Warnings for attempted rape and gore
I find gallows humour more challenging from Sansa's (the victim's) point of view. The genre includes, per definition, that the victim of violence may joke or try to alleviate his or her own dire situation by witty remarks, or the dire situations may be morbidly funny, while retaining their seriousness. I tried to use a bit of both.
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Sansa
"Brother Driftwood is big," Myranda Royce repeated tenaciously, for the seventh time that evening. "And he did help save my sweet Harry after almost killing him. I say that makes him gallant. What do you say, fair Alayne?"
Randa pursed her lips indecently, bulbous and plump as her bosom. With no reason at all, Alayne Stone thought of her as an old hag. Worse, she imagined her head rotting on a spike. Sansa immediately blamed herself for the untowardness of her most discourteous and rude mental fabrication.
What is wrong with you? Sansa asked Alayne or Alayne, Sansa. The two have been at war in one girl, since a savagely missed lance blow pierced poor Harry's armour; each with a battle cry of her own.
Winterfell! Sansa whimpered, riding to meet her bastard opponent. Gulltown! Alayne screamed heartily, unsaddling Sansa and making her land into a thickly woven, sticky, treacherous cobweb of lies. Mud sprayed Sansa's behind and her lady's armour. Alayne mocked Sansa for being green and having no place in a tourney. Sansa began crying and hid, leaving Alayne in front.
Until today Alayne did not care, not truly, if Randa was chubby or not, nor did she wonder how many name days her companion had seen. They were friends of sorts. Randa's forwardness concerning men amused Alayne, who slowly learned not to flinch at various advances she was subject to, but rather toy with them according to her needs and purposes. Men were simple. Much simpler than Sansa, the girl in hiding, had ever thought, and far less magical. A smile here, a bold word there, a bawdy understatement made innocently, and they would eat from Alayne's hand. Like dogs.
They rarely did so for Randa… Alayne's first explanation for it was deeply rooted in the belief of that other girl, Sansa, who had been told all her life how pretty she was. She must have had more success in her seduction games because she was more beautiful… After a while, Alayne found, and on this, Sansa agreed with her, that the main reason for men's continued interest in her was that she never acted on any of her forward remarks and maintained an equal, prudent distance from all of them.
In the Mother's house where she was raised, Alayne must have been taught that impropriety was a sin. Yet in the Vale the natural daughter of Lord Petyr Baelish soon learned to ignore this wisdom. Transgressions of the flesh were very common and no one was particularly shamed by them. Alayne never sinned beyond her little games, mainly because for Sansa, that girl in disguise, the notion of touching any man more than fleetingly was as appealing as eating a forgotten lemon cake full of maggots.
At times, Petyr's slobbery kiss tasting of mint, promising Winterfell, promising everything, could not be avoided. Sansa stiffened and let it be done, in fear of either angering or losing her protector. Alayne was not afraid. She would wriggle out of her father's lap like an eel, as soon as the first non-fatherly kiss was over, and run to some urgent castle business.
Randa did not share Alayne's calculation and prudence, nor Sansa's inhibitions. She found men tastier than any cake; young and old, big and small. She would lay with one before moving swiftly to another, much like the guests at Joffrey's wedding devoured noisily all seventy-seven courses in a row, before the king committed the utmost discourtesy of choking to death; spoiling the delicious meal and the wondrous festivity in his honour.
Joff's death should have been more discreet. A true king shouldn't have inconsiderately ruined the celebration of his people by dying. Sansa imagined him served as an elaborate, well-spiced main course at his own feast, so that no guest would be the wiser as to what had transpired, nor privy to the heinous murder of their beloved king.
There were places in the far North when men committed such unspeakable deeds, Sansa knew. Alayne didn't. Girls in the Mother's house in Gulltown were not told the scary stories about Skagos or the Rat Cook on the Wall before bedtime.
Meanwhile, Sansa wondered if anyone would die at her wedding to Harry the Heir. Lady Waynwood for instance. She would make a most ladylike elderly corpse. And she wouldn't be able to pry into Sansa's heartless marriage with her ward. Her dislike for the lady grew since Alayne met Harry, and had to put up with his demeaning treatment of her, only for being conceived on the wrong side of the blanket. Lady Anya had demanded Harry should like "Alayne" in order to agree to their marriage. No one asked how Sansa Stark, the last scion of one of the Great Houses of the realm, felt about marrying an arrogant twat, half-Arryn at best, on his mother's side.
There were to be only three modest courses at Sansa's wedding. No poison would be served or worn in elaborate hairnets, and there would be no heads on spikes, no heads at all.
The queen was wrong, Sansa concluded, pondering her entire existence in the Vale, and Petyr's recent demand she should bewitch Harry. If you use the weapon between your legs, you lose. It is when you only threaten to use it that you may win. Alayne had Harry's interest when she refused giving him her favour before the tourney and at the same time exposed her newly flirtatious beauty, hinting discreetly at their future union, from safe distance. Even so, the victory of her incomplete seduction was small and short-lasting. Men did not think with the ugly protruding bit they had between their legs all the time. And when they stopped, and that part of them turned plumper than Randa, they forgot women and did as they liked. With his mind set on glorious achievements in the field, Harry gave Alayne only a brief, perfunctory look before he rode out… and met his doom in the tourney.
His doom was called Brother Driftwood, or rather, Sandor Clegane. He had been looking at Sansa during a pass in a joust and missed the intended strike with his long tourney lance. Instead of unsaddling Harry, as he wanted, he nearly killed him.
Randa... She lay with anyone at will, and never gained anything from it, except… joy. In that sense, Myranda Royce was just like men. At times she thought with the wet softness women had between their legs. Alayne had discovered its existence, especially in the middle of the moon turn that passed between the two arrivals of her red flower. Sansa touched herself there at night and did not know what to think of it. It was… pleasantly disconcerting. On those days she thought most often of the cruel kiss in her past, the one that reeked of blood and not of mint.
Sansa was taught that a lady ought to let her husband do as he pleased and learn to love him with time. The queen completed her education by stating that if she could never love her husband, she would always love her children. Alayne, the bastard, noticed Randa liked more that men do as they pleased. She never married any of them or pronounced herself in love. Afterwards, she drank a stinky concoction called moon tea so that she wouldn't have any children, and much less love them. Sansa did not know what to make of that attitude.
The world stood upside down, wrought of lies and Arbour Gold.
Due to that, and despite their apparent friendship, the Lady Myranda Royce still did not know that it was not Alayne Stone, but Sansa Stark, marrying her sweet Harold Hardying. Provided she could stay present for her wedding and bedding. She had been Alayne for so long that she felt at times as if Alayne was taking over. That helpful, diligent girl who could avoid outrageous insults to her person, instead of freezing and letting her father kiss her at will.
"Since it is you and not I marrying Harry today," Randa remained true to herself and amazingly improper. "I might as well ask the mystery knight to show me his sword while Harry is showing you his… I shall require consolation for my loss."
The once credulous, timid girl called Sansa did not believe Harry would be capable of showing her anything. Not tonight. He was bed-ridden; more dead than alive, according to the maester. It was a miracle he still drew breath.
When Sansa visited him in the morning, his face was equal part sunken and swollen, and somewhat splotchy. It was unkind to think so, but he… he looked as a strange, bulging mushroom or a poisonous dark red flower from the Neck. His sandy hair turned oily and golden like the morning contents of the chamberpot. His handsome facial features appeared more decayed than the rotting heads of Sansa's Father and septa Joffrey had made her look at years ago, mounted on spikes high above the battlements of the royal palace.
Sansa was sorry for Harry, but her sincere compassion always lessened when she thought of having to marry him. Than she only pitied herself. Perhaps any husband of hers was to be ugly and twisted, as a punishment from the gods for the sins of the old, stupid Sansa, who had been deceived by beauty.
She could not fathom why Lord Baelish insisted her marriage should take place only a day after Harry's most grievous injury, nor why Lady Waynwood accepted the speed on behalf of her ward, who could apparently not even talk. Should he not speak to pronounce his marriage vows? Surely they should have waited until he recovered? And looked a bit less like a… like a corpse. Surely the tourney for places in Sweetrobin's guard of honour should have continued ? Alayne had worked for it so hard and Sansa was happy about it, a little. Now both ladies saw their efforts wasted.
Sansa wished she were elsewhere. In Winterfell… But for that she had to marry.
Didn't she?
Alayne Stone, on the other hand, felt obliged to continue the conversation with Randa. Neither Sansa nor Alayne were able to decide whether to consider Nestor Royce's daughter a friend or merely a different kind of foe.
"I do not think that the mystery knight is gallant," Alayne Stone offered bravely, in her best bastard tone of quipping with men. Suppressing the need for tremulousness in her voice, she carefully adjusted one of the ribbons on her white and grey wedding gown she and Randa had been examining for the past half an hour. The maids did a passable job in haste, Sansa noted dully. "Brother Driftwood must be a cold man. I would never give him my favour."
Alayne wouldn't, or maybe she would. It remained to be seen. But Sansa, Sansa had kissed him.
No, the mystery knight was most certainly a ruthless man. Or he would have said something about their kiss. It was not proper for a lady to bring forth such a topic from their past. She had hinted at it enough as it was, and he had refused to acknowledge it. Worse, he'd sent her away, deeming her unworthy of his attention because her hair was brown now… He said he only killed red heads, and the Hound only cared for killing people. Didn't he?
"Oh, it is not a ribbon I intend to give him," Randa spoke of Brother Driftwood with misty eyes as though he were a fluffy, crunchy cake… iced with the freshest lemons in the realm. "I shall ask him to give me a favour. A big, sweet one."
Sansa immediately imagined Randa being attacked and eaten by a huge pack of wolves, and chastised herself for another impropriety.
I must be so tired.
She had remained sleepless during night, finishing the embroidery of the direwolf's head on her maiden's cloak. Towards the hour of the bat, in the dark of the night, her fingers and her sight faltered. The stitches became completely spoiled and ruined on one side of the wolf's head. The animal began resembling an ugly wild dog. Sansa hated her mistake with all her heart until she realised who it reminded her of. Mangled. As…
"You will never receive any sweet favours from Brother Driftwood either," Alayne affirmed with passion. "He will take what you give and leave you with nothing." But a bloody cloak, Sansa finished inwardly. The offending garment was left under her summer silks in King's Landing when she ran away. She often wondered if anyone found it and what they thought of it… Maybe they washed it and used it for Ser Osney Kettleblack, after shortening it quite a few inches. No Kingsguard had been as tall as the Hound.
Tall was… pleasing to look at.
"Fair Alayne," Randa kept taunting her. "So innocent and so opinionated. How would you know that of our mystery knight of the Faith? He may well be the noblest warrior sworn to the Seven in the realm."
"He isn't," Sansa said obstinately, betraying Alayne, leaving her behind. It was impossible to be Alayne Stone when Sansa Stark thought of Sandor Clegane. "He is cruel and wicked." She was angry with him now. Very angry even. For.. for coming back. For not coming back sooner. For kissing her. For not confessing he had kissed her and asking for her forgiveness. For not… kissing her again…
"Cruel?" Myranda licked her lips. "Now that is interesting. How did you learn this, sweet Alayne? Have you met him before?"
"There was a similar man tending to the garden of the Mother's house where I grew up." Alarmed by the suspicion in Randa's voice, Alayne woke and lied smoothly, or rather, wove truth and lies into a unique composition. The Hound did serve in a place where she had forcefully stopped being a child. Though he never busied himself with flowers. Gardeners had to eradicate the weeds mercilessly. Sansa tried to tell herself that this was almost like killing.
"Later he left and became a… a wandering septon," Alayne invented the rest. She supposed a man had to be a septon, if he was allowed to work in a Mother's house. "I mistook Brother Driftwood for this… pious gardener and I shared my understanding with him. He sent me away. That is not a gallant way to treat a lady, despite my mistake."
"Poor Alayne." Randa sounded fascinated, examining Sansa's face very closely. "So flushed. I did not realise you were in love with a septon in Gulltown. I am so sorry that your septon did not return for you! Probably you were so shy towards him that he thought you never wanted him!"
In love?
Wanting him?
"If I may be excused, I should dress up for the wedding now," Sansa frostily interrupted the conversation.
"Indeed," Randa concurred, but the mischief never left her voice, fat like the rest of her. "I will leave you to it. I shall do the same."
On a second thought, Alayne's friend or enemy lingered at the door and yelled back at Sansa. "If you wish, we can swap when you are married. You could lend me Harry and I will borrow you Brother Driftwood. Maybe he will remind you of your septon in the dark."
In the dark every man is the Knight of Flowers. Was it Tyrion who said something similar? Sansa could not recall with precision the dread of her wedding night with the Imp. Yet there was no such darkness in the world that could make Tyrion Lannister look less like a gargoyle in the eyes of Sansa Stark.
The Hound, however…
It was better not to think of how he looked to her.
Sansa shivered and put on her wedding gown. As of tomorrow, she would be a great lady again and have her own maids. Her lord husband would no longer insult her for being a bastard. She would be wedded and… most certainly not bedded.
If Harry tried anything in his wounded state, he might as well die from the effort as Randa's husband did, and not for any fault of Sansa's. The thought did not displease Sansa as it should. It was almost… refreshing and liberating. She only prayed to the gods that Harry's death during the consummation of their marriage, if it was fated, did not occur when he was inside her, but rather a little bit before or after. Please, please, please, if I have to be bedded this time, let it not be horrible and sickening.
When Sansa emerged in the corridor, dressed for her wedding, she sensed him, though he hid in the shadows.
Brother Driftwood.
Sandor Clegane…
The Hound had been stalking her since this morning, but he never showed himself or approached her. Yet she knew he was there. Why?
She held her maiden's cloak close to her body in both hands, wrapped tight in a bundle, as a shield. The wolves were brave. She would only unfurl it during wedding. Father… no, Lord Baelish said she should keep the secret as long as possible so that no one sent word to the Queen Regent. Not before she and her new husband would ride north…
Harry can't ride. He'll fall off the horse and break his neck if he doesn't die before that, in bed with me.
Heavy steps followed her from a prudent distance, not wishing to be seen. She bent, pretending to pull up her stockings, in order to look back. He stopped when she did. Today he was hooded, not armoured, wearing brown. It made him look almost like the septon Alayne just invented him to be.
Sansa fancied herself back in the Red Keep. She was walking to her execution and the Hound was bid to accompany her. The morbid notion held more dignity for the daughter of Eddard Stark than the simple truth; being forced to marry, and below her station. The small Great Hall of the Royces, where her beheading was to be celebrated gaped open like a tomb. Behind it, there was no single grave, but a merry, crowded lichyard, with too many occupants. The entire castle, as well as the visitors who had come for the tourney, gathered to witness the union.
Alayne's father, Lord Baelish, waited for Sansa at the door. Harry was already in front. He was seated in bed in front of a rather drunk-looking septon. A pile of pillows was stashed behind the groom, helping him sit comfortably.
Sansa felt they could have at least made him occupy a chair if he could not stand.
Apparently all her husbands were to be not only ugly, but also short. By nature or the condition they suffered from. Sansa would have preferred tall. Maybe for being tall herself.
"Is this wise, father?" Alayne whispered to Lord Baelish, as Sansa's decision to be brave faltered and broke into pieces. "Should we not wait?"
A bony arm coiled around her waist, squeezing it, nudging her forward. Mint on Alayne's father's breath smelled like rotting meat. Or maybe it was something else that stank of decomposition, but she could not say what. There were no tables with food yet. They would be brought in later, after the dance, for the feast. The dance was to be held outside, in the courtyard, benefitting from one of the last warm autumn days in the Vale. The so called Great Hall was too small to host it.
Alayne helped Sansa to wriggle out of the non-fatherly touch on the small of her back. She remembered different arms, that had manhandled her without the unnecessary exploration of her body, when the Hound was duty bound to lift her from bed or take her back and forth from her cage.
"Now, sweet," Petyr whispered to her. "Don't ruin everything now! You know that I know what is best for you. Harry and the Eyrie, and Winterfell, remember?"
"Of course, father," Alayne said dutifully.
"Today you look lovelier than your mother," Petyr told her dreamily and gently touched her cheek. Sansa bolted and walked to her personal headsman's block alone. Her upcoming marriage increasingly felt like imminent death. Yet it was easier to stand next to Harry than to Petyr in his kissing mood.
Once in front, Sansa dared a shy look at her future husband. He wasn't as repulsive as before. His eyes were glassy. He was pale… livid. He did not move at all.
He was… dead.
Why did Petyr want her to marry a deadman?
Sansa almost cried for all to see. Instead of a tear, a hysterical gasp escaped her mouth.
"Maidenly nerves," Petyr said out loud, nodding wisely to the castle audience.
Well, at least there would be no bedding. That much was certain now.
Was it?
An instantaneous rapid recollection of all Sansa's misfortunes since she left her childhood home prevented her from instantly believing this just end of her forced wedding appointment. She strove to remain calm and keep a courtesy mask on her face.
The septon swayed left and right as though he were already dancing and not performing a holy rite. Between hearty hiccups, he held out a long parchment and read from it, proclaiming the invalidity of Sansa Stark's marriage to Tyrion Lannister, as per inviolability of her maidenhead that he himself had probed. Sansa was never subjected to any such inspection, so Petyr must have paid in gold for that assessment.
Or in wine.
Surreptitiously, she dared a look behind.
Petyr… he was very well dressed. Too well dressed even.
Dread mounted in Sansa's heart.
The septon… said something about marriage vows between her and Harry. Sansa unfurled her maiden's cloak and wrapped it around her own shoulders for protection. She hoped that her true sigil would miraculously give her strength to see the end of this awful day.
Shouts of surprise filled the Great Hall. Randa's was the loudest one.
Now she knows I never lived in the Mother's house.
Through all that, the cruel man whom she had kissed once stood in the shadows… He never made his way from the back rows to save Sansa or to kill those willing to hurt her. A liar like everyone else.
Baelish and Lady Waynwood lifted Harry's corpse. Jointly, they helped the deadman remove Sansa's maiden's cloak from her shoulders, and place his cloak around his bride. Neither Sansa, nor any of them, bothered to clasp it.
Mortally offended, abandoned, the direwolf snarled on the floor. It had never looked more like a mad dog in the pit.
Harry's hands were ice cold and it was he that stank so much. Sansa stared at the septon, expecting some absolution. It never came.
"Lord Hardyng," the septon tried to say more, but the insistent hiccups countered his best intentions. "Well, never mind," he managed to squeeze out. "You are married."
"To the dance!" someone called.
Sansa resisted the urge to faint.
I married a deadman. She laughed, panicking.
No one helped Harry anymore so his corpse… collapsed. Sansa stepped away daintily so as to avoid the impact.
"Oh no!" Lord Baelish implored. "He must have died from excitement!"
Isn't that what you wanted? Why admit the truth now?
Lady Waynwood began crying. "My poor, poor Harry," she sobbed, "I trusted that your young wife would return to you the strength and the will to live… But you were beyond our help…"
"How dreadful!" Petyr said sadly. His eyes laughed. "And how inconvenient… His passing leaves my late wife's niece Lady Sansa Stark unprotected…"
The drunk septon attempted to wander off.
"Wait," Baelish commanded him brusquely. "Your service here is not over."
Not over. Sansa drank in the words and her panic rose to unprecedented levels. What else?
"I cannot protect a traitor's daughter," Lord Baelish announced sadly. "But I shall move the mountains for my lady wife."
Myranda's father hurried to bring Petyr a cloak… Sansa did not have to look at it to know that it had a mockingbird on its back…
Sansa felt trapped as a little bird for true, understanding everything. She was never to marry Harold Haryding. Her short marriage to the deadman could be used to claim the inheritance of the Vale once Sweetrobin died from natural or less natural causes. Sweetsleep. He has had more sweetsleep than he should since we left the Eyrie. And Sansa would be shown a sword smelling of mint tonight …
Everyone says his finger is so little, Sansa thought desolately. It shouldn't hurt.
The hope of avoidance of pain did not make the prospect any better. She gulped and looked forward. Desperate, she hoped for deliverance, beyond hope.
The drunk septon was no longer there.
"The septon…" Sansa said quietly, almost calling Littlefinger father, remembering in the last moment she should not do so because she was no longer Alayne and she would not be marrying Petyr had he been her father.
Or maybe I would.
Petyr truly did not care about anything. Except his own designs… Why did Sansa ever think any different?
"We'll find a tree with a face somewhere if we can't find a septon," Littlefinger cut off Sansa's timid attempt at freeing herself. "We'll carve the face and make the tree bleed if we have to."
I am not marrying him. I am not marrying him. I am not marrying him.
But she was. As always, she was…
The huge man in roughspun of the Faith finally stepped forward from the shadows, opening his way through the crowd by pushing men unceremoniously left and right, not paying any attention if they were highborn or not.
He will save me now. Sansa hoped fervently. He will kill them all and take me home.
"I am a septon if you need one," he rasped against her wishes. "My lord," he added as an afterthought, but the usual submission that went with the title was not present in his voice.
"You?" The words left Sansa's mouth unbidden. "You said you were a killer." Did she just say that? How could she have possibly said that?
Sandor Clegane was surely dressed like a member of the Faith today, with his maimed face well hidden under the cowl. The habit was big enough for him, and it wouldn't have been if he had stolen it.
Fortunately, no one paid attention to the soft voice of the unwilling bride. Petyr, normally so perspicacious, did not even pay attention that Brother Driftwood and this septon were one and the same man, who killed Harry. Or maybe he did, but he did not care when a situation played out well for his purposes.
"Thank you, brother," Petyr said heartily. "As I promised you before, you shall be well rewarded for your efforts."
Sandor Clegane rasped on where the drunk septon had stopped. "You, Lord Baelish, take this widow here, Lady Stark, Hardying, Lannister, all that, to wife, is that the way of it?"
Petyr agreed to the rudely made proposition with a noble nod.
"And you, girl, you want to inherit Casterly Rock, and the Vale, on top of Winterfell, and marry him?"
Casterly Rock? Sansa hadn't thought that far. But if Cersei was queen and if Ser Jaime could not marry for being Kingsguard… And if Tyrion… died?
Sansa looked down. A steely something was born, or maybe it just woke, in her soul. A direwolf snarled there, and it was a much more ferocious animal than any other present. A real one, not merely stitched to a piece of fabric.
"Look at me," the septon said. No… he implored.
Sansa had to obey. Under the cowl she met a pair of changed eyes. Concerned and worried.
For me. She marvelled at the discovery.
"Of course she wants to," Baelish said in her place. "She is just too excited. It is shocking for a maiden to lose one husband at the altar…"
Why do you speak for me? Dismayed, Sansa open her mouth to say something imprudent-
"Alright," the false septon grunted enthusiastically. "You are man and wife then! Who am I to decide otherwise? To the dance!"
Sansa had never been more disappointed in her life. And how can you say this? You of all men?
The false septon even began scribbling frantically on a piece of parchment, using the quill forgotten by the drunkard. Sansa imagined he was duly taking note of her marriage on the same parchment which proclaimed she was a maiden, sealing her doom.
Angry, silent as a tomb, Sansa gave her hand to yesterday's father, her new lord husband, and let Petyr lead her to the courtyard, where the dance was to begin. Petyr soon left her side, to receive congratulations from the people in the Vale.
"The mystery knight does look like a real septon now, I'll give you that, Lady Stark," Myranda approached her from nowhere and said naughtily. "But since you are not Alayne, I will bet that he is no more a septon than you've ever been the Lord Protector's daughter."
"He has become one," Sansa said sadly, too weak to twist the truth. "He wouldn't lie about who he is. He never bothered before."
To Sansa's surprise, Myranda flashed her the most sincere smile since they had known each other. With her chubby body, she spun on her heels. An ugly red-haired knight who called himself Ser Shadrich was caught up in her plump, stifling grasp. He was the first one in the queue of men traditionally asking the bride for a dance. The two twirled with utter lack of grace, as the couple of funny dwarves who had ridden a pig and a dog at Joff's wedding, staggering and toppling over one another.
This left another man in front of Sansa, asking for a dance. One Sansa did not want to see. Not now. How could you?
"Will the blushing bride grace the humble servant of the Seven with this dance?" a voice rasped, mocking her gravely. Yet it may have been the most courteous phrase he had ever directed to her.
She discovered her cheeks were warm, just as he said.
He still carried a sword on his back, under the clothing of the Faith. She wondered if he slept with it. With his real weapon, not the other one Myranda wanted to see.
Curious, she put her hand forward. He did not need any further encouragement. He pulled her to himself and grabbed her hand and waist to lead. They spun around. A little bit of space remained between them. The grip on her body was firm, but not untoward, just as she remembered him from most occasions when he guided her to places. Those few others… when they were alone and he was angry and frightening her… she would not think of them now because it would inevitably lead to thinking of his kiss. The smell of him was wonderfully warm and non-herbal. Sansa breathed it in, filled her lungs with that unknown wonder and relaxed with a sigh. She was safe from Petyr for the time being.
He danced well for a man of his size, a man Sansa had never seen dancing in their long time together in King's Landing.
"I didn't know you could dance!" She exclaimed after a while, completely flushed, feeling almost happy on her marriage day.
Her only reply was a boar-like grunt and a squeeze of her waist, harder than necessary now and… pleasant in a quaint fashion. She should have known better than to try and talk to him. Anything she said displeased him. That had not changed, unlike his eyes…
"I didn't think you'd ever become a septon either," she confessed, contrite, immediately regretting her poor attempt at conversation, wishing to dance on in silence.
"I did not," he reacted with indignation.
"But then-"
"You are not married to him. They will discover it on the morrow."
"But if he-"
"-beds you it will be called rape. You can have him sent to the Wall for it. Let him freeze to death. The lords of the Vale love him not. Those he bought may relish keeping his coin, without him to collect interest on their debt. Not being married, you can still marry anyone you want."
The Hound didn't care if another man bedded her. That hurt Sansa and it should not have. They were in a dark corner now. The courtyard was full of dancing couples and no one would see them. Sansa's heart was pounding.
Will you kiss me now? Will you kill me, despite not having red hair?
The Hound merely released her and her heart fell.
"Here." Instead of killing her or kissing her he showed her a letter from the Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle, swearing a holy vow that Sandor Clegane the Hound had been on the Quiet Isle for a year. In that time, he hadn't visited Saltpans, nor did he swear septon vows. Under the beautiful handwriting of the real septon, there was a written confession scribbled in haste and signed by Sandor Clegane… In it, he confessed he had just falsely married Lord Petyr Baelish and Sansa Stark. And that he did it because after his stay on the Quiet Isle, even he, with his reputation, found ungodly that a man who agreed to marrying a woman to a corpse would then take her for himself, over that same corpse, while it was still fresh.
"You can write?" she wondered in her highborn arrogance.
"Guess what, I can read as well," he said scathingly. "Not that you can wrap your bird's mind around anything.'
"Why are you doing this?" Sansa wrung her hands. She would never understand the Hound. Maybe she was stupid as he said. Her head turned uselessly, trying to find an explanation.
"I won't tell you if you don't know already," he barked. "I am going. I'll make a copy of this for every high lord of the Vale before I leave."
"Going?" Sansa protested vehemently. "Again?"
"What do you mean, again?" he seemed as confused as she was now.
"I don't want your letters," she refused him.
"Than I shall take them and leave you to your lord husband," he replied cruelly. "At least he is a bit more virile than the first one they found for you today. Pardon my untimely interruption." Despite the anger in his words, he did not move to leave.
Sansa realised her hand was on his shoulder. She never knew when it ended up there.
"Dance with me some more," she invited him weakly… Her knees softened and her body hurt all over. She could find no explanation for what he did for her, nor for what she was doing now, but all of a sudden she knew exactly what she wanted. And maybe she could have it, this once. "Dance with me as if I was your wife," she pleaded.
"You are not…" he murmured. "If you were, I…"
Would you want me to be? She should be appalled by the notion, but it only hardened her resolve to impose her will on him in the matter of dancing, if she could.
"As if I was, please," she insisted, trailing her arm from his massive shoulder to his exposed neck under the habit, offering him her other hand for the taking. "Can't I dance with whom I will on my marriage day?" she pouted, but her voice rang very deep and profoundly melodious, not just soft and sweet as it was by nature.
Far from them, in the lit part of the courtyard, her would-be lord husband never danced. He remained engaged in conversation with various lords of the Vale. Sansa should be privy to its content, but after being forced to marry a deadman, she could not bring herself to care.
"If you were my wife," Sandor Clegane rasped into her ear. "I wouldn't let you dance with anyone else on our marriage day."
"Then don't," Sansa said simply.
They never stopped dancing. She realised that his grip became as she may have wanted it from the start, hard and unyielding, waking the wet softness in her core. The space between their bodies vanished by magic. Her breasts, exposed on top in her wedding dress, touched the rough wool of his clothing. She looked under his cowl, searching for that changed expression in his eyes, until she found it. Her heart raced madly and their breaths mingled. The music was a winged being, lending them wings in return. Sansa's feet flew over the mud dirtying her silvery slippers and the pale hem of her wedding gown.
There had been one animal fiercer than the direwolf in the past. The dragon. It had wings and more heads in stories and tales… Maybe she and the Hound were like a dragon together. Strong and free. Sansa had never danced so much or so fine in her life.
A raucous voice called for the bedding. Lyn Corbray? Another Littlefinger's puppet. Expectedly, Sansa was stripped of her wings and her dreams and brought to the hard ground. Lady Waynwood passed by, carrying a significant pouch of coin. Her cooperation in Sansa's marriage did not come cheap by the looks of it.
At the end, Sansa had something to tell to the Hound, breathless and flushed, before she lost the nerve and was carried away by the lewd wedding guests. "It if please you, don't dance with Lady Myranda Royce while I am gone."
It was not good enough, she had to say more.
"Don't… don't show her your sword."
"Why not?" he was… very uncertain and oddly polite.
His hesitation soothed her. He could be… gallant as Randa had said. He had just shown it more than well.
"Because my heart will hurt if you do," she announced with unprecedented warmth in her new womanly voice.
He had nothing to say to that.
Having said her farewell, Sansa felt almost ready for what was to come, though perhaps not for the thin little man who would be carried naked to the bedchamber after her.
"Bed them!" the crying was shrill now.
Why didn't everyone have the decency to die just like Harry, and leave Sansa to dance in peace? It was… it was the most wondrous sensation Sansa experienced, since she was a little girl and had a head full of dreams.
More manly hands groped her, robbed her from the Hound, from her dancing endeavour and new sweet memories; more arms belonging to wrong men. Sansa let them do and hid inside. She imagined herself in Winterfell… She was ten. She was a child again and she would be safe.
Soon she ended up in the bedchamber that was to be hers and Harry's, naked as on her name day. The room was stripped of everything, except the bed and the bedding. There was no table, no chair, no logs to be put in the hearth, no fire. Nothing she could use as a weapon.
"No," she sighed helplessly, regretting all her actions. Instead of dancing she should have begged Sandor Clegane to save her. She should have seduced him and pleaded with him to kill Petyr for her. He had promised to do that once, didn't he? Sansa could ask Alayne for help, Alayne could be forward enough if she wanted. Just in the right amount, to secure the Hound's help….
Instead, stupid old Sansa just wanted to dance. She let the Hound see her real, confused feelings towards him, and she must have sounded indifferent about the prospect of her imminent bedding. She realised the Hound must have thought she was not a maiden… when he proposed to her she should use being bedded by Petyr to get rid of him. What was a bedding to the Hound? He must have done that many times. If Petyr's entire marriage arrangement was dishonourable, why not the paper about her maidenhead?
Harry and the Eyrie. And Winterfell. And Casterly Rock.
Sansa seethed at the injustice of it all. Her anger sank all the way down to the steel in her. She had almost forgotten she had it, but there it was, undeniable. It had always been there, waiting for her to find it.
There was no weapon, but there was a window.
The blushing bride wrapped a thin, white sheet around her chest, so as to cover her modesty, but left the shoulders bare. Her legs were equally unburdened from her knees down, very much on purpose. As ready as she would ever be for her own bedding, she leaned languidly against the sill of the open window. Some drunken song about knights and fair maidens rang in the courtyard where the dancing continued. Sansa allowed herself to listen to it and sighed only once. The evening had been entirely too beautiful to end up with her being deflowered by Petyr.
Littlefinger did not tardy. Nor did he waste his time by calling Sansa to join him in bed. He hurried to his innocent wife.
When he was close enough, it was his creation, Alayne Stone, that forced Sansa's head to tilt and her lips to part seductively.
"Cat," Petyr breathed out, "you are so pretty for me."
Petyr lifted his arms to embrace her, leaned in to kiss her, naked and unarmed.
Before he could do any of it, Alayne wriggled out of another unwanted embrace with months of practice, and gave Petyr a good, healthy push in the back.
Yet it was not Alayne, but Sansa Stark who planted her leg under both of Petyr's… just as her siblings and Theon had done to Sansa in Winterfell, making her land ungraciously into mud or snow. It was the first time in her life she succumbed to repeating that most unladylike gesture.
Petyr's scream of betrayal was muffled by the song.
Maybe life wasn't one, but his existence surely ended on a happy note.
Sansa wondered absent-mindedly if Harry's corpse was still in the Great Hall, and if she had to attend both Harry's and Petyr's funerals now, as their grieving widow.
"You were right, you know," Sansa said flatly, looking down, through the window. "Widowhood becomes me."
From the highest room in the highest tower of the Gates of the Moon, Petyr's body looked like a black…
Pulp.
Harry's corpse was prettier, Sansa concluded faintly. Her strength began abandoning her from the terrifying sight. Killing was sweeter than it should have been. I did this. How could I? She had no answer for herself. Tears sprang forward and flooded her eyes, blinding her.
The steel in her became mellow, melting like hot iron to be worked on by a smith.
Sansa Stark collapsed on the floor, in a heap of trembling nerves, flesh and bone.