Sandor LXVI

Agony.

It had hurt less when his legs had splintered like twigs as he fell into that fucking ravine deadlocked with his brother. He'd have taken the feeling of his ribs fracturing and puncturing his own lungs over the complete and crushing pain that came almost as soon as they reached White Harbor. He'd had an inkling, a twinge of knowing, as soon as he saw that it was Wyman Manderly himself that came to greet them in the courtyard of the New Castle, his granddaughters grey-faced and somber beside him. Neither of them would meet his eye, though he'd seen the younger one start as if arrow-shot as soon as he stepped through the gate, her hand flying to her sister's shoulder, the pale lips open in surprise. His father-in-law, once so fat and jovial, looked wizened, deflated, as if the skeleton of the man inside had itself shrunk, leaving behind a skin too large. The eyes, though, those were the same, just like Lenna's only clouded with age and trouble.

Though the bedraggled company was headed by Jon Snow, captained by Jaime Lannister, it was to Sandor that Wyman went, his gait uneven and slow, his snowy whiskers drooping and trembling as he held Sandor's eyes. Of course he came to him first. They were kin. Clegane's own breath froze, burning his lungs even more painfully than it had on the other side of the Wall, his heart slow thunder, his vision itself pulsating in his one good eye.

"We received a raven," Wyman said with shaking lips, his once-strong voice now tremorous with care and age. He was bracing both of his hands on his staff, a gnarled length of driftwood as twisted as his old hands. The fingers fluttered, beyond the old lord's control, speaking of his agitation, of his grief. Manderly cleared his throat, lifting his chin up, almost as if in defiance. "Daenerys Targaryen is dead, but the capital is utterly destroyed. King's Landing, they say, is no more."

Sandor had felt dizzy, reaching outward blindly only to be caught by Wyman's surprisingly strong grip. He curved his own hand into Wyman's bright tunic, the rough woolen bunching in his grasp like her handkerchief once had, the vivid blue violent through the gray haze of his desperation.

"What are you saying?" he rasped, unblinking, swallowing the panic that had risen up and threatened to choke him.

"She was there, my boy," Manderly said in a voice like a wasteland, utterly devoid of feeling, of life. Wyman reached out and put his hand on Sandor's cheek, bracing both of them with fatherly care and the stirrings of a shared grief. Sandor's chest clenched oddly, his eye burning. When the tears found their way out of the old lord's eyes, he realized they were in response to his own trickling wetly into the wild tangle of his beard. He could taste the salt. "Olenna Tyrell sent word that Lenna had gone to the capital just a few days before the siege."

"The children-" Sandor's stomach fell into an abyss of ice and he felt as if he was mired in quicksand. Addy, he thought, his mind full of her bonny face, her rosebud mouth, the great grey eyes and the dark curls. And my son-

"Safe," Wyman replied quickly, a modicum of spark in his face. Relief flooded darkly through him, and Sandor reared his head back. "The bairns are with Olenna on their way to Highgarden," Wyman replied stiffly. "But there has been no other word."

"She's alive," Sandor said frantically, more to himself that to Manderly. "Manderly, she has to be." He didn't know how much he actually believed it, but Wyman Manderly had tightened his grip on Sandor's jaw, the spotted hand still sinewy and strong, but his eyes were still dim. He said nothing, just shut his ancient, tired eyes and pulled Sandor's head down until they were pressed brow to brow.

When Wyman released him, Sandor looked at the girls, grown into careworn women, and took in their glistening cheeks, the dark purpling under their red-rimmed eyes. Wylla turned her face into Wynna's shoulder and Sandor clenched his fist.

"She isn't dead," he repeated, and Wynna's face went pained.

"Sandor-" she said, her voice low and musical, so like her aunt's. "Please-"

"No," he said emphatically. "She's not fucking dead." He didn't wait for another response, another denial, and neither could be bring himself to look over his shoulder when Brienne of Tarth shouted for him. He walked through the halls of the New Castle until he found the ramparts, and he stood there for some time, his hands chapped and red from the cold, his lips dry, his eyes stinging from either the salt of the wind or his own weeping, he didn't much care which.

"We're going in the morning."

Jaime Lannister looked like a wraith, his tawny skin gray, the bright hair long since beginning to show strands of steel instead of gold.

"She's alive," Sandor rasped again, and from the way his lungs filled with air he wasn't sure he'd breathed in several hours. And yet you live.

Jaime cocked his head and bit the flesh inside his cheeks, hollowing them even further, his handsome face almost a death's head.

"If she is," he croaked, "and I dearly hope she is, then you will find her."

"Aye," he replied savagely, "and if she isn't, I'll kill you. And your brother. And your damned sister. I'll kill the whole fucking lot of you. If it wasn't for you damned Lannisters-"

He couldn't finish the thought, too consumed with the bubbling grief, the denial.

"You're right," Jaime replied, his eyes red and his jaw trembling beneath the two weeks' worth of graying stubble. "And I'll let you. Lannisters always pay their debts. But first," he said solemnly, "we hope that it doesn't come to that and that you find her...safe...somewhere."

Sandor cursed time. It had taken a week and a half to make from Winterfell to White Harbor, and it would take them another week by ship from there to King's Landing. Old Wyman had a fleet ready for them, not that Sandor thought it would do them much good. The army travelled, but if Bran Stark was correct, it hardly mattered. They were sailing to a graveyard.

They left with the next tide, there was no time to rest. There was a raven that evening of their arrival, for which Sandor was grateful in the most pitiful way. Oberyn Martell held the city. It was the first news that there were any survivors at all, and he didn't miss Jaime Lannister's beryl-bright gaze across the table from him. Some had managed to weather the siege, not many, but those that remained were swiftly running out of food and supplies. It was a plea more than a message, and Sandor could hear the prince's desperation.

They were a grim-faced crew. The nightly council meetings aboard the ship were more opportunities for them to silently swill ale in their collective dark humor than it was for any kind of planning. There was nothing to plan until their knew. Knew how bad the devastation was. Knew who had survived, who had perished.

Fucking gods.

He didn't know how he kept breathing, the same dogged determination to put one foot in front of the other that had kept him alive for the last thirty-odd years was the only reason he rose in the mornings. It was mostly habit rather than will. He felt as if he was wrapped in seaweed, dark and grasping as he frantically attempted to shrug it off. There was nothing he could do to escape it, no way to cut himself free. He settled for a gasp here and there, an explosive intake of breath, of memory, as his mind swirled with images of her caught up in the flames of dragon-fire, buried in a ruddy rubble of smoking stone. He would wake suddenly in the night, sure that he had heard her cry out for him, only for his eyes adjust to the darkness to nothing but the timbers above his bunk and the intermittent creaking of the ship.

Their first view of the capital was not a heartening one. There had been no call, but every last man on the ship was standing on the deck as they made their way into the Bay. Even from a distance, the sight was harrowing. The Red Keep was still smoldering, tendrils of black smoke rising into the impossibly blue winter sky. Even this far South, his breath stood out as a white smoke in the morning breeze, short puffs that he could not control. Sandor thought for a moment that he was looking at one of the illustrations of Old Valyria that had been in Lenna's books. He hadn't hated it when she had read those stories to him, the tales of the Doom of the city with its broken, blackened towers.

"Steady," came the voice at his shoulder and he started. Brienne of Tarth stood there, her unalluring features so still she seemed fixed in place, like a wooden effigy in a Sept, only so pale she might have been marble. It was an unlovely face, but there was strength in it, right down to the unflinching expression in her bright blue eyes, the only measure of beauty she'd been afforded. It was a steady gaze, and as much as it irked him, he appreciated the empathy that he saw in them.

She and Bronn had practically taken shifts watching he and Jaime Lannister since the news had broken in White Harbor. He reckoned they were both afraid that one or the other might do something reckless, something irrevocable. But he and the Kingslayer were made of firmer stuff than that.

No, he thought, you're just dead men walking. No point in killing what's already dead.

"'M fine," he muttered to her bitterly, his fingers biting so hard into the wood of the railing that he was sure he'd given himself splinters.

"No, you're not," she rejoined stoically. "We none of us are."

That was the fucking truth. He could stay upright, keep his heart beating, but they weren't much better than cunt wights, the lot of them, stumbling about the ship's deck in aimless wandering in the long days it took them to cut through the waters of the Fingers, to sail into the Blackwater Bay. Such a strange, pervasive nothingness had settled about him in his waking hours. It was only when he was asleep-

He growled, looking at the dark expanse of water that was still methodically lapping at the fuming wharves and the jagged rocks below the Red Keep's twisted and collapsing towers. He did not like being there again, did not like seeing that damned castle rising above him, and liked even less that instead of grand, as it had once been, it was now blackened and broken like the ruins of the old Dragonpit, only the signs of destruction fresher and more devastating as his imagination insisted on conjuring images of her, of them, roasting with the city under the hot breath of Daenerys Targaryen's fucking mounts.

At least the silver-haired bitch was dead. There were few enough details, nothing but the news that Daenerys Targaryen had died in the siege, but it warmed him to think that she was gone, that if there was anything to rebuild she would not stand in the way of the Seven Kingdoms rising from the ashes, from putting the whole last twenty years behind them.

But who will put it to rights?

He wished they'd brought the cripple, wished that Bran Stark could just tell him if she was dead. As vociferously as he insisted that she was not, the shades of doubt had begun to hound him. He felt, perversely, that he should know if she was dead, that the wound that had started to bleed at a trickle so many years earlier would hemorrhage if she had been killed, would have killed him by now, too, his body going cold as his head pounded, sweat pouring off of him as he growled and sputtered. He'd seen men die of bleeding before, saw how they went briefly mad just before they slackened and turned gray. If she was dead, surely he would have suffered the same by now, and since he hadn't-

Hope was not something that Sandor Clegane was prone to indulging. It was frail, tiny, unformed, but bright and piercing and white, seated in his abdomen and fluttering against his ribcage at the most inopportune moments.

Folly, he thought, his good eye scanning the wreckage that had once been the capital. If she had been in the city when Daenerys had attacked-

He forced himself to remain thoughtless until they had docked at what had once been the Mudgate. He remembered the last time he'd been there, charging madly into the darkness and the green flame against Stannis Baratheon's men. It had seemed hell at the time, but now, he almost wished for it. Things had been simpler then when it was easy to know where a man stood, what could happen based on a series of predictable events. There was even a comfort in knowing that if certain things came to pass, your head would be mounted on the walls. At least a death by the sword would have been swift, and not this interminable and excruciating waiting.

They traversed the city in silence, that large company of battered commanders and exhausted fighting men. Some of them had come from here, of course, bred in the city's various slums or just outside its gates. Still, there was no sound, nothing save the soft clip-clop of the horses' hooves and the tramp of the men's boots in the thick layer of ash that coated the cobbled streets, the contours of the stones so shrouded in the powder that men lost their footing and stumbled, arms flailing wildly, borne up by their fellows as they made their solemn way through what had once been the greatest city of Westeros.

No signs of life. The great Sept of Baelor was a ruin, its great dome caved in like a soft-boiled egg with its end cracked off. He wondered vaguely what they would find if they opened the charred doors. Another army of the dead, he wagered, but this one black and charred, nothing but jagged bones and gaping eyes and blistered teeth, a mass of death. It was there, they'd heard, that both the king and the queen had been consumed by fire, the whole place going up in green flame when Daenerys Targaryen's dragon had inadvertently ignited a hidden cache of wildfire concealed in the crypts as they ministered to the terrified poor of their city, hiding in the great structure in the belief that it could protect them.

The shattered glass, craggy and glinting against the sky, told another story, and he hoped, almost prayed, that the ends of those inside had been as quick and instantaneous as possible. The thought of all that fire made him shudder and grit his teeth involuntarily.

They spotted no signs of life until they reached the north side of the city, beyond the melted statue of Baelor on its fracture pedestal, as they approached Rhaenys' Hill. There they spied the paler, thinner smoke of cooking fires and his hands tightened around the reins.

It was a hard climb for an exhausted army, but he and Brienne made it together, urging the horses along with faint clicks of the tongue and nary a word between them. Jaime Lannister rode at her other side, his face a tight, stricken portrait of pain.

A lookout must have spotted them. A contingent of men were approaching them on foot, and at their head was a tall man that Sandor recognized even from the little distance. Their party dismounted, and Sandor clenched his fists and set his jaw, the sensation in his breast less like a fluttering and more like thrashing, like a bird in a snare fighting to get free, scenting its own blood.

"We wouldn't have made it much longer," Oberyn said, grasping Jon Snow and Jaime Lannister by the elbow like a fellow soldier, surprising Sandor when he reached for him in the same way. "We are desperate for supplies."

Oberyn had set about to shouting orders immediately, the weary company moving as quickly as they could to bring in what stores they had brought. The Dragonpit itself was being used as a shelter, those that had survived the siege huddled inside. There were several hundred, if not a thousand, Oberyn related, never pausing in his work but giving an accounting as food was sorted and distributed, as medicines and medical supplies were counted and ferried where needed.

"They trickled in for nearly a week after," he said, at last stopping to survey his men as they worked. "It has been days since the last. I think this is all of them. All that remain of the citizens of King's Landing."

Sandor looked about them bleakly, trying to making himself ask.

"My brother," Jaime bit out. "My sister."

Oberyn thumbed his nose and looked at the ground with a shake of his head. "I'm sorry, Ser Jaime."

Jaime swallowed but his shoulders fell, just enough for Sandor to see it, like watching a great oak fracture after a lightning strike. He was still standing, but it was taking all of his effort, all of his mettle to keep his feet.

"And now-Clegane," Oberyn said softly, his dark eyes like dragonglass and his cheek hollow. Sandor understood at once.

"Where is she?" he asked airlessly. Oberyn looked at him expressionlessly.

"Come."

Sandor didn't look back, but followed after the prince. They meandered through the hordes of people toward a stand of Martell tents, bright orange and red in the dust of the Dragonpit. They were fluttering with activity, women and men bustling around prostrate forms laying on bedrolls and makeshift cots. Some were so covered in bandages that only their noses were exposed. The air smelled of roasted-flesh, burnt hair, and sour rot. Sandor's stomach heaved, the memory of it always fresh in his own nostrils but the reality of it making it difficult for him to swallow back the bile that threatened.

"Is she-" he choked just as Oberyn called out

"Lenna-"

A woman was bent over a rough table, her back to them, dark hair in a long, ragged braid. Her skirts were tattered and blackened and he could make a out a flash of bandaged ankle. She straightened at Oberyn's call and turned.

His heart was thundering so loudly that he could hear nothing else.

"Sandor." Her saw her lips form the word rather but was too deafened by his own pumping blood to hear it, and he wasn't quite sure he believed his sight as she picked her way through the injured and made her way toward him. It seemed to him that she was coming from a great distance away, the sounds around him returning but dull, as if his ears were filled with water, but it was her face, her eyes. She was limping a little, and her left hand was bandaged tightly, the sleeve of her gown slit to accommodate the dressing. There was a plaster at her breast and shoulder above the cut of her dress, a few shiny fingers of burn visible at the edges, curling like flames themselves. His lungs worked, seeming to fill with water, but the moment her right hand touched his, warm and dry, it was like being heaved above the sea's surface after a great wave has passed, and he gasped as he clutched her to him.

Her whole body was wracked with sobs, but he could not care, could not do anything but wrap her in his arms and hold her in place, his own face pressed against her shoulder, then his lips were on her pulse in her neck and then on her chapped, dry lips.

She'd never tasted sweeter.

"Alive," he heard her say. "You're alive."

"Aye," he answered, his hand tracing her cheek and tangling in her snarled hair, avoiding the healing burns and the plaster. "I am. And you. You are alive."

"Aye," she replied, her tears cutting tracks through the grime on her cheeks. Soot, he thought, and he wiped them away, cutting swathes of clean skin on her face, the paleness all the brighter in contrast to the filth and the angry red of the burn at her throat. He could see the singed ends of the curls about her face, brittle and brown, and his fingers touched them lightly as he wondered what the hells had happened. "We are alive."

"How?" he asked, and she took his hand in hers and held it to her cheek, then slumped against him, the crown of her head pressed into his sternum as her knees seemed to give out beneath her.

It didn't last but a moment, and then she was back on her feet, her hand in his as she pulled him back toward the approaching company. Despite the ash and soot, her singed hair and bandaged the skin, her gown in tatters about her, she was every inch the lady.

Her eyes searched his face, distressed, until he saw the realization cross her features as swiftly as a sword strike, her hand flying to his face. "Sandor, your eye-"

"Not now," he replied brusquely, grasping her by the wrist and pressing it to his lips. "What are you doing here?" It was an unfair question, one with a difficult answer. She furrowed her brow.

"Records," she said, her lips trying to smile and failing. "I try to keep track of the treatments for the medics. It helps them make sure everyone is taken care of. And I have been collecting the names of the people who are here, trying to take an account of-"

Gods, he thought. A roll-call of the dead.

"The others-" Sandor started, but Lenna shook her head.

"There are few," she replied. "So many dead. The King. The Queen. Cersei and Baelish and…"

"The Imp," he said flatly, thinking of Jaime Lannister looking old and swaying on his feet.

She nodded, the tip of her nose going red. "Yes. And Tyrion." She said the name quickly, like it was a knife that cut her. She put her hand on his arm. "The children-"

"Safe at Highgarden," he said quickly. "I know. Your aunt sent word to your father."

She swiped at her eyes. "She smuggled them out with Gilly before the siege." She looked up at Sandor and he pressed his mouth to hers again. The skin around her mouth came away clean from the bristles of his beard, her fingertips burying themselves in the hair of his cheeks, grown long and bushy over the Northern winter. "There is so much to say, Sandor."

She was right, as she usually was, but there was not time just then. The two of them followed Oberyn, patiently waiting with averted eyes, and he took them back toward the entrance of the Dragonpit. The supplies had been distributed and the men were busily setting up their tents. Oberyn bypassed them altogether, leading Sandor and Lenna toward another tent in Martell orange and red, this one clearly his own.

Inside, Jon Snow was standing pensively off to the side, his troubled face visibly relaxing when he caught sight of Lenna. Jaime Lannister, who had been sitting, rose to his feet abruptly and allowed himself to be wrapped in Lenna's arms when she flew to him.

For the briefest moment, Jaime's eyes met Sandor's, and there was only grieved relief in them before the Kingslayer bent his head and pressed his cheek against Lenna's. The two of them stood that way for a long time, and Sandor didn't even begrudge Jaime the comfort of it. Sandor saw that the Lannister was weeping, his face contorted in the effort to hold back his anguish, his mouth parted in despair.

"What in the seven hells happened?" Jaime asked at last, drawing himself up to his full height and looking down on Lenna in entreaty. It was the question that had weighed on all of them, of that Sandor was sure, but which they had not been able to ask.

Lenna drew Jaime's hand into hers and pressed it, her own mouth parted as if unable to speak. Brienne came to her side and rested a square hand on her shoulder. Sandor did not miss the tenderness in Jaime Lannister's eyes as he looked at the warrior, nor did he not see the doleful interest in Jon Snow's face.

Aegon Targaryen's face, he corrected himself.

There had been little enough time to digest that.

"Betrayed," Lenna said softly. "We were betrayed."

"We know," Jon replied with equal quietude. "Bran told us."

Lenna looked at him quizzically, but then shook her head as if it to chase away a question. "I would ask a thousand questions," she started, "but they will wait, I think."

Brienne nodded.

"Sit," Oberyn said, startling Sandor. He'd quite forgotten about the Dornish prince. "Please."

There was a council table surrounded by chairs, and they sank into them gratefully. Lenna took the one next to Sandor, drawing his hand into hers and resting it in her lap. Her fingers were busy in his, stroking the length of them, squeezing, even as her voice stayed steady and her eyes clear.

"It was Petyr Baelish," she continued, and Sandor felt his blood rise. He must have shifted because Lenna squeezed his fingers, glancing at him askance. "It doesn't matter anymore. He betrayed us. Every last one of us, including her."

He wasn't surprised that the Targaryen girl hadn't seen it coming. He'd not thought her particularly bright when he'd first met her, and had become convinced during their brief stay in Dragonstone that she would not be clear-sighted enough to be competent, even with her army of Dothraki madmen and passionless Unsullied.

"We were ready for her," Lenna said with a brief nod of her head. "As ready as we could be. We tried to evacuate, but she'd set the dragons on the perimeter. Some managed to escape, but not many. As you see," she gestured lamely to the Dragonpit. It was illuminated by the setting sun, ruddy as the Red Keep as it reflected the flaming sky and the countless cookfires that were being lit for the evening meal. "Many went to the Sept of Baelor, hiding in the crypts. There was a cache of dragonfire. Not even Tyrion or I knew about it. It hadn't been there before."

"Then where-" Jaime began.

"Cersei," Lenna whispered. "She had it moved there during the conflict with the Sparrow. Just in case. In the end, it was what doomed Tommen and Margaery. They were there, comforting their people, when one of the dragons- Drogon, I think, though it does not matter- spewed fire at the Sept and the fire reached the cache and-" her voice trailed off. She took a shuddering breath and Sandor slipped his hand into hers. Her fingers tightened around his but she did not raise her eyes.

"It was fast, at least, that's what we were told. We heard the explosion in the Keep itself. Looked out just in time to see the green fireball."

Jaime made a desperate sound and sat up straighter. Sandor saw the strain in his temples, the press of his good hand against the wood of the tabletop. In his own mind, he saw the young king, and remembered when he was just a lad, a sweet-faced, golden child, and wondered if that was what Jaime was thinking of, too. The pain of it lanced through him as he recalled the brief anguish of fearing his own children dead, and the intense relief of knowing they were safe. Jaime Lannister had lost not one, but two sons, and the iron that had set itself in his heart against the Kingslayer years before yielded.

Lenna did not relent, her hands against his stilling in her lap. Her eyes were still clear, free of tears, and her voice was even, but she was staring resolutely at the polished surface of the table and avoiding their eyes. She took a deep breath and he felt the expansion of her ribs against his arm, almost crackling with the effort. "And then she came at the Keep. But Prince Oberyn and Prince Trystane, they held them off. Felled two of the dragons with the scorpions. They are at the bottom of the bay, now." Lenna bit her lip and looked into her lap, pain written in the deep lines on her forehead. "Prince Trystane fell in the siege."

"My sister. My brother," Jaime said tightly, a vein throbbing in his forehead. He was pale, his skin tight against his cheekbones, his jaw. He was shaking so hard that he seemed to waver, like a mirage in the deserts, like an apparition in the dark. "I'm the last."

Lenna looked up at him with great, glowing eyes. "Cersei was knocked from the ramparts when one of the dragon's fell. His body took out most of the inner wall. She had the misfortune to be standing there when his tail clipped the stonework." She gazed steadily back at Jaime Lannister, though effort was showing itself in the glittering of her eyes. He had cocked his head as he looked at her, his teeth gritted together like a man beneath the field-surgeon's amputation saw, like he was being dismembered piece by piece before their eyes.

"And Tyrion?" Jaime choked, his eyes full of pain but that damn chiseled jaw again set bravely.

Lenna swallowed hard, but when she spoke it was the keening of a bereaved child. She, who had remained so upright through what could not have been an easy telling, bent double with her head almost touching the table. She let go of Sandor's hands and braced herself against the table's edge, the fingers of her right hand white, and those of her left seeping dark blood through the bandages that had been tightly wrapped. She took a great gasp, a sob. "I'm so sorry, Jaime," she said, her face a mask of grief and loss and guilt. "I'm so sorry. Tyrion...he...he died for me," she managed, looking at Jaime with her throat working. "If it wasn't for me-"

"How?" Jaime prompted tightly. His voice lacked malice, lacked blame, and Sandor knew he just simply needed to know. If it had been him questioning the Imp about what happened to Lenna, he would need the same.

She reared up as if facing an execution, all of a sudden steady again, like a ship rolled on its side might right itself right on the brink of capsizing. "I tried. You must all believe me. I tried to talk sense into her until the last. We were in the throne room. The Keep was falling about our ears, the ash so thick it was like snow," her voice became high and strained but she pressed on, her hands before her face as if she was conjuring the sight again. "It was white like snow, too. Beautiful. Dense. But not regular ash, you see, but incinerated-" her voice failed her again and her throat worked, the red curls of the burn on her neck almost glowing against the pale skin, her tears cutting a salty path across them that Sandor knew had to sting quite badly. She closed her eyes and shook her head, her mouth working as she fought for the word. "She rounded on me. She would not listen. I was trying to get her to see that she couldn't just destroy her way to the crown-" her voice died and she took a moment to gather herself again. He'd seen her do it before, cling to the facts when her emotions threatened to choke her. Her eyes were dull. Her spine went straight, her hands splayed on the table before her, her chin level but not lifted and her eyes- he hated the look in her eyes. "The throne room was destroyed, the western wall entirely gone, and she was intent on setting the dragon on anyone who got in her way." She paused. "I have read many histories, what little good they did me, and seen many depictions of Aerys the Mad. There is no question that she was his daughter."

Sandor clenched his eyes at that, thinking about the strange glint in the girl's purple eyes.

"She had made her decision, there was nothing for me to do. I couldn't move, I barely understood what was happening. She was halfway through the command, and Tyrion, he- he shot her. Through the breast with a crossbow. She said the word with her last breath, and while I managed to run, Tyrion was not fast enough."

Jaime looked at his hands and sniffed, rubbing his hand over his brow. He seemed to have aged a decade in the course of a few scant hours, the golden sheen he'd always had dulled like old bronze, green eyes tired.

"He saved my life," Lenna said quietly. "He knew he wouldn't escape, but he saved me."

"He loved you," Jaime said, "as did my sister. More than they knew how. As I do. Tyrion did just as he wished to. He paid the debt-"

"Please, don't speak of that-"

"In the end, the Imp was a hero," Oberyn said, shifting the attention of the rest of the gathered assembly. It had almost been like there had been no one else in the tent save Lenna and the Kingslayer, and Sandor found it in himself to reflect, not for the first time, how stange and tight their hold had always been on her, how she had loved them despite herself in a way he sure as fuck never had. She and Jaime were alike in their grief, and it filled the whole tent like smoke or incense, strangely holy. In another time, Sandor would have hated the intimacy of what was passing between them, the way his wife clung to the Kingslayer's gaze, but he was also aware that he could not give her the comfort she needed, the absolution.

"You will write it down," Jon Snow said, speaking softly from his place. Aegon Targaryen, Sandor reminded himself again, though he doubted he would ever learn to think of him by that name. "Such deeds should not be forgotten."

Lenna shook her head and stared at her hands. "No. None of it should be forgotten."

"A wise command, your grace," Oberyn said, and Jon started when he realized the title was his, lips open as he struggled to determine how to respond.

"I am not-" he stuttered.

"You are," Lenna replied. She was slumped in her chair, hugging herself with her face turned away from them all. "You are the heir."

"We have just defeated Daenerys Targaryen," Jon began in protest, "what makes you think the people will accept me as their ruler, even if I wanted to be?"

"You've no choice in the matter," Lenna said perfunctorily. "And they will accept you. Because of who you are. Of what you represent. You are the old ways and the new, the North and the South together. In you, the wars of our lifetimes are balanced. And it doesn't make any difference whatsoever what you want."

"I am a bastard-" the young man continued, almost defiantly.

"You were never a bastard," Lenna pushed back. "You know that now. Everyone will know. But you were still Ned Stark's blood. And your father was a Crown Prince, the heir to the throne. That makes you the rightful heir to the Seven Kingdoms."

"But Princess Myrcella," Jon said tightly. "She lives?"

"Aye," Oberyn replied, twisting the signet on his little finger and staring into the flames. Even bedraggled, the Viper still seemed preternaturally at ease. "And we've thought that through as well."

Jaime was now looking at Lenna askance, his mouth opened as if to speak. He knows that she knows, Sandor thought, and he means to confess. But Lenna pressed her lips and shook her head.

"Myrcella had been betrothed to my nephew," Oberyn said, sadness making the Dornish accent darker, more mournful. "They were a devoted couple, and she will be devastated when news of his death reaches Dorne. That being said, however, in light of her brother the King's untimely death, she is the Baratheon heir apparent. There will be some who wish to support her claim, that I believe, and Lenna agrees, that Myrcella would decline it if she could. However, you are right, your grace, in thinking that it will be difficult for some to take to a new Targaryen line. So, Lady Helenna and I have developed a proposal."

"Which is?" Jon pressed with all the enthusiasm of a man facing the block.

"As one of her guardians," Oberyn flicked his eyes at Jaime without any attempt at subtlety, "I would support the idea of a marriage alliance between Princess Myrcella and yourself."

Jon sat back heavily on the stone he had requisitioned as a stool and let out a deep breath.

"Your brother-" he began.

"Doran will agree," Oberyn replied firmly, cocking his eyebrow then in Jaime's direction. "And you, Lannister?"

Jaime swallowed, then looked at Jon with a bright burning in his face. "There will be no objection from me," he said lowly. "It is rather clever, actually." His eyes darted to Lenna. "I suppose it should come as no surprise."

"Yes," Lenna replied drily, her lips barely moving. "My schemes have worked out so well for all of us."

"Your grace?" Oberyn asked as if he was asking if the man preferred wine or beer and not if he was willing to take on the Iron Throne and a bride besides.

Jon nodded sharply. "If the Princess will have me. If it is for the good of the realm."

"Then it is settled," Lenna said. "And I am tired." Sandor felt her shiver. "I would rest."

"Of course," he murmured, and watched as she retreated toward the tent door, wondering if he should follow her.

"Go to her," Jaime said at a whisper from across the table.

With a faintly sheepish look around the circle, their faces like carven statues in the Sept, he rose to his feet and followed, letting the tent flap close behind him. Lenna led him to a smaller tent nearby and stooped to enter. It was well-furnished, considering the circumstances, with Dornish cushions and a soft sleeping pallet. She stood looking at it with her right hand clenched at her side. The sun had set, the shadows falling dark purple and blue in the late twilight, the warm flicker of the fires and braziers outside flaring across the orange fabric of the tent. She turned and looked at him, her eyes red and glassy.

There was so much he wanted to ask her, to hear. He wanted to know how she had escaped that ruin of a Keep with only a few minor burns. He wanted to know why she had gone to King's Landing in the first place, he wanted to hear about Addy, their son. He wanted to tend her, to spread the salve on her blistered skin and her spirit, too, but not tonight. Not in this moment. For now, she only needed him to be.

They would, he told him, have tomorrow, after all.

"Rest, Lenna," he said, going to her and taking her hand. Whatever the reunion he had imagined, this wasn't it. He reckoned they'd had enough of them for him to have learned by now that they didn't involve running into each other's arms, jubilant embraces, frantic caresses. They were fraught with pain and things that could not be said, heavy silences. But they were also long moments of comfort, of letting the amity they'd shared for so long pass unimpeded through a glance, the press of a hand, their warmth as they simply were next to each other.

She let him pull her down into the bedroll, turning on her side to fit her back to his front as she pulled his arm around her tightly. He felt her shaking with crying though she made no sound. Without speaking, he pulled the covering over them and rocked her against him, his lips at her ear making soft, wordless sounds in a desperate and clumsy effort to comfort her. She turned in his arms, her hands balled into fists and pressed against his chest, and she came apart with a torrent of tears soaking his neck, plastering his hair to his skin.

"Shhh," he whispered, his hands loosening the rough braid, his fingers running gently through the snarls. "It's over. It's all over."

"Is it?" she asked brokenly, her voice as tired as he felt, bone-weary and broken.

He made no answer, just pressed his mouth against the crown of her head and held her, grateful that she was there, perversely satisfied that she was sobbing and fractured and burned and breathing against him, her pain only one more reminder that she yet lived, that he'd found her once again, and he wished, so persistently it was almost faith, that he was right, and that the storm had finally passed.

A/N: You didn't abandon me after the last chapter! I was terrified of posting it...so glad you've stuck around. Fast approaching the end here, folks. This has been quite a caper, and I never thought this is where it would go. Hope it works satisfactorily enough for you all. I long ago gave up trying to predict how things would end, but given what's happened in this little alternative universe, I can see this outcome. Happy endings are on their way, never fear, and I hope that will be enough to salve any sore feelings about how things turned out. On another note, I have another, much lighter, piece in the works set for after this. If you are interested in reading a snippet or two and giving your thoughts, feel free to shoot me a PM. Read and review, as always! Thanks for sticking with us.