Chapter Summary: Ned Stark has always thought Sansa was his easiest child to understand, but he finds after getting her back from the Lannisters, she makes little sense to him at all. Or that fic where Ned stumbles into a quiet moment between Sansa and the Hound. I think this is totally a G rating by the way.

A/N: Another snippet of a Modern AU I was working on (actually a variation of the same story as the previous chapter).

Title from another E.E. Cummins poem. "I carry your heart". I recommend reading it.

He's half asleep as he stumbles through the house on his way to the kitchen. The halls and rooms are unfamiliar despite the fact that the house is his. But its not home, its not Winterfell back in England and he's spent little enough time here to make it only slightly more familiar than a hotel. Its the unfamiliarity of the place he'll tell himself later, that makes him not be alarmed of the light streaming from the door. That and the fact that he has truly accepted that his eldest daughter, his Sansa, his little lady, is sleeping with a man with the nickname of the Hound. And Arya will say he's lucky at what he stumbles upon, but Ned doesn't ever want to think about what is worse and how Arya came to see it. Because then he thinks he might abduct all his children and lock them away forever.

The scene is innocent enough when he stumbles to a stop at the kitchen's side door. Clegane is sitting at the large island, the overhead light bright. He's balanced on a barstool that looks tiny under him, one long leg braced on the rungs, the other stretched out to the floor in worn jeans and scuffed boots. Hunched over the counter and the paperwork strewn across it, an old white tank stretching across his broad back. There's enough scars visible-gunshots, knife cuts, others he doesn't know- to make an old soldier like him uncomfortable, nevermind the burns running down his left arm that are newer than the ones on his face. There's a glass of amber by his hand, the ice mostly melted, an ashtray with half a Marlboro stubbed out.

Sansa is at the stove in an ankle length nightgown, light woolen shawl across her shoulders, humming to herself as she makes a pot of tea. Her hair is a loose silken tumble across her shoulders, falling across her back and glimmering under the lights.

Its innocent and warm and it catches in Ned's throat, burning and tearing at the old grief there. Those horrible years of not knowing whether she was dead or alive and trying so hard to get her back. Battering against the walls the Lannisters had put up until he was broken and bloody and his family was almost gone. And out of all that blood and despair the Hound had found them. A tattered remnant of the Lannisters ferocious beast. A broken man the world had thought dead, he'd offered them his service. And he shunned him, Ned remembered. Told him he was nothing, that he should be dead. Even Catelyn, his Cat, hadn't disagreed with him there. Murmured later that it was pity that murder was illegal for the likes of him. It had been Bran that had suggested they send him for Sansa, to prove his loyalty to the new masters he'd sought. Ned had thought it foolishness, but now here they stood. Him in a house he owned, watching the quiet domesticity and feeling like an intruder, but he stayed rooted to the spot, trying to understand.

For a long while there was only the sound of Sansa's voice, sweet and clear, the whistle of the kettle, the scratch of Sandor's pen and shuffling papers. But when Sansa's tea was done, poured with a heavy dose of honey added, she moved to Clegane's side. Quiet, but assured, her long fingers reaching out to brush his bare shoulder. His acknowledging movement just as quiet. A slight widening of his legs, an opening of his hunched shoulders and then Sansa was slipping into him. Half sitting on one muscled thigh, feet braced against the floor, she rested her head on his shoulder. His arm curved around her waist in a familiar way, big hand splayed around her hip, holding her loosely to him as he never looked up from his work.

It was sweet and quiet and familiar, innocent and warm and an outsider would only see a couple that were comfortable with each other. But Ned saw the girl she had been and the girl she'd come back to them as and was fiercely glad of the woman she was now. But he was also the man that had seen Clegane's file, watched the footage of some of his more brutal encounters in life. Saw the shell of the man that turned up bleeding on his doorstep seeking salvation and returning a month later having found it. He knows the man that sits before him has all those men within him, but is no longer them, but that's all he can see. He can't see what Sansa sees and fuck it, the rest of his family either. Somehow the fucking Hound has brainwashed his family into thinking he's something good, something worthy of touching his eldest girl. And he's not seeing it. Not seeing how the scene he's watched is at all possible.

"Ned?"

Cat's soft voice nearly makes him jump out of his skin and he thinks he's getting old enough that the term nearly gave me a heart attack won't be a figure of a speech. "Christ, Cat," he whispered.

She smiled bemusedly at him. "What are you doing? And why are we whispering?"

Still baffled and frustrated he merely jerked his head at the doorway. Still amused, she peered around him and he watched her eagerly, waiting for her disgust and horror to validate him. But it never came, only a happy sigh and tears glistening in her eyes like when she'd seen Robb and Myrcella's first baby boy. He stared at her in confusion, wondering why.

"Oh, Ned," she breathed. "She's so happy."

Was that it? Was that what everyone else saw? All they saw? Curious now, he looked back through the doorway.

Sansa murmured something into what was left of Clegane's ear and he snorted in laughter, an ugly rasping thing, but she grinned with the pride of her accomplishment. The soft beaming radiance seemingly caught him, stilled him into staring at her, something akin to softness easing the harshness of his face. Her expression never faltered under his assessment, not until he dipped his head to press his brow to hers in a simple affectionate gesture. Then the smile faded, but the sweet happy contentment remained and Ned had to face the truth. His Sansa never quite looked that relaxed, that blissful except when she was with the Hound.

"They really love each other," he murmured to himself.

Cat simply laughed quietly at him and dragged him back upstairs.