This story uses the San/San mixed-POV format of my previous two stories, but combined into one! I'm going to age up Sansa to a healthy 17 in this one. It's a mix of GoT and ASOIAF canon. All characters/settings are the property of GRRM.

Sansa was running. Her heart was a trapped feathered thing in her chest, and she was streaking down a long corridor lit with caged candles, which threw up figures as big as shadow cats on the walls. But there were real things to fear. Shouts were not far behind her, bouncing off the stone, mingled with the thudding of boots and scraping of swords. She found the door she'd been looking for, and shoved it open.

*S*S*S*S*S*S

I'm on my bed, half-stricken with a blasted fever, looking at one of my damned boots. Heel's come all adrift, from the scuffle in the slum riot. That's all my fucking job is these days, keeping famine-crazed peasants from tearing up the boy. Maybe one of these days I should just let them have him, watch them rip him limb from limb, eat him all up. That – and keeping an eye on the bird of course. The reason I'm still here and not in some sun-blasted isle with the salt making my hair stiff. I couldn't leave, and leave her here with him, not after the way he's got. He's got a taste for the darker things – as dark-twisted as my brother, maybe even moreso, and who'd have thought that were possible. But it's getting harder to watch after her, there's no doubt. Even though he's got a new queen, he's got the bird as his fucking plaything, a lazy cat toying with a mouse, just pawing at it enough so it can't run off. It pains me, to watch her taking it, and part of me wishes she'd just let go, scream and claw his eyes out, though I know that that would be the end of –

The door slams open, and suddenly she's there, eyes as wide as a Dornish sky, and she's falling on it, her hands behind her, staring at me, her chest heaving. I say what the hells are you doing bird? and she says hiding and just stands there, looking at me, as wired as anything. Please she says and her voice is like a damned little pain in my gut and I say get under here then, quick girl. And she moves, fast as a spider, and scuttles under the bed, covers long enough to conceal her, just as I hear the clump of boots coming down the corridor, a sound like distant cannon going crazy.

A thundering at the door. What? I say, still on the bed, and it flings open, and Ser Boros there, his fat bullface steaming. Have you seen her? he says and I say who and he says the Stark cunt who do you fucking think and I say not since the midday feast I haven't and I say where's she gone? He screws his eyes at me as if I'm an idiot and says if I knew I wouldn't be here would I and he says she's gone running from the king, fat lot of good that'll do her, silly bitch. Ay, that she is I say, not moving. Goldcloaks fly past behind him and he looks round at them and back at me and says aren't you coming then? and I say ay alright Boros, keep your fucking scalp on, I'll be along once I find a new boot I can stand up in and I hold it up at him. He scowls at me and is off.

I get up and shut the door. It's dead quiet. She can't be moving a muscle. Maybe I dreamt it and I'll look under there and there'll be nothing but a heap of dust. I've dreamt of it enough times, though she doesn't normally end up under my bed, ha.

There's a dead mouse under here says a small voice that's as small as a rodent itself, and I can't help a grin. Better a dead mouse than a dead Stark I s'pose I say, and I hear her wriggle a bit and I say hold off bird, just give it a moment and she stops. Partly I'm just enjoying the picture of her curled up under my bed and my mind's half-drifting off to being tucked up there with her and then I say, alright, out you come. And she slides out, as graceful as if she's just slid across a ballroom floor, and stands there, her hands folded in front of her. Her face is red and there's a tear streaked on her cheek, a little glitter.

She starts to turn around slightly to look around the room and I can't help laughing. Her back half – her hair, shoulders, the back of her skirts, is caked in dust. What? she says, her voice tight, her eyes fidgeting. You look like you've been sleeping in spiderwebs I say. She brings a hand up to the back of her head and looks at her palm. It's not my fault you don't clean under your bed, she says, with cheeks looking like they've been slapped. I laugh again and she starts to pat at her skirts. You shouldn't be here, I say, more serious, and she says quietly I know, but – and then I hear a voice outside. That gilded, chopped sound that is only one person, and I move quick, push her by the stomach to the wall behind the door and say, dead quiet, stay there girl.

Next chapter is up already!