"I was a soldier…once," Ray said. "All my superiors thought I was brave. I wasn't. I mean, I never ran from a fight. Only because I was afraid my friends would see I was afraid. That's all I was, a coward."

Sandor Clegane stood in the back as Ray led the sermon. They were down the way from the skeletal sept they had been building, most sitting in a circle around the portly septon.

"We followed orders. No matter the orders. Burn that village? Fine," Ray jerked his thumb towards himself. "I'm your arsonist. Steal that farmer's crops?" he pointed out to the side. "Good, I'm your thief. Kill those young lads so they won't take up arms against us? I'm your murderer."

Sandor felt a pang in his chest as he listened to Ray's words. Was Sandor a coward? No. But he had done these sorts of things. And he had enjoyed them.

"I remember once, a woman screaming at us, calling us animals as we dragged her son from their hut," Ray turned around and stared pointedly at Sandor. He was letting him know that this sermon was just for him, as if Sandor hadn't been able to piece that together already. "But we weren't animals," Ray continued, looking away from Sandor. "Animals are true to their nature. And we had betrayed ours."

Sandor could feel another pair of eyes on him from directly across the circle. A blue pair, catlike in appearance. He didn't look at Shar. He couldn't. He only stared at Brother Ray.

"I cut that young boy's throat myself," the septon choked out, his voice full of regret, "as his mother screamed and my friends held her back."

Sandor felt another pang. He thought back to the butcher's boy, who had begged mercy from him. Sandor forced himself to believe that he had been merciful when he rode him down, saving him from the queen's perverted form of justice.

"That night," Ray sat down on a stump beside a longhaired man in the commune, briefly resting his elbow on the other's shoulder, "I felt such shame. Shame was so heavy on me, I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep…"

Sandor looked down, remembering when he had encountered the songbird outside of that inn after he had brought the boy's body to lay before the queen. He had thought Fallon was finally scared of him, just as everyone seemed to be. But she was angry with him. That was the first time he tried to teach her the nature of this world. If only she had listened to him…

"All I could do was stare into that dark sky and listen to that mother screaming her son's name," Ray said, staring at Sandor once more with his piercing eyes. The older man's chest heaved several times as he relived his guilt amongst his followers. "I'll hear her screaming the rest of my life."

There was no sound but the wind and the birds chirping. Not until Ray stood up again.

"Now, I know I can never bring that lad back. All I can do with th'time I've got left is bring a little goodness into the world," he said, looking around at the people circling him. "That's all any of us can do, innit? Never too late to stop robbing people…"

Sandor bowed his head as he thought about the farmer and his daughter.

"…to stop killing people, and start helping people," Ray looked straight at him again. "It's never too late to come back."

Sandor felt Shar's eyes on him once again. But again, he couldn't look at her. He only looked at Ray, the man who understood who he truly was more than anyone else. He didn't break eye contact, not even as the wind blew a wisp of his hair across his forehead.

Then he heard the whinnying of horses.

He looked past Shar, who was still trying to get his attention. He saw three men on horses rounding a curved pathway as they galloped closer. Something about them made Sandor feel uncomfortable. He wished he had his axe with him.

Ray seemed to notice the look on Sandor's face and turned to look at the horsemen approaching. Sandor found himself stepping closer, his limp not as bad as it once was. He hoped that if anything happened, he'd be able to protect his new people.

"…And it's not about waiting for the gods to answer yer prayers," Brother Ray continued. "It's not even about the gods," he turned from the horsemen and pointed his finger at his followers. "It's about you. Learning you have to answer yer prayers yerself."

The horsemen were slowing to a stop when the rest of the followers stood up to receive them. Sandor was tall enough to see above everyone's heads. The horseman in the middle was a pig-faced cunt in a yellow cloak. To his left was a thickset bald man, to his right, a man with curly blonde hair.

"Seven save yeh, friends," Ray said cheerily as he came closer to them, despite the three men glaring down at him. "How can we help you?"

Sandor followed the group towards the horsemen, the uncomfortable feeling growing inside of him. No matter what Ray said, these men were not friends.

"What are you doing here?" the yellow-cloaked man said.

"Well, we're talking about life," Ray replied. "You?"

"Protecting the people."

"Well, we thank you for yer protection."

Sandor watched as the curly-haired man and the bald one scoped out their surroundings. He knew what they were doing. And Brother Ray was foolish to think his kind words would stop these men from what they were planning.

"Who are you protecting us from?" Ray asked.

The bald man made Sandor feel the most uncomfortable out of all of them as he sneered down at the men and women and children from his brown horse.

The man in the yellow cloak chuckled to himself instead of answering and glanced around for a moment. "D'yeh have any horses?" he asked.

"No horses," Ray shook his head. "No gold, no steel."

"Food, then?" the man in yellow asked as Sandor stepped closer. "Protecting the people is hungry work."

"I'm sure it is," Ray nodded. "Yeh're welcome to stay for supper, but we have hungry mouths here."

The man in yellow stared at the septon for a brief time, then faked a smile down at him from behind his beard. "Stay safe," he whispered threateningly. "The night is dark and full of terrors."

Then the three brothers turned away and rode away on the path from whence they came.


Sandor had gone far into the forest that night, chopping more and more wood. He had told Ray it was preparation for the cold night ahead, but that wasn't his only reason. It was also the way he hoped to relieve his stress. The more he chopped, the less irritated he felt, or so he told himself.

He was irritated by Shar, by himself, by the brothers' threats, but he was mostly irritated by Brother Ray's pacifism. Sandor had tried to warn him about the men on horses. They were men from the Brotherhood Without Banners and they were up to no good. They wanted food and steel and women. Sandor knew that he and Ray were the only two who would be able to put up a fight. But Ray refused.

"Violence is a disease. Yeh don't cure a disease by spreading it to more people," the septon had told him.

"Yeh don't cure it by dying, either," Sandor had replied.

So Sandor kept chopping well up into the hills within the forest. He chopped until the sun began to set over his sweating body. He dropped his axe and heaved a great sigh before pulling out his skin of water. He wasn't sure if the sigh was from all of his hard work or from the lack of wine touching his lips.

Then he heard the screams. He turned his head in the direction of the sept and hoped that perhaps it was just a bird's call. But the screaming continued. It was the screams of men, women, and children.

Sandor went as fast as his bum leg would allow him to. He hobbled down the hillside, using trees and bushes to keep him steady on his feet. But by the time he made it down to the sept, the attackers had gone. They had turned the sept into a graveyard. The bodies of the people Sandor had been living amongst for so long lay motionless on the ground, blood staining their clothes, arrows sticking out of some of their bodies.

He limped around the corpses and the vats of food that had tumbled over. He stopped for a moment when he saw Shar laying on her back, a bloody hole in the middle of her chest, her hands up by the sides of her head as if she had died trying to shield herself from the assailants. He gulped and passed her body, not wanting to feel her blue eyes on him anymore.

Sandor found himself horrified at the scene, and it took quite a lot to do that. His breath became more and more ragged as he stumbled through the gory scene, careful not to step on anyone. As terrified as they may have been of him, these were his people. These were his men and woman laying over their slain sons and daughters. These were his brothers and sisters slaughtered on the holy ground they created.

What horrified Sandor the most was what he found hanging inside the skeletal sept, blocking the setting sun. He hobbled closer and stared up at the dangling body of Brother Ray.

Ray had strayed true to his word and refused to fight the brothers who attacked his followers. He had died the man he wanted to live the rest of his life as. Sandor wouldn't do the same, however. He had learned much from Brother Ray in his time. He had grown as a person. He had become a better man. He was no longer the Hound. He was the Sandor Clegane that Fallon had always seen him as.

But he would not let this go.

Sandor would get revenge on the men who did this. He turned away from the creaking rope and limped towards the first thing he saw remotely resembling a weapon. He pulled the axe out of the nearby stump and he set off.


Sandor was still trudging through the forest, adrenaline pumping in his veins after killing those fucking idiots at their fire. He had recognized two of the men—the one with the curly hair and the bald one. The other two he wasn't entirely sure were even involved in the slaughter, but he didn't care. They were young and they looked green, but they were sitting with the two horsemen. He didn't give a fuck if they were innocent or not.

The one with the close-cropped beard seemed surprised when he saw Sandor approaching, just before Sandor took his head off with one clean swing. The one with the floppy hair and the mole didn't even bother to fight back. He looked like he had just pissed himself when Sandor drove his axe into the lad's chest.

But the curly-haired one, Sandor knew was guilty. He'd happily slit that one's throat with his axe. And the bald one, Sandor was very happy to wedge his axe into that one's bollocks and make him suffer a bit more. "Cunt!" his last word was. He was shit at dying and Sandor told him so.

The sky was gray above the trees, but Sandor didn't care to make camp again any time soon. All he cared about was revenge. He wanted the axe that he was gripping so tightly to drip again. He wanted the next person to cross him to see the trail of blood behind him.

He suddenly heard the sound of men's voices and horses neighing. His head snapped to the side in the direction of the noise, just down a different fork in his path. They could be involved, he thought as he readjusted his sleeve on his shoulder, promptly walking towards the sound.

He slowed himself down, his limp now more pronounced, as he came upon the men and horses. Then he stopped completely to take it all in. There was a band of men standing under a tree, preparing to hang the three men on small logs with nooses around their necks, while another man sat on the branch, having just attached the ropes. Only the prisoner in the middle, the pig-faced cunt in the yellow cloak, looked familiar to Sandor.

And Sandor looked familiar to him.

The one with the yellow cloak gazed up from his boots to stare at Sandor. His brow furrowed at the sight of him. One of the men about to hang him turned to see what he was looking at and Sandor realized he knew a least one more person under this tree.

Beric Dondarrion was the first of the Brotherhood to lay eyes—or eye—on him. One of Beric's men unsheathed a sword, as if he had a chance against Sandor, even with a bum leg. Another man held his double-sided axe up and their archer held fast to his bow. Sandor noticed that this archer wasn't the same bearded nance who tried to accuse him of his brother's crimes. This was a different nance, one with very long, dark hair.

"Clegane," called out Thoros of Myr, stepping forward with a cocky smile hiding within his bushy beard. "The fuck you doing here?"

Sandor didn't have the time or patience to ruminate on anything the priest said or did. He didn't care that Thoros had used Sandor's own line against him—the very same thing Sandor had said when those brothers took him hostage after he lost Fallon.

"Chasing them," Sandor responded. "You?"

"Hanging them," Thoros said in a playful voice.

"Any particular reason?"

"They're our men," Beric told him. "Or, they were. They attacked a nearby sept and murdered the villagers. Why do you want them?"

"Same reason. I was helping build it," Sandor gestured to himself with his free hand. "They killed a friend of mine."

"You've got friends?" Thoros asked with a knowing look on his face that only served to irritate Sandor further.

"Not anymore," he replied.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Thoros mumbled and looked over his shoulder, but Sandor was too impatient to wonder what he meant by that.

"They're mine," Sandor hissed. He marched forward, anger boiling his blood. His grip tightened even more on the axe. He couldn't wait to plunge it into these men's hearts.

"It's the Brotherhood's good name they've dragged through the dirt," Beric said as he and some of his other men stepped to the side to block Sandor's passage.

"Fuck your name, they're mine," Sandor growled, stopping before the one-eyed lord. "Killed you once before, Dondarrion. Happy to do it again."

Out of the corner of his eye, Sandor could see that the archer had raised his bow and was planning on shooting at him if he dared attack Beric.

"Drop that bloody arrow, yeh girl," Sandor ordered, not even looking at the archer. He addressed him only by pointing with his axe as he remembered the wolf bitch and Brienne of fucking Tarth. "Tougher girls than you have tried to kill me." When the archer didn't move, Sandor put his axe down and turned to approach him.

"You can have one of them," Dondarrion stopped Sandor in his tracks.

He gave the archer one last dirty look before turning to glance at the lord and then the men on logs. "Two," Sandor haggled.

Beric looked over at Thoros, who subtly nodded his balding head. Then he turned back to Sandor and nodded more definitively.

Sandor decided not to push his luck and ask for all three, so he stepped past Beric and looked straight into the pig face of the man in the yellow cloak. Without a word, Sandor lifted his axe high in the air. His intended victim cried out in terror, closing his eyes and turning his head to the side.

"Nooo, no-no-no-no," Thoros grabbed onto the axe from behind and prevented the blow.

Sandor fought against the priest's strong grasp, turning around to try and tug it out of his gloved hands. Sandor glowered at him, nonverbally demanding answers for why his vengeance had been interrupted.

"We're not butchers," Thoros said, lowering the axe before letting go of it. "We hang them."

"Hanging?" Sandor echoed incredulously as the man in the yellow cloak opened his eyes in confusion. "All over in an instant," he turned back to look at the soon-to-be executed men. "Where's the punishment in that?"

"They die," Thoros told him plainly.

"We all bloody die," Sandor grumbled, then jerked his head over his shoulder at Beric. "Except this one here." Sandor heaved a great sigh and gestured to the one in yellow with his axe. "I'll only gut one of them."

"No," Beric said, causing Sandor to turn once again and glare at him.

"Chop off one hand," he bargained.

"We gave you two of the three out of respect for your loss," Beric reminded him. "That's generous."

Sandor stared at Beric, but finally resigned himself to throw his axe on the ground. "Bunch of nances." he muttered as he did so. "There was a time I would've killed all seven of yeh just to gut these three."

"You're getting old, Clegane," Thoros drawled.

"He's not," Sandor quipped as he kicked the log out from under the prisoner on the left with his good leg. The man grunted and then started to wriggle, but Sandor had already moved on to the yellow-cloaked one.

"Please don't," he begged. "I'll give you anythi—"

Sandor kicked the log under him and watched as he danced, dangling from the rope. The man made awful noises as he choked, but Sandor's only qualm was that his death wasn't painful enough. Beside him, Beric kicked the log under the third prisoner.

Before the one in the yellow had finished his dance, Sandor grabbed his cloak and pulled it to the side, getting a nice look at the man's boots. They were much better than the shit the commune's shoemaker had mustered up for Sandor, so he bent forward and ripped one of them off the man's foot. Sandor got down on one knee and pulled his trouser leg up so he could remove his own boot and compare the sole of the new one with the sole of Sandor's dirty foot.

As luck would have it, the man in the yellow cloak's feet were of a similar size. Sandor thrust the boot onto his foot and stared up at the brothers, his stomach starting to rumble. They were all looking at him with disgust, but no one said a word.

"Got anything to eat?" he asked.

"Aye," Beric nodded as Sandor went to grab the other boot. "You can come to our camp with us."

Sandor finally stood up after grabbing the axe in case he'd need it. He stepped closer to Beric and Thoros, who had both exchanged glances when they thought he wasn't looking.

"Come along, Clegane," Thoros smirked, clapping Sandor's arm. "I know someone who's going to be very happy to see you…"

Sandor followed the brothers through the brush until they approached the men's new camp. No caves, no waterfalls this time. Only tents and firepits and horses along the riverside. Men mulled around together, walking across the campsite or sitting and sharpening their swords. They laughed and belched and skinned their rabbits. But then Sandor heard a loud rustling noise in the fallen leaves on the ground, overlapped by the giggling of a young child.

"Artemys! Come back here!"

Sandor stopped walking immediately, but Beric and most of the others continued on their way. He felt like he had been drenched in ice water at the sound of the young woman's voice. No, he told himself. It can't be…she's dead.

A small girl, no older than two, ran out from behind a small group of brothers. She was clad in a dark brown dress that seemed to be handmade and her thin chestnut hair was only long enough to touch her shoulders.

"Dada back!" the girl squealed, running towards the returning party.

But whoever she had been running for, she stopped before she reached them. The girl had caught sight of Sandor with her big brown eyes and she immediately stopped, almost tripping over her tiny feet. She stared straight up at Sandor. She didn't seem afraid, necessarily, but her eyes were wide and her mouth was in a tight line.

The only one of the party who had stopped along with him, Thoros smirked at Sandor. The taller man couldn't take his eyes off the little girl, though, just as the little girl couldn't take her eyes off him.

"Artemys!" the young woman's voice called out again. The body the voice belonged to dashed out from where the girl had come from. She was a whirl of brown hair and dark blue skirts as she hurtled towards the little one. "You can't keep running away from me like that!" the woman admonished, crouching down and grabbing the girl's arms. "What's the matter?" she asked when she saw the girl's face. Then the woman followed the girl's eyeline and her mouth began to hang open.

Sandor stumbled back a step when he finally saw her head-on. His own mouth dried when she let go of the girl and slowly rose to her feet. The top of her hair was tied behind her head while the rest flowed past her elbows. Her eyes were round and gray-green and her nose was centered and unbroken. She stared back at him, her pink lips quivering.

Thoros clapped Sandor's arm once again and started walking forward. "There's my little darling," he said playfully, bending down to grab the little girl and seat her on his hip.

"Dada," the girl threw her arms around his neck, finally breaking her stare. She beamed at the red priest carrying her, seeming to forget that Sandor even existed.

As he walked on, Thoros nudged the woman from behind and made her stumble forward. With every painstakingly slow step closer to him, Sandor could see the tears in her eyes. He wondered if she could hear his pounding heart as he limped towards her.

"Are you real?" Fallon breathed, her hands shaking as they reached out to him. Her tears began to stream down her cheeks, dripping onto her dark blue dress.

Sandor didn't answer. He didn't know what to say. He could see her hands coming closer as the space between them lessened, but he was afraid to touch her. He was afraid she would disappear into a wisp of smoke—a cruel joke from the gods to punish him more than they already had.

But she didn't disappear when her trembling hands found his. She was soft and warm and there. After all of this time, after all of these years, she was alive.

"I always knew you'd come back to me," she choked out, a tearful smile carved into her crumpling face.

She was alive, Sandor reminded himself. He let go of her so he could wrap one of his arms around her shoulders and put his hand on the back of her head. He pulled her body close and he felt her hold him back tightly. She was shaking and sobbing and her tears were making his shirt wet, but she was in his arms for the first time in what felt like forever.

Her body was small against his, but it seemed to fit perfectly. The void inside of him, the hole she left, was filling in again. He dug his fingers into her back, not caring that the men from the Brotherhood were staring at them. He only cared that his little songbird was back in his life.

"Rabbit's getting cold, Clegane," Thoros called out from where he stood with the little girl clinging onto him. "Fallon will still be here after you eat."

Sandor wondered if he would have killed the priest had his stomach not rumbled loudly. He'd packed his bag with whatever he could salvage from Brother Ray's commune, but the few rolls of bread and potatoes hadn't been nearly enough to sustain him.

"Come, my love," Fallon reluctantly let go of him and wiped at her tears. She then grabbed one of his arms and started leading him towards Thoros. "We can talk later."


SORRY THIS IS MOSTLY SHOW STUFF AND SORRY I LEFT WHAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED AFTER THE LAST CHAPTER SUPER MURKY (all in good time, my dudes, all in good time), but hopefully the reunion will make up for it and you won't hate me (please)!

But seriously, GUYS I AM SO HAPPY TO GET TO WRITE THE REUNION AFTER ALL THIS TIME. Their separation has hurt me more than it's hurt you, hahaha