Author's notes: So this is the end of this tale - and yet the characters live on... This has been a sad story and certainly not a pleasant read from that point of view. Hence I cherish every comment and view even more - so thank you all who have read and commented!

"I'll tell you what else it is that I desire. What I have desired for a long time now." Tension between them was palpable but he ignored it. What do I have to lose?

"You will? Promise me."

"I will. I promise."

She swayed on her spot, indecisive. It was strange how closeness of death had removed all codes of behaviour - not that he cared much about them anyway, but the little bird had always been so courteous, so proper. To imagine that he had just asked Lady Sansa Stark to show him her cunt and she hadn't slapped him for his outrageousness amused Sandor and he couldn't help a lopsided grin.

Was it his sneer that made up her mind? Did she take it as a challenge to which she had to respond? Whatever it was, she took a deep breath and her hands returned to the folds of her skirt and taking her time she started to inch them higher. Sandor's eyes were glued to the dusty hem that rose up and up, revealing more and more of her bare legs. She wore no stockings and her skin looked smoother than silk.

Sandor swallowed hard, afraid to make a noise or move. His palms felt sticky and fine droplets of sweat covered his forehead.

Her smallclothes were of finest embroidery – an oversight by her jailors or an acknowledgement of her noble status? Pure white they were, slightly tarnished, but still so maidenly and innocent that Sandor suddenly felt ashamed of asking her this. Not so much as to tell her to stop, though.

The skirt bunched in one hand on her front she awkwardly pulled her undergarments down with the other, tugging the laces loose; first one side, then another, bit by bit. Then the white fabric fell down her thighs and pillowed on her feet. The sight of fine lace resting against coarse floorboards was incongruous and all wrong.

She didn't even try to step out of them but stood still, defiantly. Her nervousness was only visible from the way she licked her lips and flicked back her head. It could have been coquettish by some other girl and in some other circumstances – but not by her, not now.

Sandor stared. Her long legs were well defined and shapely and at their juncture a triangle of finest red hair covered her modesty. She was beautiful – and the thought of what lay behind those fine curls made him swallow hard.

He couldn't tell why it had been so important for him to see her. It was not about lust, for all that his cock was throbbing so hard that it pained him. Rutting with her would have been impossible because of the iron bars that separated them, just as he had told her. No, he wasn't after that.

The little bird represented to him all that was feminine; his mother, his sister, all the women who had ever been kind to him, not that there had been many. A sight of a maid smiling to her first love, a sound of a mother cooing to her babe, a touch of a whore, however distracted and practised. Softness and kindness that the gentler sex represented, never at his reach but only spied from afar. To him she was the Maiden, the Mother, the Crone, even the Stranger - the mystery of womanhood. And he had had to see her. And now he felt unworthy, undeserving of the gift she had bestowed on him.

"Your turn. What is it that you desire?" Her tone was soft but composed.

He forced his words out, still reluctant to share his deepest thoughts. He knew he spoke out of turn but the whole situation was beyond bizarre anyway.

"This would be better left unsaid - but since you want to know, girl, here it goes. I wanted you. Always you, since the first time I saw you in that sodden courtyard of your father's house. Took me a long time to realise it though. But mayhap you are not surprised? You are too much of a woman not to have known. Many men looked at you and wanted you. You knew that too, didn't you?"

"Why did you want me?"

"Why does a man want a woman? Surely you know something of that – having been so well schooled in men and their manners."

"That?" Her tone was not upset, only curious. She seemed to have forgotten the compromising situation she was in and stared at him with genuine curiosity.

It would have been easy to agree. To let her think he only wanted her like any other man would. Like any other man had. For a quick grope, for a fuck, to satisfy a primal urge.

"No. Not only that." The words dropped from the tip of his tongue before he could catch them.

Then his feet buckled from under him and he dropped down slowly, like a giant boar after a fatal spear wound. The girl hadn't moved away and his face ended up right in front of her womanhood. The hair there was finest thread he had ever seen and he gazed in awe at the sight. The lust was still within him, the hot blood coursing through his veins, but he could shut it away and deny its existence for now.

Sandor pressed his head between the iron bars and the hard metal cooled his heated cheeks; the side that felt the cold and the other that only vaguely sensed something pressing against it. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply – and he smelled her.

Musky, earthy aroma wafted into his already sensitised nose and he thought he had never smelled anything quite as intoxicating. It was her, it was her cunt; so maidenly and pure and still as enticing as the richest, headiest wine he had ever tasted. No, better.

Sandor breathed slowly in and out, deep lungfuls, mindful of trying to hide it less the little bird would get the wind of it and find it repulsive. She was so close that if only the bars would have been set a bit wider, he could have buried his face into the juncture of her thighs.

For a long time he savoured the moment, hoping it would never end. He knew she must already regret the poor bargain she had agreed to. What is the Hound's admission, surely known to her by the virtue of her womanly intuition, against the humiliation of letting a dog slaver at her most intimate parts? Hence he wasn't really surprised when he felt her hand curling against the back of his head. Reluctantly he braced himself against the inevitable and shifted to move away.

And then he felt her caresses. At first tentative, feather light brushes against his hair, her fingers getting caught in its matted knots. Then they gained strength and confidence and stroked the top of his head, his sides, sweeping all the way down to his neck. Her other hand was still fisted against the crunched fabric of her skirt, Sandor's forehead resting against the coarse weave, but the other brushed through his hair. She didn't push him away nor pull him closer – she only let the warmth of her fingertips travel down all the way to his core. He leaned into her touch, sighing.

Time didn't stop. It should have.

Sandor wished he could have shut the world away but he couldn't help hearing the murmur of the crowd as it started to gather to the main yard. He glanced at the window and saw that it was almost noon.

Grudgingly he dropped his hand and tugged at the fine lace resting on her foot. She must have felt it as she looked down.

"It is almost time," he grumbled. She took his meaning and bent down. Their fingers touched when she reached for her garments and he felt a jolt.

Much too soon she had pulled her smallclothes up, dropped her skirt and fastened her top, and Sandor felt the loss of the sight of her acutely in the hollow pit of his stomach. He scrambled up to his feet.

Curiously she didn't seem the least bit awkward and even more curiously he didn't feel the usual simmering bitterness he had felt the few times when he had lost the control of the situation. Bloody hells, he had just begged the girl and told her about his most ardent and secret desire – and he didn't even feel humiliated. The feeling was oddly liberating.

They looked at each other across the divide. Her lips curved into a smile that seemed completely out of place in their situation. She reached across the space between them and hovered her small hand above his chest, just above his heart.

"May I?"

He nodded silently and just as she was about to lay her hand across his chest he tugged the hem of his tunic and pulled it up so her fingers met his bare skin. She startled, but didn't pull away. The touch of those long fingers against his ribcage made Sandor's heart hammer in his chest so fast that she must have felt it. She cupped her hand slightly and pressed harder.

"I can feel your heartbeat." Her sentence ended in an upward tilt almost as if she had presented a question rather than a comment.

"As I did yours." He had, when he had fondled her teats. It had been frantic like a little bird's – and that was what she was. Still. Always.

"I feel like I am holding your heart in my hand."

"As you do, little bird, as you do." Sandor couldn't believe he had just uttered something so soppy, but the quick smile she threw in his direction diminished his irritation.

She played with the hair on his chest but he knew it was not a woman in her seeking to satisfy her curiosity about men. Had they had more time, had there been no iron bars between them… who knew what might have happened? Yet he didn't begrudge what had not. Aye, he wanted to fuck her, nothing had changed, but somehow what they had shared and what she had given to him, had more meaning. He had had her and she had given herself to him, only in a different way.

Besides, it was no use to think of what could have been. He settled to what he had been offered and that was bloody much more than he deserved or could have imagined even in his wildest dreams.

"I am glad I met you again. I hoped so but couldn't be sure," she whispered quietly - but his ears had already attuned to her soft voice.

"Me too, girl. I thought – I wished – to see you in the audience. I never imagined…"

"Shhhh. It doesn't matter. What matters is that we saw each other. That we know each other for true, now."

"Aye."

After that there was not much to say. Eventually they slid down against the wall and leaned on it, side by side, holding hands across the partition. They needed no words. They looked at each other in the eye, then at their intertwined fingers, then each other again. Sandor felt at peace and she must have felt the same as the fright he had seen on her face earlier had all but disappeared.

The rattle on the door alerted them to the arrival of the gaoler. He was not alone but followed by three other guards who were all dressed in their finest garments, ready for the show.

It is time.

They took her first, as befitting to a lady of her station. At the narrow doorway leading to the courtyard Sandor saw her stop, take a deep breath, square her shoulders and lift her chin before she stepped out. The streaming sunlight enveloped her with its golden shimmer and she was gone.

Sandor had never been more proud of anyone as he was of her that moment. The wolf she was, not the little bird. No, always the little bird.

At the scaffold it was his turn to be the first. The Kingslayer was to be the main event, the one everyone had come to see. The Hound was just a teaser, a lesson to all about what happened to those who betrayed the trust of their masters.

He saw her one last time where she was standing at the end of the wooden platform. When her eyes met his they stayed on them unwavering, blue and bold and so very brave, so very wolfish – except for the hint of his little bird invisible to anyone but he. Because he knew her.

When Sandor Clegane bent over and rested his head on the old wooden block he didn't see the royal party on the hastily erected dais nor did he hear the hum of the audience. All his senses were about her; his nostrils filled with her musky scent, his ears echoing her low sighs and gasps, his eyes filled with the sight of her baring herself to him, his fingertips still sensing the softness of her skin.

As the distant hiss of the blade sliced the air on its way to meet his neck, Sandor Clegane smiled.

THE END