A/N - Revised version. Warning: contains mature themes.
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Unbreakable
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She sits on the edge of the bed, her body quaking worse than he has ever seen it. Auburn hair forms tangles around Tully eyes. Even from the doorway, he can see that she has been crying. Her skin is streaked, wetness running tracks through the powder they paint her face with. They are all but dried now, however, and it is only tearless sobs that shake her.
The Hound stands still, watching the handmaidens scurry about her chambers, wrapping bloodied sheets up inside of clean ones to hide the evidence of their master's latest folly. His master's folly, he should say - though connecting himself to the boy-king in moments such as these is increasingly difficult. Joffrey Baratheon is barely more than a child, yet he has appetites rarely seen in full-grown men. Some days, he reminds Clegane of his brother. Gregor would have beat her bloody too, he thinks, from the doorway. Gregor would have cut deeper than the boy-king, but that will come with practice. In time, Joffrey will hone his craft. In time, he will ruin her until it pleases him and then what will become of her, the Hound wonders. Will he lose interest and let her free? Will he imprison her, marry her off to some low lord, sell her?
It is not his place to wonder, he thinks, as the maids finish cleaning. His place is simply to stand guard. Though Joffrey does not dwell on discretion, the once queen is eager keep the darker aspects of her child hidden from prying eyes. She does not want the world to know what a monster she birthed. So, she sends an uglier monster in his stead – to stand guard and one day, most like, to take the blame.
They were bound to be found eventually, Clegane thought. One day, a maid would say something to one of her little friends and then the rumours would be spread. Or a Lord or Lady would come upon the chamber before it was finished. There were enough high-born cunts walking around as if they owned the castle. Something was bound to happen. And when it did, he would take the fall for his king's misdemeanours. The maids would claim against him, on Cersei Lannister's orders, and the Stark girl… His eyes came to rest on hers. Would she openly blame him? Would she tow the line and defend her king, chirp the right words like she had been raised to do? Yes, he thinks, watching her. She was numb to it all, now. She was beyond caring. She just might.
"All the bedding is taken care of, Ser," the closest maid says, coming to stand near the Hound's elbow and looking up at him. The Hound has to reign in the urge to tell her to 'fuck her Sers'. She is no older than ten and seven, barely older than Sansa Stark herself, and her eyes tell him that she does not want to be there any more than he.
He nods his head roughly towards the entrance to the chambers, then. "Be gone."
Gladly, she and two other girls skitter out, clutching bags of dirty linen and the ripped gown that the Stark girl wore. Once they are gone, the Hound shifts from one foot to another, assessing the newly cleaned room. It is Spartan – devoid, on Cersei's orders, of anything sharp enough to take a life with. The featherbed is soft, surely, but Sandor doubts the little bird finds much comfort in it. On the rare occasions he has been asked to guard her door at night, he hears her cry into the pre-dawn hours. When she does sleep, it is only to wake screaming from night terrors. He imagines she sees her father's head on a spike, every time she closes her eyes. And those of the rest of her family.
It is odd, he thinks, but that day that Joffrey forced her up onto that bridge, to see the mounted heads, is the day he first found himself drawn to her. There was more strength in her eyes, that day, than in any mere girl of four and ten years. That day, she was a girl no longer. She was a lady of the North. And he had seen the moment her heart froze over. For the next three years, she had never let the ice crack. She had faced the taunts and jeers, the whispers and laughter. She had taken the beatings and the mind games. She had refused to be drawn into their game. Refused to break, but refused to fight. She had been so very strong.
There is no strength in her eyes tonight, however. Unlike the other nights, she does not pick herself up and walk over to the hot water the maids have prepared. She does not ask him, polite as ever, to leave so that she may perform her ablutions. She does nothing, just stares and shakes and, every so often, lets out a body-racking sob.
After a minute or so, he takes a tentative step inside the room and she flinches, looking around. She flinches. He should leave, he thinks, but - as she recognises who it is who has joined her - relief floods across her face and he just cannot bring himself to. No one has ever looked into his face and shown relief, before. Sandor Clegane has been a monstrous dog for longer than he can remember. He is uglier than any man in Westeros has the right to be whilst still alive. The little bird should fear him, along with the others. But she looks relieved.
It seems he is servant to a king more monstrous than himself.
"You should clean yourself up," he offers gruffly, looking over her tangled hair and the sheets she clutches to her body.
Sometimes, if the boy-king is feeling particularly malevolent, he asks her to join him at the dinner table after he assaults her - just to see the pain in her eyes. To her credit, the little bird has never let it show anywhere but her eyes. Though Joffrey taunts, she keeps her eyes ahead and her head down. She eats daintily, remembers her pleasantries, smiles at the other guests. The Hound can see, from his place behind the king, that even the lion Queen has been impressed by her facade. But there is no ice in her eyes, tonight. Tonight, she is bloody and broken.
"Did he harm you more than usual, girl?" The Hound asks, his words faltering. Part of him does not want to know. All of him does not know why he even asks. He can do nothing about it.
After a long time, she replies, her voice small.
"Not really, Ser. He beat me, as is his usual pleasure. He did not..." her eyes lower momentarily and the Hound wonders what horrors it would take for her to say 'fuck'. "…He did not lie with me," Sansa Stark continued, her voice a little more strained. "His Grace says he is saving that for when I am before my moon's blood. He says..." she pauses, throwing an ashamed glance over at the Hound, in the doorway. "He says he will put a bastard in my belly and then nobody will ever want to wed me. He says then I will be his, forever."
His to play with, his to torture. Having a queen and servants, whores and squires, is not enough for the boy-King. His desires run deeper and darker than fucking and beating. He can harm the Stark girl in ways that he cannot harm the others. That is why he keeps her. That is why he will continue to keep her.
Though he has been torturing her for years, though Clegane has watched it grow steadily worse from the sidelines, this new torture - the thought of Joffrey getting a child on her as punishment - drives hatred through his belly like a hot sword. Though he is loathe to admit it, some of the anger that stirs in him is possessive. Despite her never having belonged to him, he cannot help but think of the Stark girl as his little bird. After all, he has been the one who she has spent the most company in, these last three years. He has been her guard. He has been the one to fetch her places, to protect her. He is the only one she chirps to, anymore. He is the only one who meets her eye, when the other all flee, out of shame for what their master has done. He is the only one that she lets see her tears. What does that make them, if not belonging to one another?
The King's bastard, in her. The King's Hound nearly growls at the thought.
Growling and raging is not productive, however. He cannot change the world. He cannot make Joffrey not the king, nor can he bring Sansa Stark's family back to life, or return her to her innocence. There are a few things a Hound does know, however, that can help.
"There are potions," he begins, hesitantly.
On the bed, however, Sansa shakes her head.
"I am allowed no maester, Ser," she tell him. "Nor is it safe to send any messages to one, by my handmaidens. They are all of the Queen's doing."
Surely the Queen did not care for Joffrey to sire bastards, the Hound mused. The world knew of her opinion on Robert's, after all. Then again, she might waive such a concern if it saw to the ruin of Sansa of House Stark. Cersei would destroy the whole of the northern family, if she could. The heir, the self-professed king they called 'the young wolf', had been dealt with. The young boys were gone at the hands of the Iron-born. The youngest girl, the spirited little whelp that Clegane had found so amusing, was vanished the day Eddard Stark had been taken by the kingsguard. Sansa was all that was left. She was the heir now. A second born child, and a daughter, but the heir.
They were both second born, thought Clegane, the thought causing a momentary lapse in his anger. It was the reason that he and the little bird shared a prefix, to their name. San-sa and San-dor; second-born daughter and second-born son. Perhaps, the gods had indeed meant for them to know one another. A cruel twist of fate, then, that he must watch her suffer like this.
"Plenty women love their children, girl, without having loved their father," he tells her, as softly as his rasping voice can manage. His heart is beating hard against his throat. Though she is bloodied and broken, he thinks it might be he who feels more vulnerable, in this moment. He is not used to emotional discourse. It is not something that Hounds are called upon to do. If she should turn and laugh at him, now, if she should throw back this offering of kindness, he thinks he would shatter and does not laugh, however. Instead, her eyes flutter closed and then, after a time, open again. And she sighs.
"My legs are shaking," she tells him, her voice is unbearably weary. "I cannot stand, to clean myself."
And his heart, such as it is, breaks a little inside.
Anger boils up, his resentment toward that golden fuck of a King reaching new heights. Men have damaged women since the dawn of time. Sandor Clegane knows that. He is not ignorant of the atrocities of war. He has seen the pillage that follows victory. Soldiers are allowed their trophies, it is just the way things are. He has never thought twice about it before. But now, watching Sansa Stark fist her hands into pink-streaked sheets, he feels like someone has kicked him in the face. It feels unbearably personal, a stinging insult. He feels that there should have been something done to protect her, (though for the life of him he doesn't know what that something is). He is only a King's dog, after all, and - with Stannis and Renly having annihilated one another, the Northern lords fighting amongst themselves, and the gold from his marriage to Margaery Tyrell to support him - that King has never been more powerful.
His anger must have shown on his face, because the Stark girl looks quickly away, swallowing hard. Perhaps she misinterprets his anger as being directed towards her, rather than on her behalf. With his twisted features, the Hound expects it is hard to tell. As he watches, her, however, the anger inside of him fades away into to shame – shame that he wants her, shame that he cares whether Joffrey hurts her. He has no right, after all. He is just the King's dog.
He turns to go, but a quick exhaled from the little bird's mouth catches him, halting his steps with one hand on the doorframe.
"Please Ser, don't."
His fingers clench on wood, trying to force his feet to carry him onwards, out into the hall. He wants to walk away from this - it would be easier to walk away from this. He wants to go back to his quarters, or to the depths of Flea Bottom, to find an honest whore and a good flagon of mead. He will drink and fuck the night away and wake tomorrow with a blinding headache and only the faintest recollection of what had happened, here. And when his eyes meet Sansa Stark's, then both of them will be filled with same, because of it.
"I am no Ser, girl," he rasps and begins to leave.
"Sandor, please..."
Up until that moment, he did not know she even knew his name. She had certainly never said it to him, before. She had always used titles that he neither had nor wanted. He was no Lord, or Ser, but he was Sandor – he had been 'Sandor' long before he was a 'Hound' – and he could not help but respond to it. She was pleading him, with his own name.
He hovers in the doorway, torn. He stands there for what seems an eternity before a decision forms inside him, spurred by the distant sound of a maid's footsteps, further along the corridor. He steps backwards and closes the door to the chamber, turning to face the little bird on her bed. She does not flinch, nor say any more, but just watches as he unhooks the sword from his belt and lays it on a nearby table – a movement meant to reassure her, as to his intentions. As he walks to her side and stops on front of her, she gazes up, expression veiled.
"Come on, then," he grunts, offering her a gloved hand to help pull herself upright.
She takes it, small fingers slipping around his own. The weight of her hand feels completely right, within his and the Hound wonders, again, whether they were meant to belong to one another. In another lifetime, when he was not scarred and she was not broken, perhaps he would have been a knight and won her affections. Perhaps they could have been like her silly songs.
One arm clutching her sheets to her chest, she tried to rise, but her legs gave and she collapses back to the bed, wincing. The Hound looks about himself, with a stab of uncertainty, before releasing her hand. Sansa, perhaps thinking he was leaving again, gives a little whimper. He does not head back towards his sword and the door, however. Instead, he makes his way to the bowl of hot water placed on her dressing table, by the handmaids. Carefully, because everything in her room is so small and delicate and he is so very large, he removes his gloves, picks up the fine porcelain bowl, and carries it back to her side. If you cannot lead the bird to water, bring the water to the bird...
He does not speak as he lays the bowl on the floor and kneels beside it. He remains silent as he dips the cloth in, to wet it, before raising it to her face. The situation is burningly intense and he wants to avoid her gaze, but it is impossible, when they are so close and her eyes are so raptly fixed on him. Trying to distract himself, the Hound focusses in on the movements of the cloth. It is distraction for only a moment or so, however. As the little bird reaches up to try and assist him, she pulls at some wound on her side and lets of a stifled cry.
"Don't, girl," he tells her, brushing her hand away, motioning for her to stay still as he works the towel down her forehead to her cheek, wiping the blood away. Let me help you, he wants to say, but cannot find the words.
She does not protest again, though, as he continues to clean her neck and shoulders, as he rises to sit on the edge of the bed beside her and bathes the slashes across her back. All of them are shallow, but he knows the cleaning will be painful. The water the maids brought is from the sea and, as good as it is for cleaning wounds, it stings like the tips of a thousand daggers – the Hound has scars enough to know that. He cleans her as gently as he can, then, until he reaches the edge of the sheets.
Here, they reach a strange sort of impasse. He lowers his hand from her back, looking up to her, for permission or guidance of some sort. Beside him, Sansa Stark falters, her body tensing again. Perhaps she is not sure if she wants to be bared, before a man such as him. It is a valid fear, the Hound thinks. After all, he is hardly known for his gentle disposition and he features in enough nefarious war stories, to frighten a young woman like Sansa Stark half to death. Still, she undressed willingly before Joffrey, just hours before, knowing he had come to bear her ill. Surely, she would do the same to let him help?
The seconds pass slowly. For a while, she looks like she will pull away. Then, just as the Hound is beginning to feel slightly maligned, she nods and looks away. As she releases her hold on the sheets, they fall from her back and some of her wounds re-open. The Hound's jaw tightens. The cuts here are deeper than those above. Joffrey could be a clever enough little bastard when it counted, he thinks, bitterly. Though the court had become accustomed to seeing Sansa Stark with the occasional cut or bruise, they were not prepared for the full extent of the boy-King's depravity. He limited the real damage, then, to areas which could not be seen - or explained by cuts from a rosebush, while out picking flowers.
Picking flowers. The court are fucking idiots even to believe that, Clegane thinks. Sansa has 'picked flowers' so often, these last few weeks, that she might weave a new cloak for Loras Tyrell.
While he dabs, gently as he can, at her back, he tries not to think about the circumstances for her being here - nor, indeed, the situation at all. He tries to think only of healing wounds and how best to treat her. He tries to ignore the smooth curve of her flesh, the way her back curves around to her belly and her teats. She has matured a great amount these past three years, he thinks, despite himself. Since the day when Joffrey first had her stripped and beaten, she has become a woman grown. There is only the hint of a girl left, in the slimness of her belly; smooth and un-muscled from never having borne a child, nor done heavy labour. She is soft, all over, and he finds himself harder, because of it.
With her in such a state, he knows he should not want her, but he does. He ignores the call of his body, however. He cannot, could never, touch her like that. She is a highborn lady, from a great northern family. She is a wolf, from a land of ice, and he is a dog from under the heel of Casterly Rock. They were never meant to belong to one another – not in this lifetime, anyways. Yet, as she breathes in sharply, his hand falters against her skin, and he cannot help but raise his eyes to hers.
"Did I hurt you?" he asks.
"Never like he does," she whispers back, turning her face to his.
He wonders, secretly, when she had found the courage to look him in the eye. Had it been when the boy-King was balls deep inside of her, a week ago? Or, perhaps, when he beat her to within an inch of her life last month? When had she lost the fear that had been cultivated so well in her, from years of fairytales, at her septa's knee? She had been such a good little highborn lady, shying away from him, when she first arrived in Kings Landing. Now, she meets his gaze without fear and without repulsion. She is looking at him like a human and Sandor Clegane does not know entirely what to do with it. He frowns, his cheek twisting slightly – burned skin moving on its own accord and disguising the expression - but she still does not look away.
"You won't hurt me, will you?" she asks him.
He shakes his head. Its about all he can manage, with all of his thoughts churning inside.
"Thank you."
She lets the sheets drop from her front, too, then and sets her hands down onto the bed beside her, completely bared before him. She is what he had imagined she would be - and he did imagine, of course he fucking did. Smooth, pale skin, marred with the marks of Joffrey's savagery. Soft, gently rounded teats and slim waist. She is delicate. He could wrap his hands almost around her at her slimmest point, but she is a child no longer. She has not been for years.
The Hound groans, internally. He is made for killing, for battle brutal and bloody. Not for this. This is he is ill-quipped to deal with.
Tearing his eyes from her chest, he focusses them back on the cloth, rinsing and wetting it again, before raising it to the side of her thigh. A leg is just a leg, he reasons. Cleaning here should help reduce his levels of excitement. As he wipes the blood free from her skin, however, his eyes cannot help but wash over her, finding the dark flash of hair in the triangle where her thighs met. With her thighs flush, he cannot see anything more intimate, but the sight of that hair, coupled with the sensation of her gaze boring down on him from above, is enough to drive him to the brink of control.
His cock is painfully hard, now, and incredibly uncomfortable within the confines of his breeches. He wonders if she knows. She cannot be innocent in the ways of a man's body, he thinks. But, then again, her experiences thus far have been with Joffrey and the boy-King does not take his pleasures in the natural way a man should. He wonders if she knows anything of what should go on, between lovers. He is not really one to tell her. Apart from the gross indecency of it, he does not much know himself. His experience with women extends as far as bending a whore over a barrel, or a pallet bed. He has never had a woman he has not paid, nor one who would look him in the face.
This is fast becoming intolerable, he thinks, head pounding with the sound of his own heartbeat. He should hand the cloth over and end it, before he loses himself completely. She can manage the rest, surely. She looks far stronger. Her limbs have stopped shaking and her breathing, while fast, is no longer punctuated by sobs. Her eyes do not betray fear or hesitance, however, and he feels a strange, possessive urge to finish what he started. So he dips the cloth back into the water and washes the outside of her leg all the way down to her calves and her delicate feet. He rinses the cloth, squeezing until it is clean and the water in the bowl is pink with her. He raises the cloth to her skin and repeats the procedure, with her other leg. Then, when he is finished that, he spends an inordinate amount of time wringing the cloth, unsure what to do next – knowing that they have already gone far beyond the limits of decency and that touching her inner thighs might be more like torture than reward.
He can see the line of a cut, however, disappearing into the curve of her thigh, and he knows that it must be cleaned. He does not want to risk her coming sick with fever. The Seven knew, neither Joffrey nor his mother would call a Maester to save her life. She must be clean and healed, if she is to survive. The Hound swallows, his fingers lying against the side of her knee. He knows he should ask her to finish the job and is halfway through forming the words to say so, when she bites her lip and parts her legs for him.
His cock twitches, beneath rough fabric.
"Fuck, girl," he mutters, lowering his eyes.
He is not like the men in her songs. He is not gallant and noble, or even honourable. Sandor Clegane is a Hound, who takes what he wants and rarely denies himself when it comes to bodily pleasures. Yet, kneeling between the legs of a woman he has desired for years, he looks away. What are you become, Dog, he asks himself. Since when did you shy away, like a pup?
The girl looks, for a moment, a little hurt and makes a tiny move as to shut herself away again, but he slides his hand to the inside of her knee to prevent her. Then, as gently as a man as large as he can manage, he slides the cloth against the inside of her thigh, cleaning the blood from the shallow cut across it.
It is not deep, not like those across her lower back. Clearly Joffrey had been investigating the efficiency of a different knife, here. He is a clever little shite, Clegane thinks again, when it comes to something that interests him. To cut deep here, in the crook of the leg, would cause a girl to bleed out in minutes. Joffrey had learned that from previous experience, presumably. He had learned other things too, thinks the Hound, winding the cloth around the edge of the little bird's thigh and bringing it away to clean it. It is not just blood that he is cleaning. Bodily fluids mix, turning the seed pink, but a Hound notices. A Hound can smell it on her.
"You said he did not lie with you," he rasps, as softly as he can manage. Even to his ears, he sounds accusing and bites back any more words, lest she think the same. He is not accusing. At least, he does not mean to be, but the rage is rushing up within him. He wants to see Joffrey's blood spilt on the stone floor, the boy-King's belly – groin to neck – opened by his blade. Only then, only then, will the burning anger begin to be satisfied.
Sansa Stark sets her jaw.
"He did not. He..." clearing her throat, she somehow manages to find a genteel way of saying what he would have said much coarser. "He finds his pleasure in his own hand, Ser. He merely cleaned his hand on me."
A growl catches at the back of his throat, cut off before she truly has the chance to hear it. She flinches anyway, but seems to know that it is not meant for her because, after a minute or so of uncomfortable silence, her hand slides down to rest on his. He lifts his eyes. Hers are focussed on him and they are blazingly strong. For just a second, she looks unbreakable.
"Thank you, Sandor," She calls him by name and, again, looks so much more like a woman than a girl - though he supposes she is, now. Ten and seven years. His own mother had birthed him at ten and eight, his brother at ten and four. Ten and seven was a woman grown, not a girl. But he will still think of her as his little bird, if she will still chirp to him. And she does. "My legs feel much better, now. Would you help me to stand?"
He gives a gruff 'yes', in reply, and pulls back from her to stand.
She is still slight in build, the Hound notes, and a lot smaller than he, but she is already taller than many of the women at the court. She is taller than the queen, almost as tall as Joffrey himself – a fact which, no doubt, inspires ire in the young King. Her face, despite the thin scratches from Joffrey's sword tip, is angular and beautiful. Her skin is pale as new snow, her cheekbones as sharp as if carved from ice itself. Holding out a hand, the Hound breathes in slowly as she slides her fingers into his palm and uses his strong arms to lever herself off the bed. She staggers the first pace, or two, then straightens.
Standing, their faces are not so very far apart. Her naked belly brushes the front of his breeches and she cannot fail to feel him, now, cannot fail to understand what she does to him. He is hard and he wants to lose himself in sordid fantasy as he does so often, these nights. He wants to lie on his side, in the dark of his small bedchamber and thrust into his hand as he imagined thrusting into her. The thought both excites him further and sends shame simmering through his veins. She is not meant for a creature such as him. He is born second son of a minor house. He is a dog. She was meant for a prince. If they were meant for each other, it was not in this lifetime.
At her behest, he walks her over to the table upon which her powders and perfumes are laid. For a horrible moment, he thinks she is going to dress for dinner and ask him to take her back downstairs. She does not, however. She just reaches into a box and withdraws a golden hair clasp. It is a simple clasp, a circle, with autumn leaves laid across it, every intricate detail of their leaves etched into the gold. After looking at it, in her palm, she turns and presses it into his hand, closing his fingers around it.
A flash of anger rises within him.
"I don't require payment, woman."
Her eyes flicker between his, just the tiniest hint of uncertainty in them.
"It is not payment, for what you have done. What you have done was a kindness."
He snorts, but has no retort fitting, so keeps his mouth shut.
"Sandor..."
At his name, he lifts his eyes back onto hers. Her fingers are still holding his closed, around the hair clasp. He can feel its golden edges pressing into the rough thickness of his skin. Never have his hands felt more calloused than now, as her softer ones twine around them. His fingers feel huge and indelicate. He wishes that he was made of something finer, something that was more worthy to touch her like this.
"I try to hide it when my bloods come," she admits quietly to him. Her eyes are lowered, but she does not sound as bashful as he would expect, to share something so intimate. Her cheeks do not colour and there is no girlish breathiness to her voice. "Every moon, I tell that they come a week later than they do, for fear he will lie with me and the seed will quicken. I cause there to be blood on my sheets by cutting my arm."
His jaw his set, teeth clenched together. He does not want to hear this, but he says nothing. His little bird has nobody else to chirp to.
"But some day soon he will learn of it, and I cannot grow his child inside of me," she whispers, "it would kill me, Ser. I'm not strong enough."
"Sansa..." He does not know why he chooses this moment, to use her name for the first time. Perhaps he knows it is what she needs, to halt the flow of her words. Perhaps, he just needs to say it.
"I cannot do it," she whispers, her voice strangled with latent emotion. The strength has faded back from her eyes and he can see desperation there. "I cannot love something that is part of him," she tells him, in an almost-whisper. "I cannot let him make a child in my belly, let him taint me with his evil."
"And I cannot do a thing about it," he snaps back, with unnecessary vehemence, "even if I cared to."
She knows he would care to, he realises, as her eyes shift across his face. She knows everything. Somehow, it does not comfort him, not to have to explain the tumult of want and emotion burning inside of him. It just makes him feel more exposed and angry.
"Seven hells, woman… you should have your tongue out, for your impertinence," he growls, trying to back away, growing even angrier when her hand tightens and prevents it. "There are a thousand worse fates than birthing a King's bastard."
"I don't want his bastard," she spits, the fire inside of her finally catching, the desperation which had lurked below her tone exploding into an expression of twisted agony. "I don't want it!"
"And since when has Joffrey given two fucks over what you want, little bird?"
She does not seem to be listening. Instead, her eyes are focussed intently on his. "Let me have yours, instead."
It takes a good few seconds for her words to make sense to him. He is halfway through forming a retort when the realisation hits and renders him momentarily speechless. His lips part, in unsaid words. Her eyes glisten, with unshed tears. How desperate she must be, he thinks, to beg a fuck from a dog – to spread her legs for a man like him. What a monster their boy-King must truly be, to rather have his seed quicken inside of her.
"Please,"
And she begs...
He has had dreams, vivid, wild, unlikely dreams where she has begged for him, but it is never like this. There is never a torrent of confusion and want, he is never torn between desire and duty. In his dreams, things are simple and there is no Joffrey. There is no castle around them, there are no guards, or towers, or headmen. He may not have done her body justice in his dreams, with its thousand beautiful imperfections, but at least, there, she is not crying as she begs him to take her.
This is wrong.
"For your sake, I will pretend not to have heard that," he tells her, quietly. His rasping voice is almost a hiss.
Her left eye leaks a single tear, falling down across her cheek. They are still so close that he can feel her heart beating, in her belly. It would be so easy, he muses, to steer her back towards the bed, to give in to what she is asking – to seal both of their fates, once and for all.
"I cannot have his child..." his little bird whispers.
"And you cannot have mine," the Hound replies, dully.
"It will kill me. I would rather die."
Her fingers are incredibly tight around his. The clasp between them digs into his skin. It is his burnt hand, he realises, which she had chosen to place her payment in. It was his burn skin that she was gripping so tight that it was almost painful. The fact that she was willingly touching his scars heat his body through – the only fire he had ever found pleasant, since that day his brother had forced him down into the hearth. It would be so easy, to fold himself inside of her, to spill his seed into her warm, tight body. But it could mean the death of them both. He was sure he would only take a few strokes, but what if someone were to enter the chambers in that time. And even if they did not, what would happen, in nine moons time?
"And what of when you birth a child without golden hair and Lannister eyes?" he asks his woman-girl, watching her Tully eyes flash and dance between his. "What then?"
"There are dark haired men throughout my line," she tells him, quietly. "And Joffrey's father had dark hair. I would praise the King, for giving me a child who is truly of the Baratheon line."
It made the situation ten times worse, thought the Hound, to know that she had given this a deal of thought. And it made the situation a thousand times worse to imagine, even for a second or two, that he could ever have a son.
It was something that he had never dared to think about. As a young man, he had long since let go of any though of finding a wife who did not cringe at the sight of him, of finding any woman, in fact, who came to his bed willingly and not for coin. He had turned his attentions towards his sword, instead, becoming strong enough to destroy the brother who had snatched normality from him. Gregor had taken his chances of having a family away, when he plunged Sandor's face into that fire. So, Sandor Clegane had grown into a Hound, fought like a Hound, and had resolved to die like one, too. If his seed ever quickened, it had been deep in the belly of a whore, who killed the unborn child with moon tea and moved on to her next customer without a second thought.
"You don't want my whelps, little bird," he murmurs, through the flash of pain the moment causes him.
She does not want his whelps. She wants out. She wants an excuse for Joffrey to lop her head off, for being too free with her cunt. Well, there are other men at court who would willingly lay with her. Let them be her dog, this time. He is done. He tries to turn away but her fingers are too bloody tight and, though his body is strong enough to snap her in two, he halts when she tugs at him, pleading him again, with her eyes.
"Go to sleep, girl,"he tells her, trying so hard to be soft. "The fire in your heart will seem a little less raw, in the morning."
Slowly, painfully slowly, her fingers loosen around his and her hand falls free to her sides. Broken.
.
Sandor Clegane turns on his heel and walks quickly to the door. Wrenching it open, he throws himself out into the corridor, slamming the thick oak behind. Rage courses through him – he is angry, both at himself and at the little bird, for opening the doors she had, in his mind. Father her bastard, indeed. He could no more sire a litter on the Queen. They belong to the Royal house of Baratheon. They belong to Joffrey, as did he. They are all his toys, all his playthings. He could hurt and maim and kill every one of them at will.
Unfairness does not come in to it. There is no justice in this world of theirs, just the way things are. Joffrey is a King, Sansa is a highborn toy, and the Hound is a Dog.
A dog, a dog, a dog.
Halfway down the hall his feet stumble over a loose stone and he falls sideways against the nearest alcove. Fingers gripping a hard edge of stone, he has to fight to keep himself upright. His body is betraying him, legs growing uncharacteristically weak, making him lean for support. His left hand is fisted tightly around something and it pricks into his skin. Uncurling his fingers, he looks down and sees the golden hair clasp Sansa Stark had handed him, its outline imprinted on his skin. He is marked by her.
Blood sings through his veins, rushing like it does in the aftermath of a battle. His skin is tingling, his head pounding, his heart thundering beneath his ribs. It feels like it might be trying to escape, to crawl back through to her, perhaps. That is all he wants to do. Crawl back through and slide into her bed; slide between her legs and pretend that things were not as they are. Her maids would not come again until well into the next morning. If she sent them away, Joffrey might not notice her absence until the afternoon. If he were to fall into her bed and take her in his arms, they might make it half a day, before they were both found out and beheaded. Well, he would be beheaded. The girl would no doubt have to endure far worse horrors.
What if they got away? What if he slipped her out of this place and took her somewhere safe. Pretending, for a moment, that this was possible, he searched for safe havens in his mind. A brothel, perhaps. Nobody would look for Sansa Stark in a brothel and the Hound knew establishments where even Varys and Littlefinger had no ears. Low places, dark places, places only a dog would visit. He would leave her, there and return to the castle. There were plenty enough moments, in a day, when a dog was alone with his master. He, alone, was that trusted, of the Kingsguard. And then Joffrey would reap what he had sown.
Sandor bites his cheek, his blood singing. Joffrey. He would sink his sword into the boy-King's soft belly; spill the wetness inside of his golden veneer free upon the stone floor. The boy was not so heavy, it would be easy to lift him and hide his body in a secret place. There were many secret places, in a castle the size of this one. It would be so easy, the Hound thought, his heart racing faster. He could take Sansa away tonight and get the king alone, tomorrow morn. He was of the Kingsguard, after all. He was at his right hand side, all of the day. And nobody would question his authority.
The thought causes him to falter, with a wry smile. He is of the Kingsguard. If Joffrey went missing, he would be the first who they came looking for. He would be missed before Sansa was.
Cursing softly, his voice echoes off the cold stone walls. Such a stupid dog, he is. Such a stupid, foolish dog, for thinking about a future other than the one he is fated to follow. The ugly dog does not get the pretty bird – he knows enough of those stupid songs to know that much. He will never spirit her away, in the dead of night, like he will never sink his sword into Joffrey's soft belly. The world would chase them down. The Lannisters would hunt them until their heads were both mounted on spikes, outside the Sept.
He curses again, softer this time. It will never happen, not for this Hound. He will never find solace inside of her and she will never birth his pups. They will continue to be Joffrey Baratheon's playthings because the alternative was no alternative at all. For a moment, he considers whether she will truly take her life, if she falls pregnant with the boy-King's bastard. He decides she probably would. In a moment of abandon, he knows she is strong enough to take the plunge – to throw herself from a high window, or dig a dagger deep into her heart. She would do it, if she knew it would end her suffering.
Pushing himself off the wall, he staggers around to face her room again. Forcing one foot on front of the other, he makes his way back to it and pushes it roughly open.
Sansa Stark stands by the window, as naked as the day she was born. Her back is to him, her hands clenching the narrow window sill. She does not turn as he enters the room and the Hound wonders whether she knew it was him, or she had just no longer cared who had come to torment her. Deciding he had nowhere near enough words to explain this to her, he stepped quietly forwards, stopping at the bed on his way across, to pick up a sheet in his large hands. Arriving at her back, he draped it across her shoulders.
Her hands rose to clasp it, her head turning slowly to look up at him.
"You came back," her voice is course, with emotion.
"I have something of yours," he holds out his hand, the golden clasp within it.
Sansa Stark smiles.
"It was my mother's."
"Then you should keep it safe," he rasps.
She turns from the window, folding the sheet around her as she looks up at him again. Her Tully eyes are endless and deep.
"I am sorry, for what I asked of you," she tells him quietly.
"Little bird, you are too young to be sorry."
She should be too young to be sorry and yet, he knows, that her heart is heavy with regrets. These last three years, she has seen her family fall around her. She has been beaten and broken and now she is to birth the bastard child of the boy who ordered all of that pain. There is no way that a man with such limited emotion as the Hound can hope to understand what she is feeling, now, but he can help – albeit not in the manner she asked of him.
"I will bring you the moon tea," he tells her, roughly, lifting one cautious hand to her hair. He slides the golden clasp into place amongst her shining auburn locks. He is not in the practice of fixing ornaments on women, but the little clasp does most of the work for him. Gathering a few silken strands, it holds them off her face, exposing her graceful cheekbones all the better. The clasp looks a hundred times more beautiful on her than it ever had, against his skin. But so do most things. "I will not let his bastard grow in you, so long as it is within my power to stop it."
And one day soon, someone will figure out who it is, who is helping the little bird, and it will be his head. Somehow, the Hound does not mind so very much.
Sansa Stark stares up at him, her expression veiled, for once. When she eventually speaks, her words are soft, the harshness of tears gone from her throat.
"Thank you."
The Hound cannot tell if she is surprised, but nods anyway. Somehow, his hand has fallen into the curve of her neck, fingers entwined in her auburn locks as they spill down her back, there. Realising he is touching her quite intimately, he almost moves to pull away but, before he can, she leans into him. Stepping forwards across the stone, she pulls the sheet tight across her chest and stands up on tip-toe, to press her lips against his. The meaning of the kiss, he is not entirely sure. What he does know, for certain, is that it is not a chaste kiss.
"For what a little bird's words are worth," she whispers, against his burned neck, "You are the only man I would have asked."
She draws back, then, and – breathing somewhat harder than he had been before – the Hound's enormous hand falls from her hair. They stand a few inches apart, watching one another with a mix of curiosity and a multitude of other emotions, each more dangerous than the last. He loves her. She knows it. Perhaps that is why he is the only one she would ask, to father her bastards. Perhaps, it is because she feels something more towards him than just gratitude. He cannot tell and knows he can never ask. She is a lady. He is a Hound. They are not meant to belong to one another.
Yet they do. Irrevocably.
"You will have to find a way to tell me, when you need it," he clears his throat, gruffly.
"I'll wear the hair clasp," she replies, a little bit breathless – there is still a hint of the girl in her, then.
He grunts his approval of the plan and takes a step back, away from her side.
.
The night could have ended so very differently and, yet, it ends as it does every night. Sansa Stark crawls into her bed and lets the tears slide noiselessly down her cheek while, in the barren quarters of the White Tower, Sandor Clegane lies on his narrow bed and spills his seed into the palm of his hand, thinking of her.
They rise and dress the next morning, they attend the breakfast and make their appearances at court. The Hound stands at Joffrey's side and distracts him with the idea of a tourney when the young King looks bored enough to want to play with Sansa. They meet each other's eyes only once but, in that moment, she sees more warmth there than any living soul has shown her in three long years.
She feels, suddenly, less alone in the world and so she goes through with his plan. She does not throw herself from the Sept window, as she had long been considering. Instead, she lets the boy-King find his pleasure in her, wears the hair clasp and takes a kiss from the man who brings the moon tea, each month, when he bears it to her.
Sometimes, rarely - when they find themselves alone and the King is otherwise occupied with his new wife, or his unfortunate whores – she takes a little more from him than a kiss. At first, it is just a touch or two. Then, one night, she asks him to her bed and he gives in to her. They find one another again and again in the darkness and they both know, for the first time, that their connection is not simply a product of circumstance. She asks him back into her bed the next week. Then every week after that. Curled up against him, on these long nights, she traces patterns in the seed he spills across her belly. She asks him not to spend it inside of her and he never questions why. She doesn't think she could ever tell him the truth: that she could never kill his pups. Moon tea is for the bastard King's bastards, she thinks, laying her head back against her Hound's chest and closing her eyes tight.
One day, she will be free of this prison, she tells him, as they lie together in her prison's feather bed. One day, the boy-King will fall from power or lose interest in toying with her and, when that day comes, she will flee from here and never look back. She has had enough of Kings and knights to last a life time and she has no family or home left, so she will travel far from this place. She will find a warm country to call home and a lowborn, honest man to make a wife of her. She will live in solitude and peace, letting his child grow fat within her.
She tells her Hound this and smiles when he asks her what sort of honest man she would be searching for.
He is the only man she would ever ask.