Chapter Text
Opulence could be sewn into usefulness.
Everything Sandor Clegane spied in this solar was crafted with the intent of finery in everyday use. Highbacked chairs with fine wolves snarling at the edges of the arms and thick legs with wide, sturdy seats. A foreboding table made of the deepest cherrywood squatted in the middle of the room, flanked by matching overstuffed bookcases that reached their top shelves towards the vaulted stone ceiling. A large log that perched atop the embers of its predecessors popped and burned within the wide-mouth fireplace and cast an almost stifling heat across the room. As tall as this room was, with windows far above his head that filtered the weak winter light through its leaded glass, it felt cramped and well-used. A thick, black cloak trimmed with grey and black fur was thrown over the back of one of the chairs bolstering the fireplace and Sandor looked it over without touching it while he waited.
His midday meal had been interrupted by a mousy servant girl who had stuttered that he needed to follow her at once and he'd be afforded more time to eat later. Used to such demands after years of regimental servitude he'd scraped himself up and lumbered through the labyrinth that was the fortress of Winterfell. What he was unused to, however, was being shown into such a room, shut in and then left to his own devices to think.
The cloak looked to belong to the Bastard King, liking his dark furs the way he does.
Sandor sighed and shifted, comfortable to neither sit and rest nor to stand at attention. The time that had passed since he arrived was of no consequence but still felt like a waste of itself. His primary interest within the walls of this place was to keep to himself, his quarters, the Wolfswood hunters and the training yard. Thus far, the Bastard had managed to keep his wild clan of human wolves away and Sandor had no intent to change that before he managed to finish training his soldiers and leave for his post at Last Hearth, the Umber stronghold in the North. He knew this to be the Bastard's wish as well, the man focused solely on the preservation of the entirety of Westeros as a personal quest.
As long as he didn't die in King's Landing, this Clegane did not care.
Just as Sandor moved to the window and looked out at an internal view of a courtyard, the heavy door opened again. He turned to greet the Bastard King and stilled as he looked into the stoic and drawn face of the Lady of Winterfell, Sansa Stark. If Jon Snow was focused on the fight against the White Walkers, his sister had been left to focus on preserving the lives of their people. Fortunately, this seemed to be a task that the young woman excelled at.
A maid ducked in to close the door behind her Mistress and then a thick silence descended. Sansa stood by the fire, hands falling on the cloak over the chair and Sandor inhaled noisily as she bore holes into him with her sapphire blue eyes. Jon Snow had failed him.
"I want to ignore your presence here," Sansa announced and he noted that not only had her face, body and bearing transformed but also her voice. It bore the noble authority her Father had once spoke with, which on him had appeared terribly serious.
"I want to ignore my presence here," Sandor grumped in reply, as if her words hadn't stung. She nodded, tilting her flame coloured head towards him in agreement and sweeping towards the desk at the center of the room. Sandor rotated in spot, watching her like a wary stag. Her hair was only half braided, keeping it free of her face but falling wildly down her back. Her dress was high-necked and black, stiff and unyielding like armor; a deadly looking chain cinched her torso. The diamond-tip sleeves were the only girlish flair on what would otherwise be a decidedly war-like frock. Idly, he wondered when it had happened.
It didn't surprise him, at all, as it had been a fate he foresaw for the frightened little bird she'd been growing up in King's Landing under the Lannisters. It hadn't been a guess as to if she'd be taken and forced against her will, but who and when. What did surprise him as a result was that she was not the puddle of travesty he'd thought she'd be, or at least, not broken to the point of uselessness. Her demeanor in dressing indicated Sansa had remade her bones with Valyrian steel as a response. There were whispers that the battle of the bastards and reclamation of Winterfell was both started and won by Sansa Stark and until this moment, Sandor had been wont to believe it. The woman in front of him was showing those rumors to have been at least half true. Something in him was irritated by her attitude, despite the glow of respect it elicited in him.
She was looking down at a book of ledgers, her fingers trailing absently over complicated writing Sandor could not and was not interested in deciphering. A map was laid out on the table, heavy pieces pinning the edges of the scroll open crudely. Sandor sighed loudly and then turned to the door.
"Lady Stark," He grunted tersely in parting, her last name coming out hard and steely. He was almost to the door, his hand extending for the handle when she spoke again.
"Where did you go?"
He paused, not turning. The question had been small, barely uttered and only heard because the room was silent. His chest clenched with how young she suddenly sounded. Visions of her during the Bread Riots, dress ripped and head bleeding as she looked mournfully up at him while he'd been covered in blood, danced behind his eyes. Cutting through the arm that had grabbed her, he'd felt his place in the world like a stone in a wall, as if he'd been born and made to protect her in that moment. A child he constantly envisioned as a goddess she'd never be given the chance to become, the Maiden alive. A child he'd tried to teach to protect herself.
"I shouldn't have gone to you. It risked your life," Sandor finally ground out. His deepest shame, a couple hours stretch of wretched blind fear, the night of the Blackwater. His impulsive decisions, blunderous execution and blind drunkenness had roiled in his soul for years. His explanation to the wolfbitch that he'd intended to ransom her was a lie and his compulsion to return the brat had only been borne out of guilt for how he left Sansa that night and every night after. News of her marriage to the Imp had gored him worse than the boar that got Robert Baratheon. News of Joffrey's murder and rumors she had transformed into a wolf and disappeared into the night had only deepened it. What horrors could turn a little girl into a regicidal shapeshifter? He could only guess.
"My greatest regret in life would cost me everything I have now and yet, I long to go back and change my mind," Sansa said quietly and Sandor clenched his jaw as he glared at the back of the closed door. He dared not turn around and look at her, else he will be lost.
"They would have caught us and killed us. Me first, to punish you."
"I wish I could say I knew that and didn't want to risk you. But my motivations in all regards are selfish."
"Are you sorry for it?" Sandor asked. There was a pause and he heard her sigh.
"Although I want to be sorry for it, I cannot change it without changing the nature of who we were. A terrified girl and a terrified weapon."
"Speak for yourself," Sandor snapped at the assessment, finally turning around to glower at her. Sansa looked at him evenly with emotions he didn't know how to name dancing in her eyes. Despite her hard shell, she was still the well of anxiety and confusion she'd been the first time she had her moonblood. Her face was now that of a woman's though, with high cheekbones and pretty eyes the colour of the sky she was born under. A touch of the deepest summer on a woman raised to bloom in the cold like a winter rose. She was perhaps more striking now than she'd been in King's Landing, with a claspable jawline and gentle mouth that was now pulled into a hard line. Her eyes flashed at him.
"You left me."
"If anyone owes anyone anything, my lady, it is you," Sandor barked at her and Sansa almost flinched, her eyes instead narrowing into a dangerous glare. They were quiet a moment, Sandor trying to work out how badly he'd misstepped and Sansa clenching and unclenching her jaw, a tic she'd had since childhood. The fire popped and part of the log collapsed, sending a flurry of sparks up the chute.
"I owe you nothing either. If you were dead, I would cry upon your grave for the injustice you were handed but you stand in front of me now. Whole and alive," Sansa said as she walked around the desk. The mask had slipped back on and she was closed off, speaking through some rehearsed prose. She approached him and it was everything he could do not to back away.
She drew near enough she could touch him, as she had always done, and stopped short of actually doing so. Despite her height, she still tilted her head up to look into his face and some place deep inside him noted she looked upon him unflinchingly. In fact, her eyes seemed to travel the features of him like she'd done so a million times but was only really seeing it for the first time. He could see the flecks of green in the pools of blue and could smell the soft, floral oils in her hair. A long-buried instinct roared up in him like a wave against the surf, all kinds of want rushing through his limbs and chest, no different from the wicked cravings he had of her as a depraved guard. Sandor clenched his fists to remain impassive, not daring to inhale her scent any further.
"I'm a hard cunt to kill," He said staunchly and watched frustration flutter across her features before she stepped back and shook her head twice. He almost swore he saw her eyes roll slightly but she'd already turned away.
"Stupid man, I prayed for you. I – you, you left me in King's Landing and I figured it out but I never – you were going to die being the way you were," Sansa said angrily and her voice was rough with emotions as she cast about for the words. Sandor watched her with surprise mingling in him but his face impassive, a guard's trick. She gave him a heated, raging expression and threw her hand wide as she spat, "I prayed to Gods I'm not sure I believe in anymore, to gentle you. To save you from battles you cannot win but would go fight anyway."
He sneered at her, deciding that that desire was from the same mind that painted Knights as heroes. Songs and poetry with her, always.
"You prayed to gentle one of the only cunts willing to go with your brother north of the wall," He informed her flippantly and was pleased when Sansa bared her teeth at him.
"I prayed to save one of the only people who never sought to use me for himself. I was right, you didn't go to help Jon – you went because you lacked cause and you're still the same savage animal you were trying so hard to be under Joffrey," Sansa raged at him and he smiled cruelly as she got closer again and glared up at him, cheeks flushed with temper.
"Maybe your Gods don't care about your pitiful attempts at atonement but instead focus on their war on the living," Sandor gloated with a smirk. He knew was causing hysterical fury to claw up the back of her throat. She got the same look on her face that her Lady Knight Brienne did when she wanted to gut a man.
"I just wanted to thank you and as always you turn it into something as horrible and twisted as you," Sansa hissed at him and Sandor snarled a laugh, the same one he uses on enemies he hunts down.
"You wanted to look upon your gentle giant and feel better, little bird? You wanted to thank me for not doing what? Pinning you down, spreading those nice white legs? Ripping those summer silks clear from your body?" He laughed again and her face shuttered and closed down, eyes going hard and her lips pursing in disdain. He leaned closer to her, keeping her eyes with his and knowing how crazed he probably looked.
"Every rape and ravage that I've ever seen I've done to you a thousand times in my head. Sometimes you scream, sometimes you sigh. And only now am I meeting you as a woman. Does that help you, little bird? Does that remind you that I am a wild animal, a dog, and that I'm not your fucking pet?"
Her Tully blues widened and her mouth was left slightly open in a soft 'o' as she stared at him. Sandor all but panted from the effort of finally spitting those words and he clamped down on the instinct to want to take them back. He relented as he took a deep, shuddering breath.
"Forgive a man for wanting to run from that," He finally said as an afterthought. She was looking hard at him, her eyes going from place to place on his face in desperate search of something and he found it excruciating to look back at her after what he'd said.
"...but you didn't," She replied lowly and Sandor's eyes slid closed as his chest throbbed, his heart expanding in the face of her acceptance of his demons. As soon as those words had slipped from his mouth he thought – hoped – that he'd lost her. That she would shut down and wall him behind the ice she'd built up around herself, in her dark castle and darker gowns. Put him in a place he deserved, which was not a place where he could be prayed for.
"Sansa," He breathed in exasperation, opening his eyes to find her looking at him with new determination on her face. He didn't like that.
"Out of everyone in the world, you didn't. I may have been a girl but it's not like I didn't know how trapped I was, how dangerous they were. I didn't think you were just following me around, taking me to Joffrey's tantrums and covering me after because we were friends but don't you see that I hoped that we'd be so in spite of it? Because you were the only person I had left! It doesn't matter to me – what you said, what you did, what you thought – because it's what you didn't do that matters," Sansa flung at him and he felt it like she'd splashed water in his face.
"Flinch all you want, you never so much as made me feel like you cared about me as a person but you also made me feel that you didn't want to crush me. You...you always saw something else," She explained softly and Sandor did look away from her then, shooting daggers into the fireplace with his eyes.
"Songs for your storybook, little bird," He rebuked and envisioned the hurt in her eyes that he wouldn't look to see for truth. He wanted to leave this room, leave this castle and breathe in the sharp snow of the woods for clarity. Everything in this room was hot, scented and complicated and he suddenly longed for the simplicity of mercifully wringing a rabbit's neck.
"Maybe so but the nights after I left King's Landing, whenever I could see the sky I would think of you and where you might be, what you might be doing. Stories of the Saltpans made it to where I was and I had to listen to them talk about you as if -," She trailed off and chewed her lower lip, a wrinkle of concern appearing between her eyebrows.
"As if I was Gregor," Sandor said stiffly, cold anger solidifying in his belly. She nodded and he watched with more interest than he'd admit as she worried her lower lip with her teeth absently before speaking.
"That's how I knew it wasn't you. You'd never be like him. But they had your helmet and...the only reason I could think of that they had your helmet is that you were dead and then...then I cried. One night for... every time you saved me," She whispered and peeked at him, eyes round and almost fearful that he would become enraged that she mourned him.
"If I had taken you on the night of the Blackwater like I wanted, I would have killed you rather than let the Imp have you or Cersei send for my head," Sandor told her bluntly and Sansa stepped closer, looking fiercely into his eyes. She crossed her arms over her chest and he got the impression she wasn't at all cowed by his words as intended.
"Why do you try to scare me? You know it won't work."
"Why does a dog bark at thunder, little bird? It's what we do."
"If we're going by animals, I am not a bird. I'm a wolf," Sansa tilted her head, her eyes probing the shiny red scars taking over one side of his face gently. "Which is why I can run with dogs."
"This dog has running orders. From your brother, the Bastard King," Sandor reminded her instead in an attempt to create distance. She was already too close, saying things that sounded too close to something a very deep, dark part of him wanted to hear.
"Are you such a monster that you only lust after little girls?" Sansa asked him pointedly and Sandor inhaled sharply, backing away from her and swiping a big hand over his face in stress. He wanted to throw her practical, reliable chairs across the room and tear the tapestries and maps from the walls.
"What," He snapped through thinned lips, "are you asking me?"
"Do you still think of ravaging me?" She asked in such a calm, imperious voice that he wanted to hit her. This entire situation was painful, humiliating and she wouldn't leave it alone. His hackles were going up because she had backed him into a corner and only half of him wanted to fight it. He glared at her, mind warring with itself before he finally bit out, "Yes."
Incredibly, she seemed to relax and her eyes softened. The fire cracked and snapped loudly, flickering light across her dainty features. Sandor couldn't process what was going on and he jerked away from the hand she was moving to touch his bare forearm, unable to stop the rising well of panic over her insanity and how close he was to following her into it.
"Don't," He warned her and Sansa frowned at him.
"Don't what? Touch you? Shall I hold a dagger to your throat and demand a song?" She challenged him and he swallowed thickly, anger passing through him at her accusation.
"You could sing Florian and Jonquil and still not understand what song I have been asking for," Sandor quipped at her and she caught the insult as readily as he sent it, eyes slitting at him.
"Is that not a song of touch?" She asked him in that same direct, pointed way that she used to ask where the Godswood was when she first kept getting lost in the Red Keep. Sandor cursed and stepped away from her, a hard expression slipping over his features as he realized how badly he wanted her to touch him. How all his thoughts were slowly starting to rotate around her, freshly awoken from their forced slumber years prior and his instincts were making wild images and thoughts from her words.
"You are no longer a child but I'm an old fucking man. Some things in this world are the way they are because they can't be anything else," He told her flatly and Sansa looked at him pleadingly, her blue eyes shining with things Sandor wouldn't even allow himself to think.
"I thought you hate liars. Do the rules of the world count when it's ending?" Sansa demanded of him, ire in her face as she couldn't find purchase in his defense. Sandor thought of men and boys, screaming in agony as they died on the battlefield and the times he'd given the gift of mercy. He thought of the women he'd pretended not to see escaping into forests with babes on their teats to stifle their cries. He thought of the permeating cold and sightless eyes of wights, marching on a frozen tundra. He thought of Sansa, of her red hair and smooth skin and the tears she'd already shed for him at the thought of his death. He thought of all the ways she made him weak, willing to die for the stupidest things, including her.
"We still live in a world where ladies do not fuck their retainers, lest they lose their position and become common whores," Sandor lashed at her with his words and they landed true. Sansa blanched, paled and then collected herself into a silent fury. If the room hadn't been so warm, Sandor would have assumed ice spread across the glass panes of the windows at the look she gave him.
"Loyal to the end, Clegane. You must always protect the Seat, as you do."
"I'm protecting -," He argued back and Sansa turned and swished back to the desk, looking disinterested and waving her hand dismissively while she interrupted him.
" - thank-you. You may leave."
The tone of finality in her voice shut the entire book on the subject. He stared, flummoxed for a brief moment as she sat and pulled material towards herself, positioning the candle so she could bow over the scroll to read it. It was as if he wasn't there and this conversation hadn't happened, a feat of emotional acrobatics he hadn't seen even Cersei be capable of. Something in him went cold with dread at the realization of what had transpired and then been crushed and how she would handle that. Rage simmering under his diaphragm, he wrenched the wood door open and let it boom shut behind him as he stormed through the castle and out into the slowly descending dark. So powerful was the pounding of his blood in his ears that he didn't hear the strangled sob that followed him from the room.