Author's notes:
As always, thanks for reading and reviewing.
This chapter is a bit longer than usual. I didn't want to cut it into smaller pieces.
Chapter 4
Sandor had resolved to keep his distance after the night in which he unexpectedly had found Sansa Stark throwing herself into his arms. Since he had neither a death wish nor any particular desire to make a fool of himself, two very likely scenarios for anyone being in her vicinity, judging by recent developments, he thought it a very smart and self-protecting decision.
It held for a whole day and night.
Then he saw her wandering by the training yard, for all intents and purposes as if this was a regular occurrence. She wore a simple grey dress and had her hair braided in the unostentatious style the Northerners preferred on their women. He mused for a moment how odd it seemed to see her in something else than her nightdress, when he noticed the weird necklace she was wearing.
It was the stone. She had fixed it to a delicate, long silver chain and wore it so that the stone was nestled in the valley between her breasts. Combined with her blatant disregard for the current fashion dictates of King's Landing, the simple ornament left her looking out of place.
Beautiful though. Sansa Stark, it appeared, didn't need expensive dresses and elaborate hair-styles or priceless jewels. She took his breath away in just a grey dress with a white stone around her neck.
Like a diamond that showed its true beauty only in the simplest of settings.
He was given no further chance to admire his present on her, because at that precise moment the soldier he had been sparring with had recovered from the blow he had landed seconds before and noticed his preoccupation, using it smartly to swing his sword at him.
Instincts born from a lifetime of fighting had him duck the blow and having the worst of it glance of his sword, but the blade now came at him at a weird angle and its tip graced his cheek.
He let loose a string of expletives that had his opponent running for cover, but when he turned, Sansa was gone.
…
"I am sorry," was the first but unfortunately not the only thing she said to him when he came to her that night.
"I should not have bothered you, not that night and not today in the yard," she whined at him, tears threatening to fall. "I cannot think what I would've done if he had killed you and it would've been my fault and…"
He shut her up by putting a hand roughly over her mouth.
"Quit your blubbering, little bird, or I'll be out of here," he growled, only belatedly realizing the oddity of him thinking this a viable threat.
Apparently, it was, because she nodded vigorously and he took his hand away.
"Firstly," he said, holding up one finger, "that whelp could not have killed me if I had been bound and blindfolded. It's an insult of you to think he could."
She opened her mouth, likely to apologize – again - but he forestalled her with an impatient gesture which made her bite her bottom lip. Which, in turn, made him forget what the second point had been.
"I missed you last night," she spoke into the ensuing silence.
He wasn't sure he had missed her. At some point in between the drinking and whoring and puking his guts out somewhere in the gutters of Flea Bottom, yes, maybe there had been a time when he had thought how much better it would've been if he'd been with her.
Not that he would ever tell her any of that.
He reached out and touched the stone on her chest.
"You are wearing it," he observed quietly.
"Because it's not nothing," she said. Then she drew herself up and pushed him backwards until he came to sit on her bed.
"And now you'll let me see to that cut you got because of me."
He rolled his eyes, but heroically resisted the urge to tell her it was nothing. Something told him that wouldn't go over all too well.
She came at him with a white cloth she had dipped into some yellowish liquid and started dabbing at his cheek.
"Seven buggering hells!"
He flinched away from her and gave her a menacing stare.
"What the fuck are you doing? This hurts worse than that fucking sword."
She glowered back at him.
"Cleaning the cut, which wouldn't have been necessary if you had been wise enough to see a maester to treat the wound!"
"A maester!"
He was torn between wanting to laugh or to howl.
"He would've keeled over laughing if I had come to him with this scratch."
"Well, too bad, now I am treating you, and you'll better take it like a man or it will scar."
He couldn't remember a single time in his miserable life when he had been this close to breaking down with hysterical laughter.
"Gods forbid it would scar. People would be shocked to see my handsome face ruined beyond recognition."
Her lips curled at the corners while she fought to stay serious, but she lost the fight against her mirth and chuckled softly.
"Still no reason for this to get worse than it is," she said, laughter still colouring her voice.
When she was done, she let her hand fall to her side and lifted the other to take his chin in her hand and turn his face sideways, looking critically at the good side of his face.
"I doubt people would ever have called you handsome, even without this," she said, indicating his scars with a nod of her head.
"Well, thank you," he gave back sardonically, wondering where her empty courtesies had gone to. This surely would've been a time for those.
"Not plain either," she continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Interesting, definitely…"
He wondered if whatever had been in the stuff she had put on his wound was making him lose his mind, making him envision Sansa fucking Stark musing about the relative merits of his visage.
"Manly, yes and … darkly attractive."
"Are you done?"
She smiled at him. A very secretive, deeply feminine smile. Something so far from innocent it disturbed him deeply.
He stood up abruptly, pushing her out of his way.
"I didn't come her to be mothered," he forced out between clenched teeth. "Or to be mocked."
He turned around but didn't get far before her hand was on the sleeve of his tunic.
"Sandor."
He froze at her use of his given name. They had somehow managed to do without. He called her little bird on occasion, she had stumbled over a few 'sers' and 'my lords' at first but since it was always only the two of them, names really weren't a necessity.
"I wasn't mocking you," she said in a small voice. "Please, don't go."
He took a deep breath, willing himself to just walk. Out of the door, away from her. Away from the sound of his name on her lips, away from her touches and her ministrations, away from her smiles.
He turned.
"Tell me about your day."
…
"Oh come on," he complained several nights later, "this wasn't half as funny as you make it out to be!"
Although he wasn't really complaining at all. Making her smile, or laugh, as the case was at the moment, was something he enjoyed rather more than he would've imagined. Currently she was in stitches about him telling her how badly Ser Wybald had disgraced himself during training this morning and how he had excused his abysmal performance with the demands his wife made of him every night in the bedchamber.
Far from being scandalized at the way he had put it into words, Sansa had since buried her face into her pillow to muffle the sound of her hysterics.
Finally she came up for air, red-faced with tears of laughter streaming down her flushed cheeks.
Seeing her like this brought the fact home very directly how much he suffered from nothing being demanded from him in any bedchambers lately. Besides being entertaining and companionable, that was.
"It's just," she wheezed, wiping her eyes, "that Lady Wybald remarked to the court ladies just this morning, that she rather wished her husband would 'use his sword' only half as often in their bedchamber as he claimed to use it in the training yard."
He snickered at that. Fit with what he thought of Wybald.
"And then," she continued, interrupting herself with another fit of the giggles, "she sighed and said 'although his sword is more like a little eating knife, really'."
He couldn't help himself. It wasn't even all that funny, but maybe people were right after all and laughter was infectious. Only that his surprised bark of laughter, not muffled by anything, reverberated loudly through her bedchamber, probably waking half the castle.
They both jerked upright, he from his comfortable slouch on the floor, she from her bed, and listened like startled deer for any sign of guards rushing towards her chamber.
When for long minutes nothing at all happened, they both breathed a sigh of relief, so synchronous it made Sansa giggle again.
"Stop it," he admonished with a grin. "You just saw what happened when you make me laugh."
She turned to him, mirth still dancing silvery in her eyes and put her hand on his face. The bad side, as always, which began to him annoy him solely for the reason that he could nary feel a thing on that side and he wanted to feel the softness of her hands on him more than he cared to admit.
"Yes, I saw and I think you do not laugh often enough," she stated with conviction. "You look years younger when you laugh."
"I rarely have reason to," he grumbled.
In all honesty, he had laughed, or at least been amused, more often in the last three weeks than he had in the last three years, maybe even longer.
These few stolen moments during the darkest hours of the night often filled him with such contentment as even a night spend between a whore's legs couldn't, and more quiet joy than he would've thought possible to find with a woman without fucking her.
Although fucking her was never far from his thoughts. Quite the contrary, unfortunately.
When he came back to his own little chamber, with her scent still clinging to him, her touches still burning on his skin and her smiles still fresh in his thoughts, stroking himself to a swift release was always the first order of business.
There had been a couple of moments when the urge to just grab her and kiss her was nearly overwhelming; even some where he thought she had looked as if she expected him to. But every single time he had held himself back, afraid of destroying the sanctuary they had created between themselves, the world where they both were content and untouchable and safe from everyone and everything outside.
He knew it was an illusion and a very fragile one at that, but he didn't mind living in it for one hour every night, like he wouldn't mind having a good dream once in a while. Happened rarely enough.
"I've something for you," she broke quietly into his thoughts and it took him some moments to focus. He had no idea how long he had been just staring at her and as always he tried to hide his embarrassment by clearing his throat and glowering at the floor for want of something else to glower at.
She rummaged to a drawer in a far corner of the room and came back with something she hid in her hands.
"A little boy down in the city was selling a couple of stones he had found on the beach," she explained. "This one," she opened her hands to reveal her present, "reminded me of you."
In her outstretched palm sat a piece of black stone, irregular and lumpy, but with a shiny black surface, smoothed – no doubt – by years of being washed over by water and sand. What made it special were the tiny glittering veins of a silvery mineral that criss-crossed its surface, making the light sparkling off of it like from a true gemstone.
"I've made a necklace out of it, so you could wear it... if you wish to, that is," she said when he didn't move to retrieve it. "It's only a leather cord, but this will not rip as easily as a silver chain would and I thought…"
She trailed off when he finally lifted his hand to pick the stone out of her palm.
Wearing any sort of jewellery wasn't at all customary for a man; maybe a ring, but not a necklace. But he would be damned if he ever took this one off for as long as he lived. They'd have to cut it from his cold, dead body.
He gave it back to her.
"Can you…" he started, but for some reason his voice came out like a croak and he had to clear his throat. "Can you help me put it on?"
She smiled and moved behind him to tie the leather strap into a tight knot, while he put the stone inside his shirt so it rested on his bare skin.
The stone was still warm from when she had held it in her hand and it felt to him as if the warmth was seeping into his skin, into his body. Thawing things that had been so deeply frozen, he had supposed they were dead.
With one hand over the place where the stone was, he fought against a sudden onslaught of emotions that were painfully churning and crashing inside of him like the waves of the sea in a violent storm.
Her smile was sweet and expectant when she sat in front of him again, but words failed him.
"Sansa, I…" he started but then shook his head.
As if to calm him, she put her hand over his, but that innocent gesture made things even worse.
She had embraced him, he remembered with sudden clarity. Maybe…
Before that thought had fully formed, he already had her face between his hands and his lips about an inch away from hers.
The urge to kiss her, to lay claim to her body just as completely as she had laid claim to his soul, was too much to fight. He rested his forehead against hers, not quite stopping what he was about to do, what his whole being demanded he'd do, but giving both of them a moment to come to terms with what was happening.
"Sansa," he whispered, their breath mingling, both of them breathing as if they'd been running.
She lifted her hands and put them on his upper arms, lightly caressing, as if she was telling him that she understood, that it was alright.
But it wasn't.
Just this one kiss would change things irrevocably. Every good intention he might have had, every claim to being a protector of innocence, a trusted advisor, maybe even a friend through dark times, would be invalidated by this one action. By taking what was not his to take.
His breathing slowed when the bout of madness lost a bit of its intensity.
"Thank you," he said, instead of doing what his insides still screamed for. "I understand now, why it's not nothing."
He would never be able to put his realization into words, but he suddenly understood why those gifts that seemed so small in material value were so important.
Surrounded by riches as they were, they had found something only for them. Something that was like a shared secret, a 'you're always in my thoughts' that rested as a small warm weight on the skin near their hearts during all those hours when they were apart. A 'you are important to me' in a world that did their best to make them feel unwanted. A 'you are not alone'.
He'd never before understood the importance some people placed on mementos of loved ones, on favours from women they loved, on all the various tokens of love and friendship people seemed to forever bestow on each other. He'd seen grown men, fatally wounded, crawl back onto a battlefield just to get back a lock of hair or a ribbon or something else they apparently didn't want to live or die without.
He understood now.
Slowly he took his hands away from her face and sat back a bit.
"I'd better go," he said, standing up.
He didn't trust himself to stay so close to her without succumbing to the temptation of her inviting smiles and soft touches. Not right now, at least.
"Will you be back tomorrow night?"
He gave her what he hoped passed for a smile. Surely tomorrow, they could go back to laughing with one another again. Back to their comfortable dream of friendship and safety.
"Of course I will."
...