Sansa couldn't remember what happened through her journey with the hound. They had ridden through the smoke-blackened streets of kings landing, across the battered old bridge, as his horse leapt over the peasants coughing blood upon the flagstones. And Sansa had held tight onto sandor's chain-mail, her long nails digging painfully until they threatened to snap. She'd never looked up.
Not even for a second.
Because if she did she's smile.
She'd see the smoking pillars and the tumbling towers, all the people who'd beaten her down like an unruly, savage beast, all the nobles who'd seen and heard but never raised a finger to help, would burn.
She had been wrong, before. When Sandor had claimed killing was the sweetest thing, he was right. Revenge was far more delicious, though. It warmed Sansa to the core, more so than that dreaded fire had ever done as it licked her tower walls.
And she'd never looked up, never cracked open her weary blood-shot eyes, only focused on the man in front of her, head bent on the road, his knuckles stretching white over the bone, face contorted into an angry grimace as he forced his horse from hell further into the forest, further from the ruins of kings landing.
And when they finally stopped, at the edge of the world it seemed, they set camp. And she said nothing, could think of nothing to say nor do, merely laid down on the damp grass as the rain soaked through her skin and cleansed her of regret, of anger and pent-up rage.
She could've cried then, and she did.
She sunk down into the mud, her legs collapsing beneath her as she crumpled to her knees, knees that were bruised from being beaten so often by her 'beloved.'
Joffrey, she thought as a pang of horror went through her heart. She turned to Sandor, who watched her with dark, half-lidded eyes and said, "Sandor! Joffrey will-"
He unsheathed his sword from the scabbard. It glinted menacingly in the pale moonlight. "He'll do nothing, little bird."
"But-" Sansa fell silent. She saw the way he looked at her. She'd seen the same way Petyr had looked at her, like he was undressing her with his eyes, undressing her like she was just another whore.
Sansa plucked up the courage to protest. She swallowed the refusal at the back of her throat. "Don't look at me like that." She said, far meeker than she meant it to sound. Rain dripped down her cheeks and eyelashes, studding her hair with tiny pearly drops.
Sandor approached her, sword still in his left hand. His right reached our, like he wanted to touch her. To take her.
"Little bird . . ."
Sansa couldn't step backwards. She looked at him like a simple doe, eyes too big and Guineas, nose near twitching like a damn rabbit. She shook, from cold or fear, Sansa could not tell. "Sandor?"
He stroked a drop of rain from her flushed cheek. His thumb was calloused from handling his sword so often. "I won't hurt you, Sansa. You know that, don't you?" And she nodded, as if she wanted to appease him.
"I do Sandor, I trust you."
He smiled with his scarred mouth. Maybe he wants me to kiss him, Sansa thought inwardly. She was disgusted by herself. Sandor was, well . . . Sandor. Nothing more and nothing less, just another dog sent to protect her.
An old dog, he'd once said. A scarred old hound, protecting a pretty little bird.
And she was the bird. His bird.
Maybe she wanted to be his. Only his, not Joffrey or anyone else's, like loras, just his.
And in that queer light, where only the moon shone, and sandor's eyes turned too dark to be steel, she wanted him. Like a woman wants a man, like how she'd always somehow wanted him, ever since he'd walked her to her bedroom and told her about his brother, confided his deepest secret.
She wasn't afraid anymore.
She approached him.