Eventually the Hound gave up his struggle, cursed loudly and turned towards Sansa. "What is this bloody play? Do you want to help me or not? If not, why bother to come here at all? Just let your dear Father and his cronies to deal with me."

The old war-dog in him had taken over; his scowl was deep and his lips pared back revealing strong white teeth, the rigid form of the scarred corner of his mouth twisting his features into something out of a nightmare. Suddenly Sansa was reminded that this dog did not only bark but could also bite.

Yet she had no answer to him. She couldn't even think clearly and wondered what next; what on earth could follow her foolish notion? He was angry now – the rage she thought had left him had returned ten-fold. A rational part of her mind told that it was no wonder; she had promised to help him and let him go.

Prevaricating between simply running away, or pulling the other lever that was linked to a counterweight and then running away, yet another thought came to her. And with that, calmness.

Sansa released her grip from the handle and stepped back a few steps to look at the huge man lying on the bench, subjugated. He had given up his efforts to pull himself free and just lay there, glaring daggers at her.

With calm had arrived clarity, and all of a sudden her qualms disappeared and she knew exactly what she wanted to do: To make him taste his own medicine, to let him feel what it was to be under another's power, to feel helpless and powerless to prevent what was done to him. It will teach him a lesson. That is all I want, to show him that. Then he can be on his way.

With composure she returned to her bundle and seized the dagger, then returned to her victim. The Hound took her approach in and instead of fear she saw only defiance in his demeanour.

"A fucking dagger? Is that it, you want to cut me with it? Go on, do it then!" He lifted his chin and Sansa saw his shoulders tensing in anticipation of whatever she had in mind. Fleetingly she wondered if he had been ever tortured or held against his will like this - and unbidden an image of a boy dark of hair, pressed against hot coals, flashed through her mind. Don't think about that now. She wavered for just a second but then pushed the feeling of uneasiness away.

"Should I ask you for a song?" The words came out of nowhere.

That. The change in him was imminent. Where there had been growling menace and defiance just a second ago, now all she could see was his downcast eyes and a flick of his head as he turned it away, abruptly. Why?

Sansa held her breath, waiting for him to say something, anything. To curse her again, perhaps. To tell her to get on with the job. Yet silence surrounded them both, silence of a tomb. It made sense – cries of agony of those tortured there should not be heard elsewhere in the castle. After a while her ears attuned to the silence and no, it was not a complete silence after all. A rustle; sounds of small animals making their way in stale rushes. A faint clank of metal against metal. His laboured breathing. Blood humming in her own ears, rushing through her veins.

Finally he spoke. "Aye, mayhap you should. Mayhap I owe you one." His voice was lower than before, hardly a whisper. He had ceased his movements and just lay there, motionless.

Should I ask him to sing Florian and Jonquil? The passing thought made Sansa smile weakly. "No need. I have something else in mind."

She approached the Hound's prone form carefully despite his constrains. There's nothing as dangerous as a trapped beast, she remembered her father explaining to her brothers once, a lifetime ago. He had continued explaining that the danger lay in that they fought even more fiercely as they had nothing to lose.

"I will not harm you," she added, as if to placate the wild animal in him. Maybe she shouldn't have, maybe it would have been better for him to dread what she was going to do? Yet a lesson was all she had in mind.

Her expert mind soon saw where to best cut and so slicing and tearing the cloth she worked away, her tongue darting between her lips in deep concentration. That she knew how to work fabric helped, although Sansa could have never imagined putting her knowledge to this kind of use. She felt almost sorry for ruining a perfectly good tunic, although it was well-worn and crudely made, probably by the brother's themselves. From the corner of her eye she noticed him following the blade as it moved about him, although when she neared the collar he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away so far that the cords of his neck strained.

As she got close to him she got a whiff of an oddly familiar scent - and quite out of the blue she found herself in the sept of Winterfell. Herbs and fragrant oils burning in front of statues of the Seven… memories of prayers kneeling next to her lady mother… tranquillity and serenity filling her soul… Then she shook her head, almost angrily, telling herself that this was the Hound, not a real brother of the Faith. Scent of a sept steeped into his clothes did not make him holy in truth.

She tried not to think of the man under her hands but only focussed on the task. It was difficult though. He was not one of the maids standing in for her, wearing a half-finished dress so that she could mark the length of hem and sleeves, the gravest danger being that she stuck a needle just a little bit too enthusiastically earning a muffled squeal from her victim. No, this was a beast of a man, full of explosive energy that would be directed squarely at her with destructive consequences should he be free. Sansa was grateful for the ancient chains, briefly glancing at the sturdy hooks protruding from the wall. They would not break, not even under an onslaught by someone of his strength and stature.

Yet there was a strange acquiescence in the Hound, whose eyes followed her every move with an intense focus almost equal to her own. She had expected him to struggle more, curse more and try to bring her down with crude words. Yet he stayed silent and she wasn't sure whether she would have preferred colourful language and his loathing over the ominous acceptance.

When Sansa finally moved away he however shuddered and released the breath he had been holding. She admired her handiwork; the tunic was now in pieces that slid away easily falling onto the bench, revealing his naked upper body to her eye.

"I will look upon you now. Just look – I will not touch you." Where these the same words he had said to her all those years ago? She couldn't remember. What she did, was the terror and anxiety washing over her when he had undressed her, an innocent maiden, wholly terrified…and yet there had been something else too.

He was far from innocent and it would not be her eyes on him that would make him fret, but being forcefully restrained might do it. Of course she was not going to look at him as greedily as he had stared at her. She was still a lady, despite her current extremely unladylike behaviour. And ladies did not feast their eyes on semi-naked men.

Sansa had moved at the head of the long bench just behind her victim's head, so he couldn't see her. His scrutiny had started to get on her nerves and she decided to let him just lay there for a while so he could experience fully how it felt to be completely helpless. She observed the stonework on the opposite wall, glanced at the oaken door, checked the wall hooks once more. She looked everywhere else but at him.

Except…her eyes were inexorably drawn to him wherever she looked and after a while she gave up.

How hairy he is! was the first thought that crossed her mind when she took in his appearance. She had seen before straight bristles of his beard morphing into short curls down his throat and under his collar, but now she could see how the matt of dark hair continued unbroken down to his chest and stomach. His neck was thick, his chest was broad and well-formed and outlines of his muscles clearly defined. They curved from his sides to his shoulders in a dance of alternative arcs, the thick forms of his upper arms twisting and coiling in a strange symmetry, tapering towards his elbows and then again growing in size in his forearms. There was a distinctive line where the browned skin of his lower arms turned paler, suggesting that he had spent time outdoors in shortened sleeves. Thick veins travelled under his skin and there was something vulnerable in how they appeared so exposed in the undersides of his arms where his skin was paler and scarcer of hair. And how big he is!

And then she noticed the scars; the story of his harsh life painted on the canvas of his skin. Battles, skirmishes, ambushes, all inscribed with the universal language of pain and sufferance.

Sansa had seen half-naked people before; children running around the warm ponds of Winterfell in days gone by; girls with whom she had bathed in communal baths; soldiers in training yard their upper body bare on a particularly warm day. Always they had seemed somehow less without their clothes; smaller and less-threatening with their pale limbs and sticky arms. But the Hound was an exception. It was not only the abundance of hair covering him all over, even in his armpits – she had hair there as well, but it was soft and downy, not dark and long, and the sight of his was all too disquieting for her. Neither was it his size alone. Or maybe it was, maybe it was the solidity of his build that made him now appear if possible even bigger than he had been with his tunic on.

Still the silence was suffocating. Sansa couldn't understand why he was so quiet when she had expected a string of expletives, threats and curses. Yet there he was, only the up and down heave of his chest indicating that he lived and breathed. He had turned his head back towards her and his eyes were open, once again focussing on the cause of his current predicament - her. He showed no fear or anger and there was something unnerving in his composure.

Realising that this was not enough and that she had to do something else to make him truly realise the gregarious position he was in, Sansa resorted to the only threat she had. She leaned over him once again with the dagger in her hand, and ignoring his stare she lowered the blade so it lay flush against his ribs. She noticed him wincing – the steel must be cold – and heard his sudden intake of breath. She slid the blade flat against the skin and felt how it caught the hair and cut it.

She registered how his nipples, not far away from the dagger edge, stood erect even though the room was not particularly cold. No hair was growing in a flesh-coloured area around them, she noticed with interest, and curiously their size seemed disproportionately small compared to everything else in him. This was the first time she was able to pay attention to such things as she had never been so close to a man in such state of undress. A part of her - the part that was not shocked by her own audacity and wary of every movement of the Hound lest he lashed at her by some miracle - took in those things with morbid curiosity.

"That much about 'no touching'. Didn't expect anything less though. So go on, cut me, girl. Do it! You do you know where the heart is, don't you? Why else would you lay a blade on me?" His voice was still low, but strangely not angry. His body though – it was tense and his shoulders hunched as if in anticipation of springing into a movement. Sansa recoiled.

"I am not really touching you. Only with the blade – and my hair," she added and by impulse lowered her head and shook it slightly so her long tresses fell down and on his chest.

The brush of his hair on her skin, the tips of his locks tickling her. She had concluded then that he had not broken his promise as how could he have controlled where his hair lay?

The big gasp of air he breathed in on the impact startled her almost as much as the sight of his bare skin so near. It was untoward, it was indecent, she should not be so close to him. A lesson – a lesson for him is what this is all about.

Full of resolve and with bravado hiding her fluster she moved to her next target, slicing the cloth covering his lower limbs with a few strategically placed cuts. The tearing sound as she pulled it apart filled the room. Startled, she paused for a moment before continuing more cautiously.

When the tip of her blade met the fabric of his smallclothes under the rough-woven material of the breeches, she hesitated. The image of Tyrion on her wedding night came to her. His manhood had been ugly, thick and veined with a bulbous purple head. She didn't want to see anything like that again for sure.

Sansa lifted the tip and sliced only through the top layer.