Warning: there is character death in this one-shot, though not first person. i didn't want to mark the main story as such since this is a series of one-shots. this is your warning. This chapter is drawn from Against Me!'s Pints of Guinness Make You Strong. The lyrics work so well with this idea, give it a google to read them if you have the chance.
The first call came at 8:15am. Sansa rolled over in bed, noticing the time on the AM/FM radio alarm clock on the bedside table and knew exactly who was calling her. Her oldest daughter would be on her drive to work after dropping off her twins at elementary school. She'd be calling her from the Bluetooth in her SUV, coffee in the cup holder, as she weaves through the downtown Kings Landing traffic. She called most mornings, and most mornings they talked, but not today. Usually Sansa woke with the sun and had showered, eaten breakfast, and watered the potted plants on her front porch by the time Hannah called.
XxXxX
Three short knocks on the front door. She'd been pacing back and forth across the family room in her baby blue housecoat, hair pulled away from her face in the rag curlers she slept in each night, unconsciously biting her nails, a habit she'd dropped as a girl.
The police officer at the door took his hat off when he saw her, and when he started, "Mrs. Clegane? I think it's best if we sit down..." she was already crying.
XxXxX
It was the fall of 1965 and Sandor was home on a short three month leave from the army when Sansa crossed his path. Over ten years her senior, there were few opportunities for them to meet. She'd always thought she would marry her high school sweetheart, and when that didn't happen, it was a very good fatherly pep talk that convinced her to go to university. On a cheer scholarship she attended the University of Southern Westeros. During her junior year, the football program teamed with the USO for a special exhibition game against some of the soldiers. Sandor played, Sansa cheered, and they met that evening at the post-game pig roast. She knew she'd always remember it - she'd still been in her uniform, helping in the ice cream line, when all of a sudden she was pulled into muscled arms and staring into intense gray eyes. It felt like forever, until a few moments later he angrily yelled at a few army buddies, using language that made her blush, getting irate that they were playing catch so close and almost hit this unsuspecting little bird with the football. The nickname. That's what caught her attention and got her to seek him out after mumbling a thank you and getting back to serving ice cream. She offered to make him a home cooked meal in the house she shared with a few girl friends, and the rest was history. He would soon have to return to the war in the Summer Isles, the one she wasn't sure why we were fighting, the one her little sister and tens of thousands of other university students were protesting, in less than ninety days. In probably the craziest and best decision of her life, they married in a small ceremony on the Blackwater, attended only by her sister Arya, her boyfriend Gendry, and the septon. No time for the fanciness she'd dreamed of as a girl. She wore a pale blue sundress with a matching wide brimmed hat and stood barefoot in the warm sand. Sandor wore his dress uniform, swearing up a storm when a wave came in and left seaweed all over his boots.
Three days later, he was gone. Her parents thought she was crazy, but they'd always trusted her decisions in the past and continued to do so. For the next year and a half, they would write letters like crazy, every single one was now neatly stacked in a series of almost ten shoeboxes in the closet of the spare room. It was through the letters they learned about each other and Sansa learned about what was really going on in the Isles, everything the evening news on TV or the papers didn't tell her.
XxXxX
"Can you imagine, having to raise three children on your own? At her age... she's so young."
"Those children need some fatherly influence. How can she expect to do a proper job?"
"She's probably better off without the last one. Eddie said told me the boys down at the precinct said that husband of hers had gotten kicked out of Clara's after getting cut off and apparently tried to pick a fight outside. Police chief found him dead in the alley later that evening, must've been too drunk to stand and cracked his skull on the brick wall... Kathy's Rick, he was the one who had to deliver the news..."
"That's horrible. If he tries to pick fights at bars I'd hate to think what he was like at home. Poor thing, but you know, she'll still got time to find herself another man."
Kill them with kindness, that's what her mother had always told her. They'll get theirs in the end, that was the slightly more vindictive version from her Aunt Lysa.
People always whispered much louder than they thought they were, that's what she'd learned. They didn't keep it down in the grocery store, or the bakery, the bank, the beauty parlor where she went once a week to get her hair done. She couldn't hear the other women through the loud noise of the hair dryer, but the looks were enough.
XxXxX
She never remarried. Sure, in the past forty years there'd been some men who were nice enough, and she'd gone to dinners and movies with them, but it wasn't the same. They all knew, they all handled her with kid gloves, which was something Sandor never did. Everyone thought he was her rock, but it was the other way around. She was strong to him, dependable, the glue that held their little family unit together.
XxXxX
The day started out as every Thursday had. Sansa woke up early, pulled out her curlers and fixed her hair, then got breakfast ready for the five of them. Sandor left for work, and Sansa wrangled the three children in the car, dropped the younger two off at Nan's for daycare, dropped Hannah off at the elementary school, then headed to her job at the Crownland Gazette, ready for a day of correcting their journalists' grammar errors. She worked through lunch, eating at her desk so she could pick Hannah up from school at three-thirty, run errands, and get Ned and Susanna from Nan's.
Everything seemed slightly off when she got home. It looked like Sandor wasn't home yet, but there were dirty boot prints on the door mat and his coveralls were hung up on the hook in the mud room, but she didn't see him anywhere. She got the kids settled into playing in the rec room and started dinner, when she noticed something else strange. The mail, which he usually grabbed, was spread out across the kitchen table, with a few pieces even having fallen to the linoleum. Sandor was normally very meticulous about the house, a trait she knew she had the army to thank for, and it left a weird feeling with her that he would leave the house with the strewn across the table.
She waited though. Maybe he had errands to do, or was planning a surprise, she began to rationalize. Dinner came and went, and she lied to Hannah and Ned, telling them he was helping Gendry with his car. When she put the children to bed and Sandor still wasn't home, she finally called down to the police station.
XxXxX
There were no witnesses, no investigation. The police ruled it an accidental death and life in their town went on with its normal slow pace. A month passed, and things still were not sitting right with her. Why would he break his sobriety like that? Six years had passed since he'd gotten sober. And he was so very proud of it, wanted to be a good example for his children.
One weekend, when the children were with her parents for the day, she came across the business card for Elder Brother in a junk drawer. Without thinking, she left her cleaning and drove across town to the Sept.
"I knew you'd come eventually," he said, rising from behind his desk to shake her hand, surprised when she walked around to hug him immediately afterwards.
"You know why I'm here?"
"I know a lot of things, Mrs. Clegane," he said with a smile. "Please sit down."
She sat, crossing her legs, folding her hands her lap, and waiting for whatever information she could get.
"He gave this to me the day he died. He came by here, but he was irate. I tried to calm him down, but there was no trying," he paused, passing an opened envelope across to her. "He threw it on my desk and stormed out. By the time I read it, he was long gone... I could've tried to tail him, but I just thought he was upset... and it'd been six years, I didn't believe he'd go back on that."
She turned the envelope over in her head. It was addressed to Sandor, return address of Westeros Department of Defense. With a deep breath, she opened it, pulling out the letter and unfolding it.
"This... this is..." she started, suddenly unable to straight. In a flash it all seemed to make sense to her.
"They were sending him back, Mrs. Clegane," Elder Brother said, even though she already knew that from the letter. "I don't think he was capable of handling being back there again..."
Please report to the Red Keep Military Compound at 8am on Monday, August 17th, 1974...
XxXxX
Tomorrow her life would go back to normal. She'd talk to Hannah in the morning, do some gardening, and meet up with Arya and Gendry for lunch like she did every Tuesday.
That'd be tomorrow. Today was about her, about Sandor, and remembering, and grieving. About not forgetting to be strong, no matter how hard it was or how tired she got.
She spent the afternoon going through old photos, letters they'd written to each other, mementos from trips. Around four, she started to cook dinner, making his favorite - a rare T-Bone steak, mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables.
When it was time to go to bed, she changed into her pajamas and lay on her side, looking over at what she kept on the bedside table. A mystery novel, a framed picture of their family on the beach in Storms' End, another picture of herself with her four grandchildren, and a worn brown leather wallet.
Reluctantly, she reached over and took the wallet, opening it and going through the contents. Her father had given this to Sandor on his return from the Isles. There was his driver license, expired by thirty-eight years, eight dollars, and a coupon for the car wash in town that'd be closed for twenty years. She took a breath before taking out the rest. A business card for the Elder Brother at the non-denominational Sept who'd helped Sandor with his counseling, his A.A. card and six bronze one-year sobriety coins, and a lock of bright red hair, tied with a baby blue ribbon.
Sansa was strong now, she didn't cry. She mourned for forty years and had cried enough. She put all of the items back into his wallet and returned it to its place on the nightstand. Tomorrow will be a normal day, she told herself. You'll talk to Hannah, garden, get lunch with Arya. You'll be strong for Hannah and her twins, for Ned's son, Susanna's daughter, and you'll be strong for Sandor and his memory. It's what he would've wanted.