#sansandreams

My dream last night was after the battle with the Dead that's due in tonight's episode. Again I'm just a spectator in the thick of it but am lucky enough to have such vivid imagery in dreams...here's my memory shorthand.

Dawn sleepwalks across the sky and survivors scavenge for fellow survivors on the frost-scored battlefield - Sandor Clegane is recovered alive from a pit of corpses, but is carrying a deep, black wound, like a sinkhole, to the abdomen. As men haul him, bleeding and sputtering, into courtyard at Winterfell, Lady Sansa watches from the ramparts, and realises with shock that the Hound came to fight for the North.

I'm on the ground staring up but can clearly sense her vowing to thank him, if he lives through it. 😭😭😭

Had such a sweet dream last night about Sansa and Sandor. I was merely an intangible bystander to it all. The dream must have been set far in the future; post-conflict, and there was a garden, cold but with the emergence of spring. Swear I could feel the spray of the breeze.

And in this garden was Sansa. Only this Sansa was older, dressed in white...but with a posture of demonstrable strength. I was awestruck.

So suddenly a groomed, yet battle-weary Sandor Clegane approaches her in this garden. Sansa's acknowledgement of him seems standoffish initially, restrained. Broke my heart. Clegane confesses he is exhausted of her enameled exterior, and he is exhausted of his own. The war is over. The war is done. He has done his service. And it has never been his nature to hold his tongue - he is leaving. Making a new life. Like the rest of Westeros.

Leaving, why? She asks.

Why? You know why, he says. You don't need to play puppet now. He wants to speak to Sansa as she is, not the silhouette she throws down for ceremony. Clegane is leaving because he loves her, you know it, I know it, has for longer than he'd like to admit. And you love me, he accuses - though you'd sooner spit on me than tell me that. He's come to understand that gives him no reason to say. He's no man's dog any longer - and no woman's, to boot.

He is done. He is leaving.

Then there's just this wounded silence between them that just engorges, but their gaze never parts. There's nothing but the acoustics of the spring garden. I'm on the edge of my seat.

Not unless you can show why I shouldn't, Sandor adds.

Sansa's jaw quavers.

Show me, Clegane pleads. Go on. Do it. You can say the words - just like I have.

But she says nothing, and for a second I'm screaming like Monica does after they lose the apartment to Chandler and Joey. Then Sansa steps in, all while Clegane watches, gathering himself in the turmoil of all this restrained anticipation. He is trying and failing to read her.

Sansa hesitates - then puts her lips to his.

No, Sandor manages. Their lips cling as he parts. Not this way. I want to hear you say it.

----- AND THEN I WOKE UP GODDDDAMNIT!!!!!

Anyway, this dream seems completely unprompted. So I can only hope it's prophetic.