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Chapter Text

So it is only him that sees the fire haired girl tread curiously to one of the hearths during the evening meal. Only him that sees her reach curiously for the licking flames. Only him that tumbles from his seat and snatches her away with a roar of warning.

********

Her chubby little hand reaches out and grabs his cheek, latching onto scarred tissue. Ridges and fissures that scar and reveal the soul within. “Ouch,” she proclaims, part question and part otherworldly understanding.

His lip lifts wryly. “Aye, little bird,” he rasps, quiet and part broken. “Ouch.”

She regards him sadly, large Tully blue eyes quivering with tears, little fingers still holding him. Then she leans forward and presses a slobbery kiss on his wrecked cheek. “Is better now?” She asks sweetly, hopefully.

And its absurd, utterly impossible, but it is no lie when he murmurs, “aye, little bird. Better.”

Her little bow-mouthed grin, half filled with even white teeth, is like a balm to his wounded soul and he wraps her gently in his arms and hugs her to his chest. Little cherub arms try to hold him back, but they cannot span the width of his wide chest. But it is enough. More than he's ever had and he knows as he sits in front of that hearth that he will guard this precious little child from whatever the world seeks to throw at her.

Chapter Text

They accused him of murder and locked him up, postponing the trial dates further and further as they stumbled after evidence. There wasn't any to be found except for his reputation and the horror that was his brother. Second hand, circumstantial. Its all laughable, really. They know he's a monster and yet they can't prove it. He doesn't give two flying fucks. Prison life agrees with him. Its cold and its brutal and there's nothing pretty about it, not even false trying at it. Its how he sees the world anyway and no ones lying about it here. Its a constant fight for survival and all about hierarchy and fighting to be top of the food chain. In here, he can become the lord of all. In here, sheer strength and intimidation rules. He's got plenty of both. Enough to get everyone to leave him the fuck alone.

sansansan

Ned Stark comes to him a year later and he's not the man the Hound remembers. He'd been a quiet man, a stern man, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, but there had still been joy in his eyes. Warmth when he looked upon his prodigious amount of children and beautiful, elegant wife. Now those gray eyes were hollow, dead and defeated. He'd lost much in the last couple of years. His best friend, that drunken fool Robert, was the first to go. Wasn't long after that his family was torn apart. One of the boys in a devastating accident that only a fool would believe that's what it had been. The youngest girl gone without a trace, the second slipping away not long after. His family's ancient wealth stripped bare nearly and most his friends abandoning him. He'd dared to stand up to the Lannisters and they always repaid their debts. In blood or gold, the choice was open to the receiver, but Lord Eddard Stark was a man of principles and he spat upon their blood money. Lot of good it had done him. He was broken for all his trouble and honor, holding onto what was left of his family with shredded fingertips.

They sat opposite of each other, a heavy metal desk between. One dressed in a simple gray suit, the other prison regs and chains. Both broken in different ways. Different men from different worlds, but life had kicked them both until getting up again was almost impossible.

“You look well, Clegane,” Stark opened. Noble hands clasped together and resting on the desk as he hunched forward.

The man that had been known as the Hound for most of his life, laughed. Steel on concrete like when the chair had been dragged back and he'd been chained to it. “And you look like shit,” he rasped back, sprawling back as much as the chains would allow. His hands were cuffed as were his feet, a chain running between them.

Stark frowned. “This is madness,” he murmured more to himself than the giant of a man.

Sandor snorted. “Aye.” His voice was a rough rasping Scottish burr, a contradiction to the older man's refined English accent. “Why are you here?”

Ned Stark watched him through cool gray eyes, measuring, and it makes the younger but bigger man squirm. Its a familiar gaze he realizes, though the color is all wrong. His daughter had had those eyes, in the end. Ones that frosted over and saw the world for what it was and not simply what they wished. It made Sandor angry. Furious as he remembered the girl he hadn't let himself think about and done nothing to save.

“I'm here to make you a deal.”

Again the sound of derision. “Let me guess. Roll on the Lannisters for my freedom. Go fuck yourself, Stark.”

The other man ignored him, mostly. “Not at all.”

Sandor felt wariness creep up on him. That idiot Prosecutor Dondarrion had only been spouting one tune since he'd been arrested. Roll or rot in prison until they found enough evidence to convict him of the murder he'd been accused of. Sandor was half tempted to confess just so he could keep his comfy lodgings, but he figured he'd wait a while to see what the little prick would do. Now this.... Stark wasn't in with Dondarrion though the two of them should have got along like two peas in a fucking pod with all their spouting of truth and justice. “What do you want?” He snarled.

“My daughter.”

It wasn't what he had expected and yet it made sense. “I haven't got her.” And damn me and that stupid little bird for that. I could have. I could have kept her safe. I would have.

“Not yet.”

For a man who had lost his mind, Ned Stark was disconcertingly calm. “Make sense or fuck off.” He did not like this game one bit and wanted out.

Lord Stark steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them. “I have the evidence now to convict you of murder. You'll be sent away for life, solitary most likely for most of it for a man like you. A life of constant supervision and orders and cavity searches.”

Sandor barked another laugh. “You make it sound like that's what life hasn't always been.” Those ice eyes regarded him silently again, so long that Sandor squirmed. “What do you want?” He rasped, low and angry.

“Like I said, my daughter.”

“What the fuck do you want me to do about it?” He was no longer sprawling, but leaning forward in his wrath, body straining against the chains that held him down.

“Get her.”

The man could have sprouted horns and shocked him less. “What?”

Ned Stark opened a brief case and withdrew several papers. “These say that the evidence against you was all circumstantial, that the witness could not be found to testify and that the DNA and ballistic evidence was circumspect and no longer admissible in court. Dondarrion has already signed off on them. All we require is your answer.”

The wariness was in his bones now. “In exchange for what?” He asked quietly.

“You infiltrating the Lannister organization and extracting my daughter if she still lives. If not, gathering whatever evidence you can so I can bring them down.”

Sandor stared at him for a moment before laughing in his face. “You've lost your fucking mind, Stark. You think I'm gonna commit suicide for you and your fucking stupid daughter? For what? Doing the right thing? Bugger that and you.”

The older man splayed his hands hard on the desktop, pressing until bones and veins stood in relief with the pressure. “No, I do not expect it of you for those reasons.”

“You've got no other reason for me to do it, do you, old man?”

Ned Stark leaned back in his chair, weary but calculating. “You've probably surmised that I've already sent men undercover into their operations?”

Sandor snorted again. “How'd that work for you? Too noble to send the type of scum needed for that work, am I right?”

The older man conceded this with a small nod. “Some did better than others. Lied better, actually flipped in one case, but they're all gone all the same. They couldn't find what I sent them for, but they had plenty to tell. About Sansa. About you.”

The wariness had turned to churning guilt and rage in his gut. “Worried I fucked your precious little princess?” I would have, had she let me. Had she wanted me. Had she not cried. Fuck me, little bird, you kill me even when you're dead.

The words finally made Stark flinch. “No, though I do not doubt you wanted to.”

That hit him hard and he knew it shouldn't have. “Everyone did. You threw a lamb into a den of lions, you fool.”

Stark pressed his eyes closed. To seal away the words, the images his mind supplied of what might have happened to her. They both knew if the girl still lived, it would have been better if she had died. “I know. And you're going to help me get her back.” His eyes opened to reveal gray steel, tempered in ice, and forged in determination.

“Why would I?”

“Because you hate yourself just as much as I do for leaving her there.”

“What makes you think I give a fuck about some pretty little bird? There's many more out there for the taking with a lest costly price to pay.”

“Because you call her little bird.”

And Sandor Clegane's soul shivered.

“You never beat her, never raised a hand even when commanded. The first order you ever disobeyed.”

He was fucked. He'd been caught and damn him if he could refute the words spoken. He knew he'd agree to whatever Stark asked of him in that moment. He'd run from his failure to the girl, the sweet red haired thing that had gotten under his skin and made a broken dog like him dream of something better than he had. He'd risen higher than himself to offer her freedom and she'd turned away. In fear of him, but it had been enough to smack him back down into his place. But he should have taken her anyway. It would have been the right thing to do. To save her. But he'd been too wounded and slunk off with his tail between his legs and got himself arrested for murder only a couple months later. And lived with the ghost of what he should have done as he languished in prison.

“Bugger you, Stark, and your fucking useless spies,” he snarled. A rabid dog backed into a corner and not liking it one bit.

Stark merely smiled sadly. “You'll be cleared of all charges ever put against you, your choice of an estate in the America's and enough money to live in comfort until the end of your days. All I ask in return is my daughter.”

“Small enough price to pay. I get exile in comfort and you get your Brady Bunch back.”

“One that you will pay.” It was not a question nor a command.

Sandor stared at him, long and hard and angry before he snarled. “Give me the fucking papers.”

Stark slid them wordlessly across the desk and Sandor signed his life away. After all, it was likely he wouldn't make it out alive so it didn't matter two fucks what he agreed to. But he'd find the little bird before the Lannisters figured him out and brought him down.

Chapter Text

He's half asleep as he stumbles through the house on his way to the kitchen. The halls and rooms are unfamiliar despite the fact that the house is his. But its not home, its not Winterfell back in England and he's spent little enough time here to make it only slightly more familiar than a hotel. Its the unfamiliarity of the place he'll tell himself later, that makes him not be alarmed of the light streaming from the door. That and the fact that he has truly accepted that his eldest daughter, his Sansa, his little lady, is sleeping with a man with the nickname of the Hound. And Arya will say he's lucky at what he stumbles upon, but Ned doesn't ever want to think about what is worse and how Arya came to see it. Because then he thinks he might abduct all his children and lock them away forever.

The scene is innocent enough when he stumbles to a stop at the kitchen's side door. Clegane is sitting at the large island, the overhead light bright. He's balanced on a barstool that looks tiny under him, one long leg braced on the rungs, the other stretched out to the floor in worn jeans and scuffed boots. Hunched over the counter and the paperwork strewn across it, an old white tank stretching across his broad back. There's enough scars visible-gunshots, knife cuts, others he doesn't know- to make an old soldier like him uncomfortable, nevermind the burns running down his left arm that are newer than the ones on his face. There's a glass of amber by his hand, the ice mostly melted, an ashtray with half a Marlboro stubbed out.

Sansa is at the stove in an ankle length nightgown, light woolen shawl across her shoulders, humming to herself as she makes a pot of tea. Her hair is a loose silken tumble across her shoulders, falling across her back and glimmering under the lights.

Its innocent and warm and it catches in Ned's throat, burning and tearing at the old grief there. Those horrible years of not knowing whether she was dead or alive and trying so hard to get her back. Battering against the walls the Lannisters had put up until he was broken and bloody and his family was almost gone. And out of all that blood and despair the Hound had found them. A tattered remnant of the Lannisters ferocious beast. A broken man the world had thought dead, he'd offered them his service. And he shunned him, Ned remembered. Told him he was nothing, that he should be dead. Even Catelyn, his Cat, hadn't disagreed with him there. Murmured later that it was pity that murder was illegal for the likes of him. It had been Bran that had suggested they send him for Sansa, to prove his loyalty to the new masters he'd sought. Ned had thought it foolishness, but now here they stood. Him in a house he owned, watching the quiet domesticity and feeling like an intruder, but he stayed rooted to the spot, trying to understand.

For a long while there was only the sound of Sansa's voice, sweet and clear, the whistle of the kettle, the scratch of Sandor's pen and shuffling papers. But when Sansa's tea was done, poured with a heavy dose of honey added, she moved to Clegane's side. Quiet, but assured, her long fingers reaching out to brush his bare shoulder. His acknowledging movement just as quiet. A slight widening of his legs, an opening of his hunched shoulders and then Sansa was slipping into him. Half sitting on one muscled thigh, feet braced against the floor, she rested her head on his shoulder. His arm curved around her waist in a familiar way, big hand splayed around her hip, holding her loosely to him as he never looked up from his work.

It was sweet and quiet and familiar, innocent and warm and an outsider would only see a couple that were comfortable with each other. But Ned saw the girl she had been and the girl she'd come back to them as and was fiercely glad of the woman she was now. But he was also the man that had seen Clegane's file, watched the footage of some of his more brutal encounters in life. Saw the shell of the man that turned up bleeding on his doorstep seeking salvation and returning a month later having found it. He knows the man that sits before him has all those men within him, but is no longer them, but that's all he can see. He can't see what Sansa sees and fuck it, the rest of his family either. Somehow the fucking Hound has brainwashed his family into thinking he's something good, something worthy of touching his eldest girl. And he's not seeing it. Not seeing how the scene he's watched is at all possible.

“Ned?”

Cat's soft voice nearly makes him jump out of his skin and he thinks he's getting old enough that the term nearly gave me a heart attack won't be a figure of a speech. “Christ, Cat,” he whispered.

She smiled bemusedly at him. “What are you doing? And why are we whispering?”

Still baffled and frustrated he merely jerked his head at the doorway. Still amused, she peered around him and he watched her eagerly, waiting for her disgust and horror to validate him. But it never came, only a happy sigh and tears glistening in her eyes like when she'd seen Robb and Myrcella's first baby boy. He stared at her in confusion, wondering why.

“Oh, Ned,” she breathed. “She's so happy.”

Was that it? Was that what everyone else saw? All they saw? Curious now, he looked back through the doorway.

Sansa murmured something into what was left of Clegane's ear and he snorted in laughter, an ugly rasping thing, but she grinned with the pride of her accomplishment. The soft beaming radiance seemingly caught him, stilled him into staring at her, something akin to softness easing the harshness of his face. Her expression never faltered under his assessment, not until he dipped his head to press his brow to hers in a simple affectionate gesture. Then the smile faded, but the sweet happy contentment remained and Ned had to face the truth. His Sansa never quite looked that relaxed, that blissful except when she was with the Hound.

“They really love each other,” he murmured to himself.

Cat simply laughed quietly at him and dragged him back upstairs.

Chapter Text

He sees her for the first time in years in a coffee shop on the wharf. Its so ridiculously mundane and ordinary and cliché that it fucking hurts. And she shines. Shines brighter than any sun and it burns hotter than any fire he's ever been thrust in and he thinks that maybe this is one he might not mind being consumed in.

Its a warm and clear September morning, so unusual for the Washington coast that's usually dripping in rain and thick gray clouds. He's just gotten off his graveyard shift working security for Manderly, but he's got another shift of hauling shit starting in hour and caffeine is one of the addictions he hasn't and is never intending to give up. He's let go of drinking himself into stupors though sometimes its only the whiskey that can chase away the nightmares and the cigarettes are going to kill him one day, but coffee, thick and black will go with him to the grave. Like her tear filled blue eyes.

He's never thought to see her again. Not after he left her to the fucking Lannisters. Thought he'd burn in eternal Hell for the crime of leaving her there and not going against her wishes. Probably still will. But it feels like a step towards redemption when he sees her across the crowded little shop, all long full lines, thick auburn hair like a fiery waterfall and sweet beauty. Her big blue eyes, once so innocent and now not quite so naïve, are staring at him with wonder, wide with the impossibility of seeing him. Full rose lips parted in surprise and fuck, when did she turn into a young woman instead of a little girl?

He's got thoughts of making a run for it, of slipping out the door and her life and running to some other place far away where he'll never see her again and it doesn't make sense in the way it does. All he wants is to stand and go to her, apologize for leaving, beg for her forgiveness. Sink his bloodstained hands into all those fiery strands and lick the taste of whatever girly beverage she's got in her hands out of her mouth. But he has a history of giving into his impulses and having them tear him apart and he's learned a better way now. He knows he's nothing good for her and it would be better to pretend he didn't see her even as he packed away his meager belongings and threw them in the back of his ancient pickup. Drove across the country or fuck, even left the buggering continent. It'd be for the best and he's got plans laying in his mind before he even moves, but they combust and blow away in the wake of her walking towards him. All tremulous smile and shaking hands and he thinks maybe she hasn't grown as much as he first thought if she's still so afraid of him. He'd never hurt her, never, but he knows he never talked pretty to her or was easy on her no matter how hard he tried. Tried harder at that than anything else for all the good it did him. She still chose Joffrey and the Lannisters over him. He'd still been the worse monster even though he had tried so buggering hard to be better.

“Sandor?”

The hesitant broken whisper of a question tears him away from his thoughts and to her, standing so close above him. He wonders how his name can be question with an ugly mug like his. There's sure not to be some one else who looks like him.

“Little bird,” he rasps and wishes that hadn't come out sounding like a prayer. Feels vulnerable just sitting there with her standing so tall beside him, so he rises. Still so big, so deadly, utterly made for destruction with his ruined face and his strong body that he worries he'll break her. But she's taller than she used to be and fuller in her figure though still so slender with her creamy skin that looks like porcelain. “You've grown.” The comment holds more than it should. More than a notice of her height, her figure.

The faltering smile finally takes root and blooms wide, like a rose unfurling even as tears fall from her eyes, prettily sliding down her cheeks. “Its been a few years.”

Time he thinks he might have been able to measure to the minute if asked and it scares him how clear the memories of her always are. “Yeah.”

“Its been years,” she whispered. She's staring up at him, still tearful, still smiling. But there is sorrow in her very soul. He can see that in the clear window of her eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

His snort of derision is an old familiar sound, one of the things that has never left him no matter how much that holy fucker tried to change him. From the man he was into the man he had wanted to be when he was a child before Gregor destroyed him. He's not there yet, but he's been getting closer though he knows he'll never be one of those handsome charming men that this little bird loved so well. “Not yet.”

The tears still and some of the sorrow eases from those blue iris'. “I'm glad.”

Something tears within him at her soft proclamation. Its ugly and its painful but its a good sort of pain. Like bruised and bloody knuckles after a good brawl. “Are you, little bird?”

“Yes.” There is no hesitation, no wait before her answer and he can detect no lie. He remembers she never could tell a lie to save herself and he wonders if its still the same. If that part of her has stayed true when so much is different. Like the way she looks at him.

He doesn't know what to say, what to do. Nothing in his life has prepared him for the way she seems to be glad he's made it through, intact or not. No one has ever been happy for his life, not since his sister now long dead. But her words make him remember the way she looked at him when he waded through the crowd at that stupid fucking party of Joffrey's and dragged her to safety. She'd been glad then too. “Little bird,” he murmurs, helpless.

She smiles again, like she knows. “Are you living here?” She pipes enquiringly.

The burnt side of his mouth twitches at her innocuous question. “Suppose so. And you, little bird? Why are you here, in this bumfuck little town?”

Her nose wrinkles at his language, but she serenely ignores it. “I'm here to stay with a friend, Wylla. Her grandfather manages my father's businesses here in Washington.”

This time there is dark amusement in his sound of derision. “Does your father own every state that is fucking cold and miserable?”

Again the wrinkle of her nose, but she smiles with abashed amusement. “Mostly yes. He says no one else likes them so no one fights him for them.”

He rasped a laugh and hated the rough sound of it next to her gentle chimes and cursed his brother again for how badly he wrecked him. He never would have been a handsome man, never anything the girls sighed over, but he wouldn't have looked or sounded like a monster if Gregor had never burnt him. “How is it your friends with Wylla? Seems some one your sister would more like approve of.”

She seemed startled. “You know her?”

“Wylla? Yeah. I work for the Manderly's, fat as they are. Girl's half mad.”

“Oh. She's not crazy just... different.”

He snorted at her attempt to pretty the definition of the green haired girl. “Mad as a fucking hatter.”

“Sandor!” She sounded scandalized and it made something that ached in his chest ease. Some worry that he didn't know he'd had until it was gone. “You shouldn't say things like that, especially when you work for her family.”

He laughed outright. “Why not? I've said as much to her face.”

She gasped. “No.”

“Yes.”

She stared at him nonplussed for long moments. Then suddenly she was in his arms, though he didn't remember catching her when she flung herself against his chest. Soft warm body pressed the length of him as she stood on tiptoes to press her face into his neck. Once more he was at a loss as to what to do. So many times he'd fantasized about having her in his arms, but it was never like this. It was never her reaching out to hold him first. But the hair he wanted to touch was tickling against the good side of his face and she smelled like summer and lemons. So he raised one of his big paws and pet down the flyaway strands and curled her a little tighter into himself because any moment she was going to come to her senses and pull away. This is all he'd have for the rest of his miserable life and fuck, it was better than anything he ever imagined or hoped for.

“I've missed you.”

The whisper is so soft he thinks he might've imagined it until she lifts her head to smile at him.

“You're as fucking mad as that fucking girl,” he grates out.

She giggled. Fucking giggled. “Perhaps. Better a crazy little bird than a stupid little bird though, right?”

He hated the sadness in those last words. “Sansa....” He thinks maybe its the first time he has ever said her name. Thinks maybe he's right when her eyes widen.

“I have to go.”

His arms clench tighter when she pulls away, unaware and yet so much so that he still held her in his embrace. But sense kicked in and his arms fell away and he waited for her to run, but she stayed where she was. So close to him, still touching. Fuck, she was a crazy stupid little bird. He'd break her if she stayed to long.

“Will I see you again?”

He flinched away from her words. “I'll stay out of your way,” he snarled, feeling the way the bad side contorted in his anger. He was unprepared for the soft white hand against the twisted flesh, the fingers curling to cup it in a soothing gesture.

“That's not what I meant.” There's a steel in her voice that had never been there. A strength and a confidence and a sweetness that he'd known she was always meant to come into. It twists him in an ache at how she's changed even as it evens out a worry that she'd always be a scared little girl.

He catches her hand, so small, so delicate and long fingered, in his big paw, all thick and callused and rough and so very stained. Means to tear it away from him, but instead, simply rests it over hers. “No?”

“No,” she affirms in her new voice, her new self. “I meant when can I see you again? I have to leave now because I'm late on meeting Wylla and she's going to worry, but I.....” She falters off and he sees a glimmer of the girl she used to be, the one she's growing away from and yet still holding inside. “I want to see you again,” she begins anew, steadier once more.

He has no answer for her because he does not know who he is anymore. Surely not Sandor Clegane, the man that did unspeakable shit for the Lannister's. No one would want to see him again, would they? Especially not a sweet little bird like her. But that's all he has ever been and there's no one else quite like him so she must indeed have gone crazy. Lost her mind in the cruelty of that fucking golden family dripping in blood. “Stupid fucking crazy little bird,” he rasped.

He expected her to recoil, to pull away hurt and run away. But instead she smiled, wide and easy and indeed, mad. “Perhaps, but I'd very much like to see you, Sandor Clegane, and at some point properly thank you for everything you did for me.”

He laughed helplessly. “Tonight, after six. The Green Dragon, its a tavern on the wharf. That lime haired friend of yours will know it, no doubt.”

Her smile brightened, something he hadn't thought possible. It blinded him to her movements and he was unaware of what she was up to until it had already happened. A brush of her lips across his cheek, the burnt side, the bad side, the monster's side. Then she was gone and he was left to wonder if he'd really seen her at all. Only the lingering scent of summer and lemons told him that maybe, just maybe it was true.

Chapter Text

The godswood is quiet, still. No wolves, no birds, just snow and the soft rustling of the weirwood's leaves in the fading Winter breeze. Steam rises from the hot pools, mixes and dissolves with the flurries of snow eddying around him. It is peaceful. Such a welcome respite after all the wars, the fighting, the death. First the folly of the Five Kings and then the coming of the Others and then, when all hope was lost, the Dragon Queen to save them all. Most anyway. The ones that counted.
Sandor breathed deep of the godswood and felt her in every scent that touched him. Before it had been Summer and lemons and flowers, but she was a child of Winter and the tamed wildness of the place was more suited to the woman she had become. Queen of the North until the boy became of age. The Winter Queen, the falcon of the Eyrie that had avenged the North. Sansa Stark. The little bird.
“Sandor?”
Her voice floated to him, carried by the breeze and bolstered up by the steam. Soft and rich, no longer the high sweet tones of a girl just dancing on the edge womanhood.
He did not call out to her, could not. A few more steps and she'd see him anyway. There in front of the weirwood, by the pool. Waiting for her. Waiting....
Sure enough, her steps drew closer until they suddenly stopped but a few feet away. He raised his tired eyes from the water, the hypnotizing mist, and found her frozen. Stiller than a doe in the moment before the arrow was loosed to pierce its heart. Was he the dart that would take her down? The shaft that would lodge in her heart and still it? Stop the steady pulse of the life of the only person he had cared for since he laid his sister in the ground?
“Sandor....?” A question of denial as she stands as frozen as a wight.
He mustered a twitching smile. Grotesque and horrid as they were, they always seemed to ease her fear. “Little bird,” he rasped.
She was too old, too cold, too broken to sob anymore, but the tears trailed down her face as she took the last halting steps to him. Sank gracefully to her knees by his side and he remembered how he had come back to her. Leaving the Quiet Isle to join her march from the Vale, the Blackfish had found him amongst the masses and had dragged him before her, the Lannister dog. A prize to torture or kill however she deemed fit. He'd fallen to his knees as much from the sight of her as the vicious kick to his bad leg. The rumors a truth before him and he had thought he could die in peace then and there. Instead she had spared him, made him part of her Queensguard, to protect her from the whitewalkers and the Boltons alike. He had done both. May all the gods save him, at least he had kept that vow. At least the one.
“Why are you here?” A whisper as soft as the hand that reached out to take his, big and broad and rough and not made to feel such finery.
He turned his eyes from her and up into the branches of the tree with leaves as red as her hair. Bark the white of her skin with blue, blue of the sky beyond. “I think I like this god more than any others,” he rasped back in way of reply. A half truth. The other was it was the only place left untouched by the flames that had destroyed Winterfell.
Her breath caught, wounded and he turned back to her. “There's nothing left to fear, little bird. Nothing left to fight.”
She shook her head in denial. “No. There will always be something to fight.”
“No, it is done.” The Others gone, the Boltons destroyed, Petyr a tattered corpse hanging from the walls of the Eyrie.
Again the shake of her head, a coppery waterfall. “There is this,” she whispered lifting his hand, cold from lying in the snow and what was to come. She pressed her cheek to the back of it and her hot tears stung the hard callused skin like drops of wildfire.
He closed his eyes against the sight, lacked the strength to open them again. “No, little bird,” he affirmed. “The fighting is done. Now it is time to rest.”
He felt her shake her head against his hand. “Sandor, please....”
He remembered a time when all he had wished for was for her to say his name. Now he wished she wouldn't because it tore him apart. He opened his eyes, found hers closed as she held onto him. “Little bird.... Look at me.”
The old command brought her focus to him. Oceans of blue with islands of ice flowing over steel. “You can no longer command me, ser.”
He laughed, rough and grating and the coughing spasm that came with it made it sound no worse. “Aye, my queen.”
It was the girl and not the queen that cast her eyes down. “I had thought I was.... I had hoped that I.... That you....”
“Aye,” he agreed on a ragged breath. What broken creatures they were that they couldn't even say the words anymore. They had both been born young naïve dreamers and this world had left no place for that. “Aye,” he said again. “You are that. Damn me for a buggering fool, but always, little bird. Sansa.”
The sob she didn't know how to let go anymore rattled in her chest. “Sandor....”
“Hush, little bird. Do not. Not for me. Not for an old dog.” He squeezed her hand, the one that still held his to her cheek.
“I cried for Lady,” she whispered fiercely, defiantly. “For Grey Wind.”
He laughed darkly. “Aye, I'm sure you did.” He watched her and let himself wonder at how close she was, that this beautiful creature of the North deigned to touch him, to hold him dear. “The keep...? The people...?”
She nodded listlessly. “It is ours. The whitewalkers are all dead. The ones that matter.... They live.” Like him, there was only room in her heart for a few now.
Good. Osha and Bran and Rickon and the frog children. Arya and the bastard Jon Snow. Winterfell reclaimed and ready to be rebuilt. Winter would fade away and the Long Summer would come and the Dragon Queen would rule and the Starks would remain guardians of the North. He could not ask for more. He could not.
“Will you burn me?” He asked on a sudden fear.
This time a soft anguished sound escaped from her chapped perfect lips. “Please, Sandor, do not speak of that.”
“I taught you to see the truth, little bird, not to turn from it. You'll die if you do.”
“What should I care for life when everything I love is taken from me?” She blazed at him, dropping his hand to her lap so she could sit straighter, face him squarely with the full power that was her.
The ache at her words surpassed everything else, left him adrift and feeling as if he'd weep. “Don't speak like that over me. Not fucking well over me. You got your brothers and your sister and all the North to put back together. They need you.”
All at once she wilted. “And I need you.”
He smiled sadly. “Not anymore. Your enemies are dead. You've got no use for an old dog like me anymore.”
She regarded him sadly, reaching out a hand to cup his cheek, the bad side. “I will always need you, Sandor,” she promised quietly.
“Sansa...” he sobbed.
“Shush,” she whispered and then suddenly she was there. Her lips cool, moistened with salt of her tears. Lush and soft they pressed to his.
He found the strength to raise a hand and bury it in her hair, cupping the back of her head and opening his mouth to the first kiss he'd ever tasted. Whores did whatever you wanted and he'd wanted none of this from them, but her.... The princess always kissed her knight at the end of the stories his mother had told him as a child. And this was the end of his.
He kissed her until the breathlessness was not just from her mouth on his. Not just from her very presence stealing the air from his lungs, but the icy grip of the Stranger come to collect his due.
He let her go, the first to last step he'd take on the road he was headed down on. “Little bird....”
She must have heard the death rattle in his voice and finally she sobbed. Falling against his chest she clung to him as if holding his mortal body would keep the life in him even though it lay in a red pool about them. “Please, no.”
He pressed his cheek, the good side, into her hair. “Sing to me, little bird,” he rasped. “You always promised me a song.”
She was quiet so long he thought maybe she'd refuse him. That he'd leave this world being punished still because he took the song and she never gave it. Then her voice hummed into his chest, over his slowing heart before soaring out into the crisp air and carrying him with it.