Author's Note: I am so incredibly stupid! I forgot to publish chapters 6 and 7, though they were ready literally years ago. I'm so sorry! If any of you still give a damn about this story, here are 2 more chapters! I have no idea if I'll ever write more of it, but for the most part, everything resolves with them, the last chapter or two would just be the happy resolution/how everyone ends up. But functionally, the story is over.
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Sandor
The shared vision ended abruptly, just as their lives had done during it. Brienne sprang back to press against the wall, her eyes a bit wild. Tormund went to her, batting aside her hands as she tried to push him away.
"Stop fighting me," he growled, and pulled her into his arms. She pounded on his shoulders at first, but then melted against him with shocking suddenness.
"I can still feel it," she gasped against his bearded cheek. "Pain, grief… you died. We all died." Her fingers clutched at his furs. "Guilt, for failing Lady Sansa— Lady Catelyn, again…"
"You did not fail me, or my mother. You did not, Brienne." Sansa's voice was unsteady as she trained her eyes on her guard, and her body was shaking beside Sandor like a leaf in a full gale.
He didn't feel too steady, himself. The burn of her lips against his, in their final moments, would be imprinted upon him forever.
"I still consider us wed," Tormund announced to his lady-love.
"By the gods," Brienne replied, half-crying, half-laughing. "That's not how it works."
"What does this all mean?" asked Jon, ashen as he leaned against the fireplace, and turned away from the weak flames struggling to flicker in its depths. "Did the rest of you see dragons? Or am I going mad?"
"See? No," Sandor rasped. His gaze had not wavered from Sansa once since the vision— hallucination, delusion, whatever it was— had ended. "But I heard them."
"Is that what that sound was?" Tormund inquired. Brienne was trying to extricate herself from his embrace, now, but whichever arm she managed to peel away, he'd just wrap back around her somewhere else. He was looking bizarrely happy, for a man who'd had the same mad experience as the rest of them. "Huh, dragons. I'll be fucked."
Judging by Brienne's expression, no, he would not be, not any time soon.
"I heard it, too," said Sansa with an incongruously adorable crinkle of her nose. "And I smelled brimstone."
"It happened just as I died." Jon seemed a bit less shaken by it all, compared to the rest of them, but Sandor supposed that when you'd died once, the experience lost something of its impact.
"Same," he replied. Around him, everyone else was nodding as well.
"It was your deaths that powered the spell sending the vision back to me," intoned Melisandre.
"To what end?" asked Brienne. She had given up trying to get away from Tormund and now just stood in the circle of his arms. "It's clear that we're outmanned. That this battle will be a rout, and us on the losing side. Better to change strategies now, to live another day, take more time to build up our forces and try again."
"Perhaps," began Davos thoughtfully, "we might like to examine the one thing all your visions had in common."
"Like dying?" muttered Sandor.
Davos shook his head. "Reinforcements are coming, reinforcements that will turn the tide of the battle. We just have to hold out long enough for them to arrive."
"Our mistake was riding out to meet them," Jon said into the silence that followed Davos' pronouncement. "We had wanted to keep the fighting as far from the keep as possible, but perhaps it would be better to wait until they bring it to us."
"We can't count on them to wait too long." Brienne was coming around to the idea of stalling, but clearly didn't have a lot of faith that it would have much success.
"Even if we can delay a few minutes, it might be enough," said Davos. "We just have to wait until the dragons arrive."
"Tormund, are any of your Free Folk good at camouflage?" At that man's nod, Sandor continued, "We can station them in key positions so they can surveil any troop movement by Bolton, then get word to us. That way, we'll be prepared to meet them outside the keep and maintain a safe zone around it."
At the speechless expressions of shock that met his words, Sandor grimaced and muttered, "I've been a soldier for over ten years, leading my own company for over five of them. Did you think I had no tactical experience?"
"I knew you had," said Sansa staunchly. Proudly, even. He felt the way he had that long-ago day when he'd fought Gregor off from killing stupid Ser Loras, who'd then flung their hands in the air to accept the adulation of the crowd: embarrassed, foolish, ungainly and misplaced.
Jon nodded, his mind made up. "Then that's what we'll do. We'll win this time." His started for the door but then stopped, his gaze flickering over to Melisandre. "But if we don't, can you do the same again? Send back a message to tell us what went wrong?"
She and Davos joined him, and they all left the room together. Her response was faint as they moved down the hallway. "Yes."
Alone, Sandor turned to Sansa. The feeble light streaming through the dirty window glinted off her hair, turning it to flame, and her eyes were like shards of sky. He lifted his hand to run his fingertips over the satin curve of her cheek. She pressed her face into the cup of his palm, rubbing, kittenish, clearly not objecting to his touch, so Sandor stepped closer and took her other hand in his. He brought it to his lips, kissed the back of it.
There was so much he wanted to do to her— with her— things he'd thought of in King's Landing, and the Quiet Isle; at Winterfell, her childhood home all around him, and during his journey north. What shocked him most was that those things featured equally as many sexual things as not. He wanted to fuck her— gods, yes, for days at a time— but he also wanted to share meals with her, and go hunting with her— he'd bet she'd be a demon with a falcon— and then it would be good to sit by the fire, at night after supper, talking or not. Sansa could embroider, and he'd whittle little figures for her out of wood. Perhaps, in time, there would be children…
It was an idyllic imagining of a happy, peaceful home life. He'd never had that, as a boy. His parents had not had a love match, and avoided each other like a particularly virulent plague. He was terrified at the idea that it might somehow, incredibly, be possible for him now. She had agreed to marry him; seemed to want to marry him, in fact. It was a fucking miracle and he wasn't going to take it for granted.
"I won't leave you, this time," he told her. "If we're letting them get closer, there will be less time for reaction, if they break through."
"But they'll need you out there," she protested.
"You'll need me here more," he rasped. Her hand was on his cheek now, and her breath feathered over his face— when had she come so close? His heart felt like it would thunder out of his chest. The memory of their only kiss, just as they died, still lingered on his lips. And his despair lingered, too, that he'd only get to hold her, to kiss her, for those few brief heartbeats.
Sansa pressed closer. Her hands were sliding up over his shoulders, clasping around his neck. She must have had some witchy mind-reading skill, because she murmured, "Won't you kiss me when we're not about to die?"
Well. He didn't need to be told twice. Her eyelashes were auburn fans on her cheeks as she lifted her beloved face, giving herself to him. He pressed his mouth to hers, hoping she wouldn't be too repelled by the side of it that was scarred. But she slipped her hands up to frame his face, thumbs stroking his cheeks— both of them— and her tongue flickered against his like a flame.
Sandor was no green lad. He'd had whores, scores of them over the years. But he had kissed few of them (or rather, few of them had permitted him to kiss them) and none had kissed him like this, like he mattered, like they wanted him, like they loved him. His chest felt as if it were cracking open, like he could just pry out his heart and hand it to her. Something about the way she sighed into his mouth told him the foolish girl would accept it, too, as if it were something of value instead of just a little-used organ trying desperately to learn how to beat.
The sweetness of her lips turned salty, and he opened his eyes to find that she was crying. He jerked back, horrified he'd done something so wrong she'd cry over it. Gods, he was worthless, clumsy and unskilled, how could he have thought—
"I'm so happy," Sansa whispered, pressing her damp face to his chest. "I'm so glad you came here. I prayed you'd find me, somehow."
Relief crashed through him like the ballast from a catapult and made him crush her closer, until she squeaked in protest.
"I can't breathe," she gasped, laughing up at him, and he had to kiss her again. Then again.
They were still kissing when Jon Snow came to fetch them.
"The Wildling's arrow is here," he said, a gentle smile on his face to see his sister and Sandor pull apart with embarrassed haste. "Bolton's forces are on the move."
"Please go out there and fight," Sansa said. "We need you so much out there. I need you out there. Please, Sandor."
He scowled, but she begged so sweetly. He had a sinking feeling that their future would include a lot of him giving way to her pretty requests. He pulled his dagger from his belt and handed it to her.
"Do you remember what I told you?"
She nodded. "The throat, quick and deep."
"You won't need it," Sandor told her. "I'll come back. We'll win this time."
She nodded, blinking rapidly in hopes of staunching the tears that fell once more (it didn't work). She hugged and kissed him, then Snow.
"You both have to come back. I love you." Her gaze encompassed the two of them, but she lingered on Sandor a moment longer than Snow. It felt like a mule kick to the solar plexis, but he had no time to gape in amazement, because Snow was tugging his arm, yapping something about getting their armor on. He let the smaller man pull him down the hallway.
His last sight of Sansa was her smiling while she swiped the tears off her cheeks.
