30. Gunslinger.

Joffrey never knew about Sansa's attempt to get in touch with her brother, and she didn't try it again. Sandor wanted her to try it again, he told her that he would make sure that Robb could meet her in a private place where they could talk in peace and then everything would be resolved, but she refused. She wasn't going to do it, she wasn't going to risk everything again. She knew it was irrational, and she knew that she was being a coward, but she had already seen too many horrible things happening because of Joffrey's wrath. Sandor understood her fear better than anyone, but he tried to convince her anyways. When he saw that it was useless, that Sansa wasn't going to leave the Red Keep mansion again, he said that he would be the one to talk to her brother. Sansa forbade it. They argued for a long time, and finally Sansa won that argument. Sandor wasn't going to go against her wishes, even though he knew how much it was going to cost Sansa.

Sansa spent in her room alone the remainder of the days that she was going to be in King's Landing before she had to leave to the Caribbean with Joffrey for their honeymoon. She had already accepted the fact that she had to go, and she knew that she could do nothing against it. She wasn't going to protest.

Sandor hated to see her in that situation, but he was powerless. He thought about betraying his word and leaving at night to see soon-to-be President Stark and let him know everything that was going on there, but he knew that Sansa would never forgive him. Maybe things would work in the end, but she would never forgive him for risking everything and endangering everyone. She was strong enough to live through everything that was happening to her, and Sandor often wondered where the fuck that amazing strength came from. He wished he could have it. All that he had was physical strength, but when it came to the emotional strength that Sansa had he was the loser out of the two of them.

He received the worst news he could have received a day before Joffrey and Sansa left for their honeymoon. He was out driving Joffrey to a meeting, when suddenly his boss decided to mention to him what he had recently decided:

"Clegane, only Meryn, Boros, and Oakheart are going to come with us to the Caribbean," the soon-to-be new Vice President said. "You are going with my mother, Tommen and Myrcella to Lannisport."

"Why?" Sandor had asked, upset. He didn't want to go to Lannisport. He couldn't leave Sansa alone during her honeymoon to that bastard! He had to watch out over her, but he couldn't do that from the other side of the world!

Joffrey was annoyed with Sandor's question. Lately he was annoyed with everything.

"What do you mean, why? Because I say so! Isn't that enough!"

Sandor bit his tongue so that he wouldn't protest again and anger his boss, and he continued driving.

The next day he accompanied Joffrey and Sansa to the airport. Cersei, Tommen and Myrcella had already left King's Landing, and he was to take a plane to go to Lannisport with them. The other bodyguards were in another car, while he was in the same car as Sansa and Joffrey. He hadn't been able to properly say goodbye to Sansa, and it felt painful to realize that she was going to be away for two weeks, alone with that monster, away from him... He wanted to hold her hand, but Joffrey would see it, so he forced himself to remain silent and still and to not show any signs of affection at all.

Once they got to the airport he helped her to carry her luggage. He walked besides her through the airport, not wanting to leave her side for as long as he could. Sansa was walking without any enthusiasm, staring at her feet the whole time. Joffrey was surrounded by the other bodyguards to avoid any possible attack that could happen. They had to stop sometimes because Sansa, even though she was wearing sunglasses, was recognized by fans that walked around them. She smiled to them and said hi, and signed autographs when they asked her for them. However she didn't take any pictures with them because she didn't have time to, even though she would have loved to spend more time with all of them rather than leaving with Joffrey to catch their flight.

Joffrey and Sansa didn't board a normal plane, but a private jet instead of course. Sandor didn't board the jet and was forced to stay behind. If it wasn't suspicious or it wasn't against his nature he would have begged to go with them, just so that he could keep Sansa some company. But he couldn't do that, so he stayed silent and he watched Joffrey go inside the jet first, and then Sansa. Sandor had given her luggage to a flight attendant, but he was still holding the girl's purse. With an expression of extreme sadness in her face, Sansa extended her arm to take her purse away from Sandor. She did it slowly, gently, like she didn't really want him to let go of the purse. When she took it from him her hand softly grazed his own hand, merely touching it, sending sparks through his skin. Sandor's fingers let go of the purse, but his eyes didn't let go of Sansa. She was also staring at him; a small sad smile lightly curled her lips for a fraction of a second.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Good bye."

And then she left. She turned around and walked away from him. She didn't look back. She disappeared from sight once she entered the private jet. Sandor didn't want to wait to see if he could maybe see her behind one of the tiny windows of the jet; if he saw her one more time he would have the strength to leave, so he put his hands in his pockets and he turned around, leaving that dammed place.

He had to hurry to catch his own flight to Lannisport. He returned inside the airport and walked through crowds of people that were going to different places. He hadn't had to check any luggage because he had just brought a backpack with all the things he needed and he could go with it inside the plane. He had already gone through security before, so he just went straight to the gate that his ticket said.

He didn't have to wait a lot to board the plane. He was one of the first people to board because he was in business class (at least the Lannisters had been generous with that and he would have to spend hours seated next to some annoying fucker.) He put his backpack in the compartment above his seat, and then he say down and waited patiently until everyone was inside the plane and it was time to leave.

Once the plane was up above the clouds, Sandor got served a glass of wine. He drank it all in one sip so he had the flight attendant pour him a second one. He started drinking again while ignoring the look on the flight attendant's face, who was clearly thinking that he was some kind of alcoholic. The only think that Sandor wanted to do was drink and pass out, and like that he able to forget for a few hours... His mind kept going back to Sansa, to those last moments in which she had walked away from him. She was going to be away for two weeks, and Sandor was terrified of the state in which she might come back after spending so much time alone with Joffrey without no one to protect her. He was afraid that the little bird that had left him alone in the airport of King's Landing would not be the same little bird that returned to him in two weeks. He was afraid that those two weeks would leave more scars in her souls that added to the ones that she already had... He was afraid that she wouldn't stand it.

He realized that, since he met her that night in the concert, more than half a year ago, he hadn't spent so much time without her. They hadn't been able to be together, yes, but at least they had been in the same place and he had been able to make sure that she was okay. And she... She had transformed him. She had transformed him completely. Sandor realized in that moment how much he needed her. He felt helpless without her, knowing that she was so far away...

And that was why he drank. He managed to get a third glass of wine poured to him, but after that the flight attendant disappeared. He cursed under his breath, three glasses weren't nearly enough to give him the effect that he wanted! His head was a little heavy, but his mind was still clear and he still felt miserable.

He gave up and decided to lean back on his seat, looking outside the window. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, and the clouds were fluffy and white, and he despised it.
He wanted a weather that fit his dark mood, and then maybe he wouldn't feel as if the universe was laughing at his expense, making a joke out of his feelings by showing him that to everyone else that was a nice day while he couldn't be more fucked. He looked at the sky. Its intense blue color made him remember Sansa; her eyes were almost the same color...

He groaned and looked away. He pressed his hand against his face and rubbed his closed eyes with his calloused fingers, feeling exhausted. Emotionally exhausted, not physically exhausted. He wished he was tired, then he would try to sleep a little bit, but no matter for how long he closed his eyes sleep wouldn't come to him. His mind kept bringing up an image of Sansa. He cursed under his breath and opened his eyes, and he checked the time. There four hours left until they reached Lannisport. He needed to find something to do with that time of he didn't want to go crazy...

He noticed for the first time the TV screen in the back of the seat in front of him. He dismissed the idea at first, but seconds later he decided to watch something in it. What else could he do if not?

He turned the mini TV on, and then he pressed the screen where it said "Movies." More options appeared, and he looked at them. Comedy, Fantasy, Action, Drama, Kids... He decided to click on "What's New" and see of there were any recent movies that awoke his interest. He wasn't a big movie fan and it was very seldom that he watched TV.

He read the titles and the descriptions, and he dismissed all of them. He didn't want to watch any stupid dramas, or silly comedies, or unrealistic fantasies or...

His finger froze right over the title of the next movie that was presented in the screen, and his eyes widened.

Gunslinger. Starring Sansa Stark and Anthony Thomas.

Sandor didn't even read the description of the movie, he check on "Watch" immediately after reading Sansa's name. There was a voice in the back of his head saying "don't do it," but he ignored it completely. He knew that he shouldn't watch Sansa's movie; seeing her onscreen would only be torture for him, but he couldn't help him. It was the only way that he had of seeing her again...

The movie opened with moving images of a landscape, and Sandor recognized it as the countryside of England. There was soft instrumental music playing while the names of the actors and the producers and the director and everyone else whom Sandor didn't fucking care about appeared on the screen, but he did recognize the music. It was the melody of the song that Sansa had sung at the Oscars, the one she had written. It was beautiful. After all the names were shown, a house appeared. It was a normal, decent countryside house. It was two stories high, and large enough to assume that the people loving there were accommodated, though it wasn't the place wasn't a mansion. There were stables at the right side of the house, and the neighing of horses could be heard. The house was surrounded by green fields and hills, and not very far away was a lake. It was a very pretty place.

Suddenly laughs started to be heard from inside the house. They belonged to both a man and a woman. The laughs got louder, and suddenly the front door of the house burst open and Sansa came out running from it. Sandor was shocked when he saw her because he wasn't used to see her in a movie, he had never seen her in one before. Sansa (or, well, her character,) was dressed with a long dress, and the style made Sandor think that the movie was set in the early 1900s. He hadn't paid much attention to the information on the screen before, so he wasn't sure. The dress floated behind Sansa as she ran, and so did her long and beautiful auburn curls. Sandor was watching her and then suddenly a man appeared running out of the house behind Sansa, also laughing. Sandor groaned when he saw the man. He knew that man was her costar, Anthony. He was probably in his very early thirties. He had short brown hair and huge dark eyes, and the kind of smile that girls found dashing. He ran after Sansa, who was running downhill. He caught her by the waist and they both laughed and tripped, falling and rolling downhill. When they stopped rolling at the bottom of the small green hill they continued laughing at the top of their lungs.

"John!" Sansa's character squealed, and then suddenly that John dude kissed her.

It took several minutes for Sandor to realize that he was clenching his fists so hard that he had buried his fingernails on his palms and he had cut himself. He tried to relax and to ease the anger that was building inside of him. He needed wine.

It's just a movie, it's just a stupid movie, he told himself. It's not real.

"Oh, I love you, Alayne," the stupid John fucker said.

"And I love you," she said.

It's not Sansa, it's not Sansa, Sandor repeated over and over in his mind. She's Alayne. She's just a fictional character. She's Alayne, not Sansa.

That thought eased his mind and his anger a bit, but he felt stupid. Really, what the fuck was he doing torturing himself like that?! Didn't he have enough with having to see Sansa be with Joffrey in real life?! Now he also had to see her with that fucking idiot in the movie!

There's something seriously fucking wrong with me, Sandor realized. He was convinced he was masochiatic tendencies, what else could explain his stupid behavior? He was making himself hurt in every possible way, but instead of shutting the TV off he continued watching the movie. Better to be able to see Sansa, even if she was kissing some fucker, than to not see her at all.

So he kept watching the movie... Alayne and John were a recently married young couple that were loving off the money that he had inherited from his deceased parents. Besides, John was a soldier. Sandor found that out when he saw that the man got a letter that called him to fight in the war that had just started overseas. There was the typical sad scene where Alayne was sad and worried, John told her that he would come back to her, and they kissed. The next morning John left, leaving Alayne alone, and Sandor felt happy.

Yes! Leave so that I don't have to watch you two kissing anymore. And do me a favor and die in the bloody war!

It seemed that Sandor was going to be lucky, because the next scene was a scene of the war. Guns firing, men shouting, enemies fighting, soldiers dying. Sandor had been in a war and he had to admit that the movie did a bit of justice to the chaos that was that shit. Of course, the movie couldn't fully transmit the feelings that a man felt in the battlefield, it was impossible, but it did manage to show some of the horrors of battle. The actors were good, the scenery was good, and the sound was good. In the next scene he saw John. He was with some other soldiers away from battle, doing some kind of special mission. There was suddenly an explosion that devastated everything, and screams were heard. The scene faded and Alayne appeared in her room, reading a letter. She was crying her eyes out.

Poor girl, Sandor thought. The little bird is so used to crying in real life that she does a wonderful job faking it.

He did notice that her crying was forced, though. Other people wouldn't notice because she was an excellent actress, but he had seen Sansa during moments where she had broken down, he had seen her true despair. There was no possible way of faking that.

The movie escalated from then on. Poor Alayne couldn't catch a break. She was devastated over her husband's death, and to get things worse, her house burned to the ground. She managed to get out (of course she got out, she was one of the main characters of the movie!) Sandor felt pity for the poor girl when she lost everything and she had to start working hard as a seamstress to earn some money to survive, because there were no relatives of hers or John's that were alive to help her.

Meanwhile, much to Sandor's dislike, John was revealed to be alive. He was badly wounded and he looked like he would be dead anytime soon, but he had been saved by the people of a village that was near the place of the explosion.

Are you fucking kidding me?

John was unconscious, but he talked in his sleep. He said Alayne's name over and over, and each time his voice was weaker. The doctor of the village said in a very dramatic time and in a language that Sandor did not understand (there were subtitles,) that John wouldn't survive the night, and that it was a miracle that he had stayed alive that long. Sandor scoffed.

He can die for all I care, he thought. He was really not rooting for the man.

Alayne was shown again in England. It had been a little over two months since John "died," and she started working, and she had saved enough money to start over again. Sandor knew that something was bound to happen as soon as he saw her smiling a little bit. That couldn't go right. It was just like in real life, everything got fucked up somehow sooner or later. In Alayne's case it was sooner, when two distant relatives decided to track her down and find her. Sandor raised his eyebrows when he saw them in the scene where they talked to Alayne. The woman was a cousin of her deceased mother, and she looked like a fat hybrid of a toad and a rat. The man, her husband, was as thin as a stick and had crazy hair, like if he had been electrocuted. His teeth were all crooked and yellowish.

For some fucking reason that Sandor did not manage to understand, Alayne decided to trust them. He could see that she was wary of them, but she was too lonely and too sad since she became a widow, and she needed the comfort of having new family.

"What the fuck?!" Sandor muttered, this time out loud.

And of course, just as he had guessed, things went very wrong. The two crazy relatives were poor as rats, and they lived in a place that looked more like a pigsty than anything else. Alayne didn't care, she was too tired and she fell asleep on the dirty bed. During the night the two crazy relatives stole all her money and left her alone in that place, again without a single penny.

"Told you..." Sandor muttered under his breath, again out loud.

But things didn't stop there. When morning came, the landlord showed up! The crazy relatives hadn't payed the rent of the last two months, and the enraged man wanted the money. Alayne woke up started and found herself alone. She thought that maybe her relatives had left for a little while, but when she went to get money to pay the man to do them a favor she found that the money was all gone. She tried to explain to the landlord, but the man kicked her out to the street like a dog. Sandor wanted to throw himself inside the movie and beat the bloody shit out of the man when he saw the way in which he treated the little bird.

It's only a movie! he reminded himself.

So poor Alayne found herself alone and poor again.

The movie cut to John again, who had miraculously survived and healed and was now much better. He spent around five minutes saying that he had to go home to his wife. He asked about how he met her and fell in love, and about how she was the most important thing for him in the world and missed her more than he could possibly ever miss anything else. Sandor had no patience for that kind of sentimentalities, but he didn't make any comments. He supposed that he, now that he was so madly in love with Sansa, was just as stupid and folkish more times than he cared to admit.

John was about to leave the village when (surprise, surprise!) it was attacked. John got up and picked up his gun, which the villagers had brought to the village when they found him half dead at the site of the explosion. He started shooting and killing the attackers, which were the enemies in the war in which he was fighting. Soldiers from his own army arrived to the village, and a huge battle commenced. There were guns firing everywhere, and men getting shot everywhere. John fought with all his might, killing enemies and saving villagers, until he was shot and he fell to the ground. He stared at the sky above him and whispered the name of his beloved wife before closing his eyes.

Did he die? Sandor wondered. He didn't care. He just wanted to see Alayne again.

The next scene showed her. She was living in the street, and she looked like shot. Sandor had never thought that Sansa could ever look like that, but apparently Alayne could. Her hair was dirty and tangled, her eyes were staring to the void, empty, her face was blackened with dirt and soot and smoke and dust. She was dressed in dirty rags, and she was sitting in a corner of the sidewalk. People walked past her, some ignoring her, some glancing at her with pity. A child brought her a piece of bread, and said that she was too pretty to be there. Alayne smiled kindly and thanked him, then ate the bread while the child ran away to join his father. Alayne was distracted, deep in her own thoughts, when she heard people calling for volunteers to help take care of the wounded in the war. She stood up from the filthy corner where she had been sitting and went to present herself as a volunteer.

In the next scene she was somewhat cleaned up, and she was dressed in some kind of nurse-like outfit, with a white apron and a hat. Her hair was in a bun and it didn't look so messy anymore, and her face was clean. She was serving soup to the wounded soldiers that had been brought to London from the war, and she was being very kind and gentle with all of them. Sandor could imagine Sansa acting like that in real life.

John was there. Sandor didn't care anymore. He figured that after the shot months that the two characters had lived they deserved something better. Alayne wasn't far from where he was, but she was too busy attending to the other soldier, and he couldn't see her because he had a bandage over his eyes.

If after all this the movie ends like shit, I will find and shoot the director, Sandor thought.

One of the soldiers, who was missing both legs, asked Alayne to sing a song for him. He was very sick, and he just wanted to hear something pretty. Sandor could see the sadness in Alayne's eyes, the pity and the sorrow for the lives that had been destroyed of those poor man. Eager to please, she started singing, and Sandor gasped. It was the song...

"Gentle Mother, font of mercy,
save our sons from war, we pray,
stay the swords and stay the arrows,
let them know a better day.
Gentle Mother, strength of women,
help our daughters through this fray,
soothe the wrath and tame the fury,
teach us all a kinder way".

Her voice was as clear and soft as a stream coming down from the mountains, as pure as the sound of an angel choir, and carried over the rest if the noise in the infirmary as strong as the wind, reaching every corner, every ear of every man. Her voice was a mixture of emotions. It could be as joyful as the laughter of children in summer, or as sad as the paint of a thousand souls in despair.

John heard the voice of his wife and recognized her. He called her name and she heard him. She searched for him and found him, and he took his bandage off and saw her too. She ran to him in tears and they reunited...

...But Sandor wasn't paying attention to the movie anymore, he didn't care. He was just watching her, watching Sansa, and he couldn't stop hearing her voice in his head, that voice that had bewitched and captivated him the first time that he ever heard her sing... Sansa's voice was both a torture and a gift to him.

He realized then that he was crying. He wasn't just shedding tears, he was bawling like a baby who needed his mother. And the worst thing was that he couldn't stop.

He knew that people were looking at him funny. A flight attendant approached him.

"Sir, are you alright?" she asked him.

"Yes, I'm fucking fine," he rasped angrily. He wiped the years off his face with the sleeve of his shirt and then he stood up from his seat and moved the flight attendant out of the way. He needed to go to the bathroom, and try there to stop crying like a baby. He wanted people to stop staring at him.

He had never felt so angry. But above all, he had never felt more embarrassed.