I have been writing this story for a year already! Yay! To celebrate that, here you have a chapter that I wrote while I was in the beach.

Please, if you see autocorrect mistakes, do tell me and I will fix them immediately :)

The title of the chapter comes from the song So Far Away by Avenged Sevenfold.

45. A Life To Heal The Broken Heart.

Gregor approached Sansa's car, gun in hand. Sandor froze inside his own car for a few seconds after he saw his brother emerging from the black SUV that had almost made Sansa crash, but his first reaction was quickly replaced by rage when he saw his brother there, silently threatening Sansa with the gun.

"Don't get out of the car, Sansa," he said to her through the phone that he had left in speaker mode on the passenger seat. He got no reply, so he didn't know of Sansa was still there of if the call had ended.

Sandor grasped his own gun tightly in his hand before quickly opening the door of the car. He was about to get out to the road to face Gregor when suddenly his brother turned his attention away from Sansa's car for a second and shifted if towards Sandor's car, and then he pulled the trigger and fired a shot. The bullet hit the bullet-proof window of the car, but it made Sandor quickly close the door again.

"Fuck!" he shouted. His brother had just tried to shoot him!

He heard a scream coming from the phone, so the call was still going on.

"Sansa, stay in the car!" Sandor shouted. "Turn around and drive away!"

As if his brother had read his mind, Gregor pointed the gun at the tires of Sansa's car and shot them, opening big holes in them. Sansa screamed again, scared by the shots. Sandor cursed and accidentally dropped the gun. He reached down with his arm and searched the floor of the car, trying to find the weapon again. When his finger's touched the cold metal of the gun he quickly grabbed it, and he didn't think it twice before opening the door again and getting out of the vehicle.

Sandor had every intention of shooting and killing his brother right then and there. He didn't care if he was accused of murder or any other bullshit, he intended to be well away from there soon, where they couldn't find him. But if he had to make that small sacrifice and go to jail in order to save Sansa he would do it.

He put his finger on the trigger and pointed the gun at Gregor, but he found much to his dismay that he had been too slow, and his brother too fast. Gregor was pointing the gun at him again, ready to shoot. He was next to Sansa's car already, and while his eyes glared at his younger brother, his free hand brusquely opened the door of the vehicle and immediately pulled Sansa out from inside it. Sansa screamed, scared, and Gregor forced her to stand in from of him. Sandor could have still shot him, because Gregor's extreme height made it an easy target behind Sansa's small body. However, Sandor couldn't shoot; he froze when he saw that Gregor had pressed the gun against Sansa's temple.

"No!" he yelled, panicked, unable to stop himself. His brother's grin did not escape his notice, making him even more furious and scared than before. Gregor was the only one capable of making Sandor feel terrified, and at that moment that monster had in his power what Sandor loved most in the entire world.

"Put the gun down, or I shoot her!" Gregor told him, still holding the gun against Sansa's head. "Put it down!"

His heart beat furiously, almost to the point in which it was painful. He couldn't take his eyes off Sansa, who was whimpering scared in front of his brother. Gregor's gigantic size made Sansa look so small and fragile, almost like a child. And he was going to hurt her...

"Let her go, Gregor!" Sandor barked, seeing red. How dared his brother do that to Sansa? How dared he?!

"I have orders, little brother."

"To kill her?"

"To take her home," Gregor said. They were such simple words, and yet they had such a dark meaning. They were twisted words, poisoned... That was what Sansa had wanted all along that day, to go home, but the home that she was being taken to was everything but home. "Put. The gun. Down. Put it down, Sandor, or I swear your lady love's brains will decorate the road before you can even pull the trigger."

Sandor was a great fighter, and an excellent shooter. His brother was even better. He had a combination of brute force and a natural gift for violence that made him one of the deadliest and most dangerous men that Sandor had even known, and at that moment Sansa's life was at risk. If he did not do what his brother told him to do, he knew that it would be very likely that his brother made his threat come true.

"You can't kill here," Sandor said, though a voice in the back of his head told him that he shouldn't be doing that. He really did not want to find out the hard way that his brother wasn't bluffing. "She's the First Lady now."

Gregor snorted. "Half the Stark family died today, Joffrey won't give a guck that another one does. Now put the gun down, Sandor. Now!"

Hating himself for doing so, Sandor slowly put the gun down on the road.

"Now kick it over here."

Sandor obeyed again, and then he waited anxiously for his brother to let Sansa go. Gregor put his foot over Sandor's gun to make sure that no one would take it, but he did not let go of Sansa. The man watched Sandor, trying to see if he was up to anything, but once Gregor saw that Sandor was standing there defenseless and just waiting for Sansa to be safe again, he finally let go of the young woman.

"Go to the car," he ordered her, pushing her towards the SUV. Sansa whimpered, but she did as she was told. She opened the door of the vehicle with trembling hands and sat on the backseat. Now Gregor's gun was pointed at Sandor's head. Sandor thought that his brother was going to shoot him, but Gregor only spoke. "You too."

Sandor nodded, but before obeyed he took a moment to retrieve his phone from his car, and the car keys as well. Then he walked over to the black SUV, feeling more defeated than he had ever felt in his hole life.

"I am so sorry, Sansa..." he murmured, really meaning it, after he entered the vehicle and sat on the backseat next to Sansa. She was looking out the window, and her face was damp with fresh tears. She slowly shook her head.

"It's not your fault," she whispered. Sandor did not know if she meant it or not.

It was painful, seeing Sansa like that. She had lost everything in a matter of hours. Her mother and her brother were dead, and she could not get rid of the guilt that she felt in her heart for their deaths. Her only chance to escape and go home had turned to smoked that slipped through her fingers. She had nothing left now, not even hope, and Sandor seriously doubted that his presence would be enough that time to console her. He hadn't even been able to defend her!

What a fucking mess, he thought bitterly, hating himself and feeling stupid and cowardly and useless.

Gregor opened the car door behind him then. Before Sandor could turn around to face his brother, Gregor spoke.

"Just so that you don't try anything stupid," he heard his older brother say behind him, and then something hard hit him in the back of his head with monstrous strength.

Sandor fell face-down on the backseat, and the last thing he heard was Sansa's horrified gasp before everything went black and he lost consciousness.

When Sandor came back to his senses, many hours had passed and they had already left behind the States of the Vale and the Riverlands and were driving through the State of Crownlands in direction to King's Landing. Sandor started hearing things before he opened his eyes, like the sound of the car quickly driving on the road and the sound of passing cars that drove in the opposite direction on the highway.

Sandor opened his eyes and blinked several times. He hissed when he felt a sharp pain on the back of his head, right where Gregor had hit him with the gun to knock him out. Sandor took his hand to the back of his head and touched the place where it hurt, finding some dry blood there. He cursed under his breath and then he sat up on the backseat of the car, groaning as he did so. He felt his head spinning.

Sandor noticed then that Sansa's hand was holding his other hand tightly. He wondered if she had been holding him the whole time while he was unconscious, and part of him felt angry that he had been knocked out so easily and that Sansa had been forced to spend hours alone in the car with Gregor, being forced to go back to King's Landing, terrified and desperate.

Sansa didn't look at him when he say up in the backseat. Her head was resting on the window of the car, and she had her eyes closed. Sandor wondered if she was asleep, but he frowned when he noticed how tightly she was holding on to his hand. Her grasp was so right that her fingernails buried themselves in his skin in an almost painful way, but Sandor did not protest. However, he did frown more when he saw that Sansa's face was twisted into a painful expression. Sandor lowered his gaze and saw that Sansa's other hand was on her belly, and then he heard her whimper in pain. He became immediately worried.

"Sansa?" he called her name, trying to get her attention. She didn't open her eyes. "Sansa, what's wrong?"

"It h-hurts..." she answered then. Her voice was very weak. She whimpered again, this time louder, and Sandor saw tears of pain streaming down her face.

"What have you done to her?!" Sandor yelled, looking at Gregor through the rear-view mirror. His brother continued driving, undeterred by Sansa's whimpers. "What have you done?!"

"I didn't do anything," Gregor grunted, annoyed. "She has been doing that for five minutes."

"Sansa, what's wrong?" Sandor asked her again, feeling desperate. Sansa shook her head, not knowing what it was. "Wait, come here with me."

He gently took her to move her towards where he was with the full intention of holding her in his arms and try to soothe her a little bit. As soon as Sansa moved away from where she had been sitting, Sandor saw what was part of the problem.

"Sansa, you are bleeding," he rasped, watching the red stains on the clear leather backseat. He looked down at Sansa then. She was wearing a blue dress; the skirt had slid up a little bit when Sansa moved, revealing more of her legs. There was blood there too, not a lot lot, but it was blood nonetheless. "You are bleeding," he repeated, this time scared. Why was she bleeding?!

"Women bleed," he heard Gregor muttering from the driver's seat. "If that bitch stains the car she will be sorry, little brother."

"Shut the fuck up, Gregor!" Sandor yelled at his brother, and the he held Sansa's face between his hands and made her look at him. She looked paler than usual, and weak... "Sansa, are you okay? Is it your...? You know."

Unbelievable. He was a grown-ass man, capable of saying all kinds of obscenities, a fighter that had seen all kids of things that would make anyone else be sick and still he hadn't even flinched, and still he wasn't capable of saying a thing so normal and simple as 'period'. Sansa understood what he had tried to say. To his dismay, she shook her head.

"No..." she said, again barely whispering. She whimpered again, and sought Sandor's hand to grasp it again.

"Gregor, drive to the hospital," Sandor ordered his brother.

Gregor grunted. "You don't give me orders, pup."

Sandor had no time to argue. Sansa was bleeding, no one knew what was wrong but something was wrong, and he was desperate. He was filled with a panic inside that he had almost never felt. Was he loosing Sansa? He did not wen want to think about it.

"Drive to the fucking hospital, Gregor!" Sandor almost screamed. "Do you want the wife of the President to die in your car and have the whole world know that you did nothing?!"

There were a few seconds of heavy silence, in which Sandor thought that Gregor would not listen to him and he would keep driving on the highway. However, much to his relief, Gregor ended up grunting annoyed and he took the nearest exit from the highway that led to one of the cities nearby. There were lucky and the nearest city, Sow's Horn, was only ten minutes away. Gregor had already been in that city before, so he was able to drive to the hospital directly. Sandor was ready to jump out of the car as soon as it stopped in front of the hospital.

"You are going to be okay, Sansa," he promised her. Sansa had closed her eyes and was resting her head on his chest; Sandor did not know if she was awake anymore.

It wasn't long until Gregor finished driving through the almost empty streets of Sow's Horn at those late hours at night, and pull over in front of the Emergencies entrance of the hospital. Sandor immediately opened the car door next to him and jumped out of the vehicle. He held Sansa in his arms and took her out of the car, and was horrified when he saw that she had bled more. It still wasn't a lot of blood, but if it was making Sansa feel pain and she was not supposed to be bleeding then it did worry him. He didn't wait for Gregor to get out of the car and he ran towards the gates of the hospital, which had opened and two paramedics and a nurse had come out with stretcher. They ran to meet with Sandor, having seen that he was holding a now clearly unconscious Sansa in his arms.

"Help her!" he begged them. He never begged... "She is bleeding, and I don't know what is wrong with her."

If they recognized who the young woman was, none of them said a thing. They took Sansa from Sandor's arms and out her in the stretcher, and then they carried her away from inside and inside the emergency department.

Sandor entered the building behind them. He fell exhausted, and for a moment he thought that he would crumble down to the floor. His head was hurting again, and even though he did not want to focus on his own pain and instead he wanted to make sure that Sansa was all right he couldn't get rid of the spinning sensation that his head was giving him. A nurse that was nearby noticed him, and saw the dry blood in the back of his head.

"Sir, sit down," he heard the nurse saying. Her voice sounded distant, but he heard her nonetheless. He thought that the woman had a gentle voice, but at the same time it was strong and imposing. He thought, for some unknown reason, that that was curious. "Let me take care of that."

"I'm fine..." he protested. He wanted to know where they had taken Sansa.

"Sir, sit down," the nurse insisted. She took his arm and made him go towards a chair and sit down on it. Sandor was not emotionally strong enough that night to keep protesting, and he say down on the chair that the nurse had led him to. He felt her examining his wound. "It doesn't need stitches. Let me clean it."

She went to fetch the necessary material to clean the wound on Sandor's head. He didn't look at the woman, but from the corner of his eye he noticed that she was really tall. While he waited he stared down the corridor where Sansa had been taken away in the stretcher, and he heard the distant sound of Gregor's voice near the exit of the emergency department; it appeared as if the man was making a phone call.

He's probably calling the a Lannisters to say where we are, he thought bitterly, feeling the hate towards everybody and towards himself return to him immediately.

The nurse came back, and this time Sandor did look at her. She was indeed very tall, taller than Sansa, but shorter than Sandor. She had her black hair in a ponytail, and she was dressed in a horrible green nurse uniform. She kneeled in front of Sandor to be at the same level as him, and that was when he saw her eyes. He gasped, startling the nurse.

The woman- she was young, being around her early thirties- looked at Sandor, surprised by his unexpected reaction upon seeing her. The look on her big and deep grey eyes becomes concerned when he saw the shock in Sandor's expression.

"Sir?" she asked. He thought that maybe she had a bit of a foreign accent, though he couldn't really identify it. "Are you all right?"

He couldn't answer her question. He hadn't even heard her asking it.

"Mom?" he asked weakly, startling the woman even more.

That woman was the living image of his mother, with the same black hair and the same deep grey eyes, identical to Sandor's eyes. Both he and his brother had taken after their mother, although their size was that of the Cleganes, as were they manly and strong factions. Their mother hadn't exactly been delicate, but her factions had been feminine and graceful, just like that woman was...

"Excuse me?" the nurse said then, and Sandor shook his head.

Don't be stupid! he scolded himself. The woman did look strikingly like his mother had, but his mother had been older than that woman, and smaller in size. Besides, his mother was dead. She had been dead for twenty-seven years already.

Suddenly he felt extremely embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," he excused himself, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. He could feel the woman's gaze on him. "It's just... You look liked mother, in sorry."

"It's okay," the nurse said softly, understanding.

Sandor opened his eyes and looked at her, seeing those deep grey eyes again. She was looking at him with pity, but Sandor didn't hate it like he hated it in other occasions when people looked at him like that. He didn't fail to notice that the nurse didn't seem to be scared or disgusted by his burns, she didn't even seem to notice them. Of course, being a nurse, she must have seen all kinds of horrible wounds and burns like those, or even worse.

Sandor lowered his gaze a second to look at the woman's name tag: Michele Leblanc.

So she's French, he thought, realizing that that was why she had an accent.

The nurse, Michele, showed him the gauze and the bottle of hydrogen peroxide that she had in her hands.

"May I?" she asked then, asking him for permission to clean his wound.

Slowly, Sandor nodded. He turned his head to the side to expose the wound to Michele. The nurse took a brief look at it and then soaked the gauze with the hydrogen peroxide and proceeded to clean his wound. Once the dry blood was washed away and Michele started cleaning the cup on Sandor's scalp, he hissed slightly because of the stinging that the hydrogen peroxide provoked him. Other than that he remained silent.

"What is your name?" Michele asked after what looked like slight hesitation. Sandor normally didn't like when people asked him questions, but for some reason he didn't mind it that time.

"Sandor Clegane," he replied.

He felt the nurse tensing a bit after he revealed his full name to her. The reason was curious, and it made Sandor start thinking. Did the woman recognize the name? Did she know who he was? Was she who he thought that she was, even though he knew that such a thought was ridiculous?

It can't be her, he thought to himself. Can she? Is she? I can't ask her... What if she is and she doesn't know?

His mind was a mess. Too many fucking things had already happened that day, and the last thing he needed was a discovery like that one. His head started hurting and spinning again.

"Are you with the woman that just arrived?" the woman asked then while she finished cleaning his wound. He nodded.

"I'm her bodyguard," he told her, and she just said 'oh', not knowing what else to say.

She finished cleaning the wound then. It wasn't deep and it wasn't bleeding anymore, so she didn't put anything on it to cover it up. She was standing back up again when Gregor appeared. His gigantic size made everything and everyone around him to look tiny, and it earned amazed glances from doctors and nurses that were around there. Michele looked at him with both a mix of amazement and horror when he walked towards were Sandor was sitting down. At first Gregor didn't notice the woman, but once he did he did a double take to look at her again, frowning just like Sandor had done before when he had seen her.
Sandor could see in his brother's eyes that he was thinking exactly what he had thought before upon seeing the woman's grey eyes and the way she looked, and it made him feel afraid.

Get away from here, he wanted to tell the woman, Michele. Walk away and don't speak to him. Don't even look at him.

As if she had read his thoughts, Michele turned around and disappeared down the corridor. She appeared to be somewhat distressed, but Sandor dismissed the thought. Both he and Gregor stared at Michele until she disappeared around a corner, and then both brothers looked at each other. Sandor was relieved when Gregor didn't mention the nurse.

"Our bosses are coming," Gregor told him. Sandor couldn't do much more other than to slightly nod his head.

If Sansa got better before Joffrey and Tywin Lannister appeared in the hospital in that city that was no farther away from King's Landing than half an hour in helicopter, then he would take her and leave the hospital with her. He would make sure that they could not be traced anymore, and he would try to take her away again. But he was not going to do that before the doctor's told him that she was okay; he would not risk her life.

There was no luck, and by the time the President of Westeros and the Governor of the Westernlands, accompanied by Cersei Lannister and an army of bodyguards appeared in the hospital, the doctors were still with Sansa and Sandor had no news of her.

Sandor felt enraged when he saw Joffrey storming through the emergency department, pretending to be extremely worried for his wife. Sandor clenched his jaw; it had only been a little over television hours since Joffrey had mercilessly murdered the Starks, and he was already coming to snatch Sansa away and force her into a life of misery all over again.

He stood up, feeling that he could beat the new President to death before he got his hands on Sansa. He was making his way over towards Joffrey...

"Where is she?!" Joffrey asked, perfectly pretending to be extremely worried. "Where is my wife?!"

"My brother and I found her at the same time," Sandor heard Gregor saying. "She started bleeding..."

"Bleeding?!" Joffrey asked, genuinely confused. "What on Earth happened?!"

Sandor was around to reach him and was preparing to snap when suddenly the doctor arrived with need of Sansa, making his killing urges fade away and be replaced by worry and the desire to know if she was all right. The doctor didn't appear to be serious, so that was good news... Wasn't it?

"Mr President," the doctor said, walking over towards were Joffrey was and shaking his hand. "Your wife is perfectly fine and had a small hemorrhage, but it is nothing to worry about. This has been a very tragic day for her, so it comes to no surprise that something like this happened. My condolences, by the way," he said, saddened by the thought of Robb Stark's and his family's sudden and tragic death.

"Thank you," Joffrey said with a nod of his head. Then he frowned. "Then Sansa is fine? There is nothing wrong with her?"

The doctor shook his head and smiled a little bit.

"As I said, she is perfectly healthy. Both of them are safe and fine."

Upon hearing those words, not only Joffrey frowned. Tywin, Cersei and Sandor also heard then and frowned, feeling confused by what the doctor had said. Both of them? Sansa and who else?

"Both?" Cersei Lannister asked, voicing the question that everyone had in their minds. The doctor realized then that he knew something that none of them did, and he smiled again.

"Yes, both. The First Lady is pregnant."