I've less of a head this morning, first time in a long time. Bit shaky, but alright.
She wants to call me – by my name. Last person to call me Sandor was, Gods, the housekeep probably, whacking me on the arse with a rag and giving me a handful of mulberries. Father called me pup – until the face, and then he didn't call me much of anything, and Gregor would spit runt at me and black my eye if I bit back. When she does, calling up the path to me, asking about some blade-tipped plants as if I'm a damned maester, my stomach gives. Gods. She caught my eyes on her this morning too – I was helpless, her leg was there, so white it practically glowed. Fine little golden hairs, shinbone. And I swear, her fixing that dagger on her ankle almost got me hard. Hells.
Getting pretty good with my left arm now. Never would have thought myself much of a huntsman but then never would have thought that the bird – Sansa. I mean, Sansa – would be rooting out mushrooms and sniffing them like a boar, or sparking a fire, or scrubbing down Stranger and giving him what for, either.
Sansa. Rolls off the tongue like sunset.
She ruins it later, though. Bloody gives away one of my hares. Hares I spent a sunrise waiting for, freezing my arse off while she slept again. Hells, she can sleep. And there she goes, without a thought, slinging it at some King's Landing strays who'll be dead tomorrow, or the next day, with my hare wasting in their corpses. She's too damned kind for her own good. And for mine. She gets between my teeth. Gods damn her.
Still, I make her pay well enough, hunting the rabbits. It's sweet as hells watching her try with the bow, seeing that long neck flush, her blood right up. And I get behind her to see her arm straight, so she's got at least a scrap of a chance. There's a slick of dirt on her collarbone. She smells of wild garlic. And mushrooms. She misses all three times and looks ready to turn into a thundercloud. I stop myself laughing, just about, and go to collect the arrows, leaving her to steam.
The last one fell over the hill, next to a couple of bloody lazy rabbits who hardly move when I come close. So I stand still, making like a tree, and I slip my dagger out and hurl it, and fuck me if it doesn't get one. And I take up the arrow and sort of shove it into the dagger wound. She'll never know the difference. It's worth it for the grin on her face. She's smiled more in the last day than I ever saw her smiling at King's Landing, though maybe she just wasn't smiling at me. Well, she is now.
Though not so much when I get her to skin it. She won't say no to a challenge, that's plain enough. Starkblood lodged in her like grit. She can't bring herself to do the head but that would be like asking me to slam a squealing rabbit's nose into the fire. I keep the rabbit tail for her. Used to do that for Fira when she was wee. She had a little row of them on her windowsill, dusty in the light, for all the luck it brought her. Luck was a hollow word in the Clegane house. Maybe no such thing as luck anyway. Just what you make of it.
And then I find myself telling her about it all – Fira, Father, Gregor, his teeth everywhere. I've never told anyone. She looks like she's damn near brimming over. She doesn't cry though, just gives me another one of those looks, like I'm a wolf-pup she's rearing. And then she comes out with it, asks me if I was ever married. Gods. How does she not understand? That looking like this, that being a Clegane, is not most women's idea of a happyeverafter. I don't belong at the end of a song.
She starts making niceties, making it worse with every word, likening me to a eunuch and a dwarf and a crippled boy and a fucking mute executioner and expecting me to be thankful for it. Well, I'm not. I hate it and always will. I hate her looking at it, which she's doing more and more, not a trace of fear. I try and hide it from her, keep her to my good side – as good as it's ever going to get, anyway.
And I blurt out that she's so fucking perfect – tongue riding brain, I'm no better than her - and I want to just crawl into a hole. Now she's lying there so quiet on the other side of the fire, chewing on it. I know she's not sleeping because I know how she sleeps now. She doesn't understand that I don't mean with her hair all braided and her sleeves floating down, but now, pulling that bowstring towards the rabbits while her jaw grows tight, knuckles getting a bit raw, strands of hair all over the place. Gods, I've a bellyful of her. Wine's out. How I'll ever sleep.
We're quiet again the next day. It's like the firetime each night tips us upside down and we say all our pieces all wrong, they just tumble out, and then we're righted again the next morning, ready to start afresh. It's good to be out from under her eyes for a bit, sitting in grassland, waiting for birds. She's making my shoulders hurt, keeps looking at me like I'm a riddle, and when I turn, her eyes jump away. I've left her chattering to the horses – never would have thought Stranger would be so soft. Sky's the colour of robins' eggs and clouds like rolls of paper being tossed out. Ah, there - got it – grouse for dinner, then. I'm not done, though.
I get down to the smallholding – I could smell the bread from all the way up on the hill. The door's open and I amble in, and there's a woman there, and she brings her hand up to her mouth, and then puts it down again and looks fierce. Gods, there's something in the air – no one's afraid of me anymore. Do you have food, I say, and she says ay. What have you got then, I ask her, and she looks like she wants to punch me, and says bread and cheese and when I say I'll have some then, she says or what? And I say or I'll slice both your hands off and then you'll bake no more, and she has little angry tears then and hands it over. But hells, I can see Sansa's bottom lip going and her eyes like chips off the Wall, and I go back and leave a coin on her fireplace and the woman looks at me like I'm a complete idiot, and I get out of there as quick as I can.
What is she doing to me? I wanted to look at her, not have her look at me, have her voice itching in my skull. I don't know what I was expecting, but I thought she'd be more - trouble, more like a highborn. But this night, here she is, I've set her plucking the bird and she's doing it like she's been a bloody kitchenwench her whole life.
I could ask her to do anything and she'd have a go. Well, not anything, not – as much as I'd like. I think of shoving her up against a Red Keep wall and demanding a song, breathing wine into her face, her blinking me away – not exactly a way to a woman's heart. I wonder if she'd do it now. If I asked nicely.
