Chapter Text
Sansa
“The lady is starting to panic”, she hears as she slides the bolt home, and stifles the scream in her throat. The rasping voice is immediately familiar, and Sansa whirls to face the man slumped on her bed reeking of wine and blood. Outside, the shrieks of horses and men are shrill and the air smells acrid, oily, like a tallow candle gone too long in a closed room. Tallow is nothing but melted fat, she thinks, and crosses to the window, sliding it shut with a sharp snap. The hulking figure on the bed seems to relax minutely, and Sansa knows the Hound must be terrified.
The thought is not at all reassuring.
“What are you doing here?”, she demands, still clutching her father’s doll. He’d given it to her and she’d sniffed, thought it childish and turned up her nose. It was silly, she had told him, and it had been his last gift to her. It brings her a cold comfort now, even as she stares down the Hound. “Not here for long”, he replies, voice lower than ever. He smells of smoke, of burnt things, and to her horror, Sansa realizes he’s been outside the walls, out with the fire. “I’m going”, he adds, and Sansa is so startled she can’t stop it, can’t shut her mouth before the word flies out, “Where?”
He looks at her with hollow eyes. He’s drunk, of course, but more terrified even than that. With the sound of screaming and the eerie hiss of the green flame in the distance consuming everything it touches, she can’t find it in herself to blame him. “Someplace that isn’t burning”, Sandor tells her, and she feels it like a blow to the stomach. She knows, and her surprise is only that he hasn’t broken and run already. They will call him craven for deserting, but they don’t understand. It’s only the fire he fears, and how can he possibly fight that? Who could ever hope to win against it?
“North, might be. Could be.”
The desperate hope rising up in her throat chokes her and makes her hands shake, so she clasps them in front of her. He’s come close now, hemming her in, grasping her arm. It’s tight, and his grip hurts, but she pays it no mind. She can smell wine, fear-sweat and the tang of stale vomit. It makes her stomach heave, but she stays still. “You won’t get out. The queen’s closed up Maegor’s, and the city gates are shut as well.” “Not to me”, he tells her. “I have the white cloak. And I have this”, the Hound says, hand resting on the pommel of his sword momentarily, as though reassuring himself that it’s still at his side. “The man who tries to stop me is a dead man. Unless he’s on fire”, he adds, and he sounds so bitter to Sansa’s ears that she aches.
He’s terrified, she thinks, and wants nothing more than to leave, to escape. In her pity, she makes a critical misstep and asks, “Why did you come here?”. She means instead of leaving, but she wishes she could eat the words as soon as they’ve left her mouth. Stupid girl, she thinks bitterly, don’t you know better than to ask questions you don’t want to hear the answer to? What other reason could a man have for searching you out at a time like this?
“You promised me a song, little bird. Have you forgotten?” He calls her little bird and she startles, meeting his eyes sharply. Outside, green fire whips across the sky, and she thinks he must have gone mad. There’s nothing to sing about here, not now. Not ever, if she’s being honest. “I can’t,” she tells him, and feels his hand tighten sharply on her arm. He doesn’t like being defied, she knows, but tonight they both seem to be disobeying their orders. “Let me go, you’re scaring me.”
“Everything scares you. Look at me. Look at me.”
She does, then, meeting his gaze steadily. There’s blood on his face, splattered viscously over cheek and congealing in his beard. For once, the burnt flesh is not the most frightening thing about him. It’s his eyes, now, white and wide as a spooked horse, terrifying and terrified.
“I could keep you safe,” he rasps. “They’re all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I’d kill them.”
Sansa thinks of being safe, of never again being beaten. She knows he means what he says; he’s never yet lied to her, even when he was cruel. Especially, she realizes with a sick lurch of her stomach, when he was cruel. She thinks of being hurt, of Ser Meryn, of knights in white cloaks with heavy armour-plated hands, of Joffrey. She thinks of all the things that wake her up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, gasping with fear and shoving a hand in her mouth to stifle mewling whimpers. She thinks of facing those fears, thinks of him facing his, of having all those fears become real in a green maelstrom. Of having to run into them, lead people into them, to die in an agony he knows intimately. She shudders.
Why are you so awful, she had asked him once, when he’d been deliberately vicious in the face of her courtesies. They were her only weapon, she knew, a sword of words and a shield of silk, for all the good they’d been blocking blows—which was to say, not at all. She still wore the bruises to prove it. I’m honest, he had told her, it’s the world that’s awful.
He hadn’t yet lied to her.
Sansa whimpers and closes her eyes at the enormity of the realization.
“Still can’t bear to look”, he snarls, and hauls her in closer. She stumbles, a hand slapping up against his armour to steady herself, landing in something sticky. Blood, she realizes belatedly, and can’t help the revulsion that wells up in her. He leans in and for a swooping, surreal second she thinks he’s going to kiss her. She steels herself for it; a stolen kiss while he reeks of smoke and what she hopes is only blood dries between her fingers. The grace-note to my song, she thinks bitterly, and wishes she’d never heard of this hellish city burning down around her ears. Suddenly she’s on her back on the bed, and he’s above her, legs hemming her in and a dagger at her neck.
He tells her to sing for her life, tells her to sing Florian and Jonquil, even as the sharp tip of the dagger pricks the skin above the fluttering pulse in her throat. His hand shakes, though with nerves or drink she can’t say. Her own mouth is dry as Dorne, and she’s quaking with fear, every song she’s ever known flying from her mind all at once. Please don’t kill me, she wants to scream, but nothing comes out. He pushes the dagger in further, making her whimper, and then she remembers.
It’s not Florian and Jonquil, but it’s a song.
Gentle Mother, font of mercy,
save our sons from war, we pray,
stay the swords and stay the arrows,
let them know a better day.
Gentle Mother, strength of women,
help our daughters through this fray,
soothe the wrath and tame the fury,
teach us all a kinder way.
And then as suddenly as it had appeared, the blade is gone. He’s pulled away, a little, and in the darkness of the room she can feel a heaviness there, a tension, as though the silence is a length of summer silk taut and ready to rip. Some instinct makes her lift her hand, finding his cheek. The burnt flesh is ridged under her fingers, sticky with blood, and wet with something that isn’t. “Little bird”, he says again, quietly, in a tone she’d call broken in a lesser man. She sucks in a breath as he shoves off of her, and when he turns to leave, she thinks of a burning city, of Stannis and his raiders, of the single bolt on her door. She thinks of Ser Meryn, of Joffrey, of Ser Ilyn Payne, of her father’s head on a spike rotting in the southern heat, flies buzzing in his eyes. She thinks of the cold, of the snow, of the howl of wolves in the woods, of her family. Of Winterfell. Of the North.
Sansa thinks about going home.
He’s nearly at the door when she speaks.
“Five minutes”, she rasps out, and he freezes mid-step. “And then I’ll go with you.”
Sandor
Gods be good, the little bird had whispered when we first emerged into the streets, voice sick with horror. I can understand that, at least, even if her gods have long since abandoned this place, these people, assuming they ever existed at all. The city is alight. The ships in the harbour are burning, the bloody water’s aflame, and we’re in the thick of it. The wine leeches out the worst of the terror, but every scream makes my skin crawl.
There’s a lot of it, screaming, from men and horses and women, all of them trying to kill or avoid being killed by one another. There's that green flame whipping around like a viper, too, sticking to everything it touches. It had gone like a poison mushroom up into the sky when the Imp had set the signal, and now it's mating with its mundane red cousin, killing everything in its path.
With the little bird tucked shaking under one arm, I do the same, cutting down anyone who dares stand between me and the stables. There aren’t many so foolish as to try, but a few—enough—and my sword is blooded. So’s my face, and hers, under the ash.
Five minutes, she had asked for, and I had given her seven, but at least she’d made them count. Couldn’t do a thing about her face, being far too recognizable already with those high Northern features, but she’d done her best. Ash from the fireplace in her hair to darken it, a dark cloak to cover her fine dress, a pair of sturdy boots under it all. She’d hastily thrown a few things into her bag: a sewing kit and needle, two serviceable dresses, and all her jewelry.
Clever little bird, I think as I swing my sword one-handed and a red-cloak falls, near cleaved in two. Joffrey had liked her pretty, and there had been trinkets and tokens until nearly the end. Wouldn’t have done for a Lannister to look cheap, of all things, and while they don’t care a shit for the girl, the lions do love their pride. All that means now is there’s gold enough to travel with, even without my tourney winnings. From the way she’d dropped it all into a dirty stocking for safekeeping, she hadn’t cared for Lannister generosity. With the bruises on her arm from Joffrey’s latest attentions only now going the colour of goldenrod, I don’t much either.
She’d thrown a few small things in at the bottom of the bag, wrapped in a shift: the doll she’d dropped when I’d grabbed her like a brute, a man’s heavy ring on a long chain that she’d fished out of a doe-skin winter boot shoved into the back of her garderobe and a small book of prayers with a worn ribbon and tattered spine. She had been quick, efficient, but if it was the panic or practice that gave her the speed, I couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter any; not ten minutes after taking my damn song from her at knife-point she’d followed me out into the seventh hell.
The stables are still standing, though a groomsman tries to block our way. He demands—demands, the ballsy runt—to know who goes there. The white cloak only catches attention, so I gut him and down he falls. Dead men don’t talk, and what’s another corpse in a city populated by them? The little bird makes a raw noise as the carcass drops, but manages to retch away from both of our boots. “Enough of that”, I growl at her, all business in this hellhole. She shoots me a look of near-loathing and I glare right back at her, satisfied to see that she only cowers a little bit now. Why she’s come with me I’m sure I don’t know, but here she is and a dog she’s got; you’d think she’d be more used to snarls seeing as how she’s the one once had a wolf on a leash.
“You didn’t have to kill him”, she says softly, and I look at her, gaze flat. “Didn’t I? And when the horse is gone in the morning, and you and I with it, who do you think they’ll ask? Assuming he survives the night, of course”, I add, and she has the grace to drop her gaze, conceding the point. “I won’t have my head on a spike for not saying please, little bird”, I rasp, and she nods. “Are we stealing a horse, ser?” I feel my gut clench at the courtesy. I’m no ser and she knows it; the passive little punishment needles like a nettle, but I’m too wine-drunk and fire-mad to argue the point. “Not a ser”, I remind her harsh as I can manage, “And no. We’re taking mine.”
Down the hall, Stranger bugles a greeting at my voice and when we get closer, he stamps his hoof hard. Agitated, he is, a big black brute raring for battle. I rumble at him, soothe him with his name and a firm hand down his nose before going to saddle him, careful to keep a watchful eye on his teeth as he’s liable to take a bite out of me if I look at him cross-ways. Always liked him, the foul-tempered creature, but the girl looks at him as though he’s a dragon and not a destrier. “Frightened?”, I ask, and she cuts her gaze to me from under her lashes, face inscrutable. “He does not seem tame”, she murmurs, voice deep with misgivings, “nor particularly gentle.”
I wonder if she means me for a second, and then give that train of thought up for uselessness. She probably does, and she wouldn’t be wrong, as I’m neither and meaner than any horse into the bargain. “As you say”, I agree, and saddle the bad-tempered beast quickly, leading him out into the corridor. Outside, the battle seems to be reaching its apex and I know we’ve got no better time to make our disappearance. Swinging the little bird into the saddle and going up after her, I drive heels into Stranger’s flanks and head for the gates, stopping for no-one. The unfortunate gold-cloaks who try to intervene meet the sharp end of my blade and the Iron Gate is a few short moments of work before we’re on our way out of it, galloping down the road as though the fires of all the hells were at our back, which given circumstance isn’t half-wrong. I keep canny; the Lannisters and Tyrells are roaming about and while Baratheon’s troops appear to be retreating, I’d rather not take my chances against an army—any army. The little bird clings to my back like a barnacle, pretty face pressed tight to my armour. I remember that she’s never been a particularly competent rider, preferring the wheelhouse on the way south a thousand years ago. Nothing to be done about that now, but I tell her to hold on tight all the same and feel her arms tighten around my waist as Stranger careens down the road at breakneck speed.
We don’t stop until nearly dawn, when the green flames of the city are long out of sight and we have to stop or risk discovery on the road. The scent of cinders and smoke hangs pungent on the breeze, but with the whole kingdom ablaze there’s no escaping it. I turn to look and see her pale as a wight, eyes shock-wide and blue as a February sky. Pupils near pin-pricked, breath short with nerves and pain. Long night for the both of us, I think. She must feel the ache of the ride. Even I do and I’ve sat a horse since before I needed shaving; a highborn girl would be even worse for it. Still, she hasn’t once yet said a peep, and I can’t fault her grit. Swinging down off the saddle, I lift her out and put her to the ground, holding on for only a moment longer than like I should.
Light as a feather, the little bird is, tiny songbird bones under winter-pale skin even the King’s Landing sun couldn’t hope to touch. She staggers when I let her go, leaning against the horse to steady herself even as Stranger shudders and sidesteps. “Stop it”, I growl to the horse, but she misreads and looks at me with those blue eyes wounded, welling with tears. Seven hells, I think, and shake my head. I’m a soldier, not a septa—what have I gone and gotten myself into? Without the wine, the morning seems bleaker, her ashy red hair the only spot of colour, bright enough to hurt my eyes even as I can’t get enough of it.
“We’ll stay off the road during the day”, I tell her, voice rough with smoke and the night’s terror. “Safer.” She nods, and looks to me as though I know where to go. I don’t, not for true, but I’m no green lad and know how to keep my head down if needs must. Never needed it more than now, that’s truth too, with a stolen little bird relying on me. I’d promised to get her home, and then I’d frightened her badly with that damned dagger. She’d made me weep like the drunk craven I was and I can blame it on the wine or the fire if I want, but the fact remains I’d made her an oath.
Never sworn an oath to anyone, not even kings, and yet the little bird managed to extract one. A traitor I might now be, but as I pick through the brambles to find somewhere to nest for the day, I can’t help but think I’ve finally picked the right lord to serve. Behind me, I hear the girl give a little yelp as she gets another shin-full of little thorns and barely manage to stifle my growl.
Goes to figure it would be a Lady.
Sansa
He leads them through the thicket, following a path she can’t identify in the pre-dawn darkness. Winding around trees and down deeper into the forest until she can no longer see the road, the Hound keeps going with a dogged determination. She wishes that he would stop, or at least slow down; her skirts catch on every twig, scraping her shins raw as she struggles. Tangled in brambles, Sansa feels as though she’s being mauled by kittens, but still he wends on methodically as she hurries to keep up. The ride has left her thighs bruised and her hips aching, and she can barely stand when finally she breaks and swallows her pride.
“Please, Ser, slow down!”
Her voice is soft but within an instant he’s turned back and crowded her up against a tree. With her back to the bark and his scarred face in hers, breath sour with wine and last night’s vomit, she has never been more repulsed by him. Still, Sansa somehow knows he will not hurt her, even as he snarls. “Not a buggering Ser”, and it’s said a dangerous tone, lethal as a whetstone on steel. He could frighten her. He should, but having seen him shaking, having felt the tears she herself put on his cheek, she finds it hard to be scared. Still a stupid little girl, believing in songs and the chivalry of true knights. He's a killer, she tells herself, even as she lifts her eyes to meet his gaze unflinchingly. “I know”, she says, voice cool, “but neither are you a lord, and I needs must call you something.”
He barks out a laugh, baring his teeth at her. “Hound”, he growls, and she shakes her head slowly. Hound is what Joffrey had called him, or dog, names meant to degrade and insult. The thought of being anything at all like Joffrey makes her taste bile in the back of her throat. She can still see the little sneer on his lips when he had done something particularly vile, the madness in his eyes and worse, the enjoyment he took from hurting and debasing those under his power.
Like her.
Like the Hou— like Ser San—
“Sandor”, she says, stunned at her own audacity. He rears back from her, eyes wide for a moment, looking nearly as shocked as she feels. She wouldn’t dare hazard a guess as to the last time someone called him by his given name, but in the absence of alternatives, she’ll do what she must. She will not call him Hound to his face, nor dog; Clegane is his brother and after the nightmare he’d recounted to her on the tourney field, she would rather bite off her tongue than call him anything to do with him. It might be spiteful, and it’s certainly improper, but Sansa resolves then and there that if he does not allow her courtesies, he will accept her liberties.
In any case, there’s the illicit thrill of power she feels at the idea of having shocked him into silence. She knows that, flames aside, the Hound is not a man easily rattled.
He takes a step back and Sansa understands it for the concession it is, lifting her chin up. “Please slow down. Even were I not aching from the ride, your legs are much longer than mine. I would rather not be lost in the woods”. She knows she's made her point by the way his brows beetle down as though he had not considered that perhaps a slight girl, no matter how tall, might not be able to keep up with a soldier of his size. Obviously it has never yet been an issue for him, but now he must make accommodations. After all, she thinks petulantly, he asked me to come.
“Come on, then”, he mutters, but his voice has gentled some. She lengthens her stride as best she’s able, gritting her teeth the whole while. I have suffered through worse, she reminds herself sternly, and would walk to Winterfell if it meant never having to return to Joffrey’s tender mercies. Soon enough, they break through the trees into a small hollow, and in the weak light she sees him tie the horse to the tree. “Here?”, she asks, looking around. “Where else, girl?”, he sneers at her, misinterpreting her question. She had only meant to ask if this was the place and why. To her eyes, one patch of forest is the same as any other. “Were you expecting a feather-bed and silk sheets?”
She offers him a bland look, biting back a million retorts with the ease of long, necessary practice. After all, it had been the Hound who had taught her to hold her tongue and keep her opinions to herself. Save yourself some pain, he had told her after Joffrey had bloodied her lip and made her look at her father’s disembodied head going mottled in the heat, give him what he wants. He obviously expects her to be simpering and mostly useless, and perhaps she is. Perhaps, but she has never done anything to cause this enmity, nor the quicksilver shifts in his temperament that leave her reeling. Exhaustion makes her bold, and newfound liberty reckless.
“You are unkind”, she tells him flatly. “I was merely asking, and have given you no cause for your rudeness.”
She knows how prim she sounds even as she says it, and curses herself for her idiocy. She watches him warily, expecting a cuff around the head or simply for him to mount the destrier and disappear, leaving her here. Instead, he simply watches through those hooded eyes of his, and then nods, sharp. “Yes, here. The hollow—“, he pauses, jerking his chin towards the lip of the little hill, “It muffles sound, hides the horse. Keeps us out of sight which, with every king and his cunt wandering around looking for us, is more the better.”
It is no apology, but it is an answer, and in his own way they are the same thing. Sliding down into the little depression, she watches him for a moment and then nods, remembering her courtesies at last. “Thank you. I was curious.” He looks at her, implacable, and says nothing as he goes about the business of making camp. She watches as he lays out the bedrolls, perhaps a little closer than she would have thought necessary, and then goes about currying that dangerous-looking destrier of his in a stony silence until finally, she can stand it no longer.
“You were very brave”, she murmurs softly as she hunkers down on the thin roll of padded fabric, wrapped in her cloak with her saddlebag under her head. It’s a tentative peace offering, a salve to his ego after their quiet confrontation. Rifling through her bag, she finds what she’s looking for: a man’s carved signet. Sansa plays with her father’s ring, fingers anxiously tracing the wolf’s head etched into the onyx. “Thank you. For saving me. For taking me away.”
He barks a laugh at her, abrasive as windswept grains of ice. “Keep chirping, little bird”, he tells her, callously dismissive. “I held a knife to your throat and pinned you down. That wasn’t saving you.” Sansa nods, recognizing the truth in his words. “No, that wasn’t”, she agrees, equanimous. The burned lip twitches as she says it and she wonders what that means. In the morning light, dried blood flaking off his ruined face, he looks monstrous. Still, appearances can be deceiving; Sansa knows that for a fact. “But telling Joffrey the lie about the nameday—that was. He would have hurt me. If you hadn’t told him…” she shudders, voice going silent as images flash through her head unbidden and unwelcome.
Poor Ser Dontos, forced to drink his fill until he was filled with drink. Joffrey licking his earthworm lips as he watched eagerly and little Tommen and Myrcella, just children, forced to observe their elder brother’s sadism silently. And her, sitting there with horror thick in her throat, knowing this was the monster she in her ignorance had begged to marry. Sansa had blurted it out without thinking, a desperate cry of No, you can’t!, and Joffrey’s attention had turned to her with the razor focus of predator on prey. She had lied artlessly, knowing he knew she was lying, preparing herself for pain. She didn’t think he would have killed her, not like Ser Dontos, but after what seemed like a small eternity with Joffrey, Sansa knew there were worse things than oblivion.
“And then you intervened, telling him it was true", she says, voice absent with memory. "As though you were reminding him of something he should know, like water is wet and fire is ho—“, Her voice dies to a strangled silence as her cheeks flush at her misstep. She isn’t prepared for the wry snort escaping him, “—fire is hot”, he finishes with a dry chuckle. “You can say it, girl.” Her cheeks are so red they itch and she stammers, mortified, “I’m sorry—that was so thoughtless of me.” “Makes no difference to me”, he tells her, and she can see the amusement writ clear on that wretched, burned face. “I’m more aware than most how hot fire is.”
The gallows humour makes her eyebrows fly up in surprise even as she tries desperately to think of a way to recover the conversation. Her consternation earns her another snort from the Hound. He’s shifted to rest on the pallet, back propped against the wall of the ditch. Sword at his side, still armour-clad, he seems impenetrable, fearless. With his good side facing her, she can see the wry smile on his lips. For a moment, with his bitterness receded, he seems different; somehow more himself. “Go to sleep, little bird”, he tells her, his own eyes closed and head tilted back. “Before you faint from that blush.”
Curling up on her meagre bedding, Sansa does as he bids. Despite the grinding ache of her thighs and the sickening fear of discovery by a Lannister patrol, she quickly slips in to an exhausted sleep, and does not dream.