Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who leaves a review! This chapter has a major spoiler from A Clash of Kings related to . . . the UnKiss! Why DID George R. R. Martin put that in there?! Enjoy!

CHAPTER 4

SANDOR

Sansa's handmaid, the young one with dark curly hair, came out of the washing room around midnight. The fire inside sent a warm draft out the door. The Young Falcon swooped down on her before she closed it.

"Tell me, Megga" whispered Harold Hardyng, "is my betrothed really a maiden?"

The girl giggled. "Moreso than you, my lord, I'm sure."

Their whispering woke Sandor up. He'd fallen asleep in the hallway, drunk. There was the sloppy sound of kissing, and then the tap of Harry's boots against the stone muffled Megga's slippers as the two ran off to find more private quarters.

Sandor lurched to his feet. His head was pounding. He couldn't remember what happened at the feast after the toasts, but he could guess. It made him dizzy to stand up. He leaned back against the wall and slid down again, his wrists resting on his knees.

Maybe he fell asleep again. When he came to, Sansa came out of the laundry room with a basket of white sheets.

"Sansa Stark," he growled. She jumped at hearing her name spoken in what she must have thought was an empty corridor. Her eyes followed the sound to Sandor crouching in the shadows. "You were a highborn lady when I met you. Almost a princess. Now you're a bastard. Next time I see you, you'll be raising a few of Harry's."

"You're cruel." She turned her nose up and headed down the corridor. The torches in the wall brackets were burning low. He followed her.

"What? Don't you want to marry Harry?"

"No."

That surprised him. Harry was young, rich, and handsome. A few bastards came with the territory. What more could a stupid girl like Sansa want? "Maybe you'll be a bard then. You're good at singing, and choosing one more name won't make much difference to you." He tried to think of a good nickname for bard-Sansa, but it was too much trouble concentrating.

"Did you like the song I sang today?"

"Prince Aemon, the Dragonknight?" In truth, he had not liked that song at all until he heard Sansa sing it. "I'm not sure Harry wants to hear his lady wife singing about infidelity." The part about being married to a monster might cut deep, so Sandor kept his tongue quiet about that. "Maybe you should have chosen a different song. There's one about a maid locked in a tower. Seems appropriate, since you're stuck here at the Eyrie."

"I'm not his lady wife." They were at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the floor her room was on. She stopped. He thought she would tell him to go away, but when she turned to him she did not look angry, but pained. "That song was for you."

Before he could say anything (not that any reply jumped into his mind) she ran up the stairs. He ran after her. She left the door to her room pushed open, her hands full with the basket, and he slipped in behind her. She set the sheets down on the bed at the far end of the room and turned around just as the door clicked shut.

Sansa froze. "What are you doing here?"

"I want to talk to you."

"If Petyr knew you came in here . . ."

"Are you going to tell him?" he scowled.

"No . . ." Sansa looked him over, then sat down to fold her sheets. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I want to apologize. I don't care much for the song," he took a few steps towards her and his heavy boots shook the room's wood floor, "but you sing beautifully, Sansa."

He thought she rolled her eyes, but maybe they were just following the sheet she folded as she raised it.

"I'm sorry," he said again. He wanted to explain the way hearing her sing made him feel, so she would believe him. "The way you sing, it's inspiring. Your voice is so delicate." It was paper-thin, really, and he didn't add that he wanted to fuck her screaming until it tore. "I was just being . . ."

"Mean," she suggested.

"Yes."

"Rude."

"Yeah."

"Mocking."

". . . Okay." He wondered how long they could go on like this. "Let me make it up to you."

"How?" Delivered in the same tone as before it sounded more like an insult than a question.

"However you want. Anything to satisfy a lady's whims, right?" She did not return the smirk he gave her.

"You can start by opening up my chest, so I can put my sheets away."

"All right." The chest was next to Sansa's bed, facing the mirrored wardrobe on the opposite side of the room. He crossed over to it and lifted the lid. It was empty for the most part, except for some folded clothes and an old pair of dress shoes, and a dirty sheet tucked into the corner beneath them.

"I think you forgot to wash one," he said, and reached down to pick it up. There was blood on it. He got a perverse pleasure from touching it, wondering if it was from her menses or a kind of souvenir from her wedding night. As he brought it out and saw it wasn't a sheet at all, and vertigo struck him. It was the old white cloak he wore as part of the Kingsguard.

"Why do you have this?"

"Uhm. You left it in my room."

"But why did you keep it?"

Sansa had gone as white as the sheets she gathered to her chest. She mumbled something into them.

"What did you say?" "

I guess I thought it meant something."

"Like what?" It came out more biting than he intended it to.

"I don't know!" she huffed, angry. "You came into my room—you were sleeping in my bed—and you promised to protect me, and then you kissed me and left that there."

Sandor dropped the cloak back into the chest with a laugh. "I never kissed you."

"What?"

"I said, I never kissed you." He sauntered over to her and her composure dropped like a curtain before a play.

"I think you did, uhm," Sansa had got up to put her laundry away, but now she took a step backwards. "At King's Landing. You told me you would take me from there, if I wanted, but I couldn't and you . . . that's how I know you like songs," she finished with a blush.

"Right." Too polite to mention I had a knife at her throat. "But I never kissed you." He took another step forward, and Sansa backed into her bed so suddenly that she sat down. "That's not fair."

"W-what?"

"You have a memory of kissing me, but I don't have a memory of kissing you." He leaned forward and put his hands on the bed, on either side of her. He had been like this, almost on top of her. Did she want him to kiss her? It seemed outside the realm of possibility, even now, but as he looked at her he allowed himself to think of it.

Sansa looked at his arms, from one to the other, like they were independent of him. "I guess it's not. I—you're scaring me—oh—"

He brought a hand up to her face. She stiffened and closed her eyes. He dragged the calloused thumb of his sword hand along her jawline. On him, that was the side of his face that was disfigured, but hers was as smooth and flawless as fresh snowfall. She was warm though, and matched on both sides. When he got to her chin he lifted her head up to look at her face, and her lips parted.

She'd grown into a beautiful woman—well, nearly. The fleshy roundness of a child's face was almost completely replaced by the clean, strong lines of adulthood. Her breath was coming out in shallow gasps and her auburn eyelashes were squeezed shut tight above her pinkened cheeks. He hadn't meant to scare her, though, so he dropped his hand and stood up.

"I can't believe you thought I kissed you," he said, feeling like a little boy gloating over some compliment. The mirror was on his left. He turned to the side and tried to imagine what his face would look like whole, but the image vanished as soon as he faced the mirror and the reality of his crisped face stared back at him.

"Did you really not?" Sansa asked, sounding a bit dazed.

He shrugged. "I might've. I was dead drunk. If I did, I don't remember."

"Well . . . maybe you just forgot." She went over to the chest and knelt to pack her things away.

He watched her through the mirror and thought about what she said. She moved gracefully even when she thought no one was looking. "No," he decided. "If I kissed you, I would remember."

She shut the lid and they turned to face each other. "Did you think of anything you want?" he asked.

"I want . . ." she looked through him, past him. "I want my family to be together again. I want to be safe with them in Winterfell."

"Winterfell's a ruin," he reminded her.

She didn't seem to be listening. After a moment she stood up and smoothed down her skirt. "It's late. I want to go to sleep now."

"All right."

Harry was an idiot, Sandor decided, for chasing after her maid while Sansa was alone in her room. She poked her head out the door to make sure no one was coming down the hallway, but it was deserted at this late hour. It would mean his head if anyone saw him leaving.

"Thanks," he said.

"For what?"

"Singing."

"Oh," she smiled warmly and looked like Sansa even under her disguise of dark hair. "I suppose I can't be with her, but knowing my sister is alive is the next best thing."

He nodded and lingered there while Sansa gazed up at him. "So, what was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"Kissing."

"Oh, you!" she hissed, and pushed him out the door. "Get out."