Disclaimer: I do not own Game of Thrones nor its characters. They belong to HBO, GRRM, and whoever else has the rights.
Note: Written for the sansaxsandor community's comment ficathon, for the prompt 'Sandor is a werewolf/becomes a werewolf'. Heavily AU, influences from the books, and a large dash of mysticism/fantastical elements.
A Sweeter Master for My Weary Soul
She was born of spring, but winter is in her eyes and her bones. She sings to him, like a sweet, little bird, and she calls to him, like the moon swollen to fullness. And when the sun gleams brightly on her hair it dances like flames in the wind.
He is a creature of lusts and instinct; born of blood and bite and beast. He exists to kill and thrives on the hunt. He has tasted fire and his brother's need for submission. He has served cruel and cunning masters; those of flesh and those of vice. He is a creature of lusts, but chains have worn and weighed him down.
It is autumn when he catches his first whiff of her. A sweet tang in his nostrils, like summer wine with a softer kick. A longing he hasn't known stirs in his belly, deep within his gut; and then he runs.
All fours, paws to the ground, nose to the air.
With wild dogs. With wolves. With no one.
He runs and he howls; no thought to the masters he has left behind, the chains he's breaking. He has always been a creature of lusts and a creature of instinct; he has bowed his head and bared his throat. He has submitted to his masters, because without them he is alone.
(The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.)
Instinct told him to submit. Instinct tells him to run. So he runs.
A lone wolf in the autumn grass. But it feels like winter when he reaches her; a wildflower amidst the snow, she still smells like summer wine.
Exhaustion takes over, and he collapses at her feet. He closes his eyes as he feels the coolness of her hands on fur, hears the sweet song of her voice, and savors the pressure of her head resting on the softness of his throat.
Instinct tells him to submit. He has never listened so eagerly.
They run together, he and his winter bird born of springtime. He likes the smell of her companion, her wolf side manifested at all times. He likes to see her staring at him through her Lady's yellow gaze.
They run under clear skies, snow giving beneath their paws; and they sing together.
He does not know which song he likes more; the howl she lets lose from her Lady's throat, or the songs of pretty maids and valiant knights that come from her pretty, pink lips. He knows the song he will love most is the secret one she will give him after the next phase of the moon, when autumn has fully passed and winter grows strong.
She brought him before her father that day, after he rested with her in the godswood. In his human skin and human clothes borrowed from someone conveniently his size. She swore he could be trusted; even her Lady and the other direwolves knew it.
The mother and the father had stared at him, cool grey and cold blue, while murmurs of Lions stirred in the halls.
But the direwolves howled for him, and his little bird sang for his cause, and new chains were forged, weightless and loose.
'We will marry,' she had said as she met his gray gaze. She likes to stroke his hair the way she strokes his fur, and the ruined mess of the right side of his face only phased her the first few days. 'We will marry in the godswood, before the heart tree where you found me,' she sings to him even now, back in her human skin and flushed with the excitement of the run he and her Lady took her for.
It is a foreign concept to him; one he had given up and one that instinct cares little for. But instinct also tells him to submit.
And so he submits, and he waits - and he runs with her inside her Lady.
It is a full moon the first night they are married. There was ceremony and drink and rowdy noises to rile him up more, so that at the first mention of bedding he had grabbed his little bird before another man could touch what is now his.
She is timid, his little bird, in their warm room with the windows open for the chilly winter breeze. She is like summer wine in his nostrils, and now on his tongue, under his fingers; pale skin flush and icy eyes melting. And she whispers, his little bird, 'Can we run first?'
Because his little bird can only fly when she wears her Lady's fur.
She was born of spring, but winter is in her eyes and in her bones, his little bird. She has claws, and she has teeth.
He is a creature of lust and instinct - and both are only her.
They run together in the cold nights of winter, snow giving underneath their paws, he and his little bird inside her Lady. They run together and howl together; and in the still dark hours of the morning, when they return, she gives him her secret song.
And then she rests her head on the hollow of his neck; always bared.