Author's notes:

This chapter and the next two deal with one important event from the past. I had to break it apart because it would be a huge chunk of 12k words otherwise, but if anyone prefers to read it all in one go, part 3 will be up next Wednesday.
Spacing it apart like that is only done to give me some much needed time to write more.

Hope you enjoy.

Thanks for all the lovely reviews.

Chapter 17: Remembering (Part 1)

Guard duty to his grace - the biggest asshole in the whole of Westeros - used to be an unbelievably mind-numbing job to Sandor.

Over the last couple of weeks, it had turned from mind-numbing to exhaustingly irritating.

For one thing because Joffrey requested his presence not only for standing guard outside his door, where he at least would be left alone with pleasant daydreams and recollections to keep him company, but more often than not wanted him at his side. Mostly to endlessly rant to him about all his grievances. He told him over and over how much trouble they all were, how no one just went and accepted his kingly decisions, how they blamed him for the Tyrells' march on King's Landing, for the hunger in the city, now that the Tyrells had withdrawn their support.

Since Joff seemed to expect answers to all his questions, Sandor one day gave it.

"You're right, you're the king," he said. "Act like one."

"How?" Joffrey all but wailed.

"Act," Sandor clarified. "Don't sit around and wait. Grab your wife and your men and ride out of the city and greet your grandmother in law. Don't let them advance on the city like an enemy host. They claim this to be a family visit. Greet them as you would family."

"What if they make a fuss about Margery?"

"It's like you said," Sandor said, shrugging. "She's your wife, you can punish her for misbehaviour as you see fit. They cannot fault you for that."

Joffrey chewed on his thumbnail.

"What about Loras?"

Sandor made a dismissive gesture.

"Loras is a Kingsguard who attacked his king," he said. "He did it in defence of the queen, but his first duty is to you. Tell them he got off lightly with only a few weeks in the black cells, Aerys would have roasted him alive. Make him renew his Kingsguard vow and leave it at that."

Joffrey nodded and sprang up from his seat, a glint in his eyes.

"I knew it!" he crowed. "I do not need to grovel and apologize. They just have to accept this. I am the king!"

Sandor inwardly rolled his eyes and nodded.

"I will give the orders at once to ride out of King's Landing in three days' time," Joffrey decided, rubbing his hands.

Experience told him that now, with Joffrey being elated, it might be the right time to ask for a boon.

"Might I ask to be relieved of my duties for those three days?" Sandor ventured.

Joffrey turned to him, a jovial grin on his face.

"Still not through with her?" he asked.

The boy could be disturbingly perceptive at the most inconvenient of times.

"Making the most out of my king's reward," Sandor gave back, trying to keep his face blank. Then, when noticing Joffrey expected some more of him, he grinned. "It's a juicy enough bone for a dog to chew on for a while."

In turn, Joffrey's expression faltered and turned wistful, his eyes growing vacant.

"I miss her sometimes," he said slowly, clearly lost in memories.

Bile rose in Sandor's throat at the thought exactly why Joffrey would be missing her.

"It used to anger me that she never begged, never cried," Joff went on, still in an almost trance-like state, "but now it bores me when others do. Of all those I had, she was the strongest, the one most worthy of me."

Sandor knew he had to interfere or Joffrey would take it in his sick head he needed Sansa back with him.

"She bawls all the time with me," he said, "might be you finally broke her when you gave her to me."

It was only half a lie, incidentally. Sansa did cry at times when with him. Sometimes with what he hoped was happiness. A few times at things he told her in the privacy of their bed, sometimes at the memories of her family she told him about. He slowly learned to not grow alarmed every time her eyes watered, learned to see the difference between pain and emotions that just expressed themselves in a damp fashion.

Joffrey's posture changed, green eyes focused on him, the fog of remembered delight vanishing from them. He waved dismissively.

"Spilled milk," he scoffed and then leered at him.

"Give her my regards when you fuck her next time. And now off with you."

…

Another, even more irritating thing about guard-duty was that it took him away from his home and his woman. Sometimes days at a time. That expedition he had advised Joffrey to undertake would cost him at least a week, so he had to make the most of the three days leave Joffrey had granted him.

Not that he ever felt that any minute of time with Sansa was somehow wasted. On the contrary. Every moment with her seemed to bring a new discovery, a new insight.

Eating, for instance, had turned from something simply done to give his body nourishment into a variance of activities of which one was more enjoyable than the other.

Sitting down for a formal meal would turn into conversation, into shared stories and laughter, sometimes into discussions about how they envisioned Westeros' future, how they thought things would turn out in those turbulent times. To be quite honest, the advice given to Joffrey about how to handle the tricky situation with the Tyrells had been conceived entirely during one of those conversations.

Eating, as he had found out, could also mean her bringing a bowl of fruit and cheese with her into their bedchamber, making an utterly delightful game of feeding the treats to him with her fingers or her lips. He had found himself growing surprisingly inventive with this particular game, when he accidentally "lost" one of the offered grapes and had to eat it off her from the place it had rolled to.

He grinned to himself at the memory, the inside of his armour growing uncomfortably warm as he strode to the stable to leave the keep as soon as he could.

Another thing he could barely wrap his mind around was how things had changed between them once again ever since he had allowed her to look at all of him. If he'd known, he thought sometimes, he would have shown himself to her in all his naked ugliness the moment he had her for himself.

It wasn't just about the added sexual pleasure of being able to see and be seen, even if he wasn't about to belittle that one. He would be dead before he would stop enjoying the sight of her moaning and writhing in ecstasy beneath him. Or on top of him. Or in front. Or pressed against the wall. Would never tire of seeing her nipples harden under his mouth, her skin flushed as arousal took her, his cock gliding in and out of her delightfully moist pink folds.

But aside from this somewhat predictable outcome, there was another dimension to this that had been a revelation.

She'd started to ask about each and every one of his scars.

At first he had been reluctant to talk about them, unwilling to drag up memories that were painful at best and horrifyingly brutal most of the time. He thought it best for both of them to keep them buried.

Her insistence had won out, however, and one night he had started to talk. Just about that one ragged scar along his shoulder, where a crossbow-bolt had shredded his armour. The ragged pieces of metal had torn into his flesh and once he'd removed it, he had made the wound even worse. It had healed badly and looked the part, even now, five years later.

Along with that he remembered, too, how he had brought the mangled piece of metal to the blacksmith for repair and how they had joked about that crossbows should be outlawed, seeing what a mess they made of perfectly fine plates of steel.

It was a surprise of sorts to have that bit of lightness come with the painful recollection.

He tried that again when she asked about the gash on his chest that had almost taken off his left nipple.

A training yard incident, that indeed brought back quite an astounding collection of stories to tell from all those endless hours spent on this particular part of various keeps and castles he'd been at over the years.

She listened with rapt attention, hung on his lips as if he was the land's most talented bard. The stories of violence, blood and rather crude practical jokes and incidents that more often than not involved manure, vomit and other less than savoury substances, not to mention that none of them was fit for a lady's ears, seemed and endless well of entertainment to her. She laughed, cried, censored at times and did not even keep herself from admonishing him for misdeeds if he told her of them. She was with him so closely when he went back to his memories, it felt as if he lived those times again with her at this side.

What a difference it would have made if he had! If there had been someone to advise him, to soothe, to praise, to reprimand or to simply hold him.

In retrospect, it seemed as if his life had not been an endless string of darkness, pain and blood as he had always believed. It surely had been quite a lot less sheltered than hers, definitely much more bloody and painful, but obviously a lot less boring, too.

The insight dulled the ragged edges of the painful thing he'd carried around inside of him for most of his life, had him dream about other things than blood and fire sometimes, made him find solace and peace even at times when they were not making love.

It made him enjoy his time with her not just as an escape, as a stolen treat to which he had no right, but as something he cherished and would fight for if he had to.

…

Sansa had both been delighted about having three full days with him and depressed she would be left alone for longer than that afterwards.

He consoled her as best as he knew how, which predictably ended up with them in bed, depleted, satisfied and in each other's arms.

They must have dozed off for quite a while, because it was dark when he woke, the fire in the hearth burned down to softly glowing embers. Sansa seemed awake, her hand stroking him, probably searching for another heretofore undiscovered story.

"Those little crosses on your arms and legs, are these from arrows?"

"Aye," he said, voice scratchy from sleep. "Doesn't seem much, but I've been lucky with them. Usually archers dip their arrowheads into anything vile and dirty they can find. I've seen men die of gangrene, who came out of a battle with nothing more than one arrow in their arm."

"Seems like the gods were watching over you, then," she said with a smile in her voice.

He didn't rise to the bait as he had a few times before. For one thing because he knew she was teasing him, for another because with all the stories he'd told her, it had actually made an impression on him how often he had escaped the Stranger's clutches. Sometimes just by a hair's breadth and never without a new set of scars to wear, but still strong enough to fight. Still alive.

"Maybe they didn't do it for me," he mused, following a thought he had had once before, the night before he killed his brother.

Which reminded him of the one scar she hadn't asked about and probably never would.

The one scar he desperately needed to talk about, because what had happened back then stood between them like an invisible wall, a line he wasn't allowed to cross.

He wasn't particularly keen on going back to those days either.

Killing Gregor had been nothing like he had always thought it would be. There had been no elation, no sudden peace of mind, not even satisfaction. There had been relief, but it was for her, not for him.

For him, there was only a Gregor-shaped hole suddenly gaping in his life where before had been a purpose and a driving force. The shadow he'd lived under ever since his childhood was gone, leaving him exposed, blinded and disoriented.

He suddenly had a lordship and lands, people were bowing and scraping and even Joffrey remembered to address him with a bit more respect every now and then. But he'd not only inherited the good, but the bad, too. There were certain types of men who suddenly sought his favour, the ones trying to impress him with boasting of atrocities they'd committed. There was the terror he inspired, both on account of his own deeds and amplified by those of his brother that rested as a bloody inheritance on his shoulders.

Since Gregor's death, people seemed even more unable - or unwilling - to acknowledge that they had been two different men.

They brought him Gregor's armour and shield and had been shocked when he gave orders to melt it down and burn the rest. He kept the fist from the helmet for a while, but one day went down to the Street of Steel, gave a few coppers to a blacksmith and forced himself to watch for long minutes as the piece of steel melted and fizzled into nothingness in the blaze of the forge.

Fire was less of a foe after that.

Only one thing hadn't changed.

Her.

She had acted somewhat differently after the fight, seemed more aware of herself, more controlled and often more remote. But the way she looked at him, unafraid, sometimes even trusting and the feel of ice she gave off when Joffrey tormented her, that hadn't changed at all. Neither had her quiet suffering and the bouts of weakness only he was privy to when he brought her back.

She had filled the emptiness, filled more than had been missing, he realized only now when she laid curled against him with nothing but naked skin between them.

She had become his purpose since then, his anchor.

Not once had he thought to talk to her about what had happened, his own emotions too raw and unnamed to voice, glad it was behind him. Maybe he should have, before whatever it was that had happened to her had festered into something that turned her into a different woman whenever it was touched upon.

Almost hating himself for what he was about to do, he took her hand in a firm grip, placing it over a recent scar on his bicep, the gash still purple.

"You haven't asked about that one yet," he said, trying to keep his voice even, despite her desperate attempt to draw her hand away from out of his, despite her wide-eyed panic.

"No, no, no," she chanted when he didn't let go, a sound as high-pitched and panicked as if he had taken her hand and held it to a flame, causing a ripping, breaking feeling inside him that robbed his breath and made him release his hold on her.

She drew away, hands pressed over her mouth, shaking her head from side to side.

He sat up and gingerly touched her cold cheek.

"He's dead, Sansa," he said, wishing not for the first time he could crawl inside her head and find out what had her so troubled without having to torment her like this. "It's over."

She shook her head again, her hands still pressed over her mouth as if physically holding back the words he so desperately needed to hear.

"Talk to me," he pleaded. He knew he would beg if he had to.

Carefully, slowly as not to scare her more than he already had, he drew her into his lap, held her like he would a small child, like he sometimes had after her mistreatments, and folded her tight against himself.

"You have to tell me, Sansa," he rasped into her ear. "I cannot stand what this does to you, it kills me to think something terrible might have happened that I know nothing about."

Nothing changed for a few seconds, but then she stopped shaking, at least. Curled into herself even more and nestled closer to him.

"It's a long story," she said slowly, as if every word was a mighty effort. "One that will hurt to tell."

"I have three days," he whispered into her hair, stroking her. "And it cannot be worse than keeping it inside. Trust the word of someone who has just learned this a couple of nights ago."

Warm wetness ran down his chest as she fought with herself and he realized that her story would most likely involve himself at some point. Therefore, it might be equally terrifying for her to tell him of it as it had been for him to confess to his misdeeds at the night of the Blackwater.

"The past can't hurt us, Sansa," he whispered, not quite convinced himself, but needing to reassure her, "neither you nor me."

She sighed deeply and when she finally spoke, her voice was small and childlike, no trace left of the playful, sensual woman she had been mere moments ago. Again she was the tortured girl she'd been, scared and defenceless, a little bird in a cage, relentlessly stalked by a mob of hungry cats.

"The morning after Tyrion's trial, Joffrey sent Trant to me," she began. "He didn't talk to me, Trant never does, just dragged me into Joffrey's solar. Gregor waited there for me."

Sandor fought to stay calm and quiet. He'd been there that day, a bit later. The memory of seeing her only a couple of steps away from the monster that was his brother still maddened him. Back then, it had almost brought on the murderous rage that had made him slay dozens of men during the Blackwater battle.

"I hadn't seen him up close before, only once at the Hand's tourney, but he'd been wearing armour then and was much farther away."

"Not a pretty sight, that one, wasn't he?" he said, trying to keep his tone light. "Runs in the family, I guess."

She seemed unaware of what he'd said, otherwise she would have protested his self-deprecating remark. It seemed as if she had sunken completely into the past.

"He was the most terrifying sight I've ever seen."

...

tbc