Summary: Finally Sansa held her firstborn in her arms and the moment she looked at his eyes, gazing at her so searchingly, she felt a deep well of emotions opening up inside her. This boy, with his tuft of dark hair and clear eyes, was not just flesh of her flesh. He was also part of him, and she loved her babe with all the ferocity of a mother wolf.

Sansa

Sansa cried a river of tears during her first weeks at Riverrun, in keeping with the name of the place. She shed tears of joy for being reunited with her kin, but also bitter tears of sorrow for the way Sandor had left without a word. When she accosted Robb about it, he was equally at a loss.

"He came to the castle unarmed, told us about you and left. I was suspicious, thinking it a Lannister ruse, and sent our scouts out to check for a trap." Robb glanced at Sansa apologetically and continued, "Hence it took a while before we came. I thought he would at least follow us once we found you, to collect his reward."

"What do you mean 'follow'?" Sansa insisted, a slight edge of hysteria in her voice. Robb looked at her with concern on his face.

"We saw him near your hiding place, just above the ridge. It appeared that he meant to make sure we reached you. I believed he was just avoiding being captured and planned to come to us once we knew he spoke true."

Neither Robb nor Catelyn understood why she was so desperate to find out where Sandor had gone. They could hardly believe he had delivered Sansa back to them, were dumbfounded that he didn't come to demand his prize, but were happy to let that be. Whatever had made him do it, the main thing was that Sansa was safe, and nothing else mattered to them.

Sansa tried to think of every possible reason he might have had for leaving. Had she been too wanton, had she lost his respect and hence he didn't want to stay with her? It would have been unfair, she knew, but men could think strangely about matters of honour. She dismissed that quickly though; Sandor was not like other men, those things would surely not have mattered to him.

Had she been a disappointment for him, not knowing how men and woman were supposed to truly lay together? That stung. She was so inexperienced, how could she have known how to behave? Or had he simply never intended anything more than to deliver her to safety and leave? Had he been biding his time to get away as soon as he could? Had she been stupid enough to believe that there had been something more than that between them?

None of those thoughts helped her nor brought her the answers she was looking for. He was simply gone and unlikely to ever come back.

With Sansa safe and Arya's whereabouts unknown, Robb considered his next move. Stannis Baratheon had conquered King's Landing and imprisoned the Lannisters, so Robb's need for justice for his father was been played out even without his involvement. Sansa's news about how it had been an open secret at the court that House Frey was planning to betray the North meant that Robb quickly cancelled any plans of joining the houses of Tully and Frey.

The news from Winterfell about the ironborn conquest and death of their brothers had been dire, so Robb decided to turn his host back towards the North. Sansa was finally on her way home.

It took Lady Catelyn's sharp eyes to detect that Sansa was with child. Sansa had been feeling sick on their slow trek, but she had thought it was her sorrow that ailed her so. One evening Lady Catelyn saw her in her nightshift and gasped in horror at the sight of a slight bump in her otherwise slender figure.

"Sansa! You…haven't been with a man, have you, my child?!" Catelyn's voice was shrill, desperate. Sansa looked at her in surprise. She hadn't told anyone about what had happened between her and Sandor. It was not their business and she didn't want to sully the memory of it, knowing how her kin would disapprove. No, she held on to it as something precious. Even if it carried a slight taint of pain, it had also contained a tantalising glimpse of pleasure and fulfilment, and been the closest she had ever felt to another human being.

"Why do you ask, mother?"

"Sansa, answer me. Have you lain with a man? Or has anyone…taken you against your will?"

"Nobody has taken me against my will," Sansa murmured with a sigh. Catelyn eyed her with suspicion and came closer, putting her hand against her belly.

"Tell me, when did you have your moonblood last?" Sansa had to think. It had been months… Suddenly she realised what her mother meant, and gulped. It can't be!

Her mother whispered to her about herbs she could take to get rid of the babe, but Sansa resolutely refused to entertain any such thoughts. Lady Catelyn insisted that Sansa tell her how she had ended up in such a state, thinking it might have been the doing of her betrothed, King Joffrey. When Sansa told her the truth, she refused to accept anything but that Sandor had raped her.

For all Sansa's protestations that it hadn't been like that, Catelyn only looked at her with desperation. "You may think so now, but the reality is that the brute took advantage of you and used you in most deplorable way. No wonder he left before you could tell us about his wrongdoing."

In time Sansa grew heavy with the child, all the time thinking of what Sandor would say if he knew. Would he be happy? Would he want to be part of his child's life? When her time eventually came, Robb had reconquered Winterfell and she took to her birthing bed in her ancestral home.

Her labour was long and hard; she was still so young and the babe was big. It took two days and nights and all the skill the old woman from Wintertown had, she who had birthed hundreds of babes. Finally Sansa held her firstborn in her arms and the moment she looked at his eyes, gazing at her so searchingly, she felt a deep well of emotions opening up inside her. This boy, with his tuft of dark hair and clear eyes, was not just flesh of her flesh. He was also part of him, and she loved her babe with all the ferocity of a mother wolf.

Lady Catelyn wanted her to name the babe Eddard in memory of his grandsire. Sansa wanted to name him Sandor in memory of his father. For a long time they warred on the matter, but finally settled on Eddor. Sansa looked at her son and swore that when he grew up, she would tell him about his father. Not the story her mother and brother held on to, that of betrayal of trust and rape, but the true story of…what was the true story? On her part it was the story of faith and affection and…love. On Sandor's part, she couldn't say.

The North was at peace. Robb had bent the knee to Stannis and peace had descended over Westeros. Sansa was happy in Winterfell, seeing her son grow up to be stout and strong and so much like his sire. He had the northern look about him: grey eyes, dark hair and strong cheekbones for a chubby baby boy.

She tried to work through her grief for Sandor, but it was difficult. She still felt his absence like a raw wound, but as Eddor's first name day approached, she suddenly came to a realisation. He told me what I should do if I needed him! He told me to send him a song. A song about the Little Bird and the Hound. Sansa knew Sandor had been jesting at the time, but that was all she had.

With a renewed vigour she sent ravens to all the kingdoms with messages to be read out aloud in town squares. The missives invited all singers and songwriters to Winterfell for a competition for a song. As they started to arrive, bewildered but curious, she gave them one mission and one alone.

"Write a song of the Little Bird and the Hound, of their journey, of the love they shared and the heartache the bird felt after the hound left. The winner will get a purse of gold, and all the others will get gold dragons to go out to all Seven Kingdoms and sing that song to everyone who cares to listen."

The singers had eyed each other curiously, but an offer of gold was too good to refuse. Many songs were sung but in the end there was one winner, and that song she sent across the realm.

Lady Catelyn and Robb didn't understand at all what she was doing, but they humoured her, thinking that to be a way for her to finally deal with her grief and have closure.

When Sansa saw the last of the singers on their way, she felt as if her last hope of ever reaching Sandor went with them. For the next year she wished for his return; every visitor arriving at Winterfell raised her hopes but inevitably led to deep despair when she realised it was not him.

The song became famous and was sung throughout the kingdoms – but Sandor never came.

Eventually Sansa gave up all hope. Sandor was surely dead, lost in some mythical place where fallen warriors ended up. All she had of him were memories – and his son.

Sansa would have been happy to live as an aunt to Robb and Jeyne's growing brood, a maiden mother. Yet when Eddor reached his third nameday, Robb and Catelyn insisted that she should get married. They felt Sansa was wasting herself by being alone – and more legitimate children would not harm House Stark. Sansa didn't welcome their entreaties, but as Catelyn came up with more and more reasons for a marriage to go ahead, including the need for Eddor to have a father, she finally gave in.

The groom they chose should not have been a surprise; Willas Tyrell was still unmarried despite his high birth. Sansa felt for Willas, knowing they were both damaged goods; he because he was a cripple, she because she had given birth to a bastard.

Their courtship was short and impersonal, their wedding taking place in Highgarden with only the closest family members present. Sansa's condition for the union to go ahead had been Willas's acceptance of Eddor, which he had readily given.

Over the next few years Sansa grew fond of her husband but she never felt anything remotely similar to what she had felt with Sandor.

She thought of him often. She had given up trying to understand his reasons for leaving, but looking back she realised things she had not understood before. She saw how Sandor had always been there for her, and although she had been too young and timid to understand it then, had probably even loved her in his own gruff way. She also accepted that her own feelings had been much more than gratitude. She had learned to read him better than probably anyone else, and had seen the man he could have been if fate – and Gregor – had not interfered. That was the man she fell for; his sense of honour, his honesty, his loyalty and his intelligence pulling her towards him.

However, all that came too late, much too late! She wanted to love again, she wanted to shake the memory of a man long dead out of her mind, but obstinately it came back to her, time after time. She tried to love Willas, but all her attempts failed as she couldn't help comparing him to her first love.

They tried for a babe of their own, out of duty and, perhaps on Willas's part, out of some secret desire of his. Nonetheless, Sansa's womb never quickened. When that became obvious, they gave up their awkward couplings and resigned themselves to living in a childless marriage.

Sansa never felt at home so far in the south, but it was only when she heard Eddor being teased as a bastard that she realised it was time for them to go home.

Sansa and Willas parted on good terms, both secretly relieved to have freed themselves from a cordial but loveless bond. They stayed married, naturally, but from thereon their interactions consisted of letters and gifts on their namedays. Life settled back to normal for Sansa; she was the daughter, the aunt and the mother, a lady of Winterfell alongside Lady Catelyn and Lady Jeyne, helping them to run the lordly household. Eddor grew alongside Robb's children, accepted as their true cousin. Sansa made sure Lady Catelyn could never have the same influence over how Eddor was treated as she had had over Jon, and Eddor grew up a happy, confident boy.

The highlights of their years after Sansa came back were Arya's return, and that of Rickon. Arya had escaped the War of Five Kings across the Narrow Sea and spent the intervening years in a mystical house of religion. She had changed a lot, but as years went by, the old Arya started to gradually emerge.

Rickon had been hiding in the far north on the Island of Skagos, and for him too it had taken many years to adapt to the genteel lifestyle of Westeros nobility. They also heard of Bran, and how he had not died at the hands of Ironborn, but travelled far north and become a powerful spiritual being. As much as they all missed him, they accepted that his fate had been different from theirs.

With most of her family back, at times Sansa could almost forget the sad experiences they had all gone through. Overall, life was good.