“Aren’t you a hard man to find, these days?”

Sandor will deny to his deathbed that she does startle him as she walks up behind him, but in his defense, he had been… well.

The Elder Brother would have laughed, he thinks.

He puts away the shovel he had been using to cover up the fifteenth grave since this morning. It’s not a job he relishes but that’s what he had drawn when they all split chores after being sure they wouldn’t have to fight wights anymore, and honestly, he’s not complaining. At least he doesn’t have to mingle with that many people and everyone else on the same job isn’t exactly chatty.

“You just have to find me,” he rasps, turning towards Sansa — he has to close his eyes a moment against how bright that auburn hair looks in the morning sun, in the middle of all the snow surrounding Winterfell. She’s wearing a gray fur coat, her hands covered in white gloves, and she’s looking up at him like she’s glad to see him, which —

Well.

He knows she would be.

That — was made very clear as they came back from the Vale.

Still, it throws him in for a fucking loop every single time, and he’s had months to get adjusted to it, if not years at this point. He wishes he hadn’t lost count somewhere in between.

“You know where I am,” he finally shrugs, leaning on the shovel and taking a step towards her, away from the grave. He doesn’t want to have this conversation standing on it.

“Fair enough,” she asks. “Will you walk with me a while? I need to talk to you. Don’t worry, you’re already excused.”

He supposes she’s asked her brother if he could be spared for the morning. “Very well,” he agrees, leaving the shovel on the ground. He can worry about the next… ten bodies later. Thank fuck it’s the middle of winter.

She walks with him in silence until they’re in the godswood, and he knows she’s looking at him while he stares straight ahead. He’s going to deny to the end of his days that he’s getting somewhat nervous, but — what is he even supposed to be thinking if she wants to sneak away very far from everyone else?

She finally stops in front of a heart tree, and motions for him to sit on a bark next to it.

“So,” she says, “while one would think that people would have forgotten about politics for a while, after the last months, I am afraid it’s not the case.”

“Do you mean —”

“I mean that Jon informed me this morning that at least five lords asked if they would consider giving them my hand. Or their sons.”

“And… what does Jon have to say about it?” It’s not like he has any ideas concerning… well. Concerning what’s going on between them, or what has been going on since they left the Vale. He hasn’t let himself go that far at all. 

“Jon,” she smiles, wait, why, “said that I’m free to do what pleases me and that he’s not going to force anyone to marry, which is also what he told Arya, but he added that if we didn’t want to be pestered for nothing for the next — well, however long it took for people to figure out we weren’t interested, if we actually were set on anyone else, we should make that clear to him so he could, well, make sure no one would question it.”

Sandor can feel his jaw dropping, and when Sansa chuckles at seeing how surprised that made him, well.

He just —

He’s too busy thinking about what she’s just implied.

“Little bird, you aren’t saying —“

“I’m saying that my sister and Gendry Waters are going to find a heart tree tonight with some witnesses and so on and Jon is going to marry them right there and good riddance to anyone wanting to object to it. Stands to reason that if I don’t wish to marry any of those lords, I should do the same.”

Sandor thinks that he has heard wrong.

“Did you just say — are you —“

“I’m saying,” she smiles a bit wider, her words flowing into the air, “that I think we both know what I want and what you want, as much as you never voice it.”

Sandor is going to faint.

“I thought you would want a grand wedding,” he blurts, hating how much his voice shakes, his thoughts — it feels like they suddenly grew restless and are rattling inside his head, because he never thought — he never thought she would want to, as much as —

“I used to want a lot of things,” she shrugs. “I learned that most of them didn’t matter at all.” Her hand reaches out, suddenly grasping his, and he gasps as the velvet of her glove touches the back of his palm before she wraps their fingers together. “I don’t care for grand weddings and honestly, right now? It would feel like I didn’t care for… how much everyone has suffered during the Long Night. I just want to marry the man I’ve loved for a long time, if he would like it.”

He splutters, feeling like he’d faint if he wasn’t sitting.

It probably says a lot that he doesn’t feel like he should drink an entire skin of wine just entertaining that damned thought.

“Well,” he says, “I never bloody cared for grand things either.” He squeezes her hand. Sometimes he feels like he’ll crush it if he does it too strongly, but — she squeezes it back, hard.

“Then — well. I don’t want to steal Arya’s spotlight, but I'm sure that tomorrow Jon would be glad to do the same for us. Find a witness, won’t you?”

“Wait, don’t you need a cloak or —”

“That’s being taken care of,” she smiles. “Just worry about that. Mine will be Jeyne, of course, but feel free to ask anyone you wish. You’re also excused from your job for the next week. Jon already knows.”

Then she stands up, leans down and kisses his scarred cheek, and he shudders when her lips meet the part where bone faintly appears, and he still can’t believe that she likes to kiss him there, fuck’s sake —

“Oh, I was forgetting,” she says, “about the cloaks.”

“Yes?” He croaks, still feeling like he’ll fucking faint.

“When it comes to the cloaks, I wouldn’t want to presume that you would be all right with doing things the way Brienne and Jaime Lannister did a month ago —”

What did they — oh. Right. They got married the moment they could, it was literally the day after the sun had finally risen from the horizon line, and it was a very hurried affair but he had been very clear about taking her cloak and not the contrary. 

“Please,” he says, “as if I care about that or as if I think you should take my bloody name. Whatever.”

She smiles back at him, very brightly. “Then think about that witness!”

And then she’s gone towards Winterfell and he’s sitting there on the damned bark, his head a complete mess, feeling like he’s completely seasick and he doesn’t even know if in a good or bad way, but —

Fuck.

They’re getting married tomorrow and the most he had thought he might get was that he could be her sworn sword if and when Brienne of Tarth decided to go back to her island, not that it won’t be long at this point, not that he’d get to —

He wheezes, putting down his hood, feeling like he’ll go mad if he doesn’t breathe in the cold air, and then he realises that he has to find a witness and that his choice isn’t just very limited.

His choice is extremely limited.

He stands up and heads towards Winterfell and tries to not think about how, ten years ago, if he had known what he’s about to do, he’d have drank himself to oblivion just because it would have been such a faraway notion he couldn’t have even conceived it.

That said, Jaime Lannister does laugh his arse off before telling him that of course he’ll be his witness, but then again — it’s not like he could have asked anyone else, not when they spent months commiserating together over how many northern lords thought they shouldn’t be welcomed before they changed their minds the moment the Long Night came, and not when there was the entire trip to and from the Vale before then.

The day after, he kneels in front of a heart tree with Jon Snow at their side, Jeyne Poole behind Sansa and Lannister behind him — Sansa wraps a Stark cloak around his shoulders and he actually fucking feels relieved at that, and she holds his hands as they exchange their pledges in front of the Old Gods. She looks astonishingly beautiful, dressed in Stark gray with a crown of forget-me-nots in her hair, the only flowers they could find in this weather, and he’s sure he pales in comparison (he polished his armour the best he could and let Jaime’s washer girl fuss over his hair and she granted him that it looked dashing, whatever she meant), but it doesn’t matter because his cloak is the same color of her dress, and when she says with this kiss I pledge my love he echoes it and leans down slowly, their mouths meeting, her lips touching both whole and scarred side of his mouth, and he didn’t know his heart could beat this fast but it does as her pale, soft fingers wrap around his own.

The next day, most northern lords will hate his sight more than usual, but he finds himself realising that he doesn’t really fucking care at all, and if he feels more than a bit overwhelmed with it —

He leans down and kisses her again, harder, his hand grasping at her braid, undoing it the moment he pulls, and she laughs into his mouth.

He thinks — he thinks he could get adjusted to having this, having her. 

He really could.

2.

The Wall is nowhere like Jon described it, or Father described it, or her uncle described it.

For once, everything is still halfway in shambles, and it’s obvious an army of undead people passed through, but it’s not… gloomy, she decides. Everyone around is shouting as they work, someone’s singing and Jon is nowhere to be seen, but he said he would supervise how things are going for a few days and see to do something about the current state of the Night’s Watch before he goes back to Winterfell, and fine, she came because if he has to leave or go to King’s Landing at times she will have to act regent for Rickon and she can’t be unawares of the status of things, but —

She kind of feels like she can’t contribute much either way. Everyone seems to know what they’re doing, wildlings included, and she’s honestly glad that they’re apparently all getting along now, and then she looks upwards and realises that Jon once told her something about how beautiful the landscape was from the top of the Wall, and —

Well.

She goes to find her husband, who is currently grunting at a couple of kids dressed in black who even Sansa can see are bad at holding a sword.

“If you’re done putting them through your grills,” she says, linking their arms together, and he’ll probably deny to his deathbed that he blushes at that, “maybe you could join me on the ramparts? I was told the sight is magnificent.”

“Didn’t know it was why we came here, but sure,” he says, and then turns to the kids. “Don’t think I’m not going to watch you later.”

The mumble something that to Sansa sounds suspiciously like of course, Ser, and — he doesn’t correct them.

Well.

Now this is something she’ll have to look into, but never mind that. She follows him farther towards the huge breach in the Wall where the Others broke through, but apparently the small elevator they had that brought to the top still works — one of the men around it lets them in and they’re brought up and up until they reach the top of the ramparts. He holds his hand out for her to take after descending, and he’s still blushing, she knows, it’s not just the cold, and then —

Then she hears him gasp and she turns to actually take a look.

It’s —

It is breathtaking. It’s sunset, but the sun has barely touched the horizon line, so while she still can see a heap of broken trees littering the ground — the Others weren’t kind to the forest in front of them either —, all that sunlight is hitting the white snow and what’s left of the Wall on their sides, and it’s shiny, reflecting the rays almost brokenly, reflecting orange and pink and yellow and a light violet all over the valley, and she gasps as well as her fingers lace with Sandor’s again, and she goes with when he pulls his cloak around her and tugs her closer to his shoulder. She’s taller now, enough that she can rest her head against the wool of his gray tunic, and she can’t help turning to look at him. She’s on his left side, so she can see the scarred side of his face, and it looks blood-red in the sunlight, but it’s not… angry the way it seemed when they met. She doesn’t know how to put it into words, but the lines on his face softened somehow, and —

It’s not like anyone’s around and it’s not like she’d care if they were — she stands on her toes and kisses his cheek, and he startles slightly, turning to her, gray eyes staring into hers, and the way he smiles ever so slightly as if he’s trying it out but he likes it makes her heart flutter, it really does.

“Enjoying the view, husband?”

“Maybe I am,” he rasps. “Or maybe I just found a better one right here.”

“Flatterer,” she says, and then she stands on her toes again and kisses him proper, laughing in delight into his mouth when he grabs her around her waist and lifts her up, her feet kicking in the air at her back, and she locks her arms around his neck, sighing happily when his tongue licks into her mouth.

She’s halfway sure that someone is whistling from… either side of the Wall. Probably they are very visible right now.

“Should I put you down, little bird?” He rasps, moving away but not doing it for now.

“Honestly? No,” she grins back, and kisses him again, feeling like she is actually flying as the breeze makes her cloak flutter in the cold winter air, and now she thinks people are laughing, and she decides she’d rather be surrounded by laughter than by all the screaming they had to hear during the Long Night.

And if she feels like she’s going to burst out of herself for how happy she is, it doesn’t matter.

He’s definitely not letting her fly anywhere, and she likes it exactly the way it is.

3.

“I’m wondering what would people think if they knew how hard it is to drag you out of bed,” Sansa says, and he should probably feel embarrassed, but — he really can’t give a fuck at this point. He spent his entire life sleeping like shit and having to be up at the crack of dawn or whenever his employers wanted him to, and when he was on the Quiet Isle it was better but it was still all get up early as hell and he might have slept vaguely better but he also could never manage to before late at night even if they all got sent to sleep just after sunset, and then it was the damned Long Night where no one knew what a sleep pattern was anymore.

And now — fine, he has to guard her, obviously, and he’s pretty much de-facto maester at arms for Winterfell and he has things to oversee, but nowhere near as many as what she has to or Jon Snow has to and it’s not like Arya doesn’t fight him his place when it comes to guarding any of her siblings, so he can actually not get out of bed the moment the sun is up in the sky, and so why should he?

“Let them think what they want,” he rasps, moving closer to her, dragging her back towards him, his arm wrapped around her, engulfing her waist along with her soft, silky nightgown. It feels so soft against his hands, he’d have felt bad even just touching it years ago.

Now he doesn’t really, really give a fuck.

“So I like to sleep. Who doesn’t?”

“Fair point,” she smiles back, her mouth kissing the top of his cheek and then trailing down and down and Sandor shivers a bit as she does — he doesn’t know how she likes kissing those scars so much but every time she does he feels a bit like she’s turning him inside out and remaking him into someone he actually doesn’t hate, and when her hands brush over a few other scars on his arm that he got during the Long Night he just moves his mouth against hers, kissing her softly and thoroughly — he knows she has to go, she has her little  brother to look after and to help Jon Snow with whatever advice she gives him every time they go through letters from King’s Landing, but he’s not going to let her leave without at least giving her a good kiss, damn it.

She hums against his lips before leaning in and pecking them, and then pecking his nose, seriously —

“Nice,” she says, “so I can expect to see you at lunch?”

“You might,” he says, his fingers caressing her hip.

“And then I can expect to see you through the afternoon and to show me a good time tonight?”

“As the lady wishes,” he doesn’t even try to stop himself from smiling as she runs her hand through his hair.

“Then I cannot wait,” she winks. “And if you were amenable to wear the new grey tunic Brienne sent you from Tarth, that would be lovely.”

“That thing is too damned fine,” he mutters, “I don’t know why she thought —”

“It was in the raven. Late wedding present. Oh, they sent me other wedding presents, but I think I shall show them to you one day when we’re not tired nor busy.”

“… So it wasn’t just the dress?”

“Not at all,” she grins, blowing him a kiss as she stands up and heads to the next room where most likely a maid is ready to dress her, and —

Fuck.

He’s smiling, so hard, and he can’t stop doing it, and he thought he had forgotten how to and he’s just — he loves her so fucking much and he’s still not sure he can contain it, and he’s not in a hurry to do it anytime soon.

He thinks he likes the feeling.

He thinks he’ll just let himself bask in it for however long he can.

4.

“How interesting,” Sansa says, “now if only our banner men could see this charming scene, they would stop complaining about my choice of a husband.”

Sandor kind of tries to glare at her, but it’s not like he can do anything else considering that he’s kind of being smothered by her siblings’ werewolves — Ghost is resolutely sitting on his lap, Summer and Nymeria are sleeping at his side and Shaggydog is just… hovering nearby, stopping growling just when he gets a pet once in a while.

“Oh, why’s that?” Sandor quips back. “I’m not moving,” he says when Ghost growls the moment his legs change position ever so slightly.

“No one would want to get on the bad side of anyone they like so much.” She grins, giving Shaggydog a pet — he happily growls under her fingers before going off somewhere else.

“Oh, because they are so threatening right now.”

“They can be,” Sansa grins back, sitting in the grass next to Nymeria — she lets her, growling a bit as Sansa pets her.

“I hope your brothers won’t get jealous or anything.”

“Please, Bran saw you before and thought it was the most adorable thing he’s ever seen.”

“… I’m just not going to say anything about that,” Sandor scoffs, his hand running over Summer’s fur.

She just — she thinks her heart is growing five sizes just seeing him actually enjoy it, and the fact that the wolves seem to like him this much just makes her even more sure of her choice, and then —

Right.

She had been wanting to do it for a while but somehow she never did, and he never brought that up beyond — beyond the time they kissed for the first time in the Vale mountains, and wasn’t she surprised to realise it was actually the first time they did. But never mind. He gave her enough kisses to make up for that one she thought he had taken.

And yet.

“I think,” she says, “I still owe him a song.”

He stops petting Summer, his grey eyes staring at her — he moves some hair from his face, his mouth moving into a half-frown. “I think you more than made up for that,” he says. “And you did give me one.”

“That wasn’t exactly the one I wished to give you,” she says, moving forward — Nymeria wakes up enough to let her sit next to him. She sits down, placing her head on his shoulder, sighing happily when his arm grabs her waist and Nymeria goes to sit on her legs instead.

“And what was the one you wished to give me, little bird?”

“The one about Florian and Jonquil, obviously.”

He breathes in, sharply, going slightly tense before pulling her closer. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

He buries his face in her hair at that, and she moves a hand over his own, grasping it.

“My love, I think I’ve been wanting to for years,” she replies, and before he can protest the name, she clears her throat and starts to sing and she can feel his heartbeat quicken as all men are fools, and all men are knights falls down from her lips, and if for a moment she feels sorrow for how it was brought up between them in the first place, she’s glad she can sing it for him now when she hasn’t felt sorrow but just joy for a long, long time, and she feels it drift through her over and over and she hopes it’s the same for him, but from the way he’s holding her closer and closer?

She thinks he does.

She smiles as she sings on. And she swears to herself that she’ll do anything to make sure that their world stays like this and doesn’t change for the foreseeable future, and if it has to, that it might for the better.

She did suffer a lot to get this happy, after all. She thinks they both deserve it.

• 1

It’s not that Arya likes to meddle in her sister’s business.

Arya absolutely doesn’t do that, isn’t intentioned to, and especially since she had to come to terms with the fact that Sandor Clegane was not, in fact, worthy to be on her list (admittedly, the older she got, the more she realises why he wasn’t and why he behaved the way he did when they were traveling together, and he’s proved himself enough that she couldn’t hold any grudge against him anymore) and with the fact that he and Sansa are ridiculously enamoured with each other, she has done that even less, not even for teasing the way she’d do with any of her other siblings.

She just doesn’t want to know.

Also, they’re just so — she doesn’t want to say disgustingly sweet because every time she runs into them holding hands or kissing in the castle’s nooks or being generally wrapped against each other or, gods forbid, hiding someplace quiet so Sansa could fucking sing to him it’s stuff that she is also guilty of doing with Gendry, except the singing. She won’t get caught singing in the lowest depth of the Seven Hells, honestly, but — never mind that.

Thing is, she doesn’t meddle in it and she doesn’t want to know about it and having been there when he found out her sister was with child because she thought announcing it during breakfast was the best possible idea — well. They had just stared at each other before he excused himself, lifted her up in his arms and brought her back upstairs while they were kissing with tongue and Arya could absolutely have done without seeing it. That was enough. She’s so not interested in seeing any more any further.

And then Jon has to send ravens and inform their bannermen and a week later Winterfell is crawling with lords who look absolutely not thrilled with that notion, good thing that both Sansa and Sandor seem completely oblivious to it because they keep on kissing and holding hands and generally looking stupidly happy, and since she is the one with the sword on her hip, damned the day she willingly took that job, she has to glare everyone else into not looking disappointed when those two are around to see it.

Maybe she should have begged Brienne to stay for longer so they could share that job, then she remembers it would have meant that Jaime Lannister would have been attached to her hip and decides that would have been a tad too much.

Anyway, she’s moving around the main hall, doing her job of glaring into silence whoever seems to be of a dissenting opinion on this topic, and then —

“I do not understand how Lord Snow could allow it.”

Arya thinks that if she had a pick of three people she could banish from this court, Lady Dustin would be one of them. Maybe not the first pick, but certainly she would make that one number. And she’s talking to… some knight from the Vale whose name she absolutely can’t remember.

“Imagine,” he says, “of all the men she could have had.”

“Ser, you are indeed very right,” Lady Dustin goes on. She’s whispering enough that no one will hear if they don’t come close, but Arya can be silent when she wants to. “Letting that girl marry below her name and to that brute, and now those will be the Stark children that might rule us if a miracle doesn’t happen?”

“I certainly hope,” the knight goes on, “that when it comes to the future King, Lord Snow won’t —”

In theory, she has an agreement with Jon.

That agreement says that she reports this kind of talk to him and stays out of it.

But when they said marry below her name —

“I imagine,” she says, making her presence known, “that if I married beneath my name it won’t be a problem because you presume I shall not have children?”

Not that she wants them, but the face those two make the moment she opens her mouth? It was absolutely worth it.

“My lady,” Lady Dustin starts, “I certainly did not mean to imply —”

“Lady Dustin,” Arya huffs, “I would like to remind you, again, that I did the exact same thing as Sansa if not, well, even worse for your standards, and that my brother the King regent has been through enough to worry about forcing us to marry anyone we don’t like. If Rickon decides he fancies a wildling girl,” she says, and at that point she sees their faces losing color so fast that if the late Lord Bolton was here they would have come close to how pale he looked, “he’s going to marry a wildling girl and no one here is going to complain about that. And whoever Bran decides to be with I suppose would be no concern to you,” and she doesn’t even try to hide her disdain, “but as much as I wish I knew what my sister sees in Clegane that much, she obviously wanted him, he kisses the ground she walks on and that was everything she’s always wanted in her life, so I hope I won’t hear you discussing this kind of thing around here any longer. Or should I report to my brother what I just heard?”

“My lady,” the knight starts, “of course — we meant no offence —”

“Of course you didn’t,” Arya cuts him off. “Make sure I don’t hear you saying that anymore.”

She thinks maybe the hand on the hilt of her sword as she said it was a good move, since they immediately bend over themselves to apologise.

She pretends to accept the apologies and goes back to the table where everyone is starting to sit for supper — Sansa and Sandor are sat in the honor seats, of course, and she can see that his hand is on her stomach, and she isn’t even showing yet, and she’s smiling at him so wide Arya doesn’t know how it’s not hurting her.

That said.

Her sister always wanted a song-worthy romance and now she has it, so she’s not going to comment on it any further, though she will tell Jon about that talk. But later.

“Any problem?” Gendry asks as she sits down, a hand wrapping around her wrist and squeezing it before letting it go.

She smiles back at him. “Just your usual idiot nobles having their idiot conversations they think others won’t hear. I dealt with them.”

“Good,” he says. “Pray I am never on your bad side.”

She snorts, grabbing a piece of bread — she doesn’t care if the rest of the food was served and no one will give a damn either way.

“I doubt that it might ever happen,” she says, wrapping her fingers around his under the table while those two keep on kissing in front of everyone else.

She’s admittedly very impressed when Sansa blatantly slips her tongue inside Sandor’s mouth.

Everyone around the table whose name is not Stark, or is not related to them, or doesn’t live here on a permanent basis, lets out shocked sounds.

She munches on her bread and decides that if she’s ever in that position, she’s going to see if she can shock them more.

She thinks she’ll enjoy that challenge, and if for now she’s really glad her sister had what she’s ever wanted… she’s never going to tell Sansa because there’s a limit to everything, but she’s happy about that, she really is, and anyone else who has anything to complain can go to the Seven Hells with it.

End.