Chapter 15: Confessing
He came awake to find that she had turned in his arms, her face against his shoulder and one arm thrown over his chest. Her skin felt a bit clammy to the touch, so he carefully angled for the covers with his feet and managed to get her under it before she woke from being cold.
She stirred against him and snuggled closer with a sound much like the purr of a cat and as always it woke his compulsion to pet and caress. He stroked his hand over her arms and nuzzled the crown of her head, drunk with satisfied, lazy contentment.
"I didn't know it could be like that," she said quietly and pressed a kiss to his chest.
It seemed pointless to tell her he hadn't known either. After all, after that first night, it had to be pretty obvious to her that he had no idea what he was doing. He saw no sense in reminding her of the way he had failed her back then, it was enough it still haunted him. Kept haunting him with growing embarrassment every time he learned something new about how he might have been able to please her, to turn that first time into something special for her instead of something horrible both of them just longed to forget.
How, after being through dozens of women had he managed to be still so clueless?
Maybe he should've done what Sansa had so smartly decided to do, go to a whore to talk and ask questions instead of just fucking her.
"Didn't Sibyl tell you?" he asked.
"No," she said. "She didn't tell me about kissing either, which always puzzled me."
"They don't like to do that," he answered her unasked question. "Seeing as they have to service sailors with rotting teeth, drunkards reeking of vomit or just plain ugly bastards like me, you can't blame them."
A gentle hand stroked over the scarred side of his face only to be replaced by her mouth.
She did that sometimes. He'd tried to dissuade her from it a couple of times, told her he didn't feel anything there anyway, but she was weirdly insistent about it so he let her, even though his insides tied themselves into a painful knot every time she did.
"You're not ugly," she whispered against his ruined skin. "You're the most desirable man I know."
He desperately wanted to make a jest of it, tell her that either her eyesight or her mind was going begging, or that maybe she just didn't know all that many men. That maybe she just said that because it was dark and he'd just fucked her into the seventh heaven. But part of him clung to her words, wanting them to be the truth, wanting them to be what she honestly thought and felt.
"So you never kissed one of them?" Sansa asked after having given him a kiss that had made him forget what they'd been talking about.
He shook his head.
"I would have to pay extra for it and the whole thing seemed bloody pointless to me."
She kissed him again. "Does it still?"
He sharply nipped at her lip to admonish her for the stupid question, then brought both his hands to her head, speared his fingers through her hair and held her to him for a kiss that further demonstrated his opinion on the matter.
Sansa sank softly against him after that, once again curling against his side.
"Does it still bother you?" she asked a couple of minutes later, when he was about to contemplate whether or not it was too early to suggest a second round. "That I went to her for advice?"
"No, I guess it doesn't," he answered. It was mostly the truth, but right now he wasn't in the mood to discuss why she felt the need to go there in the first place. Instead he nipped playfully at her ear, making her giggle. "Besides, it sure was worth whatever it was you paid her."
She chuckled and swatted at his chest.
"Then you shouldn't have growled at me back then, you mean old boor."
He retaliated with a deep, possessive kiss that was supposed to tell her that he didn't mind the way things had turned out. Not in the slightest. For good measure, he shoved his hard cock against her as well, showing her that while he might be mean and boorish at times, he drew the line at being called old. After all, he was still sprightly enough to give it to her at least twice a night.
Sansa's legs remained closed, however, her hand in his hair still soft and gentle.
"I am sorry for... growling at you about it," he said, giving her a bit of space, not quite sure it was what she needed. "I should've known you would not take this without a fight, should've known that you'd try to do something, to change things." He chuckled lightly as a memory came to him. "I guess I've known that ever since the day you tried to throw Joffrey down the battlements."
Sansa's hand that was stroking through his hair slowed a bit and then drew him to her for a languid kiss.
"You saved me that day," she whispered against his lips and then kissed him again. "... and so many times after."
"Saved you...," he said and pulled back from her with a derisive snort. As always, his gut filled with bitter self-loathing when she said something like that, because it could not be farther from the truth. That she still believed it made things even worse. "I did no such thing," he continued, determined to disabuse her of this romanticized notion once and for all. "There was a time I fancied I could, true enough, but all I ended up doing was watching you being tortured, only barely preventing them raping or killing you and I'm not even sure the latter was a mercy."
She scooted closer again and drew breath, probably to argue, but he was faster.
"Had I saved you," he said, louder than before, "you'd be with your family now, or someone who could've taken care of you the way you deserve." Bitterness dripped from his every word like venom and he couldn't keep himself from adding, "you'd not have ended up a dog's bitch."
He waited for another attempt at a protest and his heart painfully drew back in itself when none came.
Her hand kept caressing him, her breath was still close to his skin, but he felt a rift growing between them and he knew that there was another bit of truth she still didn't know, that would turn it into a chasm with no bridges to find back to her.
"I meant to take you away during the Blackwater," he said through a sudden tightness in his throat, as if his body wanted to prevent him speaking what would turn her fondness to disgust. Which would make a repetition of the experience they had just shared an impossibility.
His words had her sit up straight.
"You did? When? How? What..."
He pulled her back against his chest, to savour her closeness for what might very well be the last time while he tried to find the courage to go on.
"I turned craven during the battle, couldn't handle the fire, fighting burning men, smell of smoke and scorched flesh everywhere. I had tried to drown myself in wine but it all came back up again and finally I just turned and ran. Ran to your room, first thing, sat there in the dark, trying to think what to tell you to convince you to go with me, try to think what I'd do with you once you'd said yes."
He trailed off, the memories of this night swamping him with all the dreadful things that had churned inside him then. The painful desperation, the rage, that sudden spurt of chivalrous courage.
"Thought about what I'd do to you...," he went on, opting for brutal honesty. Maybe it was time she knew. "If you'd come into that room at that moment, you wouldn't have left it still a maiden."
Sansa didn't draw back from him as he had expected, but instead turned her head a bit and kissed his chest.
"You wouldn't have hurt me," she said, such an amount of honest, unwavering conviction in her voice, it struck him as comical. Especially considering that once given the chance, he HAD hurt her.
"You've more trust in me than I had in myself...," he said, snorting. "Because I had none. The longer I thought about all of it; where we'd go, how we'd manage, what might happen... when all that went through my mind, I turned coward the second time that night."
He fell silent then, waiting for her reaction, her verdict over his failure to do the one thing that might have truly meant her safety. Maybe they would have even reached her brother in time to caution him against trusting the Freys. Sandor had been deep enough in the Lannisters' council to know which way the ravens flew from King's Landing.
"I am sorry," he said as he once again contemplated what his cowardice had cost her.
"I wouldn't have come with you," she said after a long time.
The statement was so entirely unexpected, he forgot to breathe for a moment, then gasped as he remembered.
"What? Why?"
Not for a second had he ever thought that she would have declined his offer, he had been sure she would have gladly taken the opportunity to go, to leave that cursed place. He had hated himself for months for not giving her that chance.
"Back then… I still believed Dontos Hollard would help me get away," she explained. "And I am sure from what you said before... he would have seemed the safer option at the time."
Pieces of a riddle that had confounded him for a long time rapidly fell into place.
"He would have taken you away," he said. "And it certainly would have been safe… in a way."
Sansa's hand was gone from where she was still caressing him to stifle a sob he could still hear even through the hand she had probably used to press to her mouth. He could not really relate to how she must feel at being told she might have been away from all of this for months.
"He would have delivered you straight into Littlefinger's hands."
She stilled next to him, quiet for a moment.
"Gods… he was… he was working for Baelish?" she asked.
"That's what he told me when I had my dagger at his throat."
When she sat up this time, he didn't pull her back. Again he waited for her to decide what to do with the information he'd given her.
"If he worked for Littlefinger," she said after a long silence, "if he reported back to him, Baelish must have known the Tyrells meant to have me marry Willas."
Sandor nodded at her conclusion, only belatedly remembering she couldn't see him.
"Yes."
"He told the Lannisters about it!" she said, and suddenly her hands were on him again, both of them on his chest, with her hovering somewhere above him. Tentatively, he put his hands on her waist, stroking her belly with his thumbs, the need to assure himself she was still there one that couldn't be denied. "I always wondered how they knew."
"You have the right of it," he confirmed. "That's the gist of what I got from Hollard."
Sansa sank against him then, resting the side of her face against somewhere over his heart.
"So it was you who… told the Tyrells of Tywin's plan to give me to Tyrion?"
That was something he felt foolish to admit to. Not because it had been the first time he had coldly and systematically betrayed the confidence of those he owed allegiance to, but because he hadn't done it so much to help her than he'd done it for himself. The thought of having her wed to the Imp, of that twisted little man having a right to touch and bed her... it would have driven him insane.
"Didn't I tell you?"
She chuckled.
"You said it was a fool who didn't know what was good for him."
"See," he said, "I faintly remember you telling me I was a fool mere hours ago."
"I was wrong," she said softly. "You're no fool, you're my guardian. My saviour."
"Sansa..."
She lifted her head again.
"You are," she said decisively, "and you won't convince me otherwise. You saved me from becoming a Lannister by marriage, you were the only thing standing between me and Joffrey's cruelty, risking your life and your position every time you did. You lied to them, betrayed them, flaunted their orders and all for me. Don't you dare belittling what meant so much to me."
He nodded into the darkness again, this time unable to squeeze even so much as a yes from out of his clogged throat as she rested her head on his chest again.
Instead of a verbal answer he couldn't give, he wrapped his arms fully around her, his hands flat on her back, trying to communicate that while he couldn't really save her, he would do all he could to protect her.
"And…," she continued more quietly, "I'd rather be a dog's bitch than a king's toy."
He knew he should leave it at that, despite how it rankled that the only thing she had just told him was that she preferred being fucked by him to being beaten by Joffrey. He shouldn't try to make her see just how low she had sunk, that her current situation wasn't an improvement, but Joffrey succeeding in destroying her in a way that could never be undone.
But he couldn't leave it. Not in his current mood and maybe not in general. The words pushed against his lips and clamoured to be said.
"Next you'll try and tell me you prefer being a mistress to being a wife," he said, trying and failing to make it sound like a joke.
Maybe this was a tad unfair. After all, she had already rejected a chance she had had to rectify the situation and become respectable once again. She'd chosen this, even if marrying Lancel Lannister had not been that great of a prospect either.
"I prefer being your mistress to being someone else's wife."
Convulsively, his arms tightened around her as her statement hit, as the full meaning of her admission registered. Had she really just told him that he wasn't the lesser of two evils, but the choice she would make even if she had better options?
"What happened after you left my room that night?" she asked, her voice soft voice distracting him from his current musings. "I've never heard the whole story."
The whole story, the thought with an inward sigh of defeat. The whole ugly fucking mess he'd gotten himself into after he'd stumbled out of her chamber would surely serve to have her turn from him in disgust.
"Ran into Joff and the remnants of the Kingsguard on my way back, encircled by Stannis' men as they were," he told her. "There was no fire in the vicinity and I was... I think I was so... mad at everything, I just didn't care anymore if I died. So I somehow... lost it, went berserk I guess, every second expecting the blow that would end me, but it never came. When I came to, I stood amidst a mound of corpses, most of them not identifiable as human beings anymore, covered head to toe in blood and gore."
She nodded against his chest, not drawing back. Not saying anything either.
"You're in bed with the worst butcher the world has ever seen," he said. "The Butcher of the Blackwater as they came to call me. Couldn't blame you if it made you sick. It makes me sick to think of it."
She kissed his chest again, a gesture he started to recognize as one she used when she meant to soothe him, to show him she cared.
"I am glad you are what you are," she said in her no-nonsense voice that compelled him to believe her despite the inconceivability of the statement. "They were all terrified of you after that, Joffrey more than anyone else. You could not have done anything for me, he would never have let you stop him, if not for what he saw that night."
"Always thought it was because I saved his worthless hide."
She shook her head.
"He would have expected that as a matter of course and would think the matter dealt with by giving you a reward. But that he never spoke up against you, that was because he feared you, even with the rest of the Kingsguard at his side. He knew that if sufficiently provoked, no one could stop you."
"Makes sense, I guess," he admitted. "Although it makes one wonder why he never thought of putting down the rabid dog I've become."
On top of him, Sansa turned cold all of a sudden. Motionless and frozen, almost like a corpse.
"He thought of it," she said, her voice having the same hollow, soulless sound as if Joffrey was standing right next to her. "He tried once."
He was so astounded by what she told him, he only remembered to wrap her closer into the covers, when she started to shiver violently.
"Sansa, what happened?"
"You...," she began and was interrupted by the chattering of her teeth, "you killed your executioner."
Ah, that.
He should've know right when she froze up that it could only be Gregor's death she was referring to.
For reasons he did not understand, that whole episode was anathema to her, not to be spoken about, not even to be alluded to. If he didn't know for a fact that Gregor never had had a chance to lay a hand on her, he might have suspected the worst, but he knew that this could not be the reason.
Something had happened with her at some point between him leaving her safely in her chambers the evening before the fight and drinking himself into a stupor after he'd walked away from his brother's bloody corpse, that had broken a part of her and he had no idea what.
That she had told him as much as she had was a bit of a wonder in itself.
At least now he finally knew what had been at the core of Joffrey's weird decision back then, to have Tyrion's trial by battle be fought between him and his brother. He should've known. It made him grin darkly to himself to contemplate just how many plans and expectations he had foiled by slaying his own blood. Cersei's for not seeing the death of her father avenged as she'd hoped and ridding her of her own hated brother. Ser Kevan's for losing the one bannerman who could always be relied on to do the Lannisters' dirty work, and Joffrey's for not getting rid of a dog he didn't trust not to bite him.
He chuckled, but stopped again when he noticed that Sansa was still in her paralyzed state.
For a moment, he contemplated asking her why all this disturbed her so greatly, what had happened that had been so much worse than everything she had endured before and after. But with her shivering in his arms, he decided to leave those questions for another time.
So he turned them both to the side and did the only thing he knew to bring her back from wherever her mind had wandered to. He kissed her, caressed her, coaxed warmth back into her limbs and later into her body. Got her to respond in kind, giving back as good as she got until she sweetly opened herself to him and bade him to take her, which he did.
He was careful with her this time, slow and thorough and mindful of what made her rise with him to completion. They plunged into ecstasy nearly at the same time, both of them loudly expressing their pleasure and for once his climax didn't make him want to weep in her arms.
It made him want shout with laughter, to laugh in the face of the Stranger himself, because right in this moment, it felt so bloody fucking sweet to be alive.
...
tbc
Hope you liked it.