Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire

This is my first foray into ASOIAF fanfic territory, and I'm a tiny bit nervous! Don't get me wrong - this is very far from my first fic (it's actually my 22nd... O.O I've spent too much time on this website) - but I've always wanted to write my own SanSan fic, and I finally got the balls to publish it! So here we go. As for the numbers in the titles of the chapters - these were prompts from a list I got. The other numbers are scattered around my other prompt fics, I just took the ones that fitted each pairing the best for different fics! I hope you're all here for the ride (there'll be around 8 prompts, one every Sunday evening), and enjoy!

042. Scarred

"You'll be glad of the hateful things I'll do when you're Queen, and I'm all that stands between you and your beloved King."

But she did not become Queen, nor did Joffery remain her beloved, or king, for long. The vile prince, born not of his father, but his uncle, was cruel and vicious, and as unlike the Knights of fairy tales as possible - just as The Hound had warned her. It was not long after the death of her father and disappearance of her sister that Joffrey turned cruel, no longer concerned with how anyone would view how he treated her. The North was busy fighting a war, too busy to help her escape, and there no longer remained any Northerners but her at court. She was an outcast, by birth and fortune, so unlike how she'd always been until that point in life. She ached for the presence of her sister, or the warm embrace of her mother, or the soft chides of Robb. Anything, to help ease the pain.

But none came, and she was left alone; a sole wolf in a den of lions. It wasn't for months that the truth of his words came back to haunt her. It wasn't her first beating, and it wasn't the most vicious, but it had stripped her more than she'd ever wanted to be, mentally and physically. He'd stepped in, with kind words, and saved her from any deeper shame.

"You'll be glad of the hateful things I'll do."

She was. Indisputably, undeniably, overwhelmingly glad for anything he would do to buffer her pain at the hands of the newly minted 'king'. The bastard boy her father had found, and who had later run off, would be a better king than him, blacksmith's apprentice or no.

She was no longer a Queen in waiting, no longer protected by her dire wolf, abandoned by family. She had acquired fresh scars along her back and arms from her beatings, and just waiting for her fate amongst the vicious lions.

"Little bird." The voice was gruff, utterly cruel, but the kindest thing she'd come to know in all the land below the Neck.

She stirred, looking behind her from where she stood at the window, alone in her small room, the only solitude she possessed in the world. Even King's Landing and the sea beyond, it looked flat and plain when she thought of home and the glistening snows of her childhood.

"Yes, S- Clegane?" She still stammered over what to call him; he was the most like a knight she'd known in King's landing, loyal and honourable to her, no matter how gruff he was with his words.

"The King wants you." He almost spat the word king out, a treasonous poison rolling from the mockery of a title.

She steeled herself, preparing for anything - the whims of a teenaged king could be wild, and treacherous. Even with the arrival of his Grandfather, his moods dimmed very little.

She followed him, her face blooming a bruise almost as red as the burns running down the side of his face in a destructive river. She didn't know how much more of this daily torture her body could handle. Soon, she would be scarred beyond recognition, and beyond marriage-quality. Then she would be left alone in this world, cooped up like the little bird he said she was, just waiting to die as a shell of herself.

He did not beat this time, or command another to do his dirty work. The vile boy king simply introduced his betrothed, a beautiful girl who was everything she was not - innocent, happy, unscarred and protected by a buffer of roses - and commanded her to be married, for certain this time. And this time, to the very Hound who'd protected her from the very worst, over and over again. From the stiff clench of his jaw, she gathered the Hound already knew, and she had to employ the practice of years to school her face into terror and despair when, in her heart, it spawned with relief. She'd feared he would say the Imp, or even that beast known as the Mountain. The Hound was no punishment, but a welcome relief after the cruelty of all others in this bloody castle.

And that is how she came to stand in the grand, golden Sept of Baelor, a yellow cloak about her shoulders and some shard of hope slowly settling into her heart.

Marriage may not have been everything that she'd hoped for as a naive child; all flowers and caring Knights and beautiful children, but he afforded her protection from the cruel king who'd once been her beloved, if not company in the cold, long, lonely nights. He even voiced his treasonous thoughts to her, ones that he knew without even asking that she shared. And not long after their union, a battle came in the black of night. The Queen Mother had seen fit to not invite her, as she surely would've been 'too busy praying for her husband's safe return'. Of course she did, but she mainly looked out of the bleak window and hissed lowly in fear as green fire erupted over the sea. So entranced was she that, when heavy footsteps approached her door, she didn't notice - only the following voice.

"Little Bird," he called, tongue slurring in his mouth and breath vastly short. "Little bird, let's leave. I've had enough of this king, and by now I am the only thing left between him, and you."

She didn't even answer, but nodded, her fingers anxiously fingering the new scar she'd recently acquired on her arm. Even with his name as a form of protection, whenever he was sent away, the nightmare of old would return anew, until she could grovel her way to safety, or he would stumble across her beatings.

"Gather anything you need; quickly."

Without a word more between them, they gathered what they needed, she donned the King's Guard robe he'd once given her, still with his scent embedded in it, and they left, creeping through the castle in the inky night, and leaving the foul city of King's Landing behind not so long after.

With all the nightmares so long ago, all they had to remind them of their strife were the scars they both wore; her around her heart and all over her back, him on his face. Even if their marriage had petered out into flowers, and a new knighthood, and four beautiful children, a small part of them, against their will, would always remain in the scarred heart of King's Landing, and the place where he would stand in defiance of a King for her.

I know it's completely AU, but it's a version of events I've always wondered about. I really hope you enjoyed it! Please follow for updates and review if you've got time. Thanks!