms stretched painfully over his head. Harry leaned in to Sandor, speaking man-to-man. "Sansa is married to Tyrion Lannister. If she's been unfaithful, it's a simple matter to try her for adultery and have her claim stripped from her." When Sandor still didn't answer, Harry slapped him across the face and forced him to meet his eyes. "Everyone already thinks you raped her when you brought her north from the Eyrie, or worse—that she gave you free reign to her cunt. Confess against her," he pleaded. "It's easier this way. We'll have no occasion for senseless bloodshed."

"Go fuck yourself."

Harry turned bright red. "I'll lash you," he breathed, but reluctantly. They had been through this before.

Sandor yelped on that first, sharp contact. The whip left a red welt where it cut across his chest. But by the third lash, he was laughing. He knew that this nearly excruciating pain was nothing compared to what his brother's man could do, the one they called the Tickler. The thought that an even worse fate waited outside this dungeon, and that Harry had the audacity to ask him to hand Sansa over to it, was enough to drive him to hysterics. His laughter infuriated Harry, which made him whip him harder. This was good—he could not torture an unconscious man. Sandor saw through a fog, his body slipped painfully against the shackles, and darkness overtook him.

When he came to he was on the floor again, his arms chained far enough apart that he couldn't bring them together, but with enough slack that he could move about a foot in either direction. The hours stretched on. At first he was glad to be left alone; it was the longest he'd been conscious without anyone coming to torture him. But when he recognized the sounds of men preparing for battle, the clattering of arms and armor and the shouts of their commander ordering them to form ranks, he roared and rattled his chains.

"Let me out! I'll fight," he roared at the door of the cell. "There's not a man among you who fights better than I do. Let me out."

The door stayed shut.

The next day was quiet. Sandor figured Harry and his men had moved on. Surely, there were smallfolk or retainers holding the castle that would come to him in the dungeon. Sandor waited for the roll of bread and the cup of water that kept him alive. He shouted for it when he thought he heard someone scurrying on the other side of the cell door. But no one came.

Then the true torture began. After three days, he'd had nothing to drink and felt like he was being burned from the inside, starting at the throat. The pain was so bad he couldn't swallow. His bowels ran out and his pinned arms were so numb he worried they might be dead. His body was on fire with thirst. I don't want to die this way, he thought, limbs falling off, until all that was left was the fire inside that killed him. If he had to die, he wanted it to be fighting—his heart pumping blood swiftly out of a fatal gash, the kind of wound like he had given so many others.

Slowly dying, chained to the floor, was too much. He bargained with himself in his mind. If everyone already thought he had been with Sansa, what difference did it make if he confessed it? The suffering was too much, and Gregor would attack Winterfell without cause if he had to anyway. That was why the Lannisters had sent him; he had no honor.

Sandor was ready to die or speak—and that was when they came for him. Four days after Harry marched away, the door to Sandor's prison swung open. The action caused an explosion in his head. The creaking door ripped his ears and the sunlight stabbed him in the eyes. His eyes—so used to the darkness of the cell—felt like they had shriveled up and burned away before he could squeeze them shut against the light. But he could feel that they were still there, squirming in his head like salted slugs.

"Sansa." It hurt to open his throat and let his voice out. It burst through the fire in his throat and came out raw and wounded. "I fucked her. It's true. Is that what you want to know? I had her hundreds of times, dozens of different ways. But I never raped her. She gave herself to me, and she begged me for it. You'd believe me," he choked back a sob, "if you heard her say my name."

"You are a bold man, Sandor Clegane." He thought he recognized the voice and fought against the sensation of having shriveled eyes to open them and confirm that someone was really there, that this was not some pre-death hallucination. "We haven't seen each other in years and the first thing you tell me is that you fucked my wife."

Between the blinding brightness and his blurry vision Sandor could just make out the silhouette of the man he thought he'd heard standing short at the entrance. Tyrion Lannister, the Imp, youngest of the lion brood, that deformed dwarf Sandor knew well from his time serving the Lannisters, stood in the doorway wearing a pressed black doublet with red fastenings. The long reach of his shadow gave the impression of a much taller man, but in person he looked even uglier than Sandor remembered. He strode into the cell flanked by two boy-faced warriors, a grimace on his scarred and noseless face.

"'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' That's what the Queen told me, when she asked me to search the dungeon for prisoners who might be loyal to her cause. I must say I never expected to find you here, although after that confession you just might be exactly what we need." To the boy-men with him, he instructed, "Cut him free and clean him up. The Queen won't want to meet him smelling like shit."

With a strength and precision Sandor hadn't expected, the eunuchs used their spears to break open the manacles that held him to the floor. He struggled free from his chains, but the blood flowing back into his hands was more painful than any torture he had endured under Harry's hand and more immediate than his constant thirst. He collapsed forward and screamed, cradling his arms against his body as he writhed on the bloody straw. Sandor knew excruciating pain—the pain of his body fighting back death as feeling pumped back into his limbs. The eunuchs gave him little time to recover and pulled him to his feet, but Sandor could not gather his watery legs beneath him, so they hoisted his arms over their shoulders and dragged him out of the cell. His intense headache, the tingling in his hands, the pressure on his limbs, and the swiveling setting were too much, and he fainted.

Sandor came to in a tub, being tended to and cleaned by a group of dark-haired women. They washed him, massaged his tired limbs, and gave him lukewarm water to drink. It was the sweetest water he had ever tasted. The faster he tried to drink it the slower they poured it for him, chiding that he would make himself sick. He was too weak to wrestle the jug from them and settled for having less than he wanted, dozing fitfully between cups.

When he was clean they took him out, dried him, and fed him a broth of cold, sweet soup to give him some of his strength back. Sandor would have liked nothing better than to sleep, but they dressed him up in a red surcoat, brushed his hair, and shaved his face to match the side where his beard didn't grow. He could barely stand, much less fight like the knight they'd dressed him up as, and so felt a farce in such courtly clothes.

Tyrion came to fetch him shortly. Sandor sneered when he saw him, resentful of his rescuer's identity. He had no mind to be a Lannister dog again. The bitter feeling was mutual, at least. He saw that from the disdain that crossed Tyrion's face.

"What a swift recovery! I guess your recuperative powers are one reason my wife grew so fond of you?"

"Fuck you." Sandor spat.

"Mind your manners. We're going to meet the Queen, after all."

Sandor shuddered. He did not think Tyrion was delivering him to Cersei, but he did not want to meet any queen that was not Sansa. Stern glares from Tyrion's pair of guards reminded him that he was at best a prisoner. He stood tall well enough, but it was plain that he could have crawled better than he walked.

They led him over the ramparts, where Sandor could see a small force of their brethren gathered in the yard. It did not seem enough to have overtaken Harry's men if they held steady behind the walls of the castle, so Sandor wondered why Harry had rode out and who these foreign victors were. From here he could see out the machicolations to the field below and the destruction wrought on those who had left the fort. The field was littered with the falcon's torn banners and the bodies of dead men, the ground black from wet patches of blood and the scorched hill.

Tyrion brought him to a makeshift court that had been set up in the center of the yard. Unfamiliar characters gathered around a squared-off carpet framed by a few cushioned benches, conversing in strange languages and preoccupied with their occupation of the fort. Sandor saw a white shape in the corner of his eye as they passed the busted portcullis, so swift and quiet it may have been just a flurry a snow. But there had been no snow in the North for several weeks now, and the thing stopped among them to reveal itself. It was the white direwolf, Ghost, and Jon Snow, dressed all in black, followed through the gate behind it.

"Where is she?" Tyrion stepped forward to ask.

"Feeding her pet." Jon Snow looked even more surly and humorless than usual. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave Sandor one slow nod of acknowledgement.

Tyrion scoffed. "Didn't it eat enough yet?"

"It eats a lot."

Tyrion sighed and rolled his eyes, but Sandor turned to Jon Snow and the broken gate.

"What are you doing here, and with him?" he asked, disoriented at the sound of his own cracked voice. "Shouldn't you be at the Wall?"

"There's no more Wall," Snow answered, his white wolf matching his tone with a low growl. "She burned it down."

At that moment there was a noise like a tremendous banner flapping in the wind. A shadow fell across the yard. Sandor looked up to see what had blocked out the evening light, and his heart seized in his chest. A dragon flew overhead. Enormous and fuligin, it stretched from nose to spaded tail as long as a galleon, with wings as long again across. Tilting slightly, it brought its leathery wings close against its body and dove with a swoosh to the far wall. What grace it had in the air was replaced with a menacing ferocity as it landed, longsword-sized claws scratching at the stones for a place to hold itself. Finding no purchase, it slid like ink off a table into the yard. Close up, each scale was like a piece of plate armor—some battleworn and chipped, others shiny. All black, they glistened red in the firelight, but where no light hit it the dragon seemed to disappear into a darkness darker than black. Sandor thought he heard a thousand cats purring—it was the dragon, making a noise like the rumbling of snow loosed from the side of a mountain before an avalanche. As though its presence wasn't terrible enough, the dragon stretched its jaws open obtusely wide and bellowed fire into the night sky.

Sandor's instinct was to back up, to run away, but there was no escape. He fell to his knees. He knew that they had brought him here for this—to cow him with awe and terror of the fire-breathing drake. The courtyard's inhabitants gave a respectful distance, but neither Tyrion nor Jon Snow was phased by the dragon. They had seen it before, but to Sandor, it was something out of a nightmare.

As he struggled to fully accept the presence of the mythical beast, a girl with long silver hair jumped off its back. It relaxed its head down in the dirt in response, like a well-trained dog, giving a clear view of its protruding pointed teeth. But its gleaming red eyes never left her, and the effect magnified attention on the girl. She walked confidently, as though she expected people to watch her even when in the presence of a great dragon, with limber, elf-like movements. Choice pieces of armor were fastened over a flowing silken gown uncommon in that part of the world, but the most unusual part of her attire was a sword almost as tall as she was sheathed behind her back. As she approached Sandor, she smiled down at him—and he could not discern if it was the welcoming smile of someone pleased to see him, or the smirk of one glad to see him on his knees.

"I wonder, is it you or the dragon that feeds on the bodies of men?" Jon Snow said upon her approach.

"Don't be snide," she answered. "We both have our pets." His wolf pressed itself against her in greeting and she petted Ghost's head. Then she turned to Sandor. "Sandor Clegane. I have heard that you serve Sansa Stark at Winterfell now, after many years in the Lannisters' service. Do you know who I am?"

He shook his head. Tyrion cleared his throat and announced her. "May I present Her Majesty, Queen Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, First of Her Name. The rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men. Breaker of Chains, The Unburnt, and Mother of Dragons."

"Long may she reign!" those present in the yard called in unison.

Sandor thought so little of royalty, their rights and titles, that it took him some time before he recalled the name Daenerys Targaryen. "You're Rhaegar's sister."

She nodded; her surreal purple eyes boring into his. "Yes. I am the rightful queen of Westeros. I was driven from my home as a babe by the Usurper, Robert Baratheon, but now I am back from across the narrow sea to reclaim my throne and reign over what is mine by rights. I am not a young girl anymore, but a woman wise in the way of rule and battle, and I will take what is mine with fire and blood."

Sandor felt the weight of the past on him as heavy as if it had been a load thrown over his back. Aye, I was at that fight that deposed your family. He had killed his first man during the sack of King's Landing, while Robert killed Rhaegar in the field and his brother Gregor stole into Maegor's Holdfast to end Elia's life. What would this woman, with her hungry dragon, think of that? I felled one of your father's guards by sheer force, and I still remember the smell of his blood hot on my steel and the thrill of it that kept me killing. Would he be punished, more than a decade later, for following the life path of a warrior?

Daenerys's silver hair swung to the middle of her back, the lines of her face strangely angular and sharp on such a delicate creature. "When I returned to Westeros I found her torn apart by war and famine. I have a mind to take each kingdom away from her lord and punish my enemies for letting her fall into chaos. It is no mean feat to conquer Seven Kingdoms, but I promised to tame the country and reclaim the land. And I have already started.

"Dorne came to me easily, hungry for a respite from the Lannisters' misdeeds. Dragonstone, my isolated and ancestral home, fell next. What's left of the Ironborn's navy answers to me, and today I killed the Lords of the Vale in the field of battle. What worry have I over whether the remaining kingdoms will take my side in this campaign? The reluctant, the skeptical, and the obstinate will all bow to me in the face of my overwhelming power."

As if on cue, the dragon drew back its head and snorted out a burst of flame.

"Next, I must go to Winterfell—the seat of the kingdom farthest north. The largest kingdom. With the power of all of Westeros behind me, I will be free to take King's Landing and claim the Iron Throne."

Despite the gravity of her announcement, Sandor could not help his mind's irreverent thoughts as he struggled over the strange situation. Why is she telling me all this? This bitch is crazy! He didn't care who ruled the Seven Kingdoms—he just wanted to know if she was going to feed him to the dragon or not. Daenerys loosened the strap across her chest and held the sword in its scabbard in two hands in front of her, her fingers tracing the flame designs tooled into the stone as she continued her story.

"When I was a young girl, lost and alone, I was given a prophecy that revealed my destiny. I would know three betrayals—one for blood, one for gold, and one for love. I knew the first when a witch poisoned my husband, Khal Drogo, and murdered my unborn child. For revenge. For blood. I could not have known that the next two were for my other children—my dragons. I had three, before the little one died. I found Viserion with its head cut off and a Westerosi man who professed to be loyal to me suddenly missing from our camp. He had been a spy and stolen the head of my dragon so he could sell it to my enemies and prove the veracity of the information he had thus far fed them against me. My littlest child, murdered. For gold."

Sandor blood froze. Years ago, he had met Jorah Mormont at Gulltown and taken from him a dragon's skull, no bigger than a cat's head, and a message which he then delivered to Petyr Baelish in the Eyrie. It was where he met Sansa. More and more I'm part of this Targaryen girl's troubles, and I've never even met her!

"I will admit that for a time I lived fearful of the third prophecy, but I now believe that it has come to pass as well. I could not hold back the forward thrust of my campaign and charged forward in all areas—military, social, scientific. As I fought my way out of Essos, an advisor came to me and researched the Targaryen secrets of blood, fire, and sword that had been erased with my family's murder. Among them—how to forge Valyrian steel.

"We had rediscovered a technology that was lost in time. Though many had attempted to make swords that matched the quality of these ancient blades, none had succeeded. But now we possessed the missing element that had eluded every recent smith—a dragon's flaming breath.

"Still, we needed Valyrian ore. It could only be got from ancient quarries, too dangerous to mine now, or from the swords themselves. Tyrion told me that the Stark's ancestral sword, Ice, had been melted down on orders from his father, Tywin, that vile man who had ordered my family's death and meant the same fate for me. Ice had been forged into two inferior blades now in possession of the Lannisters.

"Fate coincided my military campaign with the quest to acquire Valyrian steel. Both swords were said to be in the middle of the country, at the region called the Neck. Whoever controls it controls the passage of armies between the North and South, so I expected the strife to be great and to use this to my advantage to throw down one or both of my competitors. But it was peaceful there. No army besieged the fort from either side, for two traitors held the fort there together. One, called the Kingslayer, had already betrayed my family by killing my father, and the other was the Maid of Tarth. Each lied to their liege to create a stalemate and prevent any decisive battle from taking place, but though they would not fight each other, in me they had a common enemy. They fought me—who would bring peace to this continent beyond whatever petty alliance they fostered—for love.

"Tyrion begged me to spare them, but I could not. It was in this battle that I lost my second dragon. I knew the truth even as my dragon died—for only Valyrian steel could have pierced Rhaegal's armored flesh. I had the Lannisters' false swords. This dark hour brought what I needed to ensure a new dawn and another foothold in Westeros. I took these broken pieces of Ice, melted them down, and made them whole again. A true Valyrian sword as has not been forged for millennia. Out of Ice, I made Fire."

Daenerys drew the sword. She gripped the jeweled handle in one hand and the stone scabbard in the other, holding her arms as far apart as she could to get enough distance to unsheathe it. It was big, a true two-handed greatsword over four feet long and took a moment to hiss free. Gone were the red and black ripples from the Lannister steel—this was Ice, reborn, and the blade shone smooth red and orange in the firelight, alive with power. Daenerys dropped the scabbard and held the heavy sword upright in both hands, the muscles in her bare shoulders tense. The sword's red blade glowed so brilliantly that it looked hot—and in that moment it ignited, flames dancing around the steel as though it had just been pulled from the quench.

"I will bring peace to Westeros," Daenerys announced. "Peace, stability, unity, order, law, justice, and freedom. Each of the Seven Kingdoms will be ruled by someone loyal to me, and in their house a knight who holds a Valyrian steel sword in my name. This knight will serve his lord, so long as his lord serves me. It will be these seven swords that unite the Seven Kingdoms, for each will be an arm that reaches where I cannot be."

Jon Snow spoke up. "By rights, Fire belongs to my sister, Sansa, who holds Winterfell in the Stark family name."

Daenerys lowered the point of the sword and shook her head. "You have no sister but Rhaenys, killed in the sack of King's Landing so many years ago." She turned back to her court. "Jon Snow is the child of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. He will be instrumental in reestablishing Targaryen rule in Westeros. But all of Westeros is mine, and Fire belongs to whoever sits Winterfell in my name."

"Sansa," Sandor reiterated, ever loyal. Show up with your army and your fucking dragon. I'm sure she'll serve you, he wanted to add, but he hadn't much strength, and was fearful of the woman's flaming sword.

Daenerys bristled, though she tried to hide it. "Sansa holds Winterfell by birthright, but the Lannisters will take it from her if they haven't already. The right to rule is a fickle thing in the face of absolute power, as I intend to show them." She took a step closer to him, suddenly gentle. "Sandor, take up this sword in my name and drive Gregor Clegane's army from the field. Give Fire to Sansa so that a Stark can rule the North under a Targaryen, and we will have peace again."

Sandor hung his head with a mirthless laugh. "You come here on the back of a dragon, and you want me to take Winterfell for you?"

Daenerys flinched, casting a glance towards Tyrion and Jon before she turned back to Sandor, unable to hide a slight sheepishness in her expression. "My military campaign has not been . . . without error. I have lost a third of my army after everywhere we have traveled besides those I had to leave for garrisons. My remaining soldiers grow weary of continuous fighting and need a friendly stronghold to recuperate. I must take Drogon to the far north to battle hordes of what Jon calls the Others as they make way their way down from beyond the Wall."

Jon interrupted, quickly chastising her. "Which wouldn't be so much of a problem if you hadn't burned it down!"

"A grievous error, I admit, but unavoidable considering the ignorant welcome we received there," she answered, her eyes flashing. "Sandor, I can give you men to stop the siege at Winterfell. Pledge your arm to me and take this sword. Return it to the Starks so that we can reforge the broken bonds of trust between the rulers of this land. No one will call you kinslayer after I have pardoned you, and Winterfell will be safe again."

Sandor shook his head, the invisible weight on him heavier than ever. "I'm not a knight, and even if you made me one, you'd be a fool to trust me. Your brother was the one who knighted Gregor, who murdered his children and raped his wife." His stomach twisted as he thought of Sansa, who should have been safe in her warm, wintery castle. It was too much like the past—the cruel cycle of history repeating itself over again.

Daenerys spoke above a whisper. "I do not think that you are like him."

"I'm too weak!" he roared. "Gregor is stronger than I am; he always has been. Even if I take up your flaming sword, I'll fail and die."

"Maybe . . . Maybe you will die in the fight against your brother. Or maybe you are already dead."

She held the sword out straight, hovering the point near his shoulder. She could kill him if she wished, but Sandor refused to balk, even as the flames licked the air by his skin. It made no difference now.

"Maybe you died in that cell," Daenerys continued, her eyes flashing in the firelight, "and this is your chance to fight your way out of the Hell the Gods meant for you. Or maybe you died earlier, by the Trident, and all your life since has been an illusion. A vision, to give you some control that you never knew in life. For to choose your own fate is to be your own God—to choose the fate of others is to be theirs. Take up this sword, Sandor, and fight in my name. This is your chance to write your own destiny."

She is right, he thought. I might as well be dead. All my life I have acted my part as though trapped in a play, no different from the pretty little bird in her youth. I have feared fire, and hated my brother, and suffered against knighthood. What has it brought me—except avoiding the fate I wanted for myself?

He nodded. "I have been the arm of the Stranger my whole life. Rarely have I had any say in what I did or whose life I ended. This time, I'll take up your sword and cut a path to Winterfell by my own hand."

Daenerys touched the heavy sword to his right shoulder, then his left, passing the flaming steel over his head while Sandor spoke after her the oath that would make him a knight.

"Now rise, Ser Sandor, and kill your brother."