"I only know who's lost. Me." Sandor Clegane the Hound, ASOIAF
Eight
When Sandor Clegane stirred from the longest and sweetest dream of his life, it was nighttime.
"Sansa," he murmured, drifting between sleep and waking state. She was resting in his arms. His body was draped in hers, just as he always wanted. They were not dressed in his dream. Reclined, she was everywhere. Her long arms had wandered to his head, seizing it. Her legs were intertwined with his, never quite reaching his feet. Heat pooled between their bellies, inviting them to join their bodies. His arousal was there, but it had no hold over him.
He could not tear his gaze away from the crown of her head, lying gently on his chest. His arms were lost in the utmost smoothness of her back and hair, occasionally grasping the curves of her hips and arse in wordless wonder.
Suddenly, Sansa retreated her arms to herself and let her elbows sink into his flesh. Flushed, she lifted her face on her hands and stared at him with quiet joy on her impeccable features. He had never seen her so radiant.
Before she might have spoken in his dream, she paled, became ghost-like and was gone.
Sandor clung fiercely to the vanishing dream-image of Sansa, like a man drowning might strive to catch a straw. He found himself most unwilling to open his eyes.
Bugger yourself with the hot poker, dog. This isn't real. She would never. Certainly not after you… after the last time she had seen you… Certainly not like this.
Would you, Sansa? Would you one day?
He would know this to be a dream even when soundly asleep. He could not find joy in the lie it represented. He hated lies.
Yet Sansa felt so warm and so real, when she slipped through his fingers and turned into nothingness, that he could almost believe it was her. As if she hadn't been an illusion. As if this dream and all his other dreams of her had been more than that.
The merciless throbbing in his body forced him to rise. The unnatural position during his climb up the chain had put a strain on muscles he rarely used. He felt his limbs and shoulders acutely now that they had cooled down during sleep.
This is real, dog, he scorned himself into obedience. Get up.
In life there was no place for dreaming. Unless one wished to lose his head before his time.
The Hound's overgrown feet felt like two giant blocks of ice. Good to build the Wall with. When he unwrapped them from the strange black scarf left to him by the sneaky old man who had robbed him in the Sky, a thin crust of ice formed around the big toe on his bad leg. He insistently rubbed it with equally oversized hands until he could feel his toe again.
Buggering winter.
Having no boots, he wrapped his feet back into the black rags. He should walk fast in order to keep the blood running through his stiffening body.
I am here, he realised, belatedly, fully awake and starving. He hadn't eaten for the entire day and two nights.
I am in the Eyrie.
The desire to immediately see Sansa vanquished the gnawing hunger. The Hound ventured up from the cellars, through an elaborate gateway, and into the dark courtyard of the great castle.
All windows were dark.
The moon was out but all the falcons were sleeping.
It is late, he told himself. They must have put out the lights and the fires to save candles and firewood in winter.
Yet a closer look at the tower nearest to him revealed there were shutters covering every window. A door, on the contrary, opened far too easily on the ground floor. No one had bothered to close it, much less bolt it.
As if no one is expected to come here.
As if no one can come here in winter at all...
Shivers ran down the Hound's spine. The stairwell was dusty, the rooms next to it empty. The cold was devastating.
This place hasn't been heated for weeks.
There isn't anyone, he realised with dullness. I was wrong from the beginning. She could have never been here. Or if she ever was, she is long gone by now...
No one is here.
It was all for nothing.
He should be angry but he wasn't. He was hollow and that was worse. Doggedly, he walked from one tower to the other of the seven white spires of the hawk's nest, all empty and black at night. The wind was his only companion, whistling merrily, mocking the dog for his tenaciousness.
He entered the Great Hall of the Arryns. The high seat with moon and falcon carvings gaped empty like the rest of their abandoned castle. The short way out of their hall was open as well. The Moon Door. He could take it and who would care? The wind howled at the walls, whirling through the hall, wild and angry as a three-headed dragon. To make a few steps towards the opening would suffice; the gale would do the rest for him.
He turned his broad back on to the Moon Door.
I am not yet done living.
She has to be some place else if she is not here.
But he was no closer to finding her than that first day on the Quiet Isle when he went to the Elder Brother and told him he would leave, unable to stay there in peace, burdened by his memories, his regrets and his dreams of kissing Sansa with his cruel mouth.
Dreams of which he had a most vivid one just moments ago. One he had never had before. He made his hands into fists.
The hands of a killer.
It can't be. She would never tremble from joy at their touch.
She would never.
Would you, Sansa?
He found that hope was too much for him. It unhinged him more than the familiarity of despair.
On the occasions Sandor knew he must have pleasured women in bed, it was his cock that did it. As an older lad he discovered that the exact way of how it could be done changed from one woman to another, much as varied forms of sword fight had to be used to bring down different opponents in battle.
On the contrary, Sandor found his own pleasure easy enough. Almost any woman he bedded satisfied his needs when they appeared, which was not that often, or as often as for any other man. He would not waste more time or thought on relieving his flesh than he normally did on eating and drinking. At occasions he was too drunk to finish his business and that was the only difficulty he had ever encountered.
The lewd talk in the inns about some cunts being tighter than the others contradicted his experiences. He had never seen much of a difference. They were all tight enough for him.
But in his latest dream, his hands had done all the work. The unsettling images of Sansa would not leave his head, ringing almost, almost like the song he wanted, but not quite. His hands would never look the same to him again.
Maybe it would feel as good if I had strangled Gregor with them and crushed his skull on a wall while he still breathed, as he had done with little Aegon.
He suspected it might not. And Gregor was already dead so he would never know.
There were no gods, but there were hells, Sandor knew. His dreams must have been hell, designed to torture him.
Or a very special heaven...
He laughed raucously, shaking his head, chasing the cold wind away.
Bugger off, he thought of the cold.
Sharp wind burrowed its way through the Great Hall. More dashing than the buggering Winged Knight, it occupied the high seat of the Arryns as the one and only Lord of the Eyrie.
What shall I do now?
He was bereft of direction as only one time before in his life, the time when he had lost everything. Shame crept through him. He remembered his actions on that day and night every single day. He climbed onto the high seat of the Arryns and sank in it, burying his ugly head between his hands. The chair was well suited to his size, he noticed, and it must have dwarfed the real lords or perhaps frightened their bannermen into submission.
He became so lost in his memory that he stopped hearing the wind. He was so enthralled that he could have frozen on that chair and waited for spring.
That night, almost two years ago, the sky had burned green. The Hound walked into the fire many times until he could walk no more. He refused to obey his masters. The buggering dwarf showed off as being braver than him and Sandor hoped he would burn for his pretence. The Hound had died that night, much before the Elder Brother ever remembered to bury him. Only a craven remained; the little burned brother who would never be strong enough.
All he had ever believed about himself were lies.
Everything was a lie. The Hound was a lie to begin with. He had never been real. He was only a fearsome mask young Sandor had crafted to hide a frightened boy from the awful world.
Sandor hated himself that night as much or more than he hated Gregor. The weak were butchered. He had become flesh for slaughter as anyone else. He was wood for burning...
He found wine. There was nothing else for him.
In his weakness and growing drunkenness, he suddenly remembered that one other thing that mattered to him. The battle raged on… He could find Sansa and offer to take her out of the bleeding, burning city as he had pondered doing so many times before and never found neither the courage nor the opportunity to ask. The timing was perfect; by the time anyone looked for her they would be far away. With some luck, they would both be counted as dead in the fighting or in the looting that came after.
He didn't know for how long he slept in her bed. But when she woke him, by stumbling into it with him, no matter what she said or did, she appeared to him more and more false.
As the world.
Sansa was just another lie he had told himself. He had thought her different. He had thought the court did not kill all honesty in her, but it was clear it did. She had never understood anything about him, never noticed anything he had tried to do for her, never wondered about his existence or noticed him, except in order to avert her eyes. All she had for him was fear and empty courtesies, and the inability to look, as if he had been Joffrey, or worse, his brother.
She was as awful as the world, as was he.
He suddenly wished to see her blood, both her maiden's blood and life's blood. They were both doomed anyway. Why should he spare her? Why did he bother before? Why did he never, never hit her? He should fuck her bloody, rip her heart out and be gone! Why fight the way of the world when it would always remain the same? He was to take his song at sword point, he was…
Her real song was so innocent that it hurt more than any wound ever did. He forced himself to listen. The more he listened, the more he became awake. The more he listened, the more he became himself. It was not her fault he was craven. Not her fault he was a lie. She should not pay for his losses.
He looked at his dagger, the mute proof of his crime on her throat. He had almost twisted it into her flesh. He removed it more carefully than when he shaved himself in the morning. What have I done? The thought was unbearable. Then he did something he hadn't done since Gregor burned him. He cried…
Her tiny hand found his cheek and his tears. He cried more, enjoying the touch which was not his to take, a caress freely given.
"Little bird," he whispered.
If his raspy voice could caress her back, it would have done so, but at that moment he needed to keep the rest of him away from her, for both their sakes.
She would never want to go with him so he left. He ripped the bloody white cloak of the Kingsguard from his back and left it behind. He had surely betrayed all the vows he had never made that night. Best be rid of it, he thought.
He still didn't know then, what he needed to tell her now.
In his solitude, on the road to Riverrun he plotted for himself, once he got drunk and imagined how it would be if he had made her his by force that night and taken her away from the capital against her will. They would travel together, the two of them alone, and he would be the stronger one. She would be helpless without him. If he forced her into it, she would probably spread her legs for him as her septa had told her she should do for her lord husband. She might obediently do anything he wanted. She might grow to like it… Some men told stories how it could be so... Truth be told, those same men frequently offered to face him in single combat in the tavern only to avoid him thoroughly the morning after in the training yard. Gnats, all of them.
The brutal fantasy did not survive the ruthless honesty of his mind more than a few moments.
The Hound had been nothing but observant in court; his survival depended on it. And he had been watching Sansa playing her part on every occasion they were both there. Taking her virtue might not be quite the same crime as killing her father, but it was undoubtedly a treason that came very, very close to it, in the scathing, unflattering honesty of things.
In all the time Sandor had guarded Cersei and her hens he had yet to hear that a lady secretly wanted to be fucked bloody by the likes of him or Gregor. And he had frequently heard about various affections involving different men. The hens chatted freely in the presence of a guard hidden in the shadows; mute and resembling just another pillar or a gargoyle of the castle red as blood. Clearly, the women of noble birth dreaded rape even more than the lowborn wenches. Some wanted a rough tumble with a strong man, a fortunate preference which sometimes brought Sandor free pleasure, but those were never young girls of twelve.
Had he taken Sansa that night, the only true response he would have ever received from her in the future would have been her cold, Stark reserve. She would give him what she would think he wanted to spare herself some pain...
To him...
To him who wanted her song, her joy and her anger. He wanted her, unbridled in her expression.
He wanted the girl who nearly pushed Joff from the battlements without fear for her own life, the one who firmly hugged her wolf on the kingsroad. He wanted her to embrace him as strongly as she did her little pet. He wanted her to smooth her dress and steal a glance at him as she did at her prince when she fancied herself in love with Joffrey.
He wanted her to say she knew he would win when he rode in a tourney and to keep her composure if Sandor killed a man, just as she did when Gregor murdered Jon Arryn's squire. He wanted the girl who dared tell him he was hateful and inquire why he let people call him dog. He wanted the girl who would wrench herself free from his embrace when she didn't want it and demand he let her go.
He wanted her to surprise him every day anew. He wanted her to satisfy the desires he never knew he had before she fulfilled them; to touch his shoulder when he thought of Gregor, to caress his face when he cried from pain.
Had he taken Sansa against her will, the Hound had no doubt she would treat him with as much love and warmth as she had kept in her heart for Cersei and Joffrey ever since they had betrayed her trust. He gathered from her reactions that she had even treated the Imp with utmost reserve of her courtesy when he tried to act as her gallant saviour; she had refused the new chambers he'd offered her in the Tower of the Hand, and returned to her cage in Maegor's, where Cersei had put her.
A cage was a cage and a Lannister a Lannister; the girl had learned her lesson well. He noted her lack of interest in good food served at court, as well as in the gowns and jewelry she either saw on other ladies or was forced to wear. She complimented everything at need and dressed to please Joffrey and diminish the beatings. She ate and drank, but she never beamed at food as she did on the feast after the Hand's Tourney when Joffrey served her and fed her from the platter, acting every inch as her prince from the songs.
She looked at the Kingsguard who hit her on command without any expectation, except maybe the one to stay away from them if she could. Even when Ser Arys played the gallant knight with her, on the occasions when he was not ordered to strike her, and when she allowed herself to exchange harmless gossip with him, her distrust was palpable.
Sansa didn't look up twice to those who had betrayed her for protection.
So the Hound knew.
If he had taken her by force, no gifts he could give her, no food he could bring her, no generous gestures of protecting her from other men would change it back. Nothing he could do would ever make her talk to him in earnest again. He would be a dead man for her as much as Joffrey and Cersei had become. She might cry out in pain if he hurt her body, but she would even hoard the bitter tears she shed for her true losses for herself. She would look at him as she did at her father's severed head when he had to turn it for her, with large, blue, unseeing eyes.
All he would have from her would be her flesh.
Until the day she would shit on his head and fly away, just as she had done with the Lannisters.
Truth be told, Joffrey and Cersei gave a rat's arse if they were dead in Sansa's eyes, as long as they had her body safely locked up in the castle. Maybe the Hound wouldn't have minded either if all he wanted were the keys to her cage and always the same tight cunt readily available.
Yet the more he imagined being treated by her as Joffrey and Cersei were, Sandor realised he would have minded, terribly so. The passive, placid lie she would offer him would kill him as surely and as swiftly as wildfire after poisoning his heart first.
Because her flesh would never be enough.
If he wanted only that, he could have had it after the Hand's tourney, he could have had it at the serpentine, on the roof… He could have frightened her into not telling anyone, make her a double prisoner, of the crown and his own. It wouldn't be so difficult to make her see her best interest in keeping the secret. He had heard enough gossip to know that the noble ladies who had lost their precious maidenheads mostly kept quiet about it and produced aurochs blood on their wedding night. Cersei was no exception.
And if his crime would be discovered, he would lose his head over a cunt. It was not unheard of, not even in the history of the Kingsguard where at least one of his long dead foolish brothers had lost his life over an equally dead Targaryen queen.
Yet it had never occurred to him he could do any of it during his and Sansa's time in King's Landing, before the bloody battle, when he was in his right, murderous mind. No, on the contrary, he might have lost his head for speaking against Sansa being beaten had Joffrey been in a different mood when the Hound had said enough. Now that, that would be unheard of in Westeros. In all their time together, it had never passed through the Hound's head to deceive Sansa and direct her innocence into pleasing him in any form.
Her innocence angered him, caused him to mock her cruelly, invited him to snarl, growl and bark at her, wishing she would see things for what they were. Including him, him most of all. He was not only his scars. Why wouldn't she look at him and see for herself?
Even when he wished to force a song out of her, it was not now, not truly, it was one day, in the future. She would be queen or married to some bugger who would not know, nor value the treasure he had; his only concern would be her whelps and her claim. The marriage bed would no longer be a secret to her. Then, maybe, if she understood that he helped her when he could, chance was she might give in and say yes if he demanded a song. She would never want him, but she could say yes if he was determined enough. And then the Hound might surprise her by showing her how a little bird could sing... Against her own expectations in the matter. If the dog was lucky once in his life, maybe she would come back for more, if she dared. If she stopped fearing him one day...
Because, unlike Joffrey and Cersei... Unlike the dwarf who liked playing a mummer's farce about being a good man, but who still had only the best interests of his family on his mind, and never what was good for Sansa… Unlike the Imp, the Hound... At some point he started wanting what was good for her, without knowing very well what that was or if he was able to give it to her.
Because Sandor… what? The reason eluded him for too long.
And he had come to regret everything he did and didn't do that night. He regretted going to her room. He regretted not going there sooner. He regretted being drunk. He regretted not blacking out completely so he would sleep till the morning came. He regretted holding a dagger at her throat and his cruel thoughts of rape and murder. He regretted leaving her. It was his last craven deed that night. By abandoning her to some better man, his only achievement was sealing her unjust fate.
The Lannisters reserved no pretty golden knight for Sansa. The buggering imp was no better man, nor braver man than Sandor. He merely survived his foolish sortie in the battle and his father found him a suitable woman to breed with, so as to better rob her of her claim.
That little piece of news almost had Sandor killed in the riverlands. He drank too much too fast, and one of Gregor's pets nearly did for him at that inn in the riverlands. While riding away, febrile and about to succumb to the wounds he had sustained, the Hound added another regret to an already imposingly long list of them. He regretted not making Sansa his and even not killing her when he still could. He hated himself for regretting this, yet he couldn't prevent the thought from surging in his feverish mind. He must have been going mad. At that moment, it would have been a mercy if the little she-wolf, Sansa's sister, had simply killed him as he'd asked of her.
Until the truth finally dawned on him, spurred by one of the first dreams he had of Sansa on the Quiet Isle, those more recent ones in which he climbed onto her bed and said he would have a song from her.
He loved her.
He loved her.
He loved Sansa.
It was the most gut-wrenching feeling of all.
Yet that single truth explained all his contradictory actions and inclinations concerning Sansa better than any other...
He loved her...
And just like the rest of him, his love was nothing like the love of the true knights from her gallant songs. It was visceral and convulsive and it would not content itself with any lesser affection in return.
Yet what kind of man considered murdering a woman for not loving him back? Or not as much as he needed her to love him? Perhaps sicker than Gregor who butchered for his own amusement those people he could afford to kill, without suffering a reprimand of his masters.
Sandor had told Sansa he hadn't done anything wrong in his life. Well, maybe he had and maybe he hadn't. He was not a septon. How should he know?
Until the night he had nearly failed her, by ending both her virtue and her life, he never paused to consider what he had done and why. But for that one night he might one day burn in hell, of that he was certain. He needed no septon's verdict on that count.
Yet he needed to tell her. It was in a man's nature to pursue the woman he loved. How else was he ever to receive her honest answer to his plea?
It occurred to him so many times after the bloody battle that he didn't even leave her a chance to take him on his offer. He just proceeded assuming the worst of both her and himself when she closed her eyes with fear and couldn't look at him as he so badly wanted.
The Hound hopped off the high seat of the Arryns, resigned and calm, instinctively avoiding the gusts of wind just as he would dodge blows in a fight at need. He could force his aloofness on him, much like Sansa, even in a wretched frame of mind. His regrets had only served to keep him in place. They would never take him where he needed to go. To the place where she was.
He only needed to discover where that was.
He dragged himself back in the direction of the cellars. They were warmer than the rest of the castle. He would shiver there until the morning. Maybe he would find food and wine. In the Quiet Isle he had almost lost the habit of drinking, as there was rarely any wine to be had, but tonight he would gladly drink himself to oblivion, just this once before continuing his quest.
When passing through the yard, he suddenly saw a light in one of the towers, the westernmost one, on the top floor. He ran up as one possessed by the darkest demons from the seven hells.
In the highest room of the highest tower, a tall silhouette of a woman stood at the open window, leaning on a slender balustrade made of smooth white stone, just like the rest of the pretty outer walls of the bleeding castle. In her right hand the lady held high a lamp, burning bright. Fire leapt up fearlessly from the little pond of oil in it, encased by a translucent ball of Myrish glass. The lamp helped the moon illuminate the starless night. Auburn hair cascaded down the woman's curved back and Sandor's heart drummed against his will.
"Sansa," words escaped him. "Is it you?"
The lady turned. It could have never been Sansa. She was short, shrunken from age, older than any woman the Hound had ever seen. An ugly servant forgotten in the Eyrie. The extreme old age of her face shocked him, more repulsive than his own. The only thing alive on her was her hair, with no trace of grey in it.
"You can't look at my face," the crone reproached him. "Yet you want to be looked at. Why is that?"
A woods witch, the Hound thought.
"I…" He found it extremely difficult to pronounce the truth in response to that question. Yet he sensed that anything less would not avail him. This crone demanded it more than he ever had. Flames streaming from oil burned higher in her lamp. Rage stirred in the Hound's guts. Who was she to ask him anything?
"I am more than my scars," he finally said with disdain for the inopportune woman. "I know I am."
"Good," she said. "I know that I am more than my old age and I act like that. Why don't you?"
There was no simple answer to that. Because it was easier, probably, to act threatening and pretend to be rabid, and his path had already been difficult enough. It had not been exactly easy to become a man-at-arms at twelve. Yet he had never complained about his life. He grabbed what little joy he could have, endured through the less joyful parts, and that was all.
He tried to be a good dog to the masters who had taken the runaway pup into their kennels and fed him, in payment of that debt. His obedience was scorched by the green curse of wildfire, never to return.
He had learned from his mistakes. He was never meant to be a good dog, nor the rabid one by choice as his brother.
He was a wild dog and he wanted a pretty, well-mannered wolf for his companion. The wild dogs roamed freely just like the wolf packs. They were not fond of kennels. He had told as much with less words to the little she-wolf in the riverlands.
"I tried to make her see I was more than my face," he finally answered the crone. "I failed."
"What makes you think you are worthy of finding the lady that you seek?"
The Hound understood who the woman must be.
"I am still dreaming," he said with conviction, "and you are in my head. So you must know without me telling you that there is only one thing I can say to myself about that. One reason why I might deserve to find her while I am no better than any other man."
"Me in your head? Are you ill? I'm just an old woman. And any old woman would tell you the same. You mentioned yourself there was a lady. And you are looking for her whether you say so or not. Why else risk your neck to climb here? There are no treasures left and I watched you since you arrived. You are not here to rob. So it must be for a woman, what else?"
The Hound didn't climb to the Eyrie to listen to morality sermons of what he should do. For that he could have stayed on the Quiet Isle.
"Bugger off, will you crone?" he snarled ferociously.
The woman laughed hoarsely, not threatened in the least.
"Same yourself, child" she said peevishly, and sauntered out of the room with her lamp held high. "I still have work to do tonight. The lords will return at dawn."
Child? The Hound was furious. Yet he could have been the crone's grandson in all honesty. She was much older than the man who had stolen everything from him in the Sky.
Sandor walked to the window and leaned on the balustrade. The world outside was slowly becoming less dark. The new winter day would be as pristinely beautiful as the one when he had climbed up to the Eyrie.
Yet his thoughts could not be more somber. He gripped the balustrade until his knuckles paled from the mounting tension. Stone remained unyielding, remained stone. He could not crush it into pieces for it was stronger than it looked.
Just like you, Sansa...
Do you hate me?
It was a serious possibility. He had never been more out of his mind than that night when he had crept into her bed. She must know how close he had come to hurting her, more than anyone else had until then. She must. And the most pitiful thing of all was that he preferred if she hated him than if she had forgotten all about him since he left. That possibility frightened him the most.
As on the night when the sky burned green, hot tears streamed down his face, wettening both the ridges and the crevices Gregor gave him and his good cheek. They dropped out of the window and watered the clouds. He wondered if they would reach the floor of the Vale. The waterfall he could hear roaring on the western shoulder of the mountain never did. Alyssa's Tears, he remembered the name of the ghost torrent. Some place I found for crying.
Sandor sniffed, feeling ridiculous.
Alyssa Arryn never cried in her life for her dead husband and sons so the gods condemned her to do it after, until her tears fell to the valley floor, far below the clouds circling the Eyrie and they had not done so for six thousand years.
She'll cry forever. A stupid story. At least the only knights in it are the dead ones.
The Hound wouldn't cry forever. He ought to stop remembering. But not before he answered the crone's question of why he might deserve to find Sansa for himself.
He didn't know what he would have done, what he could have done if Sansa didn't sing to him. He wished to believe he would have either left or forced her to leave the city with him but not done anything else. The Hound killed in one blow. The fact he paused and twiddled with a dagger on her throat, and asked her to sing for her life was not like him at all.
He reminded himself of the only certainty, the only truth he could undoubtedly state about that night, the worst night in his life. He had her pinned on her bed, pressed his knife against her throat, but he didn't rape her and he didn't murder her. Somehow he was able to decide against it. Somehow, in his depravity, he was still able to choose.
I didn't do it.
I didn't do it.
I didn't do it, Sansa. I didn't.
It has to count for something.
Sandor wiped away his tears until both parts of his face were fully dry.
He wished so hard his last dream of her were real. He wished to live in a different world; where wetness between him and Sansa was neither blood nor his tears.
xxxxxx
The winch chain grated when the Hound finally returned to the cellars. Pink dawn coloured the Eyrie in maidenly shyness. The links slid slightly up and down as if someone down in the Sky was trying to turn the chain by hand, wanting the contraption to start working. The lords are coming back?
For whom was the cheeky old servant waiting?
He stepped onto the frozen oxen carcasses and tried to push the winch. He could barely move it. He invested more effort into it. The winch turned, once, twice, painfully so. His wounded arm hurt. His bad leg throbbed as when he had dedicated himself to grave digging. The hard labour had one advantage; it would keep him warm. Sandor struggled to keep turning the device, doing oxen's work. Every turn was easier after he managed to set the winch into movement, until a large wooden basket appeared before his eyes. Two heads were visible in it, both of them dark of hair.
The basket glided in through the opening in the cellars, much as the Hound had clambered into the Eyrie the previous morning.
"Sansa," he breathed out.
Her dress was plain and brown under a heavy fur cloak and cap, and there was a new ease and bravery in her measured, prudent movements. Sansa stepped out of the basket with a simplicity proper of a great lady, and immediately helped the child out; the little Arryn whelp who had grown in size, though he looked as sickly as ever. A miracle he still lives.
Only then did she look at Sandor.
It took her a great effort to school her features in guileless perfection, he could tell. He didn't know if it was a good or a bad sign.
You know me, Sansa. Very well.
The boy noticed him too. How old is he now? Ten? His hands were too small for his age and they trembled as if he were as old as that crone haunting the Eyrie.
"Is he like the Winged Knight? He must have flown up the Giant's Lance. How else can he be here?" The little lord asked of Sansa, in all evidence more witless than ever. He should have been old enough to remember the Hound from his time at court when Jon Arryn was Hand, yet the boy's brains apparently did not follow the growth of his body and extremely long, glossy brown hair.
"Maybe," Sansa conceded carefully. "Only a true knight would have been sent to us by the gods in order to help us in our need. Is it not so?"
The Hound could tell that she tried to direct him a question, hidden in the insipid talk about the gods, but her meaning escaped him. All he could do was stare at her.
It is you, Sansa. It is you.
Dark hair or not.
He could almost sing some happy tavern tune from joy if Gregor hadn't burned his voice with his face. Yet his features betrayed no emotion as so many times in court. Besides, he very much doubted Sansa had developed a taste for tavern songs since she had fled from the capital.
"Winged Knight was a true knight, the greatest one of all," the boy said petulantly. "He belonged to a race of giants and his wife was a child of the forest. Alayne, you told me the story many times. And this man here is tall as a giant."
The boy had him in that last statement, Sandor was forced to agree. For the rest he was of a mind to gag his lordship and tie him up in one of the less slanted famous sky cells of the Eyrie until he finished talking to Sansa.
She was taller, prettier than he remembered her if that was at all possible and brown-haired, just like the frozen lock he was wearing on his arm. Is it truly yours, Sansa? Have you been going up and down this mountain?
"What brings you here?" she tried again, in that cold, courtly voice of hers he dreaded. The voice he well deserved.
You didn't call me ser, nor lord, he realised with renewed hope. How improper.
His heart pounded at the thought. Did she remember his hatred for both titles?
Sandor had come so far only to speak to Sansa. But now that he found her, he discovered he could not say a word.
I am no craven, he reaffirmed the truth angrily for himself.
I never have been.
And I haven't lost the belly for fighting.
"My lady," he began, fighting the burning feeling in his throat, threatening to stifle his low voice.
Fear, he realised. I fear her reaction.
"I have travelled from afar," he rasped as impassively as he could force himself to be. "I could not find peace in any place, nor in anyone's service until I spoke to you, Lady Sansa."
It occurred to him that the words he said could have been spoken by some buggering true knight if they existed, yet the burned voice and the ugly face were his own, just like the yearning which consumed his soul.
"Why is he calling you Sansa? The bad knight sent by the evil Queen Cersei who killed your father called you by that same name," the boy was curious.
It was some new gossip the Hound did not know nor cared to understand. A lot of intrigues must have gone by in the realm while he was on the Quiet Isle. He would speak now.
His old confidence was back and in her presence, he felt as arrogant as ever.
Before her eyes he had always felt strong.
"I love you," he threw his confession brutally at Sansa, just like he had once offered to kill anyone who would hurt her. His deep voice lowered to the limits of hearing. "I have loved you for years."
He said it all and he told it true.
And by her stiff spine and bewildered expression, Sandor knew beyond doubt that Sansa did not only recognise, but also remembered him...
He grinned wildly, insolently, not caring how ugly the expression made him.
It was a beginning.
Her eyes had gone wild as his smile, and they never left his.
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A/N
Thank you so much to the readers who bothered to review. I value all feedback ))