Lenna LVII

"Lenna?"

She looked up from her writing, over the rim of the spectacles that perched at the end of her nose. They were almost identical to the ones she had pilfered from Tyrion Lannister so many years ago, but these days, she needed them more and more.

Wynna was hovering in the doorway, her pale face drawn, blue eyes large and full of concern as she hesitated at the threshold.

"Is it Papa?" Lenna asked, taking off the glass, letting them dangle from her hand. Wynna shook her head, holding out a raven-borne scroll.

"This came. For you."

Lenna pushed herself away from the desk. In the several months since she had returned from Braavos, Lenna had commandeered her father's study. He didn't need it. He was lying in his bed, and had been since before her ship had sailed into White Harbor, rheumy old eyes staring listlessly at the canopy of his bed.

"What is the seal?" she asked, her voice choked.

Wynna took a deep breath. "It is a wolf this time."

A wolf and not a lion, she thought with perverse relief. She still kept the missive from Tyrion Lannister in her drawer, unanswered. His plea for aid, his case for a new Targaryen queen, had left Lenna shaken and almost broken, questioning everything she knew. She had left it neglected for some months since.

A wolf she could deal with.

The wind that borne she and Arya Stark back from Essos had been ill-omened. It was the only explanation that Lenna could accept, for what she found when she made it home was so much worse than she could have dreamed. Never in her wildest imaginings could she have concocted such a nightmare, and it had begin as soon as the Stark girl had wrapped her thin little arms around her and begged to come home.

Arya Stark was little more than an urchin when she dashed into Lenna's lodgings on the day of her departure, half-feral and wild-eyed. Lenna never did get the full story out of her, the girl jabbering on about no one and faceless men. It had scared Lenna, someone who had always placed absolute faith in the gods but who was troubled by the idea that such wraith-like people could walk among them.

But it wasn't the girl's tale of Braavos and the Many-Faced god that had set the streak of gray in her dark hair, it was the girl's account of the Riverlands, her presence at the Twins and what came after.

No, she thought woodenly. I would know if it was true.

The girl had told her of a the long, winding journey through the wilderness on her own husband's saddlebow, and at last of a battle that made Lenna feel as though she had hardened from the inside, only her organs left soft and throbbing.

The Mountain and the Hound. Arya had sobbed as she told the story, how Sandor had asked her to kill him. Both his legs broken, the child had said, and so covered in gore that she couldn't even make out his face.

"He was already sick," the girl whispered. "He'd gotten bitten, and it went rancid. I tried to help, I burned-"

"He let you burn him?" Lenna had asked, startled.

The girl nodded, and her face crumpled up. She was sitting on a coil of rope on the deck of the little ship, her arms wrapped so tightly about her knees that the points of her elbows stretched the fabric of her shirt until it was pale at the joint.

"I didn't do a good enough job," she said with a burbling cry, spittle on her lip. "He was weaker. He tried to send me away, gave me his horse, but I couldn't leave him."

Lenna had struggled to keep her breathing steady. "Go on."

"I found him...after," she said. "He knew he wasn't going to walk away. He couldn't. He wanted me to stab him in the heart."

To slip the knife between his ribs, Lenna thought dully, her brain clouding over in pain.

"Did you?" she asked woodenly, as if from a distance.

The girl shook her head violently and wiped her hand across her nose. "I couldn't."

"And then?"

"I gave him your handkerchief," Arya said, her gray eyes red with weeping. "With a bit of your hair in it."

Lenna had looked away, clenching here eyes and her jaw against the grief that was rising like a cresting river. "So you know."

Arya nodded jerkily. "And that's your little girl."

Lenna nodded.

"He didn't know." The girl's eyes were wide, almost consoling. Lenna wanted to reach out to her, to wrap her in comfort, but she couldn't.

She shook her head, looking down at the sleeping child. "No, he doesn't."

"Lenna," Arya said, her face reddening as she struggled to speak the words. "He's dead."

"No," Lenna had whispered, a strange, enduring twist to her lip, an unfailing glint in her eye. "I don't believe you, Arya Stark."

"I saw," the girl cried out. "I stayed with him as long as I could. I had to go, I heard something in the bracken, but he died. He couldn't-"

"He wouldn't," Lenna had said, her brows contracting and going dark with enough violence that Arya turned her head, biting her lip and shaking like an aspen in winter.

They hadn't spoken of it at all after that, though Lenna did not miss the strange looks that the child cast her, as if she had gone a little mad. Perhaps she had. She felt herself slipping away, the rational part of herself believing the child, that he was dead, and indulging herself in this strange and stubborn denial.

It was a relief to send the child into the west with an escort at the earliest convenience. Away from the New Castle, so far away in Winterfell, Lenna could imagine that they'd never met again, never spoken, that the nightmares that haunted her each night were some figment of her imagination and not conjured from some truth of Sandor laying in his own blood, begging for death, for escape.

From her.

She had not been able to deny, however, the devastation at home. The two faces that greeted her in the courtyard of the New Castle were gray as the flagstones, and just as wet in the afternoon rain.

Winterfell had been retaken in her absence only to be attacked again by Stannis Baratheon. Whilst she was gone, Sansa had gone to her brother to take up her mother's mantle and serve as the lady in the North for widowed King Robb. Lenna quailed to hear that the girl had been there when the castle was beset by Stannis' armies. Robb had refused to bend the knee, just as they had from the beginning. Stannis had attacked, some strange Red Woman in his camp making signs and burning offerings. Baratheon had sacrificed his own child, but he'd ultimately failed to take the castle, the Stark forces bedraggled but victorious.

Only, Robb Stark, hardly healed from his ordeal at the Twins, had fallen on the field. As had her own brothers, Wendel and Wylis both, and she knew it as soon as she saw Wynna's haggard face and Wylla's blonde hair. She'd stopped dyeing it, and the roots were yellow as lemons, the green like a creeping algae, and both their faces were gaunt and grey.

The New Castle that she and Arya Stark found was far different from the one that she had left. Sansa was Lady of Winterfell now, the Wardeness of the North. Her other brother, the bastard Jon Snow, driven out by the men of the Wall, had come to her aid. Together, they were slowly rebuilding the alliances and ties between the Northmen. Her own father, who would have been such an aid in the endeavor, however, was still staring listlessly at the canopy of his own bed, the mossy eyes rheumy and disoriented, his mouth slack.

He'd suffered a stroke, they said, after learning of the deaths of both his sons. Wylis, whom Lenna had not seen since her ill-fated voyage north with Sandor so many years before, and Wendel, ever her friend and ally. It seemed impossible to her that they were dead, though she had seen both of their tombs in the crypt. The Sept of the Snows had become her particular haunt since her return from the east, and the servants knew that if they couldn't find their lady, they need only send a messenger to her mother's effigy, or her brothers', and she would come back with haste.

Lenna sighed as she looked at Wynna and the scroll in her hand. It was small, but Lenna's experience with such messages was such that she only expected earth-shattering news. The shorter the missive, the more disruptive it was.

When Wynna slipped the scroll into her hand, she shuddered, put in mind of the raven that bore her mother's death, but she set her teeth and pursed her lips, flicking open the waxen wolf with determination. Her eyes darted across the message and she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose as she took a moment for herself.

The baby stirred, and Lenna rested her fingertips against the little one's chest, reassured by the rise of her ribs, the strong beat of the growing heart.

"I am summoned," she said gravely, handing the scroll back to Wynna. "Lady Sansa requests I attend her in Winterfell."

"But-"

"You are more than capable of running the city, Wynna," Lenna replied, returning to her papers. "I have not been ignorant of your help while I was gone, and do not pretend now that you do not know what to do."

Wynna took the scroll reluctantly, reading it quickly before folding her hands before her, knuckles tight and white.

"So you will go then?"

"What choice do I have?" Lenna asked. You brokered this peace, she thought, and you will see to its welfare.

Wynna did not immediately reply, and for the briefest, clearest moment, Lenna saw her own mother standing before her. Then, Wynna raised her great blue eyes, and Lenna was breathless.

"Do as you must, aunt," she said resolutely, iron in her gaze. "I will hold the city in your absence."

Lenna smiled faintly and let her pen drop to the table. A large smear of ink bled across the parchment, but she paid it no heed.

"Call a servant," she said perfunctorily. "Addy and I will leave as soon as we are fitted for travel."

Sandor LVII

The pain made it impossible to tell how much time had passed. He'd slipped into that comfortable darkness like sliding into a hot spring or a fresh bed, comfortable and almost content in the knowledge that the pain was over, regret and resignation in the curl of his hands. He didn't want to leave, but the struggle was over.

Until it wasn't.

He remembered little in the beginning, just flashes of light, the bone-melting pain consuming him, and the silence. Such a strange, full quiet, like water pressing about his ears, his eyelids and lips. It was bright and overpowering, and he tore it and ripped it and clawed at it with his own mute screams, but there was no answer to his futile, dumb curses and pleas to return to the darkness.

It rocked over him like a wave passing over the body of a drowned man, pushing at him, throwing his limbs akimbo as he fought and failed to move, to gain some control of what was happening to himself. The inability to see, to speak, to move was hell, his hearing and sensation raw, exposed, and blind. He felt like he'd been flayed and then tossed into the sea, salt mixing with his blood and burning the insides of his veins and arteries while he rocked to and fro in an invisible tide.

Eventually, his brain supplied him with visions though his eyes would still not open. He could recall tumbling down the ravine and landing in such terrible pain that he eventually went numb to it. He remembered a girl with gray eyes, not a pretty girl, but a fey-faced, boyish child who cried on him. He thought it rather extraordinary at the time, it seemed to him, that this particular child should weep for him. It filled him with a begrudging tenderness. And he remembered dying, at least he thought he did, his fingers resting against something soft and smooth and cool as he slipped into death like slipping beneath the surface of a lake.

Only it was clear that he hadn't died at all, though whatever this was could certainly be described as hell. After a long time rocking, he found himself still again, and eventually his eyes opened, staring. He could not turn his head and he was no longer in the ravine, but in a rough bed in a small room. The bed was too short, the end of it crudely extended to accommodate his size. The girl was gone, there was no trace of her, but beside him on the crude table was a faded blue bit of cloth, embroidered with white.

He'd tried to reach for it once or twice, wanting it fiercely even though he did not quite know what it was. It seemed familiar, but it hurt too much to stretch his arms out, and they would not do as he bid them. He could barely move, and he lay there for days or weeks, hazily wakening at uneven intervals. He could never fully focus when he woke, the strange, soft shapes that moved around him tipping his head back and pouring warm liquids down his throat. Liquids that made him sleepy and sick, like he'd taken milk of the poppy and too much wine, perpetually nauseated and unable to finish a thought long enough to sort out exactly what was happening to him.

His legs gave him a great deal of pain. It felt like someone had taken a hammer to them, like a convict splitting rocks. He felt splintered, and he couldn't move the damn things despite trying. They were too heavy, too stiff through the knee and ankle. Sometimes they itched like a swarm of ants was crawling under his skin, but mostly they just burned, as if his bones had gone molten, turned into red-hot steel tempered in a smith's forge, and then been put back into his legs, searing him from the inside. At the worst of it, he woke screaming, only to have more of that liquid poured into his mouth, slipping back into a brown, rusty place that was neither sleep nor death nor rest. All he wanted was the black again.

He was always groggy when he did manage to open his eyes, to take what little detail he could, but his waking grew longer and longer, and the pain duller and duller until it was a bearable if constant companion. That's when he realized that he couldn't move his legs because they were completely immobilized, splinted between long pieces of heartwood and thickly bandaged. His left arm was similarly treated, and the fingers of his right hand were splinted, too. He felt like a stick-man, some bizarre, stiff doll.

The blue fabric was still on the table, and he reached for it with his right hand, bandaged fingers too clumsy to grasp it. To his surprise, an old hand picked it up and passed it to him.

"Awake, I see." The voice was grizzled, as if not often used, and Sandor rolled his head to get a look at the man. He was old, wizened, with a bushy gray beard and eyes that were too young for his face. "You've been in and out of the seven hells, I wager. Are you in pain?"

Of course he was, but it was dull in comparison to what he'd been feeling, so he shook his head, wincing with a muffled groan.

"A warrior," the old man said with a tinge of humor. He was wearing robes, brown and dun-colored homespun, rough and scratchy, bound with a length of rope at the waist. A fucking monk. "Covered in scars from head to foot. Never seen someone both so keen to die and desperate to live."

Sandor grunted, turning his head away. His shoulder pulled at the movement and white pain flashed along the muscles of his neck like lightning.

"I can tell you're not a talker, but if you want to speak, best do it with me. You won't get so much as a peep from the others, you see. Vows of silence."

The Quiet Isle, he thought. That explained the monk's robes, the strange, heavy stillness that had surrounded him. His memories were piecing themselves together like some perverse patchwork quilt. The Quiet Isle was in the Riverlands. He'd been travelling. The girl, his brother. Lenna.

Oh gods.

"How long?" he rasped, looking back at the brother. The monk's eyes brightened.

"Nearly three months," he replied. "Someone found you in the wilds, both your legs shattered. No explanation of how or why, but they brought you here."

"Who?"

"Strange sort of person. Seemed familiar. Burly fellow with an eyepatch. And a Red Priest."

Dondarrion, he thought grimly. Of fucking course.

"Haven't seen hide nor hair of either of them since. And you were nearly dead when you made it here."

"You know what that is?" the monk asked as he nodded his chin in the direction of Sandor's hand. He'd barely noted the soft cloth between his fingers. Blue, once bright, now faded. His fingers tightened over it.

"I know who you are, Clegane," the old monk said. "And I know that sigil. I may live in solitude here, but we hear news despite ourselves. Plenty of visitors, beyond what your friends have told me."

"Should have let me die," Sandor said quietly. "It was my turn."

"Obviously it wasn't, though you did try," the brother said. "The broken legs were one thing, but you already had an infection. Left shoulder." That explained why his neck hurt each time he so much as twitched. "Fever in you raged for nearly two weeks straight. Would have killed any other man, but you didn't really want to die, did you, Clegane? And I suspect that it has something to do with that handkerchief."

Sandor didn't look at him, but he didn't release the cloth either.

"Call me an old romantic," the brother said with a smile. "I was a young man once. And I've heard the songs. The Hound and a lady and kidnapping. Tragic stuff, really, the way they sang it." He looked at Sandor shrewdly.

"I won't stay here," he said lowly, forcing himself to turn back to the monk despite the enormous amount of pain in his shoulder. Tragic stuff, he thought darkly through the thick crimson haze, he has not idea. Here the old man was trying to prompt him for a story, and he'd have no idea that the telling of it would truly be his end. Not now, not with her lost to him.

You certainly must have pissed off the gods. They won't even let you die for what you've done.

"Oh no, boy. You're not going nowhere. Not for a long, long time."

Anger giving him strength, Sandor tried to sit up, but found himself flat on his back again with the barest pressure at his shoulder from the brother.

"A very long time, indeed."

Another six months. In that time, Sandor learned to bend his legs again, his bones stiff and ungainly. His arms were easier, and he went to work for the Elder Brother, the man in the dun-colored robes who could speak whenever he pleased. Sandor almost resented him, how much he talked, as he loved the silence himself. For weeks and months, he relished the mindless strain of muscle as he split wood, dug ditches, hauled barrels for the brewers. His legs were still weak, difficult to manage, but he grew steadily stronger, measuring the days in aching sinew and the slow, steady loosening of his knees.

The Elder Brother jabbered on at him sometimes while he worked, like he was trying to coax him into talking, giving up his story. Sandor wondered why he cared so much, finally deciding he was simply in want of a good yarn. But he was no story-teller. He kept his silence.

Sandor Clegane was not about to talk of what had brought him to that place. He was not going to recount his fight with his brother, one that haunted his dreams each night, or what he saw at the Twins, or the events at Riverrun. The fighting was over, from what he could tell, and he didn't want to know what that meant. He refused to ask.

The Elder Brother did enough talking for the both of them, one of those who would rather do the penance than avoid the sin. Sandor took on his own vow of silence, something the Elder Brother remarked on, but he was grateful that the old man didn't press him on it. He kept trying, but he didn't force the matter.

Sandor was not a brother, but he lived among them and they treated him as though he was. There was comfort in the work he did, whatever they needed of him. Even in his weakened state, he was stronger than any of them, and often took on the worst of the labor without being asked: hauling casks of water, retrenching the latrine, loading the wagons with barrels of beer to sell.

That night, he was digging a grave, some nine months after he'd arrived on the island, his back again strong. It was raining, dark, but despite this it was fairly easy work, pushing the spade through the loamy ground in preparation for some fat old monk who had died peacefully the day before. The other monks had taken it as cause for celebration, and the ale had been flowing. They were noisy and too merry for penitents, all celebrating their own deaths in advance, and Sandor had eaten his stew of crabs and potatoes and gone back to work, knee deep in the mud, his clothes plastered to his body as a sharp wind blew.

"Fucking hells."

He thrust the spade into ground and looked up from beneath his dripping hair. He'd missed the sound of hoofbeats in downpour, but there was a dapple gray stallion standing just beyond the lichyard gate, led by a figure nearly as tall as himself, clad in an oiled cloak, the water streaming off in rivulets.

"Is that you, Clegane?" A large hand lifted the edge of the cloak and he could see blue even in the dim light of his lantern. "Where the fuck have you been?"

Brienne Tarth took another step toward him, causing him to take a step back. His legs, still stiff, buckled slightly and he leaned heavily on the spade's handle.

"Steady," she said, holding a hand out as if he was a startled horse, alarm etching her sober face as she realized it was weakness and not fear that set him off balance. "It's me, Clegane."

"I fucking know who you are," he replied, his throat tight with disuse. "Why are you here?"

"Could ask the same of you," she said, her mouth tight as an arse-hole. He wondered that she was angry.

Sandor yanked the shovel back out of the earth, striding past the woman. She didn't move as he went. He grunted.

"Coming or not?" he asked over his shoulder. Tarth looked back at him, her mouth no longer clenched, but open. She did not move. He growled. "Suit yourself."

Stumbling, he made his way back toward the refectory where the monks were gathered, in search of the Elder Brother. He would want to deal with his guest himself, and Sandor wanted to make himself scarce. The last time he'd seen Lady Brienne had been just a scant week's ride from where he currently stood, but a year and a half earlier. He wondered at her appearance, but her presence filled his belly with lead. He wanted a pint of ale and the seclusion of his bunk, a small room in the rear of the stable where no one dared to bother him.

The Elder Brother saw him when he opened the door, and the Tarth woman must have followed him as the old man slipped away from the other brothers and hurried across the room.

"Many welcomes," he said quietly, ushering Tarth inside and out of the rain. "I thank our friend for seeing you safely in from this weather. Can I offer you supper? Something to drink?"

"I thank you, brother," Brienne said stiffly, eyeing Sandor. "Shelter from the night. I would leave on my business in the morning."

"Of course, my lady," the Elder Brother said. "Please, follow me." Sandor turned to go, but the brother seized him above elbow. "You'll come too, friend."

He was still dripping wet, his hands clenched into fists the size of beer barrels, but he did as he was bid, trailing behind the Elder Brother, Brienne Tarth casting her bright eye over her shoulder every so often.

"Let me take your cloak for you," the Elder Brother said, taking the oiled garment from Tarth and spreading it before the fire. His study was a small room, almost a cave, spread with thick carpets and sporting a hearth too large for the space. It was the least austere room in the compound, the Elder Monk having no scruples about hoarding comforts for himself. There was always a merry fire roaring in the grate, and Sandor backed up from it as the flames licked outwards. "Warm yourself."

Brienne of Tarth took up a position by the hearth, her eyes still on Clegane.

"I see you are acquainted," the Elder Brother said, ushering in a silent brother with a tray consisting of a steaming bowl of stew and a jug of beer. The women didn't eat in the refectory with the monks when they appeared, but neither did they eat in the Elder Brother's private study. Sandor took a deep breath. He felt as if his host knew something he did not.

Brienne looked between the monk and Sandor. "Yes. Briefly."

"You are surprised to see my friend," the Brother said. "Thought him dead, I'd wager."

"Yes. We all did," she replied. Sandor glanced up from beneath his hair. "Well. Almost all of us."

"We?" the Elder said.

"Yes." She looked hard at Sandor. He scowled at his gnarled hands. "We did. His wife and family."

"I've got no wife or family," Sandor replied darkly.

"You fucking piece of shit," Brienne snarled. "To deny her-"

"She's another man's wife," he bit out. "Not mine. Not any more."

The blue eyes narrowed to slits, the shades of cerulean and sapphire almost glowing through her pale lashes. "What in seven hells are you talking about?"

"She married the Frey," he breathed, and he tasted his brother's breath, hot and dank on his face as he leaned down to deliver that blow, much more fatal than any he'd landed with his sword. Sandor gulped. "Don't you know?"

Brienne shook her head as if shaking away a pesky fly, confusing carving a dash between her nearly invisible brows.

"Perwyn Frey?" she asked, her voice rising in disbelief. He made no answer, but Brienne Tarth's brow darkened and she moved a step in his direction. "Perwyn Frey is dead," Brienne said, her voice low and soothing, like she was talking to an unruly child. "Clegane- she never married anyone but you."

"My brother-" he started, then slammed his mouth shut. Of course. His brother had tried to distract him, sap his will, make him easier to destroy. Worked, didn't it? He felt like he was going to faint, and that was not a feeling he was used to.

"Clegane," Brienne continued, "do you really not know?"

"Know what?" he asked hollowly, wishing the pit he was standing in would double in size and swallow him up.

"Come with me," Brienne said shortly. "When I leave tomorrow. Go back to her. She's been waiting."

He closed his eyes, his fingers curling inward. He could barely hold a spade like this, let alone a sword. He was useless to her without his strength. Useless to all of them, like a gelded bull-ox. What place was there for a warrior who couldn't fight, who they didn't trust to begin with. "No. I'm-"

"You'd truly abandon her, then?" Brienne of Tarth was angry, and Sandor quailed. "You've been gone for so long, Clegane. Nearly two years. Years that she's been waiting for you, insisting that you weren't dead, that you were coming back. We all thought her mad, but here you are. She was right."

"She always is," he replied dully. "But I can't."

"You must," Brienne said evenly. "Why do you not wish to go home?"

Home, he thought. The word made his chest swell in longing, but darkness overwhelmed him.

"I'm of no use," he said quietly. "I can't fight like this. I've failed."

"Failed how?" Brienne queried.

"The Stark girl," he rasped. "Dead or worse because of me."

"Arya?" Brienne said in surprise. "Arya Stark?"

"Aye," he said sadly, thinking about how the child had stayed with him, little face crumpled. He'd asked about her once he'd awoken, the Elder saying there was no trace of her. There had been no news, and he knew that if she had made it to her brother safely, there would be news.

"Arya is safe and sound," Brienne replied. "At home, among her family in Winterfell."

"Winterfell?" he asked dumbly, so tired he could barely lift his eyes or move his lips.

"Clegane," Brienne said tersely. "I think there is much you need to hear, but I'd prefer not to do it standing at the latrine."

The elder brother nodded, and Sandor heaved himself out of the pit. He was still thin, rangier than ever he'd been after months and months of convalescence, but he was strong again.

Brienne looked him over.

"You've seen better days," she said with a wry twist of her lip.

"Was always ugly to begin with," he retorted with a snort.

"We have that in common," she smiled, and they followed the Elder into the low-slung building where the brother's lived. The old man led them into his own office, hesitating at the doorway.

"You should stay," Sandor said as the old man tried to leave. "You should hear the news just as much as me."

"I am beyond worldly-"

"Horse shit," Sandor groused. The old man closed the door firmly and took a chair to the side of the room, burying his hands in his robes.

Brienne stood in the middle of the floor, and at the beginning, Sandor stayed standing as well, but the more she talked, the weaker he felt, until he was slumped into a chair with his hands in his hair fighting the fucking tears that were welling in his throat.

Robb Stark dead. Winterfell retaken, now held by its Lady, Sansa Stark. The girl had survived after all, fled North after Joffrey's death. He felt sick pleasure when the warrior told him of the young king's death. Then she told him of young Tommen and his Tyrell queen, of the Faith Militant and the High Sparrow, of the death of Tywin Lannister and the flight of Tyrion from the Seven Kingdoms.

And then she spoke of Lenna. Of how she and Olenna Tyrell had been able to still the fighting in the North, to establish an independent commonwealth and broker a tenuous peace with the South through the work of Olenna's granddaughter, Queen Margaery, and Lenna's own cunning, buying back from the Iron Bank the debt that had strangled the Crown.

And then he heard how both of her brothers had fallen at the retaking of Winterfell, and how Lenna had taken on the bulk of the governance of White Harbor in her father's own decline. A stroke, the Tarth woman said, had kept Wyman Manderly bedridden for six months following the victory, at least from what she had heard.

"I am headed to the Lady in the North," Brienne said quietly. "I am her shield now, as I was her mothers, and have recently dispatched her business. I only stopped here for shelter on my way. The Quiet Isle has taken me in before." Her lips were a thin line. "Perhaps you could come with me. Lend your sword to our cause."

"You've just finished telling me that the war is over," Sandor growled. "I'll stay here."

"I told you no such thing," Brienne replied. "I only said that the conflict between the crown and the North was put to rest. A war of a different kind is coming."

Sandor scoffed. "From where?"

Brienne looked at Sandor and at the Elder. "If I tell you either, you won't believe me."

"More than one?" Sandor asked, turning a hard gaze on the warrior.

"Jon Snow whispers of an army beyond the Wall," Brienne replied. "Coming for us. And if that was not enough, Daenerys Targaryen has raised her own forces and comes with her dragons to retake her throne."

"Fucking hells," Sandor chortled, put in mind of Lenna's old red book. "Fairy tales. You expect us to believe fucking fairy tales?"

"I said you wouldn't believe me," Brienne said. "But I saw the missive from Tyrion Lannister myself. He's gone over to her side, the Targaryen's. He sent the letter to Lenna, asking for her help. Or so my Lady Sansa told me."

He growled before he could stop himself. They always wanted to get their hooks in her.

"You cannot stay here," the Elder said from his corner. Sandor had almost forgotten that he was there. He'd been so silent that he faded into the background as Sandor's thoughts chased each other from end of the realm to the other, following and flitting always to her.

"I cannot-"

"You must, my boy," the Elder said. He rose and looked at Brienne. "He's fit for travel. Leave in the morning. Even I appreciate that other matters need tending to more than our gardens. Or our latrines."

Cold stirred in his gut as he outfitted Stranger. He had never quite figured out how the horse had made it into the Elder brother's stables. The old man had never told him, and he thought it best not to ask too many questions, besides.

The journey north was a taciturn one, the warrior only looking at him morosely across the campfire, as if there was something she wanted to tell him but couldn't. Something she wanted to say. He didn't know what she meant by it, but he did wish she would fucking spit it out.

She didn't.

They rode through Winterfell's gates on a warmish afternoon, snow falling only lightly. The yard itself was mud, and Sandor was put in mind of his first arrival in that Keep, not at all impressed with the homely, dirty surroundings, but feeling at home enough.

A stable boy took Stranger from him, leading him into the stables. His time with the brothers had left him docile as a lady's palfrey, and Sandor felt only a little pang at the loss of the horse's wildness. He was not unlike his mount, softened by his time among the silence and labor of the monks.

It had been nearly two years since he'd ridden from Riverrun's gates, and he could hardly count himself the same man who had left King's Landing in the midst of the Battle of the Blackwater. Standing in Winterfell's mud only made him more aware of the fact. The last time he'd been there had been when King Robert was still alive, when they had ridden north to beg Ned Stark as Hand, when he had been so consumed with avoiding a certain lady that he thought of little else.

He was still consumed.

The horses were led off and Sandor stood in the yard a bit dazed, taking in his bearings. Brienne of Tarth was speaking lowly and urgently to a man-at-arms while Sandor breathed and found his bearings. It was not so cold as it had been, the earth underfoot muddy and soft rather than frozen solid, and his breath was warm as it billowed back into his face.

It was a day the Northerners relished in a winter, and as such, many of them were out and about under the pale sky.

A child shrieked and he watched as the little figure darted across the muddy yard, the hem of her dress dark with dirt. Her robust cheeks were red, little rosebud mouth open in delight as gray eyes sparkled.

Gray eyes, he thought dimly.

"Addy!" came a breathless cry, and a woman darted after her, dark braid swinging down her her back. Her face was alive with the cold, cheeks and nose ruddy with exertion and simple joy, and she caught the child up in her arms, showering the dark, curly head with kisses.

The child giggled, no more than two, and her mother laughed as she hoisted her on her hip, lips planted firmly against the crown of her head as she looked up.

The air in Sandor's lungs fled as he looked the woman in the face, and he felt himself go slack by degrees. First his face, then his arms and lungs collapsed, followed in turn by his knees. Before he knew what was happening, his broken, weakening legs crumpled beneath him until he was on his knees in the mud, still locked in the gaze of the woman just across the yard.

He didn't breathe as he waited, fully convinced that he had finally gone mad and the gods were playing one last, cruel joke on him.

She stared back at him for a long moment, her face stone and ice. But then the thaw came, delicately, incrementally, and her face seemed to fill, with warmth and joy, and her eyes, a muddled green and gray, filled with an incredible light.

Sandor let out the the breath he'd been holding, refilling his lungs with vengeance when she smiled.

She took one step across the courtyard, then two, until she was a half dozen paces away, the child wriggling in her arms. Then the little thing saw him and went quiet. For a long moment they regarded each other, the little girl and the grizzled old warrior. The child lifted her arms toward him in uncertain invitation, and her mother beamed.

"I knew," she said, just loud enough that he could hear the laughter in her voice. "I always knew."

A/N: It's been a long week. I'm getting into the final stages of figuring out where this rollercoaster is headed. Forgive the little typos. I'm a bit tipsy.

All reviews are welcome. Hope everyone is well. Thanks for sticking along for the ride.