Sandor- Epilogue

The ramparts still glowed with pink and rose, the old stone made ruddy by the kind gleaming of the setting sun as it sank into the horizon. He halted in his climb at the top of the stair, whatever errand that had brought him there forgotten at the sight of her standing there looking out on the rolling expanse of their lands and the sea that lay beyond them. She did not seem to have heard him, though he was not as light on his feet as he had once been when he stalked her cat-like through the halls of the Red Keep years before. These days he was more plodding, his legs strong but never having forgiven him for what had befallen them.

Still, she had not noticed him, fascinated by whatever fancy had taken her, what little he could see of her expression wistful but not with sorrow, the corner curled up just enough to deepen the familiar dimple of her cheek. She was leaning against the stone with her hair blowing in the gentle breeze. It was long and thick again, the short, singed curls glossy once more, and he'd not missed how she'd taken to leaving it unbound save for the Northern braid at her crown. She looked years younger.

No, he corrected himself, she looks as she should.

Time had not been kind to either of them, and there were many times that he felt far, far older than his thirty-odd years. Lenna would have a score and ten on her next nameday, and he marvelled that they had seen so much- survived so much- in that space of time, just as he marvelled at it when she pointed out that she had spent half her life at his side in some way or another, whether it was as his charge or his lover or his wife. He still felt heat rise in his cheeks when she talked like that, used those words- lover, wife. He knew them, felt them, wanted them, but could rarely speak them despite the children asleep in their beds with their wondrous combination of their eyes and hair and temperaments.

Words had always come easy to her, or at least they seemed to, while they still made his tongue thick and his throat tight even as they fought to erupt from his chest.

They were threatening to now, to escape in a mad, indecipherable rush, but he breathed deep and stilled himself. They never sounded as well as they did in his head, and said nothing he could not show her in other ways, ways she still understood and accepted with gladness. Those he would give to her later as he was in no rush to disturb her.

There was time now, and plenty.

The errand, some minor matter pertaining to stonemason they'd hired to rebuild the Keep, could wait until the morning, or the next day, or even later. There was no urgency in it, not like the urgency that had once made them hot-blooded, though they were still learning how to rest, to tarry.

Strange, he thought, when our words were always 'watch and wait.'

They'd spent much of the last fifteen years watching and waiting, but with such desperation and fear that this peace was still taking some getting used to. It was hard setting it aside, though he'd far rather spend this breath of time on such a fine spring evening watching her unhurriedly, as he might once have from the shadows of the Sept, or from his place on the wall, only now he could do so in freedom.

He inhaled expansively when she turned just enough for him to see her in profile, her face cast like marble in the waning light, the breeze off the Sunset Sea buffeting her gown as it draped her in soft swathes, revealing the mound of her belly where it was growing again. A hot, visceral bolt of satisfaction and arousal twisted in his groin and in his chest. Gods, but he could stand there indefinitely if it meant at last watching her grow round with his pup.

Her cheeks were fuller, her figure rounded out in health like it hadn't been for too many years. She had herself noted the cushioning of her ribs and hips with a slightly furrowed brow and darkened eye. He'd rejoiced in them, digging his fingers into her sides and pulling her to him, murmuring his appreciation until he was quite sure that she was left in no doubt of how much he enjoyed the plush curve of her rear, the dimple beneath her navel and the sweetness of her thighs around his waist. And now, seeing her ripening before his eyes was like watching some lush fruit growing golden on the vine. He wanted to veritably sink his teeth into her.

His thoughts turned wicked at the stray thought, thinking back lasciviously of the two of them making the whelp that was swelling her belly. There was no way to be sure when it had been, exactly, but he liked to think that it had happened then. The timing was right, if he was making the account correctly. It had been an evening like this, and the stars had been out already, their new fields a gentle silver, but he'd hardly noticed them as he came to find her, same as now. Their babes had been abed and dreaming for hours, the servants sent away, and he'd found her just like this with her elbows resting on the stone. They'd been in the Keep a week, maybe a little longer, and he'd not been able to keep his hands off her, not even in the brisk spring breeze, and she'd made no protest when he'd made his purpose known. She'd been a ready participant to his lustful astonishment, her neck arched pale in the moonlight, her teeth white as she bit into her lower lip, a flush darkened her cheek as he-

If he kept with that line of thinking he'd spoil the spell she'd wrought around herself, and he wasn't keen to break it just yet, not with her looking so serene.

Serenity, he was learning, was different from peace. While they were no longer hunted by any perceivable threat, the demands on them, and especially Lenna, had not slackened since King Jon had been crowned. Rebuilding a kingdom took time and resources beyond his ken, beyond any of their reckoning, and it sometimes felt like they were working twice as hard as they were at the height of the wars when he was hacking his way through the army of the dead and she was calmly negotiating the impossible.

It was purely by accident that they were not riding to the capital themselves. Jaime Lannister was due to stop over in their Keep any day on his way to King's Landing for the celebrations. The raven had come the previous month. The Red Keep was fit for service, the Sept of Baelor reconstructed, the city itself slowly rising from the rubble and ready to receive those who would return to it. Lenna had read the news with great excitement, face aglow.

Only the babe in her belly excused them from joining the king and the rest of his council for the ceremonies surrounding the reopening of the city. Sandor was doubly pleased with the circumstances. He got to have his family for himself at least until the babe was old enough to travel, and Lenna was not allowed to go further than the Rock in her condition, something that he knew irked her perniciously.

He didn't share her annoyance in the slightest, and that irked her perhaps most of all. She was heartily disappointed that they would not be there for the festivities and the solemnities that she had helped plan for the reopening of the Red Keep. It had kept her busy for so many moons, looking over designs, reviewing budgets, requesting funds. She'd been positively giddy about the installation of sewers through Flea Bottom, which he had heartily teased her for. She had not been perturbed, her pleasure undimmed. Her role as Mistress of Coin suited her, and she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into her role, scribbling away in her books, responding to raven after raven, reviewing proposal after proposal.

Almost as if she believed she could single-handedly rebuild the Realm copper by copper, stag by stag, dragon by dragon. As if she hadn't already done enough.

He was sorry for her disappointment, truly he was. She had worked hard, far harder than he had for all his swinging and hacking and, now, planning. He'd had his own flock of unwelcome ravens, the new commander of the Kingsguard wanting his opinion, he felt, on the placement of every last bloody brick.

For his part, he was glad they were stuck in his drafty pile of rocks with the children and the dogs for a few months more. Daily walks in the meadow with the wee ones, rides with Addy on his saddlebow as he surveyed the land, Lenna's face across the supper table, her voice wandering through the halls as she sang the children to sleep, sang for him by the light of their hearth.

For now, they were just far enough out of reach that he could, for large parts of the day, imagine that there were no duties to call them back to the capital, that the simple life they were sharing was the natural reward for a job well done. A job completed. He could easily ignore the steady stream of ravens that flooded his Keep, the young maester who had been sent from Old Town running through his halls more like a pageboy than a scholar. He could even ignore the ones that arrived bearing his own name, or at least attend to them with a jagged scrawl as quickly as they came so he could stop thinking about them again.

But it was only temporary, and he was all too aware that soon enough they'd take the places that were being built for them in King's Landing: a seat on the Small Council and a high command in the King's forces. His children, he lamented, would be more or less raised at court, companions of the new little prince or princess that Queen Myrcella was already expecting, even her writing breathless with excitement when Lenna had read it to him. A fine honor for them all, of that he was well aware. While he knew that it would not be as it had been under Robert Baratheon, under Cersei, he still mourned a little the loss for his own children of his own wild childhood in the river valley and the wood, ruined as it had been in one afternoon, and the warm cocoon that Lenna had enjoyed far away in the North.

The last voyage to White Harbor had been both a beginning and an ending. The King's wedding and coronation had been a solemn affair, though there had been an undercurrent of hopefulness that could be felt even in the streets. Wyman Manderly had scrubbed the whole city from top to bottom until it gleamed, snowy white in the watery late-winter sunlight, the people just as tidy and fresh-faced as they crowded to see the young King and his bride and their courtiers, to gawk at the heroes of the ballads that were already being sung in the alehouses and the town squares throughout Westeros. Early flowers had been gathered from a radius of some fifty miles to deck the Sept of Snows and the Merman's Court for the occasion, and Lenna and Sansa Stark had stood with the princess as her attendants. Sandor had never felt so proud as he had seeing his wife standing regal as a queen in her fine clothes in a place of honor as she and the Wardeness removed the stag from Myrcella's shoulders and reverently folded it between them as Jon Snow threw a cloak of gray and white about her shoulders.

He'd had the Targaryen arms redrawn since his ascension: a three headed dragon in Stark colors, a visual reminder of who it was he was and wanted to be.

The reforging of House Targaryen would be no mean feat, though the King, who while crowned as Aegon responded to nothing but Jon, seemed bound and determined to write his own destiny. Sandor doubted much of the lad's efforts in that regard were planned, and for that he admired him. King Jon was a serious and guileless young man, and there were moments when Sandor saw Ned Stark living in his slightest gesture: the tilt of his head, the set of his jaw, the faint narrowing of his eyes. Though his claim to the throne hinged on his Targaryen blood, it seemed that the Stark won out. Or perhaps, more judiciously, Jon merely retained a composite of the best parts of his lineage, just as his young wife did.

Myrcella was a breathtaking bride, and when they'd throne open the doors to the Sept, Sandor had seen some of the same slack-jawed admiration he felt whenever he looked at Lenna reflected in the young King's face when confronted with his queen. Myrcella Baratheon had smiled when she saw her waiting bridegroom, her cheeks flushing, and when Sandor had caught sight of Lenna beside her he'd seen the tell-tale shimmering of tears in her eyes and he'd felt the answering thrum of pride in his own. The princess had been theirs for a time, after all, and he wished them whatever joy they could hope for given the circumstances of their marriage. It was a heavy weight, that of an entire kingdom and a dynasty, but if the care and genuine solemnity in King Jon's eyes were any indication, there was yet hope for true happiness in the union.

King Jon and Queen Myrcella were not the only ones grappling with new identities, with forming new selves. They were all still reeling, still learning their new steps in an unfamiliar dance. Jaime Lannister was now Lord of Casterly Rock and no longer a Kingsguard. Brienne of Tarth was no wandering warrior but a respected commander, and Sandor was no longer the Hound and a cur but hailed as something of a hero. Lenna herself was now heiress to White Harbor in her own right, Tywin Lannister's old goal sadly met. Despite her own protests, Wynna and Wylla had persuaded Lenna not to renounce her claim to the New Castle but to embrace it.

When Lenna finally relented, Wyman Manderly had blustered. "Gods be praised that is put to rest. I rather felt you were hedging bets on my grave. Leave your bickering for when I am dead so that I do not have to hear it." While the words had been perhaps a little harsh, Sandor detected a fair bit of relief and good humor in them. They were not so unlike, he and his father-in-law.

Not that Lenna's being named heiress hadn't come with its own set of challenges. It had perplexed him that Lenna had taken the name of his House even after his disappearance, styling herself Lady Clegane in his absence like the name was some badge of honor. He'd always wanted to hide from it himself, and as heiress to a seat like the New Castle, it would be expected for her to retain her family name after her marriage to preserve the line. In fact, it wouldn't have been unheard of for him to take hers in place of his own. Sandor was himself troubled that White Harbor should pass from the Manderlys who had held it for some thousand years, that the New Castle should find itself flying his ugly yellow banners rather than the clean aqua and white.

So, he was bewildered and moved when Jon bestowed additional lands and a title on Sandor in his own right, along with presentation of a new sigil: the merman of House Manderly marshalled with the hounds of House Clegane, the two set side by side on the same escutcheon. Bran's preternatural heralding after the birth of his son was made manifest in the new arms and an altogether new House.

The impact of the announcement, made as it was during the course of adjudication in the early days of Jon's reign, had nearly laid him out in the floor. Jon had called him to stand before his makeshift throne in front of the entirety of his new court without any warning. Sandor had already bent the knee, and he'd been confused as to why he'd be called on so again, but then Jon had made his proclamation, naming Sandor as Lord Manderly Clegane and granted to him holdings that been gifted for the purpose by none other than Jaime Lannister. They would encompass not only the Keep in which he'd been born, but now swept westward all the way to the strand of the Sunset Sea in the shadow of Casterly Rock itself. Sandor had not been able to do anything but swallow and nod and murmur his thanks, his eyes seeking Lenna's across the Merman's Court.

Seated on the dais with the rest of the Small Council, she had watched with wetness gathering in her lashes, her lips tight to keep from crying or laughing, he knew not which, and he had managed to quirk a smile at her in the breath that followed Jon's words. He wondered how long she had known and never breathed a word of it. He was only faintly vexed by the lack of forewarning. There had followed a strange, slowly growing applause and Sandor felt for the briefest moment the keen satisfaction he'd not been able to enjoy on that long ago tourney day, the crowd around him clapping for him and him alone, Wyman Manderly himself slapping him on the back with gusto and a great sniffling before clasping the newly-minted Sandor Manderly Clegane to his portly frame and whispering his congratulations into his son's ear.

They stayed in White Harbor near six months. It took that long just to lay the foundations of the new government, to begin the implementation of the reforms they all agreed need to be made in order for the new King and his realm to flourish. Jon set himself in White Harbor for the time, still hesitant, it seemed, to leave the North, and his Small Council stayed with him. Sandor rejoiced in watching Lenna as she soaked up the time with her people. It was strange, but it seemed that the whole lot of them were some kind of ragtag family.

The Small Council was full of familiar faces, and there were even a few he looked forward to seeing again. Davos Seaworth was Jon's Hand, and Lenna his Mistress of Coin, of course. Brienne of Tarth had been named the commander of the Kingsguard, and Jaime Lannister was to serve as Master of Laws. The young King was, perhaps, as aware as any of them of the sacrifices they had made. After six months at his makeshift court in White Harbor, in payment for their efforts, Jon had begged his Small Council retire to their own homes for a time while the new capital was rebuilt and readied.

They'd travelled south again with the lone Lannister, and Sandor had brought Lenna and the children into to the lands where he was born. Ravens came daily from the king even on the road, sometimes multiple a day, and Lenna studiously and gravely attended to her duties, a job that the King had insisted could be done for at least part of the year from either White Harbor or their holdings in the Westerlands. Sandor heartily planned to hold him to that agreement in the years to come. So, Sandor had left her to her scribbling except when he wanted her opinion, and he had proceeded to take the monies they were both awarded for their service and turn the draft pile of rocks from his childhood into something fit for his wife and their children.

At first, he felt the wraith of his brother on his heels, saw the shades of his mother and his sister in the shadows. He was glad that the hall had been more or less uninhabitable when they arrived, relying on the Lannister's hospitality while the first of the renovations were made. By the time they'd moved from their guest quarters in the Rock, Sanor was proud of the damn place. The outer walls had been almost entirely reconstructed, and there were afternoons when he returned from riding their holdings on a white-nosed Stranger than he didn't even recognize the place. The pall of the past seemed to slip away like fog burned off by a morning sun, and even the peasants in the little village that lay below the keep seemed happier, lighter. They didn't shy away when they saw him coming. The older people dipped curtsies or touched their foreheads to him just as they had his father, and the children looked at him from behind their mother's skirts, but he didn't miss their whispers.

He lost the eye fighting to Whitewalkers…

One of the king's best warriors...

Did you hear the ballad about him and his lady? A daring rescue…

He hardly knew what to do with the sharp, bright feeling that radiated from his chest, from his belly. Joy. It had seemed to envelope him completely when Lenna had told him, her cheeks flushed with emotion and afternoons spent in the sunshine bathed meadows, that she was going to bear another child to him. He wasn't surprised, of course, he'd applied himself as studiously to making one as she did to her duties, but it had still brought a great wave of feeling. He'd actually whooped and picked her up around the waist and lifted her, giggling like a girl, laughing deeply until even Lenna was looking at him with concern though her eyes were sparkling.

A new child to look forward to gamboling with through the meadows in the company of his or her big brother and sister. Wendel was toddling on chunky legs now, his early arrival not slowing him down in the slightest from keeping pace with Addy at his age. He was already almost as tall, charming and petulant, too like his father by half. Just that afternoon, Lenna had discovered him in her study completely covered in black ink and making his own drawings on the floor and walls, green eyes bright in his streaked face.

Lenna, at first peeved about the loss of a few pages of her manuscript and a significant quantity of ink, had not been able to stay miffed with him for long, dissolving into laughter and gathering him up in her arms to trundle off for a bath.

Looking at her now, Sandor thought he saw a faint smudge of ink on her cheek, but whether it was from the boy of her own carelessness, he couldn't say. She'd thrown herself in the task of writing down what had happened, what had really happened. Already, the ballads were changing the narratives, playing with facts, making the good seem more heroic and the bad even more tragic than it heartbreakingly was. Jon wanted an honest accounting, and Lenna was determined to write it for him.

It caused her some considerable grief. Often, after the children were asleep, she would sit with him by the fire in their rooms and talk, taking notes as she did so. She'd recount this episode or that, asking for his own recollections, and then scribble away, silent tears blurring her letters and leaving dark pools on the parchment.

The black bloom of ink had again appeared between her thumb and forefinger, just as it had in her youth.

The crease between her eyebrows, though, was now faint, a dim reminder of harder times that only made an earnest appearance when she spoke of them. Inevitable when she was working on her manuscript, picking his brain for his own memories. He caught her looking puzzled, sometimes, when she realized she was speaking of the dead as if they were alive. She talked of them all as if they were still there, once or twice to the point he wondered if she'd gone a little mad with the grief, but then she'd smile ruefully and catch herself, her eyes liquid and dark in apology or regret.

Cersei. Tommen and Margaery. Her own brothers. Her mother. Ned and Catelyn Stark. Young King Robb and his queen and their babe.

The rawest wound, he knew, was still the loss of the Imp. That she blamed herself for his death was obvious to him, though he wished she wouldn't. When Tyrion was mentioned, Lenna's eyes still went dull with pain. She had wept the night he had suggested that they name this new little one after him if it was a boy. Oddlt, it had been his idea, which still astonished him when he happened to think of it, but she had promised he could name the next. He'd thought at first that it would bother him to call a child that, to hear and speak that name daily, but the longer he'd turned it over in his head, the more it became the bairn's name. Without Tyrion Lannister and his rather noble death there could not have been another child of his and Lenna's. It was yet another unexpected gift from the lion's mouth.

Or perhaps, it was merely the repayment of an old debt.

Presently, he shook his head from his mind's ramblings and looked again at his wife. There would come a time, he supposed, when all of it would become just another tale. A song. Those of them who had been there- who had grappled and argued and fought and suffered, who had persisted and hoped and wanted and tried- they would all fade away. They would become just another troupe of characters in a story: knights and ladies and kings and queens, monsters and villains, cripples, bastards, and broken things.

They would be written about and sung about, stories told around hearths and campfires, shelved and tucked between the pages of some hefty tome, the brightness of their present dissolving with time, not quite forgotten but ragged around the edges, like old parchment.

It would all go dusty in the history books, in the legends that were bound to be written about them.

But not tonight.

Tonight, the lines were crisp and clean and still being written, the ink not even dry. He was standing with a warm breeze stirring his hair and her standing before him like some heroine out of a fairy story, all dark hair and pale skin and quiet courage. There was a bright moon out, and it cut a shimmering path from the far-off ripple of the sea and up the lazy little river that passed beneath his battlements, spilling across his wife's fair face. He sighed, the mooring line that bound him to her stretching pleasurably between them even as the windlass tightened and drew him closer on silent feet, and an echo rang faint in his ears.

"If you have tenacity you are determined."

"To do what?"

"Whatever you decide, I suppose."

Had they decided? He supposed that they had. They'd decided long ago, at least he had, that he'd go on living a little longer, keep putting one foot in front of the other as long as he could. She had decided the same, in her own way, keeping her back straight and her eyes open, and that damned tenacity had led them both here.

It isn't over until it is over.

He'd thought, when he'd spoken the words, that over was something they both wanted, but looking at her now, he knew that it wasn't. There was no telling what was coming, he'd long ago given up trying to predict it, had always known he'd never control it, but it didn't matter.

It isn't over, and that was enough to send a breath of thanks to whichever of the gods were listening, if they even existed.

At the sound of his exhalation, she turned to him. She looked back at him steadily, a lock of her hair cast across her face like a frond of sea-dark kelp. He felt a hot blast of feeling course through his chest, not for the first time wondering how in the seven hells any woman, let alone this one, had come to look him in the face like that, like the hero out of same damn tale.

Then she smiled. A bolt of something keen and searing and familiar went through his chest as he watched it spread across her features like the moon as it slid from behind the veil of a cloudbank, softly illuminating and radiant, a hint of color in her pale cheek.

His own lip quirked up in answer as he found himself drawn in her direction. He went to her quietly, gratified when she wordlessly fitted herself into his side and slipped her hand into his, warm and slender. She turned her face into his neck for the sweetest of moments before settling deeper against him, her head cradled in his shoulder. They stood for some time in the near-silence of the night, the only sound the undulating chortle of full-throated crickets as they watched the wind play through the meadow's silvered grasses like the rise and fall of a tranquil sea.

A/N: I have never really written an ending before and man it is HARD. I know it is super cheesy, but I couldn't resist giving in to the happily-ever-after.

Also, love how that was "brief?" Ha. I'd planned about three paragraphs, but too many people requested updates! I have always listened!

Again- thank you to everyone who has given this story the time of day over the last year. I like circles, so it is fitting to hit "complete" on this a year to the day since I started it. There is a bit of sequel in the works for anyone interested in reading it, but it may take me a few months to get it going. That being said, if you see this over on AO3, give us a wave. I have been thinking of posting there as well just to be able to keep writing in this universe on multiple platforms.

Big shout-outs and much love to everyone who has left a review, fielded a question from me, or helped me sort out my business. You've helped me grow infinitely as a writer, and I've enjoyed every harrowing step of the way. Thanks for letting me get my feet wet in a safe space and providing such valuable and encouraging feedback.

Until next time.