Author's Note:
This chapter is what happens when you're scrolling through #GoT Tumblr and happen across a still of Sansa and the Hound from Season 2…and suddenly remember all the awesomeness of those early seasons and how much time they spent on character development and mmmm yes, the echoes of a thousand AU versions of Beauty and the Beast were thrown all over the place. Not that I'm complaining. :)
So anyway, I rewatched the Battle of the Blackwater and then found myself writing this.
Please note that this chapter in no way diminishes my interest in Sansa/Tyrion (*heart eyes*). However, it certainly doesn't diminish my interest in Sansa/Sandor either (*more heart eyes*). Let's hope I can find a way to cure my multi-shipping ways before the end.
Sandor
Once, a long time ago now, Sandor Clegane had waited in a dark room for Sansa Stark to appear.
That night, he was soaked in blood, drunk on sour wine and in a fouler temper than usual. It was in the dead of night, in the middle of a battle—the gods-be-damned siege of King's Landing and the city was on fire. Its burning embers filled the streets with the smell of smoke and ash. His skin crawled whenever he thought back on it.
Fuck the fire and its lifelong power over him.
From the battlements above the Blackwater, Tyrion's wildfire worked like magic. Fire sprung up everywhere and spilled into the city so eagerly. The flames grew higher and higher and there was nothing to stop it. Bodies were burning. Stone was burning. Even the fucking water was burning. Sandor was standing on the blood-stained beach in the light of raging orange flames when he suddenly realized he had to leave. He couldn't stay, not even if the gods commanded it. Fuck the battle, fuck the war and fuck the king.
But before he left, he went to the Red Keep, thinking he would spring the little bird from her cage on his way out. He sat at the foot of her bed, ignoring the overwhelming stench of smoke and cinders wafting in the windows of the Red Keep, keeping his fears at bay through drink and the unlikely idea that he might finally get Sansa away from that cursed place.
Killer or not, I would have saved you if you let me.
It was a pretty thought but unlikely. If she had fled with him during the Battle of the Blackwater, under dark of night, under the chaos of fire and blood, secreted away far beyond Cersei Lannister's reach…would it have made a difference? Would she have escaped the worst of her fate?
Not a fucking chance.
He knew better. Sansa's fate was sealed the moment she arrived in King's Landing. Perhaps the moment she was born, too pretty and sweet for a world built by killers like him. If she had gone with him that night, he would have delivered her to her mother and brother, thinking she was safe among the wolf pack. But if he had succeeded, she would have been slaughtered at the Red Wedding with the rest of them.
Red is her color. Always red.
Sandor knew too well how life played out. Nothing good can stay. Nothing fresh goes unspoiled. Nothing sweet escapes the sour.
These were the thoughts that lingered in his head most hours of the day, too familiar and predictable to dwell on for long. His life was never a precious thing, even before the Night King knocked down the Wall and winter came to stay.
Honestly, winter didn't bother him.
It was cold as a fucking icebox, of course, and they'd probably starve or kill each other before the end—if the storms didn't do it for them. But he was alive. Still alive, while Ned Stark, Tywin Lannister, Stannis Baratheon, Jaime and Cersei, that little bastard Joffrey, Littlefinger, Beric Dondarrion and his smug fire priest, Jon Snow or Jon Targaryen or whatever-the-fuck his name was—all dead, all rotting away.
He didn't deserve to be alive. But he never asked to survive either. Not even back at the beginning, when he was a child and his brother forced his head into the coals and ash of a flaming brazier.
And mulling it over, replaying the last however many years of blood, war, fire, armies of the dead—it wouldn't change a thing.
So he fell asleep most nights easily, his dreams no more tormented than usual. Life had been shit before. Life was shit now. What was the difference?
A hound deserves no better…he reminded himself. Often.
Yet, his ongoing nihilism never stopped him from pulling his weight and attempting to get them through the damn winter. With fresh meat always running low, he went hunting in the dragon-charred, snow-covered forests often, trudging back through the frost-damned cold with the same mumbled curses, whether or not he found game.
This night, he brought back a brace of skinny hares, returning after midnight and depositing the meat in the Winterfell kitchens before retiring to the small room in the old servant's quarters that he'd claimed for himself. Much like winter, the chamber's location didn't bother him. As he'd reminded Sansa and himself more times than he could count, he was no lord or knight worthy of anything better.
Besides, most of the servants were dead with the rest. And a bed was a bed.
He carried a candle into his dark bedroom. As he brought in the light, a slim, willowy figure by the frost-stained window shifted, quietly alerting him to its presence. She was sitting in the dark, waiting for him. He recognized her immediately, just by the turn of her pretty head.
This time, it was Sansa who was waiting for Sandor.
With their roles reversed and with her presence so unlikely, in this place, at this time of night…her eyes found his and latched on. But in the extended silence that followed, she didn't explain herself and he didn't know what to say. So he said nothing, and merely placed the candle on the nightstand, casting light in dark places, just as she had done that long ago night in King's Landing.
She sat with her hands in her lap. With no rag doll to clutch this time, her fingers were restless and tangled with themselves. Her hands settled as he took a cautious step towards her and then another, reaching over her, nearly brushing the silk of her skirt…as he retrieved a second candle from where it was perched on a wooden trunk beneath her window.
He broke their tense stare and moved back to the nightstand, lighting the second candle with the first, brightening the room further. The strands of her red hair were illuminated by the candlelight.
Red is your color.
She watched him merge the wicks of both candles silently, with those same blue-grey eyes that had played witness to atrocities, deception and wickedness for years. Littlefinger's lessons went deep. And the Master of Coin had no doubt taught her how to keep her eyes neutral or shift, as required, for her audience.
When he finished with the candle, he turned back to meet her gaze once more.
Sandor would never have Littlefinger's talent for keeping secrets and playing at feelings. But, simple as he may be, Sandor only ever saw truth in Sansa's eyes—her nettled fears and that same old sadness that she couldn't shake. Sadness clung to her like dust on the wings of grey moths. Behind that sadness though, he still saw the spark of the little songbird blinking out behind all the hurt that came after.
It had been this way for a long time—before Winterfell, before the dead men came down from wherever the hell they were hiding, before Robb Stark, Stannis Baratheon and Joffrey, that-fucking-little-cunt, all met their untimely ends. Back to King's Landing, when she was still a child and he still wore a white cloak.
You won't hurt me.
No, I won't hurt you.
She was a survivor too. Like him, her resilience went deep. Far deeper than it had any right to go.
And, in that, she couldn't hide herself from him. But perhaps she didn't want to…
For what other reason could explain what she was doing waiting in his room in the middle of the night?
"He's sent Brienne away," she said finally, in a small, quiet voice. "He didn't ask me and neither did she. But she's gone, just like that…and I have no idea why."
He didn't speak immediately, gauging the impact of his words first. He remained by the nightstand, too unsure to bridge the distance between them.
"Tyrion may have his reasons," Sandor replied, wondering why he felt the need to defend the dwarf. He supposed there was solidarity in survival, even among monsters and grotesques.
"Then why didn't he explain those reasons?" Sansa continued, sharply.
Her features were still so delicate, as they had been as a child. Yet, in the woman she had become, there was strength behind her voice and a pale beauty that he couldn't match—despite his physical presence and rough manners. She was stronger than him—tough as old leather and sharp as Valyrian steel.
Not a fighter like Arya—no. She couldn't wield a sword to save her life. And he could still remember her begging for her father's sake on the tiles of the Throne Room in King's Landing. But the Sansa he'd covered with his cloak was long gone. Had this Sansa been there instead…she might have walked up to Joffrey and sliced his throat open with a dagger she pulled from Sandor's belt.
For she was bold enough. Strong enough.
She left the window, rising from the wide sill and crossing the short distance between them, where she came to rest before him, eyes still locked with his.
Twin candles smoothed out her already smooth skin, as if she was made of porcelain, while it cast his ruined features into sharper relief, showing every pockmark, every scar and every hideous twist of flesh on the burned side.
He was never self-conscious about his scars, having lived with his burns for decades. And he had faced Sansa before, just like this, nearly half an age ago. But that time, he was the one who approached her, and she had been a child holding a rag doll to her chest.
She was a child no longer and her beauty, hinted at back then, was now both breathtaking and dangerous, like the chill of a white, winter morning. So still, so unwilling to admit the threat of storms on the horizon.
And he, a mangy, mangled dog, was not a fit witness to any of it. He had the sudden urge to hide away and, with a hitch in his breath, he turned the ruined side of his face away from the light.
He would have stepped aside but Sansa stopped him by reaching up and cupping her soft palm against the old burns. Stunned, he remained where he was. With her curious fingers, she explored the ridges and leathery flesh of his mutilated face, tracing the uneven planes, where the flesh had melted and scarred over.
The heat of the brazier was seared into his brain. With very little effort, he could feel the flames licking, biting, burning at his flesh once again. If he thought on it too long, it was all he could do to keep from screaming.
But Sansa's hands were cold and gentle as she explored the scar tissue, banishing the memory of flames away with the chilled ice of the Queen of Winter. When she finally brought her hand down again, her fingers slid from his cheek bone slowly, one finger after another, to curl into her own palm. He was left with the sensation of trails of ice on his skin.
"Never lie to me," she begged him, the words no more than a whisper.
"Never," he replied, unable to consider a different answer.
In response, she placed her hand on his chest for a moment, palm flat against the leather. Did she lean up and press her lips to his? Or did he imagine it?
Did he kiss her before he left King's Landing? He can't remember now. He should have. He remembers telling Arya that he should have.
But then Sansa was gone…with nothing to mark her midnight visit but twin candles and the sweet, ghostly taste of ice lingering on Sandor's lips.