Chapter Text
She didn’t like looking in the mirror anymore. Sansa stood with her back to it while her maid helped her to dress. She fussed with laces and sleeves, skirts and underskirts. At one time, not long ago, Sansa would have taken pride in her appearance. It was important for her, as queen, to look like a queen. She knew that and she had little doubt that her maid, Lyra, was dressing her well, she just couldn’t muster up the same ability to care as a month or so ago.
Sansa thought about septa Mordane and how she’d taught her to hold herself. She stood a little taller as Lyra slipped the bodice of her new dress around her. It fit better than the first dress Lyra had tried to put on her.
“I can let out the seams, your grace,” Lyra said, gathering the other dress into her arms and moving it away.
Sansa said nothing, she only nodded and took off her crown. All of her dresses had needed altering in the last month. She had only a few that fit her now, while she waited for the others to be finished. Lyra draped a cloak over Sansa’s shoulders and fastened it in place with a silver direwolf brooch.
“No one will notice,” she assured Sansa, but they both knew that wasn’t true. Her people may not have noticed yet, but they would soon.
Lyra left with a smile and a curtsy, and Sansa looked down at the snarling direwolves in her crown. It glinted in the morning light as she turned it in her hands, and she was about to put it back on when a commotion in the yard made her pause. The gates creaked as they were opened, and one guard shouted to another. A horse clopped across the cobbles, easily heard in a confused silence.
Sansa looked up, setting her crown to the side. The highest rooms in the castle had few windows, and they were all rather small to keep in the warmth of the fires, but Sansa was tall enough to peer through her chamber window into the yard.
She half-hoped it was Arya returning to Winterfell, but what she saw instead was a group gathered around a man and a horse. A big man, wrapped in a roughspun cloak and… Sansa ran to the door. She rarely ran. As queen, she had to keep her composure -- calm and firm -- but seeing that face back in the castle, calm composure could wait.
Hurrying down the steps, sometimes two at a time, she only just managed to slow herself down as she made it to the yard. She took a deep breath, readying herself, but as she came around the corner and saw him, he collapsed off his horse and the people around him jumped back. A murmur went around the crowd of people trying to work out what they should do. A guard said they shouldn’t have let him in, and the kennelmaster said that he recognised that face.
So did Sansa.
“Get him up,” she said quietly. Only one or two faces turned to her, and she cleared her throat and tried again. “Get him up,” she commanded.
Two guards jumped into action, bowing their heads with an apologetic “your grace.” They linked their arms under his and pulled him, struggling and stumbling, off the ground.
“Follow me,” she added, aware that fewer people were staring at the stranger now. They were looking at her instead.
Lifting her chin, Sansa led the guards into the castle. Only then did the people disperse and remember that they had work to do.
For the rest of the day, serving girls came in and out of his room. Most of them had offered to light a fire, but Sansa had politely declined each offer. No fires, she was firm on that. He would have to be warm enough in the east tower, the same tower as her own chamber. She’d had a few odd glances at that, but Sansa had looked them all in the eye and instructed that their guest was to be kept comfortable.
She wouldn’t allow them to build a fire in that room, despite how cold he was. Instead, Sansa had asked someone to bring him a fur blanket, then sent them all away. Once they were finally alone, she sat on the bed and took a moment to really look at him. She gently brushed his hair from his face, frowning at the new scars dashed across his skin. They were light, silver threads across his forehead and unburnt cheek, likely easily missed if he was awake and moving around, but Sansa was sure she hadn’t seen them before.
Pushing away her rising questions, Sansa dropped her hand. The blanket alone wouldn’t be enough to warm him. His skin was deathly cold, almost grey, and without a fire she had no idea how she could possibly warm him up. She would have to wait until he woke up before she could send for something warm for him to eat.
It took most of the day for him to stir and when he did his grunt of pain made her jump. He swore, gruff and mumbled, and a small smile tugged at her lips.
Rising from her seat by the empty hearth, Sansa approached the bed. He flinched and blinked, bleary eyed, and it took him a moment to realise he wasn't in there alone.
“Sandor?” she asked when he only stared at her. “Are you--”
“I made it.”
It was at that moment that, if anyone else had interrupted her, they’d be apologising profusely for their rudeness, but Sandor Clegane didn’t. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back onto the pillows. He looked as if he was saying a silent prayer of thanks to whichever gods were listening, but Sansa knew better. He must have been tired after his long journey.
“Bran sent a raven,” she said, when it was clear he didn’t intend to apologise or say anything else. “He said you’d survived the fire in King’s Landing, and--” And his brother. Sansa lowered her eyes. “I expected to never see you again.”
“Never expected to come back here myself.”
Sansa clasped her hands tight in front of her, watching him. She’d waited for him, after finding out he hadn’t died after all, but then a moon's turn had gone by and he hadn’t appeared at Winterfell. Before that, she’d let herself think about all of the things that could happen if he returned to her, but he hadn’t, and she’d had to start making other plans.
“But you did,” she said quietly.
“But I did.”
Hope gripped her heart, taking her breath away. “Why?”
“Why do you think?”
He cracked open an eye and looked at her. She could tell she wouldn’t get any more out of him than that, no matter how much she wanted to know the answer. She sighed and sat down on the bed. It was a bed meant for two people, but he lay in the middle and filled it so that, even sitting on the edge, there was little room for both of them .
Her thigh pressed against his hip, hidden snugly under the blankets she’d had piled onto him. It shouldn’t have sent a flip through her stomach, and when she looked at him his face had a little more colour than before.
Sansa pressed her lips together and looked to the wall, trying not to think of the last time they’d shared a bed together.
“Bran said you were badly hurt,” she said.
“I was. I healed.”
“It doesn’t look like it.” Glancing back at him, Sansa caught an amused smile on his face. It fell quickly when she looked at him, and it was his turn to look away.
“There are raiders on the roads,” she continued. “After all the wars, people have had little chance to tend their crops or store enough food. People are desperate.” She watched him, but he didn’t look at her again, and she sighed. “You could have been robbed.”
“I can take care of myself,” he grumbled. Had it been any other time, before he’d left her, she’d have no doubt that he could handle himself against anything or anyone. But now he could barely sit up, and his raspy voice sounded like he was on the edge of falling into a nasty cough.
“The Queen in the North,” he said, and she hoped she wasn’t imagining the note of pride. He’d caught her staring, and although she wanted to look away, she couldn’t pull herself from the look on his face. “Thought you’d have a crown.”
Sansa smiled, answering the teasing twinkle in his eyes. It didn’t feel like a jape at her expense. He was proud of her. It wasn’t lost on her that he hadn’t used any titles for her, and this was the first mention of her new rank, but the look on his face was all that mattered in that moment.
“I do,” she said with a little nod. He huffed a laugh and tried to lift himself higher in the bed.
“‘Course you do.” He gave up pushing himself higher when he realised it wasn’t going to work. He sat up a little, propped up by his pillows, but a grimace told her that he must have hurt his arm. She pulled the fur blanket higher up the bed, covering the tops of his arm, and he stared at her as if he couldn’t work out what she was doing.
It had been nearly four moon's since she’d last seen him, and three since he’d fought the Mountain. His wounds were undoubtedly new. Sansa brushed her hand over her stomach and pulled her cloak tighter around herself.
“What do you think Cersei would say, or that cunt Joffrey, if they could see you now?”
She looked at him, frowning softly. “Does it matter? They can’t say anything anymore.”
He made a sound that she supposed was a laugh, or an attempt at one, but it was weak and gruff and sounded more like a cough.
“You’re all wolf now,” he said.
Sansa smiled ruefully, looking down at her hands where they clasped her cloak.
“Are you cold?” he asked. She didn’t know what to say. She was used to the northern weather. The North was a part of her, and she couldn’t imagine ever feeling cold in Winterfell. No, she wanted to say, she wasn’t cold. She just couldn’t remove her cloak.
“I’ll have someone to bring you something to eat. You need to regain your strength,” she said instead, rising from the bed. Sandor raised his hand, probably to stop her or grasp her wrist, but he was too slow and she didn’t give him a chance to touch her.
She reached the door before she heard the scrape of his voice again.
“Thank you,” he said, so quietly that he probably half-hoped she wouldn’t hear him. Sansa nodded, took one last look at him lying in their bed, and left.