Author's Notes: Apologies for the delay with this – it is funny how return to real life slows down one's writing! This, like the previous chapter, grew quite a bit bigger than originally intended – but then again, I did try to tell a full story in six prompts, so… *smiles sheepishly*

"I will take you to your home as soon as it is possible."

He had said when they sneaked away from the Red Keep in the darkness of the night.

"I will take you to Winterfell as soon as the search for us has quietened down."

He had said when they settled into the rhythm of the road, taking small paths and avoiding main roads, sleeping rough under the open skies or in collapsed ruins of homesteads.

"I will take you home as soon as it is safe, when your kingly brother has finished waging his war."

He had said when they found a small village in the Vale in need of his services to build a palisade around it against marauders.

All those times she had smiled and nodded and accepted his words with good grace. She didn't mind rough living, riding through the days, or the night fires in which they cooked their meagre fare. She didn't mind the village, where people were cautious but honest, the food was plain but the meals were assured, and the air smelled of forest.

The care he took of her, easing her discomfort wherever he could, touched her. He never complained, never raised his voice in anger, never lost his calm. In turn she tended to him the best she could, unused as she was to such life. But she learned; learned how to skin a hare, how to start a fire even with wet kindling, how to pack and unpack their saddle bags in no time at all. And every time when he grunted his approval of something she had done, she beamed happily, her confidence in her own worth growing and growing - as did her affection for him.

It had strengthened from her observations in the close quarters they shared on the road, when she had learned more about men - and about him especially - than ever in her years as a protected maiden of a noble house. At first seeing him relieving himself against a tree, exhaling in satisfaction after holding on for the whole morning, had embarrassed her. The brutal and efficient way he disposed of trapped hares and birds with blood-stained hands had made her queasy. Seeing him in his undershirt or worse; without his shirt and his breeches hanging loose over his hips in unguarded moments when he was washing himself in a stream, had elicited a more peculiar reaction in her that she couldn't name.

Yet she knew his manners to be as decent as could be expected in the circumstances, the death of their prey an unpleasant but necessary part of staying alive, and… a man to be able to defend her life had to be broad of shoulders and chest and have arms thick of muscle. How exactly the dark hair covering his upper body fitted into the picture she wasn't sure of, but somehow it suited him and she rested her curious eye on it whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Their first few nights in the barn of the village inn were over once Sandor's worth had been measured and found satisfactory, and they were offered a house of their own. A simple wooden hut with two chambers, a small main room and a tiny kitchen at the back of the house. That a noble maiden raised to rule over a household of a vast castle found so much satisfaction in ruling that lowly hut was a surprise to both of them, not the least to Sansa herself. For once she was the one who made the decisions and did what she deemed fit, with nobody harking orders at her. What they ate, how she prettied their plain abode, what did she do with her time, who did she see and when – what a liberating experience it was for her, and she was heady with delight of finally being in control of her everyday life.

A goat for milk and a cat to keep her company when Sandor was at work and she was happier than she remembered being for a long, long time.

When the palisades were done he helped to build more things. When the marauders from the mountain clans came, he fought alongside the villagers. His further value was recognised and respected and the welcome they had received became warmer still.

Sansa too inched her way into the weave of village life little by little. She took odd jobs of sewing, and once the others saw fineness of her stitch and endurance of her clothes, more and more work came on her way. She made friends with wives and daughters and young maidens and found them refreshingly direct and affable. A cover story of being a daughter of a lady's maid and hence castle raised explained her fine speech. That the others pitied her at first by the account of her husband being so rough and unsightly she was aware of, but dedication and warmth she spoke of him soon convinced the others that such feelings were most misplaced.

Everyone assumed them to be man and wife and they saw no reason to dispel that misunderstanding. She felt it to be dishonest and was uncomfortable in the face of it, but there was a part of her that relished the image conjured. He my lord husband, I his lady wife?

And yet despite the tranquil domesticity they settled in an odd hollowness captured her oftentimes; a sudden ache and longing that for the longest time she couldn't explain. That she missed his large form near her as she slept, when it had meant safety and security in their time of danger, she had recognised from the first night in her new chamber. They had always lain side by side but chaste; he had not touched her and more often than not had turned his back on her and slept soundly while she had been kept awake by the noises of the forest. Not once had he taken liberties with her, laid his hand on her inappropriately or raised the topic of a price for his protection in his speech.

That he touched her even less than before, assiduously avoiding even the most innocent contact, told her that there might have been a purpose in his hold before, so readily taken and so slowly relinquished. A purpose that his promise to her had defeated. No, he wouldn't challenge her virtue in any shape of form after he had assured her he wouldn't, she knew.

She was safe and danger felt far away in this isolated village high up in the mountains – so what could ail her still?

When the answer finally presented itself it was so obvious that she could have laughed. Why hadn't she seen that before, as plain as a day it was in front of her nose? She needed him not for her safety nor even for the habit of companionship – but because she needed him as a woman needs and wants man; a companion, a confidante, a lover… Her initial fascination and curiosity had grown into a feeling she now recognised to be something more, something purer and yet something altogether more earthly and straightforward.

I love him.

Release of the tension that had started to build inside her was instantaneous and liberating – but immediately replaced by a new one. Does he care about me?

That she scrutinised him more than before that evening over the meal they shared in the small main room - he weary from his toil, chewing his food steadily - didn't escape his attention. Still even when he growled at her, not unkindly, if he had suddenly sprouted horns or why did he held her attention so profoundly, she couldn't share with him her discovery. Shyness and uncertainty froze her in her spot and although he in turn lay his eyes on her searchingly, he didn't press her any further.

And so it was that instead of words that she couldn't articulate, it was she sneaking into his bed one dark night that conveyed to him what was her heart's desire.

Instead of resisting her and pushing her away – after recovering from his initial shock and strainedly enquiring whether she had finally lost her bloody mind or was this some new form of torture she wanted to subject him to – he opened his arms and his heart and his soul to her with such fierceness that she was soon under no doubt that he too felt the same. It was not revealed to her by his words but by his actions – the care and protection he had afforded her ever since King's Landing moving into a new, intimate level.

It was hesitant, it was awkward, it was endearing and it was magnificent. He tended to her newly found needs with his own body; with his hands and his mouth and his manhood. He watched over her when she shattered into thousand pieces and he helped her to put them all back together again, once she learned to let herself go and allowed her body to freely react to the unfamiliar world of bodily delights.

They discovered a new language and new world together, diligently educating themselves those long nights when evenings didn't arrive soon enough and mornings were but a blink of an eye away.

And of all the things he did to her - many of them making her blush in the light of day - his game of licks all over her body was the one which she loved the most. Maybe it was the reminiscent of the first time he had consumed her so, but whenever he pressed her down with a mischievous glint in his eyes, smacking his lips and murmuring how he felt like tasting his little bird, she was inflamed in a way that she knew not to be proper for a lady – but she couldn't have cared less.

Then the news reached them – after having travelled slowly and tortuously across the vales and hills and forests – of the reaping of Winterfell and the cowardly murder of the young wolves, and later about the treacherous wedding feast in the Twins. And so it was that endless nights, when he held her in his arms while she wept, built yet another level of trust and closeness between them. The Hound and the little bird, an unlikely pair if there ever was one.

When Sansa missed her monthly flow, her breasts grew tender and the smell of food made her stomach churn out its contents, it took only one discussion with the herb-lady of the village to confirm what she had already suspected. Their precautions – easily forgotten in the heat of passion or mourning – had been inadequate and the outcome should have been quite unsurprising.

The first row they had was soon after that; not that he wouldn't have been in awe and cautiously pleased over the news. Yet his joy was marred by his staunch view that Sansa was still the high-born daughter of a noble house, and spoiling her future by carrying a bastard born from an unworthy alliance would damage her prospects in the world.

She had to put her foot down and assert her newfound confidence and strength – ironically largely reinforced by the one who was now at the receiving end of her indignation. She would keep the babe and they would raise him or her together. And besides, the babe was not going to be a bastard because it was high time they tied the knot also in front of the gods as they had done in the eyes of the villagers and in the depths of their own hearts. His bark about her wasting herself on a dog and the northerners never accepting her if she did so, she dismissed with a graceful wave of her slender hand. If the fate of the North was tied to Starks, as was believed by all, she would find a way. And if she couldn't – at that she had shrugged her shoulders and flicked her head – she would rather have a husband who loved her and whom she loved and a babe or a dozen, than play a role in the cruel game of thrones alone.

What eventually convinced him she never knew. After an evening spent on the hillside high up above the village, on a secret recess of a stony ledge protected by large boulders they had found together, he had returned to their hut stern-faced but resolute - like a man who had truly had set his course and nothing would waver him from it.

They wed the following week in front of a half-blind, half-drunk septon, who had retired from the temptations of worldly life to live in the hills – albeit attraction to drink seemed to have remained with him. People thought him simple but harmless, and whether he truly had the rights to perform the ceremony or not they did not know nor care. As long as he was the only septon around and he mumbled the words they both had heard many times before, and was able to sign his name into the document Sansa had scribed according to his vague instructions, that was good enough for them. It was probably better anyway that he was not a man of the world, as they used their real names to make their marriage true and binding.

The babe was born, hale and hearty, with a tuft of dark hair and an appearance of a northman. With the babe Sansa's life changed once more. The new and wonderful emotion that had slowly grown alongside her swelling belly reached its peak when she finally laid her eyes on her son; love so fierce and strong that it surpassed anything she had ever felt. Seeing her son with her lord husband, who spent many an evening staring at the small wriggling creature with an expression of abject awe and wonderment, was almost more than she could bear. Often she had to close her eyes and whisper her gratitude to the gods, be they old or new, for the happiness they had bestowed on her.

The yearning for home, for the place where she had grown up and for the family she had loved, withered and weakened and eventually there were days when Sansa didn't think of them even once, so consumed was she with her new life, her new family and her new place in the world. When that happened and when she eventually remembered the need that had driven her before, she felt a mixture of guilt and relief. Why to miss something that was already beyond her reach; the place of her birth razed down and held by others, her family scattered into the four winds and dead?

And so the dream of Winterfell faded until it was only a vague memory at the far recess of her mind.

The arrival of a new babe, scarcely a surprise after they had resumed their intimate relations once again, further cemented her life there and then, with her own family. Another son, as dark and strong as his brother and his father. If Sansa had though her heart already been filled to them brim before, she now saw that it stretched even more and easily accommodated the new arrival. The second time around he too knew what to expect and together they dived headlong into the parenthood and the bonds already forged grew stronger still.

And then they heard the news.

Only whispers, they were, more than news; vague rumours and wishful mutterings, carried by a few rare travellers who crossed the mountains to disturb the peace of their little village.

'The wolves are back' they said. 'The spirits of the King in the North and his wolf have returned, in the form of a wee lad and a huge black beast', they declared.

Most people took the tales as idle chatter, born from despair of the Northerners languishing under cruel rulers. Yet Sansa's world turned upside down when she first heard them. Rickon! Shaggydog! Many had already forgotten the young boys of the House of Stark - but she hadn't.

"I will take you home as soon as we have put our life here together and made ready for the journey."

He said when all the rumours were confirmed coming from one place and one place alone; from White Harbour. This time she nodded but she didn't smile, as she knew that to be happening for real.

Their last night in their hut - and Sansa's mind churned over all that lie ahead, and all the she was leaving behind.

"Stop tossing and turning, little bird. It does you no good and makes tomorrow's travel only harder." A gravelly voice next to her startled her. Her lord husband observed her under his brow, resting his head against his outstretched arm. She had seen him thus for hundreds of times, his gaze sometimes amused and teasing, sometimes tender and calming, sometimes passionate and burning. Hardly ever she saw the remnants of the rage that had resided in them before.

"It is just…I didn't think there was anything left for me anymore up in the North. And I had accepted that, I had learned to live with the fact that this…" her eyes swept across their little room, past the wooden crib and the little cot that contained her sons, her family, her life, "…is home now. And yet I know that I have duties for my other family, and for my other home. And I don't mind that! It is just that…"

"Fuck your duties." He pulled her closer, his large hands warm and assuring in their knowledge of how to sooth her, how to make her feel safe, and when the moment was right, how to awaken her senses. "I promised to take you home and it is about fucking time I finally do it. We will find your little brother and you and he shall stir the North and kick those bloody usurpers out of Winterfell. And my job is done."

Sansa moulded into his embrace, every curve fitting perfectly into the grooves of his hard body.

"No. Your job is not done, don't ever dare to say a thing like that." She squeezed his hand hard. All this talk about home; was it here in this little village that had welcomed her and where she had found happiness and founded a family of her own - not her parent's, but hers? Or was it in the cold plains of the North in the ancient seat of House Stark, where her ancestors' bones resided in the crypts?

Then a profound understanding hit Sansa and taking a shuddering breath she turned to face him, whispering.

"My home is where you are; you and our babes. Be it here or in the North or across the sea. You are my home."

The slow grin that tugged the corners of his mouth in a rough approximation of a smile, the expression she had learned to love, spread on his homely, scarred face.

"It took this long for you to figure that out, highborn and well tutored maid and all? Hells, I knew already in King's Landing that you were my one and only chance for home. Fuck if I could have guessed that it ever came to this, though."

Relieved and lightheaded she nuzzled her face against his chest and breathed in his smell, her nose buried into the thick dark hair.

Home.

THE END