Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

While the nobles dressed for dinner at the Lord Protector’s invitation, Sandor knew the other brothers would be attending sunset prayer. Sandor’s place was there. He did not pray to their gods, of course. He knelt in the sept as he was expected, and used the quiet to reflect on unkept promises, roads not taken, and dreams that would never be.

As he trudged away from the tourney field, he scanned the castle buildings that lined the opposite side of the lists. Their windows glowed with the warmth of hearthfires and tallow-candles. For the first time in many, many moons, his stomach dropped to know he had no place there among the lordlings and their retainers.

He’d watched all day. That was all he did now: watch. Didn’t curse – or speak at all, much. Didn’t drink. Didn’t fuck. Didn’t fight. That world belonged to the Hound, and the Hound was dead. All that was left was Sandor Clegane.  The last spark of defiance in him whispered that he wasn’t really living his life as Sandor Clegane either: that he’d exchanged one dramatic pseudonym for another. Being Novice Gravedigger was no more of a lie than being the Hound, after all.

Novice Gravedigger kept no company but the island’s dogs. He kept his bile to himself, stewed in it until all that was left of him was sadness. And silence.

And watching.

Watching travellers come and go, watching ships on the Bay of Crabs, watching the moons turn and the ravens fly. Watching winter set in. It was a relief to find something new to watch. He understood tourneys, horseflesh, and duelling as he would never understand the eddies on the estuary or the social dynamics of silent men.

It surprised him how safe it felt to stand at the rail, even surrounded by fighting men who would have fled from his banner if they’d known it. The deep cowl hid most of his face, and his scars were safe behind a piece of roughspun that covered the mouth. Novice Gravedigger remained a novice – that is to say, he had taken no vows – but the garb of a full brother meant only his height and bulk drew stares this day.

Novice Gravedigger did not return their stares. He simply watched the tourney.

He saw a ginger lad wearing a sodding favour until he got knocked in the mud. He saw a puffed up blond lordling take a lance in the thigh that might well have crushed the artery there. He saw some Littlefinger crony take a dive against a big cunt in rune-scored armour. Half the nobles had gone by the time he saw the melee. 

No mad priests with fiery swords.

Then, with a winner declared to a half-empty viewing stand, the first day’s fighting was over. Spectators and knights alike retreated into warmer, drier quarters as the sun grazed the horizon. The shadows were long in the deep glens of the Vale; the tourney ground took on a drab aspect as it emptied, and there was a curious tension in the air that had little to do with the weather. Banners flapped sadly in the breeze, abandoned to the cold in favour of the entertainments of feast and frivolity. Stewards flushed them from the field more rudely and hastily than seemed necessary.

Time was, I could have destroyed a field like that. Shame the prize was a stupid fucking helm, not a bag of gold. 

The whole event stank of politics. It was hardly surprising: even the excuse that had brought him to the Vale reeked of some unsavoury conspiracy. Like a fool, Sandor had agreed to loan his muscle before he'd found out why the monks were venturing up the mountain.

Apparently, Littlefinger wanted Elder Brother to conduct a formal betrothal for his bastard. Sandor didn’t even know where to start with a raven like that. It was like a music-box made of thousand tiny clever wheels, all intermeshed and whirring, all edged with razored steel, and every one of them singing a different lie. 

Sandor Clegane had no interest in it.

Slush squelched underfoot as he made his way to the sept. The place seemed suspiciously quiet for a feast, but mayhaps that was a Vale trait. The cold soaked into your bones up here; maybe that sapped any high spirits. For once, Sandor was glad of the cloth mask that swaddled his nose and mouth. The mountain air was drier than old bones, all the water frozen out of it; his nose had cracked and bled on more than one morning during the long climb, but at least by day he had his own breath to moisten it. It was the only blood that had stained him since the leg-wound healed. 

His fingers itched to weigh a hilt. It was the only thing Elder Brother had forbidden him since coming to the Quiet Isle. The sanctimonious cunt was probably right about his seeking solace in violence in a former life, and was probably right that no good could come of returning to it.

That depends on what a man considers ‘good’. Would a quick, messy death be better than fading into the mists on the bay?

Something snagged against the arm of his cowl and Sandor spun. 

Not something. Someone.

“Brother!” cried the girl. “My apologies. I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

The wind shrieked between the tents on the valley floor. In another life, he would have thrown her from him with a vague threat about gutting pickpockets. Not today, though. He had no pockets to pick, and in any case the girl was Sansa Stark.

Chapter Text

“The festivities must be a great shock for one used to the contemplative life,” the girl chattered, still clinging to his arm in the empty laneway. “Still, we do have some quiet places here. Could I pray with you, brother?”

Stiffly, Sandor allowed Sansa to steer him into an outbuilding a few paces from where she’d bumped into him. The sept itself was just a few hundred yards ahead: he could see its seven eaves peeking above the lords’ marquees, but that fact was unable to gain purchase when his mind was screaming that Sansa Stark was alive, Sansa Stark was here, and Sansa Stark had found him.

“Do you think the gods set our paths in life?” she rattled on airily, “Or do you believe we must forge our own way with the tools they give us? Perhaps you can’t answer. A shame. I would like it very much if you could. I should love to hear your truths.”

She led him like a dumb animal through a long room lined with gates.  Am I a beast being led to the slaughter?  Sandor had not the faintest idea what she might want of him, let alone what he might say to her. His tongue felt leaden in his mouth, his throat raw at the very thought of speaking. What would his voice even sound like if he used it now?

The whole building reeked filthily of wet furs. Beyond the gated room lay a flagged stone chamber. Reins and harnesses were strewn all about, though two cloaks were hung neatly by the far door and a mouldy-looking sleeping-cot lay in the corner. The girl steered him against the table and stepped away.

 “I prefer to praise the gods in song, if it is all the same to you, brother.”

Sandor’s eyes bugged. The pieces clicked into place. Sansa Stark, in the Vale. Sansa Stark, leading him to a secluded spot in the Gates of the Moon – a castle she clearly knew like the back of her hand. The tourney, Elder Brother. Littlefinger’s bastard. Littlefinger’s knife at Ned Stark’s throat and Littlefinger’s offer to marry the little bird. 

Sandor supposed he’d never specified the breed of bird, after all. 

Is it to be a quick, messy death after all? Her revenge for the song I took?

“Do you have a favourite hymn, brother? As it’s a tourney, I suppose I should praise the Warrior, but I’ve always preferred the woman’s path on matters of violence.”

It was a clear, pure, soft voice, not quavering like the last time he’d heard it but strong. 

The Mother’s Hymn again. She’s japing with me. A mockingbird after all. 

The girl stared him straight in the face as she sang. Limp brown hair peeked from her hood, but there was no disguising the eyes: startling blue like a mountain lake in winter, skin like snow at sunrise, cheeks lit bright with blood and the dark lashes standing out thickly. No, Littlefinger couldn’t change that face. He couldn’t hide those eyes. But Sandor couldn’t meet them. He looked at the tip of her shoulder, the edge of her ear. He was passive. 

If the Stranger had come to meet him in the guise of Sansa Stark, he would at least go out looking at something beautiful. Just not looking it in the eye.

The song broke off. Her arm jerked, barely perceptibly, as though she meant to reach out but thought better of it. When she spoke next, a strange note entered her voice, something dark and warm, utterly different from her breezy coquetry in the yard.

“I suppose you will think it foolish that I ask to pray with you, and not in the sept. I am shy about singing, you see. It’s a very personal thing, to sing for someone. Do you not think so, brother?”

Tentatively, as though taming a beaten dog, she reached out a gloved hand. Sandor flinched before she laid it against his cheek, but allowed it. Gods, of all the vices and cravings he’d left on the mainland, he’d pined for this more than any of them. No sword, no wine, no wench could soothe him like that touch. That touch that told him sweetly that not every eye saw him as a monster.

That touch reached out to Sandor Clegane, not to the Hound. It seemed the garb of Novice Gravedigger didn’t hide him properly from Sansa either. The thought made his chest constrict.

At least sword, wine and wench brought me happiness, if only for an instant. This can only destroy me.

He let his eyes drift from her ear to her eyes, and her gaze struck him like a hammerblow. It pleaded for a sign, any spark of recognition. Just as Sandor was about to give in to the touch and lean his face against it, he saw her spine begin to stiffen. The hand withdrew, and he felt its loss more keenly than a slap to the face. The blue eyes iced over.

“Why have you agreed to stray so far from your brothers?” she asked briskly. “You walk like a man who has been wounded. Have they harmed you in some way? You have nothing to fear here. I know every knight and guardsman in this castle.”

Her tiny hand gripped his wrist, eyes pinned to his.

“I can keep you safe. No-one would hurt you again, or I’d…”

There was a ring of familiarity to those words, even if he couldn’t place why. Had he said something that to her, once? He’d been in his cups most of the time. It was so hard to be sure. His memories of her were soft-edged things, impressions of feelings washing one after another, from irritation to admiration to frustration. 

It didn’t matter. The meaning was clear.

Sandor grasped her opposite wrist as gently as he could manage. Her eyes widened. He saw the fright in them that he remembered so well.

Her hand still clinging to his left arm - seeming to sear its print into his flesh - Sandor pulled the cloth wrapping from his face. It dangled uncomfortably from his ear, where it remained twisted.

“What in seven hells were you thinking, little bird?” he rasped. There was a harsher scratch to his voice than he remembered, through lack of practice. “Leading a strange man into… is this a kennelmaster’s office?”

He glanced around appraisingly. “Subtle,” he deadpanned quietly.

“What if you’d been wrong? What if your mysterious brother took it into his head that he’d like to fuck you, all the way out here?”

There was no anger in his tone. How could there be? From the moment he’d reached for his gag he’d been watching the expressions roll across Sansa’s pretty face like ripples on a pond: surprise, hope, delight, wonder. She’d looked at him a little like that once before, at another tourney in another life.

Aye, sometimes watching felt like the finest thing a man could do. From the way Sansa swallowed, Sandor realised his watching probably looked more like glowering and he quickly schooled his expression.

“Maybe I wouldn’t mind that,” she teased. 

 Sandor’s expression unschooled itself.

“In any case, I knew it was you. I’ll need to ask you some questions about what you saw on the field, for the view was poorer than I might have liked up in the gallery. Another time, perhaps.”

The bottom dropped out of Sandor’s stomach. “Are you going somewhere?” he growled, feeling hollow.

Sansa blinked up at him happily. Those eyes… like looking to the bottom of the sea in summer.

“I certainly hope so,” she beamed. “Will you take me away from here, Sandor?”

If not for the table behind him, he would have taken a step back. “Right now?”

“It seems a good time. I think my betrothed is dying of his wounds. My cousin is beyond help. And I have not been missed.”

Sandor nodded. He stood up a little straighter, letting the cowl fall from his head.

“Might be they haven't looked for you yet. But you’ve been missed all right.”