Work Text:
Sansa did not know how to approach him, but she knew that she must. He had saved her life, after all, on the day Myrcella sailed to Dorne. When the man with the garlicky breath… but the Hound had been there, and he had saved her.
She wrung her hands again. Already so much time had passed since that day. She should have come to him the very next one, and thanked him properly. Now a week had gone by. Was it already too late for a suitable apology? Septa Mordane would have known.
The night was dark on the serpentine steps, but he would come that way, she was sure of that. He had found her once in this very spot, when she had come back from the godswood. He would come this way tonight, too, and she would remember her courtesies and thank him, and that weight would finally be lifted from her shoulders. It wasn’t only the Lannisters who remembered their debts.
“What are you doing here?” Sandor Clegane’s rough voice pulled her from her thoughts. Sansa wrapped her cloak tighter around her shoulders. He had come from the shadows, much too quiet on his feet for a man his size, and he stank of wine.
“Answer me! Is the little bird trying to flee her cage again?” A large hand gripped her arm, tight enough to hurt.
“I - I was looking for you,” she stuttered, trying in vain to free her arm from his grip of iron. “Please, let me go, you’re hurting me.”
He let go of her instantly. Sansa dared to look up at him from underneath her lashes, but his face was obscured by the darkness of a cloudy night.
“For me?” he asked, his voice hoarse and cruel. “What do you want from the king’s dog, girl?”
Sansa had practiced her words in front of the mirror for days, but now, standing in front of him, she found that all her pretty phrases had disappeared from her mouth. You are a Stark of Winterfell, she reminded herself, and Starks are brave.
“From the king’s dog? Nothing.”
He moved in the shadows at her words, as if surprised, and it gave her the courage to continue.
“But from Sandor Clegane? A moment of his time.”
He took a step closer, towering over her, and it brought him into the light of the torch at the wall. His terrible ruined face stared down at her, and his mouth twitched.
"A moment of his time,” he repeated her words, and what had sounded brave to her became a mockery when spoken by his harsh voice. “That’s a simple enough request.”
Sansa forced herself to look him straight in the face, as if the sight of him didn’t still frighten her to her core. Looking at him was what was courteous, after all, and so she did, with her chin held high. His eyes were gray and angry. She took a deep breath.
“I wanted to thank you. For saving me.”
His eyes blazed with fury at her words. She had said the wrong thing, but she did not know why.
“Saved you?” he spat out. “I haven’t done a thing to save you, girl.”
“But… the day of the riot, you were so brave and - ”
“Vermin, girl. Nothing more than rats for a dog to chase. But saved you?”
He laughed, and almost lost his footing on the stairs. Sansa was dismayed. What was a thank you worth when it was was rejected like that?
“But without you… if you hadn’t come at the right moment. You came just in time, or they-”
Something she said must have struck a chord. The Hound turned to her, and again she forced herself to lift her eyes to his face.
“Just in time, eh?” he rasped. “That may very well be.”
He came towards her suddenly, with a large step, and Sansa pressed herself against the wall at her back. The Hound put his palms on the stones over her shoulder and leaned towards her. Sansa could feel her heart beat faster. He was so close to her now.
“Just in time, that once,” he rasped in her ear. “But maybe not the next time. One day, you’ll be married and queen, and there will be a door between you and I. And then I won’t be there in time, when you start to scream. Oh, I’ll come for you, little bird, but the king’s guards are tougher to kill than starving peasants, and the doors of the Red Keep are hard to break down. It might be that it will take some time for me to come save you, and we both know your lord husband will be quick to do his worst.”
Sansa could see every ridge and crevice of his scarred face in the light of the torch, but it was his blazing eyes that held her captive. He wasn’t angry with her, she suddenly realized. He was angry with himself.
“I am a Stark,” she whispered, more to herself than him. “I will fight him.”
She half expected the Hound to laugh at her again, and call her a silly little girl, but Sandor Clegane went still and stared at her face.
“Would you, girl?” he finally rasped, pensively as if a thought had occurred to him. “Aye, might be there is some wolf in you. Might be it’s enough.”
He stepped back and crossed his arms before his chest.
“You won’t ever have a real chance in a fight, not even against a weakling like him. But maybe… maybe it would be enough to buy me some time. Or buy you some time, to run or to hide. Depends on how well you can be taught.”
Sansa hugged herself, wondering what he was talking about. When the explanation she was waiting for did not come, and he continued to stare at her, she gathered her courage and dared to ask.
“What do you mean by that?”
Sandor Clegane looked at her, and it seemed to Sansa that some of the rage in his eyes had died down like a candle flame. It was easier every time, to look at him.
“I mean,” he said mockingly, “that I’ll teach the little bird how to use her claws.”
They met in the godswood the next night. Sansa wore her loosest gown at his instructions and her hair tied back in a simple Northern fashion. The godswood wasn’t the place for Southron frippery, and Sansa felt more rebellious than ever. The thought of Arya crossed her mind as she made her way to the heart tree. How she would have gaped at Sansa getting fighting lessons from the Hound!
Sandor Clegane was already waiting for her, with a torch stuck in the branches of a nearby tree. He wore a loose tunic over dark breeches, but no armor or weapons. Sansa had never seen him so relaxed. He looked much younger, as if with his armor a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Not yet thirty, she thought to herself.
“Lady Sansa,” he greeted her, and she realized that, for once, he was sober.
“S-, my-.” Sansa faltered. “I don’t know what to call you. And I can’t call you Hound.”
He stared at her strangely, and she felt the need to explain herself.
“You’re not a dog. They call you that, but you’re not. They call Robb the Young Wolf, but it’s not right to address someone by a name like that. He’s Robb to me, too.”
He waved her words away with an impatient gesture.
“Clegane will do,” he rasped roughly. “Or… Sandor.”
She couldn’t possibly call him something as familiar as Sandor, and she was about to tell him that Clegane would indeed do, when the thought of Arya came back to her. What a story it would be, to not only have sparred with the fearsome Hound, but to ignore conventions and call him by his given name.
“Then we shall be Sandor and Sansa to each other,” she said, beaming at him.“No mindless courtesies between us.”
She had said the right thing, or at least he didn’t laugh at her this time. Instead, Sandor cleared his throat and came a step towards to her.
“Enough babbling, girl. Come closer.”
She had spent the whole day imagining the lesson, imagining a dagger that she could expertly sink deep into Joffrey’s black heart, but Sandor only gripped her arm again.
“Ow!” she hissed involuntarily, and again he instantly released his hold on her.
Sansa rubbed her aching arm.
“What were you doing?” she asked. “I thought… I thought there would be a dagger.”
Sandor shook his head.
“Maybe later, if at all. We will start with the basics, and the basics are you, naked in the king’s bed. I’ll teach you how to get away when he tries to hold you down.”
Her disappointment must have shown on her face, because he came even closer, and pinching her chin, he lifted her face to his.
“We do this to buy us time… Sansa. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s not your fate to be a kingslayer.”
“Is it yours?” she whispered. His eyes were dark in the shine of the torch, and the flickering light of the flame threw shadows over his scars.
“It will be, if… if he hurts you,” he rasped back at her.
“But he hurts me every day.” At her words, innocently spoken, the rage in his eyes returned.
“And every day I do nothing while they beat you bloody! Aye, just a dog, I am.”
“No!” Instinctively she reached out, to calm him like she had calmed Lady during a summer storm. He stilled when she cupped his scarred cheek. “Sandor, I do apologize. I didn’t mean it like that. You’re my only friend in King’s Landing.”
He took a deep breath and a step back.
“Enough talking. Let’s get started.”
He showed her how slither her wrist out of his grip, again and again. She would have bruises the next day, but these bruises came with the realization that he never meant to hurt her. He simply did not know how to touch skin as delicate as hers and what strength he had.
After the wrist came the elbow, and after the elbow, the shoulder.
“You’re not bad at this,” he rasped begrudgingly once they were done and sat next to each other in the dewy grass.
The compliment, so unlike him, took her by surprise, and she looked up from her lap. Sandor was staring straight ahead.
“It… it reminds me of dancing,” she confessed to his profile. She sat to his right, the unscarred side, and for the first time she thought that he would have been quite handsome had it not been for his brother and the flames. “You take a step towards me, I step to the side. You take my wrist, I turn my elbow outward… It’s like a dance, don’t you think?”
“Wouldn’t know,” he growled. “Never danced in my life.”
“Never…?” Sansa loved dancing. To think that a man his age had never danced!
“What use is a dog on a dance floor, huh?” His voice shook, and it frightened her for a moment, before he continued and she understood that it wasn’t rage this time that made him shake. “I was seven when I was burned.”
His grief touched her deeply.
“I can teach you if you like?” she asked carefully. “You teach me how to defend myself, and I will teach you how to dance in return.”
He scoffed.
“And what for? Knowing how to dance will not make me any more comely. Find yourself another Knight of Flowers, if you’re desperate for a pretty face to prance around with.”
She didn’t know what to say, and they sat for a moment in silence.
“It’s time to go back to your cage, little bird,” he finally said, slightly less gruff than she had expected him to be. “You did well today.”
They met again the next night, and the one after, and every other night Sandor wasn’t on duty. He would wear a jeweled brooch on his cloak whenever he was free to meet her, and she would steal away to the godswood for a few hours. Dontos the Fool was forgotten as Sansa danced her way out of wrist locks and neck holds and arm grabs, and when she slept she dreamed she was a warrior, all dressed in black.
They had begun her training with both of them standing, but one night she arrived to see him spread a thick horse blanket on the grass.
“Get down,” he barked at her instead of a greeting, and she obeyed. Laying on her back she waited for him to join her, but instead he paced the length of the blanket, again and again. Finally she heard him groan. His shadow fell over her as he kneeled on the blanket beside her.
“I will not hurt you,” he rasped, his voice angrier than it had been in weeks. “I will not hurt you. Do you understand that?”
Sansa nodded. She knew him now, and neither his face nor voice frightened her any longer.
He didn’t frighten her, either, when he rolled his massive body on top of her, holding most of his strength and all of his weight from crushing her, and showed her all the places a man was vulnerable when a woman was on her back. How to bite, and where to kick, and when to scratch. He even let her pull his hair. It was surprisingly soft.
“You’d never stand a chance against me,” he said when they were done, and his fingers combed thin hair back over scars. “But not many men would, either. Just remember, don’t be afraid, and use everything you have. And don’t forget to scream so I can find you.”
After that night, Sandor sometimes joined her in her dreams, and they fought a giant together, in the walls of Winterfell, or they danced in the Northern snow before a weirwood tree. In those nights, she would wake before dawn, breathing heavily and with a strange heat, like a fever, radiating from her core.
With every night that passed, she felt stronger.
“Isn’t it funny that Arya had dancing lessons and I learn how to fight?” she asked the heart tree as she lay panting in the grass after a specially vigorous sequence of exercises.
“What’s funny?” Sandor grumbled, passing her the waterskin.
“Dancing,” she replied and rolled over on her elbow, watching him where he lay on his back with his scarred side facing her. “Are you sure you don’t want to learn?”
He shrugged. “There’s no use to it. Just a waste of time.”
“Oh, but dancing is fun! And it would be just the two of us, no one else would ever know!”
“No one else would ever believe that the king’s dog has danced with the Lady Sansa Stark,” he replied grimly.
She swatted his shoulder.
“Don’t call yourself a dog, Sandor. Or I will call myself a wolf.”
“And do what?” he rasped, but she knew him now, and knew him to be playful.
“What is it that wolves do to dogs?” she asked, laughing. She had evaded every one of his gentle attempts to subdue her today, and she had rarely felt such hope since the day Ilyn Payne had taken her father’s head.
“Well, there’s fight, and bite, and mate,” he growled, and turned towards her. Sansa could feel herself blush under the heat of his eyes.
“We already fought,” she whispered.
He huffed. “Wouldn’t call it fighting, girl, not when it’s only slightly more than running away with a twist.”
“And you showed me how to bite,” she continued, speaking even more softly.
“Aye,” he said evenly.
“Sandor…” her voice was very small now. “Mate?”
He turned away abruptly and got up in one fluid movement.
“Back to your cage, little bird.”
She was a Stark, Sansa told herself. Starks were brave.
“Let’s dance first. Just three steps.”
“Will you shut up about it, then?” he asked her, talking with his face to the heart tree. “I’m getting sick of your chirping.”
Sansa got up with limbs that had suddenly lost all their tiredness, and walked towards him where he stood at the heart tree.
“I’ll have to put my hand in yours,” she said carefully. Sandor turned around and looked down at her, eyes wild behind a curtain of dark hair. He hadn’t pushed it over his scars like that in a week, and Sansa stood on her tiptoes and gently brushed it back. There was no ear to tuck it behind, and he trembled at her touch.
“You have to place one hand on my arm, like this,” she began, not in the least shaken by the stark hunger in his face and his twitching mouth. “It would be best to have some more light, of course, and the ground isn’t ideal. And I’m not wearing the right shoes for dancing, either -”
“Sansa,” he interrupted her. His voice was raw and hoarse, and she could feel that peculiar heat kindling in her core at the sound of it. “Shut up or I will make you.”
“- and we don’t have music -” she went on undaunted. It was his own fault that he didn’t frighten her any longer; he had woken the wolf in her, after all. The wolf and the heat.
“I told you to shut up, didn’t I?” he growled with his voice that sounded like steel on stone, but he let her put her hand in his and wrapped his arm around her shoulder like she had shown him.
“- so I thought I could sing for you.”
At these words, he made a noise deep in his throat, ferocious like a beast uncaged, but his eyes held no rage in them, and his lips were soft as he leaned down and kissed her.
They danced beautifully.