A/N: Sorry for the delay. Now that S3 of Game of Thrones is nearing its end, the remainder of this saga should get to you a little faster. That's my hope anyway. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read and comment. I'm humbled and honored by your attention. :)

The Calling - Chapter 3

"No, no, no. Damn it, girl, listen to me! Ease up on the reins."

There was an edge to his voice she'd not heard in a long while and Sansa unaccountably found herself on the verge of tears and resolutely blinked them away. He would not see her cry over such a silly thing as steering a wagon.

"Give them here," Sandor ordered, offering the open palm of one huge hand.

"I will do no such thing. You brought me out here to learn to do this, so I'm going to learn!" A furtive sideways glance showed her a face both vexed and amused. It had been Sandor's idea to begin with, that she learn to navigate the wagon. He'd been teaching her many things over the last month and she was determined this would not become the skill she couldn't master.

He made a sound low in his throat and slumped against the bench. "You're pulling too hard on the reins, little bird. It's not like horseback. You need the bit to sit light in his mouth. And use the bloody whip, like I told you." Off her glare he groused, "You don't have to beat the beast, just remind him who's in charge. Pull up over there, by that stand of trees. Can you manage that much?"

"Why?"

"Because I have to piss. Would you rather I do it off the side of the wagon?" He reached for the tie on his breeches and twisted away from her. She clucked her tongue, gave a slight tug of the reins and, gods be good, the horse immediately veered to the right.

"I'll take that for a no," he chuckled.

"You are a rude and hateful man, Sandor Clegane."

"Might be. But you're learning, aren't you?" His face twisted in a hideous grin and Sansa couldn't help but smile back.

…

"It doesn't work on horses, then?"

They were sprawled on their backs under an ancient oak, Sansa's head pillowed on his stomach. Sandor's arms were folded under his head and a long blade of grass had taken up a spot in the corner of his mouth. The horse had been freed from the wagon and was tied up nearby, whickering softly and half-heartedly dozing.

"What's that?"

"Your… magic, your gift, whatever it is. It doesn't work on horses. You can't read them, like you do your wolves?"

"No." She held a lock of hair and was idly examining the ends as she twisted it around her fingers.

"Not the dogs either?"

She had tried it once and found it painfully chaotic. They were too eager, too many. She'd had to lay down after, her head throbbing, weak as a babe. "No, not as they are. They're too … whimsical."

He snorted. Then a short time later, "And me?"

She turned her head and found him peering down the line of his body at her. "You?"

"Yes, me. Can you do it with me? Have you tried?"

"It wouldn't be right." Off his look she told him, "You're a man, not an animal. It would be … a violation. You've the right to keep your feelings to yourself."

He laid his head back down and chewed a little while on the blade of grass. And then he said, "Now that you've sung your polite and proper song, tell me the truth. Have you tried? Would I even know if you had?"

"You haven't." Too late, she realized she'd given herself away and quickly tried to recover. "It's not deliberate, I swear to you." She felt the muscles of his stomach tighten beneath her cheek in the instant before he pushed up on his elbows to stare down at her. "But sometimes when we touch, when I touch you, sometimes I sense things."

"What things?" He pushed up even higher and scooted back to lean against the broad trunk of the oak. Sansa tried to shift with him but he gave her no leave to do it, pulling his knees to his chest and circling his arms around them. So she sat up instead and tucked her legs under her.

"Regret … sadness ... anger." Sandor's face was impassive as she spoke, but his eyes never wandered from hers and she was certain she glimpsed apprehension in them. She chose to go on anyway, because it was easier than it had been, before, to tell him the truth. "Pain. Guilt. Need." She dropped her eyes and finished softly, "Love, or something close enough to claim its name. All the things you won't let yourself voice."

"Maybe there's a reason for that." His tone was even enough, but its foundation was built of stone.

"I'm sure there is. But the feelings are there, all the same." She found herself regretting her impulsive decision to admit anything. Though she had suspected he might be displeased, and could not blame him for it, she had not anticipated the degree of indignation emanating from him, almost scalding in its intensity. He was possessed of a brittle sort of pride, and she knew she had somehow driven a sharp blade directly into its heart.

"What would you have me do, Sansa? Drop to my knees and beg your forgiveness for what I did? Should I speak some flowery words about how nothing in the world matters to me but you; proclaim my love and shout it to the heavens? I'll see forty years on my next name day and still not bloody certain what love is. Even if I was, it don't change a thing." She lifted her face at that and met his somber eyes. "You'll still leave. Maybe not today, but might be tomorrow. Or in a fortnight, or a month, a year. But you'll leave, just the same. Your wolves brought you here but I am not the reason for any of this, only a stop along the way. Not bloody important enough to be cause for your journey's end."

"How do you know? How can you say that?"

"Because they'll come back for you. I know it and so do you. You dream of them, don't you, your wolves? Every night when you close your eyes, you leave this place and run with them."

"How do-"

"Your sister did the same. Watched her through enough nights to see it, and she'd talk sometimes, when she wasn't trying to figure out ways to kill me. I may not be as smart as some, but I know enough to put the pieces together. The wolf is strong in you Starks. You can pretend it's not there all you like, but you can't deny it, not and be honest."

Sansa experienced a stunning moment of lucidity. "Is that why… have you been teaching me all these things because you're certain I'll leave?"

"I want you to be able to take care of yourself, better than you did before. The pack may hunt well enough to keep you fed, but they can't start a fire or cook the meat. They won't be able to steer a wagon or put an edge on a blade or dig you a proper hole to shit in."

She threw herself against him, unmindful of the way his knees dug into her chest and the scrape of the tree bark across her knuckles as she wrapped her arms around him. "If I can feel you, reach you like I can the wolves," she implored, "then there's a reason for that, too. I will not accept anything less. If what you believe will happen truly comes to pass, if I am called again and must leave here, come with me, Sandor."

He brought his legs down straight and pulled her into his lap, setting his chin on the crown of her head. "No," he said, his refutation muted and oddly flat. "I've seen what's out there, girl. I want no part of it. I won't become a butcher again, not even for you. Told you before, I've made my life here and this is where I'll stay."

"But you could make another life," she reasoned. "We could start over again, the both of us together."

His hand came up and stroked her hair. "Oh, my foolish little bird. You still believe the fairy tales, don't you? Even now."

Then she did cry. Because he spoke the truth, and because she did still believe. And it was all right that she didn't struggle against them and allowed her tears to fall freely instead. She knew, above all, that she was safe with him. He held her and rocked her and kissed her hair. And after a while he tipped her face up and, chuckling, pulled his sleeve over his hand and gently wiped her nose clean. She blinked red-rimmed, swollen eyes and tried to smile, but he dipped his head and stopped her with a kiss. Then came another and another, and before long her grief had turned to need and his had, too.

Sandor removed his cloak and spread it out, easing her down and straddling her legs. He lazily began unfastening the clasps of her gown as he bent to kiss her. She stayed his hand and murmured, "Here, in the open?"

"Who's to see us - the birds, the gods? Let them look." He made quick work of releasing her from the gown and then sliding off the silky chemise and smallclothes she'd sewn. He took a few seconds to rid himself of weaponry, jerkin and tunic, and then knelt by her feet and pulled off her boots and stockings. She giggled as he pressed his lips to each knee and then sighed as he kissed his way up. Soon she was trembling under his mouth and not caring at all if someone passed by and happened to see them.

Sandor had proven a surprisingly generous and ardent lover. Sansa had not known much pleasure in her marriage beds, finding her husbands adequate to the cause of gaining themselves an heir, but the little attention they'd shown her had left her frustrated and hungry for more. She had soon learned to find her own release as she lay alone in her bedchambers or wide-awake next to a snoring husband. It was not at all like that with Sandor.

For one, he lacked inhibition and would not tolerate it in her. If he wanted something he simply asked for it, and expected no less in return. Furiously blushing like the maiden she had once been, she'd done as he'd asked one afternoon and shown him where to touch her, and how. He had been an eager student and had learned his lessons well. There was laughter, too, in their bed, and a joyful abandon she'd not thought possible before.

These discoveries should not have been as much of a revelation to her as they were. For even if she'd not been able to express in thoughts or words her growing sense of herself as a woman, she had known from the moment he'd stolen a kiss from her the night he left King's Landing that none would ever compare. She had spent the ensuing years searching out, in other men, what could only be found in Sandor.

She arched her back away from the stony ground, taut as a bow string, as he finished her off with his mouth and then reared up on his knees. His cock jutted up high and hard as he pulled open the front of his breeches and tugged them down just far enough. Sansa lay dazed and gasping for breath as he lowered himself over her and pushed into her in maddeningly slow increments. The muscles at her core pulsed tightly around him, an echo of the release she'd just found, and his guttural groan mingled with hers.

"You'll be the death of me," he rasped as he sheathed himself fully within her. She lifted her head and pulled his bottom lip into her mouth, nipping at it and tasting herself there. She gripped his biceps as he rested his weight on his forearms and thrust into her with shallow strokes, offering only teasing glimpses of the ferocity and strength she so desperately needed from him. Unwilling to be denied, Sansa wrapped her legs low on his hips and pulled him deeper.

"Then we'll both die a sweet one," she assured him.

Sandor's willful restraint did not last much longer after that. Soon he was moving in her hard and fast and she met each rolling thrust with one of her own. Her head was sliding off the cloak beneath her and onto the grass, each snap of his hips pushing them forward bit by bit. She winced as the sharp edge of a rock dug into her shoulder blade and didn't have to say a word. His gaze focused intently on her, Sandor instantly saw her discomfort and scooped her up against him, rolling over onto his back and carrying her along. She got her knees under her and sunk down heavy, reclaiming the portion of his cock she'd lost during the maneuver.

Sandor shook the sweat-soaked hair from his face and reached up to knead her breasts and circle her nipples with the calloused edges of his thumbs. She took up his rhythm, tight and fast, and felt the coiling begin again, low in her belly and spreading through her like fire, her toes and fingers tingling with it. And then his hands gripped her low on the hips and stilled her.

"Easy, Sansa. I'm in no hurry." He was breathing hard, nostrils flared, his face flushed with high color, the untouched side almost as ruddy as the burns. "Fuck me slow, now; make it last." His command was roughly given, his thumbs painful as they dug into the edges of her hipbones, but what she saw in his eyes belied all that. They were clear and warm, touched with a tender vulnerability she'd rarely seen in him. It was so naked a look that she found herself wanting to glance away, wishing to spare him any embarrassment at being caught so utterly defenseless. So she folded down onto him and pressed her brow to his as her eyes slipped shut. He eased his grip on her and began to guide her hips in a languid rising and falling; pulling her forward until he'd almost slipped out and then back again, until he was sheathed as far as she could take him. The sway created an excruciatingly sweet friction against the most sensitive part of her, down where they were joined, and she once again found herself chasing the fulfillment of her need.

Sansa lifted off him a little and her hands moved from his shoulders and grasped his broad chest, her fingers clawed and holding hard to him. Sandor had begun to groan beneath her and soon her throat was pushing forth noises to match - not at all lady-like, but she did not care. His hands left her hips and came up to cover hers and he pulled them away and raised them so their fingers could entwine. Then he stretched his arms out over his head and stretched her out above him, too, until every bit of skin that could meet, did.

Palm to palm, cheek to cheek, they moved as one. A brightness began to blossom within her, weightless threads of light and heat and stars, and she felt herself open like the outstretching of arms, beckoning the whole of everything that was not of her to come within and become a part of that light, a part of her. And all at once she felt him, touched him, just as effortlessly as she once touched her wolves. Not just an edge or a fleeting glance or the mere shadow of what he held so close in his heart, but everything. In a few brief moments she came to know the soul of him, his very essence. She was overwhelmed, awed by what she felt and unprepared, and she tried to push away. But he wouldn't let her. Sandor untangled his fingers from hers and wrapped his arms around her, bucking his hips up hard against her as he found his own noisy release. That was all it took to shove her off the cliff's edge she'd teetered on and she fell gracelessly into the light. And all the love she'd felt in him, all the hope and the pain and the rough honor, was its own light, and it merged with hers and became blinding.

It was too much, too much. She feared she might burst into flame and burn forever. So instead of letting it engulf her, Sansa gathered all the threads of light together, his love and hers, his hope and hers, his wounds and hers, until they swelled in her chest, demanding release. Guided by instinct alone she lifted her face from the hollow of his throat and, seeking his mouth, gave it all back to him in a kiss.

It went on only a few short moments before Sandor jerked hard beneath her and twisted his head, breaking away too soon for her liking. His eyes, when she lifted up to look, were wide with shock and dark as a starless night sky.

"You felt it, didn't you?" she gasped. "You felt it, too."

His eyes bored into hers, bottomless and searching. In answer, he cupped the back of her neck and urged her down to finish what she'd begun.

He was very quiet after, as she slid off him and they lay gasping and boneless upon his cloak. Her ear was pressed to his chest and she could hear the hammering of his heart. She wanted very badly to say something about what had just occurred. If it was as she thought, it was like nothing she had ever experienced … except with her pack. Not just the gift of reaching and touching, but having it reciprocated in kind. The implications stunned her and she couldn't imagine what Sandor must have been thinking.

"Do you want-"

He interrupted her before she could finish. "Leave it be, girl."

His tone offered no opportunity for argument so she held her tongue, lifting her head from his chest long enough to peer up at him. His eyes were closed, his features relaxed, and he pulled in a long breath through his nose as she watched. He brought one arm across her, then, and curled it heavy around her. She laid her cheek back down and tucked in closer, seeking his warmth as a mild breeze dried the sheen of sweat from their skin.

Not much later he stirred and reached down, raising his hips and pulling his breeches back up. He stood, looming tall and broad above her, and offered his hand. "Come on, little bird, it's time we get back. We've managed to piss away the whole day."

Silently she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. He gathered her gown and undergarments and handed them over before he finished dressing himself. She found herself standing alone, her bare toes curled into the scrubby grass, as he hitched the horse to the wagon and waited for her to join him.

Not another word was ever spoken about that afternoon. And what had happened never happened again.

…