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Chapter Text

The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that was only just dissipating now that Sansa had reawakened the hearth. A frost came the night before, and white tipped mountains greeted the Christmas Eve sunrise. 

Sansa shivered as she admired the views. She may have been born and raised in Starksboro, but she seemed unacclimated to the harsh New England winters compared to her siblings. What’s more, the Green Mountains surrounding her homestead made her feel small, insignificant to the forces around her, be they time, war, or her family’s esteem.

She returned to her usual morning chores, kneading her hands into bread dough, relishing the softness against her knuckles. The daily bread had become her responsibility over a decade before, and ever since she had woken before the rest of the house to get to work. It was often the only minutes of peace she would have all day. She had learned to relish that calm. By day’s end, Winterfell Manor would become a frenzied feast as the Green Mountain Boys descended upon their land. Only eight people will wake in Winterfell that morning but more than two dozen more would join them by nightfall and enjoy guest right. Including her father.

Sansa felt both excitement and dread at the prospect of a reunion.

But she would not, could not let that hinder the celebrations. Tonight would mark a return to the Christmas Eve feast on which Catelyn Tully Stark had once prided herself, after the quiet one they had observed the year before.

Sansa felt her mother’s breath on her neck, which made her skin rise in goose-prickles.

“The dough looks lovely, Sansa,” Catelyn said quietly from over Sansa’s shoulder. Sansa felt her chest and cheeks warm. Before she could luxuriate for too long, Catelyn stepped away from Sansa to stir the oatmeal Sansa had set over the hearth.

Praise for Sansa had not rolled off of Catelyn’s tongue much since the summer.

“I do it the way you and Grandma Whent taught me,” Sansa said as the corners of her mouth turned upward. She loved those memories of her mother and her grandmother, making various breads for the Starks and the Tullys while her father, brothers, and uncles worked the land. Those memories of her mother were soft and warm, while the woman in the kitchen with Sansa now was hard and cold. War, separation from her husband, four marriageable young women, and Sansa’s two failed engagements and shame—there was much for her to grieve.

But the cold, silent moments with her mother in the morning would soon come to an end: Sansa had already heard shuffling from different corners of the house. The careful steps of her brother Bran and friends Jeyne Poole and Beth Cassel, the careless ones of Arya and Rickon, the heft of her great uncle Brynden. The crescendo as they all made their way downstairs. So it begins, Sansa thought, her morning peace ending as the rest of the household broke their fasts and began their daily chores.

Catelyn and Sansa continued to labor in silence while the rest of the house skittered about getting ready for the day. In the corner of the kitchen, where the windows crowded out any shadows for their small in-door garden, Catelyn harvested herbs for their traditional dinner. It would be the fifth Christmas that they would bake a Yorkshire Christmas pie, save for last year’s more austere festivities.

Jeyne joined them in the kitchen, bowing her head at Catelyn in respect before getting to work on the scones and biscuits. Eventually, long after Bran and Rickon had eaten their morning oatmeal and left to join Uncle Brynden in the barn, Arya joined the women in the kitchen, taking her position at the hearth, armed with a pan so she the eggs would be ready for a family breakfast after morning chores.

Once Sansa had finished kneading, she grabbed a cloth and covered the dough before joining her mother, sister Arya, and dearest friend at the center chopping table.

“What can we do to prepare for dinner?” Sansa asked. She needed to be busy. Besides, making herself useful was how to ingratiate oneself to Catelyn Stark, and Sansa had been trying to return to her mother’s good graces for months now.

“I think that can wait until after breakfast,” Catelyn said absently as she investigated the winter savory branch in her hand.

“At least twenty men will be here by nightfall,” Sansa pried. “There must be something to I can do before Bran and Rickon get back.”

Catelyn sighed as she continued her interrogation of the herbs. “I suppose the apple cakes could get baking,” she offered, before quietly muttering, “We’ll probably never be able to bake enough, as it is.”

Sansa nodded and pretended not to hear her mother’s addition. At least twenty men, plus the five Starks and Jeyne, would be a massive feast already, and the Green Mountain Boys had left Québec weeks ago. They would surely be famished when they arrived.

“I can help you, Sansa,” Jeyne offered as she set the scones by the hearth to bake.

Sansa greeted the cold with a shiver as she shut the door behind her and Jeyne. They turned right to go to the fruit cellar.

“Do you think it’s all men we know?” Jeyne whispered. Their gossip had the tendency to travel in the cold.

“There must be men from Castleton or Bennington in the outfit too,” Sansa offered, though her heart was not in it. At least two dozen men would arrive, including her father. It would be the first time she would see him since her mother wrote to him n the summer. She did not know the entirety of the letter’s contents, but she could guess based on her mother’s silence towards her at the time. She could not muster enough energy to care about eligible young men, not when any undue attention towards could set her mother off again.

“Of course, Theon will be back too,” Jeyne said awkwardly.

Ah, Sansa thought as flashed a grin at her friend. This is what she truly wants to gossip about.

“What?” Jeyne asked

“Oh yes, men from Castleton or Bennington or Theon,” Sansa laughed gently.

“He may have matured some while fighting,” Jeyne said uneasily, hopefully. “There’s a Revolution happening. Surely fighting in it could change him.”

“Perhaps,” Sansa admitted. Though Theon was never one who wanted to change. Jeyne’s infatuation with her brother’s rake of best friend never made much sense to Sansa until she’d still managed to find herself engaged to one.

With their baskets brimming with near-frozen apples, they secured the door to the cellar and scurried back to the kitchen door, eager to return to the warmth.

“What’s next after letting the dough sit?” Beth asked, flour spotting her curls and calico dress.

“Mindless chopping of vegetables,” Arya mumbled from the corner. Jeyne barely looked up from chopping the apples.

The glare their mother gave her younger sister did nothing to chasten her. A mischievous grin painted her younger sister’s face, and Sansa braced herself.

“I apologize; I meant to say ‘I love preparing meals for the menfolk’,” Arya spoke as though honey trickled from her mouth. Sansa watched her mother’s mouth thinned into a line.

“I’ll chop the vegetables; Arya, you shall carve the meat, and Beth can manage the herbs,” Sansa quietly ordered with the little authority she wielded in Winterfell as she slid the parsley, thyme, and winter savory to her friend and the poultry to her sister. Arya had always been better at carving animals, while Sansa usually struggled to hide the wrinkling of her nose when she handled raw meat.

A soft smile graced their mother face, but remained close-lipped, her countenance still angry.

“Beth, Jeyne, and Sansa—girls, you are always so helpful in the kitchen,” mother stated. Girls, Sansa noted—her mother had not referred to her as a girl since the summer. Arya began hacking at their turkey, still remarkably accurate even in anger. Mother’s lips remained pressed into a thin line.

This was her mother and sister’s usual dance. Beth, Jeyne, and Sansa received praise so Arya would feel unworthy. Sansa had become used to feeling pride and shame simultaneously.

“No amount of compliments to them will make me like this any more,” Arya said as she separated meat from a wing. 

Sansa heard her mother cluck her tongue from behind her, the noise far too familiar from Sansa’s own recent experiences with it. Disappointment, it meant, signifying some failing on their part in the eyes of their mother. Sansa braced herself lest Jeyne said something to encourage her mother further. Following the end of Sansa’s second engagement and the scandal surrounding it, Jeyne had replaced Catelyn’s own daughters in her good graces.

None of the young women made a sound. Sansa hoped the quiet would snuff out the tension fostered by their mother. The only sounds in the room consisted of Arya’s angry chopping, Sansa’s careful slicing of the carrots, and Jeyne’s knife sliding against the wood table while she prepared small piles of parsley.

“I believe the mantel needs decoration before our guests arrive,” Catelyn stated as she glided across the room to the entryway to the dining room. Indeed she glided; their genteel lady mother had that way about her. “I’ll trust you ladies to manage without me.”

And with that, their mother left.

“I don’t know why you insist on antagonizing mother,” Sansa broke the tenuous silence that filled Catelyn’s absence. She knew she should leave it alone, she should let wolves sleep, as their father had taught them since they were children. But a part of her was angry, at her mother, at Arya. It was Christmas Eve, and their father and his regiment would be returning at long last. A family reunion would happen before the day was done, and her mother and her sister were sure to spoil it if they continued like this. Considering what awaited Sansa upon seeing her father, any further cause to dampen their spirits were unnecessary. One ruined daughter was enough this Christmas season.

“She antagonizes me,” Arya bit back, teeth showing like she was the wolf from their family crest. Righteous indignation shone through her, as it often did, when blamed for the family squabbles. Most of the time, she was right to be angry at the accusations. In her heart and in her bones, Sansa knew that. But she never had Arya’s rebellious streak, and she had always found it easier to stay on their mother’s good side. Now, she never knew what to do when they butt heads.

“Father and his regiment could be here as early as after noontime,” Sansa said as she broached the whining tone she had been trying to outgrow for years. Sansa Minisa Stark, you turned twenty not even three weeks ago. Act like it. She hated herself whenever she regressed to her younger antics.

“Remind her of that,” Arya pressed. “She knows I hate working in here. I’d be more use tending to the fire.”

“Tend to the hearth, then,” Jeyne offered absently.

“The hearth is in the kitchen,” Arya gritted through her teeth. The taunt of Arya Horseface echoed in Sansa’s memories of Arya and Jeyne’s childhood interactions. The name might not have been uttered in almost a decade, but it still hung over them whenever the two spoke. Sansa felt her cheeks redden at the memory of her past participation in Arya’s perceived failings. She now understood all too well what it feels like to be at the receiving end of Catelyn’s disappointment.

“Shhh, the both of you,” Sansa whispered. “We can’t behave like this when father, Robb, and the rest of the militia arrive. We will have a nice Christmas Eve feast.”

“The ‘regiment’, the ‘militia’…who are you really hoping to see tonight?” Arya spat. “Still dreaming of romancing a revolutionary, Sansa?”

Sansa held her knife to the wood table and gripped the carrot she had been chopping. She slowly released the breath she had been holding. There would be no more romance for her, she knew quite well. Harry Hardyng had seen to that.

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Sansa enunciated. “All I want is a nice Christmas dinner, and to be a good hostess. I know the revolution might not often be fought in Vermont, but Christmas will nevertheless be a reprieve. We have not seen Robb since last Christmas.”

“Nor father,” Arya added pointedly.

“Nor father,” Sansa sighed, nodding all the while even as her stomach dropped at the prospect of meeting her father’s gaze.

“Nor my father,” Beth added happily. “Nor Jeyne’s.”

“And Theon,” Jeyne added.

“Yes, we have not seen Theon either,” Sansa bit out, her jaw clenching. “Anyone else I’m forgetting?”

“Just whichever soldier you’ll fawn over for being oh so brave and gentle and strong,” Arya said, resuming that honeyed voice she had used on their mother earlier.

Sansa paused her chopping once more to glance at her sister.

“Some handsome minuteman to catch your eye?” Arya continued, grinning devilishly all the while.

“Arya, believe me or no, but I do not spend my days fantasizing about a soldier to come take me away from my family.”

Arya laughed, sliding the neatly cut cubes of turkey and chicken to the center of the table. She grabbed the lye soap on the counter and went to the basin.

“Most of the marriageable men are fighting,” Jeyne added. “Even Harry left to join the fight.”

He certainly held out as long as he and his aunt would allow, Sansa thought. She tried to stop her mind from imagining what her world would be if he had left sooner—if they would still be engaged, if her mother would still look on Sansa with pride, if her reputation would still be intact. But that world could not be. Two fiancés had yielded no marriages for her. But Beth and Jeyne still held hope. Both of them knew intimately how their fates were unknown as the war prevented them from marrying sooner. They felt such loss acutely, marrying later than their mothers had, where Arya felt relieved that their mother could not press her about eligible men. But there was still time for Arya, even if the war lasted a few more years. At twenty, Sansa felt close to spinsterhood without any prospects. Once the Baratheons and the Lannisters declared their loyalty to the crown, the shifting alliance between the Starks with the Green Mountain Boys and Minutemen gave her an ideal excuse to end her engagement to Joffrey Lannister Baratheon, however perfect his pedigree may have been. She had come to loathe him over the course of their both mercifully and unmercifully long engagement, and Harry proved himself to be no more than a cad. Now, with what was left of her name and reputation after the whole Hardyng affair, she only received the attention of Petyr Baelish, a man with whom she would prefer not spend any more time if she had the choice. Yet in the middle of the night while Sansa listened to sleeping breaths Beth, Arya and Jeyne, she often wondered if Joffrey and Harry had been her only chances at marriage and children now that there were no suitable options remaining in Starksboro. The marriageable bachelors may be fighting a way on either side of the Revolution, but the wives and sisters and old men who stayed behind would surely spread the tale of Sansa Starks’s ruin.

“Jeyne is right—most marriageable men are fighting, and many are not coming back at all,” Sansa said, mentioning unsavory topics in hopes they would ended this topic once and for all. “Any prospects are dim.”

“Sansa, you always dreamt of a gallant soldier to be your husband,” Arya sighed as she washed her hands, stroking each finger with the bar in her hands. “You must be beside yourself with joy that so many prospects will be here tonight.”

Sansa shook her head.

“Arya, I don’t know how many times I need to state this: Robb—and father, Vayon, Rodrik, and Theon—are coming home,” Sansa punctuated each breath, “along with twenty good men who haven’t been home or likely eaten a home-cooked meal since they left for Québec. It is the very least we can do to host them for Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner with our family and with the regiment.”

“If you insist, dearest sister,” Arya said. “I’m off to check the traps. Hopefully we’ll have something fresh for dinner tomorrow.”

Sansa nodded at her sister and forced a smile as they made eye contact. Sensing something, Arya returned to the chopping block where Sansa remained working.

“Besides,” she whispered as though neither Jeyne nor Beth should hear, “you do make the best rabbit in the three valleys.”

Arya kissed her on the cheek and hopped out of the kitchen. Sansa shook her head, but smiled at her sister’s rare compliment to her domestic graces.

“I’ll never pretend to understand your sister,” Jeyne began, “but I have to agree that your Christmas rabbit is the best I’ve had. No one can rival it from Castleton to Essex.”

Jeyne smiled at her. At least Sansa could feel comfort in her ease in the kitchen. Perhaps she could be of use to her parents as she entered spinsterhood.

“Do you think Theon will be in a festive mood?” Jeyne asked.

Be kind, Sansa reminded herself. She had felt her patience for Jeyne’s childish fantasies grow thin. First, Sansa’s father and brother left the previous year, and then her entanglement with Harry ended over the summer. She was a summer child no more, but Jeyne still was. Where Sansa found it difficult to indulge in the romantic ideation of a maiden when her father and brother were seizing Fort Ticonderoga from the British soldiers holding the garrison, Jeyne found it a joy to imagine her future husband having such bravery. Where Jeyne wanted to wax poetic about the rugged handsomeness of the soldiers who occasionally appeared in the Starksboro town center, Sansa’s own youthful fancies were waning. Harrold Hardyng had stolen them from her. She was content to sew, clean, and cook with Jeyne, to discuss their favorite Richardson and Fielding heroines and their travails, but more and more Sansa found herself more like a Defoe heroine than the noble girls of the former. Obsessing over the likes of their imagined future husbands was not the joy to Sansa that it once had been. Such a future seemed further away for Sansa than for either Jeyne or Beth. Their reputations were still intact.

“You’ll be the prettiest girl here for him,” Sansa said gently. Despite some minor overtures to her when she was sixteen—unsubtle yet deniable hints at engagement between the two of them—Theon seemed to think of her and Arya as his sisters and no more. Jeyne and Beth would be the only women he would not think of as family, at least on their property. If he made his way to Middlebury, then Jeyne would have more to worry herself over. The boy never managed to grow out of sowing his wild oats, though Sansa hoped he wasn’t leaving bastards all over the Saint Lawrence and Champlain Valleys as they trekked back from Québec.

She quickly cast the thought from her mind. Proper girls would never bother themselves with such unseemliness, or at least her mother would tell her. Sansa still thought of herself as a proper girl, and what Theon does with the women he comes across should be none of her concern, even if her best friend remained besotted with him.

“You and I both know you’ll be the most beautiful girl here,” Jeyne said softly, though not as an accusation. “Do you think any of the Green Mountain Boys will catch your eye?”

Jeyne grinned at her wickedly and Sansa fought to suppress a smile.

“I’m sure the Green Mountain Boys will have much more to be concerned with than the daughter of their commander,” Sansa said. She pushed the chopped carrots to the center of the chopping block. “Besides, we know some of them are already married—with children.”

Jeyne puzzled over Sansa’s words before she noticed her raised eyebrow, but Beth’s smirk could not be suppressed. A grimace came over Jeyne’s face as she considered Sansa’s words and realized what she meant.

“Oh, but you know that my father doesn’t count!” she protested.

“He is a member of the regiment, Jeyne,” Sansa teased, glad to have encountered at least one victory of her own today. “Perhaps I’ll catch his eye, hmm?”

Sansa smiled sweetly at her friend, whose face paled at the mention of her father.

“I should box your ears for that,” Jeyne cried. Jeyne threw a fistful of the chopped herbs at her.

“Ahh!” Sansa laughed, covering her face as best she could from the onslaught.

“What’s going on in there, girls?” her mother’s voice echoed from the entryway down the hall.

“Nothing!” Jeyne and Sansa cried in unison. Sansa could hear footsteps and quickly brushed her face in case any stray herbs lingered as evidence of their frivolity.

“Nothing?” her mother questioned with a slight smirk as she entered the kitchen. A smirk is a good sign.

Sansa smiled weakly and shook her head, making brief eye contact with her mother’s striking blue eyes.

“We were discussing how happy we are to see our fathers again,” Sansa lied. It was the toss of a coin whether or not her mother would believe it. She could be quite selective with believing Sansa’s obvious lies.

“Rodrik will be so happy to see you, Beth,” Catelyn said warmly as she re-entered the kitchen from the main hall. “And Vayon will be the same with you, Jeyne.”

The warmth in her voice felt liked something long-lost but recently found. The war had made her mother into something new, someone stone-hearted and weary. Catelyn Stark had once maintained one of the bright auburn manes famed among her Tully family. Sansa cherished the long ago memories of her mother brushing the red hair she too had inherited, being tended to and cherished herself seemed like a far-flung dream considering the woman before her now. Her once-auburn hair had become more grey-streaked since her father had left them, first for Ticonderoga, then the Continental Congress, and then that ill-fated invasion of Québec. Bad luck comes in threes, Sansa thought, though she wondered if the capture of the fort and the approval by Congress to fund the regiment truly counted as bad luck. Besides, her own failings certainly made the bad luck come in an even number.

Yet Sansa was grateful for the fight. Despite her mother preference for Richardson and Fielding, Sansa managed to sneak Paine, Varys, Locke, and Rousseau into her studies. The look of pride on her father’s face when he found her reading them marked the first time he seemed to look on her with respect. Sansa tried to recall what that felt like. Even without a clear memory, she yearned to feel that pride again.

“How is it, ladies?” Catelyn asked. She seemed relaxed, for the first time in a long while, and Sansa wondered if it was the calm before the storm. Catelyn both basked in the glory and stewed in the stress of throwing parties. She expected tonight to be much the same.

Her mother came to stand beside Sansa at the cast iron oven.

“Cooking the vegetables,” Sansa answered her quietly. “So we can assemble the pie soon.”

Martha Washington’s Yorkshire Christmas pie might be famous, but its preparation was a nightmare and it took hours to cook a large one.

December 24, 1776

“Good,” Catelyn nodded. “Now it is only a matter of time.”

Catelyn turned around the kitchen as though she were looking for something.

“Where are the potatoes?” she asked. Sansa felt her stomach drop. The potatoes! Just when the day had been going so well.

“I am so sorry, mother,” Sansa said, feeling a prickle in her eyes. “I must have forgotten them.”

“It is alright,” Catelyn said softly, the warmth still in her. Sansa felt her shoulders relax, but her eyes were still at risk of shedding tears in front of others. She had wanted to hear those words for so long.

“We will need at least one potato for every mouth, possibly more,” Catelyn thought aloud to them. “Goodness knows the last time that they will have had a satisfying meal. Fifty should be enough for tonight. If the men eat more than that, well, then we shall at least have a better idea for tomorrow night.”

Once outdoors, Sansa reached down to tighten her knitted shawl. Sansa saw something moving out of the corner of her eye. She turned to face the horizon to observe two figures on the high hill in the north pasture. She shook her head and huffed a laugh at what Bran and Rickon could be doing out there, wondering which of the ewes were giving the boys grief today.

“Sansa?” Jeyne asked gently from the root cellar door, located on the opposite side of the house from the apples to minimize spoilage.

“Yes,” Sansa said as she turned, “I’m coming.”

Jeyne loosed the door open and they cautiously entered the darkened room.

But when Sansa emerged from the cellar, the two figures had changed shape and size. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the appearance of the a regiment of the Green Mountain Boys in Stark pastures.

“Jeyne, look!” Sansa cried. “They’re here. Mother! They’re here!”

Chapter Text

They’re here! she thought. Joy bloomed in her chest, her panic not far behind. Father, Robb, Howland Reed, Uncle Edmure Tully, Theon, Jory Cassel, Rodrik Cassel, Vayon Poole, Greatjon Umber, Smalljon Umber and more Sansa could not recall. All of the key players in Starksboro before the war came to the Green Mountains, and all of them left behind the women in their lives to take care of themselves at Winterfell Manor or the village center. The younger men—those somewhat less distinguished from the French War—left with youthful fat still on their cheeks even as she could not recall their names or all of their faces. They were the favored sons of the county, those set to inherit acres worth of farmland or any of the businesses on the main street of the town center. They were her father’s men, the Green Mountain Boys, the Allens, the Chittendens, the Cassels, the Umbers, the Karstarks. Over a year since they left, it had been too long since she had seen any of them.

Jeyne entered Sansa’s periphery. They watched the growing crowd of horsed and unhorsed men coming over the hills in the pasture, making their way towards the house. Jeyne gasped, the size of the retinue exceeding their expectations as more and more bodies came into view.

Jeyne turned to Sansa, tears in her eyes already, biting her lip.

“It’s so early,” she beamed through her watery eyes.

Sansa nodded, but could not help but smile. They’re here, she told herself once more. Bracing herself for the joy, tears, and shame that were imminent. She grabbed her skirts and gripped her basket of potatoes tight as she turned the house. She spotted her mother through the thick glass of the window in the kitchen. Sansa found herself hurrying to her and when she re-entered the house, Catelyn stood at the washbasin below the glass, still staring silently at the north pasture, her shoulders tense.

“They’re here,” Sansa repeated breathlessly, obvious though the statement was. Tears pricked at her eyes.

Catelyn took a deep, visceral breath as she looked through the thick glass. Sansa took a deep breath of her own. There would be much to discuss during their stay, she knew, but she also acknowledged she would never be ready for it.

“Where is Arya?” her mother asked tepidly.

“She is checking the traps,” Sansa said.

“Perhaps that is best,” her mother whispered. She turned to Sansa, having sufficiently collected herself, though her eyes seemed to see through her. But she still fidgeted with her apron. “Let us greet our guests.”

The incoming force marked the pasture like dots on a treasure map, showing no military form as they approached the main house. Perhaps the regiment relaxed their regulations for the holiday, though Sansa knew that seemed odd for a military to allow.

With roughly half the men on horse and the other half walking, the horses progressed further and faster, even at their steady pace, with two appearing to lead the pack. Sansa observed these horses carrying two people each. Unless her eyes deceived her, she saw long dark hair whipping in the wind behind red curls—Robb or her uncle Edmure, most like. Both men took after the Tully side of the family, matching Catelyn’s red hair just as Sansa’s did. Sansa tried to focus her eyes to discern which one sat astride the beast, but it was no use. She flicked her eyes to the other horse, a pale blonde mane beside a black coat and black curly hair.

The closer they approached, the better she would be able to examine their faces, to discern who was familiar and who was new to her. As her eyes jumped from face to face, Sansa’s stomach dropped as she realized someone was missing. She searched frantically, recognizing Vayon, Rodrik, Jory, Alyn, and Howland atop their horses. She spotted the broad shoulders and tall backs of not one, not two, but five Umbers, trying to remember which sons or brothers left with Greatjon a year ago and which remained at their family estate. Sansa had been certain Mors and Hother Umber had remained at Last Hearth Homestead, but she had not frequented the village center often since the spring thaw.

At last, she could see that it was Robb and Jon Snow riding their horses with someone behind each of them.

Jon! she felt her chest warm. Their cousin had been stationed as the aide to Jeor Mormont, the great general from the French War from before she was even born, along the northern border. The Night’s Watch, they called themselves to rival the Minutemen of Massachusetts and the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont, their mission to ensure the British could not launch an incursion through Vermont.

She noted some boys from the town center, the youngest of those who left, with whom Arya once played, though their names escaped Sansa. Beric Dondarrion and Thoros Myr both walked on foot, the latter carrying an open wine bottle in his hands and moved his lips as though he were singing. She could see a bound man being led by a rope that was tied to his bonds trailing behind the white stallion carrying her cousin and the unknown blonde woman, and she shivered at the thought of a prisoner of war in their midst. Even closer, she could see the weathered faces of her father’s friends and fellow soldiers. She realized that three of the giant figures she had mistook for Umbers were in fact strangers, a black-haired one riding behind the rest of the men on one of the largest black stallions Sansa had ever seen, another a giant redhead with a wide smile riding beside her cousin, and the last appeared to be a woman. As the black-haired man approached, she could see mangled scarring on the side of his face.

But the fact remained the same and that the militia was one man short. The closer the militia came, the more obvious it was that Ned Stark was not among them.

“Sansa…” she heard her mother say from beside. She sounded so far away.

Though some overlapped, there were four women, two black folks, no general, a prisoner, and three non-Umber giants they had never met before. There were the few dozen men her father had left with, but with Robb leading the retinue…

“Sansa, I don’t see your father,” her mother said gravely.

“No, nor do I,” she breathed, and she felt both relieved and aggrieved.

Sansa heard footsteps in the snow come from behind, and before she knew it, Beth grasped her arm as she observed the force.

“They’ve arrived,” Beth breathed happily. Sansa felt her heart pang as she thought of her friends reuniting with their own fathers shortly.

“I see both your fathers,” Sansa nodded absently. I don’t see mine. She could feel her stomach ache at the now lost possibility of their family’s Christmas Eve reunion. When she awoke that morning, she dreaded seeing her father again, but now she faced the prospect that he had perished in the fight for their own government.

“Where’s Mr Stark?” Beth asked. Jeyne snared her arm around Beth’s and lead her away, where the whispered between themselves out of the range of the Stark women standing forlornly before a militia not ten yards away.

“Mother,” Sansa heard her older brother’s deep voice echo. He pulled the reins on the horse and came to a halt, deftly sliding down his horse like a scene from a painting. Sansa beheld the young woman he helped to dismount from his horse. Slender, fair-skinned, chestnut hair, wide brown eyes that watched Robb like he was her sun. Sansa shifted her gaze to the pale blonde haired wisp of a woman dismounting, comfortably and on her own, from the white horse she shared with Jon. Petite, she was, though something about her seemed far more grand than her small frame implied. Her countenance was confident, imperious even, all while maintaining an air of generosity which seemed at odds with how thoroughly she seemed at home among soldiers, presuming most of them were not familiar with her considering Sansa had been born and raised in this town and had never seen this woman before. Yet, despite all of her ease with the men, the noble young woman still looked upon Jon with a warmth that even Sansa could feel in her chest, as though the air around the couple—for that fact was far more obvious with these two than with Robb and the brunette—fought back the cold. Sansa could see her mother talking stock of the women too, measuring them according to her high Tully standards. These young women might view her brother and cousin as sweethearts of some sort, but that did not explain their presence among the men, the propriety or lack thereof, nor the absence of their colonel.

“Robb,” her mother breathed out the nickname of her eldest child. She stood tall, her shoulders pressed back with the noble posture she had instilled in Sansa and attempted in Arya. August and austere—she looked the very portrait of a colonel’s wife and a soldier’s mother, the mistress of the house keeping things in order. “It is good to see you, my son.”

Robb stepped toward her, holding out his arms for her. Catelyn grasped his hands, the white-skinned grip belying the serene countenance she maintained.

“Where is the colonel?” her mother asked tepidly. She rarely called father by his rank, but Sansa wondered if her mother’s voice would crack if she actually said his name. Catelyn Tully Stark would never deign to show emotion in front of her husband’s soldiers.

“Did you not get my letters?” Robb asked, his face falling. They had received no post in months.

“I suspect…I would not be asking if I had,” Catelyn said. For a moment, Sansa admired her mother’s quiet dignity.

“The British captured him in September,” Robb said gravely. “Theon too. The last we knew they were in Montréal. General Prescott swore he would ensure father’s safety.”

Catelyn nodded as her eyes dropped to her oldest son’s chest, her lips pursed as she maintained her composure. Jeyne clutched at her breast, her mouth open. Sansa wished she could comfort her mother but knew better than to do so in front of these soldiers and the yet unknown interlopers.

“We shall hope General Prescott keeps his word, then,” she said with a tight smile. Sansa saw Smalljon Umber untie the prisoner from their shared horse. 

“He will,” Robb added, “we have our own prisoner to care for.”

Smalljon brought the golden haired man forward, and Sansa immediately recognized him as Jaime Lannister, the uncle of her first betrothed. Sansa knew him to be a captain for the British in the Loyalist faction.

“We captured him after a battle near the Québec border,” Smalljon said. “Your son led the attack, Mrs Stark.”

“Never seen such brilliant strategy,” Greatjon boasted from the sideline.

Catelyn nodded absently as she took in the information. Sansa wondered where they would house Captain Lannister if he was supposed to be a prisoner.

“General Prescott knows we have one his Captains,” Robb added.

“As does General Lannister, I imagine,” Catelyn spoke curtly. Sansa shivered remember the cold emerald glare of Jaime’s father, Joffrey’s grandfather. Tywin Lannister was not a man with whom to be trifled.

“Indeed,” Robb agreed, “he does. But General Lannister will not let any harm come to father so long as we have his firstborn son and heir, and General Prescott knows the value of a good commander.”

“Captain Lannister,” Catelyn said, standing tall as she looked upon the man. Smalljon pushed him forward to address her. “You may be the prisoner of the Green Mountain Boys, but so long as you are on my husband’s property, you shall be treated as well as any other. Merry Christmas Eve, sir.”

“Thank you, ma dame,” he said sardonically, his tone completely at odds with the direness of his circumstance. “I shall do my best to make it the merriest Christmas I have ever seen.”

“No amount of japes will infuriate me enough to curse at you, Captain Lannister, nor treat you any worse than I would want my husband to be treated,” she said and turned to Smalljon. “Thank you, Jon.”

Catelyn looked pointedly at the women who arrived with Robb and Jon. Sansa watched as her mother conjured a polite smile. “And who are these young ladies?”

Robb turned to the chestnut-haired young woman standing beside his horse, the reins in her hand.

“Mother,” he reached out his hand towards the young woman, “this is my wife, Jeyne Westerling Stark.”

“Wife?” Catelyn’s face lifted even as confusion characterized her affect. Joyous news mixed with surprise and tragedy.

“We married three months ago, in Québec.”

“A war campaign is no place for newlyweds,” Catelyn said with a tight but genuine smile. “I should know.”

“Indeed, you should, Cat,” Howland Reed offered. Her gracious and trusted godfather, Sansa vaguely remembered the stories of Howland being present at her parents’ wedding in .

“It is good to see you, Captain Reed,” she said, some warmth returning to her voice. “So my son leaves to capture a fort and invade British territory over a year ago, but returns on Christmas Eve with a wife.”

She turned her gaze to the petite blonde woman standing beside Jon. “And I see my nephew has a guest as well.”

“Aunt Cat,” Jon said warmly as he approached Catelyn, the blonde remaining where she stood.

“I thought you were in Jeor’s platoon?” Catelyn said.

“Ah, the old bear couldn’t keep up with me,” Jon laughed.

“Good aides are hard to come by,” Cat said calmly.

“I jest. Old Jeor sent me with Robb when we left Québec. We shall rejoin when we leave in a few days.”

Leaving so soon? Sansa thought, though she supposed wars could barely observe short rests, let alone long ones.

“We?” Catelyn asked pointedly, though with a smile on her face. If one of these women were a bride, it was likely the other was as well. Sansa glanced at the large woman she had mistook for an Umber. A rough, red face and straw-colored hair, she was not a beautiful woman, Sansa thought. She wondered if she as the wife of one of the other large men in the outfit, as she stood even taller than Sansa, who had often been told she was tall for a woman.

Jon’s broad smile changed as he reached his hand out to the pale blonde.

“Aunt Cat, this is Daenerys Targaryen,” Jon said, sounding nearly awestruck as he brought her forward. “This is my wife. Daenerys, my aunt, Catelyn Tully Stark.”

“Daenerys Targaryen?” Catelyn asked carefully. Sansa furrowed her eyebrows. Targaryen was certainly a better known name than Westerling. The Targaryens were among Boston’s most famous and respected families, having landed at Plymouth Rock with some of the earliest settlers. Rhaegar Targaryen had famously fought and died alongside her father and his best friend during the French War twenty years ago. But that was a different time, and a different war. What few Targaryen remained had since declared themselves Loyalists to the Crown while the Starks chose the side of patriots. Sansa felt her back grow stiffer as she considered what could have made Jon marry someone who could be a spy.

“Mrs Stark, it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Daenerys nodded her head at Sansa’s mother before turning to her, “and I presume this is Jon’s cousin, Sansa?”

Sansa bowed her head at Daenerys and smiled.

“You are as lovely as your cousin and brother described,” Daenerys offered with a sweet smile that Sansa suspected was genuine, though estimating authenticity had never been her strength.

The scarred man snorted and Sansa furtively glanced at him. He met her eyes with an assertiveness foreign to Sansa, a challenge he mounted against her that she was uncertain how to meet, and even more uncertain what his aim was.

“Thank you, cousin Daenerys,” Sansa responded as her mother would want, meeting the impeccable manners of their guest with kindness and generosity.

Another snort came from the scarred man, and Sansa could not help but glance at him once more. Furious steel grey eyes, forge hot and steadfast—men never met a lady’s eyes with such fury. She could not help but feel as though she made him angry, though for the life of her she could not say why.

Daenerys smiled at her, close-lipped but warm. In fact everything about the girl read to Sansa like she was forged in fire. A spark in her eyes though it did not appear threatening, especially considering the rudeness of the scarred giant.

“Merry Christmas Eve,” Sansa offered to her new cousin, before raising her head to address the regiment, “to all of you.”

She made eye contact with the scarred man again in hopes that the welcome would thaw whatever coldness hung between them. He gaze remained fixated on her, apparently unamused with her greeting.

“Welcome to Winterfell,” Catelyn added. “I assume you all are hungry after such a long journey?”

Various grunts, nods, and shouts of affirmation came from the small crowd assembled before them.

“Sansa, Jeyne, and Beth have been hard at work making apple cakes and bread for you all to enjoy before dinner,” Catelyn said with a grin.

“The Yorkshire Christmas Pie?” Jory asked hopefully.

Catelyn nodded and beamed with pride, “Martha Washington herself sent me the recipe.”

“I doubt Martha Washington is the one making it,” Daenerys stated calmly, and Sansa furrowed her brows. Catelyn glanced at Daenerys, but said nothing. Sansa could send a stone had been a cast, an arrow shot, but she was not certain how or over what.

“Sansa, Vayon, Jory, and Howland, will you lead the horsemen to the stables? Jeyne—Jeyne Poole, Beth, and I can take the rest of you to the hall where everyone can enjoy a quick meal before supper. I’d love for my new good-daughter and niece to join me.”

“Yes, mother,” Sansa nodded, hurt that her mother wanted to separate her from their new family. But before she could lead anyone, she saw her brother approach her with outstretched arms.

“Robb,” she breathed, unable to stop herself from grinning as he lifted her and spun her around. “It is good to see you, brother.”

“And you, sister,” he said as he set her back on the ground. She turned to her cousin to embrace him as well. Seeing them before her now, hearing them, smelling them—as unpleasant as the latter might be—made her realize just how much she had missed them. Though her uncle, Bran, and Rickon performed the physical labor of farming in their absence, the responsibilities of being the eldest sibling all fell to her. She had already fallen in her mother’s eyes without Robb to watch over them. She had felt lonelier in the past fifteen months than she had ever known before. She had been so concerned with her father’s return and the admonishment that awaited, that she never considered the happier reunions that awaited. 

“It is good to see your faces,” she said, “and apparently greet a new sister and cousin.”

Robb grinned devilishly, while Jon was more somber. In some ways, those countenances differentiated them, but something about their reactions made Sansa wonder, though she knew far too little of marriage to know how to evaluate it.

“Come this way, “ she gestured to the south side of the manor and looked to the rest of the men in the regiment.

Howland Reed dismounted and led his horse towards Sansa, reaching an arm out to her.

“Sansa,” he breathed as he hugged her side. She smiled at him, relishing his warmth and imagining it was her father’s arms around her.

“It’s good to see you, godfather,” she said, turning to lead the men to where they could let their horses rest.

“Come this way,” she ordered, and could feel her cheeks grow flushed at the thought of leading a group of battle-hardened soldiers. But she was their hostess, at least for the moment.

Howland offered his arm to her, which she gladly took. Her godfather always knew how to calm her.

“I trust you’ve kept everyone in line,” she loudly though she learned into him as though they were sharing the latest gossip.

“As best I can,” he laughed.

“A far cry from a young man fighting the French twenty years ago,” Jory snickered from her right.

“War is a young man’s business,” Howland admitted, before lowering his voice, “your brother is quite suited to it.”

“How do you mean?”

“He has a head for battle strategy,” he said, “and the stomach for risk-taking. Not a bad thing in a war. Though, if you could not tell by the arrival of his new wife, perhaps a bit impulsive too.”

A snort came from behind them. Sansa glanced back to see the scarred stranger taking her in. She felt herself flush under his gaze.

She turned back to Howland. “We were introduced to the new wives, but not the others. Pray tell, who is that man behind us?”

“That is Sandor Clegane,” he said quietly. “Or, the Hound, as some like to call him, though he doesn’t seem to dislike the name. He defected from the Loyalists.”

A defector? Sansa cringed to think of what her mother would say when she learned that a former Loyalist would be staying under her roof. Arya would not bite her tongue if she knew of it.

“He was under Tywin Lannister’s command. Apparently since he was a child. He’s from Scotland, originally. Arrived in the colonies when he was barely a man. Though I suspect a man of his size becomes a man much sooner then the rest of us.”

“Do you trust him?” Sansa asked. Howland’s judgment was the soundest in their county. People often sought his counsel when making decisions either large or small. Her father always valued his counsel.

“I would not have brought him to Starksboro and the home of my god-children if I did not trust him,” he acknowledged with a wry smile. He patted her on the hand wrapped around his arm. “He has more than proven himself among the company. Thoros and Beric respect him and have trusted him for scouting. You should know, he saved your brother’s life during some horrible business with the Freys just a few months ago, around the time of the wedding.”

“What happened with the Freys?” Sansa asked. “What happened to Robb?”

“You remember old Walder’s farm? The Twins?” Howland asked and Sansa nodded. The Twins were situated in the northern part of their region, but the lands were unusual in that the farm was old enough to cross the borders of the Vermont tracts into New York state, having been bought long before the borders were decided between New York and New Hampshire, before Vermont had even been born. He had commissioned a bridge to be built to create crossroads for his overly large family—Walder was quite old, nearly ninety if not older, yet had outlived all of his wives, each one younger than the last, and he had managed to father a good many children with each of them so that no one bothered to keep track of just how many children he had—to tend to the field on both sides of the state border but separated by Lake Champlain.

“Well, Walder has been charging both the Loyalists and the Patriots a pretty penny to cross,” Howland continued. “And as it turns out, General Lannister was willing to pay a lot more than a pretty penny for his heir to be released. There was an ambush up by South Hero when we tried to cross from Québec. And while Captain Jaime Lannister may have been the goal, assassinating your brother was apparently worth a lot as well.”

Sansa gasped.

“Clegane is as skilled with a rifle as the best of them,” Howland continued. “A crack-shot, he is.”

 Sansa nodded as she considered this, wondered if her mother should know but weighed whether the fear over Robb’s safety would distract from the inclination to show this man gratitude.

“He rides an awfully large stallion,” she noted. “I hope we have a paddock big enough.”

“Aye, and he treats that horse better than he treats the rest of us,” Howland breathed a laugh. “Mind you, he’s saved the lives of several men in this regiment, not just your brother, but there is not much he would not do for that beast.”

“You sound like you not only trust him but like him,” Sansa observed.

“I respect him and I enjoy him,” Howland acknowledged, “though there is much about him that might take you aback. Be patient if he is gruff. Some men find it harder than others to not be soldiers all the time. Sensibile young ladies such as yourself might feel insulted by his demeanor, but I haven’t found him to mean any harm.”

Sensible young ladies, she thought. She doubted her mother would describe her as such anymore. She felt Howland’s hand tighten around her arm.

“I’m sorry about Ned, dear,” he offered softly. “I—I suspect you were eager to see him.”

She nodded quietly. Eager. Dread had seemed more appropriate, but she would also prefer her father here in Starksboro, angry with and disappointed in her, than imprisoned. 

They arrived at the stables, mostly empty after so many left for Ticonderoga the year before. They only housed enough horses for the Starks and Uncle Brynden if they ever needed to flee, with Jeyne and Beth riding double with Sansa and Arya. Catelyn would remind them of their escape plan every few weeks so they would know what to do if they were caught by surprise.

“There are six empty stalls,” Sansa announced. “Some of the horses will have to share.”

“Stranger should get his own,” Robb stated, nodding at Sandor Clegane—now dismounted and seeming just as tall as when he rode the beast beside him—who responded in kind. Robb turned to Sansa and said, “the one for father’s war horse should do.”

Sansa looked to the large man and gestured to the back of the stable with her head. She was unsure how to proceed without a formal introduction with the man. She may know how he came to be with the regiment, how he had earned his place among them, but it would not be proper to begin using each other’s names without it.

“Will this suffice, sir?” she asked as she opened the door for the stallion.

“Not a sir,” he groused. “It’s fine.”

Sansa remained silent, unsure of what to do with herself. This man was among the horse riders she did not know and who was not familiar with their property. She felt she could not leave him in case he needed anything. He was a guest, and she was his hostess. But she did not know how to be around him. The Umbers, the Cassels, Howland, Alyn—they had all been figures in her life since she was a child, and she at least knew how to make conversation with them.

“There are brushes on the far wall to your right as you leave the stall,” she explained. “My brothers restock the hay bails in the corner every morning, but we have more in the cattle barn, maybe fifty yards out the backdoor.”

He did not respond, not even a grunt. She rarely knew how to respond when people did not use the same manners she did. It was a like a game to her, and whenever others broke the rules, she did not know how to continue playing.

The large black horse began stomping his feet and whinnying.

“Out of the way, girl,” Clegane ordered, pressing his very large hand against her stomach to push her away. Her stomach flipped at the intimacy of the gesture. She quickly looked up to see who else was around, but the select few men remaining in the stables were busy and paying her no attention. He must have earned their trust if they forgot to chaperone us, she thought, though she wondered if the letter her father had been sent was shared with others, if she was already forgotten in their minds as someone in need of protection. Did she need protecting from Sandor Clegane? His hand on her belly—even with the corset preventing any meaningful touch, he could feel the warmth from his hand, and it made her think of things no marriageable woman should, maiden or no.

She laid her hand over his and pushed it off carefully, coarse knuckle hair tickling her palm. He looked back at her once her hand touched his, surprise etched on his harsh features. She retreated quickly, as did his as it returned to his own space.

“Does he not like strangers?” she asked, trying to distract herself from the sensations in her stomach, knots tying and untying as she thought about his hands.

“Considering that’s his name, no,” he grumbled. Sansa listened to how his voice seemed to reverberate in her chest. “He just senses when I’m agitated.”

What could possibly be agitating you right now? He was the rude one in this encounter, taking liberties with her that she would never allow in ordinary circumstances.

Well… No, she mustn’t think on it.

“Brush him with the hay in there if he cannot wait for a real brush,” she said, anxious, filling the silence.

“Aye, girl, I’ve cared for a horse before,” he grumbled, and shot a low glance at her. She noted how his eyes shifted so quickly from angry to surprise to mocking and back again before she could pull herself together. The gall of this man.

“Not a girl,” she said sharply.

He looked up at her, surprise in those grey eyes that seemed to shift between ice-cold and forge-hot. He underestimated her, she realized. She felt more knots in her stomach forming, but these felt quite pleasant, warm and tension-filled in a way she could not pinpoint.

“Aye, I see that,” he said, pointedly nodding at her bodice.

She felt her cheeks warm and fought to keep the shock off her face. No man had ever dared look at her like that—not any of the rakes of her past nor even Petyr Baelish in his shameless pursuit for her hand—and she doubted Sandor Clegane would have done so if he had not been obscured by the walls of the stall. Howland Reed might trust him, Robb might owe him the debt of his life, but Joffrey had been the son of her father’s best friend and war mate, and people’s true nature did not always become clear until they were tested.

“I am your commander’s sister!” she said, affecting anger that she was not certain she meant. “Your colonel’s daughter! Your hostess!”

“Out with it, little bird,” he growled, though she did not think he meant it angrily any more than she did.

“Speak to me with respect,” she asserted.

“I speak with respect to those who have earned it,” he said.

“And I do not deserve it?”

“I do not know. I cannot tell if you’ve earned it,” he enunciated.

She held his gaze, sensing the challenge in them.

He nodded at her, like he was appraising her, assessing her as she met his challenge.

“With eyes like that, I am certain you can find your way to the main hall,” she stated, and left him there, open-mouthed and cruelly laughing as she stormed out of the stables.

Chapter Text

In the main hall of Winterfell Manor, almost two dozen men stood standing. They ate the apple cake or buttered brown bread with gusto while nearly guzzling the ale Uncle Brynden had gone into town to procure for the very occasion. When managing so many men, ale is necessary, he had told Sansa with a wink.

Sansa stood outside the room, still in the foyer, watching the merriment from a distance. Rodrik, Jory, and Vayon animatedly told stories with Jeyne and Beth. Greatjon, Alyn, and Beric stood or sat soberly around Jaime Lannister, who was tied to one of the thick formal dining chairs, rope wrapped tightly around his wrists and chest to bind him to the seat. Bran and Rickon talking seriously with Howland, likely the one to break the news to them about father; it was best that way, she thought, as their uncle had a far more gentle hand than Catelyn did of late. Robb, Jon, and their wives conversed with Catelyn genially. Sansa did not want to disturb any of them, so she remained just outside their periphery.

The door behind her opened and she felt cold wind. The creak in the floorboards led her to believe that Sandor Clegane was standing at her side, for only the Umbers and men of similar size ever made the floorboards of the front hall make such noise. It was how the family knew when Uncle Brynden entered the Manor, as opposed to their mother.

She thought for a moment about the man walking not far behind her, watching her as they approached the house in the low winter sun. She had not heard him then, and she shivered in a mixture of delight and disgust that he had been watching her without her knowing. She had grown up used to being looked at, but after her mother could barely look at her anymore she had forgotten what it felt liked to be watched.

He walked up and stood beside her, also watching the merrymaking in the main hall. She fought against the urge to be polite to him and offer a cup of ale. She thought back to his eyes on her chest. It was improper. It was caddish. It was cheeky.

She liked it, though. She liked the feeling of being watched, being wanted. She liked the feel of his hands on her, somehow burning her even through her corset. Sansa shivered as she remembered the sensation in her belly.

She shook her head slightly, as though she could shake the images from her mind. She could not linger on thoughts of Sandor Clegane taking liberties with her. There were potatoes to boil and mash, and they still needed to assemble the pie for all of these soldiers and the other guests who would arrive in short order.

“Going to offer me a drink, little bird?” she heard him rumble lowly from behind her.

The gall of this man, she thought with a huff.

“Oh, Mr Clegane, I trust that a man like you knows how to pour his own ale,” she teased, “far better than a woman ever could, I imagine.”

She heard him laugh and felt a twinge of pride. He did not seem the type to laugh so readily, and in earnest, at a jest.

“You are my hostess,” he retorted. “It is my honor to be served by you.”

She looked to her left to better view him. She stood on his good side—that is the unscarred side—and took in his features. A hooked nose, sharp cheekbones, a strong jaw—these were the markings of a man she might find comely. He lacked the refined features of Joffrey or Harry, for they could even be called pretty like her, but with such broad shoulders and strong arms, he was far more of a man than either of her previous paramours had been.

He turned his head to her, and she blushed that he caught her appraising him so brazenly. Of course, she was merely returning the favor he has bestowed on her in the barn. But she was a lady.

“The ale?” he said smugly. She could not tell if he was mocking her or flirting with her, so she merely rolled her eyes to humor him, even as her skin felt like it was on fire.

“Of course,” she replied tightly, giving him a too-wide smile to be genuine. She turned away and walked through the hall to the kitchen to pour him a mug.

Arya entered the kitchen from outside, bursting through the entry with various animal carcases slung over her shoulder and tied together by rope.

“That is quite the bounty,” Sansa said, holding the mug carefully.

“What is wrong with you?” Arya said, eyebrows furrowed.

“What?”

“You are acting strange.”

“I am not,” Sansa said, perhaps too quick.

“You never comment on dead animals when Rickon or I bring them home.”

“Well, it…is Christmas Eve,” Sansa argued. “We have a feast to plan tomorrow night as well. The Christmas Pie is unlikely to survive tonight. There are more men than we expected.”

Sansa saw Arya’s demeanor shift and face fall. When Sansa turned to follow her sister’s gaze, she saw that Jon had joined them, his arms outstretched towards his favored cousin.

“Jon,” Arya said solemnly. She takes after father, Sansa thought wistfully. Jon took after his mother Lyanna Stark, which meant he looked more like Ned Stark than his own children did, save for Arya. The two cousins looked like male and female versions of the other, with mops of raven hair and grey eyes.

“Cousin,” Jon said with a grin. Arya dropped the rope on the floor and she jumped into her cousin’s arms. Jon twirled her around just as Robb had done to Sansa for their reunion.

“I did not know you would be joining us,” she cried with joy, and possibly tears if Sansa was not mistaken.

“If our letters had arrived, you would have known,” he said as he put her down. “Arya, you should know, your father...he’s…”

“What?” Arya asked quietly.

“He is alive!” Sansa interrupted. “Jon, start with the good news, for goodness sake.”

“General Prescott’s men captured him and Theon a few months ago,” he said. Arya startled.

“A few months ago?” Arya snarled. “Have you heard at all about his treatment?”

“We have,” Jon nodded. “General Prescott swore he would personally see to his safety.”

Arya nodded absently and Sansa could see ideas spinning dangerously behind her sister’s eyes. Jon reached under her chin and lifted it up to look at him.

“We told your mother all of this when we first arrived,” his tone was teasing. “Where were you?”

She gestured back to the dead animals bound in rope on the kitchen floor. Sansa scrunched her nose at the thought of animal carcasses on the kitchen floor.

“My traps caught maybe a half-dozen rabbits,” she said half-heartedly. “If I wake up early to go shooting, we could possibly get a duck or goose for Christmas dinner too.”

Their father loved having roast goose for Christmas supper.

Sansa glanced out the window to see the sun low in the sky though still above the horizon. We must get moving. The pie would need to be put together, and the rabbits needed to be larded once they were skinned.

“That would be lovely,” Sansa said gently. “Arya, can you skin the rabbits so I can prepare them? I can manage after that if you wanted to join everyone in the dining hall.”

Arya looked to her, coming back to the moment and remembering herself.

“Where are Jeyne and Beth?” she asked.

“They are with their fathers,” Sansa softly told her. “I would hate to tear them away from their reunions.”

“You can’t make a Yorkshire pie by yourself, Sansa,” Arya rolled her eyes.

“Nor can just two people,” Jon added. “I can join.”

“Jon, you’ve never made it before,” Sansa said.

“I’ve been General Mormont’s aide for well over a year now,” he laughed. “You learn fast when you feed a group of hungry soldiers. How else do you make leather boots edible?”

“Leather boots!” Sansa shivered at the thought. “That’s terrible.”

“War rations force you to get creative at times,” Jon said nonchalantly, “or the lack thereof.”

Sansa moved to the counter but came face to face with Arya.

“When did you take up drinking ale?” Arya smirked, nodding to Sansa’s other hand. Sansa startled when she realized the mug of ale for Clegane was still in her hands.

“I—”

Clegane walked into the room from the main hall. Sansa’s breath caught. He nodded at the mug in her hand.

“That for you or for me?” he rasped.

“No, no,” she said breathlessly. “I have never had the taste for ale.”

Sansa presented the mug to him.

“Pity,” he said.

“I thought you had a preference for reds, Clegane,” Jon teased.

“What?!” she said aghast while Clegane choked on his ale. Arya snickered from the corner with the butcher block.

“You always drank wine in camp,” Jon said confused, “And, Sansa, you can’t possibly think you’re a bad hostess for offering the man ale instead of wine?”

Good Lord, cousin, you can be thick sometimes, Sansa thought, though she was also grateful for it. She looked to Clegane, who finally seemed to have lost his footing after their exchange in the barn. His mind had followed hers. She felt her cheeks warm and her heart flutter at the thought.

She thought of offering him some of the claret that her mother had been saving for the holiday meals, but then she reconsidered their current positions. He had insulted her in the barn, no matter how much she enjoyed it. She wanted to kick herself that she even gave him a mug of ale, and found herself somewhat pleased that he choked on it just moments before, only because it did him no harm.

“We shall serve claret at supper, sir,” she offered awkwardly, though she remained polite. She wanted to kick herself. She sometimes hated how eager she was to please. It is likely she would not be ruined had she grown out of such behavior.

His back straightened, and his countenance schooled once again into the inscrutable soldier she had first spotted in the pasture. His eyes shifted back to the anger that had been missing since their interaction in the barn. She could feel that she did something to upset him but was not sure what. He nodded at her, exaggerated and almost a bow as though she were his liege lord and not the sister and daughter of men he fought alongside. Before she could react, he had retreated from the kitchen back down the main hall.

She felt her spirits drop as he exited. She was not certain what she thought would happen while Jon and Arya stood watching. It is not as though he would be as forward as he was in the stable.

“Well that is a very strapping man,” Arya said pointedly to Sansa. Sansa recoiled somewhat. Under no circumstances did she want to discuss the matter of her interactions with Sandor Clegane in front of Jon. She decided to take control of this situation, since she seemed incapable of doing the same with the man who had her stomach in knots.

“I know, I thought he was an Umber when I first saw him riding through the pasture,” Sansa responded, a little too quickly to sound nonchalant about the tall, broad-shouldered, and scarred soldier in their home.

“Mmhmm,” Arya said.

Sansa averted her eyes when she realized that Arya was wielding a carving knife. Sansa shivered when she heard it cut through fur and flesh. She turned away, distracting herself by tending to the dough and chopped carrots, celery, onions, and herbs.

“Jon, cook the poultry, please?” she asked. Jon nodded and went to work.

“I’ll admit, he’s far from your usual suitors,” Arya commented blithely.

“He is not a suitor!” Sansa cried. She quickly looking to ensure Jon was too busy with the cast iron to notice her, before whispering, “My usual? What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s bigger than the men you’ve taken to before,” Arya listed. “He must be half a foot taller than Joff or Harry, probably more. The scars, too. You usually like your men pretty.”

“That is a cruel reason to judge someone.”

“So you do think of him as a suitor?”

Sansa could see the impish grin on her sister’s face through the back of her head.

“I met him not but an hour ago!”

“Well you do fall in love fast.”

“Why do you care so much about this?”

“To be completely honest, I don’t,” Jon said. Sansa had nearly forgotten Jon was there, she was so used to bickering with Arya without many men in the house.

“Of course you do not,” Sansa laughed. “You came home with a wife. The bickering of your unmarried cousins is of no concern to you.”

“What?” Arya said. Oh no, Sansa thought. She turned to look at the chopping block, where her sister was de-boning rabbits. Jon looked up from the hearth.

“I got married,” Jon said lightly. His wide eyes told Sansa he knew he had misstepped, though Sansa suspected he was not entirely certain how.

Arya stared blankly again, not unlike when she had learned of father’s absence.

“You married?” she asked again.

“About a month ago,” he nodded avidly, as though his enthusiasm would offset Arya’s shock. “I know you’ll love her. She’s—she’s unlike anyone we’ve ever met in Starksboro.”

Sansa could see how besotted he was with the petite blonde. She was curious if the woman would be able to live up to his vision of her. Arya’s face remained blank.

“Sister, it surprised me and mother, as well,” she said genially, her intervention unnoticed by her cousin. “Robb has also arrived a man with a wife in tow.”

“Robb?” Arya spoke finally.

Sansa nodded. “Of all our generation of the family, I never imagined that Robb and Jon would be the two to elope. Everyone knows you’re impulsive one.”

She kicked herself at the last bit, but neither Jon nor Arya seemed to notice nor mind. Considering where her own impulsiveness had led her, she supposed she should not pretend to have the moral high ground.

“Well, congratulations, cousin,” Arya said, her face still blank but her eyes watery. Sansa felt a pit in her stomach. “I wish you and your new wife the best.”

There was nothing genuine in her sister’s words, but Jon, for all his closeness to Arya, never knew her heart the way Arya had wanted him to.

“Once we get the pie baking, I should like to introduce you,” he said with a smile. Thicker than a wooden beam.

They grew quiet. The kitchen echoed quietly with the sounds of chopping, sizzling, and kneading. Sansa worked the dough to form a flat pie shell, Jon cooked the remains of the meat, and Arya took it upon herself to lard the rabbits.

“We’ll need help moving this into the oven,” Jon said matter of factly. “I’ll ask one of the Boys.”

Jon exited the kitchen. Sansa took the absence as an opportunity to approach her sister at the chopping block. “Arya, are you alright?”

Arya’s face was schooled into a mask. Sansa recognized the blank expression and neutral countenance even as desperation rippled in the air around her sister. She had also learned how to wear one, first with Joffrey Baratheon and his Lannister family, then with their mother following the end of her betrothal to Harry.

“I’m fine,” Arya said.

“Jon—I thought you—you two were always so close”

“You thought wrong,” Arya said sternly. “I am glad for my cousin, as well as our brother. We have a new cousin and sister now. Though we’re still missing a father.”

“It is alright to be upset. Sometimes Stark cousins marry. It’s understandable that you—”

“Sansa, leave it alone,” Arya said with a bland threat in her tone.

“I only want you to know that I would also be upset, if it were me.”

“But you are not me, and I am not you. I do not fall in love so easily and I am unlikely to have the options you had and have managed to ruin. And I do not fall apart when my heart is broken.”

She took a step back from Arya, reeling. Before she could fully collect herself, Jon had returned with Clegane following him. Sansa tried to school her face quickly, into the mask she wore whenever she was upset but could not afford to let anyone know it. She had been practicing this mask whenever she was around her mother.

“This is secure, right?” Jon asked, tentatively pressing his hand to the springform surrounding of the pan.

Sansa nodded, not trusting her voice in that moment. Clegane grimaced at her, and she shrunk away from him.

“Alright, Clegane, over there,” Jon explained, nodding to the brick oven. “Quick, grab the other side.”

“I’ve got it,” the large man grumbled, deftly lifting the heavy pan out of Jon’s hands. Sansa watched him move, unexpectedly graceful and quiet as he maneuvered around the center table. She watched him gently place the edge of the dish onto the surface of the oven’s opening, but he paused as he glanced at the flames inside of the bricks. He gazed into the flames and seemed uncertain, uncertainty flickering on his face.

Burn scars, she thought. She could not be sure what came over her at that moment, but she joined him at the mouth of the oven and pushed her side of the large springform pan inside with all of her might.

Clegane turned to her. his gaze heavy on her, but she met it this time and did not shrink away as she had done moments ago.

“Well,” Arya stated, “the pie is cooking. I’m pouring ale.”

“Before you get too deep in your cups, come meet my wife,” Jon laughed. Arya glanced darkly at Sansa, but Jon led her by the arm into the sitting room.

And Clegane and Sansa were alone once again.

She noticed the mug she had poured him earlier had been traded for a cup of wine.

“How is your wine?” Sansa asked lamely.

Clegane’s eyebrow rose. He only had one good eyebrow. She took a close look at him, even as his eyes were hard and bored into her. Half of his face was a ruin of scars, the other untrusting. He was tall, perhaps not as tall as Greatjon or Smalljon Umber, but big enough to rival Brynden. And with such size, she noticed that his chest was unfathomably broad and arms impossibly thick. He seemed bigger than he did in the foyer, and that fact made her burn in a way that was unfamiliar to her. She turned her gaze to the cup in his impossibly large hands. She did not dare look more.

“Fine,” he said, taking a brusque sip.

‘That’s our finest wine. I would have hoped it would be better than ‘fine’,” she teased, hoping her jest would be received in good faith.

“You want me to grovel and appraise it?” his tone was harder than the lighter one they had established in the foyer.

“Well, that would be a refreshing start,” she said, hoping a jest would improve whatever was happening between them in that moment. She noticed the scarred side of his face twitch, and wondered what that meant.

“Well, milady, the wine is delicious,” he japed. Sansa felt her stomach burn in indignation. What an insolent, insufferable man. “Something wrong?”

He was needling her—she knew that, she did. She had spent the good part of her youth being mocked by Theon, and she had always played her part as the blushing maiden. That seemed her lot in life—to be the victim of mockery. Where Theon’s jests signaled his own interest in her, Joffrey’s had taken on a crueler undertone, the mark of a man whose pleasure came at the expense of other’s dignity. Harry had mocked her too, often making her feel younger than her years compared to his own tastes and desires. She had fallen for that once, and she did not intend to be made the fool again.

“Fine,” she said, offering a tight, closed-mouth grin as soon as she was able to muster the strength.

“As a guest to a most gracious hostess, I would have hoped you’d be better than ‘fine’,” he said, taking another gulp of wine as he did.

Sansa sighed through her nose, before she worried if the action made her nostrils flare. She was certain she looked a frightful image when she was angry, just as her mother’s fury could be a source of terror when unleashed.

She did not want to be like her mother. And she could not bring herself to respond with an insult, not when she saw him flinch in the face of the hearth fire moments ago. What’s more, she did not think these were the words of someone have a jape at her expense, though she still did not know his motives. She could at least smooth things over.

“Sir—”

“Not a sir.”

“As you keep mentioning,” she retorted, her original response forgotten. “Is there something wrong with sir?”

“Where I come from, ‘sirs’ are for lords and upjumped men looking for land or a title.”

“Where I come from, ‘sir’ is a sign of respect.”

“Even as your brother, father, and cousin fight for a war to separate you from where the title matters,” he spat the words. “Only pretty little birds use such courtesies, in my book. Always spewing courtesies like the queen herself.”

“Is that what you called me in the stable? Little bird?”

He looked to her, perhaps alarm registering in his eyes before that disappeared behind the façade. Something shifted in her.

“Where I come from, we say ‘sir’ when we do not yet know someone’s name,” she said as a sort of peace offering. “I think we both know who the other one is, but we have yet to be properly introduced.”

He appraised her, looking her up and down, though the tenor of his looking was different from that of the barn. In the paddocks, he had seemed interested in her, in the way Harry and Petyr Baelish were interested in her. But they viewed her as a prize broodmare, meant entirely to make them look good and bear them pretty, healthy children. This Sandor Clegane and his wants were a mystery to her. 

“Aye, I supposed not,” he said. His hand reached to rub the back of his neck, a gesture that seemed sheepish compared to how he was with her not moments ago.

Sansa reached out her hand to him. “Hello, I am Sansa Stark. You can call me Sansa.”

He eyed her warily, holding his wine cup like a cross warding off a demon. How could I be the one to frighten him? she wondered. She raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the hand she had offered. He reached out to her, and held her hand, not ungently. His hand was rough and calloused, yet it cradled hers like she might break.

“Sandor Clegane,” he coughed, his voice soft despite a coarse roughness that always seemed to linger at the back of his throat. She quickly noted the scarring at his throat and wondered if that was why, though she tried to look for long lest he grow angry with her. They had seemed to forge some sort of fragile peace in the moment.

“Nice to meet you, Sandor Clegane,” she said, pretending to be confident. She gripped his hand firmly, just as Howland and Uncle Brynden had always taught her, before shaking it. She hoped he viewed it as the sign of courtesy and respect that she meant it as.

“Likewise,” he grunted, avoiding her eyes, but not dropping her hand.

“I take it you’re not the loquacious type?” she teased gently. She did not mind teasing or being teased. A part of her liked it even, a kind of attention that made her blush softly while her stomach warmed. Japing was another matter.

He raised his one good eyebrow at her.

“Does the hostess always demand her guests be loquacious?” His cheek twitched. His eyes dropped to where they hands remained clasped in between them. Despite the familiarity with which he removed her from his horse’s paddock, this, this hand handholding seemed far more intimate than that brief moment of impropriety.

“You called me a talking bird moments ago, so I’m sure you can imagine my preferences on the matter,” she said with a smirk.

He guffawed at that, a laugh both mocking and intimate at once. She tried to hide her growing grin, and he watched her reaction like he was assessing her once more, though much more proper than his appraisal in the barn.

“Sansa, how are the potatoes com—” her mother’s voice interrupted whatever moment she had been luxuriating in with Sandor Clegane.

Sansa loosened her hand from his, and their hands dropped, though based on her dear mother’s gaze not soon enough. She saw us, Sansa deduced, feeling a burning of a different sort in her gut now.

“Yes, mother,” she whispered as she quickly returned to her kitchen duties.

“Captain Clegane,” her mother spoke in that gracious yet cold polite manner to which Sansa had grown so accustomed, “please, go join the festivities. It’s Christmas Eve, and you’ve been fighting a war.”

Sansa peered at the man and observed the twitch in his cheek and clenching of his jaw that she had observed several times in their own interactions. He dislikes falsehoods, she deduced, recognizing that he too observed the inauthenticity and incongruity between her mother’s tone and her words.

He nodded at the lady of the house, before bowing his head to Sansa—perhaps the first moment of true propriety that she had received from him all night, and the fire in her belly told her she enjoyed it as much as the impropriety he had shown her as well. He may dislike the falsehood of Catelyn’s words, but he at least recognized them for what they were—an order, not solely an invitation.

With that, he left the kitchen, and a stony cold fell across the room. Sansa glanced at the hearth and saw that the fire was still roaring. The cold had fully enveloped her soon enough, and she knew that her mother was near.

“How is it going, darling?” her mother spoke, but Sansa knew the words were just filling the space between what Catelyn wanted to say and what she was afraid people would overhear.

“Well, enough, I think,” Sansa said lightly. Perhaps she could salvage the moment by playing the dutiful and earnest daughter. She did not dwell on the fact that she had been playing this role for the last several months with nothing to show for it when it came to her mother’s approval. But she continued roughly peeling and chopping the potatoes, leaving enough skin on to add texture to the eventual mash. A sliver of hair fell out of place, teasing her brow and cheeks.

“I need not remind you to mind yourself when surround by these soldiers,” Catelyn said stonily, her breath touching Sansa’s neck and sending chills down her spine. “You need not show favor to one and give him the wrong idea.”

“He helped Jon and I get the Yorkshire pie into the oven,” Sansa stated as calm as she could. “I meant no harm.”

Sansa turned her head and met her mother’s gaze.

“Aye, sweet girl, you never do,” Catelyn said, tucking the stray piece of hair behind Sansa’s ear. Her look was authoritative, suffocating. There would be no room to argue, and Sansa knew she could not, so long as she had no leg to stand on when it came to propriety and her mother.

Catelyn nodded at her daughter, her movements hard and concise as she left Sansa alone in the kitchen.