Work Text:
He is a loyal dog, and does as he is bid.
That is what he tells himself as he picks his way over a tangle of tree roots, moving further into the shadows off the road. The boughs above him creak in a warm wind. When he stops some yards into the woods, so do the soft footfalls behind him.
“Why are we stopping, my lord?”
Her voice cuts through the trance he has been moving under since they left the Keep, ignites a pit of fire deep in his belly that has nothing to do with Dornish sour. It is the acrid taste of anger on his tongue and the lead weight of shame in his chest, pulling him down. He thinks he might deserve it all for what he has agreed to.
Where they have stopped lies just between two great oaks, their trunks gnarled and ancient. In among their leaves he can hear birds calling, the dull hum of some flying insect he can’t name. Here and there flowers have pushed their way out of the ground, determined to fight their way to the sparse light falling through the canopy. It is as though the world has suddenly woken. Life is all around them, and it is the cruellest thing he’s ever seen.
“Are we to make camp here?” The girl continues timidly, unaware of the danger she is in, unheeding of the fact that he might have orders other than those the Queen told her of. Forgetting that he is, first and foremost, a killer.
There is no suspicion in her blue eyes when he turns to face her. They flicker away, as always, to study the tops of her boots. He did not expect her to look at him any more than she had in her golden cage, but if he thought that might have made his duty easier to fulfil he was wrong.
“We’re not making camp,” he tells her, and it is no lie. He hasn’t lied to her; Cersei did all that, telling the little bird some pretty story about him taking her home to her mother. For all that, he still thinks himself among the lowest whoresons in the Seven Kingdoms. He had promised never to lie to her, but here he is, playing along to deceit like a mummer in some terrible farce.
The girl listens to him warily, still observing the undergrowth. She does not see the hand inching towards his sword belt, unsheathing the dagger there to hide it in the shadow of his cloak. He takes half a step toward her.
She has always been pretty, even as a mere child with a head full of songs. The years at court have not diminished that, he thinks, odd as the observation is. She is taller, she is shapelier, and there is something about her countenance that seems to have cast off childhood like other girls change their dresses. Hers is a sad sort of beauty, and never more so than in the golden light of high afternoon tumbling between the leaves of the Kingswood, not guessing for a moment that this is the day she will die.
The thought is a blow to the chest, poison through his veins. But he has orders. In all his time serving House Lannister, the Hound has never disobeyed them. There has never been anything to make those loyalties waver. Even now, he knows he will do as they ask.
It is hard, he thinks as he looks at her, eyes averted and shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. She is thinking of something pretty to chirp at him, and that thought angers him more than anything else. Her last words should not have to be some empty courtesy, but that is all that leaves her mouth. So he speaks for her.
“I want my song, little bird,” he tells her, despising himself every moment he prolongs his task. He should have slit her throat swiftly while they were riding away from King’s Landing, but something had told him she deserved more than bleeding out hunched in a saddle. Die she would, he knew that much; if not by his hand, then by one of his noble brothers of the Kingsguard, or by Joffrey himself. This way, Cersei had told him, it would be quick, almost painless, which it certainly would not be at the hands of her son.
Either way, the Queen had said, I will have Sansa Stark’s heart.
“A song?” Her eyes meet his again as he begins to close the gap between them a little further. They speak of her confusion without another word having to leave her mouth.
“You promised me a song, didn’t you?” When he had asked her for one, she hadn’t understood his meaning. “Florian and Jonquil, you said.”
The cruelty she has known still hasn’t quite succeeded in robbing her of her innocence completely, and it makes his stomach roil with unshakeable guilt as he watches her wrack her brains for a verse about knights and fair maids.
He is the last person on the gods-forsaken earth who deserves such a thing.
They are almost an arm’s length apart now, and she has to crane her head to look at him. And look at him she does, for a few moments longer than he had anticipated. A few moments turns into more when the little bird does not look away, and her mouth opens to sing.
He will do it while she is distracted, he thinks, meeting her gaze. They are blue as a cloudless sky. The handle of the dagger is like ice against his fingers. I will make it quick for her, he tells himself firmly. I will make it quick and it will be done. No more hurt, no more fear. He is not a godly man, holds no stock in mercy and heavens, but he thinks that if one creature deserved such a thing it would be her.
He grits his teeth, and the little bird begins her song.
‘Gentle Mother, font of mercy, save our sons from war we pray.’
It is not Florian and Jonquil, and his surprise almost makes his grip falter. He tenses, but does not remove his eyes from her face. It’s a hymn, he knows, and it makes a sudden realisation burn through his mind.
I cannot do it.
It takes a few moments of ringing silence for him to realise when she has finished. The knife remains in his hand, and her heart remains in her chest. Something in the back of his mind registers that the birds have stopped singing. He has been silent for too long.
Then suddenly there is a soft pressure on the side of his face. It is exceedingly gentle; he cannot truly feel it, through the twisted mess of scars there. It is more of a memory, perhaps, of a time when someone had dared to touch him there- or mayhap it is only a glimpse of a dream that has somehow bled through to reality.
In a heartbeat, all semblance of loyalty to the Lannisters vanishes like a summer snow. Little bird, he thinks, or perhaps he says it, for she gives him a tremulous half-smile. Had she known what he was about to do? He thinks not, even as her hand slips away from his face to hang awkwardly at her side, the blood rising in her cheeks. He knows then that he could never hurt her. Could never leave her.
His sudden shame almost overwhelms him, an aching tide of bitterness welling from the depths of his chest. I might have killed her, he thinks, watching her follow the flight of a starling from a nearby branch. His stomach clenches. I would have killed her.
“Will we make for the North soon, my lord?”
He presses the dagger back into its sheath, his hand tingling where he’d held it as though it had been aflame. Something seems to be eating its way through his chest, and he isn’t entirely sure what he’s saying as he answers her.
“Yes. We’ll go back for the horses, take one of the hunting trails west and cut up through the Reach,” he tells her, though it’s more for himself that he says the words. There is a bag of gold dragons tied to his swordbelt; he’d brought it to pay for the inn they had stayed in the previous night, and for the sheer volumes of wine he had intended to drink once he’d done what was required of him. Now, though, he tries to calculate if it will be enough to see them to Winterfell. With a nod, he gestures for her to walk on ahead, and the girl does so, ever obedient.
I could never have done it. He picks up his stride behind her, watching the play of the light in her auburn hair. She glances back at him once or twice, all the shyness of a maiden in her eyes. It does nothing to alleviate the bitterness he feels toward himself, but it does make one thing absolutely clear as the two of them pick their way back through the trees.
Sandor Clegane could never kill Sansa Stark. But he would gladly die for her.