AUTHOR'S NOTES:

-Kindred is now available as a free download in both ebook and PDF formats. See the "Kindred fanfic" link on my Tumblr for more info on that (my Tumblr username is the same as here).

-Find extended author's comments and Kindred-themed images on my Tumblr. Feel free to send me an Ask on there, and I'll be glad to answer it in a post. Links to all 'Kindred' stuff is on the right-hand side of the page.

-All other story info (content warnings, character age adjustments, etc.) is at the top of Chapter 1. Enjoy!

CHAPTER 21

"Sit down."

She chose a smooth rock close to the ledge, so she might watch the quiet expanse of the Crownlands below. The valley was beautiful this time of day, warmed by misty rays of waning light that pierced the lingering clouds. She had never felt quite so small as now, staring across this land that Joffrey would rule, and never had she been so happy not to rule it with him. Somewhere beyond her sight was the goat farm, deserted and purposeless now, adrift in the rolling world.

She swallowed to bury her unease, and when she felt his fingers brush over her collarbone, she fell into a willful state of resolve.

It will grow back.

The braid was tugged back over her shoulder and she held her posture straight, sighing through her nose as it swayed against the fabric of her dress. Then the drumming pace of her heart fluttered when she felt him pull it taut.

It will grow back.

For a long time, he didn't move, but she was relieved once she felt the slow saw of the dagger, once, twice, and then it sang with a dull shick that made her shoulders flinch. Loose locks tickled her as they fanned out, and she went very still. Around them was the bright chorus of early insects and beneath it, his boots scuffled in the leaves as he leaned forward to drop her severed braid into the scoop of her lap.

It was lighter than she had predicted. Silent, she picked it up and turned it over, woven auburn, soft and coming loose in her hands. Over her head, she heard the low tone of Sandor's sigh, weighted with a reluctance she'd never seen him have. "More," she whispered.

It will.

While the setting sun gilded their camp with light, coppery tresses fell like feathers across her shoulders, gently lifting the burden of her name. It was then that the heat of tears began to swell behind her shut lids, and she let the hair slip from her fingers and onto the ground.

…

She hadn't moved.

The wind was what pulled him out of his head and made him look for her. It had kicked up and was gusting now, hissing through the sparse thicket at his back and seeping into his tunic. The girl stood close enough to the ledge to spur his discomfort, straight as an arrow and gripping a limb with one slender hand. He'd forgotten how tall she had become, how strong the lithe frame of her shoulders. The bare nape of her neck was goosebumped below her rust-colored fringe, but she seemed not to be nettled by the cooling air, poised and watching the valley.

Their campfire whipped and spat a scatter of embers across the ground, and Sandor scooted to his feet. Beyond the cliff, the sky had begun to dim, its fiery pink giving way to the dense blue of twilight, and his approach was cautious as he neared her perch. She must have seen it long before him, the angry billow of steely clouds that had come to rest over the hills, invading from the southwest and raking the land with a curtain of distant rain. Then came the rumble, and he knew they had to leave.

"Come here."

He wasn't at all prepared for it. Her breath stirred and she turned her head listlessly, pivoting to see him with a sudden and naked awareness of her solitude, and his. It was staggering. "They could be anywhere," she said. "I've lost them all." When the tear came down, it left a faint, glassy trail and rested in the corner of her mouth. It was the only one to fall, and then her eyes released him from his paralysis and flickered elsewhere, lost among the gloomy trees.

"Come here, I said." Wary, he took her arm and held it still, like hushing a skittish horse, and led her back to the fire. But she faltered, stalling. And in mid-step, she turned to crush herself, shivering, against him.

It wasn't the abrupt movement that triggered his panic, but the meager sound she hummed against his tunic. It was the cool sting as the tear bled through the fabric, and the way she never lifted her arms from her sides, but anchored herself to him as if he were a favorite tree. Unbidden, his fist unfurled, and his palm found its way to her crown. In the instant it rested there, he saw how the tips of his fingers shook, and then the girl drifted back to the horses, evaporating from his hand like a ghost.

…

As hard as they rode, the storm came on faster, blackening the skies to the south and sending windblown seedpods skittering over the trail. They had descended into a dell as quickly as he could lead them, back into the thick belly of the forest and away from the sparse trees atop the ridge. Ducking over Stranger's mane, Sandor cleared a low-slung limb and glanced back to see her do the same. "Where will we go?" she asked him, but he was too far into his head now, dismounting and growling to himself and shortening the tether between the horses. He needed that gelding to move, and quickly.

"Get your hood up," he told her, and he pulled at her cloak, billowing it around her and tucking its hem beneath the panel of her saddle.

Squinting against lashing gusts, they passed shallow outcrops and fallen trunks, but none of them would do. There was a crack and the air seemed to seize, warm and frigid all at once, heavy and teeming. Stranger pawed and snorted as the long bellow ruptured overhead, and the beast trampled backward on the narrow path. "Steady, you," Sandor barked. He heard the girl call to him, a cry swallowed by her gelding's frantic whinny, and then it came.

Rainfall was on them, sharp and nipping, and soon, their mounts were both panting through the torrent. Sandor clawed the wet hair from his eyes and brought them off the path, veering down an incline and pulling them close to a hulking stone bluff that wept in the darkness. Rain cast down its face in sheets, and in a jolt of glaring white, he spotted the glint of quartz. There was a gap there, a narrow gorge where, ages past, the stone had been cleaved apart by the shifting earth to expose a ghostly sheen of minerals inside.

Fighting branches and brushwood, they rode for the crevice until Stranger wouldn't have it. Heaving and snorting, the stallion stumbled between rocks. Then he was done. He flattened his ears, planting himself despite kicks and shouts. "Bugger you," his master snarled, but it wasn't any use. The courser had to be led. Sliding from his saddle, he slipped into the muck and looked first for the bird. Her elbows were rattling, but she held the reins in tight fists, legs drawn up under her drenched skirt and hunkered low. Then she saw him and shifted. "No," he grunted at her. Caught by a gust of sweeping rain, his black mop stuck to the scars, rendering him half blind. "Stay on, don't you move!"

She was white-eyed and frozen, halting obediently and stuffing her boot back into the stirrup. Sandor put a hand between Stranger's eyes and tugged at his noseband with the other, seeing them through to the hollow. Some time ago, a long slab of rock had broken off the peak and tumbled into the chasm, wedged at an angle and black with lichen. Water spilled off its edge and hammered the soil, but the stone's underbelly was dry and glistening with quartz and mica.

He bent for a fallen limb and prodded at the walls within, listening for the scramble of vermin, but there was nothing. Ducking inside, he stamped about and found only the slop of muddy water, surging in and out of the space. When he went for her, her fingers were cold and stiff, gritting her teeth and clinching fast to his forearm. Her wet cloak was weighty across the horse's croup, and she shivered into his bear-hug as he heaved her down. Above, the storm was roaring now, fracturing the black sky with its lightning and ripping at the tops of trees. It was a gale.

"Get in there," he yelled. "Don't sit down." He was gone then, finding dense trees to shelter the horses and salvaging whatever supplies were still dry. Sandor ended up wetter than anything else, determined to search the craggy basin for a lesser boulder, something he could lift, smooth and wide. All were huge or much too small, and when he returned, it was a broken log he'd settled for, ordering the girl to move and shoving it into the tiny cavern. It wasn't comfortable, but enough to keep her off of the sopping ground.

She thanked him for it, as was her way, and when he slumped down next to her, she whimpered softly inside her sodden cloak. "What about them?" She was looking out into the downpour, her shorn hair wild and covered in droplets. She looked entirely different now, but still as lovely. Every other moment, the delicate structure of her face was lit by flashing clouds, her skin pale and glistening with rainwater, her lips quivering with chill. He would see long enough to wish she was warmer, and then she'd be gone again, swallowed by the close darkness of their stony burrow.

"They have the trees. The wet won't kill them. Us, though…" He reached for her, and first, she cringed away before seeing what he wanted. Sniffling, she went still and let him loose the iron clasp under her chin. "Take that off, go on. It's keeping you cold."

The cloak fell around her shoulders and she balled it up, looking with timid fingers until she found a crag to stuff it into. "Will we sleep here?"

"If you can. Can't build any fire in this and there's nowhere to go." Again, her face was lit, and again, he was looking. With the wood so wet and bleak, she seemed the last warm thing left to him, rubbing at her nose, trying to steel herself to the cold, worrying over the horses. Quiet and small and much too near.

Before, she hadn't gone to the fire for comfort. It was him she had sought. There wasn't warning, for she hadn't wanted him to stop her. And when her temple pressed into him, for an instant, he had felt himself falling as he sometimes did in sleep.

Before.

Doubling over, he stopped raking the rain from his hair long enough to work off his waterlogged boots. The beast overhead riled and cracked, and he bent forward, stretching his arm out into the pelting rain. Behind him, the bird concealed a sneeze and did as he had, leaving her own boots on the log and pulling her pale feet up into her skirt. Sandor doubted even their wool socks would dry in this. The air was thick and growing colder with the night. As would she.

"Best you could do is get that dress off too. But." He left that where it was and settled himself, leaning a shoulder upon cool stone and folding his arms. Soaked and gooseprickled, they watched the writhing trees. The sun was well and truly gone now, the sky devoured by the gloom of the storm, dark as pitch. When lightning ripped across the sky, they looked up at the slab that sheltered them, admiring the shimmering stones.

Quiet found its way between them, but every so often, he felt her move, lifting her arm and letting it fall and doing so again. She was fretting with her hair, picking absently at the feathery ends, touching and touching it.

"Why did you let me do that?" Faintly as he said it, his voice sounded bigger beneath the rock, resounding above the rain. She went rigid.

"I asked it of you."

Do you know then, bird? How easily your every want can move my hand.

"You cried." He could feel her looking at him, heard the soft rattle of her breath. The day had been hard on her, but she sat still and never complained, somehow resilient. Slow to blame. The thing came at him then, the bitter flood of what was done, swelling up and drowning him in memory. He thought of the fire, the green, bellowing sky, the way he had staggered up the stair, prowling, hunting for her door.

A chill seized him and he winced, the shudder hidden in the dark, and with the small murmur beside him, it was gone. "I will miss it," the bird whispered. Her silence had been long, but then she sounded certain. "But I haven't any regret. Hair grows back. I'll cease wearing this dress too, when we're not in the wood."

"If you mean to look like a boy…" The sky flickered and he gazed over her until she looked away. "…you can't."

"Perhaps. Not up close."

"And close?"

"Touched. As you said." He glanced away, grimacing, but she went on, stalwart and sure. "I have seen girls with their hair cut off, common girls. My septa told me it was because of lice." She must have thought he wasn't listening then, for she slumped down and finished simply. "I won't look like a lady, besides. Or a Stark of Winterfell. And if that is so, I would do it again."

…

The storm had dwindled to a gentle shower, but the girl was too cold to sleep. He couldn't know what time it was now. Clouds had swallowed their sky. Beside him, Sansa had moved at some point in the night, scooting away from the chilling rock and settling against his arm for its warmth. They sat together in odd positions, struggling to keep their feet propped up on something dry and yawning their sentences. As she grew drowsy, he felt her weight pressing more and didn't mind it.

She's forgotten who she shares her sleep with.

Had she been alert, she would have recoiled, he knew. Had there been more light.

He had stolen her cloak for his pillow and was peering up at the black of their cavern with eyes half open, listening to her clear her throat, feeling her sigh.

"I still dream of castles," she mumbled, and it took him a moment to hear. Her voice was barely there. "Only now I hate them. I've had the same dream three times now, since we left. There is a hall and I'm running, but it always finds me."

"What finds you?"

"The lion." That was all, though, and then she was sneezing into her sleeve and shutting her eyes.