The twins mark themselves as Sandor's sons and learn a lesson in the process.
Note: Even though this is being posted in the showverse, Sandor's scars are on the left side of his face rather than his right, like in the books.
Maester Collen inspected the twins' cheeks, turning their heads this way and that. They each had a thick, long, steady gash reaching from his left temple, across the curve of his cheek, to the corner of his mouth. They'd wiped away the blood, smears of red still reaching for their necks, but the gashes gaped open, ready to be cleaned and sewn.
"Do I want to know how this happened?" the old man asked, moving to his table and sifting through bottles of liquid ointment. The boys exchanged uneasy looks. Collen found his preferred medicine and sat back down in his chair, indicating with his free hand that they should also sit. "Well?" he prompted. He reached for a small box on the shelf next to him and pulled from within it a needle and silky black thread.
"It didn't … happen, exactly" Robb said slowly. Collen looked up at them, confused. The boys had never been so solemn in his seventeen years of looking after them. They looked like their father and had their mother's hair, but they had never had either parent's seriousness. The maester reached a hand up and began to wipe away the remaining blood on Robb's cheek.
"We did it to ourselves," Ned admitted. "We rode down to the village for the afternoon. Mother's nameday is soon, and we wanted to buy her a gift." Ned paused his story to watch Maester Collen thread the silk through the eye of the needle and poise the point of it over Robb's ruined cheek. "While we were getting our horses back from the stable there, we heard a man from the south telling stories about papa. Horrible stories about when he was at King's Landing. He-he made jokes about papa making bastard children with a Stark."
Ned hung his head and went silent. Collen was applying ointment over Robb's stitches. They sat in silence for several minutes as the maester finished dressing Robb's wound and turned to Ned to begin cleaning him up as well.
"Did that shame you, embarrass you?" Maester Collen asked finally, pulling Ned's chin up so he could see the gash on his cheek.
"No," Robb told him firmly. "We've never been ashamed of papa. It's not the first time we've heard those stories, and it won't be the last. We … we weren't even recognized by the Southroner. He seemed so knowledgeable about everything else regarding our family, but he didn't even recognize Sandor Clegane's 'bastard' sons."
Robb gave a derisive snicker and shook his head.
"The bastard joked about papa's scars, about his having to force mother on account of his face, so we gave him some scars of his own."
Maester Collen's hand stilled, needle halfway threaded down Ned's face. "Oh boys, you didn't," he said softly, looking Ned in the eye. "Tell me you didn't." Ned squirmed uncomfortably, averting his eyes from the maester.
"We didn't hurt him much. We gave him the scars we gave ourselves … three times over. We told him now he had the same look as the Hound and his bastard children." Robb and Ned gave each other a conspiratorial grin.
Maester Collen sighed as he began applying ointment to Ned's sutures. "These will scar badly, you know." The twins nodded, solemnity returning.
"Papa shouldn't have to bear the burden of scars alone," they told their maester.
"Well he certainly won't be the talk of the town for a while, not while you two are off assaulting people for their opinions," Collen quipped, rolling up his excess silk thread and replacing it in his box. He eyed the twins warily; they did look a little sorry for their actions. "It wasn't right to include someone else in your prideful antics. Wars are started over much more trivial things." He rose from his chair and began ushering them from his chambers. "You'll see me every day to apply ointment to prevent the wounds from festering. You've done enough damage to your faces, you shouldn't make it worse. For now you need to justify your actions to your mother. Tell her the whole story. If you're going to act like men in the village, you're going to take consequences like men, even if it means a scolding from Lady Sansa. Now get to it."
Maester Collen watched them trudge down the spiral staircase, heads down, shoulders slouched. They looked the picture of guilt. Maybe that would help them when their mother finally got a hold of them.