Thanks, TopShelfCrazy :-))
Xxxxxxx
Xxxxxxx
"The Hound's face was hard to read. He took a long moment to consider. 'Why not? I have no lands nor wife to forsake and who'd care if I did?' The burned side of his mouth twisted. 'But I warn you, I'll say no knight's vows.'" Sandor Clegane the Hound, ASOIAF (when they give him the white cloak of the Kingsguard).
Twenty-one
Gregor was dead.
But the world was the same today as before his brother left it; lying and awful.
Gregor was dead and Sandor was still himself; disfigured and born a Clegane.
The second son of a minor house.
The mirror didn't lie.
The world would always see him as he was; his face, his origin, his past, his ardent service to the Stranger and to the lions. Justice couldn't turn back time. Nor give him a new name.
Or lands, the thought was treacherous and sudden.
He saw himself a high lord, receiving petitioners, with Sansa by his side; his pretty wife in yellow silk.
Right.
He laughed at his own idiocy. His chuckling always sounded like a bark.
A dog was a dog, he had no trouble with that.
He lived as he could, he wouldn't regret it now. On most days, he was who he was, and he went on from there, not minding himself. But there were other days, when he knew in his guts that he'd been a victim of a much bigger injustice than that suffered by other men at the age of six. Then, he would rage and he would bite until he managed to shut up.
Yes, he had suffered.
And?
He wasn't the only one and he lived as he could.
(And sometimes, as he felt he ought to. But not often enough.)
His fist flew in the direction of the bloody mirror-
"Sandor," Sansa murmured with somnolence, saving the looking glass from his mounting anger.
He sauntered back to bed in nothing but his breeches. His angry eyes found Sansa in a thin white shift; tousled and lovely. Her waking gaze roamed over his entire body. Not so long ago he would have snarled at her, demanding that she looked him in the eye.
Now, he grinned, stripping fully, carelessly and purposefully, showing her his buttocks first and his deflated cock next. The widening of her irises and the colouring of her cheeks was a priceless treat. She continued taking a good, long look at him, following the contours of his body in line with her wishes, not his; avoiding his cock. He fancied he could feel her eyes on his exposed skin and walked slower than usual, instead of bridging the distance between them in two giant, unceremonious leaps.
He didn't fuck her bloody, but well last night. Or she him, towards the end, he quipped inwardly. He didn't think this was something she wanted to hear so he kept his wit for himself. What they did was incredible. He remembered a moment of fear he suffered, that for the first time in his life he'd be too tired to continue for as long as she would let him…
No.
As long as she wanted him to.
Sansa was much younger than him…
Sandor never felt old. He only looked old and was used to that. But he knew very well that aging men began losing to younger opponents in the yard and women married to grandfathers like Lysa Arryn often found lovers... This had sometimes worked to the dog's advantage in the past.
His fear of weariness in bed with Sansa was unfounded. As always, he was just terribly sleepy after.
And it was still unbelievable that she wanted him, that it wasn't a concession in payment for his protection. The most he allowed himself to hope for at court was that she would let him have her one day because he'd be there for her. Not that she would have her own longings concerning his person.
He wondered if it was alright now to have her on her back whenever he wanted or if a new day meant a different order of business.
Women were fickle. They changed their mind.
And he… His thoughts swirled so often around bedding Sansa and yet, very strangely, he wasn't in a mood for it now. Not at all. He didn't even want to undress her. His huge head was full of fickle thoughts and he was content with being around her.
At ease with her.
The morning was silvery grey in the Eyrie. The bright winter sun was gone, left in the past with Sandor's hidden wishes to have a wife and lands.
And not just any wife.
Sansa.
"I'm going home today," Sansa announced with such eagerness to leave the Vale that it hurt him. "And you'll go with me," she added expansively. "You'll love it."
He didn't think he would. He liked it well enough in the Eyrie where the illusion of having Sansa to himself was almost complete. Not an illusion. She is mine.
But only for a time.
She'll have to marry some day even if she doesn't want to.
Sandor would never forget the falcon's nest.
Was that why he wanted them to stay in the Vale? Not because it was sensible to avoid hardships of lonely travel by road in winter, dangerous even for a man like him, but because he feared the change?
Was he being craven again?
"I was younger than you when I left mine," he said quietly.
Sansa was all ears. "Why did you leave?" she asked quietly.
"There isn't much to tell," he began, sitting up in bed, turning his back on her.
And ended up spilling everything about his father's death and Gregor's role in it as she lay behind him; attentive and silent. A hunting accident. Had Sandor killed even his own mother, he would have probably confessed it to Sansa. She had a way of making him say things. What he never intended to tell anyone.
He omitted the mention of his sister. Her accident occurred some years before Sandor left home, and it couldn't be treated with ointments; only with six feet of cold ground above her little body.
One day, he would tell Sansa about her, but today he could not. That loss was buried too deep.
Today he needed to break things.
Kill.
No.
It was worse than that.
Today he coveted lands.
The West was less far from the Eyrie than Winterfell and it would be beautiful in spring.
The winter will pass and then...
Sandor could bend his knee to a new Lannister lord, in Gregor's place, and claim his family lands for himself. Gregor had perhaps been the only ser in the realm who was always respectfully referred to as lord bannerman to Tywin Lannister. Ser Gregor's respectability and lordliness grew with every new atrocity.
Sandor could try taking his place if there were any Lannisters left, and if they wanted back their surviving dog.
But the dragons returned. They would have little love for the stag and the lion. They wouldn't forget the death of their own...
Maybe his grandfather's keep and lands had already been scorched, together with Gregor's pets-at-arms and the smallfolk who had the misfortune to survive him.
He would… he should ask the Targaryen boy, if he was crowned king, to confirm that the Clegane lands were his, praying that the boy could tell the difference between his mother's butcher and the man who killed him.
His anger simmered. There was no king present to ask for favours, nor any man he could hit or murder without regrets.
He would have gone to the training ground and bruised a man in sparring, but he was far too late for that. Judging by the luminous greyness of the morning he and Sansa had overslept most of it. It must almost be time for midday meal.
Sansa suddenly hugged him from behind. He felt her tits through her shift against his bare back.
Her pretty hands grasped his chest, her chin leaned on his shoulder, her cheek on his cheek. He was secured and kept in place by Sansa.
Anger began leaving him.
"Any pretty words for my father?" He mocked her, but very lightly. "You always think of something appropriate to say."
"He shouldn't have said that your bedding caught fire," Sansa declared with that air of superior composure and melancholy she used for judging the worth of men, impeccably and innocently, pronouncing truths that could make her lose her head if their recipient was a vain, cruel boy like Joffrey.
"No, he shouldn't have," Sandor's mouth twisted in a grin, amazed that she even remembered his father's lie. He had mentioned it to her that bloody night in the empty field after the Hand's Tourney.
Sansa began to kiss his shoulders. This was very innocent and his back wasn't a very sensitive part of him. But the little bird's ease with the gesture and the knowledge it was her and not a wet dream of his made it exquisitely satisfying.
His head swam with happiness.
"It is time for midday meal, you know," he observed timidly, feeling it was fair to inform her.
"Is it?" The news upset her.
Just as he thought it would. Courteous, silly bird.
"We should have-"
"Yes, been up for a while and broken fast with the little lord even if he hates us today. But we didn't. We slept."
She began fretting with her shift, dressing up. He followed; resigned to a new day and duties. Every kennel came at a price. Be it in a sept or in a bloody castle.
He told himself that he hadn't been in a mood for it anyway. Only his concern about his and Sansa's future remained; treacherous and vivid.
Craven.
Lost between illusion and reality.
They found the castle almost as empty as on the day when Sandor had climbed to it on the winch chain, looking for Sansa.
The midday meal was served only for the two of them. There were a few servants and some guards left in the Eyrie. But the men of the Vale were gone, back to the Gates of the Moon, for there was no place else they could go.
Further up the Giant's Lance there were only clouds.
There was no note, no explanation from the little lord left with anyone.
Sansa turned soup over her plate, spilling a drop on her gown and wiping it meticulously with a silky, light-blue napkin.
Sandor could watch her eat for hours.
This was very well because it nearly took her that long to finish her meal.
"Well," Sansa murmured, leaving the fork and knife in perfect position on her plate. "I suppose Aegon will come at the end of the day as he promised if he truly needs my help." She looked very uncertain about it all of a sudden.
Afterwards, they returned to their room for not having anything better to do, with bellies full of food and heads restless from nerves.
It was as if their legs took them back to bed with a will of their own. Besides, it was too cold to linger outside or even in the hall where they dined in solitude; spacious and drafty. It would have been warmer with more guests at the table, but there were none…
Somehow, they sat on their bed and Sansa embraced him from behind once more. Her tiny, lovely hands ended up stroking his clad chest.
Instinctively, he turned his head back towards her on his good side, sparing her the sight of the other half by the supreme force of deeply entrenched habit to be as businesslike with women as possible. He remembered too late that he didn't have to think of that with Sansa. She saw him now; all of him, not minding his scars. Just like he always wanted. Revelling in the knowledge, he turned back fully and kissed her. When she sighed into his mouth, there was only one thing he could think of, and hopefully so did she...
Revisiting the discoveries from the night before came so naturally to him, step by step. That he could lay her on her back. That he could loom over her, showing himself, not hiding his face in her neck nor in the pillows. That his weight on her was welcome if he left her some space for breathing. That he could impose his rhythm and that she would follow, surprising him at occasions with a change or an addition of her own. That he could cover her with his body without her showing fear. That there wasn't any reticence between them, neither on his nor on her side...
That he could…
Lose himself at will, not regretting it.
She was very quiet when he cleaned her stomach and was about to help her dress. She liked it before.
Now, her curious, alert gaze lingered on him and she didn't look spent at all.
"You wanted more," he stated, filled with dread at his own insufficiency. What could a man with no lands and an ill name give his woman if he failed in this?
"I don't know," she said, sounding painfully honest and confused. "I mean, I don't think I could have continued much longer."
His dread deepened.
Did I hurt you?
"Why didn't you tell if there was pain?" he asked, sobering up from the blessedly numbing aftermath of his pleasure.
Did he not see? Was he lost in what he wanted? Could he have been oblivious to her pain? Her unease and fear had always held him back in the past, always… Why not now that she loved him? Did reassurance and love make him more blind to her discomfort than anger ever did?
Was he blind like Father in his love for Gregor?
Cold dread coiled in his belly, judgmental and insistent.
It felt as if his sword arm betrayed him in battle.
"It didn't hurt. Or very little. Nowhere near as much as the first time," she began explaining sincerely, and then lowered her eyes, seemingly at complete loss how to describe further what she experienced, and yet wishing to say something more.
"I'm sorry," she finished lamely, looking nervous and unhappy. "It must be me. And… and my lady's armour towards men who… who make me obey them. I… I obey. But I… I don't feel. I hide within. I guess it was easier for me if I was like this in situations I deplored. And I don't want to be like that with you now but it just happens. It's as if I expect to suffer and… close myself to it to hurt less… But I… I'm improving since I know that I love you. I wasn't indifferent or afraid of you. I felt a lot. And…. it was good," she sounded incredibly embarrassed from the admission. "It's always been good with you… since you found me here. Just not as good as last night."
Not as good?
He had trouble grasping the concept.
For him a fuck was good or it wasn't, and there was no way it wouldn't be good with Sansa.
It was too good to be true.
And after last night he thought it might become the same for her, that a fuck would always be as good for Sansa as it was for him.
He should have known that a proper lady would be different.
"I'm happy it was good for you," she said shyly. "It pleases me that I'm now able to lay on my back-"
He kissed her compulsively.
"What you want…" he muttered, "as you want it, remember?" he paused. "I've always wanted a song," he reminded her in a deep rasp. "I still do. A song. Not what you think you ought to do for your love of me," he sounded more mocking than he intended to.
He hoped she didn't mind.
Sansa contemplated the gravity of his wishes.
"I see," she said, though he suspected she might not.
She had never been very vocal in bed, though it would be a lie to say she was silent. Every little sound she made was terrifyingly pretty. He suspected she found it unladylike to allow herself to make plenty of noise. His grunts were much louder.
He loved her more for that reluctance because it made her... Sansa… and not any other woman in existence.
Though he wished… he wished she would completely lose her composure at times; with him, and not with anyone else. And every time she lost some, she was so beautiful.
"Kiss me some more," she demanded, regaining her courage. "If you… if you don't need to sleep."
She'd noticed his habit of falling asleep after emptying his balls, didn't she? She had to have by now…
He would have fallen asleep if he wasn't thwarted in his desire to give her what he could. And that was pleasure.
No lands and no wife.
"There's this thing women ask for," he stated between kisses with carelessness he didn't feel. "But you didn't think much of it."
She'd forbidden him to lick her cunt. In prettier words, obviously.
No woman had actually asked Sandor to do that, what with his face. It was simply what he heard in taverns. Men lied about it, just like they bragged that women begged them for a fuck. But if he loved a woman's mouth on his cock, then the opposite ought to be true as well. The bewildered reactions women had given the few times he drunkenly tried it vaguely confirmed this.
"Why would you want to do that?" She wondered. "I am… I'm not clean now."
"Do you think washing matters for any of this?" He asked between kissing her teats. "You smell like a treat to me."
Sansa became deep purple and was unable to speak. Her mouth was slightly open.
He wondered if that was a tentative yes on her part, or simply a sign of profound shock.
"I thought about it once or twice since you tried it with me," she confessed.
Is that a yes?
He could ask, but he found that he didn't want to hear a no from her mouth if that was what she meant. Best if she refused him in practical terms. It would be less of a blow to his newly found reassurance that she wanted him. It would make him less angry if she turned him down in deed than in word. Less prone to either chasing her away by profanities or leaving her in his rage.
So he set out to determine if she would allow or deny it, as attentive to Sansa as he would be to an opponent during battle.
He kissed her from her breasts down, marking a line over her belly, sucking on her belly button. Arriving to that thatch of soft, auburn hair, he looked up. His heart pounded like a drum on a galley; very fast, in attack speed.
Sanda stared at him without saying a word, without a move to either reject him or welcome him.
He spread her cunt with his fingers, not too much, only a little, and licked the softness in the middle.
The smell was incredible and he wanted to continue without controlling himself. Until he hardened again and was able to have her.
He nonetheless halted and looked up.
This wasn't about him.
Her eyes were locked on him and she seemed terribly focused on his presence between her legs, just as much as he was determined to be successful in this.
He licked her again and heard that little sigh she made so often when he kissed her mouth, and which he took for an encouragement to proceed.
He held her hips and licked her cunt freely, tasting her. Her legs tightened around his face, but she didn't push him away, though she probably could; his head wasn't as heavy as the rest of him. Her hands grasped his skull, but without hitting him helplessly, which would be another familiar sign of hers that he should stop. Her nails stayed out of his scalp.
He fed on her and heard another sigh, a longer one. Sansa was so wet and smelled so sweet that he compulsively thought of himself, hardening, and not of her.
Later.
He put his tongue inside her. Whenever the squeeze of her hands and legs on his face lessened, he licked her firmly up and down, believing that he was doing fine whenever she did her best to choke him.
(She could never truly choke him. She wasn't that strong.)
One of his hands ended under her arse when her hips jerked forward. His finger skirted her back opening and travelled to the front one. Reaching her pretty little cunt, it slid in.
She gasped and almost cried now. He didn't know if that was very good or extremely poor on his part.
When he looked up, her eyes were unfocused, semi-closed, and her head hung to one side. Her teats were rising and falling in the restless rhythm of her breath.
So it was either that good or that bad, just as he thought.
Too craven to speak, fearing rejection, Sandor took a risk as he often did in battle.
He would be a good dog and let Sansa tie him to the bed after, if he got it wrong.
He used his tongue and his finger to explore her cunt without holding back or looking up to her face. He wondered if it would be alright to have her again now.
In a while, through the haze of his desire, he heard a very soft sound of her crying.
Stopped by her tears, he crawled up to face her. His cock softened, defeated. Hesitant and craven, he kissed her shoulders.
Finally finding his courage to face her, he whispered. "Should I say how sorry I am?"
(He never said that to anyone. Never. Why should he be sorry? The world should be sorry and it never was.)
No answer came.
"I'm so fucking sorry-"
"It was very good," she interrupted with no regard for courtesy, needing to correct him. "Different than anything else," she stated in a deep voice, wiping a small tear, pulling him in for a proper kiss.
He would have to remember that Sansa always needed to be kissed after anything they did in bed. And despite being a lady, she didn't seem to mind her own taste on his lips.
He realised how stiff he was when her hands found his shoulders.
"You are… uptight," she judged, her voice still deep and fluttery. "I thought it was only me because of my past and because it's so new to me… to love a man like this. To love you."
That was what he needed to hear, he realised.
"I was afraid that it might be terrible for you," he confessed his weakness. "I'm not… I'm not confident I can do that properly."
"The ladies didn't ask you to, did they?" she asked with an emotion he couldn't place; a dark one.
He shook his head. "They didn't," he said. "So I tried when I thought I could. Some women asked me for a fuck, but not very often. Mostly I paid for it."
His confession earned him a hug and a kiss on top of his head, on the portion of his scalp where no hair grew. A rather… sensitive part, he discovered, not hard and leatherlike like the tissue of his scars.
"They didn't love you," Sansa continued with her own outburst when she was done kissing him. "They didn't see you. It both pains me and pleases me that they didn't. I'm sad for you and happy for myself. Because I love you, and your stupid, unhappy past means that you can be mine."
Suddenly, it was more womanly love that Sandor could bear, more than he asked for.
Too bloody much.
"I'll get us some warm water," he said, needing some time apart.
Wife and lands.
She doesn't want to marry, dog.
But he didn't even ask her, so how could he be so certain that she wouldn't want to marry him?
Because you're still a dog alright.
Before he could succumb to the omnipotent need to break and crush things, he got them some water, and then also some food from the kitchens, feeling ravenous hunger as soon as he was out in the cold.
They cleaned and had their supper in bed and she talked to him about Winterfell, confessed how mindless she was when she wanted to leave her home and how for long years all she truly wanted was to go back… She told him how Littlefinger promised her she would go home with an army if she agreed to marry Harry the Heir… And reiterated how glad she was for not having to marry, many times…
Any mad desire to ask Sansa to be his wife died in face of her fervent wish to go home and contentment about being free.
Your home isn't in the West, is it, Sansa?
Would you wither like a winter rose if you went there with me?
The West wasn't truly his home either. Just the only piece of land he might be able to claim if he was fortunate. And he probably wouldn't be.
When the day dwindled, Sandor and Sansa stood at the window of their room in one of the seven white towers of the Eyrie, fully dressed. He was armed and armoured. Quietly, they observed the waterfall; a rustling, crying sound.
Alyssa's Tears.
Darkness came slowly to their world.
And with it, the terrible, cruel certainty.
They were still alone in the castle, apart for those few servants and guards.
Sansa's prince didn't come for her as he promised.
Maybe Cersei killed him to remain queen. Maybe she stole his dragon and was now flying above Westeros conquering the Seven Kingdoms. Cersei was capable of anything, and she had waited so long to be queen…
"I guess," Sansa finally began admitting the truth, wringing her hands. "I guess that Aegon is no true knight. He didn't keep his word."
"It would seem so," Sandor agreed gently.
"They all left us!" Sansa complained heartily about the abandon of the Eyrie for the first time that day, forgetting her dignity. "How could they?"
"Perhaps we should have woken up at first light to see what the little lord was planning," Sandor tried to say.
Oversleeping was rude in courtly terms.
Sansa embraced him and cried. "I know," she drooled on his shoulder. "I just thought… I thought myself safe for once. Free from the necessity to show my utmost respect and blind obedience to anyone. And I… I dreaded to see my cousin after he found us last night. I never wanted to hurt him. And I... I needed to be with you. I didn't want anything else. It doesn't matter, Sandor, it will pass. It just hurts so much to lose hope again."
You only wanted to be with me?
Why not then?
Why not marry me, Sansa?
The kingdoms are in ruin and who would care if a dog married a noble girl?
"I know what this is, Sandor," she finished her outburst full of sorrow for herself. "I've known it all along. This must be the punishment of the gods for betraying my father."
"I'll never go home," she wept.
Sandor wanted to contradict her, wanted to claim that she would, that he would take her there. That there were no gods and no punishment; no heavens and no hells.
His mouth remained shut. Stranger was dead. How was he going to take her home? Walking?
"We'll go somewhere," he affirmed. He was successful in that, he always went some place else. Every time the dog was forced to leave a kennel.
"Ten more times up and down from the Gates of the Moon to the Eyrie?" Sansa retorted unhappily. "Why not go and live as peasants in some village in the Vale?"
Because the villagers won't have food for us or like my face any longer than the time it takes to build a palisade for them.
"I am no knight, but you're a lady," he offered carefully. "This is easy to see. When they are hungry and angry, the poor can be much more awful to their betters than the highborn to each other."
Sansa shivered, remembering. "The man with garlic on his breath…" she stuttered.
Sandor had cut off the bastard's arm in the riot when he tried to pull Sansa off her horse. He still remembered Sansa's horrified face at the sight. It had probably stopped him from killing the gnat. His mercy had been a cruelty. Without a maester's attention, the loss of a limb meant certain death; slow and painful. He should have cut that man in two, but he couldn't…
Sansa had been staring at him and he opted to climb on her horse and bring her back to the bloody castle, which she shouldn't have left in the first place-
His thoughts delved in the dark, into that place where he occasionally imagined that Sansa was his prisoner and not Joffrey's. He would treat her well.
But if he restrained her freedom in order to ensure her perfect safety, as a deeply buried part of him suggested he might do, she would be unhappy. Birds didn't belong in cages no matter how prettily they chirped.
Sansa's slender frame shook and she began sobbing violently.
Soon it became clear that she wouldn't stop.
The only time Sandor had seen her that devastated was when he came with Joffrey to her room, when she'd been crying for days after they killed her father.
That night Sandor held his weeping woman in his arms and pondered frantically what he could do.
At moments he wondered if the little lord was shaking and if anyone helped him.
He'll have to help himself.
It was the only way.
The Stranger was gone when Sandor needed his help.
The gods departed.
Perhaps they were never in the Vale and he was a superstitious fool.
He nonetheless whispered to Sansa that everything would be alright; he repeated this wish of his until exhaustion, hoping it wasn't a lie.
It isn't, he told himself stubbornly. It won't be.
He could…
He would try to put on the face of the Maiden and the Mother, the Smith, the Warrior and the Crone.
He could be the Father.
Though he didn't know how.
He would raise his ugly mug for all to see and go on, like so many times before.
He would live as he could.