The Harlot and the Hound

5

Sandor

His first instinct was to put a knife to her throat and demand to know just exactly who the fuck she was, but he couldn’t bring himself to withdraw from her cunt.

She touched him, his scars, his face and there’d been no revulsion there. She’d wanted him.

Oh, she must be some hellbitch indeed.

Logic told him that in all of the world, there had to be more than one man named Sandor. She didn’t know him. She couldn’t.

And there was only one woman he’d ever offered anything of himself to and she’d not wanted it. No, this was some conjuration—some demon. He’d have his money’s worth nevertheless. He’d ride her into the seven hells if that’s where she wanted to take him.

Yes, he’d trade whatever he had left of his soul for the illusion of Sansa Stark.

“Tell me her name,” she pleaded.

“You already know,” he growled. Perhaps this was one of the hells and his body was still out in the blizzard.

“How could I know?” she asked softly, still clinging to him, her heat still wrapped around him. “Do you think me some witch?”

“Yes,” he rasped. He slid his hands down her back and there, he felt a fine crisscross of raised flesh. Scars from a whip.

He knew then she was no wraith, no demon. She was just a whore who happened to have hair like liquid flame. Who’d suffered, maybe as much as he had. Sandor was as bad as the rest of the lot, with their curses and nonsense. It wouldn’t hurt to tell her his little bird’s name.

“Her name was Sansa.”

She reared back and ripped her blindfold off before he could stop her.

He didn’t want to kill her, but if she saw his face, he’d have to. Sandor wrapped his fingers around her neck, not looking up at her. Not wanting to see either her revulsion, or acceptance. It didn’t matter because he’d have her blood on his hands.

Her fingers were slender, but firm and dug into his jaw to draw his face up to hers.

And her eyes, Seven have mercy, her eyes.

They weren’t just the blue of the sky in the long summer. They were Tully blue.

Even though he knew she couldn’t be Sansa, he spilled inside of her, unable to stop himself as he drowned in the endless pools of her eyes.

He held her close after he’d finished, he didn’t know if he could bear to look at her. Looking at her meant he either had to acknowledge her or deny her. If he believed she was Sansa, then this, what had happened to her was his 

fault. She’d said she wished he’d taken her… saved her. The memory of the scars on her back burned into his fingers. 

And if he denied that she was Sansa Stark, she’d seen his face. She’d have to die. Even after the kindness she’d shown him. Either choice was the path to pain.

“They told me you were dead.” Hot drops splashed on his forehead and cheeks. She was crying.

Over him. Over a fucking dog.

“Have you ever wondered if we are dead and this Hell?” he said bitterly.

Her embrace tightened. “It really is you, Clegane.” Her hands were in his hair again, on his face.

Sandor acknowledged what he already knew. It was her. Sansa, the name for sin and redemption

He finally had his little bird. All it had taken were for her wings to be ripped off, her song whipped from her and then she was fit for the Hound. Her innocence was long gone, all that what he thought had made her what she was to him, an ideal woman.

But he knew there were no such things as ideals made living flesh, no true knights, no paragons of womanly virtue.

She was here. She was alive.

And she wanted him.

He was afraid she’d made the memory of him into something it wasn’t, made him into something he wasn’t and alternately afraid she hadn’t. He could never live up to her ideals, but he could try. What he never could admit was that he wanted to be her true knight, her Florian, or anyone or anything she needed. She made him want to be a better man.

“They told me you were dead too. That Joffrey beat you to death.”

“He tried,” she admitted.

Sansa pulled away from him and looked down at him, but he still wasn’t ready to meet her eyes.

“I shouldn’t have left you,” he confessed on a ragged exhale into her neck.

“I shouldn’t have been afraid.”

“You would have been stupid not to be. I’m a monster, Sansa.”

“I’ve been accused of that before. Of being a stupid little bird.” She laughed. “No, you never would have hurt me. 

It was always you, your sword and yourself between me and harm.”

He eased her down, almost against his will. She was pliable in his arms, all but for her damned fingers which she kept on his face. Stroking his cheek, smoothing back into his hair—he didn’t understand why she kept touching his scars. Like they’d become holy things to her.

“I would have hurt you. Maybe not that night, but I’m not a good man.” Another confession uttered as if she hadn’t seen him kill, seen him maim. As if she was still a sweet little bird who didn’t know anything about the world or the bad men in it.

“Why? Because you wanted to fuck me?” Her laugh was bitter now, not a sound he’d ever thought to hear from her. “Better you, a strong man who tended my bruises who would have kept me safe, a man who wanted my song instead of my screams and terror. Would you have wanted to make me scream, Sandor?”

A sound came from low in his throat, a guttural and primal sound of rage.

“Or is this your way of telling me that I’ve loved your memory in vain? That now that I’m not your little bird anymore, now that I’m not a round cheeked maid with stars in her eyes that you don’t want anything past what you’ve paid for?”

“Sansa,” he began. Fuck, but her name felt good on his lips, knowing he was speaking to her and she was there, hearing him. He could say everything he wished he’d told her, but now it all escaped him.

“It’s all right,” she said with quiet resignation and dropped her hand.

The loss of her touch made him bereft, like when she’d taken her hand away, all of the light had gone with it.

“I’m just a dumb animal, Sansa. I’m a rabid dog and I don’t know how to…” he trailed off.

The light returned when she tangled her hands in his hair once again. She understood.

“Tell me why you wanted a whore with red hair.”

“Because when I dream of fire, I’d rather dream of burning in your hair.”

He dropped his head onto her flat stomach and his large hand palmed her hip.

She sighed softly. “Then you don’t have to know how to do anything. All you have to do is keep loving me.”

He moved so that he could pull her against his chest and she fit against him as if she’d been made for him. Sandor knew better, nothing so fine could have been crafted for him, but he’d found her. Sansa belonged to him. She’d said so.

“Stupid little bird,” he said gently as he twined her hair around his fingers. Sandor felt her cheek curve in a smile and her lips press against his skin.

“Dumb dog,” she muttered in a tender reply.

* * *

As they fell asleep in each other’s arms, the horrors of the world drifted away like the swirling snow in the blizzard outside. Winter had come to Westeros, but in the shadow of a breath that lay between them—it was always the summerland.