The cold air stirred around him, squalling as the snow fell harder onto the earth. The aching in his body grew fiercer, serving as a relentless reminder of his battle scars, as he laid atop the snow with his head resting on a stone beside a withering campfire. Of all his aches, the heaviest was the one he felt in his core, repeating the words spoken hours ago.
'Easy to love, wouldn't you agree, my queen? A great man' that bastard said...'Yes, he was,' my wife admitted. But to what? His greatness or the ease of loving him? And when I took her, I had to hear her say it. 'I'm yours' she said, but not before I told her to. Not before I fucked her like a whore. 'Your whorish bride.'
Sandor struggled with the tormenting thoughts and for the first time in a long while, considered drowning his sorrows out with wine. It was not a moment later before he stood from the snow and departed the dying campfire to make his way across the camp.
"Get up," he whispered harshly inside the tent.
"What? I've just laid down. Leave me alone," Arya whined. Sandor reached to pull her up until his leg buckled underneath him, dropping his knees into the snow. He would have fallen on top of her if it were not for her reflexes. Reflexes like an assassin, he thought. "Seven hells!" she cursed at him.
Sandor pushed himself up slowly before grabbing her wrist, leading her through the sleeping camp. "I've found the buggering cunt behind that letter. It's a bastard who is spying on her," he muttered quietly.
"Are you stupid? I told you not to do anything!" She pulled her wrist away but continued to walk beside him. Sandor shushed her and walked for several minutes before standing mere paces away from the tent. The tent located the furthest distance away from the wheelhouse.
"There," he said pointing. "I saw him there before finding you. Not even I will kill a man in his sleep, but it won't hurt to question the fucker."
Arya looked at him incredulously and furrowed her brow. She surveyed the area around them and discovered the only remaining men who were awake were either drunk or blinded from sitting so close to the campfires, each of them desperate to feel its fading warmth.
"Who is it?" she whispered, pulling out a dagger from nowhere.
Gods, this girl is never without her steel.
"Philip fucking Snow," he mumbled. The dagger stilled in her hand.
"Philip? I've trained with him in the yard. I don't think that is the man you are looking for." The girl squinted at him. "I think you are suspicious of him for other reasons."
Other reasons, like him being a handsome fucker and putting his bastard lips on my wife's hand?
"Girl, if I am wrong about this you can beat me bloody with that little sword of yours. I can't summon the fool to speak with me without Sansa knowing. Now is the only time."
Arya looked at him doubtingly before sighing, easing her way closer towards the tent. She slipped her dagger in between the folds of the fabric and brushed one to the side.
"It's empty," she said before looking over her shoulder in distress. The girl did not have to voice the thought that passed through her mind, because he thought of it, too.
"Sansa," he breathed, turning back towards the wheelhouse and darting across the camp despite the shock of pain inside of his leg. The snow grew thicker as he ran, the air grew colder, and the campfires became nothing but ash and cinder. The only sound he could hear were the footsteps behind him, and the pounding of his heart as dread overtook him.
When he approached the wheelhouse, he lunged towards the door, heaving it open. The faint light of the moon, bleeding through the snow clouds, crawled inside the confines of the walls.
Sandor's breathing stopped.
Empty.
He rushed towards the guard who had been posted nearby and found that he was sleeping. Sandor pulled the man up by his cloak and shook him violently.
"Where is my wife?" he yelled. Others nearby began crawling out of their tents due to the commotion as Arya ran up beside him, breathless from fear.
"Your Grace, I- I did not see her leave," the guard's voice shook.
"Find your queen!" Arya shouted to the others, sending every conscious man to erupt into the frigid night.
He took her, the bastard took her.
Sandor threw the guard down onto the ground and climbed into the wheelhouse to release his longsword from its sheath. He marched towards a grove of dead oak trees, shouting her name but the sound died with the frozen gusts of wind. Arya joined him, breathing frantically with her sword now in her hand.
"She can't be far," she muttered to herself. The snow fell harder, stronger, blinding them of the distance beyond where they stood. Behind him, the sounds of men shouting could be heard.
"Your Grace! She's here!" Sandor and Arya turned on their heels, climbing back up the hill towards the camp. Sansa was huddled underneath a thick cloak, her demeanor staggered by the chaos inside the camp. Beside her, smirking with his arms crossed against his chest was the bastard. But for the briefest moment, Sandor could have sworn it was Littlefinger. Words escaped from Sansa's mouth but he could not hear them, not over his rage.
Sandor swung his sword at the bastard, at his smirk, his stance, his likeness of Littlefinger. The attack sent the bastard to unsheathe his own sword, a grin still plastered on his face. But when Sandor's eyes met Sansa's, he saw the look that was becoming all too familiar to him: her disappointment, disgust, and pain with him, her husband, not being able to control himself.
Sandor paused and lowered his sword, his eyes never leaving hers, and felt the bastard begin to approach him.
"I found my queen taking a stroll. She appeared to be very upset about something…or someone," the bastard said, causing Sandor to glance at him with loathing. "I returned her at once when I heard the camp stirring," he explained innocently, but Sandor could see the look of mischief in his eyes.
"A stroll?" Sandor looked at her warily ' Your whorish bride' the words of the letter taunted him. "A bloody stroll? At this hour? Alone?"
Her face, though still, was a copy of how it had been when he yelled at her that day in the courtyard. She turned around without a word and entered the wheelhouse, slamming the door shut behind her.
"And here I thought our king would be overjoyed to have his queen returned to him," the bastard spoke to the crowd of men. They laughed and Sandor wanted to cut each and every one of them down. "Rest assured Your Grace, I would never do anything that my honorable late mentor Lord Beric Dondarrion wouldn't," he smirked again.
"Sandor, no!" Arya shouted as he began to swing his sword again. She grabbed onto his arm, pulling it down with all her weight. "Leave him! The rest of you, go!" she shouted. The crowd of men, whispering and chuckling, marched their way back to their tents. The last to leave was the handsome bastard, smiling, and muttering to himself.
"Enjoy her, Hound," were the last words he heard before entering the wheelhouse.
"What are you doing? Have you gone mad?"
Sansa sat on the bench in the wheelhouse and awaited his entrance with a candle lit in the sconce beside the window.
"I don't trust him," he snarled. The tone of his voice seemed to have instilled a fury within her, causing her to rush onto her feet.
"You would destroy your honor, your atonement, just to kill a man because you can't trust him?" Her fists slammed into his chest, but he allowed it. Sandor could understand her frustration. However, once she swung them towards his face, he caught them and lowered them to her side.
"I have good reason not to trust him." Sandor threw his sword down onto the bench, producing an unusually loud thump once the steel hit the wood.
Sansa scowled at him. "You'll find a reason to not trust anyone. All you will do is have my men fear talking to me, fear confiding in me, their queen, all because her brute of a husband will have his head off for it!" She pushed him with all her weight, but he did not budge.
She is not wrong. She is never wrong. But why can't I trust her? Why don't I trust her?
"I swore to protect you, and that's what I will do!" he shouted.
"Other men have protected me without having to hack off an innocent man's head!" she yelled. The words pierced harder than steel, and a fury arose. He grabbed her arms with clenched fists and held her up against him with his face directly above hers.
"Stop it!" she cried.
"Like Beric?" The name escaped him. "Go on, little bird, say it!"
"Say what?" she whispered, becoming as still in his arms as she had when she had died. Sandor's anger turned into despair, realizing that he had gone too far now to turn back.
I have to know. I need to hear it from her. Bugger the sister, bugger the bastard, bugger the bloody letter.
"Did you," he sighed, the words sticking in his throat. He couldn't take his eyes off her horrified face, watching as the blue eyes stared at him as if he were a monster. "Did you let him have you?"
She was unmoving, her tears glistening in the candlelight, a candle that burned brighter than any brazier.
He pulled her closer when she did not respond and dug his fingers into her arms. "Tell me!"
Sansa whimpered and began to cry again, refusing to answer his question.
"Answer me, girl! Did he fuck you? Was that little boy, the one I haven't gone one bloody day without thinking about, even mine?" he sobbed. However, his sorrow was short-lived, and the rage returned when she did nothing but stare at him.
'They're all liars here, and every one better than you.'
Tears fell down her face and somehow they made him angrier. "Stop," she whispered.
Sandor removed one hand from her arm to slam his fist against the side of the wheelhouse, causing the candle in the sconce to shake and send shadows to dance along the walls.
His rage became the driving force. "Tell me!" he shouted again. "Tell me, or I will rip your fucking heart out before I let that bastard have you the same way Beric did!"
"Sandor, wake up," she said, but it wasn't her voice. "Wake up." Her hand nudged his shoulder. "Wake up, you shit!"
Sandor awoke all at once, his back soaked from the melted snow on the ground. He was sweating, sweating profusely despite the frigid air surrounding him. He stared up and saw the wolf bitch, leaning down, pressing against his shoulder.
"Wake up!" she hissed.
Was it only a dream? Or is this the aftermath?
"What- what is happening?" he muttered in fear.
"I know who is spying on my sister," Arya whispered. "Follow me."