Before their final stretch of road back to Winterfell, Tyrion and Sansa came to Storm's End to visit Gendry and Arya. Naturally, the plot to murder the queen, Daven's treachery, Tyrion's courage and the subsequent rewards and honor he received from Her Grace were one of the first matters to arise in the general conversation.

"I am so glad he ended up the way he did," Arya said bluntly. "That scheming, evil, treacherous - "

But even though her words were clearly meant as a compliment to Tyrion, Sansa noticed the deep frown on her husband's face, and gave her sister a meaningful glance. "Has everything been well here lately?" she asked Gendry.

"No trouble whatsoever," replied her good-brother. "I think... I don't mean to boast, but I think all is going well now. The local lords will respect me yet."

"Don't be so humble," Arya smiled, "they respect you now. Sansa, you'll want to go up to your chambers and rest before supper, of course?"

"That would be most welcome," Tyrion replied instead. Indeed, despite his triumph he seemed weary, in mind more than in body.

"The gods seem to have some very particular design for me," he told Sansa once they were alone, "mine is the fate of repeated kinslaying. I killed my father, now I killed my half-brother... it's a pity I was not the one to dispose of Cersei," he added with a crooked smile. Despite his light tone, it was obvious he was tormented by what he was forced to do.

"He would have killed you if he'd had the chance," Sansa said quietly. "You know it. Then or later, he intended to get rid of you. He was..."

"Insane, you mean to say?" Tyrion interjected bitterly. "I hardly think so. He was a Lannister through and through. Ambitious, unprincipled, proud in the extreme... and yes, perhaps with a shade of the slightly unhinged mind that was so evident in Cersei. I didn't mean to kill him, but... when he dared to speak of his designs on you so cynically, it seemed these hands somehow acted of their own accord," he spread his small, blunt-fingered palms and looked at them, as if unbelieving they were capable of such a deed.

"He didn't really want me," said Sansa, "it was, I think... it was only that I refused him."

"Partly," her husband shook his head, "but you should know, Sansa, that your innocence of heart and sweetness of spirit are an irresistible attraction to men like Littlefinger... and like my late and unlamented brother."

For a while, there was no talk; they only held hands in the semi-darkness, each one a reassuring presence to the other, but immersed in their own thoughts. "It is over," Sansa said finally, with a glow in her face. "We are going... going to Winterfell. I know it will not be our home forever," she added, "I realize we will have to go to Casterly Rock eventually. But not in a while... isn't that so?"

Tyrion nodded. "I want our daughter to be born there," she went on, "like little Eddard was."

"You can't know for sure it is a girl," her husband objected with a gentle half-smile.

"But I do," Sansa replied, quite convinced, "it is a girl, and we shall name her Joanna."

... in due time, a baby girl was born to Sansa. She had the auburn hair of her mother and the green eyes of the Lannisters, and her name was Joanna. Not long after, Arya brought forth her firstborn too, a daughter named Catelyn, and later a son, Robert. They and all the rest of the Stark children went on to live a long, happy and prosperous life - which was not at all devoid of adventures.

One day, Queen Daenerys heard of magic that could lift the curse of her barrenness, and sent once more for her trusted friend and advisor, Tyrion Lannister.

But that is a beginning of another story, which has no place here.

A/N: I would like to thank all my patient readers who have stuck with the story until the end, despite the long hiatus!