DISCLAIMER: Nope, still don't own anything.
3.
"Why did you leave Tarth?"
Of all the questions she could ask at a time like this. Sprawled taut on the forest floor, his massive form draped over her like a human blanket, the night covering his eyes but not her blushes, the Stranger take him he can feel the flush of heat along her white cheeks and it burns like a brand against the pads of his fingers. The movement of her soft mouth against the rough joints clamped to keep her silent is almost unbearable. The riders that had disturbed their slumber have gone and they have escaped unnoticed, for now.
"What?"
She has the audacity, the blind fucking gall to attempt to pry his fingers off her face one by one with delicate hands and fool he is he indulges her as she dislodges the hasty gag he has put in place.
"You heard what I said", Tully eyes flashing blue fire and he smirks at it, this resurfacing of highborn arrogance, because it is better, anything is better than her weeping as Meryn beat her black and blue with his sword or the stillness of her face when she puts on Alayne like a dress and becomes a dark-haired woman he barely recognizes.
"You think I have a hankering for a monk's life, little bird? Prayers and digging for me, is it? You'd like that, I suppose, the wild dog chained up in a bloody garden?"
"No," she sullenly retorts, brushing her hair back from her face, "as if anything could chasten you. Only I wondered why you would leave. The Lannisters would kill you for desertion, and you did not swear fealty to another house, so - "
As if I'd put myself on a leash for another bunch of fucking lords, he thought heatedly and said nothing, only pushing himself up onto his elbows to give her room. In response she turns onto her back, which is worse because now her throat is level with his chest and he has only to lean down to breath into her hair, the only fire he has ever desired to approach. He shifts lower to adjust only as she does the reverse, wriggling along on the cold ground and he finds himself face to face with all her finery and at a loss for words. Finery. The last time he saw her in a gown was Kings Landing, all Southern silks and fancy jewels. At the Eyrie she was shuttered, dimmed like a blinkered candle, all plain dresses and wrong hair to play the bastard daughter Baelish wanted in more ways than one, scheming bastard. Here, dress worn from the road and hair mussed, loose from light sleep, the red coming through stronger now her perfect face is all the finery she could need. Dog that he is the press of her breasts to his chest is equally distracting. She's taller than before, all long limbs and pale skin and fuck –
Thinking is impossible when a slender finger floats up out of the gloom and feels along his mouth. The burnt side is only a little numb, her touch a distant sensation, like the remnants of sea spray carried on the wind. On the other side he feels everything with shocking clarity, her small fingertip traveling along the rise of what's left of his lips.
"What in the Seven fucking hells do you think-"
"You're bleeding" Eyes wide like that night he must never think of, ever.
She's right, though, he can taste the salt and iron in his mouth and wants to laugh at the irony of it all. The Hound bites his own lip to keep from biting at a highborn's perfect teats, the jokes practically write themselves. Only, his desire whispers to him, you would never bite, but lick and-
"Don't fuss, girl"
Her fingers don't drop from his face, they travel back the way they came over to the burnt side where his mouth disappears into mottled, fading but reddish scars.
"Can you feel anything on this side?"
What do you think, he barks inwardly, tossing his head away from her touch.
"So many questions, little bird"
"I'm granted so few answers, you see"
It's the other voice she uses then, the Stone girl's voice, neutral and flat, uninterested but still polite and he snaps. Snatching the wrist the fingers belong to he clamps the full breadth of her hand palm first along the length of his face, pressing the appendage from wrist to fingertip along the surface of the scars and dipping his head to frighten her growls in warning.
"There. Does that answer your bloody questions?"
Her breath hitches, whether from the sudden intimacy or the look of his face snarling barely an inch from her own, he doesn't know. Or care. Her eyes fly open wider still but she says nothing, only lets him press her hand against the uneven surface of his face.
"Soft"
Confusion must have shown itself on his face despite the poor light as there's the hint of a smile at the corner of her pretty little mouth as she clarifies her statement for him.
"I didn't think it would feel soft"
He's released her hand already but it's still there, and now, Gods be damned, moving softly against his ruined cheek in motions not unlike –
She's stroking him. Petting. Like that wolf she kept on a leash before the beast was killed for attacking the brat that would be king. What he would give to put his head in her lap like he'd seen the beast do. What he would do with his head in her lap is something else entirely. He dismisses the half-grown fantasy, furrowing his brow against the vague images, suspicious that Elder Brother's sanctimonious lectures have made him pious after all.
"I'm not your pet wolf, girl"
"No," eyes hardening at that and he knows he's touched a nerve, her jaw tightening even as he feels her stomach trembling, "they killed Lady, as they did my father, my mother, my brother, even our Septa…"
Her thumb smoothes the mottled network over his cheekbone. Firm.
"I would have killed him," she whispered fiercely, his little bird become wolf beneath him, "I would have pushed him off that parapet and watched him break on the stone floor. And smile," her eyes glowing now, glittering, "I would have smiled over his corpse"
I know.
"And your pretty head would have been the next one on a pike. So much better you didn't"
"Why did you leave Tarth?"
"I told you, little bird. I'm no monk. There's plenty of killing to be done in the world, and I'd rather be the one doing it"
"Did you hate Joffrey too?" She dabs at his mouth with the edge of her sleeve. He can see the stitching on it now and somewhere his mind registers that it is morning and the sun will soon rise above the hills, "he always spoke so cruelly to you"
I thought about snapping his precious little neck more times than I care to tell you.
"Might be if you hadn't been in the way I would have tipped him over the side of that walkway myself"
She stops, her hand frozen at his mouth, those eyes, damn them, searching his face for the merest hint of a comforting lie but he's honest, she knows that much. A hound will die for you but never lie to you. Next thing he knows she's stretched up to meet him and her smooth young cheek is pressed right to his burned one, her lips by the mess that was once recognizable as an ear. The scent of her hair fills his nostrils and he could swear an almighty oath that under the woodsmoke, green air and her own warmth it smells of fucking lemons. Her voice is full to breaking and his heart pounds in his chest as she breathes right into the depths of his brain like a maid entrusting a secret to a friend's confidence.
"Maybe…if I'd been Queen by then I would have knighted you for it"
She drops back, collapsing back onto the forest ground with a soft huff of breath. He stares down at her, something like victory and surprise at her own daring warring in those blue eyes. Words refuse him. There is a line that has been crossed here, his very gut tells him as much. What that line is though – they are still lying on the ground looking at each other and it can't go on much longer.
"I'm no knight, little bird," spitting the word like an insult.
"I know. I've become less fond of knights, though"
He grunts something like a response to that as he levers himself up off his elbows and rises to a kneeling position. Dawn is approaching, and fast at that. He glances down at her and wishes he hadn't. She's spread out on the dry leaves like a bloody banquet, her dress creased from his weight and arms bent gracefully above her head. All in all she looks as if she'd just woken up on a feather bed after a hasty fucking. The dawn light catches the auburn in her hair and he looks away.
"Come on. We'll make as much ground as we can while there's light"
She rises to a sitting position, hands already busy combing her hair back and twisting the length of it round into a neat bun at her nape. A girl used to having her hair brushed for her. She still smoothes the wrinkles in her skirts before following him to where the horse is tethered. A lady never forgets her manners, it seems.
"Sandor"
He stops at that, hands at the reins frozen. She's never said his name before. It was Ser this or My Lord that before he'd made it clear neither title fit. Then no titles at all, which was fine. He was the second son of a lowly House, still is and a Lannister's dog then, though not now. He's surprised he recognizes it as his own on her tongue.
Sansa.
"What?" More sharply than he feels, which is hot and almost dizzy, the remnants of her heat cooling rapidly along his torso in the morning cold. Flushed like a green boy, he curses, hard at the prospect of his first tumble.
"I never thanked you that day"
"What of it?" Swinging up into the saddle, reaching down to pull her up behind him.
"It was impolite"
He snorts, pushes the straggling hair out of his eyes and gestures impatiently with his hand. She takes it in her own, tiny and white against his huge paw. He lifts her up and she settles behind him easily now, her slender arms circling his waist and clasping together at his belly.
"All apologies lately aren't we, little bird"
"You like it," and Seven hells but he can feel her smiling into his back. He watches her fingers knit tightly together at his stomach. He turns the horse about.
"Don't, girl"
"Don't what? Her cheek against the back of his arm.
"For a second imagine I am anything but a killer"
"The world is built on killers," she reflects, giving back his words from then, "and I'm used to looking at them now"
"Good"
"But you're different, somehow"
The world narrows. He stiffens in the saddle and knows she feels it as her head lifts from his back in silent question.
"There are any number of things a man like me could do to you, girl," he warns, voice thick with threat. Like take a song from your mouth, and no Mother's hymn neither.
"I know," is her quiet reply, "and you haven't. Doesn't that say something in your favour?"
He scowls at the rising sun and tries to unsee her fingers interlocking against his mail. Little bird the things I'd do, he fumed, and how you'd hate them, yourself and the dog you let too close for comfort.
Her grip around his waist tightens and he feels her straighten behind him. Such a proud lord's daughter, this one.
"I'm very good at imagining," she muses, almost to herself, "and I'm much better at pretending now. It has saved me so far"
He digests that in silence. He's certain he doesn't want to know anything of what Baelish taught her. Natural daughter the Crone's arse. He knew the look on the other man's face well enough to understand how much "Father" doted on his only girl.
"So ride on, good Ser," she picks up in a knowing, haughty sing-song and he bristles before understanding that she's play-acting with him now, and how light that makes things, that Lions and white-coated pricks have not taken the girl in her completely, that his little bird can still play at storytelling like the pair of them are living a song. "This almost-princess is eager to put a great distance behind her today"
He flicks the reins and the horse breaks into a steady canter. What a Queen you would have made, seeing again the erect line of her back, the lift of her chin and the impossible lightness of her step as, his cloak around her shoulders she had stood and walked out of the throne room as if the beating she had just taken never happened. But it had, he'd heard the clucking of her maids after they dressed her the following morning, bruises like great dark roses spoiling her milky skin, flowering over her ribs and back. He wishes again he'd skewered Meryn like the fat hog he was. Maybe the Imp's sellsword had already done it for him, there was no love lost in that quarter. On the Quiet Isle he'd dreamt of nothing but kissing those flowers from her flesh, dragging his tongue over them and panting like his bloody namesake as he licked the wounds from her skin. As if he could. And now, thanks to her boldness he knows already the dreams that will plague his watch this night, her with her dress about her waist and her fingers at his temples, stroking his burns while he tastes her sweet, wet-
"Sandor?"
"Oh aye, your Grace," he mutters thickly, and the road ahead opens up as she presses against his back and they gallop into morning.