Chapter 28

Prowling

Where the characters successfully prowl around King's Landing

xx

Sandor

Getting the Kingslayer and his bastard out of the hole in the ground proved way easier than he expected. The city turned silent before time, maybe due to the black menace boosting a coat of sharp glittery scales, hovering over the Blackwater Bay, or there was no wine left with the change of the seasons. Sandor Clegane was glad for it either way.

"Come," he told the nearly tamed lion, who followed without words, clutching to his chest an enormous book and a black candle, burning. The flame exhaled a peculiar dark purple vapour, and it emitted no heat as far as the Hound could tell, as if it were not made of fire at all. He still kept a bit away from it, on an impulse.

Tommen, unlike his father, was all for talking.

"You betrayed Joffrey," he said in an accusatory tone he must have very recently acquired from Cersei in the stone cage for wild animals they called the Red Keep. "Won't you give us up to the new king to earn riches and favours?"

"The new king is no hair of my arse," the Hound bothered to answer the boy, as all three of them hurried down the empty paved streets. The only sound to be heard came from Sandor's boots for his charges emerged from the soil barefoot like on each of their name days. "And don't think I betrayed Joff, not truly. I just ran away from everything like a scared dog who has had enough."

"Dogs kill kittens," Tommen observed, not entirely wrong in his assumptions; twisting Joffrey's neck did occasionally cross Sandor's darkened mind. His heart was at peace when he learned that someone else had effectively seen to that.

"And the men with the big black dragon on their golden armour will kill us all if you don't shut up," Sandor said, fed up with making conversation.

It worked. Sometimes he regretted his words didn't have that same effect on Sansa as before. It used to be so easy to scare her that it almost gave him joy, just like she had suspected. But that night he was determined to try another approach.

No longer a girl, he pondered without anger. I will see what kind of woman others have made of you, little bird.

He would get a good measure of her, all of her, and see if she would refuse him or welcome him closing the distance. He didn't want to dwell too much on which possibility terrified him more. He would uncover her, inch by inch, reveal what others have had before him. Since he had left her after their walk to the Mud Gate that night, he found that he didn't care what other men there were, when, or how many. It was up to him to see that there wouldn't be any more. If she would let him.

His resolve grew great as the mountains. It used to occur the same way during the countless long evenings of wine induced dreams, in his own cell in the Red Keep, the place someone once ventured to call a room, where he plotted and planned on whisking her away from the capital, away from his masters. To take her for himself, a selfish, starved dog. The one who would never share a bone.

And every time he would end up looking at his ugly face in the mirror some merciful bastard had put in his prison, until the night he shattered it with his fists, and covered it in a spare white cloak, not to remind him of the truths he sometimes wanted to ignore.

But never to forget.

It would not do to forget the truth, unpleasant as it surely was. It was what the gods have made him, to their glory, or their shame. And everyone was welcome to take a good long look.

At what life could do to you if you were not careful enough.

There was nowhere to go but back to the fisherfolk who would shut themselves on the floor above, and never put their noses out at night, and for that, too, the Hound was grateful. The only one who could see Jaime and Tommen were the bloody ravens, and so far the birds still could not talk, despite the dead dragons and the sleeping white walkers resurrecting to life.

"The accommodation lacks in comfort," he cynically told Jaime when he brought them in. "But I'd say that it still leaves the luxury of the black cells far behind."

"Thank you," the Kingslayer said, slumping to the floor as soon as they were out of the streets and over the looming stone doorstep, where Sandor had the misfortune to overhear the little bird wishing he would ride very far away from her, only to bring her a flower. The Seven Kingdoms were no longer the same in his grey eyes. They were a different land entirely. One with possibilities.

Tommen gazed around with improper curiosity only a child would be unable to hide.

"It smells on dog," the boy said.

The Hound chuckled thinking of Nymeria. "Don't tell it to the real dog when she gets back. She might not take it kindly."

"There is a puppy?" Tommen was happier than ever. "Mother never let me keep one…"

"Tommen," the Kingslayer finally rediscovered his natural grace in speaking, and not a moment too late, for Sandor's patience with children was running dangerously thin. "There is a pallet in that corner. You should sleep now. Please."

"I will, father," the boy said with such affection in his voice and obediently laid down with such incredible speed that the Hound started to envy the father lion. It was another of the simple things a mere dog would most likely never experience. Yet the buggering sister fucker who never had the guts to tell his children the truth had just got to enjoy the gift of fatherhood.

The Hound regretted his thoughts when Jaime gave him a pained look. The Kingslayer was not well.

"Maybe you should put it down," Sandor suggested, pointing at the odd candle. "What is it, anyway?"

"I wish I knew," Jaime said. "But it didn't seem prudent to leave it where it was, so I thought I had best take it with me."

The fire had not been kindled in the hearth that evening, the Hound noticed, so he moved the blocks of wood and dry cracking branches from it, clearing some space in its sooty interior.

"Here," he told the Kingslayer who relinquished his dark burden in the fireplace, and sat on the floor in front of it, the large book falling open on his knees. Jaime looked up to the Hound behind him, reminded of something, a consideration of importance judging by the green urgency of his questioning glare.

"The shield," he said. "Brienne's. You asked about it too. Look. Tommen recognised it in the dungeons."

The Hound stared wordlessly at a rather conspicuous entry in what had to be the White Book of the Kingsguard, depicting the life and brave deeds of the legendary Lord Commander in the times of King Aegon V, Ser Duncan the Tall, and his coat of arms.

A falling star on a sunset field, and a single tree.

The image he remembered hanging on the tapestry in the Clegane Keep, one of the few possessions left over from the times of his grandfather. Probably ruined by Gregor since Sandor ran away from the place. And that action of Gregor would have probably been for the best. Why their grandfather should cherish a symbol of a long time dead knight of old was beyond Sandor Clegane's capacity of comprehension. Maybe the old man had been more sentimental than the Hound had ever thought. It was plain stupid, not to mention presumptuous to keep such a token where it did not belong, in the seat of a minor bannerman of the House Lannister. Should Lord Tywin have recognised it, it wouldn't have gone well for the Cleganes. There would be no Raynes of Castamere to sing about their fate. Only ruined walls and bodies of all the castle folk put to sword, or worse, would speak of what words could not.

You either knew how to use your sword, or you died by it, sooner rather than later. There was little else.

Another entry on the page, done in elaborate ornamental calligraphy, flashed bright in front of a pair of grey eyes, slowly getting stormy like all seven hells. "Black of hair, seven feet tall…"

The height was his own, and Gregor had surpassed it. Very few people in Westeros could match it, maybe one of them bloody northerners who followed Lord Stark around in Winterfell in the unique visit that Sandor was forced to pay to that frozen middle of nowhere. He heard there were giants north of the Wall, but then again, he also heard they were in relation to man what a wild aurochs was to a manse goat. Not exactly one and the same.

It was a silly thought and Sandor disregarded it with all his might. The Kingsguard father no children, the much repeated statement fleeted over his mind, but only one look at Jaime crumpled in front of him was enough to send that notion to a pile of other obvious lies he had heard in his life where it clearly belonged.

"We can't stay here," Jaime said, and the Hound had to agree.

"No," he told him truly, "but we'll think of something by the morning. The bloody singer and the monk should show up any time, and they both have bigger brains than I."

"Or I," the Kingslayer said bitterly, waving his non-existent hand. "I used to be much more eloquent with smith-wrought means of persuasion."

"I'm out of spare clothing of the faith," the Hound said to halt the self-pity of his former liege lord, gesturing at Jaime's lack of decency. Pity will lead you nowhere, he thought, moreover, he knew, from his own experience. Pity was not what the Hound wanted, and neither did Jaime, whether he was yet aware of it or not. Sandor Clegane went to look around, digging through everyone's possessions, showing no respect.

"Here," he sneered, "we are all mummers now. I don't think that the others will mind. Or not very much."

Soon Jaime was dressed in Lord Blackwood's tunic featuring a giant tree, his tired body turning every bit as stiff as a dead white tree might have felt, if it had any feelings to start with. Almost falling apart from exhaustion. Sandor had seen men looking like that after surviving long and nasty battles.

"Get some sleep, Kingslayer," Sandor chased him away like a bugger he was, and only when he succeeded in his efforts, the Hound realised the most important flaw in his plans. He wanted to see Sansa.

But Sansa was not there.

Aegon

Many years later, after the Long Night, Aegon would still not be able to explain why he summoned Varys in the middle of the night at the beginning of autumn, where none of his other councillors could see him. Not even the straightforward Jon Connington who believed so fervently that Aegon was Rhaegar's son: the noble man fierce in his honour who had become Aegon's father in almost everything. Yet a terrible doubt was gnawing at the young king, and the Iron Throat felt less his own and more someone else's with every second he dared to seat on it. As a consequence, he avoided it, prowling around it in great circles while Ned Dayne and Robert Arryn guarded the entrance to the throne room.

It would dawn in a couple of hours.

Dawn.

Ser Arthur Dayne's sword was the only thing that felt like Aegon's own, as if a voice from the grave whispered to him that single truth.

Then again, Jon taught him not to believe in prophecies and premonitions. His father did, and it led him to his death. Rhaegar, like his father before him, believed in the prophecy of the prince that was promised who would issue from the male line of Aerys II.

Maybe Viserys had children before the horse riding barbarian killed him, Aegon would never forget the rumours in Essos concerning his uncle's demise. While his aunt stood by and watched. And that is the woman I am supposed to marry. A woman barely older than a girl who already buried two husbands and a brother. It was rumoured she was more beautiful than sin and that she took as many lovers as she could handle, men and women both. Aegon shivered, uneasily, when Varys finally entered, clad in a pale night gown, a dark blue night cloak and a pair of slippers ladies could wear at court.

"Your Grace," he said softly, "you have an important counsel to ask for, no doubt, to disturb your faithful servant in his night rest."

"Forgive me, Lord Varys," Aegon said and meant it, certain of one other thing apart of his love for his new sword. The man in front of him, for much that some would not consider a eunuch to be a man, had once saved his life, smuggling him out of the capital. "But there is a question I can ask only of you in greatest secrecy."

Varys looked around him and nearly under the throne itself. "Great secrecy," he parroted in a voice betraying no human emotion at all. "A most unusual demand in the friendly and loyal surroundings we are now all experiencing in the Red Keep after the long years of the Usurper's undeserved rule."

Aegon was not stupid and he understood. Even in the middle of the night, someone could be listening.

"Walk with me," he said. "The autumn air is sweet in the streets of King's Landing. I would breathe it at night."

Varys obeyed, and Dayne and Arryn followed. They didn't go far, barely a few streets in the direction of the Iron Gate, a peaceful part of the city where everyone seemed fast asleep.

Aegon sat on one of the stony steps surrounding a well in the middle of a small square, a buzzing place in daytime, where women would soon come to carry away the water. There was no much time left before the all powerful sun would wake up the city, its inhabitants and the beasts, stray and domesticated alike. So he asked, more bluntly than he intended.

"Varys, am I really my father's son?"

"As much as I am a son of my own father, I swear on that, Your Grace," Varys said with seriousness that further kindled the fears of the contrary in Aegon's heart.

"Sometimes," he stuttered, "I dream of Rhaegar, crying over my dead body. Except that the body is not mine but of a different boy. Then a green dragon rises in the sky, and I know that all will end well."

"Dreams play tricks on us, Your Grace," Varys said quietly. "Don't listen to them or you may lose your mind."

"The curse of the Targaryens, I know, One healthy on one mad in almost every new generation," Aegon said. "And I cannot help but wonder… I've known Septa Lemore since I know myself, and she is Dornish as far as she is willing to admit."

"What are you trying to say, Your Grace?"

"The Dornish are dark of skin, I know," Aegon said. "In Essos the sun shines so strongly that almost everyone is tanned… Yet now we are back in Westeros and the maesters have sent out the white ravens. Autumn is here, and winter will be here soon. We have been here for two months, and Septa Lemore's skin has turned imperceptibly paler, and mine, my own, Lord Varys, has remained as honey coloured as it always was. I wonder…"

"You are nowhere near as dark as Septa Tyene, Your Grace," Robert Arryn dared saying to his new sovereign and almost friend. "She's definitely Dornish, she even speaks like one. I learned to tell all accents of the Seven Kingdoms when I was a little boy at court and my father was the Hand of the Usurper."

"You even wear the Usurpers's name," Aegon commented, smiling."I meant no offence, Robin, it's a good a name as any other. Nonetheless, when it comes to me, I cannot help but wonder…" Aegon said looking at his honey coloured hands in the light of a pale moon, waning sadly behind the tall city walls.

"The intricacies of nature," Varys said sweetly, "the colour of an eye, the shade of skin, the charm of a pretty face, they all come and they go. You are still your father's son, Your Grace. You have my word on that for what it is worth."

"And about my aunt, Varys, what of her? Should I propose her marriage, or war? Or should I marry one of the other ladies on offer? Their number is growing by day," Aegon concluded with resignation, more worried about the answers he received so than before when all he had were questions. That afternoon he had received a raven from Prince Doran Martell, offering him his cousin, Ariana, Doran's daughter and heir, for wife. He had no idea how to respond to that generous offer.

"Let's say that," Varys chose his words carefully, "marrying your aunt would be a long step in the right direction of proving that you are your father's true son and heir. Everyone would see it as honouring a marriage tradition between siblings and close kin of the House Targaryen. But the choice is not yet here to make. I believe that you should talk to Princess Daenerys first."

"Talk! How when she hides on her ship under the wings of her dragons?"

"Maybe I can help!" a deep pleasant voice startled Aegon, climbing up from the direction of the Iron Gate. Dayne and Arryn took a protective stance in front of their King but the uncouth man in dark rags and a light cloak came forward, baring the palms of his hands in sign that he held no weapon. There was a longsword on his back and a lute on his hip, his waist devoid of any other weaponry. Aegon recognised the singer he had let go; well, perhaps he had made a mistake. He could be killed now by a perfect stranger and never know the real answers to his questions.

"Lady Sansa," Lord Varys said to a woman appearing behind, supporting another person with the help of a giant dog. "Well met."

"Well met indeed, Lord Varys," the young woman said calmly as if they were all exchanging pleasantries at court and not standing next to the fountain belonging to the commoners of the city of King's Landing. "Your Grace," she said to Aegon, "Mance Rayder means you no harm. He has come from far north with a song meant for your ears and the ears of your aunt. But for that the two of you should come together, and listen."

"Sweetrobin," she addressed young Robert Arryn, "I am truly glad to see that you are well and almost a knight grown. Has your ailment been bothering you?"

"Not so much in the last days, Alay… I wanted to say, Lady Sansa."

"Sansa, please," she admonished him gently. "We are first cousins."

"Sansa," the boy knight blushed in her presence.

"I took a liberty of recommending to your aunt to meet you before she may decide to scorch this city," the wild looking man said to Aegon then. "I didn't see fit to inform her I yet had to convince you to meet her as well."

"And what of my own messengers?" Aegon said, an unmeasurable wrath slowly taking hold of him. "Have they already been burned?"

"I have not seen them," Mance said with caution, avoiding a direct lie. "But her men mentioned they were in chains under one of the ships while their queen examined her options."

"Their queen," Aegon snorted. "Your words are a carefully boiled poison, bard from the north. Why should I trust you?"

"I am not asking for your trust," Mance said. "I only ask that you come to Mud Gate tomorrow at noon, with a chosen company of men you trust to protect your life, even against a dragon. I will not be present at your talk with your aunt if she comes, as she said she would. I will help that you meet and take my leave. The private matters of the kings are none of my concern."

"Then perhaps I will be in a company of a woman," Aegon said, making everyone's head turn and mouths open. Even Lord Varys showed signs of not understanding, for once, and Aegon's heart danced.

"If you allow me now, my lords, my lady, I should return to the Red Keep before my faithful councillors send out the Golden Company to look for me again. They pillaged some more in the already ruined villages of the war stricken Riverlands the first time I walked away after the phantom of my aunt. I would honestly hate to see it happen again."

"Your intent is noble, Your Grace," Varys turned to flattering. Lady Sansa made a perfect courtesy, and Mance just stood, staring forward as a statue of the Great Titan in Braavos, welcoming the ships to his harbour in his own particular way. By a blast. The way Aegon should perhaps greet his aunt before she decided he was not Rhaegar's son, and had him killed like her husbands and her own brother before him. He knew that he should greet Daenerys with a sword.

Dawn.

Daenerys

Daenerys knew she should go back out as soon as the latest of her uninvited guests left, the singer, the lady, and the wolf. For they were not the very last ones.

"Come out!" she called to the unknown and the unseen, not experiencing any fear.

"Daenerys," the man said under the brown cowl, not showing his face, holding forward a rounded wooden shield with a falling star. She could feel Drogon's excitement at it with sheer urgency and she knew beyond doubt that the man was no foe. But that didn't mean that she knew who he was. "I followed my friends here."

"Why if I may ask?"

"I was afraid you would have them harmed."

"So you came along, one man with a shield, among many man at arms at my command, to help your friends?" she asked faking indifference and amusement where she was most intrigued by the man's unexpected courage.

"You are forgetting a lance that was once broken, and a piece of armour of a dead king," he said, humouring her mood, showing his long freshly forged weapon in an unthreatening way and a black breastplate he wore, the decoration on it recalling a sigil that was not his, but hers by right. His words sounded sincere, unlike hers. "If you were in Harrenhal as you told Mance, than you may have noticed me as well, even if I am a far less colourful person than some of my companions."

"The monk who stood against the injustice done to the singer at his failed execution, they called you the Elder Brother" she said, and it all sounded true, but not completely. She repeated to herself that she could not trust this man. Trust was not advisable.

"And most of all, I wanted to see you, Daenerys Targaryen, the new wonder of Westeros, Mother of Dragons," the monk said, "and create my own impression of you."

"Have you done that?" she had to know.

"Most definitely," he said. "A rather high one, so far. But have you more prisoners in need of healing under your decks? I could give you a hand."

"There is a girl who doesn't remember her name," Daenerys said, surprising herself for answering. "She tried to kill me, but I couldn't bring myself to have her executed for that. She is so young. But it was not only that. If she had really tried to kill me, she would have been the first of many assassins who would have succeeded. Something stayed her hand. As I stayed mine, and Drogon's fire, in payment of that debt."

"Is it possible not to remember one's name?" the Elder Brother wondered.

"In her case it is," Daenerys replied. "The leader of my army, they are called the Unsullied, he deems it some witchcraft from across the sea. Or a result of the extreme suffering of body and mind."

"Which explanation do you favour?" the Elder Brother needed to know.

"What do you think?" she responded with a question of her own.

"You believe in the power of human suffering," he said looking deeply in her purple eyes. "Forgive me if I wrong you by saying so."

"You seem to know me well for such a short a time," the Silver Queen said, pleased at the thought that perhaps also in Westeros she could find an ally. Not a trusted one, at first, but an ally at least. "You've heard what I said to your friends. When I am done with them tomorrow, if they don't betray me to my death, I will show you the girl if you still want to see her."

"Thank you," the monk said, bowing simply. "I will hold you to your word."

Noisy and clumsy in his going, contrary to what he might have believed about the prowess of his silent arrival, the Elder Brother returned to the city, with his lance and his shield. Drogon flapped his leathery wings in the sky spreading them towards the sun, thrilled with the coming of the new day. And with something else Daenerys had never yet experienced from her dragon.

Green, green, green, the black dragon thought only of green, and revelled in the thought giving him joy, or so Daenerys understood him, wondering one more time, as she did every singled day, if his brothers, Rhaegal and Viserion, fared well.

If they were still alive.

Sansa

When Sansa and Mance hauled Brienne in the fisherman's house, none of their companions were there. Only two blond haired creatures, a smaller and a larger one, slept peacefully on two pallets in one of the corners. A fresh dread descended on Sansa.

Sandor was not there.

Did he come looking for her? What did he do when he didn't find her? Had he gone drinking? Wild fears swirled in her mind imagining what he could have done in his anger, when Mance solemnly declared. "The gods can be greater than we can picture them to be."

"My Ned Stark still lives!" he exclaimed and Sansa wished greedily he meant her real father and not the Elder Brother. "We met both Aegon and Daenerys," he continued, "and here are the two players who have been lost to me. They have to read soon the next part of my show, the best kept secret."

They laid Lady Brienne to sleep next to Ser Jaime and Tommen. It seemed like an adequate place. "They could be the lord and the lady, and the boy their child. Of some faraway castle in a land that exists only in tales," Sansa imagined aloud. "The sleep knows nothing of the Kingslayer and his whore. But he still would have allowed for you to be killed."

"We all do things we think best, but which bring harm to others," Mance said. "I will look for my back, but I will not hold that against him."

"My father said that is why we needed the laws," Sansa responded with the lessons of her childhood.

"As long as we do not forget that the laws are made and broken by men," said the King Beyond the Wall. "I could not judge another for transgressions I have made myself. I broke almost all the laws in this land yet there are only a few things I truly regret. The laws can change."

"What do you regret, besides… besides skinning the Boltons?" speaking of the horror was difficult for Sansa but she forced the words out. Not embellished and not false.

"I will tell you, Sansa, but not tonight. Tonight this house is empty! Tonight the moon was high! And my errand is almost done! I so have to go out to meet new dawn. Try a song or two. I picked up a rhyme about Daemon Blackfyre and his unrequited love which could come handy for amusing the drunk sellswords of the Golden Company…"

Sansa wouldn't admit it but she was relieved when both Mance and Nymeria were gone, one to caress his lute, and another to howl sadly to the moon, disappearing in earnest behind the Iron Gate. The wolf was distressed to the extreme after their talk to Daenerys. Sansa could not distinguish why, and while she sensed the animal's fear, the reasons for it escaped her.

She stepped out of the door, restless like she rarely was.

She felt him before she had seen him, a shadow among the shadows of the coming morning, black-shaped as when he hid in her bed when the wildfire consumed Blackwater all those years ago. He was roosting with the ravens on the city wall which did not collapse from his weight as he once feared. Or maybe he lost some of it, a man diminished without the dark metal of his old armour.

"I see that you take to seeing older men," he barked without looking at her. "I guess Mance is an improvement after Baelish, no doubt, at least he comes from that vast land of yours. Do his hands on your body remind you of home? Of frozen streams and summer snows? That's how the men of your father called it when I had to go to Winterfell. Summer snow, and it was deeper than anything I have ever seen in the west in what they told me was winter."

Sansa was upset with his words, and with a prickly feeling in the small of her back.

"Come down," she said, unable to fight him when he was so far away. She needed his proximity to receive at least a little bit of guidance on what was going on in his soul.

"You don't want me to," he replied after a while. "I'd do things to you. Things you wouldn't want me to do."

"Let me be the judge of that," she said and raised both her hands up towards him, too late in realising the futility of her gesture. If he took her on her offer, he would crush her down with his body like a broken twig, no matter that she had grown taller than most girls and women she had known.

"Mance asked me to go with him and see Daenerys Targaryen. He wants her to talk to Aegon, and that both she and Aegon watch his show," she tried explaining.

"And the dog was not worthy of being told before you went?" he snorted. "After… After we…."

"Somehow, somehow," she hesitated in baring her reasoning, "it was not the right moment. It rarely is, with you. My… my dead mother was with her, but luckily Daenerys doesn't seem to trust her counsel. And she gave us Lady Brienne as a token of her good will. You must have seen us dragging her in."

"I may have," he admitted, and Sansa concluded he behaved worse than the ladies of the court when he felt hurt. Because he didn't feign it as they mostly did. The Hound could get hurt by her. The sensation flowed through the air and she was never more certain of anything. And he had no right to be angry with her when he didn't tell her either that he would go out for Ser Jaime and Tommen, she realised.

"Come down," she repeated in a deeper voice, softer than a kiss.

He was with her in a second, making her lean to the cold wall where she stood, under the ravens' nest and next to the growing pile of penitent shoes.

He slid both hands under her bodice in a skilled movement, unfastening it swifter than her maids ever did, deft as when he wielded his greatsword on a different kind of battlefield, accessing skin, boldly. He cupped both her breasts and said: "Did the Imp do this to you?"

"No," she managed a reply. No one ever did, she thought. The stone behind her back stopped feeling cold, acquiring an eerie warmth of the walls of Winterfell, heated by the pools of hot water, even in the middle of winter.

"Did Baelish?" he asked again, dark of voice and thought, continuing to explore her figure in slow circling movements, descending to her waist, hands finding their way into her small clothes and further down between her thighs.

"You are lying," he accused her before she could even give her next answer. His words devoid of hatefulness but full of unwavering conviction. "You would not feel this way if no one ever did."

Sansa didn't know how she felt to him or how a maid was supposed to feel when someone touched her there. It was just different than anything that was ever done to her before.

"It makes no matter," he exhaled and got his hands out, embracing her, leaning his flat half ruined forehead on her own smooth one. "It makes no matter who did what to you. I would still want you. And it's driving me more insane with every day that passes."

Her entire body tingling from new sensations, Sansa sneaked her hands around his neck, and took the matters to the known ground. The new kiss was different than any other they gifted each other before, crude and wonderful in its devouring simplicity. She pressed her breasts into him, and it was even better. She couldn't remember how it was possible that she had ever been afraid of him or his mangled face. He seemed to approve of her deeds, yanking her behind and her legs off the ground until they instinctively ended somewhere high up and around his body, helplessly stuck in the mild autumn air.

A cry, such as she has never heard herself utter before, left her lips against her will, hanging between them like a confession.

And then, before she could process it all, he gently lowered her down, still well-placed in his arms.

"Not like this," he said, looking almost timidly around, losing his resolve, exerting all over her a cold controlled look of a man who used to loom next to Joffrey in a blink of one of her Tully blue eyes. "You want presents, and attention. Declarations of love. I cannot give you that."

Sansa could not tell him what she wanted but presents were very much down on her list of silly wishes of late. And his presence quite high on it.

"Stay with me," she murmured. "Don't tell me now what the next day will bring."

It seemed he could live with that last silly wish of hers.

When the party that went searching for the Lady Brienne returned home, they were still hiding in the shadows, immobile, not talking. When Mance came back, Sansa's hands went up, under Sandor's tunic, and they almost didn't see him, lost to the outside world. When the Elder Brother returned, the last one to do so, they shared their final kiss, impervious to the shrill light of the sun shining over the wall and the white blocks of stone it was made of, shedding its merciless glimmer over the land, washing away the promises and ending the prowlings of the night.

In the light, their courage dwindled. In the light, they were only Sandor and Sansa, not Florian and Jonquil, nor Rhaegar and Lyanna.

In the light, it was difficult to pretend.

Whatever they were becoming, it would not be allowed to be.