"Pretty thing, and such a bad liar. A dog can smell a lie, you know. Look around you, and take a good whiff. They're all liars here... and every one better than you." Sandor Clegane the Hound, ASOIAF.
Twenty-four
The causeway through the Neck was paved with flayed corpses on pikes, slowly rotting.
Sixty-three of them.
Gregor might have dropped a word of praise for the handiwork of the unknown butcher.
If Sandor hadn't killed his brother first.
His guts danced with joy from the pleasing memory.
Sansa observed the dead with unseeing eyes, and then, she looked away.
"The ironborn, killed by the Boltons through base treachery," their dwarf guide whispered; a crannogman from the Neck with a quiver of poisoned arrows on his back. A shot from his bow meant certain death; as painful and slow as being skinned alive. The tiny killer had offered to accompany Ned's precious girl home, through the treacherous sands and swamps of his homeland.
The causeway was partially eaten away by floods and incessant snow.
Snow.
Sandor looked around, taking in the unbelievable whiteness.
It reminded him of climbing the Giant's Lance.
He'd become fond of the pretty, deadly white blanket, beckoning to the traveller to lay down and find eternal rest.
Ned's precious girl could barely walk after the long illness that had almost killed her; leaving the wheelhouse only for necessities that she now performed on her own...
He had no reason to enter the carriage of an unmarried lady, especially not at night. His men spied on him, rightfully concerned for Sansa's honour, which would be irreparably tarnished if he was found in her bed. Even if she only moaned for all to hear while he was in there.
He gave a rat's arse for anyone's judgment.
Some men might even admire him, if they knew that he fucked Sansa.
But how would she feel?
Her father was a bugger who died for honour. Sansa surely wouldn't take the condemnation lightly.
Besides, she looked… too fragile to be embraced as he would have wished, weighing little more than a child.
He constantly thought of asking her.
Will you marry me when you're better?
Marry me, will you?
Will you?
Will you, please?
Why wouldn't you?
If you want to be in my arms…
Her eyes kept telling him that she would want his embraces, during endless, innocuous conversations they pursued in daytime, on the interminable journey to the bloody North.
And yet why would you?
If she came into possession of her claim, Sansa could marry anyone. Once she forged a solid alliance with another great house, she would be safe from beatings for a lifetime.
It was best not to consider his marriage prospects, and yet they were never far from the surface in Sandor's churning mind.
The kingsroad was in the same poor condition as the causeway; almost washed away by rain and snow.
The days grew colder, the nights freezing.
Colour returned to Sansa's pale cheeks from the chill. Her curves were not yet back to the fullness he adored, but at least her bones were no longer disturbingly visible.
The ruined road wound on, past Barrowton and further North.
The calm, and the giddy contentment Sandor experienced because Sansa's health was improving, alternated with wet dreams of what they had done… Of him inside her… of his fingers and tongue in her cunt… And of what they never did.. Not yet. She might put her mouth around his cock one day… or let him have her from behind… In the wheelhouse… In bloody Winterfell, why not?
Few nobles married for love.
Sansa could keep her dog. Find him a place. Call it an appointment. A captain of something. An honourable guard. A steward. A castellan. Chain him in a kennel inside her castle. A kennelmaster, why not?
But what would it do to him?
How much time would it take before he showered her in contempt; for being below her, rather than with her.
Even if she didn't take a husband…
And if she did…
His guts would cry for murder. He would leave before he killed her.
He might kill her, losing his temper. Then, his guilt would fester and slowly eat him alive, like a wound from that poisoned arrow from the crannogs.
But she was his now. How could he ever leave her?
And she'd made it clear to him in the Vale that she would hate for him to leave.
He had to ask.
It was the only way forward.
But with her health returning, and Winterfell approaching, the words always stayed on his burned lips, unable to escape.
Torn apart, he waited; spending time with her every day, doing nothing.
Watching her.
He could study her in peace now, without any effort in stealth or a carefully presented show of indifference. The sweetness of the idle endeavour struck him; patching him where he didn't know he was broken, sewing him together, and anew.
She engaged him in conversation, about the buggering wild flowers he'd picked for her in the marshes when she slept… Yes, his hands had itched for days from it. About the weather, the men in their company… They spoke of everything that wasn't them; their past or their future.
Sansa was probably unable to speak honestly and openly about a matter as improper as them, and to his surprise, so was he.
He who could name everything without flinching hesitated to admit aloud what they were.
Lovers.
They remained connected, despite not having touched with impropriety since she'd woken from her illness…
And…
Sang to him again, like she'd done after the bloody battle; this time holding his entire face in her lap with her weakened arms.
Bird's touch.
Light touch.
A touch of light...
He had felt so young, and innocent.
Joy had never fully left his heart since then, not even when he was plagued with doubts about his future.
Their future.
The wheelhouse, and Sansa's bed in it, was rather small. They would barely fit in it, laying together. He had gotten the fancy means of transport for ladies in Darry, when it became obvious that Sansa wouldn't die soon, as he'd initially expected in the blindness brought by his grief. The carriage was much more modest than Cersei's. Yet in order to get it, the Hound had to promise gold he didn't have, after a winter which he might not survive.
War was brewing in the North, his host in Darry had said; a widowed Lady Lannister, born Frey.
Against the snarks and grumkins; the ancient monsters of ice.
Lady Amerei had no use for the wheelhouse in the cold season, so she didn't lose anything by believing his lies. He could have gotten more than carriage from her, in the dark, if he wanted.
But he had a sick love to look after; a pretty girl who looked at him and saw him in plain daylight.
Now, two turns of the moon later, the men he trusted, leading them from the Vale, were constantly being joined by small groups of cold-eyed, but not as cold-blooded, Northmen; stubborn and judgmental, they began to guard Ned's little girl day and night.
The word of her return was somehow spread, though no one knew how or why.
Her compatriots loved him not; remembering the Lannister dog.
She treated all equally, and with natural grace, refined and perfected with time into not revealing much; her honest bluntness well hidden.
Sandor slept outdoors with his sword at hand, terribly suspicious. Too many people had heard of her, and some might not love her. The Stranger could visit her in the heart of the night, brought by unknown foes, attacking.
But despite all his fears, his nights went by uneventfully, long and black, in eerie quiet and mounting cold.
One night, she came out to meet him in moonlight.
He was armed and alert in a frozen field, white like the blazon of the Kingsguard, hearing her step of a child learning to walk.
"Why are you here?" He rasped.
She'd asked the same of him when he had fallen asleep in her bed after Blackwater; out of his mind from all the burning.
He resented her for not seeking him out earlier.
Yet he was guilty of the same. He could have sneaked into the wheelhouse under the cover of darkness, despite the vigilance of her precious Northmen... And he didn't, couldn't, needing her to get better before he could-
"I miss you," she announced in that solemn tone of hers. "You, the white towers of the falcon's nest."
There was no mistake as to what she meant.
She'd come out of her solitude to see her lover.
And it was him.
He used to think she was lying when she spoke like that.
Now he believed her more than any septon he'd heard preaching in his life.
The camp slept, the fires were dying.
Sandor put his sword away, pulling her into his lap, smelling her warmth; unable to feel much of it through his armour.
"Marry me," he rasped.
"What did you say?" she exclaimed, suddenly skittish in his arms. "You truly mean it? You'd do it right now?"
"You heard me," he retorted sharply, retreating on his marriage offer in his mind. How could he have said it when he knew…?
He knew...
"You want it?" she was tense.
"The lady doesn't, does she?" he barked, surrendering to anger.
Or course you don't. You'll marry a pretty knight one day.
"I just-" she stuttered, fluttering in his grasp.
"Spare me," his temper flared. "Forget it."
She hissed from pain.
His left arm had ended up pressed tightly against her back, still clad in a sharp metal glove and vambrace.
Sandor released Sansa instantly, embarrassed by his clumsiness.
He'd become used to touching her freely, forgetting himself, his place, and his warlike attire.
"I'll try not to remember," she said weakly. "Unless I should?"
He couldn't form an answer, peeling off the bloody gloves and vambraces, closing his bare fingers around her frail body. "I didn't mean to-"
"You didn't, did you?" she sounded more hurt than he would have expected from the discomfort caused by his armour. "Very well, Sandor," she concluded, "I'm sorry to have bothered you. Help me return to my bed, please."
After that, she didn't speak or smile to him for days.
The first few of those days he hadn't noticed the difference in her carefully schooled attitude; immersed in his fears of unknown attackers and concerns for her safety.
Then, he ignored it.
It was natural that it would be so.
Love didn't last forever, not even in the songs.
And their love was left on the mountain; forgotten, abandoned.
Down here, he was still a dog.
But when the northern gnats told them both that they might reach Winterfell on the morrow, he waited for the moon to wane and sneaked into the wheelhouse; sober and somber.
Instead of clamping her mouth, he whispered, "Sansa."
He was greeted with stony silence which was very much awake, despite pretending to be asleep.
"Tell me you don't love me and I'll leave, tonight," he spat out arrogantly, like he would address her in the past, bragging about the strength of his arms.
Fear gripped his heart with long fingers and sharp claws.
You don't, do you? How could you?
"Does it matter? You've already accompanied the lady home unharmed, protecting her from snarks and grumkins," Sansa was furious.
He admired her, wishing for light to better see her anger.
"Isn't that all you needed? Or do you want a bag of gold for your efforts?"
"Sansa," he pleaded. "Don't be stupid," he said with scorn. "If it please you," he added, feeling like a fool.
"You tell me," she demanded now, with passion.
"What?" he blurted.
"You know what," she trembled, "if it please you," she implored. "What you said on the mountain. I need to know that it wasn't another dream of mine. I…"
He couldn't fulfil her wish.
He wasn't a gnat repeating words of love on a woman's whim. Not even Sansa's.
Do you not know?
He-
"It's just…" she complained heartily. "It hurts… when you aren't what I want you to be."
"What do you want me to be?"
And just like this, Sansa was in his arms after the prolonged anguish of her illness and months of self-imposed separation that followed.
"Everything," she breathed out.
Sansa was everything to him, without needing to move her little finger for it.
"Tell me how. I'll be anything for you," he blurted, his arms sneaking under her loose sleeping shift.
She was skinnier, her curves were smaller, but still wonderfully smooth to touch.
"For a start, don't… don't bark at me! For… For not saying immediately what you want to hear," she pleaded nervously, but her body felt more at ease in his embrace. "It is disheartening. I'm trying so hard to guess what I should say to you most of the time… And I have no one else to talk to about my new trouble..."
New trouble?
He felt oddly insulted for not being the only source of her misery.
"Is there something you wanted to say?" he asked coldly, assuming wildly. "That it's over? That I should forget you?"
She shook her head, stiffening.
"What is it?" he asked with more calm. "Go ahead. Say it."
She became painfully tense, facing away from him while he kept holding her. "I have been dishonest," she stated with heartfelt pain. "I… I'm stupid like Joffrey said."
"You're not," he contradicted her, though he'd believed it about her in the past. That she was empty-headed like a colourful, singing bird from the Summer Isles, repeating words others had taught her.
She relaxed, a little. "Do you remember the men who joined us today?"
He did. Three handsome buggers with whole faces. Long black hair, like his own. One had looked at Sansa and tossed some empty words of flattery at her, and Sandor had wanted to kill him.
"Prettier than me," he grinned nastily.
"Please promise me that you won't be angry," she pleaded, "I feel sick because of it. I… I'm afraid that I will turn ill again. I think… it's true what they say… if a lady does what we did… she acts shamefully and becomes wanton. Dishonourable."
He was already angry.
"What did he do?" he snarled with venom.
"Nothing!" Sansa sounded mad and looked utterly miserable. "It was me…"
She'd fallen in love with someone else. A handsome Northman…
He pushed her away, about to leave.
"Where are you going?" she seemed horrified. Her arms were snakes, coiling tightly around his large form, holding him in place. "I missed you! I have no one else… I am the worst…" she chastised herself and began to cry, squeezing his stomach muscles.
He stayed, diving into his despair over the inevitable. He'd always known she wouldn't be his forever. "What did you do, Sansa?" he asked darkly, filled with poison.
"Nothing!" she insisted. "I… I have been ill, maybe that's the reason. And those men are stupid… despite being from the North. I don't even like them. They gave me platitudes about my beauty… And I flattered them in return because we need more men, not knowing what we'll find in Winterfell… And because kindness is never wasted. It can open doors better than yelling…"
Sandor disagreed. Snarling had opened almost any path to the Hound in the past.
"But one of them was pretty, as you'd say; and my stupid belly turned, a little, as it does when I see you… In truth, it was much less than when I see you. But it was still the same feeling… It's sinful. I'm ruined. If I love you, how can I experience this for anyone else?!"
Sandor's head was larger than the great pumpkins of the Vale. "You mean you felt like you wouldn't mind fucking a boy for a bit of pleasure, despite knowing he's a gnat? And wanting to fuck me much more?"
Sansa preferred him… she'd compared him to a handsome fuck that had drawn her attention and still wanted him…
He felt like he had passed through fire unscathed. An unknown piece of his wounded soul received an unusual ointment. A balm. Calming him.
Sansa's cheeks were hot like coals and she must have been beet red. He couldn't see how much in the scarce starlight passing through the carriage window.
"How can I feel this for another at all when I know myself to be in love with you? Before us… I never felt this, or not clearly… Maybe very little with Ser Loras, when he gave me that red rose at the Hand's Tourney. I mistook the tiny trembling of my body for love… But I only discovered this feeling more fully in my dreams of you…"
"Dreams of me?" he blurted.
"After you left. You'd climb into my bed and say you'd have a song from me… I was overwhelmed by the sensation and… my body hummed and tingled like it does now, before we… Then I would wake," words poured out of her and he knew she wasn't lying.
"I had the same dream," he confessed, "but mine rarely ended only with getting into your bed. It ended with you sprawled over me after a good fuck."
Sansa's redness must have deepened. "Oh…" she paused. "The same dream?"
"Many times," he admitted. "It stopped when I found you, though."
"So did mine," she shared.
He remembered the faces of the gods from the Vale and wondered, wondered...
He didn't know when he had begun caressing the small of her back… His attention seemed to be calming Sansa's nervousness… Not only… It made her cling to him, seeking to feel his blessedly unarmoured body from tip to toe, draping him, just like she'd done so often in his fruitless, beautiful dreams of her on the Quiet Isle.
All impulse to snarl or despise her for having eyes for pretty boys vanished.
He was at her mercy.
"A man can want a fuck and go for it simply because he has a chance, is all," he rasped. "Or think of it from eyeing a pair of teats and forget it later, returning to his chamber without doing anything. Why not a woman?"
"You can want that… feel that... do that… without… without any love? Independently of it? Why?" Sansa sounded mortified; her view of the world shattered once more.
Sandor shrugged. "Why does it snow in winter?" he teased her.
His arms closed tightly around her.
There were no boys in the wheelhouse and he wouldn't leave her to any of them.
"Was there another one for you since you confessed your love to me?" Sansa was shocked and terrified.
"No," he replied truthfully. "I could swear it on my sister's grave."
"But in King's Landing there was," she said sadly after a long while.
He couldn't deny it.
"More of them?" she looked horrified, assuming further.
"When I could-"
"Did you tell them you loved them?" her voice was an outraged whisper, almost deeper than his. She struggled to wriggle out of his grasp, but he wouldn't let her.
He shook his head, struck to the core. No one had ever resented him before for having a fuck here and there.
It was she who'd briefly desired a pretty boy now, and yet it was he who felt guilty like seven hells. Because he wouldn't let her have anyone else if he could choose, and yet he'd enjoyed the freedom he would deny her in the past.
"I never threatened to kill any other girl but you," he blurted. "I just killed them at times, like I would kill anyone else."
The weak. And me, the butcher.
"I saved all my sweet talk for you, I fear," he joked dryly. "I must have been as bitter in my unwanted confessions towards you in King's Landing as those awful cakes you used to stuff yourself with at every opportunity," he mocked himself, sounding almost… courtly.
"You remember that I like lemoncakes?" Sansa beamed at him, looking so young that he felt sick, wanting to run away.
What do you want?
Melt into his skin, for a start. She'd wanted it from that first time she'd come into his bed in the Eyrie, lying on top of him stark naked, thinking he wouldn't wake from it…. ignorant about what she was doing, and how men reacted to it…
She had been fortunate he'd been asleep and bloody tired from climbing. He felt relieved now, remembering how the episode had thankfully ended before he could misunderstand her; taking her on an offer she hadn't made…
Right now, Sansa wasn't as decisive in sticking her precious little hands under his garments as he could be if he began undressing her, but her intention to have him naked in her bed was unmistakable.
Why did he want to marry her if he could have this?
This was more than enough.
He parted from her, impatient, stripping in two moves, coming back, embracing her and finding her naked in return. Her speed in undressing had surprisingly matched his. She was thin, yes, but didn't feel as if she would break if he held her freely; arms roaming over her back, her hips, her behind.
"How's this?" his voice was terribly low. Her nipples were hard against his bare chest.
"Warm," she murmured, finding his lips.
His head was empty.
He was mindless.
Overtaken.
They lay side by side, pressed against each other. One of her legs circled his waist. Her wetness was on his cock, and it was too good. Waiting or speaking became an impossibility.
He was inside her without making a single push. Nor did she make any real effort to straddle him. They just fitted together.
It felt like... sliding into place, like… heavenly oblivion… simple, and honest, and natural; utterly, unbelievably good.
He went slow, needing to savour this, rather than waste his pleasure immediately like his body strongly suggested.
Close to the edge, he began pulling out. Her leg squeezed his arse tightly, not allowing him. She led him deeper, freezing in place around his cock, then moving gently, and yet in a devastatingly pleasurable way.
He heard her sighing now, or maybe she was crying against his missing ear.
"Here," she murmured sweetly, "here…"
Her movement became a torment, both too fast and too slow, treacherous, as she hunted her pleasure.
He wondered if she knew exactly what she was after by now, or if she was still blind to the goals of her body; aimlessly following her instincts like when they became lovers…
He thought of Gregor; dead, oozing black blood, and of his new horse that used to belong to his late brother.
He thought of Stranger, butchered.
He thought of his face, burning.
He thought of faceless women and children being killed by him, whose names he didn't know…
He thought of the bloody mountain in the Vale, and the different faces of the buggering gods.
He thought of...
Sansa became shaky and sweaty, trembling erratically, grazing his ear… She… kissed him so sweetly, exhaling loudly, finding a position on him that was too much to bear; too tight to believe it was true.
He allowed himself to think of what he was doing, and to consider only Sansa in all her splendour...
Pulling out, he spilled himself all over, shaken and terribly content with his achievement.
Yes, he was able to please her, and not only himself. He could tell the signs by now.
He just had to shut up. Follow. Lead. Give. Take.
All of it at once.
This was the easy part, perhaps.
Like killing had always been, after the first few lives he had taken.
Yet he might lose Sansa in Winterfell.
Ned's precious little girl.
In the castle of her forebears, she'd belong to everyone.
Except to him.
Her precious Northmen would find husbands for her; a long line to choose from, queueing up for her lovely hand. They would thank him for bringing the lady home, and call him a Lannister dog behind his back, wondering when he would return to his warm, southron kennel, and vanish from their sight.
No.
I haven't come this far for nothing.
He would have to do things he wasn't good at.
Speak to the bloody people and buggering nobles, flatter them, argue in his favour. Swear vows… Beg… maybe. Withhold from leaving bruises and breaking bones in the yard for his morning pleasure… Make himself heard and understood.
Be a much more accomplished liar than any of them.
A second son of a minor house, who had finally killed his brother.
He wasn't born in a ditch.
And even if he had been, he would act the same.
He wouldn't leave without a fight.
He could be as good as anyone.
Or as evil.
Was that all a man was?
A possibility?
(He wouldn't think about it now.)
"How was that?" he asked lazily. "Should I do more?"
"You must know! It was lovable, Sandor. You were staring at me when I… You waited for me," Sansa effusively admitted what he'd already assumed in his arrogance, yet it was profoundly reassuring to hear it from her mouth. "And it didn't hurt at all. I thought that it would, every time, at least a little. Especially now that we didn't love each other for so long. But it seems that… the more I needed you to hurt me, the less you did."
"If I hear that anyone else hurt you like this," he said, having to, needing her to know the truth about him, and yet choose him over any other man, "I'd kill him."
"No one did," she hurried her response. "Though some tried... before you came to the Vale."
"And if you laughed at me with him behind my back, playing me for a stupid fool, I'd kill you too," he finished his thought.
There was… there was fear in Sansa's eyes, there had to be. He was being damn honest, and serious.
The Stranger was feared by all, and was never far away from the Hound.
Silence was thick around them; their bodies slick against each other, languid and pleasured.
"And if I hear you hurt another woman like this… if you betray my trust like all the others..." Sansa whispered after a while, "you'd be like dead for me. You wouldn't exist."
Sandor was… gratified.
No woman had ever asked him to keep faith with her, and much less in terms he could understand.
"So I should do it," he rambled, laughing like dogs snarling in a pit from sheer happiness.
"I see," she was offended by his derisory behaviour, attempting to extract herself from his arms.
He grinned madly, tightening his grip on her.
The Stranger was infatuated by death.
He found it pleasing.
As long as nothing was burning.
"What I mean is, I'd love to die by your hand," he voiced an intimate wish. "After a lifetime at your side."
She tensed from his words, and then leaned into him, on that small, useless cot.
As if they could be any closer than they already were.
"Sandor," she said, kissing his eyes, "Don't be silly. No one's going to die. I'm so afraid of dying."
Why me why me why me then? he thought, murderous, and tremendously pleased to be her man.
After everything.
Sleep clutched him, conquering his senses, erasing the sweetness of her kisses from his face.
He realised he'd just repeated the same mistake he had made after all the burning, when he'd offered to take her home and kill anyone who'd hurt her.
A mistake of never giving Sansa a chance to answer any of his sudden proposals… of protection… or marriage.
He assumed she would refuse him, then and now…
He would ask again.