Chapter 6: Catching Up
People seemed surprised when Sansa appeared in the great hall while they were about to eat their morning meal. Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her with wide-eyed, in some cases even open-mouthed surprise.
The maid who'd watched over her during the night had helped her into a dress that must have been one of her mother's. Made of a heavy, flowing material in various shades of blue, it was a bit too generous around her chest when before she had been barely able to lace her jerkin all the way up over her rapidly growing bosom.
You look almost a woman… face, teats…
In front of the mirror in her chambers, she had turned a little to the side when she heard his gravelly voice in her mind, to see the swell of her breasts now favourably highlighted by the new dress. She asked herself if the Hound would have appreciated that, if he would have deemed her more than almost a woman if he saw her now.
…and you're taller, too.
During the night while she had slept, someone apparently had hastily taken in the length of the skirt a few inches, making the dress a little too short for her now. She smiled at the thought that even her own mother hadn't quite seen yet how much she had grown.
With her hair neatly combed and braided to form a sort of crown on top of her head, she probably looked way better now than she had yesterday, beaten and bedraggled as she had been then. Maybe this was why everyone was gaping.
"You've grown into quite a bonny lass, Lady Sansa," the Greatjon said at last, the first of the assembled people in the hall to find his booming voice. "At least they've not let you starve."
Suddenly insecure, Sansa looked down at herself to see if maybe she'd grown fat in the meantime for Lord Umber to say something like this. It was no secret that he liked women who were more on the voluptuous side.
Unbidden, her mind posed the question which sort of woman Sandor Clegane preferred.
Robb shot his bannerman an admonishing glance and then smiled tightly at her.
"Good morning, Sansa," he said and then his gaze and smile warmed a little. "You really look much improved this morning. "
Next to him, her mother got up from her seat. On her brother's other side, a petite and very pretty young woman looked at her with a genuine smile.
Sansa hadn't noticed much yesterday, could only really remember her mother's arms and her brother's voice and felt a bit ashamed that she had not even been able to properly greet everyone.
"Thank you... your Grace," Sansa said and curtseyed, then smiled as her brother made a somewhat sour, un-kingly face at hearing her form of address. Then he turned to the young woman next to him and gave her a smile of such warmth as she had never seen on the face of her brother.
"My wife, Jeyne," he said and looked at Sansa as if challenging her to find fault with his choice.
"It's an honour to meet you," Sansa said with a smile and gave another curtsey to the young queen.
In quick succession, Robb then introduced her to the rest of the assembled people; her uncles Edmure and Brynden, Jeyne's parents and brothers and his close circle of guards and advisors.
Then he related in terse, quick words how he had met his wife.
He stumbled over his explanation why he had been in need of Jeyne's comfort when staying at the Crag and Sansa caught her mother's anguished look as he did.
"I know about Bran and Rickon," she said then, bravely trying to hold back the tears that threatened. "Joffrey wasted no time telling me as soon as he heard."
The tension in the room, already palpable to begin with, seemed only to grow at her announcement, everyone in attendance at loss for words, her mother clearly trying not to dissolve into tears just as Sansa was.
Into the silence, suddenly a low growl could be heard, emanating – to Sansa's acute embarrassment – from her own stomach.
The Greatjon laughed loudly, breaking the tension as Sansa turned crimson.
"Well, give the girl a place at the table and something to eat, she sounds as if she'd soon go and eat one of us!"
There seemed to be some relief at the turn of events and everyone sat down again, tending to their abandoned breakfast.
Sansa found that she was indeed hungrier than she could remember she ever had been and fell on the offered honeyed porridge and scrambled eggs with only barely remembered manners.
"We hadn't expected you to be already up and about after the ordeal of your... journey," her mother said, looking at her with a slight smile.
Swallowing what had been in her mouth, Sansa shook her head.
"But my journey had not been an ordeal at all," she said happily.
Disbelief was plain on the faces of those looking at her and only then did Sansa realize that yes, her journey should have been an ordeal. Two or three weeks – she didn't even know how long it took to get from King's Landing to Riverrun – on the run from Gold Cloaks and Kingsguard. Nights spent on the cold ground, eating Gods knew what, while trying to survive in a war-ravaged land where neither smallfolk nor innkeeps would be inclined to harbour a high-born fugitive on their premises.
If they asked her about all of this, she'd either better come up with a good lie or brave the dangers of telling the truth.
Quickly, she stuffed more food into her mouth so she would at least have a few moments before she surely was expected to answer all the questions people were probably burning to ask.
…
The questions had not been too long in coming and started as soon as the servants had cleared away the remnants of the meal. To her distress, neither the Westerlings nor Robb's guards and advisors had seen fit to give them some privacy, turning her account of her supposed journey into a rather public spectacle.
"Who brought you here?" Robb asked.
"Sandor Clegane did," she answered.
In the distressingly short amount of time she had to decide what to tell them, two things had been clear to her from the start.
For one thing, she would not tell what only she and Sandor Clegane would know to be the truth. There was no need for her family to suffer the embarrassment of everyone else thinking she'd turned insane during her captivity. She found herself doubting all that had happened more often than not, only knowing it to be true for the fact that she was indeed here at Riverrun. She could hardly expect anyone else to believe the tale of a fairy and three wishes.
For another, she would give credit where credit was due. Sandor Clegane had saved her and if nothing else, her brother and his men should know that. Should know they ought to be grateful to him. She owed him at least that much.
"The Hound?" her mother asked, disbelief heavily colouring her voice. "That pitiless butcher, who does everything the Lannisters bid him to do?"
Sansa swallowed. Apparently it would be harder than she'd thought to convince those she loved of Clegane's kindness. Should she tell them of how he'd taken her in his arms just to hold her? How he had comforted her as she dissolved into tears at the almost forgotten feeling of being surrounded by the strong arms of a man who would kill for you? Who – in the Hound's case – already had killed for her? His embrace had reminded her so much of her father, her grief for him – a wound only barely scabbed over – had torn open again.
"He is not a bad man," she said and noticed at once that the claim fell on deaf ears.
Robb glared at her then and she almost shrunk from the anger radiating off him. She'd never seen her brother so livid.
"He's not?" Robb hissed. "He all but threw you at our feet; bleeding, bedraggled and half-naked and he vanished so quickly afterwards we couldn't find him even a quarter of an hour after you came here and you are still defending him? What... else... did he do to you?"
Sansa could feel her blood draining out of her face, her jaw slackening and her eyes open wide when she caught the gist of what her brother was suggesting.
By trying to make him a hero, she had made Sandor Clegane a villain in their eyes. Even more of one than they already thought him to be. A man who had abused her and possibly even...
She shook her head mutely as the full implication of her brother's outburst sank in.
"No," she said thinly. "It wasn't like that at all, he saved me, he helped me."
"Do they still have Arya?" her mother inquired quietly. "Is that what they're holding over your head, what makes you lie to us?"
"Arya? No! I haven't seen her since father's death, I always hoped she'd gotten away somehow. She's not... she's not here?"
Her mother pressed her hand over her mouth while her eyes filled, shaking her head.
"Why did he bring you here, what do the Lannisters mean by that?" Lady Westerling inquired shrilly, apparently greatly distressed at the notion that her reappearance was somehow a clever Lannister ploy.
"I wasn't brought here on the Lannisters' orders," she said, her voice wavering under the onslaught of disbelieving and disapproving looks everyone was levelling at her. She felt herself judged and the feeling made her only more insecure and surely she had already started to look guilty of what she was being accused of, whatever that might be. "He brought me back to help me, nothing else."
"Help you," Robb sneered again. "If beating and raping you is his notion of being helpful…"
Her teeth started to chatter and she prayed her tears at being treated so callously and so unjustly would stay where they were.
"You take that back, Robb Stark," she demanded as firmly as she was able to, her lips quivering with the effort it took to keep the tears at bay. "He did not … violate me and I will not have you say so. Your words dishonour me as much and more than what you accuse him of."
A flush of red washed over her brother's cheeks, but anger still burned in his eyes.
With two long strides, he was right in front of her, grabbing her chin non-too gently and turning it so her mangled lips and the bruise flowering on her chin were exposed to the light coming from the windows.
"Those bruises are not older than two days," he hissed at her. "So stop. Lying. To me!"
At this, she could not hold back the tears anymore and Robb abruptly let go off her chin when he saw them rolling down her cheeks.
A look of disgust replaced the anger on his face.
"How many horses did you have?" he asked.
"Two," she answered, barely audible.
"From the king's stables or did he buy a horse for you in King's Landing?"
She opened her mouth, but couldn't answer. Clegane had been right; she was a terrible liar. In this case, she didn't even know which of both was the more probable scenario.
"Did he pack provisions beforehand, or did you buy them on the road?"
"Robb, please…," her mother said at one point, but her brother just kept pressing her.
"Did you sleep outside or in inns? Did he bring a tent? Were you ambushed on your way? How did you make it through our lines? Why didn't you change your dress?"
Sansa shook her head, muted by her tears and her inability to answer even so much as a single question. She knew which impression she gave, could see it on the faces of the people staring at her, could see it in her brother's disgusted, ice-cold glare.
The questions ceased at last and for a while the room was almost completely quiet, the only sound her own sobs.
Robb ran a hand over his face and sighed, then turned to her again.
"Tell me the truth, Sansa. Has my own sister turned traitor against me?" he asked, sounding tired and beaten.
Shame; red, hot and suffocating shot to her face and closed her throat.
Robb's a traitor.
How often had she denounced her brother as a traitor, how often denied her love for him, her trust? Did he know about that? Had he heard?
She wanted to deny his accusation, wanted to assure him of her loyalty, but her own words, so often spoken to Joffrey, rang in her ears as loudly as a sept's bell and swamped her with guilt, once again taking her ability to speak.
"Escort her to her chambers," Robb barked at one of the men-at-arms guarding the door. "I'll continue this later."
…
At first she had cried. Thrown herself on her bed and buried her face into Clegane's cloak and sobbed until she was sick with it.
She had shed tears over the unfairness of her brother's accusations, the coldness of how he had handled her, the almost non-existent attempt of her mother to help her. Even now, she had not even come to her chambers to offer comfort.
But most of all, she'd wept in helpless fury about her own stupidity. Had her months in King's Landing not taught her anything at all? Here she was, believing herself in the bosom of a loving family, only to find she was still at a king's court and apparently, all the same rules applied.
Robb might not be Joffrey, was as far from being Joffrey as a man could be, but he still was king and the fact that she was his sister was but a minor consideration in the grand scheme of things. There would be no mercy for her if he decided she was a danger to his kingdom, a traitor.
She should have known that, should have been better prepared and less willing to shed her armour and her mask.
After a few hours, she had picked herself up from the bed, wrapped the cloak around herself and walked to the window, staring out onto the mighty river with tear-blinded eyes. There was an emptiness where her tears had been before and she stood there numb, unthinking, uncomprehending.
How had she managed to turn what should have been joyful into such a mess? How had she made her brother hate her, think her a traitor?
Maybe she should not have lied to him, but how was she to tell him the truth?
Behind her, a knock sounded at the door. Thinking it was a maid, she called for her to come in.
"Sansa."
She spun around to find herself face to face with her brother. Robb looked at her with sad eyes, taking in her tear-streaked face and the sodden handkerchief she had balled into her hand.
"Come with me, please," he said. "I need to show you something."
Mutely, she nodded, then wiped a hand over her face to get rid of her tears, replaced the cloak on the bed and stiffly took her brother's offered arm.
He didn't talk to her as he led her over the courtyard and then conducted her up to the battlements from where he pointed to a number of gibbets not too far off, seven corpses dangling from the ropes while crows feasted on their remains.
Sansa clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified when she saw that some of them wore the colours of House Karstark.
"What happened?" she asked after a moment. "Who did this?"
Her brother turned to her, his eyes hard, his mouth a thin line.
"I did this, Sansa," he said. "I had them hanged for the traitors they are and I personally put Rickard Karstark to the sword, a man who had been one of my staunchest supporters in this war."
She shook her head, not understanding, not wanting to understand. This felt too much like that time when Joffrey had shown her what he usually did with people who he thought to be traitors.
"Do you want to know why?"
In all honesty, she didn't want to know and nearly told him so. She'd seen her own father's head roll from the executioner's block, had seen it tarred and on a spike, had seen men maimed and hacked to pieces. None of this made her want to know why her own brother felt the need to hang and behead his allies.
Why he had turned into a killer.
Especially not when he thought her a traitor, too.
But she also saw the pain behind the cold hardness of his eyes, his need to tell her, so she nodded.
And so he told her.
Told her how he had hurt when he'd heard of Bran and Rickon's death. How Jeyne had comforted him and how he had decided to put her honour above his own after he'd deflowered her.
Told her of how he came back to Riverrun to find that his mother had let Jaime Lannister out of captivity, hoping he could be traded for Arya and herself. How her betrayal had destroyed him, how it had later forced his hand as the Karstarks took it upon themselves to take revenge on two boys instead of the Kingslayer and how that had forced him to show them that no one disobeyed a king without paying the price.
"I've won battle upon battle, Sansa," he said, his voice thick with grief. "But I am losing this war. I've lost Winterfell because I trusted Theon and I have no idea how and when to take it back. I do not know how to win back Walder Frey's trust and support after having broken my vow to marry one of his daughters."
He slammed a fist down on the stones of the crenels and Sansa winced in sympathy at the pain it must have caused him.
"I have only just turned sixteen," Robb went on, the words pouring out of him as if he was glad he'd found someone to listen to him. "I only ever lived at Winterfell and suddenly everyone is looking to me for the right decisions, when most of the time I feel like I am in over my head. Everyone is expecting me to be strong and decisive, even my own wife could not suffer me to show weakness beyond some personal grief for the death of my brothers."
He looked at the men swinging on their ropes and shook his head.
"And now my beloved sister is brought back to me, bleeding and beaten and in a torn dress and I know it was my decision to leave her to this."
Carefully, she put a hand on Robb's arm.
"It was not always that bad, only that one time," she said softly.
Robb huffed an unhappy breath and shook his head again.
"How am I to know right from wrong anymore, friend from foe? How am I to know who is on my side when my own mother betrays me and my own sister lies to me?"
Red heat suffused her face. She had lied to him, that much was true, but she had still no idea how to tell him the truth. She knew Robb well enough to know he'd never believe her.
"I cannot tell you the whole truth of how I got here," she ventured and his gaze sharpened, his mouth turned down at the corners. "Part of the truth is someone else's secret and it's not my place to reveal it."
A muscle in Robb's face jumped as he clenched and unclenched his jaw, gazing into nothingness.
"So that's how it is, we're keeping secrets from each other now?" he asked curtly.
Sansa stepped closer and put her hand over his. His skin was cold, but at least he made no move to shake off her touch.
"Shouldn't we rather have secrets between us instead of lies?"
Robb remained motionless.
"I swear to you on father's honour that this secret is nothing that concerns yourself or this war."
Finally, he gave an infinitesimal nod.
"What can you tell me then?"
"I spoke the truth that it is thanks to Sandor Clegane that I was brought here. I owe him a debt greater than I can tell you. He never once lifted a hand against me and I am still a maiden."
Sansa saw his throat move as he swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment as if relieved.
"My wounds I received on Joffrey's orders from his guards," she continued, "but I was brought here so quickly, there was no time to change or clean up."
"How?"
Sansa remained mute, silently begging him to stop asking.
"I see," he said.
Eyes still on the hanged men, he turned his hand and gently clasped it around hers.
"Can you forgive me?", he asked. "For not doing anything I could to get you out of there?"
A selfish part of her wanted to say no, wanted to be obstinate and demand that his sister should have been Robb's first priority. But at the sight of the hanged men, she knew he had had decisions to make no boy his age should have to face. Decisions she herself would have made differently, but he was king and maybe there were rules to being a lord or a king that she did not understand.
Her father had judged people as well and killed if he deemed it right and just.
All men are killers.
"Of course I do," she said with a sigh and turned to him.
Without any more words needed, she wrapped her arms around him and felt his around her as he crushed her to him with a sudden urgency that felt like desperation.
"I am so glad to have you back," Robb whispered against her hair, tears in his voice.
Unable to speak due to her own tears, she only nodded, holding him tighter.
...
tbc