I own no part of Game of Thrones. Fanfiction only.

The Pack Survives

The stench was horrendous. It was a mark of deepest respect for Lady Clegane that the Dreadfort folk followed her wishes at all. Though many of them were turning green at the effort to not wretch, her personal guard knelt in the mud as the cart passed with solemn reverence. Irrun, now stooped and gray, wobbled dangerously as he pressed his arthritic knee into the muck. His features were rigid as he struggled to keep his bottom lip from trembling. His eyes watered as much from the odor as his grief.

"Are you sure this is what mother wanted? It seems . . . gruesome." Visenya glanced uncertainly up at Eddard. All of the Clegane children boasted their father's height, but only Visenya was graced with her aunt's rich auburn hair. She lifted her delicate brows. "Father would never have—"

"From the moment he took mother into his care, every breath he took for the rest of his life was for her. He fought off the Stranger more times that he could count for love of her. There is nothing he'd have denied her, certainly not this." Eddard turned sad, brown eyes down on his sister. "Our mother was very clear. Months ago, she gave her instructions to me, the Maester, Sario—"

Visenya rolled her eyes. "Of course she told Sario. He'll do anything she damn well—"

Eddard growled on unabated, "—and even had a raven sent to cousin Lyanna that if her orders weren't followed, Lyanna was to ride with the Mormont men in force to retake the Dreadfort and see the deed done personally." Visenya snorted softly. Eddard's eyes fell on Lyanna Mormont sneering at him from beside the pyre. "You know as well as I do that the Mormont men would gladly raze the Dreadfort to the ground if they thought a Stark wanted it done."

"We're Starks."

Jaqal murmured softly, "Aye, but not like her." He pursed his generous mouth. "The Mormonts pledged their swords to the Starks of Winterfell for perpetuity." Termynd ducked her head and mouthed the word 'perpetuity' with amusement. Jaqal ignored her. "Some day you may be glad of their allegiance."

It took six men to maneuver Sandor Clegane's putrefying corpse, clad in the finest Westerosi plate and mail, onto the pyre. After torture, numerous wars, wights, epidemics, and famines, it had been a training accident that had felled the infamous warrior in his own courtyard. Sandor had survived his injury only long enough to tangle his fingers into his wife's graying hair and whisper his love into their last kiss. Arya had knelt in a pool of her husband's blood until it froze, holding his head in her lap, stroking his hair and weeping. Out of pity, Sario finally shot their mother with a blow dart loaded with sweetsleep so that they could prepare their father's body for burial.

When Arya woke hours later, Eddard and his siblings realized to their horror the dose of sweetsleep was wholly inadequate. She had burst out of her chambers, still covered in her husband's blood and bristling with blades. In her haze, she didn't even recognize her youngest son, Jaqal, and he still bore the scars where their grandfather's Valyrian blade had laid open his chest to the bone. Never in his life had Eddard seen a woman so crazed with bloodlust. When she found the fool squire whose arrow had sailed through Sandor's throat, it took all four of the Clegane brothers to stop their mother from slaughtering the boy.

The king himself had flown by dragon immediately to the Dreadfort. Jon alone seemed to be able to reach Arya in the depths of her anguish. Had he not come, Eddard sincerely doubted anyone in the Dreadfort would have survived his mother's rage and despair.

It was Jon who had reminded Arya that Sandor was particularly fond of the boy, having rescued him from an abusive father the year prior. Tarren was a clumsy and frail-looking lad, but he had dogged Sandor's heels ever since, practically worshiping his brusque, aging lord. He was nearly as devastated by the loss of his savior as he was by losing his lady's favor. The night they had laid Sandor in his tomb, Tarren had drug Sandor's long sword through the great hall and presented it to Arya, begging her to kill him.

Arya had risen slowly from her place at the high table, her face fixed in an inscrutable mask. Jon had grabbed her sleeve, but she ripped her mail savagely from his grip and paced slowly around the table. Every noble house in the North and many from the Westerlands and Crownlands were assembled for Lord Clegane's funeral, but the heels of Arya's boots snapped hollowly through the silent hall as she descended the dais. No one dared breathe. All valued their own lives too much to try to stop her.

Towering over the sobbing squire, Arya held out her hand, and Tarren placed the leather-wrapped hilt of Sandor Clegane's sword into her hand. Arya unsheathed the sword and examined its edge.

"I cannot number the men my husband cut through to get to me with this sword. The Many Faced God sent him back to me twice when I thought he was lost." Arya's chest rose and fell rapidly beneath the hound and direwolf worked into the breast of her black brigadine. She advanced slowly on Tarren. "The Lannister cunts couldn't take him from me. The fucking Mountain couldn't take him from me. The dead couldn't take him from me." She dropped her cold eyes to the boy, and he flinched as though she had struck him. "Not in a thousand years could you ever be enough to take Sandor Clegane from me."

Tarren knelt at her feet, pressing his face hard into the cold, damp flagstones. He tore away the filthy stock around his throat so that the back of his neck was bared for all to see. Though he tried to contain them, his whimpers echoed off the floor and through the hall.

Arya glanced down at Tarren. "The Many Faced God gave Sandor Clegane to me, and only the Many Faced God could take him back."

Tarren looked up at her, his eyes streaming. "I loved him, milady. I'd have given my life for what he did for me."

Arya's façade cracked, but only for an instant, and a single tear crawled down her cheek. "So did I, Tarren, but when the Many Faced God has spoken your name, it cannot be unspoken." Arya took a deep breath and blew it out, and every man and woman in the hall sighed in deepest relief. "It was his hope that you would someday join our Black Riders as a man at arms. I hope to the old gods and the new that you are better with a blade than a bow."

In the two years since, Arya had withdrawn from the life of the castle. She spent hours, and sometimes days, wandering and hunting with Nymeria. Mysteriously, the direwolf had returned only days after Sandor's death, and would always be waiting for Arya when she decided that she needed the peace she found only on the moors. Arya would eventually return, sometimes carrying a small doe over her shoulders, and she would be herself again for a time, smiling through stories of her exploits with her husband in her youth, practicing at the blade and bow with her grandchildren, and sitting in judgment at the head of the hall. Inevitably, though, within weeks or months, her eyes would darken with the weight of her grief, and she would be gone again.

Only weeks ago, Eddard had come upon his mother, lingering in the great hall and stroking her hand lovingly across Sandor's great sword. In her other hand, she held a whetstone and cloth. She glanced up at him, and smiled tremulously.

Laying her hand against Eddard's cheek, the same side that had been destroyed on his father's face, Arya murmured, "You really are the image of your father . . . so handsome. He was so proud of you." She had raised herself on her toes and kissed him softly on the lips. "I think I'll walk in the godswood tonight."

A cold stone had dropped into Eddard's stomach as he had released his mother's fingers. He watched her lithe form retreat, wondering if he should have said something, if he should have stopped her. Arya didn't return for over a month, and when she did, it was with such advanced pneumonia that she could barely stand, little lone walk. Even now, he wondered if his mother had dragged herself back to the Dreadfort through sheer stubbornness or if the direwolf had carried her. Either were equally possible. Not even her Many Faced God would have been able to prevent Lady Arya Clegane from finding her way back to her beloved's side.

It was Termynd, Eddard's youngest sister, who finally found Arya. Termynd seemed to have a second sense where their mother was concerned, and she found Arya curled at the foot of their father's tomb, shivering convulsively beneath sopping, ice-encrusted leathers.

When Eddard scooped her up and carried her upstairs, Arya wound her fingers into his hair and murmured softly into his neck, "Sandor . . . the fuck have you been? I've been looking for you everywhere."

Eddard pressed his cheek against his mother's scorching forehead. "It's Eddard—"

"I know, Sandor." She patted Eddard's cheek and rubbed his bearded jaw consolingly. "You couldn't have saved father any more than you could have saved Micah. That little cunt Joffrey would have put every one of us to the sword if he could have." Arya snuggled deeper into her son's neck and murmured in a shuddering wheeze, "I forgive you, love."

Arya languished on the edge of her fever for a fortnight, rarely lucid. When Visenya sat with her, Arya was certain that it was Sansa who towered over her. Termynd, with her wild red-gold curls, Arya mistook for their Uncle Rickon. Sandor Clegane had left his stamp heavy on his sons, and in her delirium, Arya could distinguish none of them from her late husband, though she paused in confusion every time she looked into Benjen's grey eyes. Laughably, when their frail Aunt Sansa finally arrived in a carriage from Winterfell, Arya mistook her first for Old Nan, and then for her despised septa.

From beneath heavy brows, Eddard watched as Sario bore their mother to the pyre. Sario alone of his siblings had fully mastered the arts of the Many Faced God, and he alone could bear to ease their mother into the arms of their god. Arya's breaths were labored now, and it seemed as though an eternity passed between each one. She had been too weak for days to lift her head and had refused to drink, but when Sario laid Arya beside Sandor, she sought her husband's cold, stiff fingers with her own. Sario held a long, thin vial to Arya's lips, and she eagerly sipped at its contents. Sario held his mother's fingers, and after a few words, he helped her to clasp her trembling hand around Sandor's mailed arm.

When Sario joined them, Eddard nodded his thanks. "How long?"

Sario frowned and shook his head. "She was so weak, the Strangler took her almost immediately. She's where she's meant to be. She's home with her family and the Many Faced God has reunited her with her beloved."

"It's not right." Visenya angrily slapped a fugitive tear away. "She was strong and healthy a month ago. This isn't what they would have wanted. Father hated fire! We buried him for a reason!"

Benjen turned his grey Stark eyes on his sister and glowered at her from beneath heavy Clegane brows. "Aye! We buried him for a reason—so that he could wait for this very day. It is what she wanted. It's what they both wanted. Father told me once . . . he said . . ."

Nearly overcome, he took a deep breath. Benjen had been closest to Sandor, having taken up their father's place as master of arms of the Dreadfort and fighting through several campaigns at his side while Eddard had been sent to Dragonstone to be schooled under Maester Sam. He clamped his mouth shut and breathed heavily through his nose while he recalled himself. Benjen had worshipped Arya as a paragon nearly as much as Sandor had. He had scoured the moors for his mother for weeks and blamed himself bitterly for failing to find her.

Taking another breath, Benjen continued, "He burned for her for the better half of his life. On the day mother consented to have him, father promised her that if she'd love him, they'd have to burn them together because he'd never leave her . . ." He shook his heavy head and glared at his sister. "You didn't know either of them at all if you think she'd leave this world without him."

Benjen glared at Lyanna and jerked his head angrily. Lyanna nodded and lit the pyre. The flames licked higher and higher, wrapping around the still forms of Arya and Sandor Clegane, nearly reaching the bloodied weirwood leaves above them.

With a trembling lip, Visenya asked plaintively, "What will we do now?" She wiped away another tear and laughed shakily, "The Hound and his wolf bitch are both gone . . ."

Eddard raised his chin defiantly. "Aye, but the pack survives. Come. There's work to be done, and neither of them would have us standing around waiting for summer."

Eddard led Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane's children out of same godswood that had witnessed their union. The sun set bloody, and their pyre burned long into the night. Eddard drank deep into his cups, watching the conflagration exhaust itself from the window of his chambers. In the small hours, he fell drunkenly into his wife's arms, hoping to fuck away his sorrow.

In the morning, Termynd and Sario returned to the godswood with a cask. From within the cask, Termynd produced one of Sandor's old cloaks that Arya never seemed to be able to relinquish. The heavy green cloth was tattered and frayed, stained in multiple places with what was unmistakably blood. In her melancholy, Arya would often draw it around herself and brood for hours into the fire. Termynd pressed it to her face. Tears pricked her eyes when Sandor's earthy aroma, horse and leather and ale, steel and blood and sweat, diffused into her beneath the lighter notes of her mother's scent, pine and snow, fresh bread and beeswax. Termynd spread the cloak inside the cask and placed Arya's smoldering bones upon it.

Termynd paused, holding one of Arya's ribs in her hand, and stroked her thumb lovingly over it. It was still warm from the burning. "I remember the last time they sparred."

Sario looked up with interest. "Aye?"

It was taking longer for Sario to retrieve their father's bones as he painstakingly laid aside what remained of Sandor's mail and armor to find every sliver.

Termynd nodded. "Mmm hmm. She cut him . . . tore right through his hauberk beneath his pauldron. Mother stopped at once, and father just pulled open the hole in his mail and glanced inside. He said . . ." Termynd smiled at the memory and laughed breathily. "He said, 'That one's gonna cost you, wolf bitch.'"

Sario pulled the cask closer so he could begin depositing Sandor's bones within. He made no effort at all to separate Sandor's bones from Arya's. He grinned broadly. "When I was a wee lad, I could never quite figure out if mother's given name was 'wolf bitch' or 'Arya'. It was finally Aunt Gilly that set me straight, and Gods, she beat my arse raw after she heard me refer to my mother as 'wolf bitch'."

Termynd laughed. "Aye, but when he used her name, it sounded like all the good things in the world were wrapped up in that one word."

Sario smiled sadly. "Aye. So did he make her pay?"

"Hmm?" Termynd looked up blankly, having lost the thread of her story. "Oh! Aye! He laid into her like he had no mercy at all, and she grinned like it was the finest treat she could imagine, spinning and ducking every time he slashed at her. She kept her blade up against her spine the way she liked to, and you could tell he saw red! Everything stopped in the courtyard, and everyone else just got out of the way. He chased her from one end of the courtyard to the other until he finally got her pinned against one of those big oaken beams next to the targets at the end of the yard. Gods, how they both laughed! He tore her blade out of her hand," Termynd flicked her wrist, swinging the bone gracefully through the crisp air, "and threw it aside, and kissed her like she was a blushing maiden fresh as the snow."

"Did she hit him?"

Termynd smirked. "No, but she laughed and wriggled and tried to get that Valyrian dagger of hers against his belly. He tossed it aside too and scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder like sack of grain. She laughed and laughed and beat against his back with her tiny little fists." Termynd balled her own enormous hands, and beat them against the air. "She told him to put her down and go to the maester to get stitched up, but he told her she made the mess, she could damn well stitch him back up herself when he was done with her."

They laughed heartily. These little skirmishes had played out so frequently between their parents that Termynd and Sario could imagine the scene with perfect clarity.

Termynd took a deep breath of icy air. "He hauled her back to their room, and she shrieked for him to put her down the whole way. At one point, he must have slapped her across the rump with the flat of his blade, because she started threatening him. Gods, there wasn't a corner of the keep where you couldn't hear her cursing him. Called him 'the worst shit in the Seven Kingdoms', and he just answered, 'Aye, well, you shouldn't have married me then'. We didn't see them again until dinner, and when they finally came down, I remember they both just glowed. He made her come down in a dress that night to make up for cutting him, and she made him dance with her to make up for the dress."

Termynd wiped away a tear with the back of her hand.

"You and Kaarth have that."

Termynd snorted. "Aye, we have that. I thought father would kill Uncle Jon for bringing Thenns inside our walls, but when he found out I'd let one bed me . . ." She grimaced " . . . if mother hadn't stood between us and father, I think he'd have flayed us both."

Sario folded what could be salvaged of Sandor's hauberk and began piling together the singed plate. "I think he came to like Kaarth in the end."

"Aye, but it took two babes and a campaign against the Ironborn rebels before father made peace with it. You remember the night he and Kaarth came back from Pike, and they'd lost their horses gambling at the tavern, and they stumbled through the gates leaning on one another completely pissed and singing?"

Sario snorted. "Gods, yes. Father couldn't sing to save his life. They woke up the entire fucking household they were making such a racket. I remember mother was so furious, she made him sleep in the stable where the horse should have been."

"Those were good times." Termynd scooped up their mother's and father's comingled ashes and deposited them into the cask one handful at a time. "We won't see their like again in this life."

Having reclaimed as much of their parents as they could for the crypt, Termynd commented softly, "I guess now we know why mother never let us build her a crypt beside father. I always thought it was because she was going to live forever," they both grinned at the thought, "or maybe because she wanted to lie in her crypt in Winterfell with the rest of her family."

Sario shook his head. "She never intended to leave him."

"No, she never did."

Termynd turned her hands over, scarred from the practice yard just as her mother's and fathers' hands had been. She rubbed them together to dislodge the oily ash from her skin. It was everywhere, in her hair, beneath her nails, ground into the stitches of her brigadine. She saw there the truth of the Dreadfort Clegane words, writ as clearly upon her skin as within it.

"Do you think she knew, all those years ago, when she chose our words, that this is how it would turn out for them in the end?"

"What do you mean?"

Termynd scooped up a handful of ash from the cask and let it pour from between her fingers. "Honor from the ashes . . . a Stark and a Clegane, back to back against the rest of the world, fighting off the Many Faced God with only their wits, blades, and honor."

Sario shrugged and stood, balancing the plate precariously. "Who can say what the Many Faced God whispered in mother's ear? Who knows what exactly the Lord of Light showed father in the flames? All that matters now is that we build upon their ashes. They carved out a place for us here, and it's up to us to keep it. The pack survives."

Termynd smiled and heaved the cask onto her hip. "Aye, the pack survives."