A/N: The long-awaited part one of Learning to Fly. My apologies for taking so long! Part two is about half-written, at this point, so the wait shouldn't be as long next time around!
PART ONE: OUR WALLS
Her days are simpler, now; nothing like her days as Alayne, running the Eyrie. Wake up, sit in darkness as her maid, Hynnah, braids her hair and helps her into her simple woolen dress and hands her the walking stick, and walks with her to the hall for breakfast.
Sit next to Jon, advise him on how to deal with his aunt and advise him on how to deal with his aunt's former… whatever Jorah Mormont was to be considered, the Lannisters-in-exile, and the Lannisters-on-the-Rock who were constantly trying to get the Lannisters-in-exile back to the Rock by way of bribery, extortion, and all other methods that came to their minds.
Go with Jon to his solar. Get read the daily letters. Fend off the usual marriage proposal from Lord Umber. Go over the sums of the keep. Jon goes off to supervise the training of the brothers. She goes to Maester Samwell's company, sits with him while he brews his potions and he gives her lessons on plants and herbs and histories.
She eats lunch with Jon at the high table. Sometimes in the afternoons she tries her hand at her signature; she and Samwell have taught Hynnah to read and she can check Sansa's attempts. She and Hynnah sit in her bower, and Hynnah reads to her. Then, they go the kitchens to check on the evening meal, her stick and her maid never far away.
When there are wildlings, Sansa treats with them. When there aren't, she goes and stands with Jon as he watches over the men preforming their duties.
The Brothers call her Lady Stark.
She does not tell them that House Stark is gone, and that she is a Lannister while Tyrion still lives, warm, lavished with springtime luxuries in the Red Keep, and thankfully unaware of her continued existence. It is strange to be both a widow and a wife. To many she is dead. She prefers it that way. She is nothing but a prize to be won, a man's last ditch way to try and claim the North while Winterfell and the Stark family stands in ruin.
She is fallen.
She is powerless.
She is blind.
Sandor Clegane arrives at the Wall on a dreary spring morning. Where flowers are blooming and the sun is shining in the sparkling South, the North is still in the last death throes of winter. He wonders if summer ever truly comes this far north, or if it merely a rumor carried on the strongest winds carried up from Dorne.
Castle Black is a bleak thing despite the patronage of Daenerys Targaryen, the new queen delivered by the war's end, eager to pay any price to win Jon Snow back into her home. Well plied or no, the wall is a punishment, condemned or freely here he will spend his life, amongst the worst of men.
Where he belongs.
This is his penance.
His lands have been given away by the Dragon Queen, and he is welcomed by neither the Lannisters nor Baratheons, what is left of them, anyhow. It has been made clear that he has no place in court.
So he will take the black, for the girl with the red hair and guarded, tense, smile. For she is his fate, and he will no longer fear it. She is his ruin and his salvation, more painful than seared flesh and better than any salve. And she has taken black, buried deep in the rocky soil of the Vale, forgotten.
He did not save her, when she saved him.
And he will pay the price, serving the only Stark left, even if he is truly a Targaryen.
Jon is watching new recruits spar in the muddy yard, Sansa's arm looped through his, when the caravan arrives. Ghost sits at their feet, complacent.
Theirs is a story shaped like a sphere. Or perhaps a circle—convex and concave, ironic and cruel and doubtlessly insane and wondrously kind. They are both bastards and not, insecure in their skins and hiding from the rest of the world. It is only now that they are not siblings that they are free to act like it.
There are days when they are Jon Snow and Alayne Stone; days when they are as bitter and cold and hard as their names. And then the days when they are Aeron Targaryen and Sansa, the last known Stark; days where they are soft and tired and just so old and dead and dying, like brittle leaves swept away in the autumn wind. They are long gone. They are ghosts.
And they do not fit into either of their names, the lowborn and the high. They have seen too much and given too much to survive. They are no one but the boy and girl who cling to one another in a lasting attempt to survive, not to slip away in the darkness that already consumes too much of their lives. Sansa lives in the night, Jon must patrol it.
"Where are they from, this group?" she asks. She is safe with Jon, who has taken vows and is running from a marriage proposal himself, who does not resent her for who she was as a girl in Winterfell, who lets her try and teach him to dance and leads her around the room the best he can for a bastard with no inclination for dance and a lady without her eyes. "What is this lot made up of?"
She will never be a true wife, or a true mother. But she tries to tend to his men the best she can. She cannot see their looks, the way their eyes are drawn to her clouded, wrinkled eyes. She was such a vain creature, he thinks. Once.
Once, always once. Winter took things from all them, took things and changed them irrevocably and handed them back, made them binding.
"From King's Landing," Jon answers, wrapping her arm around his. He hands her cane and leads her down through the yard, Ghost following them closely. It has been years since he has had to walk her around slicks of mud and ice, but he still keeps her close, more for his comfort than her convenience. Wiser men have made the mistake of underestimating his sister (cousin, his mind does not supply) but he will not. "My aunt has sent them personally. Liars, deserters, thieves. Political pariahs. I do believe she intends to export half the city's male population at this rate."
"And what does she think this will accomplish?" Sansa asks, not because she does not know the answer but because she wants to know that Jon does.
Jon gives her a short laugh and a pat on the hand. "She knows I will not answer her letters anymore, at least not her summonses to King's Landing. She hopes to provoke me by inundating me with over-qualified men for the Wall."
"Provoke what?"
Jon snorts. "Anything."
"And you…?" Her tone is light. His dear sister, giving him his daily lessons. She looks upon them as penance. He is the last person in the world who knew her when she was a girl in Winterfell. Jon knew the girl before she was killed, brushed out of the way for Lady Stark, for Alayne, for the woman who looked at people and wondered how she could best make use of them.
"Are very much unwilling to leave my post as Lord Commander. Three heads hath the dragon. I helped her vanquish the Others. I have done my duty, and will continue to do my duty—to the wall." He is annoyed, and cups her elbow and other hand, helping her up onto the platform leading to the tower that houses her bower and chambers. "I will walk with you to our evening meal and give you complete roster of the men Daenerys has sent me."
Sansa smiles in the direction of his voice, lifting her hand out to him. Jon grasps it briefly, and raises it to his lips.
"Thank you, my lord."
Jon smirks, teasing the space between her knuckles with his thumb. When he answers, there is laughter in his voice. "Go on, sweet sister. Ghost, go with her."
Jon knows the man the moment he sees him. Knows him because his name was in the last letter Dany sent north. Knows him because Sansa has spoken of him, both as the girl and as Alayne and as Lady Stark. He does not bring her with him to greet the new recruits. He never does, he does not wish to introduce her to danger, not when she cannot wield a dagger but as a last resort and cannot see her attacker.
Just as he needs her, she needs him, for this. He promised her he would keep her safe, after she escaped Littlefinger with a host of Vale men and Blackfish and was brought to the Wall. He will take no chances.
He pulls himself up onto the platform before the battlements and rests his hand on the hilt of his sword. No one questions his position as Lord Commander anymore. No one questions a dead man who lives and is now the nephew of the queen.
"Welcome to Castle Black," he shouts, old lessons holding true. Robb's daughter with Jeyne lives with the Reeds. He wonders how fate would have turned if his brother had sired a son. It is a turn of the mind that Sansa steers him away from. Jon wonders how long until Sansa will ask to leave, to go to the Reeds and help raise the girl who also lives with her identity in the shadows. But the Wall is no place for a woman, and definitely no place for a girl.
King's Landing was not any different, and over the years he believes that he has heard all of Sansa's story, as it was in broken shards, sharp and pointed and harsh. But he knelt on the glass-covered floor with her, got his fingers bloody as they pieced them all together. He knows Sandor Clegane, he thinks.
He locates the man immediately, pinning him under his gaze as he continues his speech.
Sansa hears of the Hound's—no, the Hound is dead, the Elder Brother said so—arrival shortly after she steps into her bower. Hynnah bursts into the room, tripping over her lady's cane as she does so, sending herself to the floor and Ghost to his feet.
"I am so sorry milady, I am—"
Sansa can hear the blush on her face, and bats Alayne's cold voice from her head as she lifts herself gently from her chair and edges herself over to Hynnah's place on the floor, reaching down to tenderly place her hands on the waifish girl's shoulders.
"Come, come, up. Did you hurt yourself?" There is no place here for her to be a cruel lady, not when Hynnah is her only other female in which she can seek solace. They must be allies. And Sansa is older and in some ways wiser than thirteen year old Hynnah Snow, the orphaned daughter of a wildling woman who had fought with the host of wildlings in the Battle Against the Night. She raises her hands to her erstwhile handmaiden's face, palpating carefully for any wounds. "What is wrong, to have you running in here like that?"
"Sandor Clegane," the girl gasps, leading Sansa back to her chair and sitting her down, before scampering for her lady's stick and pressing it into her hands. "He's here!"
Sansa blinks, tightening her fingers around her cane. "Oh."
"He's apparently already gotten into a fight with Jaime Lannister." Hynnah drops to her knees before Sansa, grabbing her hand between her slight, birdlike fingers. "Willas from the kitchens says that it was about you. Jaime didn't tell him nothing, but that's like him. He was just cruel and laughed. Taunted him, and the like. Brienne weren't too happy about it either, but she didn't say nothing either."
"Say anything," Sansa corrects faintly, turning her face to catch the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the glazed window.
"What?"
"Say anything, not say nothing. I'm well aware that good grammar does not always correlate with intelligence, but if you wish to succeed in Lord Umber's household, you'll need to start focusing on sounding educated." Sansa breathes deeply, narrowing in on the feeling of the thin skin of her hands stretching over her knuckles, the sound of men sparring in the yard, the sound of boots on stone.
"Lady Stark, you know I will not leave you," she protests, attentions diverted for the moment. "I do not wish to leave you."
"I am all that you have known, besides your mother. Me, and Castle Black." Sansa sighs, closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead. The headaches come and go, the cloying pull of pain behind her eyes, one other constant reminder of Petyr Baelish holding her down on his bed and pouring poison her eyes. She can close her eyes and remember what it is like to see, but not when her head feels as if someone has set it on fire. "You need to leave at some point, starling. Castle Black is not a place to come of age. Or to go anywhere in life."
"I know that, milady." She sounds so honest, so earnest. Sansa thinks she must have been like that once. She does not know how beautiful Hynnah is, but she hears the men talk. Soon it will be dangerous for Hynnah to be around so many men. She will not be afforded the protection that she has. Sansa knows what it is like to be young and beautiful and so, so powerless. "But I wish to remain here with you, milady. I am loyal and true, like the North. Isn't that what you say? I can stay here and learn from you and Maester Samwell." Her voice changes, soft and disarmed. "But only if you wish it. If you tire of me, milady, I will leave."
Sansa smiles tremulously. Hynnah will have to leave, and soon. Ghost whines, curling up at her feet.
"No, no, my girl," she says, panic welling in her chest. Hynnah will leave and she will be alone again. But Hynnah must learn to fly all on her own. "Little bird, you must learn to leave the nest. It's almost time for you to go. Lady Umber will treat you well. Otherwise she will answer to me."
Little bird, she thinks. He is here.
She knew that he was alive. After fleeing to the Vale, Uncle Brynden had taken her to the Quiet Isle, to see if the Elder Brother could do anything to save her sight. The Elder Brother could do nothing for her eyes, but she had been able to glean that bit of information, only to learn that he had left the week prior to act as champion of the faith against Ser Robert Strong—Gregor Clegane, risen again, harder and stronger.
And he had won. But even then that had won him no favors in the court, only a brief second taste of the love of the commons.
Shunned by all for his association with the Lannisters, even after defeating Cersei. The iron whim of the Dragon Queen had sent him out of King's Landing, and even after being found innocent in the sight of gods, no one wanted him in their service.
And now he is taking the black, by choice.
My non-ser, Sansa thinks sadly as Hynnah chatters on to her about the dagger Brienne was teaching her to use. You are no more a dog now than I am a bird, too broken to bite and too broken to sing.
"He doesn't know you're here, milady." Sansa can hear the clicking of the spinning wheel and the girl's voice from her left. "I will tell you what his face looks like when he sees you, if you wish."
All the stories she had told her, to make her believe in fair maidens and true knights like her Septa had done to her. Was it a mistake, to teach her these things? Fill her head full of lies? It was not impossible to blind a girl raised amongst the crow—perhaps Hynnah is a different species of bird.
"I am sure that he will be made aware of my presence by Lord Snow," Sansa tells her. She imagines that Jon will come to her before mealtime, voice low and concerned and he will ask her if she would rather take her meal in her chambers, as if she is a fragile porcelain tea cup and like she could see Clegane's reactions anyway. "And even then, I was just a girl he knew once."
Hynnah giggles.
Sansa realizes she never should have told her little bird the stories about Sandor, how he saved her from the riot, put his cloak around her shoulders, offered to take her out of King's Landing.
Or rather, she should have told the whole of the stories, not just the fanciful versions she had reimagined in her head.
I convinced myself he kissed me. She wishes to hit herself.
"But you're a woman now. The beautiful Lady Stark. The North could be yours, if you only said the words. Sandor Clegane would love you."
Sansa holds her breath; the spinning of the wheel stops. She imagines that Hynnah is looking at her expectantly, and gathers a reply. "I would hope that he would love me for more than my beauty or my claim, since beauty means very little to me now and my claim is better off in the hands of the Umbers. All besides, Hynnah, he is taking the black. He is not a man in want of a wife, should that wife even be me. And I do not want for a husband."
"But in King's Landing—"
Sansa holds her tongue, trying not to be harsh with her. "He protected me when he could. And he did take… risks on my behalf. But he also did many horrible things, my girl. Not all the stories are lies, but they are rarely as pretty as they seem. Sandor Clegane was the man who wrapped his white cloak around me when Joffrey had me stripped and beaten, but he was also the man who held me at knife point, drunk, and threatened to rape me."
Hynnah gasps.
"I am thankful of him, little bird. But I am also wary. The Elder Brother has told me he has changed. But so have I."
"From the white cloak to the black, Clegane? I know that story."
Sandor freezes, grumbling as he heaves his bedroll and meager belongings onto his cot. It's been a long time since he's had to climb his way up from the bottom rung.
"Fuck off, Kingslayer."
Jaime Lannister chortles complacently, positively swaggering up behind him. "Not a kingslayer anymore. All of my past sins are behind me. We're equals now, dog."
"I'm not the Hound anymore."
The former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard sits himself on Sandor's things, smiling facetiously. "I'm here to atone. Did the queen send you here for that too?"
"I came on my own bidding."
"After the last Stark got away from you. They haven't heard from that one in nigh on eight years now. Slippery little bastards, the Starks. Especially when they turn out to be Targaryens. Or pretending to be bast—"
"I said fuck off, Lannister," he growls.
Jaime's smile grows. "Don't want to hear what I have to say? What if I want to be your friend?"
"Clegane," a voice breaks in. Both of the former Kingsgaurdsmen look up at the Lord Commander, who is smiling without smiling. Lord Snow clasps his hand over the pommel of his sword, his face twisting into a grimace made all the more gruesome made more gruesome by the long, slashed scars covering his neck and face. "A word. And Lannister, back to the yard."
Sandor follows him silently, deliberately not looking at Jaime Lannister as he walks away. Jon Snow—Aeron Targaryen—leads him up a series of winding steps, across a battlement, and into his solar before at last gesturing for him to take a seat at his table.
"Wine?"
Sandor pauses. "I don't drink anymore."
Snow raises his eyebrows before pouring himself a drought of wine. He does not sit, merely perching himself by the fireplace.
"Will I need to keep you and Jaime Lannister separated?" He says this with his grimacing smile. "In order to keep the peace on my watch?"
"No, my lord," Clegane grumbles.
Jon Snow swallows his wine in one swig, watching the former Lannister dog carefully. "I do not know how to tell you this, so I will be blunt about it."
There is a moment where the world in enveloped in sound—the crackling of the fire place, the passing of men in the hall beyond the door, the sharp sound of steel in the yard, the shouts of men, and then the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch's words:
"Sansa is alive."
Sandor Clegane does not know what he feels in that moment. It is a vacuum, where his hope and despair lives together. Sansa Stark, the girl of his greatest dreams and worst nightmares, the girl with fire for hair and ice for eyes. He died with her on his lips.
And was reborn trying to forget her.
He tried to die again when he could not.
"And she is here," Snow continues. In the court they call him Lord Targaryen, the queen's nephew. She wants him as her heir, but he will not forsake his vows. No longer Ned Stark's bastard, but he is still Lord Snow. Of the North, Lyanna Stark's babe in arms. The man pauses again, holding words in the back of his mouth, trying them out in his head before speaking them aloud.
"She… is not the same girl she was in King's Landing."
A winter has passed, Sandor wants to say. None of us are the same.
"Summer first, summer again…" Jon Snow murmurs, as if repeating something he heard once and long ago before looking him straight in the eye. "She is blind, now. Not… crippled. But she cannot go about her day unassisted. She lives here, under my protection. And you will see her tonight in the hall. And she will not see you. You will not approach her. But she has… spoken of you, kinder than she has of most. And now you know that she lives."
He stays frozen, as if it is the still the depths of winter and he is in the Red Keep after the fall of Cersei Lannister, aimless and drifting before the appearance of dragons on the horizon.
He can breathe again. Tethered. He is in a world where his girl of ice and fire lives again. Of course she does. She may have been afraid, but she was never weak.
Jon Snow nods, his mouth a hard line. "You're dismissed."
"Hello, Jon," she greets him as he passes through the door. Looking up at the door way, her ruined blue eyes pinch slightly. "The new recruits?"
"The usual," he answers, crossing the room to press a kiss to her forehead, brush hair out of her eyes. "They'll do."
Sansa hums. "And Sandor Clegane?"
Jon curses. "How do you know?"
"I have ways of learning what goes on in this castle." She smiles up at him, pulling her cane between her legs and resting her chin atop it. "I know everything, Jon."
He snorts. "Hynnah."
Sansa laughs, reaching out for his hand. He puts his on top of hers, and lets her pull him down onto the bench beside her. "You cannot hide a man the size of Sandor Clegane. Now what is wrong? Your color is off."
"My color is just fine."
"You are worried about me." Her smile grows softer, and she looks at him. "Ghost has been whining since you left. You're worried that he'll hurt me. And that's just silly. No man can hurt me. Not anymore."
"I am… hesitant." Jon eases the words out of his mouth. "He is a man with nothing left to lose."
She hums. "He will not hurt me. Is he aware that I am alive?"
"Yes," he replies. "I informed him as such."
"So he will not be seeing my ghost tonight. Very good. The poor man does not deserve that, at least." He stands, and her eyes follow him, narrowed. "What else did you say to him?"
"Nothing, sweet sister."
"I can tell when you lie. When your sight goes, the rest of your senses improve upon themselves," she tells him loftily, as if she is still a highborn maiden and he the bastard boy unwanted in the household.
Jon coughs. "He is not to speak to you."
Sansa scoffs, japing her walking stick out towards him. Jon catches the end of it, and pulls. Not hard enough to dislodge it from her grasp, but enough to annoy her. "All of the men here may speak with me, if they wish. Haven't you heard, I'm the Lady of Castle Black."
Jon rolls his eyes, sighing heavily for Sansa's expense. "Collecting titles again?"
"A dead woman earns nothing but."
"You are too concerned with yourself."
She laughs, hard and high-pitched. "And you too little. Have you replied to Daenerys yet? They would welcome you in King's Landing as a hero, and yet you want nothing for yourself. Or perhaps you should think of the kingdom. The queen can bear no children; Aegon is dead. She needs an heir. And while you are no proven stud…"
"Hush."
"No."
"Becoming blind has made you shameless," he japes, dropping the end of her cane to the floor.
Sansa stands. "No, that is the product of living with only men as company. And now I act like a man, instead of a lady. What would my mother say?"
She raises her hand to his face, a sad smile on his face. Oh, what winter has done to them. The snow is melted and this is what is left of the Starks—a blind, bitter woman, a bastard. And the child, hidden, safe for now. All running, all hidden from the world.
"Nothing," Jon Snow replies. "Your mother is dead." He pauses, placing his hand over hers. "I will not meddle in your affairs with Sandor Clegane."
He does not approach her, like he was told.
Sansa waits three days, before it happens accidentally and not at all how she intended it to be.
She walks down from her place at the high table, Hynnah trailing two steps behind. She walks; her braid swinging down her back, cane tracing the stones in front of her. When she stops two feet before passing him, even she seems startled.
"Sandor Clegane," she says haltingly, as if this was not a part of her plan.
She is grateful that she cannot see his face, but she does watch his color change, sparking to something bright and nebulous before she regains her bearings and nearly flees the hall.
"What happened?" Hynnah whispers desperately, holding onto her lady's sleeve. "My lady—did you see him? Milady how did you know it was him?"
"Red," she whispers. "His color is red."
"What was that about?" Jaime Lannister whispers impertinently in his ear. "She can't even see your face to be scared of it and she bolted."
Sandor growls at him.
"And you claim that you're not the Hound anymore." Jaime laughs. "Use your words, Clegane."
"How the fuck are you even alive, Goldhand?"
"Because darling Brienne took care of me, before our lovely queen decided we were to pay House Lannister's debt by serving at the Wall." He snorts, returning to his breakfast. "And now I am protected by the oath and our treaty with the fucking wildlings and the fire-breathing beast that inhabits the cage in Eastwatch. The real question, though, is how are you alive, dog?"
"I'm not," he mutters. Too much has changed; the world has no place for him now. And at the end of the world, he finds the one thing he had ever wanted. What he had lost, of his own foolishness.
Sansa Stark is not a thing. Flesh and blood, that girl. And now a woman grown with a life and a mind and beating heart—not some pale, shrinking visage he fails to protect, even in his dreams.
Sandor Clegane is not sure how to live. The hound is dead and somehow he lives on, when all the songs and stories would have him dead. He has nothing left to live for. His story is a circle—chasing not what he wants. Chasing nothing. He serves, and now all of his masters are dead. He has a choice now. It was not given to him, but won simply by surviving.
Sansa Stark lives. He would choose her, but she would never choose him.
More days pass. Sansa is always in the company of the Commander, or his wolf. Or often, her maid, who stares at him and giggles as if he is a knight in shining armor, not some run-down crow.
He could approach her, but doesn't. Instead he takes up the habit of following her silently, like he used to in King's Landing. She does not notice him, not like that morning his first week at Castle Black.
It will be her choice.
She wakes up screaming, the nightmare clawing at her vision, Littlefinger's angry face in her eyes, the feeling of his silk sheets at her back as he pushed the hem of her dress higher and higher.
She claws at his face, shrieking in protest.
I am dead, she thinks. This is not remembering—this is something that takes her and holds her and pins her down, steals her breath and her mind, forces her to relive him reaching for his bedside table, makes her hear his voice again.
She had threatened to leave. Blackfish was alive, and in the castle. She had threatened to leave.
She screams, and sees him unstop the bottle and splash the poison at her face as she writhes on the bed, hoping to escape his grasp. For a slight man, he is so strong. She stops clawing at him, instead clawing at her eyes as her vision burns away…
She hears the door open, and someone burst in. The memory looses its grip on her, and she sits up, hands pushing her hair away from her hot face.
"Hynnah?" she gasps as someone presses a cool hand to her face. "Hynnah is that you? Who is this? Announce yourself, please." Her voice shakes.
She opens her eyes and sees red. Her hands fly to his face, her palm brushing over the burns that she knows are there. Her skin meets his again, and for a moment his face, sad and drunk and frightened and terrible, connects between her eyes and mind.
"Sandor," she says.
There is a rustling of fabric, a heaving gasp, and a rush of air over her the palms of her hands.
The door slams, and he is gone.
He comes to her in the night, when memories grab at her and threaten to pull her into the darkness, where even the remembrance of sight cannot save her.
He helps her remember the light, in the darkest parts of the night.
And in the days, they pass each other in the hall and in the yard and on the battlements. She stands with Jon, watching the men, and does not watch him. She knows he beats everyone he goes against. She doesn't have to ask Jon about that.
She knows his friendships with Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth are growing, that the young men respect him and the old respect him and that Hynnah watches him carefully and flirts with young Willas from the kitchens and they trade stories and she gossips about them. Sansa knows that Hynnah knows that he saves her from the terrors of her mind, but that Hynnah is too graceful and too good a friend to gossip about that.
It's just like how she knows that Jon will eventually bend to Daenerys' will and will go to King's Landing and learn to be a prince, and she will have no place here, tending to the wounds of the crows and telling them stories and singing them songs. She is the Lady of Castle Black contingent on Jon's place here, here were Sansa Stark can be both a ghost and a woman, very much alive. Where Samwell Tarly is her friend.
"When will Sam return from the Citadel?" she asks. She must ask him for something for her dreams. "It's been over two turns of the moon, now."
"He was invited to King's Landing," Jon answers sourly.
Sansa just laughs.
"Soon, Jon," she tells him. "Soon. She has your friend now. You'll have to go and rescue him from court. And his father."
That is a tale less humorous. She would not wish Lord Tarly onto his son, even now as a learned maester she fears would his influence would be on the poor young man.
Her words carry in the yard, and the men who have finished sparring smile. Jaime pokes Sandor in the side. Sandor grumbles, swatting his hand away. Jaime pouts, and Brienne rolls her eyes.
Clegane looks up at her briefly, not wishing to be caught staring by Lord Snow.
He remembers his singing little bird from King's Landing, a naïve highborn maid chirping about true knights and fair maidens, so concerned with her hair and dresses and jewels. And now she can see none of it. He may be unable to find beauty in the world, but he is saddened that she is prevented from doing so when she used to so easily.
Something flashes below her, a blooming red. She looks down upon where she knows Sandor Clegane must be standing and smiles.
I had prayed to the gods to gentle him. To spare him.
She wonders what the cost was.
She understands fear now, and hatred. How it turns people nasty. And Sandor Clegane had no Jon Snow to save him from it. His older brother was the monster in his life.
"Hynnah?" she calls. Jon helps her turn, a habit she wishes he would break. If she is to convince him to leave her behind, she needs to convince him that she will not break. She feels the girl touch her arm, and greet her with a soft milady. "Let's to the kitchens."
"Do you wish to take tea, milady?"
"I wish to hear you make Willas squirm, and then we will take tea together, little bird."
Sandor freezes in the stairwell.
Little bird.
The past overlays with the present and he is overwhelmed in a wave of memories that threaten to drown him. And then the moment passes, and time clicks forward again.
"There is an opening in Lady Umber's service," Sansa says, bringing her tea to her lips in order to give Hynnah a silence to contemplate her words. "You should consider it."
Hynnah clears her throat. "I told you, milady—my lady—I will not go."
Sansa calmly places her tea cup down onto its saucer. The tea service was a gift from Queen Daenerys to Jon, and had been appropriated to her use. Sansa smiles sadly. "It's time for you to move on."
"My home is here," the girl protests. Sansa has created a face for this girl in her mind, collected from the facts that she knows—Hynnah is blonde-haired with dark eyes, a short nose in a heart-shaped face. Sansa has sculpted other features for her—a distinguished brow line, high cheekbones, the soft, round jaw of a girl, bright eyes that remind her Arya's. She imagines that the lines of her face are taught, steeled for battle.
Sansa reaches out for the girls hand, slides her palm across the table until she finds it. "I know. And Castle Black will always been your home, as long as I am alive. But… I left my home once too. And it's time for you to leave the nest, birdling. Time for you to fly. There is so much I can't teach you, so much you can't learn in the comfort of home."
Hynnah jerks her hand away. "I don't want to." Her voice wavers. "You cannot make me."
"It is time," she responds, voice stern. "And I can make you. I do not want to."
Hynnah sobs. "No."
"Lady Umber is a kindhearted woman," Sansa tries to placate her, reaching out for Hynnah's hand again; when she is unable to find it her searching grows more frantic. "She will treat you well. You will excel in her service, and perhaps you will be able to marry the son of their Master of Arms, or a lesser son of a Lord. And perhaps, one day, you may serve my niece. Lady Umber—"
"She is not you." Hynnah launches herself into Sansa's arms.
This is why she must go, she thinks. She is too familiar. I am not enough. She needs other women.
Sansa straightens her spine, but rubs the girl's back, fingers tracing over the soft wool of her dress, the leather laces. "And that is why. You need to see more than here, my girl. You must… you may be afraid, but do not let direct your actions. It is time for you to go. And you can read and write. Maester Samwell can read your letters to me, write my replies. And you can mock my signature, as poor as it is."
Hynnah sniffs. "Will you visit?"
Sansa sighs. "I…"
"Are you afraid too, Lady Sansa? To leave here? To let people know you are alive?"
"Lord Snow protects me," Sansa answers, stiffening.
She knows fear. Tastes it every night in her dreams. Takes every step in it, her cane tracing the ground. She waits to trip and fall into the worst of life, blindly now. She trusts no one and nothing but Jon and these grounds. The crows expect nothing of her. Her past does not exist here. She does not exist here.
"The Umbers would protect you," Hynnah whispers. "We could go to Winterfell together. You could go home. Rally your people. You've the best heart of anyone I've ever met—they'd follow you."
Sansa laughs wistfully. If only the girl could see the hatred that lives in her heart, even now. "You've not met many people in your life, little bird. Not in this blackened cage."
"I'm scared to leave." Hynnah says. And then more resolutely, "but I cannot stay."
"That's my girl." Sansa's smile is watery, tears slipping down her cheeks. She pets Hynnah's hair, combing it behind the girls ears. "Although I do not know who I will get to fix my hair in the mornings. The Lord Commander has never quite grasped the concept of the braid despite all of the knots he knows how to tie."
Hynnah buries her face in Sansa's shoulder. "Promise me you'll visit. I could fix your braids to be extra nice if you visited."
Sansa shivers, and her voice shakes. "I promise."
She cannot mean it.
"I will send her along with the next caravan south," she tells Jon that evening as she sits in front of the fire in his solar. She frowns when he does not answer. "What is wrong?"
He clears his throat. "Meera writes that Catelyn is sick."
Sansa tenses. "What is the sickness?"
Jon hums, and Sansa can hear the sound of shuffling papers. "Some childhood fever. They have a maester attending to her."
"Do the Umbers know of this?" Her words are curt, and soon Jon's hand is on her shoulder.
"I do not believe so."
"I do not trust anyone with her." Sansa fidgets with her hands in her lap, aching for the days when she could distract herself with her sewing, even when it was just mending Littlefinger's clothes. Instead, she employs her fingers by tracing mindless patterns into her skirt. "I—they are sure it's just a fever?"
"Meera wouldn't lie."
"I do not trust anyone with her."
Jon snorts. "You do not trust anyone, sweet sister."
"I trust you," Sansa scoffs, reaching for her walking stick and standing.
"Oh, barely, I think," he replies. "And only because you must. And now I must head south, to King's Landing, because the queen demands it. And I will not leave you here, Sansa, without anyone you trust, so you will either have to accompany me or stay with the Reeds and acquaint yourself with the niece you have only met through the letters of the people we have entrusted with her care."
The secret child of Robb Stark and Jeyne Westerling-a girl, who survived when her mother did not. Gods-given, but a daughter. Sansa fears that the world may do to Catelyn as it did to her. And so, she stays hidden, secret to everyone but them and the Umbers, who hold the North in their stead.
Sansa taps the bottom of her cane on the floor impatiently, feeling her temper rise. You know nothing, Jon. Do not presume to know what it is like for me. Our lives are not the same, and they never have been. Alayne rises in her conscious, driving her to be cruel. "So what, I can leave her again? If I go—"
"You will want to stay," Jon breaks in, voice harsh. She hears him cross the floor with heavy boots. She squeals when he yanks her stick from her hands, throwing it to the floor. "And then you will see people. And you will like them, and you will begin to feel again. You will be reminded that you have duties and responsibilities to someone beside yourself and the little pet you have chosen to raise." Sansa drops to her knees, sniffling, hands running over the rough wooden floor. Her fingers ghost over her cane—and then Jon kicks it out of reach. She sits up, and stares in the direction of his voice. "I will not have you with a weapon. We are going to talk."
"Fine then," she answers, huffing and in tears. "Talk, my lord."
"You're running scared, Sansa."
"In case it's slipped your notice, Jon, I cannot run."
"Oh pardon me," he scoffs. "Poor blind Sansa. Like that makes you any less intelligent, any less capable?"
"Thanks a-plenty." She stumbles to her feet, hands reaching out in front of her until the hit his chest. Jon takes her shoulders, holding her at arms-length. "In case it has slipped your notice, no one wishes for a blind woman for the Warden of the North. It is best that Lord Umber keeps his post until Catelyn comes of majority, and then perhaps then I will—"
"And then you'll what? Go back home at last, too old to marry and unwilling as it were, and become the Queen of Ice, pulling the strings behind your niece's back? Making enemies and letting no one in?" His voice softens, allowing her a tiny bit closer. "I know you Sansa. I know how you can be. It is a blessed thing that you let me in. No one stands a chance around you."
"And what about you?" Sansa starts, letting Jon wipe her tears with the sleeve of his soft wool sleeve. "Aeron Targaryen. Dany wants you to forsake your vows and marry, produce the heir she cannot. You surely know that if you go to King's Landing you will not return North ever again. She will marry you off to Myrcella Lannister. Or Mya. Any of the great bastards."
"I am but a bastard."
Sansa laughs. "I am ever sorry that I treated you as such."
Jon shrugs, even though she cannot see it. "We were children."
"I wish I could toss away the hurtful things people have said to me like you can."
Jon hugs her then, tightly. Sansa wonders where Arya is—Arya, who Jon used to hug and carry around on his shoulder. Who had that stupid needle of hers. Arya, who Jon loved as a sister before her. "You have more than paid your cost for your words, Sansa. I will not lump any more pain onto your head. Not while Petyr Baelish lives on in your dreams."
"Are you not afraid of court?"
"Like a man walking to his death."
"But you will go?"
Jon hesitates. "This duty… keeping the peace, this way, may be more important."
"So you're forcing my hand here?" she sniffles. "I'm impressed."
Jon laughs, deep and rumbling. For a moment, Sansa can pretend that she is small, and in the arms of father. Jon always did look like a Stark—she wonders if, at twenty-six, he looks like father did. "I'm pushing you out of the nest. Take Clegane with you. He doesn't belong here either.
"Or…" he says, softening. "Wait. Keep the Hound with you. Go when you feel you are ready to."
Sansa hums. "I hope I learn to fly."
A fortnight passes, and a train prepares to go southward.
"You needn't lurk," Sansa says as she reaches for the handle to her chambers the night before her departure for Greywater Watch. "I can see you."
"How?"
Sansa laughs, a high and pleasant sound. True, almost, Sandor thinks.
"Hmm…" She opens her door, gesturing for him to follow her in. He remembers King's Landing; the days following her father's death when he had to scoop her out of bed to present in front of Joffrey, the night of Blackwater and the smell of fire and smoke and melted flesh, the taste of liquor and bitter words. "It is hard to describe."
This is fucking strange, he thinks. So much has changed between them. So much time gone. The last time we met I held a knife to her throat and took a song. Why is she being so fucking pleasant?
"I kept your cloak," she tells him, voice light and words inconsequential, as if she is just making conversation. "The one you left behind, the night of the Battle of Blackwater."
"Fucking hells, girl."
She laughs. Outright fucking laughs.
"Kept it in the bottom of my trunk. Hid it from my maids and Cersei." She sits on the bed in her exceptionally plain bedroom. It is uncomfortable, to say the least. It is not the first time he has been here—he stands outside her door on an almost nightly basis. Comes in when he hears her screams, shakes her from her dreams. He could not save her then; he cannot save her now, even though he is free to. He serves no one, not even the Night's Watch, not yet. "I had to leave it behind, of course, when Lord Baelish spirited me away the night Joffrey was murdered. I had no part in that, I'll tell you. The Tyrells were behind it, if you would believe me."
"I know," he answers curtly. She drops her cane onto her bed beside her.
She smiles, looking unsure, eyes darting about wildly, but always landing back on him. It is a bit disconcerting, he thinks, to have a blind woman looking at you.
"I wish I had gone with you, that night."
He barks a derisive laugh. No, you fucking sure as hell don't. "Stranger's arse, girl. I was drunk as all buggering Seven Hell's and put a knife to your pretty fucking throat."
She shrugs. "I would have been better off with you than with Littlefinger."
"Aye, girl. You'd be better off being dragged around the Riverlands by the Lannister dog. I wouldn'tve kept my hands off you for long, such a sweet young thing you were. I'dve taken that song. Fucked you bloody on the ground somewhere." He snorts, stepping further into her room, watching as her eyes—shriveled and cloudy but still so blue—attempt to follow him covertly.
He freezes when she seems unfazed. "I would have let you."
"The fuck you would have, girl," he growls. "Highborn fucking maid like you. I'dve run you through. You'dve been killed, with me. I'd would've fucked you every night, planted a bastard in your belly. You know what I wanted girl."
She smiles sadly. "I know what you wanted. I know that now. But you would have protected me. You told me that if anyone had hurt me, you would have killed them. I used to dream of it, when Lord Baelish came into my bed. I never—" she swallows hard, and Sandor feels the Hound begin to rise up after being dead for so long. If only Littlefinger wasn't already dead. "I never said no, but I never wanted it. And after Harry died—after he was murdered… when you slayed Ser Robert Strong, how did it feel? You once told me that killing was the sweetest thing… and now I am trapped again. Here I am a widow but out there I am still the wife of Tyrion Lannister."
He does not know what to do with this creature.
"What do you want from me?" he asks. She reaches out her hand to him. What is she trying to get me to fucking do? She lowers her hand, disheartened. "What do you need me to do?"
"You guard my door every night, ser."
"I'm no ser," he spits, and is surprised when he laughs.
"Ah yes," she replies. "I remember that."
There is a stiff, terse silence.
There is a strange one. They are the Hound and the little bird, the Lannister dog and the Lannister bride. The fair maiden and the true knight; the beauty and the beast; the bastard and the Gravedigger. It is a story of jumps and starts and long absences in which growth occurs. It is not a circle, because there is a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And now this, this awkward post script, where they dance around each other. She meant so much more to him when he thought her lost to the Imp, when he thought her dead. And now that she is here, alive and… blinded. It makes him so angry, to see her like this, because it is so unequivocally wrong, to see his little bird weary and learned, stripped of her innocent veneer, to see her eyes darkened and hazy, no longer trusting and bright and eager.
He had tried to destroy her. Petyr fucking Baelish had succeeded, and his blood boils at the thought that he cannot reciprocate for her.
"I am leaving tomorrow."
"I know." They all know. The fucking lion in winter has been talking about it non-stop.
"You once offered to protect me," she says carefully. "This is a much less… dire circumstance, but still I am in need of a sworn shield. If only for someone to provide me with vision. And our special…"
"Why can you see me?"
She sighs, and reaches out for him in an aborted movement. He takes a halting step forward, lifting his hand out to her. She looks up at him, and it is a terrifying but true thing when she takes his hand and wraps her smaller ones around it.
"It's not so much seeing as it's…" her voice trails off, and he tries not to be impatient. "You have a color, to me. And I can see it… in the darkness. Your… color."
"My… color."
"It's red," she explains hastily, as if it means something. Perhaps it does to her. He doesn't fucking know. "Jon… the Commander… has a special bond with his wolf. And mine… Lady is long dead. But I can see… certain people. Jon has a color. And I think that... that Catelyn might. I hope she does. I want—I want to be able see her. She is-she is my niece. I have a-she is alive, and she is Robb's rightful heir. But we do not... she is fostered at the Reeds, for her safety."
He gulps, itching to wrench his hand away from her. Almost three months in Castle Black, and she finally reminds him of the girl in King's Landing that she once was, so long ago. The girl he wanted to throttle and protect. The girl who drove him to drink by existing and touching his shoulder.
"Will you accompany me?" She looks like she too, is about to drop his hand and break free. To take flight. "You have not yet said your vows. You are still free to swear your sword to me."
He came north to serve a Stark.
And she is the one…
It is too much wanting, too much having.
He jerks his hands from hers, standing quickly. Her mouth forms a petite 'o' as her chin falls, face crestfallen. "I understand. You have come here too—too abandon your old life. Not to dredge up the past. Forgive—forgive me for misinterpreting your kindnesses, my lord."
She stands, hands fumbling at her middle. She does that, he has realized. Now that she cannot see, she is never certain what to do with her hands.
"I wish you the best of luck here after I am gone."
Her voice does not waver. He is strangely proud.
"Little bird…"
She smiles sadly. "You needn't feel sorry for me. Everyone already does. I know you don't feel sorry for people. You shouldn't feel sorry for me."
"Girl."
"No, no." She is timid, shoulders curling inward. "Please, go. I shouldn't keep you. You must have other duties to attend to, and I need to finish packing. Although I haven't an idea where Hynnah has gotten to, she must be with Willas, saying her goodbyes—"
"Little bird."
"I've taken to calling her that, you know? Little bird. I always thought it was sweet, even though you didn't mean it nicely."
He stares at her.
"I know. I've heard you say it."
"Oh," she says then, eyes falling to the floor.
Her eyes rise again. "I can look at you now. Well, not really. I can… I can't see you. If that—if that helps, at all."
They are both sad, he thinks. Sad and tired. He is less angry now. It comes in spurts, rising again now that he's around Jaime fucking Lannister of all people, and the little bird, who always had a way to raise his ire. But he's seen her angry, too.
"It doesn't bother me anymore, little bird," he answers truthfully, something cruel blooming inside him when she looks surprised. "The Elder Brother…"
"Right," she whispers. He raises his eyebrows, forgetting she can't see him. "The Quiet Isle. I was there, you know, after you left for King's Landing. To fight in Cersei's trial by battle. The Elder Brother tried to fix my eyes. But it was too late."
Her voice is hollow. He wants to shake her.
"Everyone always leaves me."
"What?" he snaps.
Sansa shakes her head as if clearing it. "It is no matter. You should leave, if you wish."
He stays planted.
"I dreamed that you kissed me, before you left." Her laugh is hollow, too. And her eyes. Her posture. The tiny fragment of life that inhabits her rattles around inside her chest. Every muscle in him tightens, and he feels the instinct to reach for his sword rise. "I convinced myself you had. Silly, aren't I." She pauses, exhausted and defeated. "Don't you want to go now?" Her voice is that of a small girl's.
"I'm still here, aren't I?" He does not know why. His whole life he has been running and hiding, making himself into a monster and a thing to be had, to be controlled and bought and owned by the more wealthy and more evil. Why does he stay for this girl?—woman?
Sansa Stark is a woman, he thinks, with whom he has much in common.
It comes to a shock to him with the first of her sobs, heavy and ringing, come through.
"I want to go home," she sobs into her hands, and fights him when he tries to pry them from her face. But he is much stronger—he is before her, on his knees, his hands on her face. "I want—I want a home. I want to stop running. I want to stop hiding."
"Then I will take you home," he offers, voice strangely gentle. It is the same thing that propels him to wipe away her tears that had moved him to wipe the blood off her lip so many years before. She offers up her body to be taken, to be broken. But now they've gotten to her soul. Cleaning her face is the least he can do when he… understands.
"I'm scared." The words bubble up, unbidden secrets taking flight. "They will—they will not want me."
He is silent.
She is widow, childless, landless, without a claim or a title. They will take her body, rip out her soul, and sell her to the highest bidder, or back to the Lannisters. They think her a cripple. They think her broken. Not if I'm around, they fucking won't.
"No one will hurt you again," he says quietly.
"I cannot look at you," she tells him, laugh and crying and trying to place her hand over his burnt cheek. "I look and I see nothing. I see darkness. I see light and shadows. Shadows and faces… so many faces. I still fear it."
"No one can tell."
She cries harder. "He taught me to lie. And to play the game. To convince others of anything. I am—I am someone I do not recognize, some days. I can mean, and cruel. I have a hard heart, Sandor Clegane. I do not trust easily. I do not allow people to become familiar."
"And I will be able to take it. I'm still bigger and meaner than you, little bird."
"I cannot pay you. My family's gold was taken when Winterfell was sacked."
"Have I ever cared for gold?"
"Stop!" She says, swatting at him with her hands, landing blow after blow. He takes them. He knows this urge to lash out when all you want to believe is that you're alone in the world. "Why are you being nice to me?"
He traces a smile onto her lips with a thick, calloused finger. "I do not know."
"I would look at you, if I could." She swallows hard. "I would not look away. Not now. Not anymore, not after what I've seen. The world is awful—you told me that. I should've paid more attention to what you said. But all I thought about were ribbons and silk dresses and favors and—and then winter came."
"Winter came for us all," Sandor replies.
"Your leg," she says, patting beside her. "You mustn't be comfortable kneeling like that."
"I'm fine, girl."
He isn't. His leg burns like wildfire, and he wonders how she knows of his leg. Snow, he thinks. Or that buggering maid of hers, the blonde always following her around or collecting gossip like rainwater. He shifts his weight.
She's still so beautiful, he thinks. A Northern lady, with her long auburn hair curling to her waist, in a plain gown of white wool. Her eyes… she stares dully past him, though him. Her hands no longer are the fine, white, delicate hands of a highborn maid. They bear scars and callouses. Her face is weather-marked, but her skin is lily-white and pure, her nose still long and patrician. Her waist is smaller, hips bigger, teats fuller. She has only grown more beautiful with time.
Such a vain thing, she was. And he.
He tentatively grabs her chin, pulls her face down towards his.
"Why do you look upon me?" she whispers. "I imagine it is not a pretty sight to see."
He snorts. "You truly are blind."
"You think its funny?" she sounds affronted.
"Fuck no," he answers. "But you're still—you're not unpleasant to look at."
She reaches out, her fingertips gently tracing the contours of his face, dragging over his cheeks and his stubbled jaw, over the rough, cracked skin of his scars. "I can see you."
"I'm ugly."
"Not on the inside, not anymore." She smiles at him. "It doesn't matter anymore. I cannot see your face."
It saddens him, somehow. That only now that she does not fear him that she cannot look at him. For some reason, it hurts.
But life always does.
Reviews are very much appreciated. :)