A/N: Set years after this universe's Battle of Blackwater, Sansa Stark hires outlaw Sandor Clegane to help her out of her gilded cage and to San Francisco, where her father's former men are told to be working and where hopefully she can reclaim her family fortune and make a fresh start. Will eventually include other characters. Story will not be told in a linear fashion and will be updated whenever I feel so inclined. Each chapter will be titled with the approximate date of the chapter's events.
Will include gun fights, salon brawls, shooting lessons, Arya as Annie Oakley, run-ins with the law, outlaws, and bandits, and a train robbery or two. Prompts are welcome.
Starts in 1869; Sansa is 19, Sandor is 34.
JULY 1869
He found the little bird in an upstairs room of a brothel in a tinderbox town that was lacquered with red dust and the shattered dreams of the tired, the weak, the alcohol-laden few who couldn't quite stretch their ambition enough to make it. There were feathers in her hair, hands folded demurely into the deep creases of her skirts. Sandor recognized the dress as one her had father bought for her, after he first struck gold back in '64.
Now it's stained, indecently hemmed, and spotted with liquor and the cut of the neckline too low—the little bird has grown quite a bit since old and dead Ned Stark had had the satin and lace gown made for his eldest daughter.
Sandor ties Diablo to a post outside the whorehouse, leaving the old black warhorse to kick or bite anyone who would try to steal him.
Sandor tosses the brothel owner—a mustached man who Sandor cannot quite place, whose smile is tarnished by a patina of slime—a purse of gold, and climbs the stairs to second floor, to the rooms where the girls are kept. He is thankful that the little bird has at least not been reduced to hang out the front door of the saloon in her petticoats to holler at drunks, or rather that the quality of this house does not lend to it, or require it of her.
He had only been intending to pass through the washed-out town (the gold long gone, most of the business with it, and only those who made enough to live comfortably or not at all remained) the night before… until he heard her singing, tipped his head towards the red light in the window, and saw her sitting at the window of her room, singing like the little bird she was.
Is?
Was.
Sandor thinks she might not chirp much these days. He had heard rumors, after he split from the Lannisters, that Geoffrey had abandoned Miss Stark in some dusty little town like this for the favor of Miss Margery Tyrell.
After sending his goons after her daddy, of course.
Maybe now she sings because the owner tells her to, to attract customers. After all, she must be a favored girl to have the front room.
He doesn't bother to knock on the door that he knows to be hers, just pushes his way through the door frame, and then lingers there, awkwardly, in the aftermath of his decision. He second guesses.
Maybe she chose this house; there isn't much by way of law in this wild Lannister west. A lady needs protection out here-a good brothel will protect a woman from a man who seeks to take what he wants without the permission granted by taste and coin. And he has certainly patroned these kinds of houses enough to not judge the girls who powder their faces and smile prettily for coin and safety and a full belly.
(After all, Sandor Clegane reminds himself, he's done worse for money. Much worse, if he remembers the bruises on Sansa Stark's face well enough. Enough, he remembers, and lets out a dry chuckle. Words, in the Lannister gang, weren't much, aren't much. And he is a man who has always prided himself on his… acts, as they are... and he didn't do a whit to save her.)
But God—heaven knows she could make a living sewing pretty dresses, or as some rich man's wife. It was a choice, he wants to believe. But there aren't many choices for a lady in a place like this; they wind up some man's property by one way or another. At least this way, Sandor hopes, she doesn't have to pretend to love the man who has bought her, and she doesn't have to warm his bed.
He can understand why she'd choose this, after Geoffrey.
Sansa looks up at him through her auburn waves with a smile not nearly as dainty as her gently-clasped hands.
"I sang to you, sir," she chirps from her seat at the window. "Was wondering if you had heard."
His mind swirls with dust and clouded memories. This isn't the little girl he left behind the night of the firefight, this is no pale and shaking thing.
No, Miss Sansa Stark is all fire and brimstone—red satin, red hair, redder lips, a wolfish smile full of promise and laughter.
"I'm no—"
"I know," she answers, almost teasingly. "It was said in jest." She pauses thoughtfully, standing; delicately brushes the creases from her dress with porcelain hands.
She makes the heat coil and churn inside her little room with a tight-lipped pause; Sandor shifts on his feet uncomfortably and lets her do so.
"I let the owner of this… establishment believe that he's keeping me here. Peter. He was a friend of my mother's, when she was a girl. Not entirely sure what happened since, but…"
"What?"
Sansa laughs again, endearingly. She moves from the window to her vanity, picks up a horsehair brush from a tarnished silver tray, and pulls it through her neat curls. "I've learned a few things, Sandor Clegane. And I reckon you've done the same, in the years since we last met."
Last met. Such a harmless way of putting that he had held a knife to her throat and made her sing.
"Yes…" And her damned sister had left him to die, before a Jesuit missionary found him. Where in hell is she going with this?
He tries to separate the brothel noise—the squeak of a mattress from the room over, the banging of a headboard against the wall, moans drifting through windows flung open in consideration of the sweltering heat—from Sansa goddamn Stark, sitting before him as alive and whole as he left her, sweat dotting her painted nose, smiling at him.
"One thing I've learned…" she pauses, not thoughtfully this time. Her eyes deaden in a way that makes him want to demand whether or not she is here by choice, but it's none of his damn business so he doesn't. "You owe me a debt, I believe. And I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna catch up with you again."
It's a fair bet, although Sandor doesn't want to think of how he might never leave, now that he knows that she's here. (He died with her on his lips, after all, with flames as red as her damned hair on his mind like hellfire.) He's a dog, and he's been without a master for far too long. And Sandor Clegane isn't the kind of man to sputter at the idea of serving a lady.
He'd worship at her altar if she'd let him; Sansa Stark was the only virgin he prayed to, getting clay and dust from the whitewashed floors on his knees. She was everywhere, back then—her fingers in the teasing summer winds, her imagined wrath in the violent storms, her cruelty in his shaking withdrawals. She was not a girl, but a goddess of nature. And here, she dares to sit a woman, a challenge to every fever-wracked illusion he reached out to touch with his damp and shaking fingertips.
It almost makes Sandor hate himself more.
"What do you want from me?" he rasps, shutting the door behind him when she motions him closer, to sit on the bed.
"What do you want from me?" she asks coyly in return. "You paid Peter the coin to come to me."
He balks, and she gives a tittering laugh.
"Like I said, I let him think he can keep me here. But he's taught me a little too much in my time, and his. I have the money to leave, Mr. Clegane, and the inclination to. I'm no little girl anymore, and I'm no kept woman, and I do not owe him any debts that he would imagine. But I have neither a horse or protection, and if I recall correctly, you could provide me with both. So, if you don't mind me mentioning—"
"My debt, as you're inclined to call it." He gives a dark laugh; an echo of when his alcohol glazed-evenings painted her in deep oils and inappropriate gazes. How could she feel safe with him?
You came to her, you blasted fool.
"I could call it other things." Her tone is almost a threat, her smile the barest gleam of a dagger.
She has learned.
Sighing, she turns away from him, crossing her legs at her ankles under her voluminous skirts. The evening is deep hues of purples and reds, the heat of the sun barely diminished in its absence a reminder of their sins and all that they'll never escape, not really. Not that they really want to.
"So you want to leave, Miss Stark?"
She hums, before nodding. "I want to leave."
"And where do you want to go?"
Her lips tighten, her eyes looking steady out the window where the din of drunks and working women, poor men and their shouts, horses and the clucks of chickens rises from the street like heatwaves. "Home's gone." She swallows hard. He may have followed her into hell, but she deserves better than that. The little bird wants out of her cage, however painful it may be. She needs a plan. "San Francisco, maybe? It's a proper city now. And I still have my name. Some of my father's men wound up there, I've heard."
He nods; she watches him in the mirror, before looking down at her lap.
"We'll need to leave after business hours, but before Peter wakes up."
That almost answers his question of how she got there. That, and the not entirely sure what happened since. He doubts the real answer is something simple, but again, he won't ask her. Even still, he'd as good as slit the man's throat while she readied what she needed.
"We can be long gone before that."
She nods again.
"We'll have to travel light little—Miss Stark."
She gives him a strange smile. "You can call me that, if you like."
"Call you what?" he bristles, uncomfortable. He didn't mean to call her…
"Little bird." Her finger-almost playfully, in a feminine way that she has always had-trace over the feathers in her hair, before her face darkens again. "Everyone here knows me as Elaine. Just so you're aware of it. Peter, he… but when I was your little bird, I was still Sansa. Besides," she says with a laugh, "it'd be nice to think there was something still innocent about me."
Innocent, perhaps not, Sandor thinks. Maybe only in his fever dreams. Geoffrey had peeled it off of her first, with his greedy, wormlike fingers. And now this Peter. But still, Sansa Stark is no fallen woman. Nothing pitiable, nothing graceless. She is not meant for this town of sadness and liquor-soaked delusions.
(No, he thinks. If nothing else, she was pushed, the red light hanging from her windowsill. But he does not think her fallen at all, just a glimmering jewel in a place she needs to leave. They need to remove themselves from this wild place, this tiresome game, and land barons who rule in place of the law, crown themselves kings over dismal little swallows of land. Then she can fly.)
"We'll be miles gone by dawn, little bird."
She smiles at that, but trembles.
What makes you think you will be safe with me?
He had promised her once, when he could not. He wants to laugh-the minister spoke of penance, and here the universe has spat him back at Sansa Stark's dainty feet. Penance, then. He can take a hint.
He keeps his promise.
By morning, the only red lights are the ones breaking over the horizon.
Reviews are very much appreciated, but thanks for reading all the way to the end!