A/N: This is a Kashi chapter. It's a headcannon of mine that Sandor gets all courtly-dictioned when he feels ashamed of himself. Which is rarely. But still.
Well. This was.
Well.
Wasn't it impolite to kiss someone without asking for her permission?
Didn't Sansa usually care about that sort of thing?
Her arms, which had been looped around his waist as she'd clung to him, sobbing with relief at his lack of indifference, had stayed put, as if holding him, instead of pushing him away reflexively like she expected them to. Indeed, her whole body seemed to be betraying her with its compliance to the will of his gentle, startling kiss.
And leading this mutiny of compliance, her heart.
Well. I never.
Hours before she'd discovered a speck of affection for the brute, cried over him even, yet it seemed absurd that she should be sighing against his lips (completely against her will, she noted internally) if that mote of feeling was as small as she'd judged it to be.
Did I judge myself wrongly?
His lips were warm but weathered, the hook of his nose gently brushing the side of hers as his mouth dipped and moved on her lips, ever so slowly, as though one sudden move would spook her and send her flitting across the room. Not an entirely undue caution. And yet the sigh that came from her as he pressed his lips into hers a fourth time, her own lips shivering against his in a timid kiss in return, seemed to spark something in him, and his caution he threw to the howling wind.
A groan rose from his chest as he brought one hand up behind her neck, pulling her closer, holding her to him. His other hand closed around her hip, dwarfed by the palm of his hand, and she knew she was helpless, trapped to him, and while there was a thrill and panic in her of something like danger, she could hear his voice as if it were carried on the very smell of his sweat: No, little bird, I won't hurt you.
But there is a difference between being out of danger and feeling safe.
And if your protector is the one making you feel unsafe…
"Sandor, I…" she managed to eek out between his kisses, and inexplicably her voice shattered the moment and sent him reeling back from her, gasping with eyes wide and full of bewildered guilt.
He shied away from her gaze at once. "Forgive me, Lady Sansa. I…I meant not to offend."
"It's alr—"
The door to her chamber flew open before she could finish, and in swept Sarankar Do, her brother hot on her heels, with seemingly the rest of the village waiting in the corridor without.
"May gods be just, Lady Flame! They tell me you are injured?!"
Sandor stepped between Sansa and the matron, shielding her from view. The vulnerability he wore from the moment before had disappeared, and he was her snarling Hound once again.
"That she is. And lost a lot of blood, at that," he lied, spitting. "I'm seeing to it; the last thing she needs is to be a buggering spectacle in her state. Now off with you. All of you."
Some villagers took steps backward, but Sarankar and her brother stayed put. Mahinja leaned over to whisper something in their Summer Tongue to his sister, which earned him a quick slap and an admonishing tone, though he was laughing so hard at his own joke he seemed not to care.
Once Mahinja quieted down, Sarankar sighed and asked, "Please allow me to treat her, Lord Dog. I am trained in healing. You can—"
"I'll not leave her to fight in any bloody war for any buggering king, you craven bastards understand me?!" Sandor shouted, rocking forward and scattering the rest of the villagers.
"Nobody is trying to separate you from her, Lord Dog," Mahinja said with a sly smile. Then, to his sister, "Come, Saran. It seems we are interrupting something. Let them alone. Maybe then Jurakan will lower his clouds."
Confused at this, Sansa tried to lean around Sandor to ask what he was talking about, but he blocked her view with his massive, naked back.
"We are interrupting nothing," Sarankar said disdainfully, shooing her brother into the corridor. She held her hand out to Sandor. "Come, Lord Dog. The incoming storm has blown our enemy off-course for the time being, yet you must still allow me some time alone with the Lady."
"Over my dead body," he growled, turned his head and spat.
"I'm afraid I cannot oblige you in any of the ways that strange Westerosi idiom can be construed. Please, Lord Dog. I will not ask you again."
"Go ahead, Sandor," Sansa said, trying to sound permissive, but perhaps her words had registered differently to Sandor, as his eyes were filled again with the guilty, bewildered vulnerability they had been when he had apologized for kissing her. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and sighed, directing his attention at her feet.
The muscles in his jaw worked for a moment before he ground out, "as you command, my lady."
And then he was gone. With Mahinja and the rest of the party, isolated behind the heavy goldenwood door.
"Actually, um, you were interrupting something, a little," Sansa confessed to Sarankar after the door swung shut.
"Nothing that would lead to anything useful," the matron asserted dismissively. "Otherwise Jurakan would not be so prone to unleash his fury on us all. He is impatient with you, Lady Flame. He means to prompt your choice. Now come. Let me see to your wounds."
"I was only hit once. Here. On my arm." Her tongue tripped over the lie Sandor had given her.
"Hm. By what?" The older woman didn't sound convinced.
"An arrow." A streak of brilliance struck her. "It grazed my arm and hit Prince Kiza."
Sarankar's brow furrowed. "You must allow me to check for any other wounds, Lady."
Sansa sat obediently before her vanity, schooling her face to not let her confusion show before she was certain she knew not what Saran was referring to. "Why would Jurakan be impatient with me?"
"Because you have not chosen your Lord Dog yet to make you a woman."
Sansa blinked, thinking she'd misheard, or that Sarankar had misspoke, but when the matron's nonchalance had turned cold and heavy in her stomach, Sansa squeaked, "pardon?"
Sarankar continued to search her body for mortal breaches of the skin, taking her time in answering. "As the prophecy foretells. Originally, we had interpreted the lines to suggest that the Two-Legged Dog must kill the Tattered Flame in battle, but now that we know the Tattered Flame is a young girl, not yet made a woman, it is clear that the Two-Legged Dog must be her Choice, love her into womanhood, and bathe his manhood in the blood of her relinquished inexperience. Has your Hound not explained as much to you?"
Sansa shook her head vigorously, feeling betrayed, violated and angry. This was starting to feel like the longest night of her life. "He's said no such thing!" and then felt hot tears, like as not from exhaustion, prick the back of her eyes. She flung herself down on the vanity to hide her face. "How come nobody ever tells me anything?!"
The matron sighed. "Come now, Lady Sansa, do not be so upset—"
"No," Sansa started, whipping around at the woman and standing, shaking a finger in her face. "No. I thought I had a choice. I thought in your culture I was supposed to be given a choice!"
"You have," Sarankar said, trying to placate her. "You always have. I just know what choice you will make, when the time is right for you and all of us."
Sansa was enraged. Before, she had liked Sarankar. Before, she had trusted her. "This place is no different than Westeros. Is it inescapable that my innocence should be currency for political power, no matter where I am in this world?!" She was sobbing now. "How can you assume to know what choice I will make?! How can you know such a thing, when even I cannot?!"
Sarankar Do drew herself up tall, folded her hands across her lap. "I am the high priestess of Atabe on this island. I can confer with the Gods. I know these things, just as my mother before me knew them and her mother before her."
"Well, I am a Stark of Winterfell, just as my father was before me and his father was before him. We were once the Kings and Queens of Winter. And Winter will not bow to your heathen southron gods, not for anything in this entire world!" She was spitting with ire she had once only known Arya to bring forth in her. "I was bred to consort with Kings. In my native land I was a Princess. If I wanted to, if I'd been allowed my choice back home, I could have had any man I so desired. How, then, is it at all even possible I would choose to give my maiden's gift to that scarred and tactless brute?!"
There was silence in the room then, heavy and hot.
Sarankar cleared her throat. "Perhaps I should go, Lady."
"Perhaps you should," Sansa snorted.
The matron's steps were brusque until she paused just outside the door. "Lady?"
"What!?" Sansa snapped.
Sarankar turned; whether it was there or not, Sansa detected a haughtiness in her tone that only further irritated her. "It is just that, when Winter arrives on these islands, you'll find it feels just as the other seasons do. It is as warm and fruitful as summer, this far south."
Though she had no idea what it was supposed to mean, the comment only served to stoke her rage; Sansa flew across the room, wrenched the door open for the matron, and fairly shoved her out into the corridor.
Shoved her into the corridor and, incidentally, a large, familiar figure sulking outside her door, evidently listening in on their conversation. He apologized to Sarankar in his usual rasp, and at the sound of his voice, Sansa felt a chilling dread pool in her stomach.
He heard everything I said, she knew at once. She met his eyes, as filled with regret as she imagined her own to be, before he dropped his gaze to the floor and stepped back listlessly, into the blackened corridor and padded after Sarankar without another word.
"Sandor," she called after him without thinking, "wait!"
But he did not.
Flush hit her cheeks as the shame did. He's heard everything. Every single thing I said.
'Ladies,' chided the shade of Septa Mordane, 'do not speak ill of others, and in cases which they must, Ladies do so discretely, vaguely, and well out of earshot.' Sansa had received the lecture after Septa Mordane had wrenched her from Jeyne Poole's side when they were yet girls, gossiping to ascertain whether or not the Septa had any hair beneath her habit.
Second to that moment, this was the most ashamed of herself Sansa had been in her entire life. To think, she gulped, how disappointed, how hurt must he be? Certainly Sandor Clegane did not have the sensitivities of a withered old Septa, but something about the chill trailing behind his shoulders, touching her in her core, made her unsure.
And he had been kissing her, not a minute or two ago.
Well, if he didn't hate me before…
Resigned, she stepped back into her chamber and shut the door, staring unblinkingly at the golden woodgrain between her fingers. Sandor was not alone in weighing on her mind: prince Kiza was dead, warfare had come to their peaceful little island, and she could not be certain about exactly what sort of prophetic hand her presence had played in these two events. The whole matter of the prophecy only compounded in complexity with time, and what mysterious involvement she initially had seemed innocent enough to Sansa was becoming something altogether more dreadful and familiar. She sighed heavily.
It's all the same. Everywhere in the whole world it's all the same. Selfishness and lies and killing. Whatever goodness there was in the world went with Father's head.
The weight of a long and terrible day, doubled by bitterness, now brought a fatigue she could feel in the marrow of her bones. She estimated that the hour must be quite later than she was used to retiring, and pulled herself to her vanity to ready herself for sleep. She unwound her silks, combed and braided her hair as best she could, washed her face and mouth out with cold water from the basin, and slipped into her bed.
The storm Sarankar had alluded to earlier came quietly, and then all at once, whipping itself into a tempest that howled like summer storms at Winterfell, nearly human in its screaming. She could hear bits of vegetation come free, scraping against the heavy brick of the pyramid, thwacking against the glass of the windowpanes with startling suddenness. And then the thunder picked up, like the wind in its volume, rumbling and cracking as if the sky itself was splitting in half. Lightning, bright as day, came bolting into her room, coloring it wholly unnatural, green and purple and gray-white. Fear seized in her chest; Sansa squeezed her eyes shut, held her breath, and pulled her blanket over her head.
This is exactly what I need, she thought distantly, to be frightened by a thunderstorm like a bedwetting child at the end of a day like this.
Another roll of thunder pulled her knees to her chest; she let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
I survived a shipwreck. A shipwreck. How am I so afraid of a little—
The next crack of lightning flashed into her guarded eyes, in time with a deafening crack that she, in her heightened imagination, figured must have been the pyramid, splitting open.
I need Sandor.
Her pride kept her back a few minutes more, huddling beneath her covers and trying to convince herself she was being ridiculous. And besides. Sandor isn't speaking to you, remember?
But why was that? She'd been unkind—he, who was always there for her, was undeniably scarred, tactless and brutish, but that was not all he was. His scars were not nearly as unsightly as before she came to know him, nor was his tactlessness so abrasive. Slowly she began to learn the language of his kindness, the subtleties of it, and see with some clarity that the kindness he had for her was far wider and deeper than she could know.
And she had affection for him—she could no longer ignore or deny it, for it grew plainer every day. And this man, for whom she had affection, had kissed her (and it had felt really quite nice) and she had thanked him with unkind words. The shame, remorse and disappointment in herself rang on every level of her being.
I will apologize in the morning, she told herself. He probably needs to take the night to cool down. I survived a shipwreck. I am a Stark of Winterfell. I can be brave.
But the next thunderclap was so loud and so close it might have been in her very own heart, and Sansa was on her feet before even its echo had faded. At this point, needing to choose between swallowing her fear or her pride, her pride suddenly seemed more manageable.
On the bare balls of her feet she skittered down the corridor to Sandor's chamber, knocked daintily, and, upon hearing a surly, uninviting grunt, let herself inside.
He sat at a stout-built goldenwood table, a clay flagon in his hand, the room lit in a dull warmth by a singular tallow candle. He'd let his hair hang in his face, had yet to wipe the prince's blood from his body.
"I said leave," he grunted sullenly, pulling the flagon up to his lips, gulping. Wiping his mouth on his wrist, he turned to glare at the unwelcome intruder haunting his threshold. "I don't want any company ton—" he met her eyes, took a startled breath, and almost made to get up before he slouched back over the table, picking the flagon up again. "Can't say I expected to see you here," he took a sip. "Choosing the company of the scarred, tactless brute."
"Sandor, I—"
"I got the impression you would never be caught choosing my company."
"You have every right to be angry at me. I'm very ashamed of myself for what I said."
"Oh, I'm sure you are," he intoned, sarcastic. "Being on my bad side doesn't suit you. Without me, you'd be dead. That's one strong survival instinct you've got, little bird, if it's got you begging my forgiveness on those soft, white, highborn knees of yours."
She did her best to ignore the sleight. "May I come in, se—my l—…Sandor?"
"And how would that suit you, Lady Sansa?"
"I want to make peace with you." He made to cut her off, but she spoke over him. "Earnestly. From the bottom of my heart."
He took a swig from the flagon. "Are you going to tell me that you didn't mean what you said? That you take it all back?" He chuckled darkly, bitterly, and drank again. "Don't be a fool. I've heard it all, girl, every blithering insincere bit of it."
Sansa squared her shoulders. "No," she said firmly, "I wasn't. I meant what I said. You cannot deny that you are scarred, tactless and brutish. I doubt you want me to lie to you and say that you're not. But…" she glided into the room then, letting the door swing shut behind her. The man seemed transfixed, his eyes on her face. "That is not all you are, to me. With me you are kind…in your way. You're open, trusting. You're concerned. You're the only one who ever gave a fig about me in King's Landing—"
"Buggering hells, girl," he snarled. "Save the bleeding speech. If you're here to say you're sorry then bloody well get on with it."
"I'm sorry I hurt your feelings." She exhaled. It seemed anticlimactic, and Sandor seemed only somewhat satisfied. Before she could think, she added. "And I'm sorry you stopped. Earlier."
Her stomach dropped as Sandor froze, flagon halfway to his mouth.
WhatdidIjustsay?!
"What," Sandor turned, his voice somewhere between offended and touched, "did you just say?"
"Well, I…uhm…I said…" she stuttered.
There's no going back now, Sansa. Own it.
The man blinked at her, wide-eyed, expecting to get hurt.
She cleared her throat, smoothed her skirts, tried to look him in the eye, opted for his chest instead. "I'm sorry you stopped earlier. When you were kissing. We were…uhm…kissing."
He stood, incredulous.
"I…uhh…liked it."
"You liked it?" His voice broke in its rasp as he stepped measuredly towards her.
"Mhm."
"Look at me, little bird, and say it. No stuttering."
A clap of thunder made her jump as she found his grey eyes. He has the look of the North, she could not help but think. "I liked it when you kissed me. When we kissed."
He let that swing between them, and heaved a sigh.
"Gods damn me…Seven hells…" he muttered. "So…should I do it again, then?"
Sansa blinked, averted her eyes. He was standing quite close to her now. "I mean. If you want to."
"I want to."
Sansa swallowed. He was leaning over her now, his hand lingering inches away from her neck and jaw.
She gave a single nod, whispered "alright," and stole one last glance at his closing eyes before his hand cupped her face and his mouth was at hers again.
This time he kissed her with a softness that was not so timid as tender, one careful press and drag of his lips that she met, as well she knew how, with a press and drag of her own. He drew back, bewildered, swiped his thumb across her cheek and whispered her name as he shuffled closer, dipped lower, looped an arm around the small of her back.
Her arms seemed to want to go around his neck and so she slid them thusly, apparently encouraging him as he drew her body against his, kissing her more insistently. The moments stretched into a small, melodic infinity, and Sansa found herself quite content under his command. Who knew kissing could feel so pleasant? For it was undoubtedly pleasant, despite the awkwardness of his scarred corner. But more than pleasant was the feeling that was welling in her heart, pooling in her throat, pouring from his mouth to hers and hers to his: a desperateness, a hunger not only for the kiss but for the intimacy and closeness it demanded, the affection it expressed.
She had needed this more than she had known.
It was a clap of thunder that broke the kiss, startling them both to jumping, bumping their noses together. Sansa swore daintily, and Sandor chuckled, pulling her face to his chest in an embrace and sighing happily.
"So I'm forgiven?"
"You're forgiven, little bird." Another thunderclap rattled the room. "Is there anything else you need from me this night?"
"Well…I…" she jumped at yet another clap of thunder. If this is Jurakan, he must be displeased we stopped. There suddenly seemed weight to Sarankar's claims. "I have to admit, I'm a little scared of the thunder…"
"Scared!" Sandor hooted, beginning to laugh. "Little bird, we—"
"I know, I know. It's childish. But I can't help it!" She tightened her arms around him as another bolt wracked the sky. "But I think sleeping by you would make me feel better."
He chuckled low in his chest and mussed her hair before smoothing it back down. "Alright, little bird. You can sleep by me." He stepped back from her, patting her waist gently. "You go warm the bed while I ready myself. Unless you'd like to help me wash off all this blood," he gestured at his skin, still rusted red.
She ignored the wanton shred of her that was tempted to explore the way his muscles would feel beneath her fingers and cloth. "I'll let you take care of that."
And she must have flushed, for the wicked grin he gave her over his shoulder before he sauntered to his basin and began to messily wash.
She was not so willed as to keep herself from watching, though, as he wet and scrubbed himself down, tore his fingers through his hair, stripped out of his breeches (well, she might have turned away then) and dressed himself in fresh ones. The darkness came with a faint whiff of smoke as he blew out the candle and his naked footsteps drew closer to the bed, sagging behind her with his added weight.
Sandor, likely emboldened, slid up behind her, fitting his knees into the crook behind hers, draping a palm over her waist, his breath stirring the top of her head.
"Little bird?" he asked.
"Mmhm?"
"The thunder's all but gone. Do you still need to sleep here?"
"I still want to, if that's what you're asking," she said, half in a yawn, and tucked herself further back into him.
He said not another word after that.
