He'd left her behind him in the twilight quiet of their evening's camp, but as he hunted he thought only of her.
He'd taken her. That was the truth of their relationship. There was nothing that could be done about it now, even given that it was better he than Joff, or even Cersei. He'd taken her and could not let her go and consequently he was aware of her at all times; even now as he slunk through the brush he could see her in his mind's map, a burning light where he had left her, the fixed axis he hunted in circles around, always keeping her in the center. So as not to be too far.
Probably she expected that he would someday trade his life for hers. Probably she'd understood that about him before he'd realized it himself. Probably a part of her knew, even as he was stuffing her into a bag to sling over his shoulder, that the monster was struggling to craft its redemption, that it was exchanging itself for the safety of her passage. He hoped she knew. He hoped she could forgive his theft by the price he'd eventually pay. He hoped she would remember him without rancor in the end.
Then he thought about what to feed her, and thinking about this brought his own sore and empty stomach into his awareness. He'd stopped noticing it.
They were just inside the swamplands' borders now. The air was luminous and wet. Even the shape of the forest was changing; above him the canopy was low and dense and draped with long garlands of spidery moss that hung in curtains, silver-tinsel curtains that reflected the dimming sky in an unreal purple as he passed through them. Ghost halls, he thought, even the trees here are haunted. A length of moss stroked his head as he passed under it and caught his hair up in its wiry fingers. Pulling the silver claws open to release himself, they wrapped around his fingers instead, pliant like an insect's, and he shuddered involuntarily. No wonder everyone stays to the road, out here.
From nowhere the voice in his head spoke to him, as if in conversation with his thoughts. Out here is where it will get hard. You've reached the part where you must take care.
He stood very still in the purple fog, between the corridors of moss whispering and shifting around him, in between the piping of the frogs.
When has it ever been easy, he asked the voice, and what have I ever done but take care?
This is where it gets hard, the voice of his protector repeated. Remember what I told you.
In the dimming light, standing in his hallway of silver moss, the Hound answered Gerion: But you told me a hundred thousand things, and none of them stuck; all you truly did was leave in the end.
.
Between the swaying silver curtains and the opalescent mist rising up from the bog he could see practically nothing, and what he did see he saw too late: the humped back of a catlike thing slipping from the bank into the green scum of the water, cranes snapping into racuous, long-winged flight before he could react, thick black ropes dropping into the water from the branches as he passed- she wouldn't eat a snake anyhow, he told himself. Rats in abundance. His boots sunk in the mud whenever he was careless in his step and it was loud getting them out. It will be harder to hunt from here on out.
Finally a leap in the marsh before him, and he moved quickly enough. Clumsy, hunting in the near-dark; the quill tore the little thing in a furrow from haunch to shoulder, skewering it through the ribs. He held the small squealing body in one hand against his chest and broke its neck with the other, cursing the poor light and his own skill. He looked up to the sky as he did it. Gauging the little light left. Against his stomach the legs kicked, jerked, went still. He registered the sensation without feeling any particular emotion but a sense of slight relief.
.
He did not have to retrace his trail. He knew exactly where he'd left her, could've found it with his eyes shut. It used to be this way with Cersei, he reflected. He'd always known where she was. A dozen maids could pass by the vaulted corridor but the sound of the little Queen's step would wake him. The small chamber outside her door was his, ostensibly so that he could keep watch against intruders. Lord Tywin had never stooped to explain the truth of the post. Her door will not open till morning, that was all he'd ever said.
If the Hound thought about it he could still dredge up the sound of her voice. Clegane, she would say softly, standing in the corridor with her shaded lantern making her a wraith, pulling the nightjacket close around her throat, the veins shadowed blue lines in her pale and lovely hand. Listen to me. Her green eyes steady up to his. A command. Sometimes beauty and authority were indistinguishable, he'd learned. Pay no mind. Do you hear me? Pay no mind. Her bottom lip caught in her teeth as she passed him.
But it was this particular gift of the Hound's- his capacity to pay no mind, to oppose and yet perform duty, to care and not care; the hallway's worth of length he allowed her before he began following her, quiet and unhurried, to eventually stand invisible guard in the shadows beside the door while she sobbed her brother's name in the dark- than won the Hound his post, his pay, his regard. His seven feet of height and his sword were well and all, but it was his ambivalence that kept him.
That ambivalence was gone. He had become a different man. He hurried on his way back to the girl at the fire.