Author's note: thanks to the lovely reviews cheering me on, I am back way before I expected! This and the next chapter are mostly setting the stage for what is to come. And I fear this fic is going to be much longer than I had originally planned. Le sigh. It is still PG for now, but sexytimes will assuredly happen in the goodness of time. :P
Chapter Three
Joffrey was being strange nowadays. Staring at her in a way that made her feel naked and vulnerable. He kept asking his mother when they would be married, but the queen kept stalling.
Sansa watched them argue but she dared not let the flutter of hope warm her heart. She dared not think that the queen had changed her mind. That she would no longer have to marry a Lannister. Each time she looked at Joffrey's face he made her sick. His smooth skin, soft lips, and gleaming green eyes. Once her dream, he was now what her nightmares were made of.
She did not know what she would do if she were made to share his bed.
Her days passed by achingly slow. Surrounded by people she hated, feared, or felt nothing for, she felt almost like a ghost. Flitting about all day, barely talking, barely being acknowledged. Tommen and Myrcella were sweet children, but they were just that: children. They did not understand why she would not play with them. Lannister children, golden and delicately beautiful, they did not understand that their laughter and joy made her burn inside with terrible emotions she would rather not admit.
After each day, empty, alone, and exhausted, she would make her way to the godswood. And there he would be waiting for her without fail.
Sansa could not fathom what he was doing here. Perhaps the first day she found him on his log she could have asked him, but now the chance for explanation seemed to have passed them by. The Hound did not offer much in terms of dialog either. It seemed not his nature to fill the air with empty words, and she was much too timid to initiate conversation on her own. Some days his only reply to her greeting was a grunt and a curt nod. Mostly he worked on his sword as she prayed. Sharpening it, polishing it, the constant scrape, scrape, scrape driving her mad some days and other days soothing her tired mind.
Once she came to the godswood to find the Hound's kingsguard cloak tossed aside like worthless linen over the log he liked to sit upon, but he was nowhere in sight. She regarding it. When she had first come to Kings Landing that piece of wool had been the ultimate in honor and gallantry to her. How young she had been then.
Chewing her lip in just that way she used to scold Arya about, she walked towards the back of the godswood. She made sure he was decently submerged in the pool before stepping into the clearing.
His grey eyes opened to peer at her.
"Good evening, Hound," she said, ducking her head in greeting.
"I won't ask you to join me or you'll threaten to tell His Grace again," he rasped. His muscled arms were splayed out, holding him above the water, and his head was tilted back. "Your loss little bird," he said, shutting his eyes again. "It's always unbearably hot before a long winter. Bad enough for us southron folks, but your northern bones must be melting."
His face was so different like this. With his eyes closed and his face calm, he looked years younger. "How many winters have you seen, Hound?" she found herself asking.
He snorted. "Is that your way of asking my age, girl? How old do you think I am?
She measured him. He was very old, but not quite as old as her father. "Thirty?" she asked.
"Close enough," he rasped.
She watched his relaxed face and felt the unworthy tug of jealousy. If he was not here she could have bathed in the pool herself. "How did you discover this place, Hound?"
"A whore brought me here."
"You brought a whore to the godswood?" she asked, the shock pulling her out of her reverie.
"Are you deaf now?" he asked. "I said the whore brought me here."
"Hm," she said doubtfully. "Well, I am going back to pray now."
"Give my regards to your acorn tree, little bird."
He listened to her retreating footsteps. His eyes were open now, though he saw very little. The cool water had lulled him, and he had been halfway asleep before she arrived. Suspended in that murky place between dream and wakefulness, he had been thinking of her.
It was not a lewd day-dream, though the Stranger knew he had plenty of those about her too.
In this dream she was fully clothed, and she was standing in a room full of golden sunlight, looking out the window as if waiting for someone. His dream-self stood still for a moment, soaking in the vision. Memorizing how the burnished curls of her auburn hair fell thick and gleaming down her back. When he opened the door wider it creaked, and she turned to look at him. She was older, her face more angular, and so lovely it took his breath away. Even more so when it split into a radiant smile, different from any false and forced smile he had seen on her before.
When he returned to reality she was standing before him, her young face downcast, tired, and pale. He teased her even as he shut his eyes against her present image, trying to grasp the threads of his dream. Would she ever grow into the woman he had seen? He rather thought she would, if the world would let her.
He did not bother wondering if she would ever look at him as she did in the dream, though. That was mere fantasy.