"That's a fucking chicken."
"Yes, I know."
Sandor looks from the bird that's still very much alive and sleeping to Brienne, the cage resting against her leg. He isn't sure how the idea got in her head but carrying a live bird with them certainly is one of the strangest ones she's had in recent days. More so than her idea to knock on an old man's door and offer him work in exchange for room and board. Out here, where people are few and far between, and farms span the length of the roads, a woman like Brienne stands out.
"So you'll kill it and pluck it when it's time for a roast then?"
"Do you have any better ideas about keeping us fed?"
He grunts in response then leans back against the hay bales and shuts his eyes. The hay pokes into the crooks of his body, makes it more than a little uncomfortable to lay there, but it's better than being outside in the pissing rain. "Next I know, you'll be asking me to drag around a cow."
"It would only be a calf." Brienne tries not to smile but Sandor has opened one eye and is now staring at her as if she just said she's going to become a holy woman. "You could name it Joffrey."
"I wouldn't name anything after that royal cunt." His entire body shakes when Sandor laughs at the idea, loud and unrepentant. She's a funny woman, Brienne of fucking Tarth. First she tries to kill him, then she hauls him half-dead and broken to some healer. Now she just sits there and smiles at him as if the entire thing has all been a prelude to something else. "Not anything I was planning to eat."
"Because he'd haunt you? The gods aren't that cruel." Brienne checks Arya and Podrick are still asleep, curled up on opposite sides of the smoldering fire, before she scoots closer to Sandor. Legs stretched out, their knees almost touch, and after a while Brienne feels him run his fingers through her short hair. She might dress like a man, he says, but everything else about her is womanly. "How long do you think it will be before we arrive at the Eyrie?"
"I don't know."
He wants to say he doesn't think they'll ever get there, that the Lannisters or whichever traitorous fucks — who were likely allied with the Lannisters — killed Arya's brother are going to find them first. Knowing their luck, something is bound to go wrong. Sandor just hopes it doesn't involve his leg being broken (again).
As for the gods, they're gods. Neither here nor there. It's a nice thought that they exist but Sandor has never put much stock in things he can't kill. He trusts his eyes and hands, not statues or symbols. The gods didn't stop Gregor from shoving his face in that fire, did they, or punish him afterwards. No, that kind of retribution will come from his own hands, he decided. When he's bloody, exhausted, and standing over Gregor's corpse, killing his brother will become the sweetest memory he has.
"Clegane?"
"Mm?"
"Stop delaying the inevitable."
"And what's that?"
Brienne reaches across, turns his head to face her. His beard is ragged and uneven, the scarring from the burns horrendous, but the rest of him is hard and calloused. In a way, his hands are almost as familiar as her own. "A good fuck."