Notes: The idea for Sansa's curse came from the story 'The Harlot and the Hound' by Shadow_Belle (though this story takes it in a completely different direction). It's really great, you should read it.

The Faceless Girl and the Cursed Queen

A girl had been sitting in the darkened corner of a pub, wearing a middle-aged merchant's face and sipping at a mug of ale, when the conversation of a group of men at a nearby table caught her attention.

"How do you think this one'll die?"

"Mauling by wolves?" suggested one of the men.

The others groaned at this answer. "Mauling by wolves has already been done," scolded the one who had posed the question. "Think of something original!"

"I say- burned in a fire," another of the men said. "What more fitting way for the Hound to die?"

This suggestion was met with more approval from his peers.

A girl could not ignore the implications of such a conversation. "A free pint to whichever one of you will tell me what you're talking about," she said, moving to sit at their table.

"Lady Sansa is betrothed again," the man who had suggested mauling by wolves hurried to tell her. "We're wondering what will happen to the unlucky sod set to marry her."

"Why would anything happen to him?" a girl asked innocently.

"You haven't heard?" the man raised his eyebrows at her condescendingly, but seemed to relish the opportunity to spread some old gossip to fresh ears. "The Lady Sansa is cursed. No man she has ever married has lived long enough to bed her. And each one dies in increasingly more gruesome ways than the last."

A girl had heard the rumors of the curse before, and had derived much personal amusement from them, but she pretended ignorance. "What happened to them?" she asked.

"Well, the first husband, Tyrion Lannister, he lasted the longest. Everyone knows though, that the only reason he lasted as long as he did was because he didn't make her consummate the marriage. Well, even so, the curse got to him eventually. He disappeared from the dungeons in which he was being held after poisoning King Joffrey, and popular opinion is that Cersei had someone get him in a far nastier and slower way than beheading would have been."

A girl did not know what had really happened to Tyrion Lannister. She had been traveling with the Hound at the time. Still, matters seemed to have turned out quite well there. She smirked, and gestured for the man to continue.

"The next husband was Harrold Hardyng. His death was the least dramatic. On the wedding night, while heading up to his bedchamber, he fell down the stairs and broke his neck."

Harrold Hardyng had been a callous arse and was rude to Sansa. Still he was not evil or cruel, and a girl had given him a quick and easy death.

"After that was Robert Arryn. He was just a boy, and a sick one at that, he succumbed to his illness soon after the marriage," the man continued.

A girl had had nothing to do with that death, but she had investigated the matter at the time of Sansa's next wedding. The boy had not died of illness, he had been poisoned, which brought them to Sansa Stark's fourth husband:

"The next man she married was Petyr Baelish. His death was the worst. On the way back from the godswood, the party was attacked by a pack of wolves. Baelish was eaten alive, but hear this-" the man leaned forward conspiratorially, preparing to dispense a particularly juicy bit of information. "No one else in the party got so much as a scratch. They only went for Baelish."

Ah, yes. The last wedding was her favorite. Perhaps she had been a bit extravagant in her execution of that one, but she could not bring herself to regret it. A girl may no longer be Arya Stark, but she was not no one either. A girl remembered, and she did not forgive.

"So you see," the man concluded, "Sansa Stark is cursed. Only a madman would marry her at this point, and the only question that remains is: How will this one die?"

"And did I hear you say that the man she is now betrothed to is the Hound?" A girl had heard that the Hound was still alive, and had not been entirely sorry for it. Still, she must have misheard- the thought of the Hound marrying Sansa was absurd.

"Aye, the Hound," the man agreed, surprising her. "The northmen hardly liked it, but since none of them are willing to marry her and she'll be needing an heir, they didn't have much of a choice, did they?"

She was not surprised that the Hound wished to marry Sansa. He had ill concealed his lust for her during their travels together, and a girl had not forgotten his fevered ramblings right before she left him. Rather, she was surprised that even now, when queen of the north, surrounded by loyal bannermen and in possession of an army, Sansa had still somehow allowed herself to be manipulated again into marrying some unworthy cunt she didn't want. If it weren't so pitiful it would be infuriating.

A girl sighed. She had been headed to King's Landing to take care of some unfinished business she had there, but for the sake of the memories of Arya Stark's mother and father, she could not allow Winterfell nor their daughter to fall into the hands of that brute. It seemed that she would be going up north.

A girl had to rush to make it in time, and arrived at Winterfell only a day before the wedding. She kept out of sight, and when evening began to turn into night, crept into the godswood to scout out the area she she would have to work in tomorrow. The sound of soft footsteps alerted her to someone approaching, and a girl scrambled up into a nearby tree, peaking down to see who could be visiting at such a late hour.

It was Sansa. She was wearing a dark, heavy cloak, but there was no mistaking her brilliant red hair in the dying light. She knelt down in front of the heart tree, and began muttering something quietly. A girl held her breath, and leaned closer, trying to make out what she was saying.

"Thank you," Sansa was murmuring, hands clasped in front of her. "Thank you so much. Thank you thank you thank you."

Another pair of footsteps sounded, heavier this time, and Sansa stood up just as Sandor Clegane came into view, limping slightly.

"Little bird," he called, spreading out his arms, and Sansa unhesitatingly stepped into them, resting her head against his chest. "I thought your days of creeping off to hide in the godswood were behind you," he growled, stroking her hair with one hand.

"They are," she smiled up at him. "I just wanted to visit again, and give the gods thanks."

"Thanks?" he snorted, "What for? For your dead family? For your destroyed home? For your full crypts?"

She did not seem taken aback by his harsh response. She merely looked up at him, a solemn expression on her face. "You've heard the rumors, haven't you? About me being cursed?"

He scoffed. "Don't tell me you believe that shite."

"Of course I don't. Let me finish," she scolded.

"Go on, then."

"I don't believe in the curse. You must admit, though, that four husbands, all dead before the marriage could be consummated is quite a coincidence. And except for the marriage to Tyrion, I knew about all three other marriages in advance. I used to go to the godswood and pray for hours, begging the gods to give me a way out. Pleading with them to not allow me to be married to any of them. And they listened to my prayers, every single time.

"There was another thing I secretly wished for, though, but I never prayed for it. Not having to marry Harrold or Petyr was enough, it seemed impudent to ask for more than that. But there was something more I wanted, even if I never asked for it, a person out there that I did want to marry. I didn't even know if you were alive then, or what had become of you, but whenever I thought of the coming wedding, instead of the intended groom, I would suddenly see myself being covered with a cloak that had three dogs on it, on the yellow of the autumn grass."

Her hand came up and stroked his scarred cheek.

"So you see, Sandor, I have much to thank the gods for. Not only did they answer my prayers and give me what I had asked for, but they also granted me the dearest, deepest silent desire of my heart, the one I was too scared to even voice. Tonight I give my thanks; tomorrow I marry you here, in front of the weirwood."

The Hound bent down and leaned his forehead against hers, but it was Sansa who wound her arms around his neck and pulled him in for a kiss.

"Pretty bird," he told her, once they broke the kiss, "you don't need to pray to trees anymore. Whatever you wish for, you can ask me, I'll give it to you."

Sansa might once have been offended by such blasphemous words, but now she merely smiled indulgently. "Not everything is within your power to give me, Sandor."

"What do you want that I cannot give to you?" he growled at her, cradling her head in one enormous hand.

"Arya," Sansa breathed. "Bran and Rickon were dead, but they came back to me all the same. If only the miracle could extend to Arya. I don't even know if she's alive or dead."

A girl could have told her that Arya Stark was dead, but it wasn't her that had been asked.

"She's alive," the Hound said, with gratifying confidence. "Wolf bitch's as tough as they come. She won't die easy."

"I hope you're right," Sansa replied mournfully.

"I- I could go and look for her," the Hound offered hesitantly. "Start at Braavos and see what I can find there."

Sansa shook her head. "No. I just got you back, I won't have you leaving me again. If Arya is alive, word would have reached her by now that I'm here, that the Starks have Winterfell again. If she hasn't made contact, it's because she doesn't want to see me anymore. I wouldn't blame her-" her breath hitched "-I've been a bad sister. I wouldn't want to see me again if I were her."

"None of that now," the Hound scolded. "You weren't a bad sister."

"I was!" Sansa cried. "I was constantly scolding her, I called her mean names-"

"And she teased you right back," the Hound interrupted impatiently. "You were two very different people forced to spend a lot of time together at an age where you hadn't yet learned how to deal maturely with annoyance or with not getting your way. It was only natural for you to fight. That doesn't make you a bad sibling. Trust me," he gestured to his scar, "I know about bad siblings."

"You don't think she hates me?" Sansa asked in a small voice.

"If you think she hates you, you're a stupid little bird," he said, but his tone was soothing.

"Then how come she hasn't come home yet, if you're so sure she's alive?" Sansa demanded.

The Hound sighed. "After the red wedding, she was different. Sort of numb, empty, indifferent to everything. Some people become that way, when the pain is too much. Maybe it's still too much and she needs to keep her distance. She'll come back, though, when she's ready. Might take some time, but Arya Stark is one of the strongest, fiercest people I've ever known. She won't run forever."

"I'll keep praying then, for her to come home."

"Fine. You do that," the Hound huffed. "But anything that I can give you, little bird, you come to me to ask, before going to these damn trees, you hear?"

"Motherhood," Sansa said immediately. "I want babies."

"Aye, I can give you that," the Hound responded, reaching his hand down to squeeze her bottom. "I'll give it to you right here, right now, if you want. I suppose you'll be wanting to wait until after the wedding, though?"

"You suppose right," Sansa replied, thankfully.

"In that case, let's get you back inside before you freeze your perfect teats off," the Hound said, pulling her by the arm back towards the way they had come.

"Can you believe next time we'll be here, we'll leave as man and wife?" Sansa gave a little squeal of excitement as she headed back after the Hound, shooting one last longing look at the tree behind her.

The Hound was by now too far away for his reply to be heard, and after a few moments, both voices faded away completely.

Arya Stark climbed down from the tree, and wiped uselessly at the wetness that had appeared on her face. She stood in front of the heart tree in quiet contemplation for many minutes. Perhaps there was a wedding gift she could give her sister that wasn't the murder of her new groom.

Perhaps, it was time for Arya Stark to come home.