Once Jon has left her chamber, Sansa is left with her thoughts.
She considers Jon's discovery of his true parentage, and how he wants to believe that, though his mother dishonored herself, his parents may have at least loved each other. It sounds like something from a song and therefore something she would once have thought romantic. But her beloved songs and romantic notions have never made her happy, as she once believed they would.
…one day I'll have a song from you…
Sansa wonders what became of Sandor Clegane. He had always ridiculed her love of songs and her ideas about true knights; and he had been right. He had hated liars as well, and told her she was a bad one. What would he think to hear me lie now? He said a dog can smell a lie; so I would doubtless stink of deceit to him.
He had come to her the night the city had fallen. He had deserted the battle and stolen into her chamber to wait for her, certain the she would come. How he knew she would flee the queen's false protection in Maegor's she does like to think: he may have been ordered by Joffrey or Cersei to find her and kill her when they knew their cause was lost. Cersei had told her earlier that Ser Ilyn was there for them: that she did not intend that Renly would take them alive, nor for the Stark forces to rejoice at their defeat. If Renly prevailed, Sansa would die; and so she had gone to her room to lock herself in and pray to be rescued. But the Hound had been there, drunk and defeated but he wanted a song, he wanted her to sing Florian and Jonquil for him and he even held a knife to her throat and she had been so frightened and so certain that he was going to kill her that she had sung the Mother's Hymn instead and he had relented somehow. He had taken the dagger from her throat and ripped off his Kingsguard cloak and handed her his dagger by the hilt.
"Take it, little bird; and kill any man who tries to touch you. Right here," he thumped his armor over his chest. "You know where the heart is? I'll be standing guard outside your door: don't you open it for anyone unless I say so, or you hear Lord Renly. Do you understand me?"
Sansa had nodded meekly and curled up in the far corner of her chamber, wrapped in his cloak and holding the dagger so tightly that it hurt. Finally she heard soldiers approaching, and then the voice of the Hound addressing the Knight of Flowers, Ser Loras Tyrell.
"Ser Loras," the Hound had rasped, "you once said you owed me your life. I claim your debt now for the life of the person I protect-"
"You cannot save your bastard boy-king, Clegane," Ser Loras had pronounced haughtily.
"Fuck the king; it's Lord Eddard Stark's daughter I guard here. Lady Sansa has been a hostage of the Lannisters and not the devoted betrothed of the king they may have you believe. She has been beaten and tormented, and they meant to take her life when the city fell. Promise me that she will be safe with you and Renly and returned to Winterfell…and then you may do what you like with me. I'll even bend the knee to your king before you have my head if you want."
Ser Loras had honoured his request and tasked his own guards to protect Sansa when the other soldiers took the Hound away to a cell. After the battle for the Red Keep was over, she was taken before Lord Renly, now King Renly where she graciously bent the knee and asked him to send her home.
"In time, Lady Sansa; I cannot spare the guards to escort you now, and the city and the Crownlands are still very dangerous. I will send word to your family that you are safe and are living here as my honored guest. Soon you will have the company of my queen, the Lady Margaery of House Tyrell."
Sansa had wanted to weep when she was told that she would have to stay in Kings Landing but she smiled instead, and thanked the new king for his hospitality and his protection. She became friendly with Queen Margaery and her ladies, and her shrewd and forthright grandmother, the Lady Olenna. The old woman had wanted Renly to betroth Sansa to her grandson, the heir to Highgarden, Willas Tyrell; but Renly had promised Lady Stark to return her daughter to her, and he insisted on keeping his word.
It was during her first days in King Renly's court that Sansa had been called to bear witness against the Lannisters and their guards. She knows that until her dying day she will remember being led into the crowded throne room on the arm of one of Renly's Rainbow Guard as a herald loudly and clearly announced her presence, preceded by a forceful thump of his staff on the marble floor.
"The Lady Sansa of House Stark…Princess of the North!"
The throne room had been lined with benches on both sides so that nobles could watch the proceedings. She remembers how they had all stood as she passed: the men bowed to her and the women curtsied. She had kept her head high and her eyes fixed ahead of her, though inside she was frightened to be there. She was there to denounce the Queen, King Joffrey and the Kingsguard, none of whom could meet her eyes save Joffrey who glared angrily until she began to speak of his abuses, and then he looked pleadingly at her; much as she imagined that she must have looked the many times he had her beaten and humiliated. Of all the Lannister retainers held by the Rainbow Guards, only Sandor Clegane would look at her, and when she meet his eyes he nodded once firmly, reassuringly; and she felt braver then.
After she spoke against Joffrey, Cersei and Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn and Ser Boros, Sansa then bowed her head respectfully and lowered herself gracefully to her knees as the court watched in stunned surprise.
"Your Grace, I knelt here once before in this very room to beg mercy for the life of my father. I was denied, though I did not know it until Joffrey called for his head. Believing your grace to be a better king, and a better man; I would beg mercy for Sandor Clegane-"
The gathered nobles gasped in their collective breaths.
"- who never once harmed me and even attempted, though neither obviously nor forcefully, to stem the abuses I suffered at the hands of other members of the Kingsguard. He stood guard outside my chamber when the Red Keep fell to ensure that I would not be harmed, for Cersei Lannister had promised me that I would not live if House Lannister was defeated. He let it be known to Ser Loras Tyrell that I had been a hostage and not party to their treason. If not for Sandor Clegane, your grace, I would not be alive this day."
Renly had looked down on her shrewdly and glanced to his queen before answering.
"Since Sandor Clegane never harmed you and even protected you; and since we know that he once saved the life of our own queen's beloved brother, Ser Loras, from his own brother, Ser Gregor Clegane…we grant him mercy, and we thank the Lady Sansa, Princess of the North, for her brave and honest words."
He nodded then to a member of his Rainbow Guard who brought the Hound forward. Sansa noted that the guard was almost as tall as he was, and then she was dumbfounded to realize the guard was a woman.
"Sandor Clegane: you were a loyal retainer to House Lannister and a member of Joffrey's Kingsguard, who have proved beyond doubt that they were no true knights; and yet you seemed to have conducted yourself better than any of them. Why is that?"
Sandor Clegane looked at him and his mouth twitched. "I was never a knight…your grace," he rasped.
The crowds on the benches now tittered and laughed; but the Hound bent the knee to King Renly and Renly charged him with being the sworn sword of Myrcella and Tommen, now named Waters, when they went into exile in the Free Cities. Then he loudly proclaimed that anyone who sought to harm them would die a traitor's death since he, their king, had declared that they should live. When Sandor Clegane rose he bowed to the new king and queen and then turned and bowed to Sansa. She looked him straight in the face, as he had always said she should, and she noticed then that his eyes did not seem to burn with the same rage. She thought that he meant to say something to her, but he never did, and she could only nod to him as he had to her when he was led away by the big, tall female guard. She never saw him again.
When Sansa thinks now on the way he looked at her and spoke to her then, she thinks that he may have wanted her; but she does not think that should have been enough for him to have protected her time and again and then to have guarded her when the Lannisters were defeated. He could have deserted and escaped, as Lord Tyrion and Lord Varys had done; or he could have fought to the death as he was sworn to do and escaped justice. Instead he had guarded her life at the possible cost of his own, for surely he must have realized that he would be captured and imprisoned and sentenced to die. Even in the throne room, where her words could have sealed his fate, he had nodded to her and given her a measure of certainty and bravery she had not been sure that she possessed. She had come to realize that he must have truly cared for her, though whether it was as a woman or simply as another person tormented and made to live in fear as he once had, she is still not entirely certain.
She wonders now what would have happened to her if Renly had been defeated. Would the Hound still have come to her chamber, or would he have stayed by Joffrey's side throughout the battle, and then stood by as she was wed to his king and continued to try to temper the king's brutality in small ways? She likes to think that he would have come to her and offered to keep her safe, and to run away with him. She likes to think that she would have been brave enough to accept. But she had still feared him then: feared his rage and his scarred face and his brutal honesty. She suspects that she would have refused, and that he would have left without her. She would have been a fool if she had refused; but they would also likely have been hunted and killed if she had left with him, probably by his own brother.
She wonders also what would have happened if King Renly had instead wed her to his goodbrother in Highgarden, Willas Tyrell, and she had become the Lady of the Reach. Would she have been happy then? Or would she have yearned for the North while acting dutifully in his hall and in his bed?
She thinks she should never have dreamed of love or romance. She may have been happy then; or at least content. She likes to think she could have been happy somehow and that this is not her fate: to constantly chose the wrong man and make the wrong decision. Sansa knows that she is high-born, and that she has been given more in life than most people, yet with all she had been given, she always seemed to want more: something magical and splendid; and when she got it and discovered it was not what she had hoped, she would then dream desperately of what she had before.
Why? Why can we never know the consequences of our actions beforehand? Do the gods choose our fates: so that whatever we do, we end up as they intend; or do they let us choose and then laugh at us as we ruin and make mockery of our own life? Perhaps the gods do not so much punish me as let me punish myself, and then laugh at me, she thinks as she shakes her head.
She thinks of Jon Snow again, who had been given less than she had but made a life for himself. She does not imagine it is an easy life but he has made the best of it and he clearly works hard at it. She can do the same.
I am a Stark, and an Umber. I am a lady, or at least I still know how to be a lady.
Sansa rings for her maid and waits. Before she arrives, her husband returns to their chamber.
"My lord," she smiles to greet him.
"Sansa," he replies. "The maester will bring you quill and ink and parchment for the letters the Lord Commander would carry for your family. You rang for your maid: can I have her bring your meal for you?"
Her smile wavers slightly. "We used to take our meals in here together," she cannot help reminding him.
"There are guests in the castle, Sansa," he sounds weary to her, "I have my duties to them," he replies.
She takes a deep breath. "As have I, my lord," she tells him firmly. "My maid will draw me a bath, and I will dress for the hall. I am the lady of Last Hearth," she reminds him, "and I have my duties as well."