A/N: Thank you to everyone who has left a comment! I really do appreciate the encouragement, especially as this last bit has been a doozy. The timeline is challenging, and I'm trying to take heart that it's just as convoluted in the books and series! I promise it will start picking up as we get closer to the action of the books, I just truly felt that these relationships were important to build from the ground up. I hope you enjoy!

Lenna IV

294 AC

The capital's tendency to change from misty mornings to sweltering middays infuriated her. When she'd first arrived, it had felt like the air weighed more, dropping like stones into her lungs. The humidity made her feel like she was suffocating. At home in the North, she'd needed a stout woolen dress and a cloak for the evening chill even in summer, but they had long ago been banished to the bottom of her chest, unused and unnecessary. Only silk would do in King's Landing.

When she looked down, she could see that her burgundy court gown was streaked with dark perspiration stains. It had draped so elegantly when she dressed just a few hours before, but now it clung to her back and stomach. The fabric was limp and rumpled from sweat. All she had done was walk to and from the Sept at a leisurely pace.

With the dress was in such a state, she cringed to think about her hair. While she more or less looked the part of a capital lady-in-waiting, she continued to decline the handmaiden's efforts, wearing her hair as she always had in either a braid or loose down her back. The curls simply wouldn't comply with court standards, and she loved and envied them for it. She'd tried to bind them today, and she could already feel unruly tendrils plastered against her neck, itching like winter wool. Another reminder that despite her courtly manners, Lenna was not a capital woman.

Each day she rose and dressed in her pretty things, feeling like an impostor. It had been nearly four years since her arrival, and though she had adopted King's Landing dress and manners, she had steadfastly refused the bright colors and ridiculous hairstyles. She knew that no matter what she did, she would always been an outsider among the other ladies at court. She had come to prefer it that way.

She did her duty. That was her comfort. The beginning had been difficult, but the time since her mother's death two years before had been almost unbearable. It went far beyond homesickness and grief. Both could be overcome with occupation, but Lenna had none unless she counted her time with the royal children each day, or her hours in the library.

Lenna smiled despite herself. Myrcella had been her sweet self that morning. She'd almost mastered her colors and shapes, and Lenna was amazed at how much her vocabulary had expanded. She was precociously speaking in full sentences, and Lenna wished she had more time with her. Her mother seemed to barely acknowledge her, but Lenna was invested in the little girl, both in her happiness and her growing. She was at the age where she was full of questions, and Lenna was more than happy to answer them and the all the ones that followed in their wake. It did her mind and her heart good to talk to the little girl, to share with her what she could.

Of course, Joff had been himself as well. He needled his sister, who usually avoided him, and played roughly with little Tommen. The littlest prince wasn't even two yet he already grew fussy and hesitant around his big brother. Lenna and Clegane had exchanged looks all morning, but neither of them could do anything about it. Clegane had clenched his jaw, something she'd learned to read as his contained fury, and Lenna had felt her shoulders creep up around her ears until she could feel the headache rising from between her shoulder blades.

When Cersei had dismissed them for the morning to attend to her business, she had almost fled to the Sept. Not even her time before the Mother, that blessed quiet time, had eased the tension between her shoulders or smoothed her brow. It was one of those days where only the isolation of the library would give her the relief she craved.

She had even really thought about where she was going once the doors to the Sept closed behind her. She simply followed her feet. Her routine had been her saving grace after her mother died: mornings with the queen, a visit to the Sept, time in the library before dinner. Evenings were often a little more varied, but once everyone had retired, her feet would find their way back to the library doors, leading her back to her work and the solace of the silence.

As she looked at her rumpled gown again, She wondered why she even cared what she looked like. No one would see her, and even if they did they wouldn't attend to the state of her clothes. Very few people ever noticed Lenna Manderly at all. She walked as quickly as she could, her slippers barely making a sound against the paving stones. She paused before the set of large heavy doors as a trickle of sweat slithered down her spine. She walked into the cool darkness on the other side like wading into the chill of a lake.

As many times as she had cursed the heat of the capital, she had blessed this place for its quiet rows of musty books and dark, deep nooks. The Red Keep's library was always shrouded in shadow, even at midday in midsummer, the few shafts of sunlight falling like honey from the high windows, so thick with dust she felt she could reach out and wrap one around her hand like a skein of silk.

This library had been her refuge for the past few years. It was where she came when she could stand it no longer, both keenly aware that she wouldn't even be missed and glad for the respite. It wasn't a bad thing to be so neglected. She found all of the places to stay out of sight in the Keep, away from the gossip of the other ladies and the attention of the young knights who seemed to flock around the young ladies of the court like flies to sweets. While many maids may have wanted to stay close to the queen, to at least try and make connections, Lenna decided it was best to be left to her own devices. Instead of extra hours of embroidery some of the women returned for in the afternoon, she decided to take to the gardens by herself, spending hours there walking every day. Rather than listen to half-hearted minstrels, she hid in the dark depths of the Keep's massive library, a labyrinthine cavern of dust and wormy vellum. The queen never objected, and Lenna had long ago learned to ask for forgiveness instead of a blessing. If she was missed, she never knew it.

But this place, she thought, as she breathed in the musty comfort of the books, a smile curling across her face. This place was the closest thing she had to a home anymore, and when she breathed that dusty scent in deeply she was taken back to her father's study. In her memory, she could almost remember the salty tang of White Harbor, of her father's hair when she bent to kiss it while he sat at his great desk. She had passed her childhood in a miniature version of this temple to learning. Her father's study was a wide, bright room that overlooked the harbor, the cries of the gulls filtering through the windows with the cold sea-light. His collection of books was well known, and she had relished the stacks. None of them were off limits to her, his favored child. His only daughter. The smell of musty vellum and cracked leather must be universal as the atmosphere of the library in the Keep evoked her memories of White Harbor strongly each time she set foot within the doors. It was almost like walking through a portal back to the New Castle.

Four years since she had been home, four years since she had seen her father, as he steadfastly refused to come to the capital even to see his precious Lenna. He'd sent ravens faithfully at the beginning, but then her mother died and something...happened. Something had to have happened. There was no other explanation for why the communications had dwindled down to nothing except a hasty note on her nameday, written in cold terms that destroyed her heart each and every year. Coin came, but beyond that, it was if she'd been entirely forgotten, cut off from them.

It had been in these stacks that she had mourned the news that her mother was dead. She hadn't seen her in two years, but her seventeen-year-old self had curled up in a ball like a child on the window ledge and keened for hours, day after day, the little roll of parchment clasped in her hand. She kept her face placid and her eyes dry in the queen's company, though Cersei tried to be gentle and considerate of her in the weeks that followed. It was only in the safety of the stacks that she allowed herself to properly grieve, to have any emotions at all. She would not allow herself to break in front of anyone.

This was only partially true. One other person had witnessed her devastation, the only other person who had acknowledged her loss at all: the Hound. An unlikely friend. They'd formed an odd kind of awareness of each other, perhaps because people went out of their way to ignore them both, her because of her insignificance, him because of his face.

He'd become a most welcome sight to her each day when she walked into Cersei's solar. On the day she entered the Red Keep, he had been the only person who smiled back at her. The others may have simpered and twisted their lips, but she didn't trust their eyes. She knew he meant it because he had answered her smile unwillingly. He didn't seem the sort who smiled often, but when she had unexpectedly caught his eyes and smiled he had quirked the unscarred side of his mouth up into the only expression of real warmth she could recall seeing in the Keep. Though she always had a smile for him, he didn't return it again, but his expressive eyes would change. She marveled at his self-control, then realized they were similarly skilled: he kept his face stony, she kept hers pleasing. They'd developed an odd language of darted glances and cocked eyebrows, and she imagined that he was laughing with her as they listened to the ridiculous preening of the other courtiers, or that he was joining her in indignation at Joffrey's latest infractions. Either way, he was the closest thing she had to a friend.

When her mother had died, she had felt utterly on her own, awash with grief with no one to turn to. He'd been tasked with seeing her back to her rooms. He had stopped her before she went into her rooms, on the verge of collapse. There had been warm sympathy in his eyes as he clumsily offered his condolences, sympathy that she had continued to see in his face in the following months, even years.

He pitied her. She might had felt resentful of it once, but she clung to it. Of all the people in the Keep, the Hound was the only one who felt anything other than indifference toward her, and she was desperate enough to take pity. Perhaps it was mutual. He pitied her for being abandoned and ignored, she pitied him for being degraded and scarred. Maybe they weren't that different.

She was musing on this darkly, not even past the first stacks, when the door to the library was flung wide with a bang. Helenna jumped, a hand flying to her throat. An exceptionally tall figure was standing in the doorway, backlit by the sharp contrast of blazing daylight and darkness.

The subject of her thoughts was in her library. She couldn't fathom why the Hound would be there. Surely he wasn't looking for her. She'd never encountered him there before, though she had spotted Maester Pycelle, Lord Arryn, and even Jaime Lannister. The Hound had never made an appearance. No, he wasn't there of his own accord. She smirked to even imagine a book in those rough hands. She thought it more likely he'd take up playing the lute and singing the chivalric ballads than read a book.

The image of him with a book engulfed in his colossal hands turned the smirk into a true smile.

"Can I help you, Clegane?"

"The queen would like you to come to her," he ground out. His voice was a raspy, low rumble. It was rusty, like the hinges of a door that hadn't been used in a long while. Though he spoke rarely, Lenna thought it was a strangely pleasant sound, rugged and low.

"Of course," she replied, walking toward him. He grunted.

He stood silently aside to let her pass, closing the doors behind them before falling into step a pace behind her shoulder with his helm tucked beneath his arm. Lenna had grown into a tall young woman, easily a hand or more taller than many of the other ladies. The queen was almost as tall as she was, but not quite. Standing next to the Hound, however, she felt positively diminutive. He towered over her like one of the statues in the Sept, the Warrior or the Smith, and just as silent. She appreciated this about him, so unlike the other guards who wanted to make small talk, to flirt. Not Clegane. All brusque, curt utterances, and economy of words. He never made her feel like she had to pretend, to chirp back pretty platitudes, to play games.

The cloisters were awash with afternoon sun. It was a beautiful walk, the courtyard a wide expanse of honey stone, broken here and there by fringed trees and bright flowers in iron pots. Helenna squinted in the sunshine, shielding her eyes from the quick and painful adjustment. She preferred the shaded walks of the gardens that stretched down to the water with their stands of trees, or the cool of the library. More sunlight meant more heat, and she despised it. She could already feel sweat resuming its trickle down her spine, and was annoyed thinking about how it must be staining through the dark fabric. She didn't care much for the fashions of the court, but she disliked appearing rumpled. It reminded her too clearly of her first audience with the queen.

She was puzzled and concerned by the Hound's appearance. She had never before been brought before Cersei during the course of the day, and certainly never sent for in such a way.

"How did you know where to find me?" She asked Clegane, looking up at him over her shoulder. He looked down at her askance, the good side of his face smooth as the harbor, always a contrast to the livid mass of scarring on his right side.

"No secrets in this place," he replied gruffly, his voice like gravel.

She nodded, a little frown pulling at her mouth.

The journey to the queen's chambers took less time than she thought it should, or perhaps it had seemed quicker because she was agitated by the time they reached the doors to the solar. She ran through the possibilities in her head, wondering if she were about to be sold off in some marriage pact. Her father had promised her that if such were to come to pass he would write her first. She'd been waiting four years and no such raven had come, much to her relief. She dismissed the idea, but her mind immediately reeled to the worse options of her father's illness or even death.

They'd stopped before the door. Clegane reached out a hand the size of a barrel to open it. Helenna quickly staid him, wrapping her fingers over his wrist. He wasn't wearing gauntlets, she noticed, and his skin was surprisingly smooth and warm. His gaze flicked to where her hand rested on his but his face remained impassive as he looked at her through the long fall of his hair.

"Please, just a moment," she whispered, trying valiantly to push down on the rising tide of worry in her gut. He grunted, stepping awkwardly back. She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath and squared her shoulders, unaware of his intense observation. She found a measure of calm and set her lips into a straight line. She looked up into his face and nodded, pressing her lips together in determination.

"Thank you, Clegane."

He looked down at her, a flicker of something in his gray eyes, and nodded.

Sandor IV

She had touched him. He had looked down on her little hand where it rested against his wrist with odd fascination, marveling at the feel of her soft fingertips against his skin. Her fingers were slender and pale, the nails trim but not manicured. He knew she picked them when she was thinking, but now they possessed a faint tremor. He hadn't seen her so agitated in years. He was accustomed to watching her predictable and quiet ways, every word and gesture measured and premeditated. Reaching out to him had not been thought through, it was an impulse.

Yet, even in her disquiet, she didn't flinch from his gaze. She looked up at him steadily, her eyes never wavering. It was a game he played frequently, seeing how long he could get people to look at him. There were serving wenches that never looked past his boots, though the boys and men of all stations tended to fare much better. Helenna Manderly had never failed. And he had long ago stopped trying to look away, accepting that he wanted to be trapped by her fine eyes and her smile.

His lips itched to return it, but even now, with the pleasure of her fingers against his wrist, he couldn't muster one. So he pressed his lips together and nodded in reassurance. It made something deep within him twitch with want.

"Took you long enough, Hound," Cersei said as they entered the solar, her voice hard. It didn't match the sweet curved lips or the bright emerald eyes.

"The library is big, your grace; a lot of nooks and crannies," he replied lowly, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed across the barrel-chest in his customary fashion, the royal children at his feet. Helenna caught his eye, and while she still looked apprehensive she cut him another little smile, like she was laughing at him. He quickly averted his gaze, feeling ridiculous. Six and half feet of brute strength towering over the toddling princes and princess. He knew he was as apt a nursemaid as a bear. He didn't need her smirks to feel foolish, he managed that quite well on his own.

She was still smiling as she went forward, the curtsey appearing almost reflexive, the good humor almost genuine, not a trace of the uneasiness he'd seen outside the door.

The queen rose from her cushioned chair on the dais. As was her custom, she was dressed a deep red gown with her golden hair loose and coursing over her shoulders.

"Lady Helenna. How long have you been in my service?" The queen said, her voice sounding bored. She always sounded spiritless. Despite her great beauty, Cersei had lost her luster. A woman with her looks should have shone like the sun, but Cersei's bright hair and skin were almost dun with her lack of spirit.

"Almost four years, your grace," Helenna replied softly. Four long years, Clegane thought to himself. Four years of dinners and morning audiences where he'd watch her from his post, and four years of chasing her face from his mind when he'd finally bed down for the night. He had a soft spot for the girl, one that was strangely sore and tender. He despised it with a fury. It made him feel foolish, and he hated feeling foolish.

"Four years?" Cersei sounded surprised. "Has it been that long? You must have been very young when you came to me." A little furrow appeared between the queen's golden brows. Clegane knew Helenna Manderly had been no little ward. She'd been tall already, though she'd grown since. She'd had the figure of a young woman, the distinct curve of breast and hip, the delicious angles of collar bones leading into a long, pale neck. He grunted to chase the thought away.

"No, your grace, I was fourteen when I came to you," Helenna replied evenly, her gaze now fixed on her hands. She'd carried herself with poise even then.

"How is it you are yet unmarried?" the queen asked, with what appeared to be genuine confusion.

He heard the girl let out a burst of breath that could have been a laugh. "My lord father has yet to make me a match, your grace." Her voice was matter of fact, a sprinkle of sarcasm flavoring her modulated tone.

If this was the line of questioning, Clegane thought, an imminent betrothal was unlikely. The thought relieved him. He had been faintly surprised when the queen had bade him find Helenna Manderly and bring her. If she was keen to see the girl, something must be afoot, and a girl of her station might expect to be informed of a marriage contract at her age. The thought that she might be sent away had sent a tremor of disappointment and sadness through him. The idea that she might be about to be married off to some little lordling had stirred his blood in a way that he didn't want to think about.

"Fathers and their daughters," Cersei replied, a knowledge in her eyes. "I am sure he would be loathe to lose you. You are pretty enough with that luxuriant hair and those fine eyes. Isn't she, Hound?"

Sizzling anger gathered in his belly as he turned his eyes to the queen. Why she delighted in plaguing him this way he didn't know. It was almost as if she knew where his thoughts tended, where his weaknesses were.

"Thank you, your grace," Lenna responded, shifting uncomfortably on her feet, heat creeping up the pale skin of her neck, saving him the embarrassment of making an answer. He would have agreed, of course. No one pretended that Helenna Manderly was plain, but neither was she beautiful like many of the ladies in the Red Keep were. While she had a fair and regular face with fine cheekbones and clear, creamy skin, she was rather too tall, and while not fat, not exactly a fashionable waif. She'd make someone a fine wife.

Not you.

"Perhaps he has something in store for you, my dove. A handsome lord of the North? Does he let nothing on when you go home?"

"I have not been home since I came to King's Landing, your grace." This admission cost her something in the telling. He detected it in the hitch of the breath, the tremor to the voice. It got his attention at the same moment that it drew the queen's. Clegane looked at her, and he felt sorry for her. He often did. He liked this girl, more than he wanted to, and in ways that he didn't want to think about. She made him feel like more than a brute, and he hated to watch her suffer all the fucking time.

He could forget the travesty that was his face for a few seconds each time she met his eye. There was no flash of pity or revulsion when she looked at him. She looked at him like he was anyone else, met his eyes without hesitation as if his face were whole and not destroyed. She smiled at him the same as she did everyone else, like she was pleased to see him. He suspected, oddly enough, that she was.

To hear heartsickness in her voice spoke to him in a way his gruff exterior would never belie. Her eyes had dimmed, looking faraway, pained, and wistful. It painfully brought to mind the night he'd spent outside her bedchamber, listening to her wail. Now there was longing in her voice, and it made a strange, faint ache spread through hsi chest.

"Never been home? Whyever not? Surely you miss it," the queen asked.

Cersei had grown fond of her quiet lady-in-waiting against her will. She didn't feel the need to fill silence foolishly. She did what was required of her and then she got out of the way. Cersei had said once that she wished she had a court full of Helenna Manderlys, pretty girls who weren't too pretty, quiet, well-mannered, and loyal. Clegane had thought such a court would be his personal waking nightmare. One was enough to plague his thoughts.

"I am in your service, your grace," Lenna replied evenly, the tremor erased. "It is not for me to decide when and where I should go. I bow to your grace's decisions and judgment."

"As it should be, I suppose," the queen replied with an upturned lip. "Which is what brings you here today. I have use of you, Lady Helenna."

"Your grace?" Helenna's brow knotted in confusion.

Now we get to the bloody point, Clegane thought. Trepidation welled up in him like quicksand, slow moving and thick.

"I had wondered where you got to every day, but was informed by my Hound that after you leave me in the mornings you go straight to our library. Is that so?"

Clegane felt a bolt of annoyance and dismay flash through his blood. It was all he could do to not react.

Helenna looked at him again, this time he pressed his lips together and avoided her scrutiny with a flash of embarrassment coursing through his chest.

"Yes, your grace, except for when I go to the Sept."

"Why do you go to the Sept?" she asked, as if such a concept was foreign to her, looking at the Clegane. He kept his eyes averted, pretending not to notice the queen's displeasure. Cersei saw the outward show of piety as some kind of weakness, a feebleness of the will. He'd found her devotion more admirable, though he didn't share it. He'd taken pleasure in watching her kneeling before the gods, her white hands lighting tapers in the shadows, her dark head bowed. He, who hated songs, had enjoyed listening to her fair voice.

"I go to pray, your grace," she replied.

"A pretty answer. After you pray, what do you do in the library?"

The girl took a deep, steady breath. "I study, your grace."

"That," the queen said with pleasure, "is exactly what I have been told, and exactly why you are standing before me, for all your worry and confusion. I can see it written in your eyes."

She flushed at this, color rushing to her cheeks. It happened with regularity, and it seemed to frustrate the girl, her eyes narrowing in such a way that it might have been imperceptible to those who didn't know her better. Clegane noticed. While he enjoyed the heightened color in her face he felt a spark of ire, angry at the queen for teasing her.

"Do not worry, little dove," the queen continued, noting how Lenna's cheeks had pinked. "I think you might actually enjoy how I intend to use you. It seems to me that you love the princes and princess. Indeed, I have been pleased with how taken they are with you. Myrcella is growing quickly, and I've watched you with her. Now, my family has always had a tradition of educating their daughters. I don't mean in the way that most noble girls are educated by a Septa, with needlework and dancing and that sort of thing. Of course we had that training, but in addition to it, we were taught history, philosophy, literature- the sort of thing that could prove useful to a woman of status. As she is still little, and it it isn't proper for her to be instructed along side the princes, indeed they have a very different curriculum, I have decided that I would like you to teach her. There isn't a septa in the city that has the skills I'm looking for, and when casting my eyes about for a suitable candidate, you were the natural choice."

"Me, your grace?" Helenna said, her eyes widening.

"Who better? You are well read, and I understand you speak several of the modern languages as well as can read in Old Valyrian."

The girl looked puzzled for a moment, her eyebrows coming together. She glanced to Clegane, who watched her from under the fall of his hair, and he pressed his lips together in acknowledgement, nodding his head subtly. He'd stopped following her, but he had been told to keep an eye on what she was studying. He didn't like reporting back what he'd seen to the queen, but what was he to do? He couldn't very well refuse Cersei, and she would know if he was lying. He was a terrible liar.

"And better yet," the queen continued, "you are a lady of good reputation. In fact, I have never heard so many people use the same word to describe one person, except for perhaps my Hound."

"What word is that, your grace?" She asked softly, genuinely curious.

"Kind," she said, casting an almost coy look in the guard's direction, "And I would want a kind instructor for my girl. She is a sweet child, a little girl still, but it is time she began to learn the things that will help her in life, give her a sense of where she fits into this family, this kingdom. Can you do that?"

"I can certainly try, your grace," the girl replied evenly.

"Good. You'll begin tomorrow morning, after breakfast," Cersei declared with finality. "Three days a week from breakfast until noon. She must attend her other lessons in addition, you see. You'll attend me, then eat with the children each day, even when Myrcella isn't to come with you. When the boys go to the Maester those three days, you'll take Myrcella to the library. If you require anything you need only ask. My Hound will accompany you, of course."

"Your grace?" he erupted, startled by the announcement. He'd been assigned to the family, of course, but his main concern had always been the little Crown Prince, Joffrey. He didn't know what to make of this new assignment, wondering if it was some sort of demotion.

"There are plenty of king's guard to keep watch of the boys in that part of the keep, but I cannot send my precious girl off on her own, now can I, dog?"

He hated being called a dog, but he hated it even more that it was in Helenna Manderly's hearing.

"Do you swear to take on the duty of keeping the Princess Myrcella from harm while she is in your charge?"

"Aye, your grace," he replied without hesitation. For someone who abhorred vows, that one rolled off his tongue with surprising ease.

"And do you swear to keep Lady Helenna from harm?"

This request came as a surprise, and he cut his eyes over to the young lady. She looked back at him openly but he couldn't read her expression. Would he swear to protect her? Yes, even if it means protecting her from myself.

"Aye," he replied. "I do so swear." As he spoke, his eyes never left hers. She looked away with the barest indentation of a furrow between her dark brows.

"Then the matter is settled. I'll expect to see you tomorrow before breakfast, Lady Helenna." Cersei dismissed her with the slightest wave of her hand.

"Yes, your grace," she replied with a murmur, brought out of her thoughts.

"You may go," the queen said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, raising a glass of summer wine to her lips. Helenna dropped a hasty curtsey and with a single glance at Clegane, who met her gaze boldly, wondering what he just gotten into.