Lenna LXVII

Sandor had once told her that it wasn't over until it was over, and the phrase had taken to echoing through her head in the weeks and the months that followed the siege of King's Landing and the end of the Wars. Instead of conveying a hope, though, it now simply expressed the unending work that still lay before Lenna and Sandor and all the rest as they endeavored to keep pace with the messy business of reconstructing a kingdom.

The very air seemed to have changed, and it did soothe her somewhat. She had not quite realized how fraught and heavy she had felt in the past months-no, the past years- until the omnipresent threat of imminent destruction was removed. There was no Night King, no Dragon Queen, no Joffrey and no Frey, just the bedraggled and aggrieved remnants of a once-great city and the urgent task of consolidating power before the hastily filled cracks weakened and crumbled away.

"The lords will not rise up," Jaime Lannister had said from his seat at the table. Most of the forces had pulled out of the Dragonpit, the survivors of King's Landing funneled into temporary lodgings and encampments elsewhere in the surrounding Crownlands, Riverlands, and the Reach. Lenna had been pleased with the outpouring of aid from the high-borns. It had been rather unexpected, but she knew that Jaime was correct. The lords would not rise up, there was no desire to, the disgruntled old guard either dead or too aged to care. "The world has changed," he'd continued, the silver at his temples catching the low light of the sunset, "and it is no longer theirs."

That, or, as Lenna thought more likely, the feuding old lords of the last thirty years were simply too tired to care.

It was a feeling with which she was all too familiar. Weariness was bonedeep in them all, but it helped that there seemed to be a stirring of spring afoot, the breezes warmer, a very tingle of newness, fertile and green, that was only partly to do with their work and the naming of a new king.

"We cannot be so sure," Jon Snow had replied hesitantly. His dark eyes were always wary, his words always measured and almost stiff. He was a great battle commander, of that Lenna was quite sure, and even an able leader of men in her own experience at Winterfell. Even Sandor readily attested to his martial ability, but since it had become apparent that he was the heir to the throne, the future king of the Seven Kingdoms, an unanticipated guardedness had descended on the young man like a shrouding fog. He had always been a quiet lad, Lenna knew him of old, but now he was even more reserved, and where he had once been bold he was now cautious. Not at all undesirable qualities, to be sure, but in such times of upheaval, Lenna wished he was a touch more assured.

"We have not had one refusal," Lenna had said, trying to smile a little at him across the table reassurance. It was strewn with papers, mostly raven-borne messages of support from the various Houses across the realm. The response to the proposed union between Jon and Myrcella had been overwhelmingly positive, just as Lenna had hoped it would be. Those who might have bucked against the idea of a new Targaryen dynasty were soothed by the idea of continuity, where those who had hated Joffrey and doubted Tommen, or at least Tommen's parentage, were assuaged at the idea of a shift of power, especially one that favored a man they all saw as theirs. It must have been a painful thing for young Jon to have spent his whole life being the unwanted bastard son now that all of the North was clamoring to own.

"Yes, but-" he' started, but he was unable to finish the protest, clapping his mouth shut.

"All of the Lords Paramount are behind you, your grace," Lenna replied, keeping her voice low and even. "And where they go, so will their bannermen follow."

"Except for Baratheon," he said sulkily. Lenna smiled knowingly.

"And its lady shall be in agreement," Prince Oberyn replied solemnly, "just as soon as we may go to her."

Early on, it had been obvious that such a delicate errand must be completed in person and not via raven. The young woman was recently bereaved, not only of her future husband, but her mother and brother as well. Of all of them who had lost someone dear, and nearly all of them had, it was for Myrcella that Lenna felt the most pain. Myrcella, good and lovely Myrcella, who had even less control or agency than Lenna herself ever had, forced to walk the line of a perfect princess, to be what everyone wished her to be, and who would now be called upon, once again, to give up what she knew and loved and sacrifice on the altar of a realm that did not fully appreciate what it was asking of her.

A sacrifice that Lenna herself would ask her to make. She was glad she had at least a week at sea to compose herself, to try and put together the words in such a way that she didn't feel as if she was wielding a knife, an executioner's sword. A way that didn't feel like a smiling betrayal.

"When do you leave?" Jon had asked, looking nervously at Lenna. She had straightened in her chair and folded her hands primly, just as she did every time she had to do something she didn't wish to.

"In two days time," Lenna had replied, flicking her eyes to Sandor. Her husband was no more pleased than she was. In fact, at first it had not occurred to any of them to send him with her. There had even been talk of setting him up as the garrison commander, but a hot flare of his temper had reminded them all that he was still, somewhere, the Hound, albeit on a tightly controlled leash of his own devising. Jaime Lannister had volunteered for the job in his stead, his hollow cheeks twitching and his eyes furtively finding Brienne of Tarth, also tasked with building up the new king's forces. Lenna had been well-pleased with both Jaime's offer and the way he looked at her friend, and so Sandor would sail with her and Lenna allowed herself to consider the possibility that Brienne's painfully restrained devotion to the Kingslayer was not as one-sided as she had feared.

Once the business in Dorne was completed, and Lenna had no doubt that Myrcella would acquiesce, they would make haste to White Harbor, two weeks in fair weather by ship. As the great Sept of Baelor was ruined, it had been decided that Jon's coronation would be held in the Sept of the Snows. Lenna had been wide-eyed with disbelief at the decision, proud as she was of her family's holdings, but confused as to why it had not been the Starry Sept in Oldtown that had been selected. Aegon I Targaryen had been crowned by the High Septon there after the Conquest, and she rather liked the symmetry of that, but no. Jon Snow had insisted that he was a Northerner, and since the Sept of Baelor had been destroyed, he wanted to be crowned among his own people.

He wanted to go home, one last time.

Lenna's heart ached for him. No matter what they told her of his prowess on the field, the fearlessness he had showed in his confrontation with the unholy terrors north of the Wall, she still saw the boy she had once known, the young man in Winterfell, at once desperate to make his name and still unsure and browbeaten by his origins and the treatment of even those that loved him.

Now that his heritage was no longer in question and widely accepted, it had not dispelled the years and years of keenly felt inadequacy.

She hoped very much that they would be back in White Harbor before the end of the month. Oberyn's ship was a swift and luxurious one, and the time aboard was quite pleasant all told, but she still found herself more than a little restless, often rising to walk to decks in the night. When she slept, all she saw was smoke and flame. She'd been unable to fully accept Sandor's attentions since, which grieved them both though he said not a word, just held her silent once he'd let his hands go still as she stiffened. Sandor had never been turned away by her before, and Lenna felt terribly guilty when she retreated into herself, burrowing against his side in the bed rather than returning his caresses. Try as she might, each time she felt the least twinge of pleasure, of happiness, it was killed by the remembrance of fire and wind and a little voice whispering Dracarys.

She sought solace in watching the waves. Her feet were cold on the wood of the deck, but the planks were smooth against her soles, whether from wear or by care. The salt wind soothed her as it always had, the sight of the multitude of stars constant as they wheeled overhead. Winter had not yet left them, though, not quite, and the air was still chilly and dry.

"You don't belong here."

She smiled at the sound of his voice at her back, wondering if he remembered saying such to her so long ago on her father's walls. He laid his hand on her shoulder and she lifted her own to cover it, leaning back into the expanse of his chest.

Choking smoke and lashing flame.

"No," she agreed with a sudden shake of her head like a horse bucking its bridle. She did not like having no control over what went on behind her eyes. She was exhausted, but she felt better when he was near. "We don't."

He humphed behind her, not knowing what to say, and she tried to smile but it was a grimace, instead laying her lips against his fingers where they rested on her upper arm. Her head tucked under his chin, she could feel the rise and fall of breath and despite the aching pit in her chest.

"What are you thinking?" he asked, and the words rumbled against her back like a lion's purr.

"About Tyrion. About that day. And," she paused, feeling as if her breath was being sucked from her lungs, "about the children." They were fine, she knew they were fine, but she had come so close to never seeing them again that she was haunted by the thought of it. The others, their friends couldn't imagine, couldn't understand, and she had struggled against the intense feelings of loneliness, of wrongness in being away from them, long after her breasts stopped aching and no longer gave milk for Wendel, long after she had held the assurances from her aunt in Highgarden in her own hand and accompanied by a childish sketch of Addy's. She kept that scrawled picture folded up inside her bodice and wrapped in Sandor's handkerchief, her mind aflame with a mother's worry and longing. "I am forgetting their faces."

Sandor growled again, but this time it was in assent. "I know," he said softly. "But when this is over-"

"Will it ever really be over?" she asked, turning to look up at him. "When Jon is crowned, married to Myrcella, then what? Will we simply be able to walk away from them, from the realm-"

Sandor bent and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth to silence her. "We both know that there is no walking away."

He was right. He was horribly, horrifyingly right. She wondered how he could sound so resigned, almost accepting of it. Every bit of her rejected it, railed at her.

She knew she was wrinkling her brow before he kissed the divot in its center. It had disturbed her at first to see the lingering effects of this old habit in her glass, along with the streak of gray that bloomed above her forehead and trickled through her braid, just as it had wound itself through her mother's hair. Adalyn Manderly's brow had been similarly lined, but hers had been the result of mostly laughter, or at least that is what Lenna had always believed. Now she wasn't as sure.

She could never be sure of anything except the man behind her.

"Remember when King Robert gave you that slip of paper?" she whispered, thinking back to the kindling of hope. Her fingers tightened on his as she kept her eyes on the perpetual rise and fall of the sea. It had been a simpler time, a time when both of them had just struggled to keep their heads above the foam, to steal one more breath. It had been exhausting and terrifying then, but now it seemed such a trifle after so many more difficult, miraculous, and improbable happenings between them. Still, she liked to remember that day sometimes, when he had come to her in the library, stepping into the circle of warmth with a tiny roll of parchment engulfed in his hand and an expression in his eyes even she didn't have words to tell. "A keep of your own." Her voice grew thick. "It was all we wanted."

"Aye," he replied simply, fingers tightening their hold on her. "It was. Then."

The tears on her cheeks were so cold they almost stung. "But not now?"

His beard was raspy, almost uncomfortably so when he rested his chin on the top of her head. She buried her nose in the tuft of hair that escaped above the collar of his tunic.

"I still want it," he replied, "but things have changed."

All the planning, all the hoping- she had immense difficulty believing that it was all coming to this, the realization that they would never be free, that it had never been the Lannisters, not really. It was duty, and honor, and folly, and sacrifice, and-

"I can walk away," she whispered urgently. "We can go to Westerlands. Live quietly, raise our children-"

"Lenna," he said lowly, turning her to face him. "You could no more walk away than I could. Don't make me be the one to lecture you about persistence. About doing the right fucking thing," he continued, an expression of annoyance on his features that almost made her laugh as she thought of all the times she had lectured him on the same. His face visibly relaxed, long hair fluttering in the breeze as he took a deep breath. "Besides," he continued, looking over her shoulder, "I already know what he asked you."

It had been weighing on her since they set out. After the plans had been finalized, as the others had drifted out to prepare to each go their own way, Jon had called Lenna back, and with eyes averted, as if he knew what the asking would cost her, he requested that she accept the honor of becoming his Mistress of Coin.

"I did not give an answer," she replied, her voice a strangled gasp.

"Why in the seven fucking hells not?" Sandor demanded, but there was no rancor in voice, and perhaps even a glimmer of pride. "We both know what it shall be," he continued smoothing his hand over her hair almost defiantly. It was simply braided over her shoulder and still hung well past her waist though the wisps about her face curled tightly from where she had trimmed away the singed strands. His fingers played with them in the moonlight.

"Why did you not say that you knew earlier-" she began, furious that she could hear the tears and irritation in her voice.

"Waiting for you to tell me in your own time," he replied gruffly. "I might have lost an eye, Lenna, but I'm not blind. I thought forcing one more stone on you like that might sink you."

She took a harsh breath, eyes stinging, the truth in his dry, gravelly tone rubbing against the rawness of the wound. Of course he was right, the offer had been pressing against her like a millstone, grinding away at her self-possession. That she could rise each morning and go about her work was a small triumph in every step, in every word and deed, no matter how small. The weight of it felt like the world, and she knew very well that she would accept it, take it on her thinning shoulders despite her objections, despite the piece of her that sobbed silently every time she even thought of continuing on with the burden of that responsibility after so many years of paddling frantically just to keep her nose about the waterline, each unexpected inhalation too brief a gift but just enough to allow her to keep paddling, slowly drowning in the middle of a storm.

"We would have to be part of the year in King's Landing," she said, her words weighted with false equanimity, wondering how she could possibly walk those halls again, even if they were new. The memories were embedded in the very stone itself. Even the thought made her feel as ancient as the rocks themselves.

"And part of the year in White Harbor," he replied with equal impassivity, almost glib. "Or my drafty pile of rocks in the Westerlands. Both, I expect." He cleared his throat brusquely, and when he continued his voice was louder than before, brighter with bravado or uncertainty or both. "Besides. You weren't the only one asked to continue your service to the Realm." He was avoiding her eye, but she simply waited for him to gather himself, just as he had waited on her to find the courage to speak of the terrible thing Jon Snow wanted from her. From them. "He needs a new training facility. The guard is more or less destroyed, and a new Targaryen king will need reliable fighters."

"And he wants you to train them," she replied, not at all surprised though this was the first she had heard of it. Jon had not said a word to her, nor had Jaime, but she gathered her guess was accurate from the way he clenched his jaw. He still would not look at her. Her brow went up though he was not turned toward her to see it. "And you have already agreed."

"Aye," he replied lowly.

"Without speaking to me first-" she started, almost angry.

"Lenna," he growled, turning his eye on her. In the moonlight it glinted like silver. "We both already know your fucking answer." There was no arguing with it. He was right. She did hate it when he was right.

"It is an honor," she said quietly, softening and casting her eyes back on the waves, watching as the ripples and the ridges and the foam faded in and out of each other, pieces of one great moving whole. "I am not surprised it has been bestowed upon you. Does he want you to take vows?"

"Told him to fuck right off with them if he wanted my help," Sandor spat, his mouth twisted. So he was asked, she thought wryly. For some reason beyond her ken, it warmed her. "I've gone this long without being a damn cunt knight, and I'll die before I kneel."

"You'll kneel to make your pledge of loyalty," she said ironically. He grunted in admission, fingers flexing on the rail. She turned to him, reaching out a hand. "Sandor-"

"Aye," he snapped, misreading her. "I'll fucking kneel then, but that will be the only bloody time. Now," he said turning his lone gray eye down on her, "since it's all settled, can we fucking get some sleep?"

His irritation caused her to draw back in surprise. She had not realized the depth of his disquiet, and he was about as inviting as a bear. "You go ahead," she said coolly, "I'll come later."

"No, you won't," he replied, his fists tight at his sides. The shadow along his jaw tensed and relaxed again. "You haven't stayed a night in my bed since-," his voice broke unexpectedly. She looked at him blankly. There hadn't been a single evening when she hadn't gone to bed with him, she just simply couldn't sleep. Every time she drifted, she woke with a start to the glow of flame and the smell of burning flesh. "Is it-" he asked lamely, his voice dying as he jabbed a finger at the eyepatch.

"What are you talking about?" she asked in confusion. Surely, he didn't think-

"My face never bothered you before," he said thickly, "but now-"

Oh gods, she thought with a bolt of clarity. "No, Sandor." His hands were stiff in hers when she seized them, the long fingers only marginally relaxing into hers. He stared down at them, huge where they lay in her own and her throat thickened. "It has nothing to do with that. Not at all."

"Then why-"

"I can't sleep," she owned. "Every time I close my eyes, all I can see is...all I can hear-"

Her breath turned to gasps and she could not continue. It was too hard for her to put it into words, what had happened that day. Often, in their past, she had wondered why he could never speak of what had happened to him, of what his brother had done, and it had frustrated her. She couldn't help him, she reasoned, without know what had happened, and he patently refused to tell her. Hells, he'd been scant enough with details of the Mountain's death, though Arya Stark had been more than happy to tell the tale for him, but she understood, now, what it was to have something so painful swimming just below the surface of her thoughts that even the crackle and pop of a campfire made her jump, and breathing the merest word of it resurrected it so vividly that she wasn't sure she would outrun the flames this time.

"It has nothing to do with you," she whispered. "Nothing at all. And I am so very sorry that you have thought-" She reached up and laid her hand on his palm and nearly cried out when he turned his face into it with such relief on the unscarred side he would have been more at home on a scaffold than beside her.

"It's nothing," he said, and her breast felt full, a cataract of memory as she thought of the days when it had infuriated her, for his sake, how easily and fully he forgave even the most grievous slight, how unaccustomed to being asked for his pardon he was that it was as if he didn't even understand why it was being asked even when he was the injured party.

She pulled his head down to hers until their foreheads met, the wind whipping his hair about both their faces.

"I am so glad," she whispered, holding his eye, "so glad that you are well and whole and here."

It wasn't until far later, when the lantern still sputtered and he slept, his arm heavy across her bare waist and the hair of his chest tickling her cheek, that she let herself shut her eyes and fall asleep, and even though the flames danced behind her eyes, the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear was enough to tell her that it was just a dream, a nightmare, and that she'd wake again.

The journey was not long enough to prepare her for what she found in Dorne. The woman- and she was a woman now, no longer a girl- who met them at the wharf in Sunspear was grey-clad and wan. Myrcella stood stiffly with her white hands clasped before her, her bright hair covered in mourning, and when she saw Lenna, she did not smile but raised her arms as if she was a little girl again and in desperate need of comfort. If she could, Lenna would have sat down on the rough pier and taken the girl into her lap, just as she had when she was a lonely little girl afraid of her brother and the dark.

She could still feel the hot fall of the girl's tears against her neck when they made their way to Doran's hall, the Prince of Dorne seated on his throne, dressed in deepest black from head to foot.

"Lady Helenna," he said by way of greeting, his eyes barely flickering over his own brother. "And this must be your infamous husband."

Lenna dipped the curtsey due him, grateful that it gave her the opportunity to hide the wry twist of her lips.

"Yes," she replied softly. "May I present Sandor Clegane."

"You are welcome," Doran replied hollowly. He blinked quickly and then glanced at his brother. "Oberyn."

"Brother," the younger prince replied, his own voice dark and shaded by grief.

"You are safely home," Doran said, and the words were laden with accusation.

"I am," Oberyn returned, his eyes again hard as obsidian. "Brother, your son-"

"You shall not speak of him," Doran spat, raising a hand to stop him. He turned his attention to Lenna. "Why have you come back, Lady? Surely, you would have preferred to have returned to your own home."

A furtive glance at Myrcella revealed the girl to be herself questioning Lenna's presence, relieved as she had been to see her. Lenna clenched her hands until her nails bit into her palms in painful crescents. She had not meant to speak so soon on the purpose of her mission.

"My lady is tired from the journey," Oberyn started, but Doran silenced him again. Oberyn stood with his chin uplifted, an unnatural stiffness straightening his spine.

"I am come to make a proposal, my lord," she said, folding her hands at her waist, counting the notches of her spine as she straightened, one by one, until she felt as if she had donned Sandor's plate.

"You would come to demand more of me even than my son?" Doran said, and Lenna's resolve nearly crumbled.

"I demand nothing, my lord," she answered, "and not of you."

"Then what?"

Lenna turned to Myrcella and the girl almost took a step back, wavering where she stood like a river reed in a gust.

"My princess," she said quietly, reaching out her hand and taking Myrcella's cold, slim fingers in her own. "It is to you that I am sent. To put forth a suit for your hand."

"Tristayne," the girl choked, her mouth like a closed bud. She must have been biting her tongue, the way her cheeks pitted.

"It is so soon," Lenna continued, rubbing her palm over her hand. "I know. I am sorry for it. You know I would not-"

"No," Myrcella breathed, and Lenna almost thought it was a refusal. "You would not have come if it wasn't necessary."

"I would never ask more of you-" Lenna started, but something about the young woman's quiet gaze stopped her. The beryl-green eyes looked back at her with unwavering light, even as Myrcella herself seemed to sway. Such absolute trust, Lenna thought, and she nearly wept.

"What is it?"

Lenna took a deep breath. "Jon Snow will be the King of Westeros," she said. "And he has asked me to make his suit for your hand."

"You mean Aegon Targaryen," Doran said from his place. He was leaning forward in his seat now.

"I do," Lenna replied. "He will be crowned at White Harbor. He wishes it to be his wedding-day as well. To unite House Baratheon, which has sat the throne since the Rebellion, and House Targaryen, which has found a new head in him."

"A usurper-" Doran said.

"Lady Helenna would not make such a proposal if she did not think it right," Oberyn cut in. "She has long been a peacekeeper in this realm-"

"No," Myrcella said again, but this time her voice was strong. It reminded Lenna painfully of Cersei's, full of backbone and iron. "She has not been a peackeeper, but a peacemaker." She turned her eyes back on her old teacher, her old friend. "It will be my honor to do my duty," Myrcella replied firmly. "I listened, Lenna, when you and my mother talked. More than once I heard both of you say that women must be the weavers of peace. I did not know what you meant, but I have seen how you have borne yourself. You were separated from your family for me, from your husband and children for this war. I have heard how Margaery Tyrell, how Sansa Stark, have put the good of the Realm before themselves. Now it is my turn, to do as you have done." She turned to Doran and it was not as a ward asking for permission. "I will go to White Harbor as soon as the preparations can be made."

And so it was.

Myrcella kept to herself for much of the voyage, still wearing her somber grays and blacks, but on occasion she had sought Lenna out, the two of them sitting on the decks side by side while Sandor made himself scarce. As much as he loved the princess, his discomfort in being privy to their conversations was obvious to both of them who knew him so well.

"And he is kind?" Myrcella asked, looking at Lenna with worry. "King Jon, I mean."

"Yes, very," Lenna replied honestly and with a smile. "Your grace, he will make a fine king." It was something that despite the trouble and the turmoil that she wholeheartedly believed. The last thing Jon wanted was to sit the throne. That he was willing to accept it as his duty, and to do so with reverence and with hesitation, only convinced Lenna the more that it was the right course.

"But will he make a fine husband?" Myrcella returned. "My father," her voice dropped, both of them knowing she was speaking of the man she knew as her father, the one who had raised her, "was a very fine king. An affectionate father, even." Her face was drawn and wistful, so like Cersei's but with a depth that hadn't been her mother's custom. A depth and a regret. "But he was not a good husband."

Lenna squeezed the girl's hand in reassurance, thinking of the young man's soft ways and solemn eyes. He was earnest, and brave. And good. "I think that he will be."

"Tristayne-" Myrcella attempted, her voice shuddering and her throat working. She shook her head and gripped Lenna's fingers tightly "He would have been."

"I know," Lenna replied. "And I am so sorry, your grace, that it has turned out this way."

Myrcella looked at their hands in dejection, piled as they were in Lenna's lap, but then she shook her head. "I am not unhappy to do what I must. I understand why it must be so, it's just-"

"So very fast," Lenna replied. "I know. If there were some way to delay-"

"I just wish that I knew him," Myrcella said, swiping a tear from her eye. "Tristayne and I had years to know each other. To grow to love each other. And there's been barely time to accept that King Jon is the heir, let alone that I'm to marry him."

"Time," Lenna counseled quietly. "There will be time, and plenty, once it is done."

Myrcella smiled sadly. "I wish I'd been able to marry as I chose, as you did."

Lenna took a deep breath, wanting so much to contradict the girl and explain that hardship and suffering, but knew that in the end she would not be able to express any regrets whatever for her marriage. Instead, she settled for sincerity. She was a woman born under a lucky star, though much of her life seemed to contradict the notion. "As do I, your grace."

Myrcella was between she and Sandor as they swept into White Harbor at last. She had put off her mourning clothes when the New Castle came into sight, going below the sad princess and returning dressed as she had in past times, in hues of pink and gold that set off her skin and hair. She was so like her mother that Lenna thought it was Cersei at her side, but Myrcella had all of her mother's beauty and none of her coldness.

It was strange that she missed her. The grief for Tyrion had felt natural, and there were many moments where it consumed her to the point of choking on her own tears. She still could not speak at length of what had happened, though Sandor woke her often enough in the night to calm her thrashing, to hold her close against him as her heartbeat calmed and her tears dried. Yet, she did not dream of Cersei, but rather missed knowing that she was somewhere in the world. Or perhaps she missed who she could have been if she'd been more like her daughter, but she didn't know how that would have even been possible.

"We women are the weavers of peace," she had once said, an echo the conversations that Myrcella had overheard and observed, and that Lenna had taken it into the fabric of her character. Strange that Cersei Lannister should say such a thing. She certainly had not lived it, else she had a different notion of what it meant entirely, unhappy queen that she was, trying to bend the world to her will. But perhaps even she had believed it, once, as a young queen with a distant husband who was still trying to do her duty. Though she had not seen its fruits, the rewards of enduring sacrifice and effort even when all hope seemed lost, Lenna did when they docked in her home city, her family waiting for her on the quay: Wynna and Wylla, her father, Olenna Tyrell, Gilly. And the children.

She was barely able to keep herself from running, failing in the last as Addy broke away from Gilly's hand and came rushing to her with shrieks of childish abandon. Lenna knelt down on the landing with her arms outstretched and her daughter flew into them, nearly knocking her over. She could not describe what it felt like to have the child in her arms again, like she had been stitched back together from so many pieces, a patchwork of feeling and flesh again made whole.

"Da!" the girl cried when Sandor reached them, throwing her arms around his knee much as Myrcella had done as a bairn. She jumped up and down on chubby legs, cheeks red in the Northern air. "Da and Mama are home!"

Lenna did cry again in earnest when Gilly put Wendel into her arms, her bosom aching. She felt vaguely ridiculous, knew she was breaking every rule of propriety by not immediately greeting her father, her aunt, seeing to the princess, but nothing else mattered than the look of sheer shock and wonder on Sandor's face when she presented him with his son.

Luckily, Wynna was more than up to the task, stepping briskly into the role of hostess long enough to give the four of them a moment of quiet even among the bustling of the docks. The world seemed to melt away, their little group a happy huddle. Tears were silently coursing down both of Sandor's cheeks, whatever injury done to his eye not at all affecting his weeping, and Lenna kissed the wetness where it glistened, salt and joy on her lips.

He bent abruptly and kissed her in sight of all those on the quay without any regard for decorum, and when she laughed into his mouth, it was a prayer and a thanksgiving.

A/N: It was hard to write this. It is hard to step away. I expect one brief epilogue to come pouring out in the next week or so. Thank you for everyone that has stuck around from the bottom of my little anonymous heart. Writing this has seen me through quite a bit of tribulation in the last year, and I can't really communicate what your kind words and encouragement have meant to me. Thank you.