Fic: These Scars We Wear - 16/?
Obligatory disclaimer: Not mine and never will be. All credit goes to GRRM. I’m just playing with his toys while he’s not looking. I promise to return them in as good a shape as I found them.
Summary: Sandor Clegane discovers that death does not always mark the end of a life. Sometimes it's only the beginning. Spoilers up to and including A Feast For Crows. AU
Rating: M
Pairing: Sandor/Sansa.
Word Count: 2,710
Warnings: Should consensual snuggling with a Westerosi maiden just shy of her majority be warned against? If so, you've been warned.
A/N: This one should probably be sub-titled "The Calm Before the Storm, " or "The Fluff Before the Rough," or "The Sweet Before the Bitter," or something along those lines. Pick the cliched phrase of your choice.
Comments are love. I appreciate each and every one of you who take the time to read and leave feedback. These chapters are the best "Thank you," I could ever send your way.
These Scars We Wear - 16/?
A fortnight sees them north and east of the Twins and on the southernmost edge of the Neck. It has been an arduous stretch and as fraught with danger as Sandor had feared. They meet fewer and less smallfolk along the way here but he knows this means nothing, for he is aware they have been watched several times - by eyes he cannot see but can feel. He has grown accustomed to the sensation of the hair rising on the back of his neck and wears his sword at his hip and in plain view. Sansa's dagger is tied to the horn of her saddle within easy reach, and he has made certain she knows the most vulnerable parts of a man to strike at close range.
They have found little refuge from the wilderness, only more burnt villages and plundered keeps, small farms of scorched ground. But he has become adept at spotting low caves and sheltered outcrops where they can make camp and at least stay dry. Some days he thinks the rains will never stop. And if Sansa has noticed the growing chill in them, she says nothing.
This part of their journey has not been without its pleasures, though they have been small and hard-won. They both have need of frequent stops when they dare risk it, to seek the other out for long embraces, standing under the shelter of scrubby pines or in the middle of empty buildings with blackened or battered walls - and often stained with rusty brown streaks he recognizes as dried blood. It does not matter where these newly intimate reconnections of theirs take place. All that matters is that it is there for the asking, a constant renewal.
There is no pretense when night falls and they find their pallet, burrowing under the furs and into each others arms. She coos encouragement to him when he kisses her and maps the least dangerous of her curves and valleys with his large hands, but he holds to his vow that he will not take her in these sorts of places. Though Sandor cannot say why, it is important to him that when she gives her gift, it is in a place equal to and deserving of its value.
In the two weeks since their kiss at the river's edge, knowing that she cares for him and wants him has made surprisingly little difference, and yet all the difference in the world. The small things have not changed. He still grows annoyed at her chirping and endless questions and her distaste of anything muddy or rank, or any food they gather that is unfamiliar to her and strange on her tongue. He still bristles when she questions him about why they go this way instead of that; and times they are both tired and he will scold her when he sets her to a chore and catches her heavy, put-upon sighs.
But everything large, the context of everything else, has changed.
He is no longer afraid he'll say or do something and she will turn away from him. He speaks more freely to her and expects the same in return - good or bad. If there is a problem, they battle it out or wait it out. He knows now that he has been granted, along with her presence, the very thing that finally got him to his knees back in the sept on the Quiet Isle. Her affection for him, he has discovered, is another gift: one of time.
So when he watches her now, he does it differently. Not to judge or to find reasons to either smile at her or frown. He no longer tries to guess what she thinks of him or poke at her with words to weigh her response. He studies her now with endless fascination and uncomplicated concern. Now he can get out of his own way and simply watch.
"What is it?"
They are sheltered under an outcropping of rock on the edge of the hills, surrounded on three sides and over their heads by stone. Too shallow to be called a cave, it still has enough room that he has built a fire to roast the two scrawny jack rabbits he managed to trap before the rain began to fall again.
She peers over at him, sucking the meat from a bone; other, smaller ones piling up next to her. "Nothing," she says.
"Is that why your face keeps wrinkling up, girl: nothing? Have you hurt yourself and not told me?"
"No, it's not like that."
She goes back to her supper and he can tell she's had her say. He thinks to leave it but then her face twists again, harder this time. He tosses away a bone and licks his fingers clean.
"Sansa, look at me." He waits till he has her reluctant attention. "What is it, then?"
Shaking her head, she glances aside. "It's nothing, truly. It's just … My moonblood is upon me."
Laughing, he reaches over and runs his hand down her arm. "Is that all?"
She darts her eyes at him, blushing.
"Cramping, are you?" That gets him another quick peek and she gives a sharp nod.
"It's nothing to go red over, bird. I was Cersei's dog for years before she gave me to Joffrey. I know a thing or two about a woman's moonblood."
He levers up from the ground, wiping his hands on his robe and searches around, poking through the loose rocks at his feet. Finding one long enough and flat enough, he scrapes the edge of the fire back with the side of his boot and sets it on the embers to warm.
She watches him with curiosity as he sits with his back against the stone wall and grabs their saddle bags, stacking them one upon the other between his legs until he's made a short cushion. "Come here, bird," he says patting the stack. "Sit with your back to me. Off with the robe first."
She side-eyes him for a moment and then crosses her arms in front of her and pulls it off. She is clothed in simple breeches, high boots, and a boiled leather jerkin strapped over several of his tunics. A woolen scarf is wrapped around her neck and her hair is still bound under her cap. She reminds him of a filly standing there, all long slender legs and filled with innate grace. She steps between his feet and turns, carefully lowering herself to sit in front of him.
He begins undoing the buckles on the jerkin, his cold knuckles brushing the back of her neck on the first, and a tremble runs through her. He reaches the last one at her hips and works it free, leaning up to push it off her shoulders. She shrugs out of it, bending, to set it at her feet. Before she can fully straighten, Sandor presses his thumbs hard into the small of her back, on either side of her spine, fingers spreading to easily encompass the curve of her hips.
She jerks in surprise and then moans low in her throat and folds herself almost double as his thumbs begin drawing deep, widening circles into the muscles there. He grins at her back. "That the place?"
"Gods … yes," she breathes and then yelps as he hits an especially tender spot. He lifts his hands but she tells him not to stop and he digs back in.
She is slumped like a drunken soldier before long, forearms resting on splayed knees, her head hanging low between them. But no soldier boy ever wore curves like hers. He is tempted to stop long enough to shove his hands beneath her layers of tunics and chides himself for his want of her bare skin under his. He can feel when she gives up the last of her resistance and relaxes fully against his hands, swaying slightly with his movements.
"Did you do this for Cersei?" she mumbles, her question almost lost as she asks it to the ground.
He shouts a laugh. "Little chance of that, bird! Remember the bloody nose I told you about? She gave me that for grabbing her arm when she stumbled going up a stair. She was in a foul mood that day and told me a dog's got no business laying paws on a lion. No, I watched her maid do this for her."
"You are quite good at it."
"The first one's free. Might be I'll want something in return next time. Not a bloody punch to the nose either."
"I am no lion, ser," she retorts and he can hear the smile in her words. "Wolves and dogs are more alike than not, I think. Your nose is safe with me."
"Good thing, that. Wouldn't want to ruin this pretty face of mine."
She giggles and then gets quiet again. He works at her back until his hands begin to ache and he flexes them and pats her between the shoulder blades. "Up," he says as he stands. "Fetch me a tunic from my bag. Don't matter if it's clean."
He squats by the fire and takes what she's dug out. Wrapping it round his hand, he grabs the flat rock from the embers and bounces it in his palm to judge its readiness. "That'll do," he decides, pivoting and dropping off his heels, scooting back until he's slumped against the wall. "Grab the furs and come back here," he tells her. Unwrapping the cloth from his hand, he loops it round the rock, padding it to protect her from the worst of the heat it's leeched from the embers. Sansa settles between his outspread legs and he pulls her back against his chest after draping one of the furs over his shoulders and around them.
"If I had a helm we could heat some water and use a skin instead. This will have to do." Sandor picks up the bundled rock and lays it low on her belly. "Put it where it feels best, girl, the heat will do the work." He sits up, bending them both over as he snatches another fur to cover them in front. He tugs off her cap next, and combs through her hair with splayed fingers. They are soon cocooned, warm and relaxed in their small nest of stone.
"That helping?" he asks after a few minutes.
"Yes, very much so. Thank you."
He wraps his arms round her and covers her hands with his. Her head tips back against his shoulder and she peers up at him.
"How did you know to do this?"
"I've lived twice as long as you, girl. I've learned a few things. Might not be fancy, but it does the job."
"It wasn't right, what Cersei did," she says a short time later. "She should not have hit you like that."
He has grown used to the way her mind works and how she'll hold close something he's told her and think on it, then bring it up again as if they hadn't already moved on to something else. She is a constant delight to him and he squeezes her tightly for a moment.
"Lions, dogs, wolves. They're none of them so different. A pack can only have one leader. She was making bloody sure I knew it wasn't me."
"Not all wild things are like that."
"Most," he argues.
"Not birds. They don't care about things like that. They just want to be free to fly."
He turns his head and nuzzles into her hair, struck by the sadness he hears in her words.
"You may have the right of it, there" he says. "But there's more wolf than bird in you, Sansa, don't forget that."
"Maybe that's why she hated me."
"Who, Cersei?"
"Yes. She pretended to love me, but she didn't. If she loved me she wouldn't have let Joffrey do what he did to me - or to my father. I wanted to be like her once. How could I have been so blind?"
"People see what they want to see. The first time you set eyes on someone, you make up your mind who they are, 'specially if they fit the part. Works the other way, too. Get looked at a certain way enough times and soon you wake up one day and that's who you've become, like it or no."
"Is that what happened to you after Gregor burned your face?"
"Aye, some of it. The rest I took on myself."
"But what you look like, that's not all you are. Not anymore."
"No, and you're no empty-headed bird either."
"You used to think I was."
"Still do, sometimes." His bark of laughter becomes a grunt of pain as she jams a well-placed elbow in his ribs. That makes him laugh even more. He will give her that one. They shift and get comfortable again.
"How much further do we have to go, Sandor?"
"A fortnight should see us well through the Neck. We'll have to stay close to the Kingsroad, else the bogs will get us. That'll make for a quicker trip."
"And then?"
"Then we have to make it past Moat Cailin."
"It's still so far to Winterfell from there."
"Not so far as we've already come."
"Will we make it before the weather turns?"
Assurances automatically spring to his lips but he holds them tight and swallows them down instead. He can't find it in him to lie to her. "I don't know, bird. I mean to get us there, but I don't know for certain."
She grows quiet and soon lifts the fur to lay the bundled rock next to them before covering up again and turning in his arms to push closer. She tucks her legs close to her chest and he enfolds as much of her as he can wrap his arms round.
"It's all right," she decides after a while, her voice gone slow and thick with sleep. "If we needs must, we will find a village where we can stay and be safe. Or mayhaps even a cottage or a farmhouse along the way that's not been too badly damaged. We'll fix it up and make it our own and we'll stay there. We can do that, don't you think?"
He knows it more likely they will die out here, either buried in the snows that are sure to come or killed by men carrying banners or none at all, but armed with steel just the same. They have been far luckier than they should be and Sandor knows that luck will eventually run out, as surely as he knows he will die protecting her from whatever may come. He finds he doesn't have the heart to share his certainties this time though, and so he sighs and pulls her closer and tells her, "Whatever you want, bird, I'll make sure you have it. Whatever you want."
Later he dreams of snows and of howling winds, of bitter cold that cuts right through him, sharp as a blade. And when he wakes shivering at first light, he blinks with disbelief and dread at the blinding white of the snow that has fallen as they've slept, blanketing their rocky slope and the fields beyond. Sandor finds himself mouthing curses and prayers in equal measure as he shakes the girl awake.
Winter has returned to Westeros.
...
Summary: Sandor Clegane discovers that death does not always mark the end of a life. Sometimes it's only the beginning. Spoilers up to and including A Feast For Crows. AU
Rating: M
Pairing: Sandor/Sansa.
Word Count: 2,710
Warnings: Should consensual snuggling with a Westerosi maiden just shy of her majority be warned against? If so, you've been warned.
A/N: This one should probably be sub-titled "The Calm Before the Storm, " or "The Fluff Before the Rough," or "The Sweet Before the Bitter," or something along those lines. Pick the cliched phrase of your choice.
Comments are love. I appreciate each and every one of you who take the time to read and leave feedback. These chapters are the best "Thank you," I could ever send your way.
These Scars We Wear - 16/?
A fortnight sees them north and east of the Twins and on the southernmost edge of the Neck. It has been an arduous stretch and as fraught with danger as Sandor had feared. They meet fewer and less smallfolk along the way here but he knows this means nothing, for he is aware they have been watched several times - by eyes he cannot see but can feel. He has grown accustomed to the sensation of the hair rising on the back of his neck and wears his sword at his hip and in plain view. Sansa's dagger is tied to the horn of her saddle within easy reach, and he has made certain she knows the most vulnerable parts of a man to strike at close range.
They have found little refuge from the wilderness, only more burnt villages and plundered keeps, small farms of scorched ground. But he has become adept at spotting low caves and sheltered outcrops where they can make camp and at least stay dry. Some days he thinks the rains will never stop. And if Sansa has noticed the growing chill in them, she says nothing.
This part of their journey has not been without its pleasures, though they have been small and hard-won. They both have need of frequent stops when they dare risk it, to seek the other out for long embraces, standing under the shelter of scrubby pines or in the middle of empty buildings with blackened or battered walls - and often stained with rusty brown streaks he recognizes as dried blood. It does not matter where these newly intimate reconnections of theirs take place. All that matters is that it is there for the asking, a constant renewal.
There is no pretense when night falls and they find their pallet, burrowing under the furs and into each others arms. She coos encouragement to him when he kisses her and maps the least dangerous of her curves and valleys with his large hands, but he holds to his vow that he will not take her in these sorts of places. Though Sandor cannot say why, it is important to him that when she gives her gift, it is in a place equal to and deserving of its value.
In the two weeks since their kiss at the river's edge, knowing that she cares for him and wants him has made surprisingly little difference, and yet all the difference in the world. The small things have not changed. He still grows annoyed at her chirping and endless questions and her distaste of anything muddy or rank, or any food they gather that is unfamiliar to her and strange on her tongue. He still bristles when she questions him about why they go this way instead of that; and times they are both tired and he will scold her when he sets her to a chore and catches her heavy, put-upon sighs.
But everything large, the context of everything else, has changed.
He is no longer afraid he'll say or do something and she will turn away from him. He speaks more freely to her and expects the same in return - good or bad. If there is a problem, they battle it out or wait it out. He knows now that he has been granted, along with her presence, the very thing that finally got him to his knees back in the sept on the Quiet Isle. Her affection for him, he has discovered, is another gift: one of time.
So when he watches her now, he does it differently. Not to judge or to find reasons to either smile at her or frown. He no longer tries to guess what she thinks of him or poke at her with words to weigh her response. He studies her now with endless fascination and uncomplicated concern. Now he can get out of his own way and simply watch.
"What is it?"
They are sheltered under an outcropping of rock on the edge of the hills, surrounded on three sides and over their heads by stone. Too shallow to be called a cave, it still has enough room that he has built a fire to roast the two scrawny jack rabbits he managed to trap before the rain began to fall again.
She peers over at him, sucking the meat from a bone; other, smaller ones piling up next to her. "Nothing," she says.
"Is that why your face keeps wrinkling up, girl: nothing? Have you hurt yourself and not told me?"
"No, it's not like that."
She goes back to her supper and he can tell she's had her say. He thinks to leave it but then her face twists again, harder this time. He tosses away a bone and licks his fingers clean.
"Sansa, look at me." He waits till he has her reluctant attention. "What is it, then?"
Shaking her head, she glances aside. "It's nothing, truly. It's just … My moonblood is upon me."
Laughing, he reaches over and runs his hand down her arm. "Is that all?"
She darts her eyes at him, blushing.
"Cramping, are you?" That gets him another quick peek and she gives a sharp nod.
"It's nothing to go red over, bird. I was Cersei's dog for years before she gave me to Joffrey. I know a thing or two about a woman's moonblood."
He levers up from the ground, wiping his hands on his robe and searches around, poking through the loose rocks at his feet. Finding one long enough and flat enough, he scrapes the edge of the fire back with the side of his boot and sets it on the embers to warm.
She watches him with curiosity as he sits with his back against the stone wall and grabs their saddle bags, stacking them one upon the other between his legs until he's made a short cushion. "Come here, bird," he says patting the stack. "Sit with your back to me. Off with the robe first."
She side-eyes him for a moment and then crosses her arms in front of her and pulls it off. She is clothed in simple breeches, high boots, and a boiled leather jerkin strapped over several of his tunics. A woolen scarf is wrapped around her neck and her hair is still bound under her cap. She reminds him of a filly standing there, all long slender legs and filled with innate grace. She steps between his feet and turns, carefully lowering herself to sit in front of him.
He begins undoing the buckles on the jerkin, his cold knuckles brushing the back of her neck on the first, and a tremble runs through her. He reaches the last one at her hips and works it free, leaning up to push it off her shoulders. She shrugs out of it, bending, to set it at her feet. Before she can fully straighten, Sandor presses his thumbs hard into the small of her back, on either side of her spine, fingers spreading to easily encompass the curve of her hips.
She jerks in surprise and then moans low in her throat and folds herself almost double as his thumbs begin drawing deep, widening circles into the muscles there. He grins at her back. "That the place?"
"Gods … yes," she breathes and then yelps as he hits an especially tender spot. He lifts his hands but she tells him not to stop and he digs back in.
She is slumped like a drunken soldier before long, forearms resting on splayed knees, her head hanging low between them. But no soldier boy ever wore curves like hers. He is tempted to stop long enough to shove his hands beneath her layers of tunics and chides himself for his want of her bare skin under his. He can feel when she gives up the last of her resistance and relaxes fully against his hands, swaying slightly with his movements.
"Did you do this for Cersei?" she mumbles, her question almost lost as she asks it to the ground.
He shouts a laugh. "Little chance of that, bird! Remember the bloody nose I told you about? She gave me that for grabbing her arm when she stumbled going up a stair. She was in a foul mood that day and told me a dog's got no business laying paws on a lion. No, I watched her maid do this for her."
"You are quite good at it."
"The first one's free. Might be I'll want something in return next time. Not a bloody punch to the nose either."
"I am no lion, ser," she retorts and he can hear the smile in her words. "Wolves and dogs are more alike than not, I think. Your nose is safe with me."
"Good thing, that. Wouldn't want to ruin this pretty face of mine."
She giggles and then gets quiet again. He works at her back until his hands begin to ache and he flexes them and pats her between the shoulder blades. "Up," he says as he stands. "Fetch me a tunic from my bag. Don't matter if it's clean."
He squats by the fire and takes what she's dug out. Wrapping it round his hand, he grabs the flat rock from the embers and bounces it in his palm to judge its readiness. "That'll do," he decides, pivoting and dropping off his heels, scooting back until he's slumped against the wall. "Grab the furs and come back here," he tells her. Unwrapping the cloth from his hand, he loops it round the rock, padding it to protect her from the worst of the heat it's leeched from the embers. Sansa settles between his outspread legs and he pulls her back against his chest after draping one of the furs over his shoulders and around them.
"If I had a helm we could heat some water and use a skin instead. This will have to do." Sandor picks up the bundled rock and lays it low on her belly. "Put it where it feels best, girl, the heat will do the work." He sits up, bending them both over as he snatches another fur to cover them in front. He tugs off her cap next, and combs through her hair with splayed fingers. They are soon cocooned, warm and relaxed in their small nest of stone.
"That helping?" he asks after a few minutes.
"Yes, very much so. Thank you."
He wraps his arms round her and covers her hands with his. Her head tips back against his shoulder and she peers up at him.
"How did you know to do this?"
"I've lived twice as long as you, girl. I've learned a few things. Might not be fancy, but it does the job."
"It wasn't right, what Cersei did," she says a short time later. "She should not have hit you like that."
He has grown used to the way her mind works and how she'll hold close something he's told her and think on it, then bring it up again as if they hadn't already moved on to something else. She is a constant delight to him and he squeezes her tightly for a moment.
"Lions, dogs, wolves. They're none of them so different. A pack can only have one leader. She was making bloody sure I knew it wasn't me."
"Not all wild things are like that."
"Most," he argues.
"Not birds. They don't care about things like that. They just want to be free to fly."
He turns his head and nuzzles into her hair, struck by the sadness he hears in her words.
"You may have the right of it, there" he says. "But there's more wolf than bird in you, Sansa, don't forget that."
"Maybe that's why she hated me."
"Who, Cersei?"
"Yes. She pretended to love me, but she didn't. If she loved me she wouldn't have let Joffrey do what he did to me - or to my father. I wanted to be like her once. How could I have been so blind?"
"People see what they want to see. The first time you set eyes on someone, you make up your mind who they are, 'specially if they fit the part. Works the other way, too. Get looked at a certain way enough times and soon you wake up one day and that's who you've become, like it or no."
"Is that what happened to you after Gregor burned your face?"
"Aye, some of it. The rest I took on myself."
"But what you look like, that's not all you are. Not anymore."
"No, and you're no empty-headed bird either."
"You used to think I was."
"Still do, sometimes." His bark of laughter becomes a grunt of pain as she jams a well-placed elbow in his ribs. That makes him laugh even more. He will give her that one. They shift and get comfortable again.
"How much further do we have to go, Sandor?"
"A fortnight should see us well through the Neck. We'll have to stay close to the Kingsroad, else the bogs will get us. That'll make for a quicker trip."
"And then?"
"Then we have to make it past Moat Cailin."
"It's still so far to Winterfell from there."
"Not so far as we've already come."
"Will we make it before the weather turns?"
Assurances automatically spring to his lips but he holds them tight and swallows them down instead. He can't find it in him to lie to her. "I don't know, bird. I mean to get us there, but I don't know for certain."
She grows quiet and soon lifts the fur to lay the bundled rock next to them before covering up again and turning in his arms to push closer. She tucks her legs close to her chest and he enfolds as much of her as he can wrap his arms round.
"It's all right," she decides after a while, her voice gone slow and thick with sleep. "If we needs must, we will find a village where we can stay and be safe. Or mayhaps even a cottage or a farmhouse along the way that's not been too badly damaged. We'll fix it up and make it our own and we'll stay there. We can do that, don't you think?"
He knows it more likely they will die out here, either buried in the snows that are sure to come or killed by men carrying banners or none at all, but armed with steel just the same. They have been far luckier than they should be and Sandor knows that luck will eventually run out, as surely as he knows he will die protecting her from whatever may come. He finds he doesn't have the heart to share his certainties this time though, and so he sighs and pulls her closer and tells her, "Whatever you want, bird, I'll make sure you have it. Whatever you want."
Later he dreams of snows and of howling winds, of bitter cold that cuts right through him, sharp as a blade. And when he wakes shivering at first light, he blinks with disbelief and dread at the blinding white of the snow that has fallen as they've slept, blanketing their rocky slope and the fields beyond. Sandor finds himself mouthing curses and prayers in equal measure as he shakes the girl awake.
Winter has returned to Westeros.
...