fic: the maiden in the tower (5/?)
Title: The Maiden in the Tower
Chapter Four: A Dream of Wolves
Rating: M
Warnings: Allusions to canon sexual abuse, suicide/suicide ideation
Word Count: 2,891
Characters and Pairings: SanSan, Jaime/Brienne, Petyr Baelish, the Elder Brother, Bran Stark, Arya Stark, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow, Lady Stonehart and co.
Summary: There's a story that the smallfolk tell about Sansa Stark and the night she threw herself from the Eyrie. Westeros is six years into winter, and two unlikely people find their way to the Vale where they find out an unlikely truth about the night that Sansa Stark was supposed to have died and the light that can be still be seen shining from the Eyrie. WIP.
Big thanks to Emily for drawing me fanart, which you can see here!
---
She dreams of a forest, and a pack of a hundred growling wolves following at her heels. They've turned eastward, following no road of man, just the growing periods of moonlight. She dreams that she is a hulking she-wolf, a stalking grim shadow against the snow-littered ground, grey and huge, immune to the other grey menace slinking through the Riverlands, that has made territory of graves and households whole. Not even the bravest of her grey cousins will feast upon that meat. Not even she.
The wolf has no home she can return to, and she will let no trap or man or snare stop her. Not even the bravest of those who tried, the men who belonged to the woman with the heart of stone. Oh how they tried, and the Lady gave gurgling screeches of protest. But what's a brotherhood of men against a legion of wolves?
They feast on what is left of the aurochs, on whatever is left of any kind. Winter has come, and it has not come kindly.
Arya had not thought it would.
But the coldness came down from the North, from the place that they once called home, and she knew to flee. Even a hulking she-wolf knows when she is outmatched, when it is better to turn her pack to new territory. It is the pack that survives, and the she-wolf would not abandon her pack, not after all this time.
The lone wolf dies, where the pack survives.
They will survive. The she-wolf has created a pack of her own, and while she may be the strength of the pack, the strength of the pack is what has kept her alive. She has lost her siblings, but she will not lose this pack. She growls, nose low to the ground. Smells the cold, the hard, unnatural cold, which pervades the soil and the air. They must move faster.
She fills the night with her song.
She may not have her home, but her mistress has come back to her. The pack. The pack must survive, and her mistress is the pack. Wolfsisters must find each other. The wolfsisters do not have a home. But they may have each other.
The caw of a raven draws the she-wolf's attention.
She growls, the fur on her back rising. Winter is closing in. Winter, and all that is tied with it-the true winter, cold and dark and long-is rising. With winter, comes the darkness, and what rises with the darkness. She is direwolf, she knows of this darkness. She can smell this cold, this ice. The death, and the perversion of death. It is an instinct much older than her, or her pack, but it is one deeply imprinted on her bones. It has hardened like dragonglass. And it urges her to run, and find the wolfsister.
Grass, covered with snow and ice, comes up beneath her, under her paws.
Winter is no longer coming.
Winter is here.
And Arya-no longer Eirene, or Mollye, or Blind Beth, or No one-sleeps on, the familiar feeling of dirt flying under her paws.
There was a story, Old Nan used to tell them. When they were young and their pack unbroken, when they were all too small and dumb to think of a time where they could be like this. Before winter was hailed by their sorrows and their grief.
Oh, Arya thinks in her dream, legs thrashing under her covers. I never stopped being a wolf.
(She sleeps not in the bed of the maid she killed, but in Sandor Clegane's, while he made haste elsewhere. She had been too tired to question, only to ask if he was planning on tying her to it to prevent her escape. He had, in turn, replied there was no longer a ransom on her head to benefit from, before stomping out of the room.)
She runs with her wolfbrothers. East, east. Runs towards her wolfsister, who has lost her pack.
We are coming. We are coming. You have not lost us. We have always been with you. Oh red wolfsister, hold on. We are your pack. And we are coming for you.
Winter is here.
And so are the wolves.
---
Sansa rolls over in her bed, pulling her furs tighter. In her dreams, she spreads her wings, looping down through the night sky, perching near to the white specter loping across the ruins. This is the part that is hard, even after years:
Sansa detaches herself from the raven, from her wings and her claws, and stands up. She is not Bran, her sweet little brother. She does not wish to take the form of the heart tree, to walk the path of infinity. She only wishes to stand on her own, on her own trembling, wobbling legs and feet. Her feet are bare on the snow, her long auburn hair only a shade away from what mother's had been, swirling down by her knees.
She imagines it might be easier for her companion, the white specter, who waves and quivers before her, shimmering slightly, and then taking the shape of her bastard brother (something inside her smiles, secretive) Jon. His form is grotesque. But Sansa is now well-versed in the grotesque. The appearance of it no longer bothers her. The disconnect, the true monstrosities in life, belongs to the soul. And she knows, Jon's wounds no longer ail him.
(The first time they had appeared in a dream together, she had cried out, pressed her hands to his throat, his back, and he had called her sweet sister and eased her away.)
"Daenerys will come for me soon," he says, and she takes his arm. "Have you had a response from Jaime Lannister?"
Sansa nods. They walk the ruins of their old home, in this dreamland controlled by their brother and the pulsing magic of the North. Of the weirwoods and of winter. Snow falls softly, and reality, or a distinct lack thereof, reverberates with every measured step. Cold. It is always so cold, here-perhaps, Sansa thinks, because it is not truly a dream. The three of them are here, and so they have brought winter with them. After all, Stark blood runs through all of their veins.
"He has sent supplies to Lord Manderly. Any more north than that, he fears, and it will only be in vain. And he says he has not heard from the Wall in ten weeks?"
Jon nods as well. "The Dragon Queen's men have made haste. It has saved us all. But Stannis, and his Red Priestess, believe that she is naught but an imposter."
Sansa smiles. "Imposter or not, she has dragons. There is not much to be said when you have been turned to singed flesh and bone."
He snorts. "Still, he says he will refuse to treat with her. And Melisandre is confident that she will… dragons, she says, are the agent of her Red God."
"But these dragons…"
"Are the agents of Daenerys, yes." They turn through the ruins of the rookery, moving through to the crumbled armory, back into the Godswood. "Although Melisandre says that I, too, am an agent of the Red God." He sighs.
Sansa strokes his hand. "Your purpose is your own, Jon. And no one else's. You are here for a reason. You are…"
"I am here because of her." He does not seethe, but his words are tight. Sansa knows his anger is not directed towards herself, but the Red Woman. She cannot fathom the pain of being alive, after tasting death. Is Jon even alive, truly? "She believes me her puppet. Her puppet and the puppet of whatever… fates she finds in her fires."
"But you said that you do not believe she reads them correctly."
Jon sighs, tightening his grip on her. "No."
"You said that if she was reading them correctly, Stannis would have won. And that he would have won a long time ago, before winter took hold of us all."
He opens his mouth as to respond, before shutting it, teeth clicking together. He hesitates. "Yes…"
"The Boltons are dead. Arya is somewhere, out there, alive. Bran is alive… as such. Rickon is… you said last time that Davos is still searching for him. The Northern lords have convened in White Harbor, and while the Wall is… Castle Black still stands, and dragons are coming."
She does not smile-her look is determined. "I am treating with the Lannister host and you with the Targaryens. Stannis Baratheon willfall. The North will not."
"And you feel no duplicity over duping the Lannisters? With us playing both sides?"
Sansa grins wryly, looking up at him in periphery. "I'm locked away in a tower, how could I possibly do anything at all?"
Jon inclines his head, but his face is still painted with wariness. "Woe betide the man who counts you out, Lady Stark."
"Glad to see that you have accepted that. Although you are no living man, Jon Snow." she answers, voice tinged with a false bravado that Jon can easily read. She wonders why she still bothers, why even after years in the tower she still bothers with masks. "We'll go home, Jon. You will have to rescue me sometime. I would like to hear the voice of someone who is not in my head. We'll go home and then the pack will follow. House Stark began in a winter such as this."
The night becomes alight with the song of hundreds of wolves.
"See," she says, voice and smile tremulous. "They know."
The dream shivers again, as they draw closer to the heart tree. An expression of worry crosses
Jon's face, and he leads her away from it, out of the Godswood, into the courtyard where the archers used to practice.
"They know…" he echoes, a bit dazed.
"What's wrong?" she asks, voice soft. She knows he can see more than she can here. Knows that his form is different, his body unsure. Sansa thinks it might be like the first dream, where she took up Lady's bones. Gods, she muses, stroking his arm with a ghost-like touch. What an existence.
He shakes his head. "I'm not certain. If anything at all. Five years like this, and I'm still not…"
"Soon," Sansa says, trying to console him.
Jon hardens the line of his jaw, before looking to her and nodding sharply. "Soon." And then he grins, cocky and boyish, as Sansa imagines he was back in Winterfell. Oh, how she wishes she had been different. How she wishes they all had been different. "And then we'll get you out of that tower, helpless maiden."
They both laugh, and take another turn around the courtyard.
---
Sandor does not dream, because he does not sleep. He does not think it wise, this night. Cannot imagine what kind of nightmares sleep would bring him. And so he left the she-wolf to sleep in his own bed of straw and wool, before stalking off for the grounds. For some reason he is drawn not to the sept on the grounds of the Gates, but its heart tree.
All his years on the Quiet Isle have not made him a man of the faith. Any faith, truly, despite the Elder Brother's best attempts to turn him towards the Gods.
(No, he'll pray to the Maiden, even as she lives and breathes.)
He fears how she will react to him. Not for himself-he is a man grown and fought and bled-he can and will take whatever Sansa Stark can do to him, if only because he deserves it. He hopes that she will trust him to lead her out of the Eyrie, to her own safety. He itches to drink, but won't. If he drinks tonight, he will not stop.
Stopping was another one of the Elder Brother's lessons-this lesson, at least, one rooted in pragmatism-one that he can use. One that he should have used, all those years ago at Blackwater. He stopped yes. But Gods, how he terrified her. And now, without the haze of drink, he knows that her fear of him was a healthy, pragmatic one to have.
The she wolf will be there, he thinks. The little bird will have to want to be with her sister. Perhaps he need not approach her, let the she-wolf talk to the little bird. Only the buggering gods will know what she'll be like, four years without contact with the outside world.
He freezes. What if she is not physically strong enough to make it down the mountain? Stuck in one fucking room for four years. Any good sense would say her legs have had no exercise, not that she was the hardy sort to begin with.
Stranger. She could ride on Stranger, and he would just have to walk.
Not like your leg'll make it, a contrary voice hisses in the back of his mind. You're weak, old man.
Or Mayhaps he'll just have to steal a horse for the sisters to ride. And furs. Would the little bird have furs in her tower? Would do them no good to get her out and then freeze her pretty little fingers and toes off on the ride down. He scoffs. And what does he know of furs and cloaks? He'd have to ask the she-wolf. She weren't much of a lady, but she did know the ways of one.
The little bird has to be… gods what? Ten-and-nine, now? Not so little, anymore. He pauses, trying to tamp down thoughts of her, womanly and grown, with teats and hips and arse. With real curves and warm, soft skin. Stop, you pitiful fuck. She weren't never yours. Or any man's.
He knows that want, wants it for her as well. Sandor Clegane has no lands or wife or family to forsake. He knows why its best to belong to no one.
You're rescuing her from all of that. Settin' her free from her cage.
She belongs to no one, least of all you.
Sandor squints into the horizon, the sun beginning to rise over the snow-carved mountainscape.
They say the Eyrie is nigh unreachable in the winter.
He snorts.
Well, he's alive, the she-wolf is alive, the little bird is alive, and the Others are coming. Four things people have said to be nigh impossible. Sandor Clegane is unsure whether he should take so much stock anymore in what people say. Not that he did much, in the first place.
Buggering hell, he thinks. I've gone soft. Lame and soft isn't gonna help us any.
He returns to his room, and shakes the she-wolf awake. She gathers her clothes, before staring blankly and telling him to turn around.
"I've got teats now, dumbass," she seethes, crossing her arms over her breasts, clad only in her smallclothes and a threadbare shift.
He shrugs, and does as she says. "If you say so."
"I'm seven-and-ten now, Clegane." He can hear the rustling of cloth as she dresses herself. "Not some flat-chested eleven-year-old, passing herself off as a boy. My apologies."
"You've got hair now, too," he retorts.
He can practically hear her scowl. "I've always had hair, Hound. It's just long, now, like a lady proper."
He laughs, low and deep. "Your sister will be so proud."
The she-wolf doesn't respond, and he can't hear the rustling of fabric, the sound of haphazard dressing. Reluctantly, he turns, the queerest expression on the she-wolf's face as she runs her fingers through her long, brown hair, the heavy wool of her skirt swaying at her ankles.
"I'm not a lady," she answers softly, voice guarded. "Not like she was. Is." She shakes her head, picking up her discarded apron and tying it around her waist. It was stained, and fraying.
"You and I, we've both changed. Not the same people we were, right?"
"Aye," Sandor replies, slowly tasting the word as it leaves his mouth.
She shakes her head, barely taking the time to braid her hair over her shoulder.
"What?"
Her mouth pinches. "He'd better not have taken that from her. Her-her… whatever it was. He just… better not have made her into someone else. He made her play Alayne Stone, the bastard, but he better not have stolen Sansa Stark to put Alayne Stone in her place."
Sandor sizes her up. She looked even more a Stark than she did when she left him on the banks of the Trident. The Elder Brother told him that Littlefinger had the little bird dye her hair brown to play the part of his bastard. He wonders if that would have made the two look more like sisters.
"I thought you were gonna kill him anyway?" he asks.
A smile appears slowly onto her face, as if carved by a knife. "True." She bites her bottom lip. "Still don't want Sansa hurt any more than she already was. I'm willing to do the deed without any more of Littlefinger's..."
He nods. "That I understand."
She stands, putting her hands on her hips. He means to read it as a signal of her being ready for the day.
"We need to see the Elder Brother."
Arya cocks her head. "What for?"
"The truth. About your sister's would-be wedding."
---
( chapter three | masterpost | chapter five )
Chapter Four: A Dream of Wolves
Rating: M
Warnings: Allusions to canon sexual abuse, suicide/suicide ideation
Word Count: 2,891
Characters and Pairings: SanSan, Jaime/Brienne, Petyr Baelish, the Elder Brother, Bran Stark, Arya Stark, Jaime Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, Jon Snow, Lady Stonehart and co.
Summary: There's a story that the smallfolk tell about Sansa Stark and the night she threw herself from the Eyrie. Westeros is six years into winter, and two unlikely people find their way to the Vale where they find out an unlikely truth about the night that Sansa Stark was supposed to have died and the light that can be still be seen shining from the Eyrie. WIP.
Big thanks to Emily for drawing me fanart, which you can see here!
---
She dreams of a forest, and a pack of a hundred growling wolves following at her heels. They've turned eastward, following no road of man, just the growing periods of moonlight. She dreams that she is a hulking she-wolf, a stalking grim shadow against the snow-littered ground, grey and huge, immune to the other grey menace slinking through the Riverlands, that has made territory of graves and households whole. Not even the bravest of her grey cousins will feast upon that meat. Not even she.
The wolf has no home she can return to, and she will let no trap or man or snare stop her. Not even the bravest of those who tried, the men who belonged to the woman with the heart of stone. Oh how they tried, and the Lady gave gurgling screeches of protest. But what's a brotherhood of men against a legion of wolves?
They feast on what is left of the aurochs, on whatever is left of any kind. Winter has come, and it has not come kindly.
Arya had not thought it would.
But the coldness came down from the North, from the place that they once called home, and she knew to flee. Even a hulking she-wolf knows when she is outmatched, when it is better to turn her pack to new territory. It is the pack that survives, and the she-wolf would not abandon her pack, not after all this time.
The lone wolf dies, where the pack survives.
They will survive. The she-wolf has created a pack of her own, and while she may be the strength of the pack, the strength of the pack is what has kept her alive. She has lost her siblings, but she will not lose this pack. She growls, nose low to the ground. Smells the cold, the hard, unnatural cold, which pervades the soil and the air. They must move faster.
She fills the night with her song.
She may not have her home, but her mistress has come back to her. The pack. The pack must survive, and her mistress is the pack. Wolfsisters must find each other. The wolfsisters do not have a home. But they may have each other.
The caw of a raven draws the she-wolf's attention.
She growls, the fur on her back rising. Winter is closing in. Winter, and all that is tied with it-the true winter, cold and dark and long-is rising. With winter, comes the darkness, and what rises with the darkness. She is direwolf, she knows of this darkness. She can smell this cold, this ice. The death, and the perversion of death. It is an instinct much older than her, or her pack, but it is one deeply imprinted on her bones. It has hardened like dragonglass. And it urges her to run, and find the wolfsister.
Grass, covered with snow and ice, comes up beneath her, under her paws.
Winter is no longer coming.
Winter is here.
And Arya-no longer Eirene, or Mollye, or Blind Beth, or No one-sleeps on, the familiar feeling of dirt flying under her paws.
There was a story, Old Nan used to tell them. When they were young and their pack unbroken, when they were all too small and dumb to think of a time where they could be like this. Before winter was hailed by their sorrows and their grief.
Oh, Arya thinks in her dream, legs thrashing under her covers. I never stopped being a wolf.
(She sleeps not in the bed of the maid she killed, but in Sandor Clegane's, while he made haste elsewhere. She had been too tired to question, only to ask if he was planning on tying her to it to prevent her escape. He had, in turn, replied there was no longer a ransom on her head to benefit from, before stomping out of the room.)
She runs with her wolfbrothers. East, east. Runs towards her wolfsister, who has lost her pack.
We are coming. We are coming. You have not lost us. We have always been with you. Oh red wolfsister, hold on. We are your pack. And we are coming for you.
Winter is here.
And so are the wolves.
---
Sansa rolls over in her bed, pulling her furs tighter. In her dreams, she spreads her wings, looping down through the night sky, perching near to the white specter loping across the ruins. This is the part that is hard, even after years:
Sansa detaches herself from the raven, from her wings and her claws, and stands up. She is not Bran, her sweet little brother. She does not wish to take the form of the heart tree, to walk the path of infinity. She only wishes to stand on her own, on her own trembling, wobbling legs and feet. Her feet are bare on the snow, her long auburn hair only a shade away from what mother's had been, swirling down by her knees.
She imagines it might be easier for her companion, the white specter, who waves and quivers before her, shimmering slightly, and then taking the shape of her bastard brother (something inside her smiles, secretive) Jon. His form is grotesque. But Sansa is now well-versed in the grotesque. The appearance of it no longer bothers her. The disconnect, the true monstrosities in life, belongs to the soul. And she knows, Jon's wounds no longer ail him.
(The first time they had appeared in a dream together, she had cried out, pressed her hands to his throat, his back, and he had called her sweet sister and eased her away.)
"Daenerys will come for me soon," he says, and she takes his arm. "Have you had a response from Jaime Lannister?"
Sansa nods. They walk the ruins of their old home, in this dreamland controlled by their brother and the pulsing magic of the North. Of the weirwoods and of winter. Snow falls softly, and reality, or a distinct lack thereof, reverberates with every measured step. Cold. It is always so cold, here-perhaps, Sansa thinks, because it is not truly a dream. The three of them are here, and so they have brought winter with them. After all, Stark blood runs through all of their veins.
"He has sent supplies to Lord Manderly. Any more north than that, he fears, and it will only be in vain. And he says he has not heard from the Wall in ten weeks?"
Jon nods as well. "The Dragon Queen's men have made haste. It has saved us all. But Stannis, and his Red Priestess, believe that she is naught but an imposter."
Sansa smiles. "Imposter or not, she has dragons. There is not much to be said when you have been turned to singed flesh and bone."
He snorts. "Still, he says he will refuse to treat with her. And Melisandre is confident that she will… dragons, she says, are the agent of her Red God."
"But these dragons…"
"Are the agents of Daenerys, yes." They turn through the ruins of the rookery, moving through to the crumbled armory, back into the Godswood. "Although Melisandre says that I, too, am an agent of the Red God." He sighs.
Sansa strokes his hand. "Your purpose is your own, Jon. And no one else's. You are here for a reason. You are…"
"I am here because of her." He does not seethe, but his words are tight. Sansa knows his anger is not directed towards herself, but the Red Woman. She cannot fathom the pain of being alive, after tasting death. Is Jon even alive, truly? "She believes me her puppet. Her puppet and the puppet of whatever… fates she finds in her fires."
"But you said that you do not believe she reads them correctly."
Jon sighs, tightening his grip on her. "No."
"You said that if she was reading them correctly, Stannis would have won. And that he would have won a long time ago, before winter took hold of us all."
He opens his mouth as to respond, before shutting it, teeth clicking together. He hesitates. "Yes…"
"The Boltons are dead. Arya is somewhere, out there, alive. Bran is alive… as such. Rickon is… you said last time that Davos is still searching for him. The Northern lords have convened in White Harbor, and while the Wall is… Castle Black still stands, and dragons are coming."
She does not smile-her look is determined. "I am treating with the Lannister host and you with the Targaryens. Stannis Baratheon willfall. The North will not."
"And you feel no duplicity over duping the Lannisters? With us playing both sides?"
Sansa grins wryly, looking up at him in periphery. "I'm locked away in a tower, how could I possibly do anything at all?"
Jon inclines his head, but his face is still painted with wariness. "Woe betide the man who counts you out, Lady Stark."
"Glad to see that you have accepted that. Although you are no living man, Jon Snow." she answers, voice tinged with a false bravado that Jon can easily read. She wonders why she still bothers, why even after years in the tower she still bothers with masks. "We'll go home, Jon. You will have to rescue me sometime. I would like to hear the voice of someone who is not in my head. We'll go home and then the pack will follow. House Stark began in a winter such as this."
The night becomes alight with the song of hundreds of wolves.
"See," she says, voice and smile tremulous. "They know."
The dream shivers again, as they draw closer to the heart tree. An expression of worry crosses
Jon's face, and he leads her away from it, out of the Godswood, into the courtyard where the archers used to practice.
"They know…" he echoes, a bit dazed.
"What's wrong?" she asks, voice soft. She knows he can see more than she can here. Knows that his form is different, his body unsure. Sansa thinks it might be like the first dream, where she took up Lady's bones. Gods, she muses, stroking his arm with a ghost-like touch. What an existence.
He shakes his head. "I'm not certain. If anything at all. Five years like this, and I'm still not…"
"Soon," Sansa says, trying to console him.
Jon hardens the line of his jaw, before looking to her and nodding sharply. "Soon." And then he grins, cocky and boyish, as Sansa imagines he was back in Winterfell. Oh, how she wishes she had been different. How she wishes they all had been different. "And then we'll get you out of that tower, helpless maiden."
They both laugh, and take another turn around the courtyard.
---
Sandor does not dream, because he does not sleep. He does not think it wise, this night. Cannot imagine what kind of nightmares sleep would bring him. And so he left the she-wolf to sleep in his own bed of straw and wool, before stalking off for the grounds. For some reason he is drawn not to the sept on the grounds of the Gates, but its heart tree.
All his years on the Quiet Isle have not made him a man of the faith. Any faith, truly, despite the Elder Brother's best attempts to turn him towards the Gods.
(No, he'll pray to the Maiden, even as she lives and breathes.)
He fears how she will react to him. Not for himself-he is a man grown and fought and bled-he can and will take whatever Sansa Stark can do to him, if only because he deserves it. He hopes that she will trust him to lead her out of the Eyrie, to her own safety. He itches to drink, but won't. If he drinks tonight, he will not stop.
Stopping was another one of the Elder Brother's lessons-this lesson, at least, one rooted in pragmatism-one that he can use. One that he should have used, all those years ago at Blackwater. He stopped yes. But Gods, how he terrified her. And now, without the haze of drink, he knows that her fear of him was a healthy, pragmatic one to have.
The she wolf will be there, he thinks. The little bird will have to want to be with her sister. Perhaps he need not approach her, let the she-wolf talk to the little bird. Only the buggering gods will know what she'll be like, four years without contact with the outside world.
He freezes. What if she is not physically strong enough to make it down the mountain? Stuck in one fucking room for four years. Any good sense would say her legs have had no exercise, not that she was the hardy sort to begin with.
Stranger. She could ride on Stranger, and he would just have to walk.
Not like your leg'll make it, a contrary voice hisses in the back of his mind. You're weak, old man.
Or Mayhaps he'll just have to steal a horse for the sisters to ride. And furs. Would the little bird have furs in her tower? Would do them no good to get her out and then freeze her pretty little fingers and toes off on the ride down. He scoffs. And what does he know of furs and cloaks? He'd have to ask the she-wolf. She weren't much of a lady, but she did know the ways of one.
The little bird has to be… gods what? Ten-and-nine, now? Not so little, anymore. He pauses, trying to tamp down thoughts of her, womanly and grown, with teats and hips and arse. With real curves and warm, soft skin. Stop, you pitiful fuck. She weren't never yours. Or any man's.
He knows that want, wants it for her as well. Sandor Clegane has no lands or wife or family to forsake. He knows why its best to belong to no one.
You're rescuing her from all of that. Settin' her free from her cage.
She belongs to no one, least of all you.
Sandor squints into the horizon, the sun beginning to rise over the snow-carved mountainscape.
They say the Eyrie is nigh unreachable in the winter.
He snorts.
Well, he's alive, the she-wolf is alive, the little bird is alive, and the Others are coming. Four things people have said to be nigh impossible. Sandor Clegane is unsure whether he should take so much stock anymore in what people say. Not that he did much, in the first place.
Buggering hell, he thinks. I've gone soft. Lame and soft isn't gonna help us any.
He returns to his room, and shakes the she-wolf awake. She gathers her clothes, before staring blankly and telling him to turn around.
"I've got teats now, dumbass," she seethes, crossing her arms over her breasts, clad only in her smallclothes and a threadbare shift.
He shrugs, and does as she says. "If you say so."
"I'm seven-and-ten now, Clegane." He can hear the rustling of cloth as she dresses herself. "Not some flat-chested eleven-year-old, passing herself off as a boy. My apologies."
"You've got hair now, too," he retorts.
He can practically hear her scowl. "I've always had hair, Hound. It's just long, now, like a lady proper."
He laughs, low and deep. "Your sister will be so proud."
The she-wolf doesn't respond, and he can't hear the rustling of fabric, the sound of haphazard dressing. Reluctantly, he turns, the queerest expression on the she-wolf's face as she runs her fingers through her long, brown hair, the heavy wool of her skirt swaying at her ankles.
"I'm not a lady," she answers softly, voice guarded. "Not like she was. Is." She shakes her head, picking up her discarded apron and tying it around her waist. It was stained, and fraying.
"You and I, we've both changed. Not the same people we were, right?"
"Aye," Sandor replies, slowly tasting the word as it leaves his mouth.
She shakes her head, barely taking the time to braid her hair over her shoulder.
"What?"
Her mouth pinches. "He'd better not have taken that from her. Her-her… whatever it was. He just… better not have made her into someone else. He made her play Alayne Stone, the bastard, but he better not have stolen Sansa Stark to put Alayne Stone in her place."
Sandor sizes her up. She looked even more a Stark than she did when she left him on the banks of the Trident. The Elder Brother told him that Littlefinger had the little bird dye her hair brown to play the part of his bastard. He wonders if that would have made the two look more like sisters.
"I thought you were gonna kill him anyway?" he asks.
A smile appears slowly onto her face, as if carved by a knife. "True." She bites her bottom lip. "Still don't want Sansa hurt any more than she already was. I'm willing to do the deed without any more of Littlefinger's..."
He nods. "That I understand."
She stands, putting her hands on her hips. He means to read it as a signal of her being ready for the day.
"We need to see the Elder Brother."
Arya cocks her head. "What for?"
"The truth. About your sister's would-be wedding."
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( chapter three | masterpost | chapter five )