Chapter 12: Aftermath

Sansa watched with fascination as the portcullis opened, clearing the way into her home.

It made no sound as it slid upwards; there was none of the usual creaking of metal, of pulled winches and groaning wood, only silence.

Only belatedly did she realize that Robb had stepped to her side.

He looked stunned, eyes wide and unblinking while his throat worked without producing a sound.

Then he shook his head as if to clear it, huffing a quiet laugh.

"Wargs, wolves and witches, huh," he said, "well, it works out better than Bolton might have thought."

Grey Wind was the first to move when the portcullis was halfway up, joined by Nymeria, prompting Sansa to follow. The two wolves gave small yips and whoofs, madly wagging their tails and jumping aimlessly through the snow in joyful anticipation and it seemed only their loyalty to the family held them back from running straight through the gate and reclaiming Winterfell all by themselves.

The wolves' apparent eagerness and their complete lack of fear or wariness gave Sansa and Robb the confidence to follow them, striding toward the gate with steadily mounting speed.

Sansa fell back a little to allow Robb to be the first to step into the yard and the moment might have lent itself to some form of celebration, had not the sight that greeted them been so weirdly disturbing.

The gatehouse was manned by two Bolton guards, slumped over in their booths.

Robb carefully stepped toward them and put a hand on one of the men's necks.

"They're alive," he said wonderingly, "just asleep."

Sansa looked around herself.

She found more men lying around as if having fallen asleep right in the middle of whatever they were doing and the wolves were nosing at them with curiosity and a patent lack of concern that meant none of those men were corpses.

Men had fallen asleep in the sparring ground still holding their wooden swords; serving wenches slumped over the chickens they had been in the midst of plucking, children at their play, curled on the ground, some even with their thumbs in their mouths.

Behind them, the rest of their party had stepped through the gates and she could hear them whispering and mumbling amongst themselves.

"It's not destroyed at all!"

"Looks no different than before."

"Even the glass gardens, not a single pane broken."

"Hey, watch this, even the horses are out cold."

And they were.

Horses were sleeping in their stables, the pigs had lain down to sleep in the mud of their pen, not a single dog barked a welcome or a warning, because they were all soundly asleep. After Robb had sent a few men to scout out the outbuildings, one man came back reporting that even the ravens in the rookery had been found with their beaks tucked beneath their wings.

As the whispering between the men grew louder, Robb put a finger over his lips, signalling his men to be quiet.

"Do not wake them," he whispered. "Bind them as quickly and thoroughly as you can, every man you can find. I'll go with Sansa to look for the bastard."

Before they could go, however, Sansa's mother came up to her, tears in her eyes.

"Thank you," she whispered and then extended a shaking hand to lightly caress her face. "I should not have doubted you."

Sansa swallowed her own tears and nodded, then turned to follow Robb towards the Great Hall.

On the steps leading up to the hall, they saw that apparently not everyone was asleep.

An old man sat huddled on the last step, trembling, thin and clad in rags, a beggar most likely. His head was covered by wisps of thin white hair and he emitted a stench that made Sansa reluctant to take even as much as another step in his direction. He was rocking his upper body back and forth in a never ending, monotonous movement.

"Guess your magic doesn't work on dimwits," Robb said under his breath.

As they neared him, both with their hands covering their noses at the smell, they heard him mumbling something.

"Reek," the man half-mumbled, "My name is Reek, it rhymes with weak."

"That's a fitting name if I ever heard one," Robb said a little more loudly, capturing the old man's attention.

He looked up quickly, but before they could get a good look at his face, lowered it again and continued rocking.

"My name is Reek, it rhymes with squeak," the old man said.

Sansa was about to carefully step around the man to get where they had intended to go, when she noticed a faint golden glow surrounding the pitiful bundle of bones, loose flesh and stinking rags.

"Who are you?" she asked, perplexed, turning back again.

"My name is Reek, it rhymes with freak."

He looked up again after that and as Sansa finally saw his face, his eyes, she stumbled backwards and would have fallen if Robb had not caught her.

"Theon!"

"No, no," the man who had once been the boy they had grown up with protested, looking around himself in wild fear. "My name is Reek, Reek! It rhymes with…"

Next to her, Robb exhaled loudly, then drew a deep breath and roared with inarticulate fury. Theon flinched and cowered, covering his head with his arms, a gesture so pitiful it shocked Sansa to the core.

"No!" Robb hollered. "Your name is Theon and it rhymes with traitor!"

Sansa flinched at Robb's bellowing voice. If anyone was still asleep by now, they would not be for long if he kept this up.

"It rhymes with murderer! With kinslayer."

Robb's sword flew out of its sheath with a hissing, chilling sound.

The glow around Theon intensified and with some horror Sansa realized that back when she had made her wish for her family, Theon had been in her thoughts as well. Not consciously, but somehow there, at the fringe of her awareness.

"No!" she cried, and made a grab for Robb's arm that he had already raised to deliver his revenge for the murder of their brothers. But as much as she wanted justice for them, she had no idea how her spell would turn against Robb if he tried to harm Theon.

Robb spun around, glaring at her.

"Why do you protect him? He killed Bran, killed Rickon who was just a baby, he…"

"Theon."

They turned back to Theon who had a faraway look in his eyes.

"Theon didn't kill his brothers. They ran away. He looked, looked everywhere. The men started laughing at him. He couldn't let them laugh."

Robb stepped closer and grabbed Theon by the scruff of his neck, bringing forth a terrified squeak and another wild look of bottomless fear.

Sansa saw it then, the marks. The strips of raw flesh, skin flayed off it, the carved up ear, the black gaps in what had once been a gleaming white smile with teeth like pearls on a string.

She stumbled back until she hit a wall, glad it kept her upright while her knees buckled under her.

Yes, she hated him, loathed him for killing her brothers, but would she have wished this on him? This destruction of everything he had ever been?

"What. Did. You. DO?" Robb demanded, shaking him.

"The millers' boys," Theon said, trembling and tearful. "They had the same height, the same age. Even Luwin couldn't tell it wasn't them."

"They're alive," Sansa breathed, as another wave of emotion threatened her ability to keep upright.

Her brothers were alive and suddenly she was as sure of it as she could be. And if they were alive, it meant they were protected as well.

Maybe, maybe they would even come back.

…

"Three wishes?", Robb asked, as if he had trouble understanding what she had told him. Him and their closest circle, which included not only their family but most of the lords bannerman as well.

Sansa nodded. She had seen no sense in making a secret of it anymore. If anyone still doubted her, they had better come up with an explanation for how the castle had been restored to its former state, how it had come about that every breathing thing inside its walls had been deeply asleep up until the moment when Robb had wakened a bound Ramsay Bolton with bucket full of freezing water to his face.

The men had been prepared to deal with the chaos that had arisen then, with the Bolton men suddenly finding themselves bound or thrown into cells and with servants, women and children disoriented and afraid.

Robb had decided to have "the North take its own revenge" on Ramsay Bolton and some of his allies. He had ordered them to be tied to stakes outside of Winterfell's walls, Ramsay clad in the rags they had gotten from Theon.

That night, while those men slowly froze to death outside, he had asked her if she would consent to tell them how all of this was possible.

She had nodded and everyone had taken his or her place around her, all of them looking a bit like children eagerly waiting for a most riveting bed-time story.

With a smile, she realized it might well become one, decades from now, only by then it would have lost all the ugliness surrounding the magic and the children listening to it would not learn how desperate the circumstances were under which those wishes were made and fulfilled.

"Yes," she answered. "I was granted three wishes by a fairy. I know how that sounds, but you have seen with your own eyes how my last two were fulfilled."

Each person around her nodded to themselves, a faraway look in their eyes as they contemplated what they had been told.

"So you used the first wish to save yourself, the second to save us at the Twins and the third to bring us home?" Robb inquired, quite obviously the one who was the least surprised, because he had thought along similar lines as far back as the Twins.

Sansa shook her head.

"No," she said, swallowing a lump in her throat. "It wasn't my wish that brought me back, but someone else's."

Most of her audience looked puzzled.

"You mean to say," her mother started quietly, "that Sandor Clegane was as blessed as you are and sacrificed one of his wishes to get you to safety?"

She gave her mother a grateful smile. "Yes, that is what I meant to say."

Her mother looked unconvinced and opened her mouth to say more, but Arya interrupted her.

"But… how… why… no," she stuttered. "What's it with those fairies, throwing around wishes left and right? Why did I not get any, I sure as Seven Hells could have used them many times over!"

Her voice had gained in volume while she spoke and by the end she was almost yelling, her voice thick with tears and trembling with a hurt so deep it made Sansa wince in sympathy.

"Have you any idea… do you even…," she couldn't go on because she was shaken by great, heaving sobs.

Her mother turned and gently cradled her youngest daughter to her.

Sansa was grateful that she just held her, did not say anything about the will of the Gods not being meant to be understood by mere humans. Sansa doubted it would have soothed Arya. They still did not know what she had been through, but what they had figured out by now was in whose custody she had been for a while and it didn't take much to deduce what horrors she must have seen.

"You were protected by my first wish," Sansa said haltingly, not sure if that information would be appreciated. "I wished for my family to be safe, all of those still living. Maybe it wasn't circumstance that it was Sandor Clegane who found you and brought you back."

Arya did not blow up at her at that as she had half feared, but sniffled and knuckled her tears out of her eyes.

"Wasn't the Hound," Arya gave back, but her words lacked their usual conviction.

Then she suddenly started to laugh, somewhat unhinged and shaky.

"Thinking of it," she said, "I actually think I had my own fairy who offered to fulfil three of my wishes. I just made a mess of it and wished for the wrong people to die."

"Doesn't sound like a fairy to me," Sansa said quietly. "They do not kill."

"Well, this one did and lemme tell you he was really good at it. Jaquen H'ghar was his name."

After some prodding, Arya offered the whole story. About the faceless man whose life she had saved. About how in return she was to tell him three names. How the men bearing those names did not survive more than one night.

When she finished her tale, Jeyne was quietly sobbing in Robb's arms and her mother held Arya so tightly, it looked as if she was about to crush her. The expressions on most of the men's faces ranged from horrified and shocked to pained and angry.

"I could have wished for Joffrey to die," Arya said into the silence. "Or for Tywin Lannister. At the very least I could have wished Gregor Clegane dead. But no…," she shook her head and then lifted her eyes to Sansa's. "I think you did a much better job with your wishes than I would have."

If the sadness about having to abandon every hope to see Sandor Clegane again would not have weighted as heavily on her as it did, she might have been genuinely happy about that compliment.

"Does that mean Bran and Rickon…," her mother started but stopped, trying her hardest to keep her composure.

"Yes, mother," Sansa answered the unspoken question, "I am convinced they are safe, protected by my wish."

"And Theon?" Robb asked. "Is this why you didn't let me kill him, because he's protected as well?"

Sansa bit her lip and nodded, feeling guilty.

"I must have thought of him as family when I made that wish, just the way I think of Jeyne and her baby as family."

A muscle in Robb's cheek twitched as he ground his teeth, his eyes sparking anger.

"He doesn't deserve to live," he finally said. "He might not have killed our brothers, but there are countless innocent lives lost because of him, the Miller's boys among them."

Sansa lowered her head, looking down at her hands.

"Don't you think the boy has paid for his sins, Your Grace?" Lord Reed asked gently. "I do not doubt he had very often wished he was dead instead of suffering what the bastard put him through."

Robb gave a tight nod.

"The maester told me… in thorough detail."

For a moment, he closed his eyes, his throat working as if he was fighting a wave of sudden sickness.

Sansa knew that Robb had ordered that Theon should be treated as any high ranking prisoner would. He was given food and a guarded room, had been washed and seen to by a maester, his wounds treated, but even the maester had said that most of the damage done to him was irreversible, which included the damage to his mind and soul. In the maester's opinion, Theon would only ever remain a shadow of what he once had been.

In many ways, Sansa found that a sentence worse than death.

"So the wish for our safety was your first one," Robb concluded, apparently wishing to leave the topic for Theon behind. "That wish was responsible for our victory over Lord Walder's treachery?"

Robb asked that question in a slightly surly tone, as if he didn't much like the idea that it was a fairy's doing that they had come out of the Red Wedding in one piece.

"No," she said, smiling at her brother. "The fairy's magic merely made me see what was planned. We might all have survived one way or another, but it was your achievement to turn that situation into such a victory, with no lives lost but those of the enemy."

Robb made an honest effort to supress a very pleased smile.

"And Winterfell?"

Sansa sighed.

"I saw no other choice than to wish for two things. For an easy victory and for Winterfell to be restored to its former state. I did not know what else to do and I had no one to ask."

"You could have asked me," Robb pointed out the obvious, even managing to sound slightly hurt.

"Would you have believed me?" she asked quietly.

"I went with you, didn't I?"

Again she looked down at her folded hands.

He was right, of course. There had been no hesitation in him when he joined her, no doubt. Had it been a mistake to put to little faith in her brother's ability to believe her? Could this have been different if she had trusted him more?

Then Robb sighed deeply.

"I honestly do not know if I could have believed in three wishes," he admitted. "I went with you because I thought you might have seen something, but this...," he shook his head. "And even had I known, I cannot think of something I might have done differently. You did as well as was possible, Sansa. You saved us all. Again. The North will be forever in your debt."

He stood then, looking around himself with all the authority of his position.

"I charge you, every single one of you, with keeping this a secret. Winterfell was taken back because it was always meant to be home to the Starks and every bit of magic happening was because a Stark came back to Winterfell. I ask all of you to gainsay everyone who calls my sister a witch. I will not have her name slandered and I will not foster hopes and expectations she cannot help but disappoint."

Around them, people nodded or approved with spoken words and Sansa gave her brother a grateful smile.

…

Even before they had reached Winterfell, Robb had often assigned Greatjon Umber to be her escort and some sort of personal guard. For one thing, because he seemed to be one of the few men not intimidated by her purported use of magic, for another, because Sansa had taken a liking to him ever since he had been the first to welcome her back. Privately, she was grateful Robb had chosen someone with Lord Umber's stature. While she was sure Lord Reed and other similar fighters were just as able to protect her, she knew she would feel safer protected by someone who towered over her and possessed visible strength of body.

Like Sandor Clegane.

So it wasn't unusual for the Greatjon to accompany her on her walks. Most of the time, she just hurried to the godswood to offer her prayers before the cold drove her inside again, but today, one day after Robb had spoken his sentence over Ramsay Bolton, morbid curiosity made her take a walk atop Winterfell's wall, looking down at the motionless figures of the men tied to the stakes.

The servants had whispered amongst themselves that Ramsay had screamed for a long time, even when his men had already fallen silent, until he, too, had been quiet. They said the sudden silence had been the most disturbing part of this execution.

Had it been particularly cruel, to have them die like that, slowly freezing to death? Should she have insisted that Robb just hanged them or took their heads?

"It's been too merciful a death for them, if you ask me," the Greatjon's rumbling voice broke into her thoughts as if he had read them. "Freezing is painless, peaceful even. Much like going to sleep."

"They said he screamed."

Lord Umber huffed a laugh.

"That he did," he said. "Because he knew he was going to die and that he would become a feast for crows and wolves afterwards. I reckon that's not how he thought that tale would end for him. He screamed with rage and anger, much like a spoiled child not getting its will."

"Which one is he?" she asked.

The Greatjoin pointed. "The one in the middle of the seven. He should have died first, what with only those rags to cover him, but I guess his rage kept him warm longer than the others who just wept and pleaded."

"How do you know it's been painless?"

He turned fully to her, a slight smile hidden in his beard.

"Had a close call last winter myself," he told her without hesitation. "Got lost on a hunt, horse broke its leg so I had to kill it. Rest of the party was far away and didn't hear me holler. I tried to find some shelter, a cave or something to light a fire, but it was so fiercely cold, I soon couldn't feel my arms and legs anymore and I was so very tired. So I just sat down and then that very peaceful, warm feeling came over me. I knew it was the end, but I felt no fear, only… peace."

His eyes turned inward as he spoke and he looked as if he was reliving that moment of peacefulness.

"You were saved… obviously," she said, eager to learn how that tale had ended.

At once, his eyes began to glitter again with that curious sparkle that could make him look like a young man if one only looked at his eyes.

"My boy found me, had to slap me a couple of times to rip me out of death's loving embrace."

The big man laughed loudly at the recollection.

"I'd wager he quite enjoyed slapping his old man like that, payback for every time I tanned his hide when he got into mischief when he was little."

Sansa smiled and nodded, but still couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness as she looked down at the frozen bodies of their erstwhile enemies.

…

Later that night, as she prepared for bed, a knock sounded on her door.

Wrapping her warm robe more tightly around herself, she bade her visitor to enter.

Robb came in, looking a bit sheepish and much more just her brother than a king.

"I didn't mean to disturb you, if you'd rather go to bed?"

She smiled at him and gestured for him to take a seat in front of the fireplace and then curled up into an armchair herself, looking at Robb expecting him to speak.

"There is something I meant to ask, a question I didn't want to ask in front of everyone down in the Hall."

Sansa nodded for him to continue. She felt no apprehension at whatever he meant to ask. She had disclosed every last of her secrets today. There was nothing he did not already know.

"You gave your wishes for everyone of us. You had three and you sacrificed every single one so we could live and survive and do so in comfort and safety."

He made it sound so very noble, the way he put it, when in truth she had done most of this for herself. Because she could not have suffered to lose whom she had thought were her only surviving family members, because she wanted to live and survive in comfort and safety.

"What have you given up on, Sansa? What were the wishes staying unfulfilled now, because you had to pay for my mistakes?"

Slowly, she lowered her gaze to her lap, to her folded hands.

She'd been wrong. There were still secrets left to tell. Not secrets as in veiled knowledge, but as in unspoken dreams and fantasies that existed only in her own heart and mind.

"Does it still matter?"

"It matters to me," he said. "You paved my way, ensured victories I had no right to, because I'd made so many wrong decisions. If there is anything that would be in my power to give, just say the word."

She leaned towards her brother then and put her hand over his hands that he had balled to fists in his lap in self-recrimination.

"You made wrong choices for the right reasons," she said softly, trying to give him a smile that was to convey she meant it. "You failed because you loved where you should not have and because you trusted where trust was misplaced. I made those mistakes as well and they have cost our father's life. If you are able to forgive me, you should be able to forgive yourself."

Robb shook his head.

"It's not the same," he said. "I am king."

A spark of anger ignited in her, flickered and made her next words sharper than she intended.

"You are human, Robb," she said. "The crown doesn't make you infallible, it doesn't make you always right. I've known two kings who thought it did and they're both dead. I wouldn't want you to end like them."

The closed fists under her hand softened a bit, but Sansa couldn't tell if she had gotten through to him.

"Your wishes, Sansa," he said. "Please tell me."

She was about to tell him that it wasn't in his power to fulfil any of them, but then a memory struck, the shard of a dream.

"You gave me a promise at Riverrun," she said. "I wish for you to keep it. I wish for you to accept my choices when it comes to marriage, no matter what they may be."

Blue eyes, so very much like her own met hers, questioning, searching and apparently finding something she'd thought well hidden.

But to her relief, he did not voice his question, did not ask her about whatever he might have thought.

He just nodded.

"You have my word as your king," he said and then grinned. "And, more importantly, you have my word as your brother."

Standing up as if to leave he lifted a finger.

"Because," he said, the grin still lingering. "A king might not be right every time, but big brothers always are."

With a laugh, he dodged the pillow she threw at him and slipped out of the door.

…

After Robb left, she had not even shed her robe when another visitor announced herself.

In this case with a hovering cloud of golden dust.

"You have to burn the corpses," the fairy said, without a greeting and without preamble. "Nothing dead should be left unburned this coming winter. There's enough evil already walking."

She didn't quite understand all of the fairy's meaning, but she remembered the unease she had felt at seeing the corpses, more so than usual and she resolved to ask Robb to do as the fairy wished when next she saw him. He would not hesitate to do as she wished, of that she was sure.

"I will see that it is done," she said.

"Very well," the fairy replied. "I trust you are satisfied how all of this turned out?" the fairy asked, reminding Sansa of a saleswoman inquiring about the quality of her goods.

She could have lied then. Maybe it would have been the polite thing to do. After all, the rules had been clear and she did have only those three wishes. Just as Arya had her regrets regarding her own fairy of death, so had Sansa and suddenly she found it would be a lie if she would not tell her.

"I still think I owed my last wish to Sandor Clegane," she said. "It feels like a failure, it feels incredibly selfish that I used all of them on me."

At hearing that, the fairy made a very un-magical "pfff" sound.

"Selfish?" she said then, her voice even higher pitched than usual. "You saved countless lives, not just those of your family. I'd hardly call that selfish."

"My family," Sansa replied, her voice growing louder with agitation with every word. "My home, my safety, my comfort, my not having to starve and freeze. I can't see how this could have been any more selfish!"

The tiny golden girl sighed and then fluttered to rest on Sansa's hand, where she proceeded to look at her earnestly.

"No, Sansa, you cannot see it this way. You acted out of the generosity in your heart as the gods knew you would. Everything else…," she stopped for a moment and gave her a smile full of hidden meaning, "Well, let's say that there are some things in this world that have their very own magic with which even fairies don't like to interfere."

Again not quite understanding what the fairy meant with that last statement, Sansa mulishly shook her head.

"I will be forever in his debt."

The fairy smiled indulgently.

"If Sandor Clegane was here, he'd tell you he did not give you his wish for you to be in his debt. He meant to see you safe and well. That was his wish and this is what you owe him."

This time, it was clearer to her what the fairy meant to say. The Hound would have wanted her to make exactly the choices she had made. To see that his wish had not been wasted, that he had not saved her from Joffrey only for her to die somewhere else.

It should have made her feel better, but it didn't.

"I meant to help him in his trials."

The fairy looked as if surprised that this was something Sansa knew about.

"His trials are his alone to go through and all you can do to help him is to include him in your prayers."

So there were trials, Sansa concluded and although that meant danger for him, it was the one thing that DID make her feel better.

"I will," she said. "Thank you."

There was more she could say, but she didn't. How to explain to a magical being her dreams of the kiss she had given him, only that nowadays she imagined the kiss to be more of the kind Robb and Jeyne gave each other. That she frequently dreamed of him undressing, preparing to climb into bed with her, only to find herself waking short of breath and with her blood simmering, never knowing what might have happened afterwards.

The fairy nodded and bade her good bye, then slowly started to disintegrate. Before the golden dust completely vanished, though, her voice could be heard again, almost inaudible as if from far off.

"He wanted you to remember him. He didn't wish for it, but I knew it was in his heart. Maybe it's a wish that you can grant without my help."

Her reply was equally inaudible because it was whispered around a lump in her throat. Happiness, as golden as fairy dust, rushed through her and made her want to weep and laugh at the same time.

Sandor Clegane wanted her to remember him!

"I won't forget him," she whispered, smiling. "I swear I won't. Ever."

…

The pyre where the corpses of the bastard and his men had been burned were still smoking when Robb's lord bannermen rode past them, on their way back to their own keeps before cold and snowfall would keep them in Winterfell for as long as winter would last this time.

Those still too sick to make the journey would stay at Winterfell.

With all the former inhabitants of the keep itself and the nearby Wintertown killed, they could use every hand once those men were healthy again.

The black and grey columns of marching and riding men were soon out of sight due to the swirling snow and Sansa felt a sense of loss at the thought that she would now have to live without the comforting and oftentimes uplifting company of Lord Umber.

I wish, she thought and then habitually stopped herself, only to remember she was now free to think such thoughts without having to fear to waste a wish.

I wish for all of them to have a safe and swift journey home, she finished her interrupted thought. I wish for a leg of mutton and a steaming cup of mulled wine waiting for them at their return.

Then, unbidden, other thoughts came to her, wishes she had not dared to think for so long, she had forgotten she had them. As if the knowledge that some of her wishes could be fulfilled had stunted her ability to blindly wish for things: real, imagined, impossible or improbable.

I wish my father would be alive, she thought, tears pooling in her eyes as she acknowledged how impossible this wish would always be. I wish for Bran and Rickon to come back to us, hale and healthy. I wish for Arya to forget about the demons plaguing her sleep. I wish that Jeyne and her baby will be healthy when she gives birth.

I wish for winter to be over and for Westeros to live in peace.

She stared unseeingly out into the snow until her eyes smarted.

I wish for Sandor Clegane to persevere in his trials. I wish for him to remember me as I remember him and I wish for him to come to me as soon as he can.

...

tbc