A/N: This one's by Loquitur
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Waves of a deep turquoise blue lapped against his ankles, pushing and pulling the white sand on the shore in a rhythm the sea had kept for ages before he had arrived, and would continue for ages after his bones had long turned to dust. Its permanence despite its unruly tempestuousness was, in a way, soothing. Half-naked and seething, he would need all the help he could get.
The horizon was bereft of ship or boat, had been for at least two hours, and the only sign of the carnage they had escaped was the driftwood that carried them ashore. Sandor clutched the hilt of his dirk with white knuckles and spat into the thrice-damned surf.
Fool. Idiot. Moron. Stupid piece of shit.
How dare he assume that he would get into the Seven Heavens. How dare he fucking assume that the little bird would be his reward. Hadn't the girl (woman, the back of his mind whispered) suffered enough in life? Surely her short years had not been so sinful as to warrant the punishment of being shackled to him for eternity.
The burnt side of his face twitched furiously. He tried to rub away the tick with the heel of his palm, but even that small thing evaded him.
They were not dead. They were deserted on a godforsaken island in the middle of fucking nowhere— he had long abandoned hope that they might be in the sea of Dorne— probably consigned to a nasty fate of death by dehydration, and this time he wouldn't have any illusions about where he would end up. There would be no little birds to kiss and hold in the fiery pits that awaited him.
That kiss was definitely worth going to hell for. She had been so soft, so sweet, her lips pliable beneath his. Bliss had flooded the core of his being. For a brief moment, he was able to believe that he had escaped his miserable, rage-filled existence to find heaven in the form of her hands on his face. How wrong he had been, to think that she was going to caress him. He was starved for tenderness, had been starving since his mother and sister passed, and she was certainly not inclined to satiate his ravenous hunger.
He grimaced. Stupid, stupid dog. White hot anger burned in his chest as he replayed the moment Sansa had pushed away from him, how he had not been able to say what needed to be said when he thought they were going to die in that tempest, how he failed yet again. At least I managed to get her out of the damned Red Keep alive, he thought before a mirthless bark of laughter escaped him. And to what end?
A seagull shrieked overhead, as if in reply. He hadn't liked the look of that Volantene ship in the first place. The Lorathi vessel next to it had looked twice as strong, and its crew half as stupid, but the little bird wanted to go to Lys. And he, fool that he was, tried to fulfill her wish. Damn it all, I'm going soft.
The left corner of his lips rose, not unlike a dog raises its hackles. Bugger the gods in their nonexistent asses if they thought he was going to die without ensuring Gregor's inevitable trip to hell first. Claiming the little bird as his own was merely a bonus. It was doubtful that they would ever find a way off the island, but fuck him if he wasn't going to at least try.
With his resolve renewed, the Hound turned away from the rolling tide. It was well past midday, judging by the lengthening shadows. They would have a few hours of daylight to set up a rudimentary shelter and, hopefully, fill their starving bellies. Stranger had already started on the latter, tearing out clumps of sea grapes from the sand and chewing noisily in his obnoxious, horsey way. "Don't go too far, you wretch."
The black courser whickered spitefully and returned to his meal.
The shore was littered with palms in various sizes and swathes of sea grapes. He could only name a few breeds of flora along the beach; some he recognized from the coast of Kings Landing, others from his travels to the Free Cities when he was Cersei's shield.
His field training in making shelters called for a much different kind of tree, but there was no other choice unless they went further inland. He trudged into the brush, oriented himself so he could keep an eye on the horizon, and began hacking at a short palmetto. Sansa's position was not too far away, as evidenced by the sound of parting palm fronds and a soft humming. Every now and again, when he lifted his head from his work, he would catch a flash of auburn among the brush.
He soon had a considerable pile of verdant fans, his brow streaked with sweat and dirt in a raw display of his efforts. They would do nicely as a canopy if he could contrive a way of weaving them together without rope. The stems (if they could be called that) were profoundly rigid; only through a concerted exertion on his part had he been able to snap one in half.
He was beginning a crude overlap of the fronds when a feeling of unease danced up his spine. A quick scan of his surroundings showed Stranger further down the beach, the surf, foliage, a small heap of kindling, but no Sansa. The humming had ceased as well. He felt the thick hair on his arms rise. "Little bird?" he called.
No response.
He abandoned the wreath of palm fronds to stride further into the brush. A brightly colored lizard hissed at his passing before slithering further up the coconut tree that served as its home. Perhaps they could exploit the tree later, if he could find a rock jagged enough to break through the fruit's tough husk; it was a trick he remembered the exiled prince, Jalabhar Xho, demonstrating on a coconut imported to Kings Landing from Dorne, long before Robert's gutting by that pig.
"Little bird!" he shouted, an edge of panic creeping into his voice.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I take my eyes off her for two minutes… "Little bird!" A lion could have made off with her, dragged her further into this tropical hellhole in a trail of gore before feasting upon her bloody entrails. But a lion wouldn't prowl this close to the beach… would it? No, there was no way; lions usually kept to wide grassy plains, far away from any saltwater. They were probably safe from most of the land predators he knew of. Except one.
There was no guarantee that the island was deserted. She could've been snatched up by rapists. Or cannibals. Or rapist-cannibals. Fuck.
"Sansa! SANSA!"
"Over here!"
Relief flooded his chest cavity with its icy catharsis. "Where?" He trampled over leaf and vine to reach the source of that sweet, sweet sound.
"Up here," her voice piped somewhere above his head.
At the base of a large, leafy tree was a cluster of dates and a number of small, hard-looking oranges. He looked up into the tree and spied Sansa sitting on a thick branch close to the trunk. Her left arm was laden with several large, aromatic fruit, her right hugging the trunk for support. The tatters of her dress clung to her form like ragged feathers. She was beaming at him, triumphant in her accomplishment. "Found a roost, have you?" the snarl came unbidden as his concern morphed into rage. "I thought I told you to stay close."
Her proud smile fell. "There weren't any other fruit trees around, and I couldn't find any on the lower branches so I—"
"Scampered up there so you could fall like that brother of yours? Stupid girl, you survive that storm just to risk breaking that pretty little neck?"
"That's unkind Sandor." Her frown turned stormy. She attempted to cross her arms, forgetting her burden, and flailed momentarily. He rushed forward with his heart in his throat. She was able to find her purchase without dropping the fruit, at the sacrifice of her indignant face.
"Who do you think would be the one to put you out of your misery, if you fell and didn't have the courtesy to die straight away?" He could not restrain his need to cause pain in the hopes of diverting attention away from his own wounds, still gaping and bloody from her rejection. "You ever see a man fall and not die immediately? Start babbling nonsense while their brains leak out the back of their skull. You could live for hours after it, if someone's not there to give you the gift of mercy. That what you want?"
"I didn't think it was that high," she muttered.
"Care to find out?" His eyes flashed with venom.
"No! I mean… I can't get down," she finished lamely.
He rolled his eyes. "Thrown down that shit you're holding."
"But they'll bruise."
"Just toss the damn fruit."
She dumped the bounty from her arms. He made a half-hearted effort at catching them, saving five from splattering upon the ground with his hands, and three more by lessening the force of their momentum with his body. Sansa stood up on the branch, her skinned knees flashing briefly between her ruined silks. "You should be able to get down now."
Her brow furrowed as she calculated the distance between the branch and the ground, her equations, no doubt, muddled by vertigo. She chewed her bottom lip, looked at him, then at the ground, then back to him. "Really?" he snarled.
"Could you? Please?"
The Hound growled as he set down the fruit among the tree's roots. With that done, he gave her an exasperated look and held out his arms. Still, she hesitated. "Seven hells, I'm not going to drop you, girl. Just jump."
Sansa launched out of the tree and into his chest, knocking the wind from his lungs. He folded her into his embrace and buried his nose in her hair, inhaling deeply to replace the air he had lost. Her womanly scent, stripped away of its usual mask of perfumes and fragranced soaps, swirled around his nose, slightly tainted by the tang of sea salt. She squirmed in his arms, her palms pushing against his bare skin. His hold on her had lasted just beyond the trappings of propriety. He released her with a pang of regret. "Get started on the fire pit."
He left her to gather up the fruits of her labor alone.
Sandor finished their shelter just before sunset. His erected the woven structure between a trio of coconut palms, having found a way to use strips of the fan-like leaves to crudely tie the entire thing together. Sansa had chosen the trees earlier and dug out a pit for their fire with her hands. The kindling was stacked in a haphazard manner, for she had no experience with building her own fires. He knelt before the pit, arranging the tinder in such a fashion that the sea breeze would neither extinguish it, nor set their encampment ablaze. His flint had been lost in the storm, so he started the fire the way his father had taught him, and his father's father had been taught before him, all the way down their unrecorded peasant line. Two carefully chosen sticks and a wealth of friction were enough to birth the flames that destroyed his face all those years ago. He fought the urge to reel away from the growing fire. Instead, he sought out the cool water.
Sandor looked up from the pit. Sansa was standing, calf-deep, in the ocean. The dying light reflected off the waves, staining her figure in the peach tints of sunset. She watched the sun's fading rays dip beneath a horizon unblemished by the silhouette of passing ships. Her matted hair glittered, now bronze, now gold, now a rich burgundy.
A last corona of light burst behind her, while her shredded skirts undulated with the breeze. She strode out of the surf within a rush of sea foam, possessed with all the glory of a primitive ocean goddess. Bits of powdery white sand dusted her legs as she walked up the beach and joined man and steed in their makeshift shelter. Stranger was lying with most of his body underneath the palm canopy. His head stuck out of the shelter, though not of his own volition. Sandor caught him with his muzzle deep in dates, and had to drag the warhorse away from the remaining fruit by viciously tugging on his reins. He could not banish Stranger completely, however, so a compromise was formed. The courser's immense body heat would keep them from freezing through the night— a very real fear, since they had no blankets— and his ass was not greedy enough to shovel their food into itself of its own accord.
Stranger snorted at Sansa and bared his teeth. She, in turn, picked up one of the oranges from their pile of fruit and fed it to him, careful to snatch back her fingers to avoid his indiscriminate bite. Though they both were famished, the oranges had proven to be far too bitter for either Sansa or Sandor to stomach. The stallion was more than happy to relieve them of their citrus burden.
The Hound sliced up one of the fruits Sansa retrieved from that tree with his dirk while she took a seat between him and his horse. The fruit was somewhat oblong in shape with rosy colored skin and a rich orange flesh within. Pulp burst down his forearm as he peeled away the skin. He offered her a thick slice at the point of his dirk. "That looks rather messy."
"You don't have to eat it."
"I didn't say I didn't want it," she plucked the piece of fruit and popped it into her mouth. She hummed with pure joy as juice leaked out the corners of her lips. "Oh wow. Sandor, it's delicious."
He bit off a chunk of the fruit close to the pit. "It's alright, I guess. Here, have the rest."
She greedily tore into the ripe flesh while he contented himself with the soft dates. They ate their fill in silence, but for the crackling flames and Stranger's occasional snort as he begged for more oranges. Sansa indulged the courser every so often and patted his flank tenderly. "You'd better watch him. His back end's as dangerous as his front."
She swallowed a mouthful of fruit before responding. "You won't let him hurt me."
"No, little bird. I won't."
A chorus of cicadas chirruped around them in concert with crashing timpani of the rising tide. "Sandor."
"Hm?"
"Do you think we're stuck here?"
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "We'll find out tomorrow. Get some rest."
Much to his surprise, Sansa curled up along Stranger's side and the stallion did nothing to deter her. On the contrary, he tucked his head into his forelegs and flickered his tail to rest over her exposed legs. "What did you do to my horse?"
"Same as you. I treated him with respect."
He mulled over her words as the fire died down. If they were going to explore the island tomorrow, he would need a weapon he could use from Stranger's back. He was already at a gross disadvantage having to ride bareback on top of every other detriment from the storm. Come morning, he would look for a sapling he could sharpen into a rude spear. Maybe build some stake traps if they found any game trails.
"Sandor?" Sansa piped, maybe an hour later.
"What?"
"I'm cold."
"You've got Stranger at your back."
"And it's my front that's cold."
His muscles tensed. "What do you want me to do about it?"
He could almost smell the uncertainty in her silence. "Sansa."
"Would you come here… please?"
He shifted to the other side of the fire and kneeled before her. Though he was still stinging from her behavior earlier, he could not help but desire to be close to her. That did not mean he was willing to bend to her whims. If she wanted something, she would have to command it of him. And if she was unable or unwilling to voice her desires, then she could shiver throughout the night as far as he cared.
"What do you want?"
"I know this is highly improper, but… if you could just… lie down…"
His first instinct was to snap something at her and return to his end of the fire. He even considered it while he lowered himself to the ground beside her, facing out so he could maintain the illusion that he was keeping watch. The little bird curled alongside his bare back, pressing gentle hands to his shoulder blades. She stuck her feet into the backs of his knees, and he hissed at the contact. "Seven hells, your feet are cold!"
"I'm sorry, my lord, I could—"
"It's fine. Sleep." He rasped.
"Good night, Sandor." She sighed happily with her cheek alongside his shoulder.
He said nothing in return. Instead, he looked out to the moonbeams dancing along the foamy wave heads and tried not to think about her warm breath on his neck.