A/N: Unbeta'd, English is not my first language
Concrit, corrections and feelings are all welcomed in the review box!
All rights belong to George R.R. Martin
"That was the damn bloody stupidest knightly act I've ever seen, little bird."
She walked before him, unreachable and shimmering, her head tilted sideways to observe, a small smile playing on her lips as she said, "You should be grateful for the stupid things I do, when I am all that stands between you and our beloved queen."
Sandor Clegane was being supported by two guards as he limped behind her, too shaken and beaten and weary to conjure up a fitting retort.
When the huge black night-scaled beast had unfurled behind the silver queen's elevated platform in the clearing, the constricting arms and hands that'd held him prisoner swiftly let go. The dragon stretched its leathery wings, wide as a warship's sails, and began a lazy crawl, sending small tremors through the earth as it slowly clawed his way to him, small plumes of smoke escaping from between its jaws and flared nostrils.
The realization that he was helpless, that even if he could've clutched the reassuring grip of a sword in his hand, he would not be able to overpower the threat, hit him like a blow in the gut. A distant memory echoed. The Hound foolishly brandishing a sword, boasting. So long as I have this, there's no man on earth I need fear. How that has been proven wrong again and again, he thought bitterly, and then ceased to think at all.
He couldn't repress the shivers, nor the nightmarish visions and tears that blurred his sight. The gasps and jeers of the crowd behind him, the shush of his blood rushing in his ears; as the drum of his heartbeat pounded louder and faster with every pulse, it muted all other sounds. The faint waft of sulfur turned his stomach and made bile surge up. NO, thoughts jumped out from a primal, deeply rooted cache in his mind, NO, NO, NO, not that, not FIRE.
All else evaporated.
The Elder Brother might've enabled him to silence the consuming hate and anger he had nourished for most of his life, but the fear of fire had been seared into his flesh, as much part of him as arms, eyes or heart.
Patches of grass smoldered with every stunted claw the huge winged beast advanced.
By the time the first terrorizing flames licked the dragon's mouth and he could discern the individual scales that constituted its armor, he had fallen to his knees on the moist green. The burned half of his face twitched madly and ghost pain crawled over his skin with cruel hot fingers, sizzling and lashing and melting, a mock play of his own mind as the imminent inferno scorched its last coherent thought. The tattoo that buffeted his ears dissolved in chaos. His world shrunk to the abysmal dark glow of the lizard's eyes.
A sob escaped his lips.
Unbidden, a shadow of grey, white and red flashed before him and obscured his gaze into hell. For a moment, the silhouette appeared to him like one of those abnormal direwolf pups the Stark children let trail behind them, now grown into full majestic stature, another myth present to witness his death. It howled. He trembled.
"DROGON! Get back! I command you!"
The shout from the Targaryen queen, followed by the cracking of a whip and a roar from the black winged lizard, ruptured his feverish phantasm. The wolf transformed into a woman.
She had her back turned to him, auburn hair flowing and falling in soft curls at the curve of her lower back, clad in a sumptuous gown of grey silk and white velvet. Tall and dignified and graceful, her pose was enough to betray her identity, for it had already defined her when she was still a child. Had his senses not broken down like they had, seeing Sansa Stark again would've shocked him profoundly.
As the blurs retreated to the edges of his sight, he sucked in deep, helpless breaths to sustain his teetering body. The humid strands of grass under his fingers had never felt so fine, the light touch of a breeze on his face was a mercy.
"What is the meaning of this, Lady Sansa?" Daenerys Targaryen snapped from her vantage position. "I was not under the impression you cherished a death wish."
Steadily Sandor could hear the murmurs rise of the crowd of courtiers and guards, still a safe twenty yards back from where he fell. The black beast seemed to have disappeared while he recovered, flown off in search of another prey.
"Pardons, Your Grace. I had only little time to act, when you decided to condemn this man at hearing his name." He drank in the familiar cadence and singsong of her voice like the first swill of water after a day under the scorching sun.
"Which is my prerogative, as queen, as the Mother of Dragons. His blood savaged mine. I resolved to revenge my family's wrongdoings any way I could a long time ago. What the Cleganes did to my niece and sister-in-law was atrocious."
"Your Grace. Dany." She said, supplicating. She took a step forward to the heightened platform where a long elegant bench had been installed for the queen. "I've come to know you as a strong-willed, honest and fair-minded woman. I do not believe killing Sandor Clegane will lighten any debt you might feel toward the gruesome past of your family. It was not his shame to bear, but the monster that was his brother."
He saw Sansa tilt her head slightly to the right, a subtle glance to the person seated not far from the torn queen. Gods, he thought, the dwarf. He's still alive, the pest. Things had gone so fast when he was hauled before Daenerys Targaryen, he hadn't even noticed the little Lord Imp lurking next to her.
If the queen kept him close and fed, the brother of the Kingslayer…
Sansa's gesture had not escaped Daenerys Targaryen. Her downturned mouth and narrowed eyes turned into a frown, her hostile stance lessened.
Some of the sheep behind him felt the need to bleat their disagreement with what the little bird said. "He's a rabid dog!", "Butcher of Saltpans!" and "Craven deserter of the Kingsguard!" they baaed. It stung him little, these flowery titles they bestowed.
"Silence," Daenerys said, raising her hand. The shouting dwindled. The queen spun on her boots and strode with a determined step to the lounging bench she'd leapt off in fear and anger to call back her winged son. She seated herself calmly, taking the time to rearrange her skirts, before she spoke up.
"I understand what you're trying to convey, Sansa." She stressed the little bird's name, an unspoken reprisal for using hers, and their apparent mutual appreciation, as a leverage in this provisional outdoor court. "But I am far from done with this man. As the lords and ladies have supplied, there are other crimes he has to answer for."
"And he will, I'm sure. In time. When a fair trial can be arranged. Until then, I ask you humbly, Your Grace, to leave this man under my charge."
He could see curiosity getting the better of the silver-haired queen. She raised her eyebrows in surprise after Lady Stark's request. He was feeling much the same. What is the little bird thinking? Does she want to make sure she can take her own personal revenge for my awful treatment of her?
It was then she chose to face him full, slowly turning on her feet. The curtain of auburn locks gave way and framed her Tully blue eyes. His heart clenched. In defiance of everything he might've guessed they would bare, he saw relief.
He gradually took in her image, her body, the way she had grown into her mature frame, her lovely features that had lost their baby-fat, her curves, her elegant hands lingering by her sides.
She is a woman, he realized nonsensically, as he had known that all along.
As a smile curled around her lips, he found the strength to push his weight off the ground and stand on his legs, though a dizzy spell almost made him falter midways. He grit his teeth and closed his eyes to stop the world from spinning as he rose.
When he opened them again, he found himself looking down on her, but not as much as he used too. She was of a height with his chest now, and stood just a few feet away. What is she thinking, crossed his mind once more, even more puzzled then before.
"Very well," the queen said, cutting through the bubble of their quiet reappraisal. The both of them turned their heads toward her at the words. "As long as you understand the consequences should Clegane turn up lost later, Lady Stark, I see no reason to deny you this. As soon as we are back at my palace, I will deal with him." The Imp opened his mouth but apparently reconsidered and voiced no audible complaints, and neither did their public.
The guards ushered him into a large canvas tent, and dumped him on a chair. Sansa seated herself across of him, by a round table. As his two escorts exited, silence filled the distance between them. She focused her gaze on her hands and looked deep in thought.
He scraped his throat. "little bird-"
It made her look up, yet any emotion stayed veiled behind passive features. "Please, call me by my name."
He nodded. "Lady Sansa," he said, and immediately fell silent. He did not know how to proceed. One moment he had been traveling to Oldtown, riding Stranger on a track a little ways off the Roseroad, the next he had been surrounded by a guard patrol, was roughly manhandled and dragged before the bloody dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen herself, who had been sojourning close by together with her whole buggering court. Who wasted no time in setting her black beast on him. If not for Sansa Stark, he would've been roasted like a suckling pig. And now she sat before him, the beautiful maiden who blossomed into a stunning, self-assured woman.
"Why did you-," he couldn't get his tongue to form the words 'save my pathetic arse with that dangerously stupid move', for fear of what it implied. His weakness. His utter breakdown. His barely averted nightmare. In fear of the answer. Her possible motives. Her thoughts. Her feelings. Her heart.
After a lengthy pause during which she studied his face with curious eyes, she spoke up. "I settled the score. We're even now."
"Even?" he said, uncomprehending.
"For the riot. You came back for me. Saved me, then, from the maddened mob. From death, or worse. And before that, when I was contemplating, up on the battlements, after Joffrey forced me to watch my father…" she said, and Sandor remembered.
"That was nothing. Just a man guarding his master's favorite toy," he responded flatly, privately mocking himself for the half-truths he served her up, and hastily tried to distract her. "Besides, those are two separate incidents, so that doesn't make it even, does it?"
It was Sansa's turn to be surprised and raise an eyebrow. "I would think jumping in front of a crouching and fuming dragon would go quite a way to pay back what I owe you." Speaking the words made her shiver, the first hint she'd emitted that her reckless deed had affected her. Smiling tremulously, she said, "I try not to think too hard of what could've happened, but I fear I might be in for a few sleepless nights."
He mulled over her words. "So you acted like a bloody airheaded knight from one of your beloved stories, because you thought you owed it to me. Why keep me after? Why ask Her Grace the honor of my leash?" he rasped. The Elder Brother had buried the Hound and taught him to be a man again, but Sandor still occasionally caught himself referring to his beastly mask.
Her carefully studied demeanor fractured even more, as she dropped her eyes and started picking on a loose thread of her gown.
"You were kind to me, back in King's Landing. Horrible most of the times, but kind too. It was unjust of Dany to condemn you like that on grounds of your name and reputation." When she looked up, he saw a flicker of the beleaguered child he knew in the Red Keep, afraid and uncertain. "You once told me you were honest. Tell me, do you want to live?"
"Seven hells, Sansa, you're not finished saving me, are you?" He sucked in his next words, why she would bother with him just because he had offered her some slivers of kindness mixed in with a flurry of hateful taunting acts. That he didn't deserve her misplaced affection. That he had been a horrible person, no chivalrous knight.
He released a sigh. "Yes. I want to live."
The child melted away, and the woman reappeared in all her confidence. "That is all I need to know now. We better get to working on your defense, then. But aren't you forgetting something?" She looked at him pointedly.
He blanched once more on her meaning, but then a vivid image of Queen Daenerys' hungry pet swam before his mind's eye.
"Sansa. Thank you. For rescuing me."
"See, was that so hard to say?"
A/N: For those who want, there is a little bonus fluff chapter that immediately follows on this