By While last week's instalment of Game of Thrones saw the looming threat of battle cause various characters to jump into each other's arms, there was only one fleeting moment of intimacy in 'The Long Night'.
Having both been instructed to stay safe in the crypt - fast becoming the home of all heated moments - Tyrion Lannister tells Sansa Stark he wants to go into the battle.
"None of us can do anything. That's the truth. That's the most heroic thing we can do now: look the truth in the face," she says.
"Maybe we should have stayed married," he replies, to which she say thoughtfully: "You were the best of them," before explaining why his allegiance to Daenerys means it wouldn't work between them.
It's another interesting exchange between them after the first episode of the season where Sansa cuttingly told him, “I used to think you were the cleverest man alive”, a line that seemed to indicate the show was setting her up as Tyrion's latest intellectual sparring partner.
Later, when the enemy has infiltrated the walls of Winterfell and the dead are bursting into the crypt, Sansa and Tyrion take shelter together behind a wall and, believing death has come for them, Tyrion takes Sansa's hand and slowly kisses it.
It's a gesture that can be seen as either revealing or simply innocent, either him quietly professing his feelings for her with nothing to lose, or just an act of kindness to make her feel comforted in what is likely their last seconds. Maybe, just maybe it was a way of nudging the idea of them as a couple back into the mind of the viewer.
Tyrion's kindness to Sansa when they were forced to marry in season 3 showed the best of him. It was a level of respect she hadn't been granted outside of her family, telling her he wouldn't share a bed with her "until you want me to".
Not to say that Sansa would settle for any vaguely good man after the succession of rapists and torturers she's endured, more that Tyrion has been a constant presence coming into her life at difficult moments. Some fans have even speculated they are, in fact, still married after Ramsay's death possibly nullified his marriage to Sansa.
If Game of Thrones were to end truly saluting Sansa it would place her on the Iron Throne or ruling over The North. However the show's sentimental streak in keeping alive key characters and letting new romances blossom might mean she has to settle for a neat love story rather than a crown. It would also, potentially, make political sense in the way it did back in the first place: a Stark and a Lannister together in peace. Stranger things have happened.
