Archive of Our Own ^beta

This far north, even at the very start of the ninth month, the chill from the land is obvious. If one had the luck to be somewhere else, perhaps even just ten miles further west towards Karhold, the endless crags and roughness could be considered windswept, barren, and quite magnificent. There is a music to the wilderness between the Weeping Water and Last Hearth; a pagan Old Gods strangeness that makes people even in the heady year of 1957 think of faeries, weirwoods, and time never quite moving as it does in the rest of Westeros.

And then there is this place. This citadel, dark and ancient and filled with the memories of far too much death. To be perfectly honest, the scrubby moorlands surrounding the Dreadfort are, and this is charitably put, bloody depressing. Purple heather gives way to sad-drooping ferns that drip wet even into the afternoon, and the not quite vibrant foliage edges testily towards a more fittingly utilitarian brown. If the wind blows the wrong way, off the river, some of the more impressionable pupils swear they can hear the screams of the flayed men tortured by the ancient Boltons.

The less said about the current crop of Boltons, the better.

It is here, caught in the no man’s land betwixt fortress and stable, that Mr. Clegane, who has the unfortunate position of being the history master at the Dreadfort, is accosted.

“Good afternoon, Cleggers.” Cheerful. Loud. Ex-army officer written through it like a stick of rock.

“Never. Call me that. Ever. Again.”

“Babydoll better?”

“Piss off, Dondarrion.”

The physical training master, all gold-red hair and war wounds from crashing his tank in a feat of apparent derring-do back in ‘43, nudges him with a muscled elbow, grinning broadly. He is possibly the most relaxed man in Westeros, to the point where rumours are amongst staff and pupils suggest he spends most of his time off his head on various highly illegal substances. Clegane doesn’t particularly care, since Dondarrion is one of the few people that he almost likes and respects, and they all have their vices. He himself deals with isolation a lot more easily than the others, since Clegane is quite a solitary man - if they want to drink, take drugs, shag each other, read pornographic novels, take up sword fighting, or try and seduce Matron, then bully for them.

“How were your holidays?”

“Alright. Get any of the boys killed?”

Beric laughs, gold tooth glittering. “I only get them killed when they really act up. No, we did well. Bagged three over three thousand feet, and did that particularly difficult overhang on the range near Starfall. No one died, was maimed, or even got food poisoning from any of the cooking. A success all round, I’d say.

Clegane regards him, shrugs. Beric has a fetish for mountain climbing, dragging current and old pupils with him down to Dorne each summer to partake in acts of wanton madness. Dondarrion has always been the same; he obviously likes life-or-death situations. It explains the eyepatch, the scarring, the endless near death experiences, the obsession with dangerous sports and motorcycles.

“Nutcase.”

“Of course I am. You are, too. Why’d we be teaching if we weren’t?”

“Speaking of mad men, we got any new ones starting?”

They pause under one of the forbidding overhangs of the Dreadfort, Clegane lighting his pipe though, as always, Dondarrion supplies the lighter. The man is a walking combustible substance. R’hllor worshipper, after all. Companionable silence reigns momentarily as the pipe stutters for a moment, Sandor grumbles, and Beric steals the implement from his mouth, sighing.

“You never pack this thing correctly, and yet how long have you been smoking a pipe?”

“Too bloody long.”

“Miss Tarth’s got competition for attention, anyhow. New mistress starting.”

“Yeah?”

Dondarrion taps out the tobacco and refills the pipe with long, practiced fingers, pops it in his own mouth, relights it with a satisfied nod, and then relinquishes it to the actual owner. He spent several years after coming out of the forces in Asshai, ostensibly to recover from his war wounds and the stress caused by battle, and is the school authority on the smoking of many things. He owns one of those strange tall shisha pipes. Sometimes he ends up dreamily recounting tales of Red Priests, fire worship, and long overheated nights spent in mosquito-buzzing tents with beautiful women blessed with long red hair who talked of the coming of the Dawn and the Prince Who is Promised.

Usually it is boys leaving school who travel east to experience the mysticism.

Not Beric. He’s not usual.

None of the teachers are. No one can work at the Dreadfort and be entirely normal. At least, sometimes they try - bright-eyed young educators with stars in their heads, clutching their suitcases, all wide-eyed and enthusiastic. They bring lesson plans, and ideas of how to motivate the boys. Wall charts. Singing. Oh Gods, the bloody singing. A general lack of corporal punishment, preferring niceness over canes on backsides or rulers across knuckles. A year later they slink away, traumatised, tails between legs, and the equilibrium swings back to how it should be; the odd, the peculiar, the damaged, and the downright wrong.

“We have a lady joining us, Sandy. A Miss Stark from Winterfell.”

“Didn’t we teach-?”

They look at each other, remembering the chaos borne of Robb and Theon, and groan as one.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Clegane taught them the Wars of the Five Kings for their final examinations, and found them re-enacting it one day in his classroom, completely naked, very drunk, using their genitalia as weaponry. He stared at them, told them both that perhaps the bloody Greyjoy rebellion against the Starks might be more suited to their cockfighting, and just left them to it.

“At least Bran is promising. We can but hope that she follows his rather more sensible footsteps - hasn’t he mentioned a sister, who enjoys fencing? Perhaps this is the one? Anyhow, she’s bound to be like Tarth. All professional masculinity and highly polished brogues. Lots of tweed.”

“Go on. I’m sensing a lecture, you knob. Might as well spit it out. Tell me about how fucked up we are when it comes to dealing with women.” Dondarrion fancies himself as some sort of philosopher. Clegane blames the drugs, the Red Priestesses, and the head injuries. 

“Sandy, we really are damaged when it comes to the fairer sex.” Beric smiles, pleased to have the opportunity. Given Clegane’s taciturn nature, even by those who know his moods he is considered an excellent listener. Even if, most of the time, he tunes whoever is speaking out.

“Look at our situation; the upper class males of Westeros. From the age of five we are devoid of female companionship. We are shipped off to school - prep, grammar, major or minor public schools - and then many of us join the forces, or become septons, or decide to teach or, Gods forgive us all, enter into the business world where women do not exist. All we know are mothers, and sisters, and the relatives of friends that we may see at birthday parties. We socialise with men. We live with men. We work with men. No wonder the vast majority of us aren’t even married, Sandor. We’re emotionally stunted as a collective. Some of us are, obviously, perfectly fine with this, but others? Lannister, for instance. He’s desperately in love with Tarth, and has no idea of how to go about wooing her. He just treats her as a boy, with hilarious consequences. We are, as you might say with a woman coming within our midst, putting a cat amongst us pigeons.”

“Ever thought of going after the Ethics job? Your rant’d be right up their street.”

“I’d have to know High Valyrian, and Tyrell would beat me with his cane whilst apologising for the inconvenience.”

“Martell’d poison your tea, more like.” The chemistry master is very fond of the ethics master; everyone knows that Oberyn has slept with both of Willas’ siblings. Perhaps he’s going for the entire set, given the ardour of the Dornishman’s affections. Tyrell’s obliviousness to everything, apart from parsing sentences from thousand year old texts and writing erudite and impenetrable papers for the sorts of journals produced for very intelligent, very obsessive language specialists, means Martell has no chance.

“Bet he tries to seduce Miss Stark.”

“Who?”

“Oberyn. He’s a rake, a cad, and a bounder. He tries to seduce everyone.”

Clegane pauses, frowns. “He’s not tried it on with me.”

“I think your raw masculinity intimidates even the great Professor Martell.” Beric pats him gently on the cheek, over the scars, because both of them know what it’s like to have ruined faces, and, well, it’s only Beric. Dondarrion is as Dondarrion does. It’s the same with Lannister; only the war wounded, the three of them, and, of course, Miss Tarth who is also one of them, are allowed anywhere near the injuries sustained on the battlefield. Brotherhood of the Broken, in a way. “You’re far too manly for him, babydoll.”

“Don’t. Call me. That. Ever. Again.”

“Shit. Look lively.” A flash of colour through the frosted pane of glass in the staff room door; reddish, even through the near opacity.

“What?” Lannister looks up from the newspaper, reading about the latest failure of the Westerlands cricket tour to Braavos (37 all out, Braavos won by an innings and 362 runs). He spent the holidays sailing from Lannisport, and is as brown as a robin’s egg, hair bleached lighter streaks. Before he lost his hand, he was the star bowler for the country team; he still stings about that, says that if he was in Braavos, they’d be winning.

Clegane nods towards the closed door of the staffroom. Dr. Selmy asked the staff to gather to greet the new teacher, and in dribs and drabs they all turned up. Tyrell and Martell talk quietly in High Valyrian, radiating overly-educated smugness - at least Oberyn does. Willas just looks earnest and thoughtful, sipping his tea, free hand waving about as if he is trying to direct traffic. Tarth, grave and serious, sits neatly with her hands upon her tweedy trousered knees. Lannister - the short arse, not the handless one - reads Lady Chatterley’s Lover , making notes and grinning to himself. English master. A breed unto themselves, pretentious twat that he is. Dondarrion isn’t there, which isn’t surprising, since Bolton Minor summoned him to go and help with something pressing and urgent, which probably involves moving torture equipment around the part of the castle still inhabited by the owners.

The school exists as a way for the Bolton family to remain at the Dreadfort, to keep the family legacy, without being forced under with the crippling expenses, bills, and pressure of maintaining one of the most ancient estates in the whole of the North. Roose Bolton is a canny bastard, even if he is a slimy one. However he persuaded Selmy to take on Ramsay as biology teacher, Clegane has no idea, but blackmail is a possibility. Even if Bolton Minor is very talented at the subject. Worrying so. He can dismember a frog like no one’s business. He sometimes watches each teacher in turn, as if he knows how they’d taste if he removed their skin and turned it into one of his leather motorcycle jackets he wears.

Bolton doesn’t even own a motorcycle. He steals Dondarrion’s.

Others, too. All of them - not many people, for they only need one master per subject - packed into the staffroom. Lots of smoke. Chatter. Someone has brought shortbread, unfathomably cheerful on a lace doily the colour of fir trees.

“What, Clegane?” Lannister prompts.

“Incoming.”

The door opens, a creak of rusting hinges and old paint, and the new music mistress is brought before them like some sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.

She is young. Very young. Definitely one of those bright-eyed optimistic sorts, with long red hair pulled into a tail, and a neatly prim but fashionable slim-fitting grey dress with matching black shoes, and dark stockings. She is young, and well dressed, and tall. Slender. Her eyes are bright shocking blue in her peaches and cream face, all pink at the cheeks without cosmetics. The way she moves indicates an unsureness, which is to be expected when a roomful of men stare at her like she’s the best thing to walk through the door in half a century.

Because, damn, she is.

Miss Stark is a good looking girl. She’s the sort of girl who has been told she’s beautiful, and doesn’t quite believe it on some level, or has had an experience in the past that’s knocked her confidence. Perhaps her family don’t get involved with all that sort of thing. Maybe they prefer sports, or intellect, or, in Robb’s case, alcohol and smoking with a reprobate from the Iron Islands. She probably has pretty friends, who are vivacious and know the affect they have on men. She seems quite reserved. Well-mannered.

Clegane watches people. He’s good at it. He’s the sort of honest man that the rest of the world fears because he doesn’t hide his honesty, and that makes him a threat. He is not the most popular man because of this, but is respected by his peers for his convictions.

She carries herself gracefully, but with a slight inward tilt, as if she’s almost protecting herself from something, or someone, or a situation.

“Gentlemen. Miss Tarth.” Selmy, who is as fond of Brienne as he would be of his own granddaughter, nods companionably at the large blond woman. “This is Miss Stark, who shall be teaching music for us this year. No doubt you will help her settle into the school, and assist her with everything she may require.”

“I am pleased to meet you all, sers.” Poor girl. Her voice is sweet, lyrical, and of course she teaches music.

First few weeks out of the way. Tommen Baratheon cries every night because he misses his cat. Bran Stark smiles oddly and talks about Three-eyed Ravens for some reason that no one can fathom. The sixth form are caught between crushes on Jaime Lannister, Martell, and Miss Stark who seems to have no first name.

It’s bloody ridiculous to compare himself to a gaggle of sixth formers, but Clegane is developing quite the crush himself.

She plays the piano. The viola. He finds himself outside of the music rooms as she works through   mournful requiems, or leaping bagatelles, or the thick rich dreamscape nocturnes. Sometimes Oberyn accompanies her on his guitar, and makes her blush and smile in turn, though she retains that careful demarcation between herself and other people. Of them all, she prefers the company of Miss Tarth, who seems to have a burgeoning soft spot for the girl, and they are often to be found in a corner of the staff room, drinking tea, whispering.

“Bloody girl stole my wench,” Lannister grumbles.

“Matron is perfectly capable of looking after herself. It’s lovely that they’ve bonded.” They are in their knot of the war wounded; Clegane, Lannister, and Dondarrion, passing around a hip flask.

They have their friends, their cliques. Some, like Bolton and Payne remain outsiders. Some drift between everyone, like Tyrion, who is the friend of all. He is mercurial, and overly-clever, and gives Clegane a headache. He operates on a scale of drunkenness last seen in the army, during the War.

Everyone has their vices.

Even Miss Stark. She loves lemon cakes, and there are never any left for the rest of the teaching staff. The kitchens now bake every day; Hot Pie, like many of the boys and the men, has a place in his heart for their quiet red-haired music mistress. Even the rarely seen Varys, the deputy headmaster who deals with the Boltons, the administration, and the admissions, has voiced a fondness.

“She needs a friend.”

“Who does? Brienne’s got me.” Lannister can be possessive where Matron is concerned. “She doesn’t need anyone else when she’s got Jaime Lannister. I mean, I’m worth ten friends.”

“You call her wench, Jaime, which isn’t terribly pleasant. Anyway, I was referring to Sansa.”

“She’s got a first name then?” Clegane rolls the syllables in his head. Sansa. A pretty lilt of letters, like her singing or playing. Her long slender fingers pressing ivory and ebony, or the catgut strings of her warm-toned viola.

“You’re looking lovesick, Hound.” Jaime grins, alive and golden. The old army name sticks like shit to a shovel.

“Piss off. How d’you know her first name, Dondarrion?”

Beric drags on his roll-up cigarette, eyes half-closed. There is a strange sweetness to the tobacco, a cloying quality that reminds Clegane of Theon Greyjoy and his smoking habits. Unlike the rest of his baccy, this cloying scented one is never shared amongst the staff, but is taken once a day, after lessons, in full view of the headmaster and the other teachers. But, then. No one cares. Whisky does the rounds. Miss Stark - no, Sansa - nibbles at lemon cake. Brienne sips tea as if there is nothing else in the world that can anchor her to reality, fingers itching to wrap about the fencing sabre she sometimes carries at her belt. Martell tries to seduce Tyrell, who lives in another dimension entirely and seems unaware of the suit being pressed. Bolton’s pornography habit is legendary amongst both staff and pupils, though tilts towards the highly disturbing. H’ghar, who teaches modern languages and ensures every student leaves with a very peculiar accent akin to his own, sits cross-legged before the open fire and hones a vicious bone-handled knife to razor sharpness. Payne, the caretaker, the uncle of the one pupil Clegane actually enjoyed teaching, reads about serial killers. Selmy and his desperation to be honourable and fair, caught in a system that does not allow that. Varys, gin, and the more muscular of the rugby playing sixth form boys. Baelish and his crime ring, selling cigarettes, booze, and other illegal material to the pupils and staff.

Fucked up, the lot of them.

“I asked. Unlike you, Sandy, I’m not terrified of women.”

“Though you’d not sleep with one,” Jaime offers, that grin still white-toothed and gleaming. No wonder school boys get crushes on him.

“Jaime, I’ve slept with more women than you.”

“Which isn’t bloody difficult, is it blondie?” Jaime and his twin sister. No wonder they keep people like the staff in the Dreadfort, locked up and safe. The fucked up, the broken, the wrong, and the crazed. All corralled away from decent society. In charge of educating the next generation of ministers, business leaders, aristocrats.

“Oh by the Seven, not you ganging up on me as well, Hound?” The man ruffles his hair from his forehead carelessly with his prosthetic. “Tyrion. Come and rescue me.”

“You’re big enough and ugly enough, dear brother, to deal with a ginger and a dog.” Tyrion gleams, odd-eyed and cynical, but he comes over with his copy of Anaïs Nin . He’s working his way through the great obscene texts of literature, hoping his dissection of them can be published to wide acclaim. Tyrion is an excellent writer, witty and accessible, with impressive research skills, but his subject matter is very niche and bordering on banned. There are books in his library - de Sade, for instance, and Cleland, and Radclyffe Hall - that are illegal. Tyrion reads them in plain sight, simply saying that if he doesn’t analyse them, who will? He is doing the work of a martyr to the cause of art.

Perverted little dwarf that he is.

“The Hound fancies our erstwhile music mistress, but she seems more interested in stealing my wench away.”

“Gods, she is beautiful, isn’t she?” Tyrion looks over his shoulder at Sansa, who sips her tea with a delicacy of movement that makes Clegane think of feathers, and rosewater. “Poor girl, being locked up here for a year. At least we all seem to be looking after her. Such a shame that she’s had to come out to work at all, given the Stark fortune, but since Ned died they’ve all been scattered to the winds. Barristan says the reason she took the post is because the family gets a reduction in school fees that way, and there’s another little wolf due to start next year. Death duties have really broken them.”

“The War changed everything, didn’t it?” Dondarrion smiles, though the expression is a little darker than his usual kindly warmth. He, out of them all, suffered the most. “Not so much for us middle classes, but Gods, Tyrion. You and Jaime should be charming women on the beaches of Myr, not here, in this damned school. The Boltons should never have been forced to running a school just to keep their home. Oberyn is a prince in name yet he’s here. Willas is heir to a crumbling estate that he says he’ll turn over to the government when it is his, so his family can be freed from the Sword of Damocles that Highgarden is. Did you know the government used the Tyrell estate as a troop hospital? They promised to pay for it to be put back to how it was pre-war, and never did - it’s a shell now. No wonder Willas is so distracted. Ramsay just seethes. You two deal with it, I think, but that’s more because your relationship with your father is more stressful than not. I think you both enjoy the independence. Sansa seems lost.”

“Aye. War changed us all,” Clegane agrees, going for his pipe, pausing, and handing it to Beric.

“We’ll rebuild, one day. It may take years, but we’ll get there.”

“There’s that Red Priest optimism that we know and despise,” Jaime says, amused.

“If you’d share your drugs,” Tyrion adds, “then I’m sure that the pain and suffering of being hideously wealthy and estranged from our family would fade far more quickly.”

“Excuse me? Mr. Clegane?”

Tommen Baratheon, all five feet two inches of second former, peers out from under his floppy blond fringe. He clutches an instrument case made of black leather in one small hand, and shifts his weight from foot to foot nervously. Even the older boys retain their fear of Clegane; something which he quietly encourages with relish.

“Yeah?”

“Um. Sorry to bother, but Miss Stark asked if I could find someone to help her move some things, and Mr. Dondarrion is teaching at the moment, so if you could please help her, please, then that would be super, please?”

They always go to Beric first, who is considered a decent sort of chap. There is a hierarchy of teacher approachment; Dondarrion first, then the Lannisters, then through the list to the bottom. Clegane is below Payne - mute, can’t yell, only a caretaker so no actual power - and above Bolton - short, vicious, murderous, psychopathic, might eat boys if they look at him wrong.

“I’ll be along in a bit, tell her.”

Tommen flushes very red, and he does take after his ‘uncle.’ Legally the youngest of Cersei’s children is Robert Baratheon’s son, but having had most of his bastards come through the school at one time or another, all dark-haired and blue eyed, the blond and green-eyed children of Jaime’s twin are definitely not Bobby’s. Obviously Tyrion knows, and the knot of War Wounded, and Brienne has been informed, but, to the rest of the world, these are the legitimate spawn of Robert and Cersei, and are to be treated as such. Even the kids have no idea.

Clegane sometimes dreams of telephoning that little shit Joffrey Baratheon and informing him that he is a bastard. Nothing but a yellow-haired, green-eyed incest-born bastard.

Revenge for Joff being a bastard in nature, and not just name. He was horrible at school, but at least Clegane had the opportunity to beat him every so often. Of course he whined to Tywin Lannister, who replied that corporal punishment made him a man, and his sons men, and perhaps if Joffrey does play up, then it is his own fault that he’s caned.

He takes a moment to try and remember how to act around pretty girls, then makes his way to the music rooms. Someone plays a trumpet very badly, all sharpness and shrieking, but the soft warmth of Sansa’s voice makes encouraging noises and, thankfully, the din ceases when he knocks on the door.

“Come in.”

“Alright? Tommen said you wanted some things moved.”

Now the weather turns colder with the turning of the moon, Sansa has taken to wearing little cardigans over her dresses, and shoes rather than her sandals. Her dress is deep maroon, flaring today, showing a slenderness of torso and a curve of hips padded with petticoats. Always so well-dressed and groomed, her hair pulled into a chignon, chestnut strands framing her pale, grave little face.

“Thank you for coming to help, Mr. Clegane. I’ll just help Seaworth with this last passage of Clarke.”

Seaworth is one of the vast brood of a captain from the south, and says he wants to be a septon one day. He has his father’s clean peat-brown eyes, and a propensity to swear like a sailor when upset, which, given his father’s position in the Merchant Navy, is not unexpected.

“From the last repeat please, Steffon.”

A grin from Seaworth, before he starts blowing into the infernal instrument. Trumpets never produce the most elegant of sounds, even when played well, but the boy has a talent for murdering any finesse that even brass can produce. The short while it takes for him to honk through the last part of the piece seems to last for decades, so Clegane distracts himself by thinking about Miss Stark’s long red hair unpinned, taken out of the neat hairdo, spilling across her bare shoulders.

“That’s all for today. Thank you, Steffon - I think you’re getting it. Just be a little more careful with your technique, but you’re improving.”

“Thanks miss.” Another of those blazing friendly grins, before the boy shakes his spit from the mouthpiece with a certain schoolboy relish and departs into the next room to put the trumpet safely away, where it can’t hurt anyone else for whole two days.

“What needs shifting?” Brusque. His voice is short, and gruff, and he tries to pull it back but he can’t because otherwise he might give away that he rather fancies Miss Stark - Sansa, all birdsong and trees in a spring breeze.

“Now the sun has changed, the piano is in the wrong position.” She smiles, all faint lines and curves of her sweet lipsticked lips. Soft pink today, like innocence. “When I try and play, the light glares on the music sheets.”

“Didn’t know pianos could be in the wrong position.”

Small talk is never an easy thing for Clegane. He usually lets others get on with it, preferring to remain silent and looming in corners, or, at dinner, allowing conversation to wash over him. Luckily most people like banging on about themselves rather than asking questions, so he makes it through his life somewhat successfully on that point.

“I tried asking Mr. Payne about blinds, or curtains, but he just stared at me.”

“Yeah. Doesn’t like change.”

“Oh.”

“Where d’you want it?”

The piano, an ancient upright without wheels, glowers.

“I think if we move it towards the left wall, there won’t be a problem from now on. I might find a lamp, to help…” Miss Stark trails off, a furrow between her arching eyebrows. They are the same red as her hair, a slash of colour on the cream of her face. If she wore more black, the only richness in her would be deep glowing chestnut and the sea-fathom blue of her wide, carefully lowered, eyes.

“Right then.”

“I’ll take one end, if you-”

“You’re not pushing a bloody piano, girl.” He sighs, shakes his head. She’s a slender beanpole of a thing, all limbs and no strength. “You’ll probably ruin your pretty dress and your nails.”

Something snaps over her face, like a mousetrap, and she seems to retreat into herself. Stiffness, and a certain northern gravity. Not that Clegane had any idea that she wasn’t hiding within herself, before, since he has never talked to her one-to-one, and she always seems so very reserved in the staff room. He is used to Miss Stark’s reticence, and perfect form. Her carefully constructed words. Her inoffensive and crafted ways.

It strikes him, very hard, very quickly.

She’s been hurt, badly, by someone or something. She’s afraid.

“Moving things, it’s what I’m here for. S’what I do, girl, I didn’t expect you to help.” He scrabbles to try and bring her back, to try and set her at ease, and her wide so very blue eyes are quiet and shadowed as she nods.

“Thank you, Mr. Clegane.”

It takes quite a lot of shoving, and he finds himself swearing under his breath when he catches his toe under the heavy edge of the piano bottom, but finally he’s manhandled the instrument into the new pride of place.

“It’s what I’m here for,” he reiterates as she creeps behind the piano, running her long fingers across the keys and pressing one. It resonates, deep and rich, and she smiles so very softly that Clegane’s heart hurts.

Whatever happened to Miss Stark makes him want to scoop her into his arms and beat the living daylights out of what hurt her. Kill it. Show her the dripping corpse of the situation or the person and free her from the weight that drags her down, makes her less than she truly is.

“Still in tune. Thank you.”

Without looking at him, Sansa takes sheets of music, the black notes random squiggles to his philistine eyes, and settles upon the stool. Whatever she does, and it is magical, produces sounds that should never be conjured from human fingers. Softnesses, and dreams, and romance; the sort of beauty that recalls knights, and their ladies, and a thousand years of courtly love. Technically, even though he doesn’t know, but he does because there is an innate appreciation for the music, Miss Stark is flawless. More than that, though, she puts herself into her playing; not her quiet mouseness, or her carefully created persona, but something that is more than that. Her body moves like fluid, a water flow of arms and feet as she depresses pedals, her hands shimmering and fingers quick and precise and at one with the sound and the instrument.

The music changes from what is evidently the introduction, and he recognises what she plays.

The opening aria of Florian and Jonquil is, after all, the most well-known piece of classical music in Westeros.

Then. She begins to sing in the original High Valyrian.

Chest tightening, because she is beautiful and assured and the woman she should be when lost in notes and ivory and ebony, and he is half in love with that figure that life has snatched away from existence, he leaves the classroom with the phrasing reverberating:

Sȳndrori jorrāelis lȳr ozdakonot ziry dīntis *

The majority of the boys go home for the end of term holiday. The few who do remain are left to  their own devices for the fourteen nights between the full and half moon.

Bolton stares at the grey nothing of sky, that sly evilness of a smirk across his mouth, and shoots. The pigeon explodes in a flurry of feathers and blood, and Dondarrion shakes his head.

“Do you really have to use that powerful a shotgun?”

“Makes sure they’re dead, doesn’t it? Better than them being injured, flying off, dying weeks later festering with maggots in the fucking wound, isn’t it? They shouldn’t be shitting on the stables, should they?”

“If the feed was more secure, and the vermin didn’t get to it, you wouldn’t have to-” Beric pauses, narrows his eyes. “You aren’t, are you? Securing it?”

“Where’s the fun in not having something to kill?” The contents of other shell tears through another pigeon, and Bolton pops the shotgun, cartridges removed with a swift ease honed through years of wanton destruction. “I’m on holiday. I am having fun. Look at me having fun.”

“Thank R’hllor the air force turned you down. The thought of you with bombs or a machine gun is abhorrent.”

“I’d have been fucking brilliant at killing.” The pigeons, who thankfully seem to have realised their brethren are being murdered by a short man with a death fetish, have fled for cover. Bolton growls, thankfully unloads his weapon, then deigns to sit with the commoners on the cool dead grass.

“War isn’t all about killing, Ramsay.”

Clegane continues to say nothing. He hates associating with Bolton, who strides about as if he owns the place which, of course technically, he does. His father spends more time with his new wife these days, in King’s Landing, and the Dreadfort is left, for the most part, in the manic and murdering grip of the bastard son.

White scrimmed eyes flicker over Dondarrion’s war wounds.

“Bet they were beautiful when you first had them.”

“We’ve been over this.” Patience is a virtue, according to that fire religion of Beric’s, but a note of tension sings in Dondarrion’s low voice. “Many times.”

“And yet I’ll keep asking until you tell me.”

“No, Ramsay.”

The biology master whines through his nose, rolling onto his stomach and picking up his shotgun. He settles easily into whatever mindset drives his killing urges, broad shoulders relaxing as he squints into the distance.

“I want a rifle.”

“You can’t have a rifle, Ramsay. You know you’re only allowed a shotgun under sufferance. Roose will never get you anything more powerful than that.”

“I could shoot rats more easily.”

“Which you wouldn’t have if you didn’t purposely leave the feed room open.”

They bicker constantly apart from the rare times Bolton softens to something less brittle, less dangerous. Those moments tend to be after Roose stalks menacingly through the hallways of the school, the father demanding the presence of his wayward son. For hours afterwards Ramsay stares into space, eyes dull and still hating but cloudy with something Clegane doesn’t completely understand. Dondarrion, who understands everything because he has an empathy beyond that of a mortal man, sits with him, offers him sips of whisky and the occasional puff of his sweetly-tainted rolled cigarette.

“It is Roose’s fault,” Beric explained one dark rainy day when Bolton destroyed a classroom in a fit of uncontrollable anger and suffered the wretched consequences of his actions. “All if it is, but Ramsay still loves him. He broke his only son, and punishes Ramsay because if it. All it’d take is a kind word now or then, but Roose isn’t the sort to admit that he’s made mistakes.”

To a point Clegane gets it. His own father fucked him up, too. No excuses, though, for men like Bolton and Gregor.

“Get me a rifle, Beric?”

“No.”

“Come on. Get me a rifle or I’ll tell the police about your drug habit.”

A gentle kick to the back of a thigh. “No you won’t.”

Their eyes meet, silver on amber, and Bolton bares his teeth in some sort of smile.

“What about fucking men in the arse then?”

“Again, no you won’t.”

“They’d arrest half the bloody school if you say that, you cunt,” Clegane murmurs. “That’d screw up your Dad’s plans.”

Bolton sits up, glittering like diamond with excitement at revenge on his father, before Dondarrion shakes his head and returns to marking the half of Clegane’s essays he promised he’d help with.

“Sod the school.” Movement, black and bustling, before the dark-curled head rests upon Beric’s shoulder, chin to trapezoid. Bolton probably could flay the skin there perfectly, demonstrating to his pupils the layers to flesh below the surface. “Where’s the fun in losing Dondarrion? Who else have I got to torment the shit out of?"

“Idiot.” The fondness in Beric’s tone is damning.

The music room is too dark, and he knows Sansa squints when she tries to play her piano. The corner it sits traps shadows, sucks even the pale weakness of light that trickles through the leaded glass panes.

Midnight passes, and then one. At two - and she must be abed now - he pulls himself from his armchair before the dying fire in his study. The box in his arms weighs heavy, though more in emotion than heaviness. He shifts it, cardboard biting into his chest. He has been clutching it and staring into the embers for too long, retinas blazing oranges and reds.

Everything is silent, with milk drips of the waning moon puddled upon the ancient worn stone. Few walk the corridors at this hour. Sometimes he finds Tyrell tucked into a window seat, unseeing eyes somewhere a thousand years ago and another language in the words he murmurs to himself. Sometimes Martell accompanies him, trying to persuade Willas to return to bed, to sleep and rest that fierce and scattered mind of his. When that happens, Oberyn’s cinnamon coffee eyes meet Clegane’s, and he shrugs like a wild cat as he wraps a blanket around the frozen young man who exists half a step in the past.

Sometimes Clegane himself shepherds Tyrell to his small rooms that are more books and papers than furniture, bullying him into bed. Sometimes, when the wrecked leg seizes with cold and stillness - not war, not for the heir of Highgarden, but a childhood accident badly set and then infected that makes him lame - Clegane picks him up and carries him.

Beric once said that Sandor is the hero the school deserves. He read that once, in a comic book, about a man who turns into a bat or somesuch nonsense.

Obsessions. Vices. The lot of them. It replaces human interaction, or social experience, or relationships.

Varys, who never sleeps, nods in passing. The moonlight turns him albino, strips the violet of his eyes and turns his rich purple teaching robes into dusty black.

“Tommen was out of bed. He’d availed himself of one of the stable cat’s kittens, so I delivered him to his dormitory, avec aforementioned feline. Gods, I hate it when children cry. What can one even do when they do it? Seaworth has taken it upon himself to try and stop further escape attempts, though now he has a playmate I’m sure Tommen will be rather less miserable.” If Selmy is the headmaster, then Varys is the driving force. His entire reason for being is to keep the school running, whoever is in charge.

He is strange and obsessive. Like the rest of them.

“I’ll keep an eye out for anyone else up after curfew then.”

“Good man.” Varys is one of the few who voluntarily touches others, mostly because he seems to revel in the power it brings. He rubs a plump hand, glittering with gemmy rings, across Clegane’s shoulders before retreating back into his customary shadow.

Clegane shudders at the familiarity and moves onward, towards his goal.

Thumbing the latch, he lets himself into the music room. For a moment he wonders about turning on the lights, but decides to work in the faint dimness instead; best to do that than explain the reason he creeps around at night in the classroom of Miss Stark.

The box scuffs open, he does what is needed, and is back in his study ten minutes later and staring into the ashes of his fire.

It feels as if he has left an apology, and it feels correct.

The note, when it comes, is delivered by Bran Stark in his wheelchair. As usual Jojen Reed propels dangerously, for the two boys talk constantly. There is a Tyrellesque dreaminess in them, but something more primaeval. They speak of ravens, and Children of the Forest. The old folk beyond the wall who are dead for these five hundred years past. Dreams, and nightmares, and Sight. They make a strange pair; Bran who is crippled and strange, and Jojen who has the greenest eyes and is even stranger.

“For you, Mr. Clegane. San-. Miss Stark asked if we could deliver it to you.” Bran rarely smiles. He is quite solemn in manner, but more the gravity of a king than a judge.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He shoos them away with a wave of his hand, and tears the envelope open.

Lemons. The paper is lemon-scented, like Sansa.

Dear Mr. Clegane,

Thank you. You did not leave your name, but I know it was you. I very much appreciate the kindness in the gift that you have left.

Yours sincerely,

Sansa Stark.

P.s. I am not very artistic, but I tried my best. Please see this as a thank you for your generosity.

Her handwriting is feminine, loops and neatness, curved like her waist into the gentle curves of her hips. Below the cursive, below the name - Sansa, not Miss Stark, but Sansa - she has sketched in pencil. Nothing much, and yes, her talents run to music and not drawing, but she has an eye for detail.

If he were not a history teacher, Clegane may not appreciate the meaning.

The wolf and the hound.

They are copied, painstakingly, from the history textbook he uses to teach the sixth years; the one that investigates, in detail, the Wars of the Five Kings. He knows this because the sigils have not yet become fancy, more fitting for an age beyond swords and horses and siege engines of war. In time these simple symbols of house loyalty became true heraldry, quartered and crowned and described in the flowery language that invokes fields gules, a lion rampant Or. The more modern blazon invoke cadet houses, or coronets, or fantastic beasts holding shields aloft. The simplicity of this heraldry sits comfortable, in that medieval state he prefers to the more modern history he is forced to also teach.

Tracing each line with the thickness of a finger pad, he loses himself in the heady fact that she, Sansa, took the time and effort to make something so personal, so fitting, when all he did was bring her a lamp.

That is what changes everything. Whatever that was, which was just Clegane helping a colleague, albeit one who he fancies far too much for it to be a mere crush, the gift giving continues, into the turning of the year and beyond.

A knitted scarf, in gold and black. Apparently he looked chilly while helping Dondarrion with rugby practice.

Lemon cakes, made by hand and filled with sweet buttercream. Much swearing happened during the creation. Sansa insists on sharing them with him, and Clegane does as she asks, even if he is not fond of lemon himself.

Upon a leather cord dangles a tiny pewter hound. It stays about his neck, never removed even when he bathes.

In return, a silver charm to be fitted to a bracelet, of a sapphire-eyed wolf. Sansa wears it upon a long chain around her throat, and the chips of blue match her own pretty gaze.

If he were someone else, Clegane could almost think they are courting. Sansa - she is Sansa now, Miss Stark is the past - gravitates to his side in the staff room, the clicking of her knitting a soothing metronome in the chaos of pipe smoke and masculinity. The others who leer take one look at the looming presence of the history master and quietly make their escape. Apart from Baelish, but one Sunday afternoon finds the lecherous shit sporting a beautiful black eye and a thick lip for making comments about Sansa in Clegane’s presence.

Selmy does nothing, because frankly Petyr’s had something like that coming for years.

He doesn’t bother Sansa after that. He returns to his evil lair in the depths of the Dreadfort and admits defeat.

Another term passes. She does not go home for the holidays, and neither does Clegane. She tries to teach him a little of Florian and Jonquil, and is amused and horrified in turn when it happens that the history master has the musical talent of a spoon. They drink tea, and open up a little more. Sansa talks of her family, of her past, of a nameless boy who broke her heart in some way. He speaks of Gregor, and a rather bowdlerised version of the War, and sometimes she rubs lightly at his forearm, over cotton that conceals his blown-out blue-faded army tattoos, that she has no idea exist.

Yeah. If he was someone else, he and Sansa would be courting.

The holidays drift into the next term, the third and final one of the year, and the boys arrive back from their far-flung destinations. All is normal. To a point. Nothing about the Dreadfort is entirely sane. Nothing about the Dreadfort is straightforward.

“Clegane?”

“Martell.”

Dark eyes regard him without rancour.

“Could I perhaps borrow you?”

“...what’s wrong?”

“Willas.”

Shit. It’s been coming, though, like it does every year. This is a ritual re-enacted annually, though the episodes seem to be worsening each time it happens. Alarmingly so.

He trudges after the lean figure of Oberyn, who moves like something that ripples; sand dunes, or when stones skip across ponds. Dondarrion thinks Martell and H’ghar move like killers, and who knows what they men did during the War? Dorne, neutral, prefered to remain outside of everything, providing succor to those in need. More for the Dornish to seduce, probably, given their tendency towards sexual immorality, the lucky bastards.

Tyrell is wrapped in a blanket, lost on the maze of battlements, clutching a book. He looks about twelve, though youths aren’t usually fully conversant in several dialects of High Valyrian, which he speaks in constantly now. It is a strange static of a language, filled with buzzing and the little used consonants from the arse end of the alphabet.

“You must come inside, sweet one. You will catch cold.”

“ Se iōrves yne dōrī jenitis .” **

“It shall when you are sick abed and I must take your classes. Your fourth years irk me with their inability to conjugate, and I would be far less sweet than you in my wrath.”

Tyrell smiles. He tends towards the pale and worried, and should be somewhere warmer, kinder, and less filled with children who drive him a little more towards a breaking point every day. He’s one of those who should haunt dusty university corridors, arms filled with books only very worthy, really obsessive scholars read. Maester. He’d be a bloody good maester, if he wasn’t so head in the clouds and fixated on his language studies.

“Come inside, Willas?”

When this happens, it gets to the point where Martell fails to persuade with gentle coaxing, and someone large and well-built - Clegane or Dondarrion - are tasked with manhandling, albeit gently, the idiot Tyrell towards a roaring fire, a cup of tea, and Matron. Oberyn could do this on his own, but he is paranoid about injuring the ethics master. Lannister said something about the broken leg possibly being Martell’s fault, but that probably isn’t true. Though, you never know with these upper classes. Probably horsing around or something.

Clegane raises his eyebrows, and Oberyn shakes his head. Not yet.

“What ails you? Are the children not listening again? Shall I speak with them?”

“ Īlōn pryjassis līr īlōn mazverdis. ” ***

“You must not drive yourself so hard.” A frown, a hand reaching to rub gently at the nape of Tyrell’s neck. “You mustn’t destroy yourself to prove a point, Willas.”

“ Valar mazvēttas luos belmossi zirȳle tolvȳs gaomoso iderennosō letis. ” ****

“Contracts are broken, sweet one. We can leave here - it makes you ill, and I cannot bear to see you so sad. It is not failure if you have tried so hard, for so long.”

Clegane shifts, uncomfortably. He feels as if he is interrupting them when they are like this, when Oberyn is kind and something more than his flirtatious wit, and Willas is lost somewhere where he is almost impossible to catch. A little intrusive, his presence; so large and looming while Martell tries to rouse his friend from whatever plain of existence he currently exists upon.

This would be far easier if one of them didn’t speak in a dead language that only the truly posh can be bothered to properly learn.

“Want me to go get Dondarrion? He understands more about this shit than I do?”

Willas smiles at that, a mercurial thing that changes his sharp cheekboned face from melancholy to almost impish. “ Zȳha Valyria qupēgrie issa. *****”

“Dreadful. Yet he will insist upon trying to speak it.”

Footsteps break the moment, the pressurised shrieking, and they all turn to the echoing stairwell behind them, even Tyrell. Soft scuffs of feet, and Oberyn shifts his weight as if ready to spring.

Sansa blinks as she steps carefully from the darkness, the brightness of the day not so much shocking in general but rather more blinding when emerging from the dank depths of the Dreadfort. She clutches a flask in one hand, and a half-filled glass in the other, and her long fingers are snug in gloves that she has been knitting in the staff room since before the holiday.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says, rather formally, but Martell does seem to set her a little on edge. Perhaps it is something to do with the Dornish gaze that sometimes, and Clegane hates this, wants to punch Oberyn on the nose for making her nervous, lingers on her body or face. She’s beautiful, of course she is. Lovely. Kind. Sweet-natured. Strong. Resilient. Awful at drawing, but Clegane keeps that sketch folded up and carefully stowed in his wallet and therefore with him at all times. It feels as if he is carrying a favour from one of those imaginary ladies from the rubbish they teach children about knights and chivalry. He takes great pleasure in shattering the illusions of his pupils by telling them, in excruciating and exacting detail, about what the great sers of yesteryear really were like.

“Miss Stark.”

“I thought Mr. Tyrell might like some tea, or some port? It’s quite chilly out, and it might warm you up, ser?” She smiles, careful but gentle, encouraging and sweet, as if Willas is some nervous colt to be tempted with sugar cubes.

She’s lovely.

Sansa holds the glass out, not crowding, and for what seems a lifetime Willas does not move. Silence reigns, apart from the rustle of half-dead ferns and the dripdrip of the gargoyle downspouts that forever leak. Silence, and stillness, before Tyrell carefully takes the glass in his own blue-tinged hand - it is bloody cold, after all - and sips at the heavy sweet red wine.

“I didn’t know if you’d like that one, but it’s sweet, and sugar is good for-” Sansa doesn’t finish the sentence.

“Thank you.” The surprise at someone else coming to assist drags Willas back from his internal depths. His voice cracks when he speaks Common, a tenor slightly off kilter and trailing with the lilting exactitudes of the Reach. “Ever so much.”

“You should drink the tea, too. It’s lovely and hot, and you look very cold. Shall I ask one of the porters to run a warm bath?”

Oberyn steps over, silent and awed, kissing her cheek. At any other time the lechery would be obvious, and Sansa would retreat as she does from others who stare too long, or appraisingly, or try and sweet talk her. Several of the teaching staff have tried; Tyrion, obviously. Baelish, the bursar who everyone despises, insists on touching her hand, kissing her fingertips, reciting verse that sounds trite and nasal in his flat Midlands accent. Bolton said she was cute, eyed her with a hungry want to possess, but his attention is a fleeting thing. If it isn’t Dondarrion or slaughter, he’s never truly interested.

“I shall take him inside, Sansa. Thank you.”

“I’m sorry, Oberyn. I just...it’s all quite. You know. Things. Heavy things. The children are awfully difficult, and I’m. Not very good at this. This teaching lark. Olenna is right. She’s always right. Isn’t that wrong, that my grandmother is always right?”

“Hush, Willas. You must rest now, dear one. You will go and sleep, and I shall intimidate your classes. Nasty little things.” Arms are wrapped about blanketed forms, kisses bestowed upon foreheads. Again that intimacy, so very singular, as if they are apart from the world, the people, the place, the setting. The way Tyrell looks up is not adoring; it is deeper, denser. As if Martell, for all of his many and devious sins, is the entirety of everything when Willas comes back. As if, when he finally retreats from wherever he escapes to, Oberyn is always there, always waiting, to help him over the horror of actuality.

When they leave, taking both wine and tea, the thick heavy blanket mood lifts, just a little. Sansa tucks her be-gloved fingers into the pockets of her skirt, gazing across the ancient mossy stone to the crags and moors beyond.

“How’d you do that?”

“My cousin is quite similar. He has episodes. I heard Brienne say that Willas wasn’t very well, so I asked if there was anything I could do, and she said he suffers with his nerves. Tea always helps Robin, and a little wine, so I thought I might see if I could help? Willas is so nice, and it’s horrid to think of him being so upset.”

“Happens every year, about the same time.” Clegane rolls his shoulders under his shirt. “Poor sod shouldn’t be teaching at all, he’s too soft for it. The kids know it, and they play on him like a fiddle.”

“Mr. Martell is very kind to him. It’s rather sweet.” He catches the ghost of a smile on her rose-pink painted lips, at once wistful and warm. “It reminds me of the sonnet, the one that speaks of love being ‘ an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken. ’ I’ve never really seen people be so kind to those they are fond of. My parents were practical, more than passionate, and, well. Joffrey-”

Ice prickles his neck. “Baratheon?”

“Yes. He wasn’t the kindest boy I could have become engaged to.”

“He’s a shit.” Sweet, gentle Sansa. With that little bastard Baratheon. The sheer effrontery of the idea makes him want to smash his hand into a stone pillar and imagine it as Joffrey’s smoothly handsome and unutterably smug face.

“I loved him, or, at least, I thought I did. He turned out to be cruel, and awful, but I ignored that because he was so handsome. How shallow that sounds, Mr. Clegane. To look at someone so attractive and ignore all the terrible things about them because the fit into this ideal. This fairytale I had in my head, where everything would be perfect, and wonderful, and I’d make my parents so very proud by marrying into such a fine family as the Baratheons.”

“He didn’t deserve you,” he says, realising his words and scrabbling to make them sound less incriminating. The girl is opening herself to him, just a little, and he sounds like some bloke trying to flirt with her. “He doesn’t deserve anyone.”

“I thought he’d look after me when my father died, but I think Joffrey took that as an opportunity to start acting out.” Sansa is possibly the only person who could call the bastard Baratheon’s sociopathy ‘acting out.’ “Naive, thy name is Sansa.”

“You were, what? Seventeen? Eighteen? That’s bloody young.”

“Nineteen. I suppose that is quite young, especially when I was sheltered growing up. A proper upbringing for a well-bred young lady.” She pauses, looking up at him. “I’m sure you never were so silly, Mr. Clegane. You always seem very down-to-earth.”

“Had to be. In the War.”

“Oh. Is that-?” She glances shyly at the thick scars across his cheek, curving to his ear and jaw, tugging at the lid of Clegane’s eye, his mouth.

“Yeah.”

“You must be very brave.” She seems to truly mean what she says, all wide-eyed and honest.

How much does he want to tell her. How much does pretty Sansa Stark want to know? She knows the basics, of where he served, and his regiment, and what he did during the conflict. Does he tell her about holding dying men in his arms, promising to send their last words to their mothers, or wives, or lovers? Storming beaches, tasting blood and salt and watching good soldiers - his friends, his true family, because fuck Gregor - gunned down around him. Villages reduced to nothing but corpses and ash. Cameraderie between those who don’t even know if they’ve another day left to live, bedding down in the hulks of broken temples or shell-craters to snatch some sleep. Marching through the Free Cities as the bombs rain. People they liberate dying slowly, of starvation or disease, rather than being blissfully, quickly killed by shrapnel or bullets or explosions. How Dondarrion lost his eye, his sensibility; his promising army career that should have been for life guillotined short in one messy tank battle. How Lannister used his arm to save the life of one of his corporals, and lost his hand in the process. The bones are interred in the family crypt, carried from Essos in a velvet bag tucked into the Captain’s shirt. How Clegane burned, and screamed, and begged for someone to put a bullet through his head when the incendiary device wrecked his face, because he has never felt any pain so hideous, or consuming, or mind-destroying, even when Gregor tortured him for fun when they were young.

“I survived.”

He wants to tell her. He wants to share it, to let the weight from his shoulders. Just for once.

“Mr. Clegane?” The temptation to tell Reed and Stark to stop racing up and down corridors with that bloody wheelchair is sometimes overwhelming. They corner dangerously, sometimes on two wheels, though they never show any particular joy in doing so. It is how the boys, both enigmatic and solemn in turn, just are.

“Yeah, Reed?”

“Miss Stark requests your presence in the music room.”

She never comes and fetches him herself, mostly because with the school run on such few staff they are always both extremely busy. She’ll be still closeted with one of her pupils, something hideous rumbling from a euphonium or cat-screeching from a violin, trying to persuade beauty from a grubby-faced teenager with the artistic ability of a three-legged goat.

Jojen tilts his head, all pixie glitter and strange Old Gods ancient eyes. Between him, Bolton, and Baelish, they have quite the creepy triumvirate.

“She likes you, Mr. Clegane. Before she saw beauty, she ignored the darkness that chased her away. She hid, within herself. Safe and quiet and hurting because of the handsome boy with the yellow hair and the sadist’s heart. Away from those who might hurt her once more. Away from those who would have her for their own ends. Then she sees beauty despite the scars-”

“Shut up, Reed.”

“Yes, ser.” Mildly.

Jojen will go off on these tangents, where his expression becomes greenly tinted. Clegane scoffs at the rumour that he’s something more than human, because Reed exists to try the patience of the entire teaching staff. He’s too clever for his own damned good. There are no such things as Children of the Forest, and green seers, and Gods. Clegane is a Stranger to all of that religious rubbish.

“Piss off and annoy someone else.”

“She does like you,” Stark echoes from his chair. He has Sansa’s elegance, though his looks are far more northern. “She smiles for you and no other.”

“Bloody kids. Piss off and do homework. No. Piss off and write lines. No. Piss off, write lines, and get Mr. Bolton to watch you while you do. Tell him he can set the content.”

That shuts the little buggers up. No one likes being placed into detention with Ramsay and his shotgun. Something passes between the two boys, almost as if they have a telepathy - ridiculous, that doesn’t exist. Clegane is a historian and he knows that the tales of the ancient skin-changing Starks and the marsh-dwelling fae-touched Reeds are flights of fancy created by romanticist writers five hundred years after the events of the Wars of the Five Kings - before they speed away, ducking around corners, rubber wheelchair tyres squeaking.

No tortured instrument sounds castrate the general surroundings of the music rooms. All that can be heard is the softness of fingers upon piano keys, the faint creaking of a stool, the occasional thump of a pedal as a foot dampens the strings. From the sweet melancholy and technical difficulty of the piece, it can only be Sansa playing.

He doesn’t knock, because for the last three times he has attended Miss Stark in her chambers, there has been no need. She expects him. The message was sent. His knock, she explained gently, as one of her more squirrely nervous pupils startled at the hammer of Clegane’s fist upon the door, can upset the concentration of the children. Indeed the boy, a dark little thing with a hint of Baratheon bastard about the ears, completely lost his place in his cello piece and fled, the instrument almost as large as him.

Though the days stretch a little longer now, the sun creeping ever more overhead as the lunar calendar moves forward in the sticky oddness that is time at the Dreadfort - all spurts, and lulls, like a cadenza written by a madman, with no discernable beat but it is there, just difficult to fathom and even more impossible to count - this late into the afternoon and this far north means the everything is still rather gloomy. The lamp lights her, throws shadows under her cheekbones and jawline, turning her into a creature of fire-hair and monochrome.

“You wanted me?”

Sansa looks up, her hair across her shoulders as he always dreams of. A silver-metal clip keeps the tumbling locks from blocking her view of the music, neatly to the side of her head, and it throws sparks with each movement she makes.

She smiles.

She smiles for him, Bran Stark says.

Perhaps, his treacherous brain considers, that is true? Not that he wants to agree with a boy pretentious enough to think he is some sort of Three-Eyed Raven prophet, but her expression is different when they are alone. Amongst others she retains that perfect ladylike graciousness, replete with gentle smiles that never quite warm her pale little face. She says as she needs to, and does as she is supposed to, and is charming and lovely and puppet-like. No one gets close, apart from Miss Tarth, who seems to act as champion and protector.

Brienne is a knight of old. Clegane has seen her fencing. He has seen the skill, the movements, the innate honour she possesses. She would, a thousand years before, have been an anomaly. A frightening, dangerous anomaly, threatening sers with her entire being.

Begrudgingly, he rather likes Miss Tarth.

“Would you like some tea?”

“Got any wine?” It’s late enough to start drinking, but at the Dreadfort, as Tyrion tells them all, any time of day is late enough to get pissed. Time moves differently for them all, so isolated in these ancient tors and peaty moorlands.

“No, sorry.”

“Need me to turn the music?”

“I’ve almost finished.”

How Sansa can still play, perfectly, while talking, Clegane has no idea. Under her talented fingers the music drifts. She always plays Florian and Jonquil these days, every time he is asked to visit her in her dingy little set of music rooms.

“That’s your favourite?”

“I love the story behind it.” Something quirks her lips, into an amusement. “Of course, I’m sure you’d tell me that it’s all untrue, and that knights were rather more awful than they are supposed to be, and that courtly love is a myth?”

“Some stories are based on truth,” he ventures, carefully. “There’s usually some sort of fact behind everything. Probably was a Florian and a Jonquil. He wasn’t a knight, though. Not like one of your fancy ones, with plumes on their heads, riding at tourneys, taking favours from lovestruck girls. He wasn’t noble, just a man in motley with a nice sword and dialogue written centuries after he existed. Just like all the other stories. They’re all rewritten for a public audience, made less bloody and more romantic. The nineteenth century did that with every bloody thing. Take a folktale, make it a sodding epic romance across space and time, rather than the allegory it was, or the war-spun oral tradition of the First Men and the Wildlings.” If pressed, Clegane can rattle on for hours about how subsequent centuries and romantics cleaned up history, and how much he wants to tear that down, rebuild what is supposedly fact with reality.

“Some of the best men are not sers,” she murmurs, the last bars warm and mellow under her hands. “One does not need to be knighted to be a good man.”

“Most men are fools and knights where women are concerned.”

“Most women wish there were knights, but sometimes the one who is supposed to be a Florian turns out to be-”

Golden handsome Joffrey, as Florian on the outside as it comes, but tainted and evil and twisted within. Perhaps his parents being twins has something to do with this, but Clegane knows there are those out there who aren’t made right, who are wrong in the head. Gregor, for one.

“I’d offer to kill the fucker, but you’re too nice to take me up on that.”

Sansa has become used to his lapses into swearing. Clegane tries to keep his tongue civil, but some subjects cause his self-censorship to break.

“Sandor?”

“Yeah?” How she says his name, in that song-filled voice of hers.

“Could I ask something, please?”

“Anything.”

She slips from behind the piano stool, in her dress of Stark silver-grey. The colour always suits her, sets her skin milk-smooth and hair burnished copper-flame. Carefully she comes over to him, the click of her sensibly low heels and the silken suggestion of stockings all he can hear apart from his own breathing, before she touches his hand with her own.

“Sandor?”

“Sansa?” The name roils, bubbling like champagne.

“Will you kiss me, please?”

She likes you. She smiles for you.

“I’m not Florian.”

“You’re my Florian.” Determined, the wolf in her expression. Sansa’s fingers wind about his wrist, over black teaching robes and his dark blue shirt sleeve. “The true Florian, not the courtly love version. Do you see, Sandor? How he is no ser, no knight, just a man with a sword, a greatness, so very brave and very fierce. Jonquil, the noble maid, who is taken by his strength, his character, his,” and she pauses, wide blue eyes fixed upon his. “No one has been so very kind to me, like you. No. No one is like you, at all. You are a knight, in deed, not name.”

“You’re too good for me.” She is. Sansa is so beautiful, so good, so untainted. Too good for an old dog like him, with his scars, dark moods, that misanthropic nature.

“Don’t you dare tell me what I need, Sandor. I know what I need, and you’re standing there, before me, being you.”

Months. Months of watching her, of admiring her inner core, her resilience, her talent and her self-preservation. In her, Clegane sees a little of himself; the parts that don’t shame him. She is so very strong, so very determined. To escape from Baratheon, to come to the Dreadfort where everything is so alien to a girl brought up to be a lady. How she suffered, and did not break. How she fought, in her own way, in the way of a woman who uses what she knows, what she has learned, to survive in a world she should never exist within. She should be in a fine house, surrounded by her loving family, wealthy and lovely and without a care in the world. Not here, in a dripping desolace that drives those who teach to some sort of inner madness.

Months of falling a little in love with what Sansa is, not what she should be.

She’s a survivor. Like he is.

His mouth finds hers, as sweet and lemon-tasting as he dreamed, and his arms insinuate about her slender waist. In reply Sansa’s hands slide, over wool and cotton, from Clegane’s wrists to wrap about the density of his biceps.

When they come to, lips swollen and tingling, cheeks flushed, darkness has truly fallen.

Dondarrion announces, very casually, that he’s remaining at the Dreadfort over the long holiday whilst eating a poached egg. Breakfast. The last morning of the school year. Pupils are packed and ready to be shipped out across Westeros, and the teachers thrum with a sense of everything finally being over for now. Of course the vast majority are returning. Even Tyrell, though Martell has finally persuaded him to attend the clinic of a gentleman of psychiatry in King’s Landing. Medication is apparently involved, and Oberyn feigns upset about the two men not being able to drink together as they once did, but it is obvious that he is more than relieved his friend is slightly less ill than before.

“Why’d you want to stay in this shithole?”

“Roose is at King’s Landing for a while longer, so Ramsay needs some help around the place. He’s strong, but he could do with a human cart horse to shift the larger things. I volunteered.” Given the expense of running the Dreadfort, or at least the part the Boltons still reside in, many of the rooms are being closed off, shut down, to cut costs. Some items are to be auctioned at King’s Landing, though according to Beric the torture equipment is remaining in situ. They’d have to peel that from Bolton Senior’s dead hands.

“”Not content with working with the crazy bastard, you’re intent on holidaying with him.”

“I could say the same about Sansa,” Beric shoots back tartly, buttering more toast. The man has an appetite that rivals that of legendary sea creatures.

“She’s not cr-”

“Dollface, you are the Bolton to her Dondarrion.”

Clegane inspects the butter knife, but it isn’t sharp enough to shiv the man in the kidneys.

“Don’t. Call me. That. Ever. Again.”

“I’m so pleased for you both, Sandy. She’s a peach, and you’re a good man under that hardbitten cynical exterior of yours. You’ll have gorgeous children.” Dondarrion pauses, bites his toast, is army officer enough to finish his mouthful before he speaks. “I want to be godfather.”

“We’re just going to the Stormlands for a bloody holiday, you twat. We’re not getting married or having kids.”

“Yet.” Amber eyes sparkle. Beric is a bastard, most of the time, even if he’s an almost friend.

“Got to go to Winterfell to meet the Starks before though, so-”

“Good luck with that. You think we’re strange at the Dreadfort? Winterfell is a whole other kettle of fish.” Annexing yet another piece of toast, Dondarrion slaps him companionably on the shoulder and departs. Bolton, lurking, steals it from Beric’s hand and eats it, because he’s the sort of shit who’d take the food from the hands of a starving man.

The rustle of skirts brings him back, and Sansa settles next to him, cup of tea in delicate bone china in her hand. The wolf at her throat sparkles as she sips, swallows, and the urge to bury his mouth between her collar bones screams angrily, persuasively.

Not in the staff room.

“All packed?” She takes some toast from the rack, and Clegane passes her the lemon curd without being asked.

“I think so. I’ve left a few things, of course. I can’t really bring my viola, so I’ve put it safely under my bed. I’ll only really need it next year, after all.”

“If you want a viola when we’re away,” he says, headily because this feels important and big, “I’ll get you another one.”

He pauses.

“You are returning next year?”

Sansa leans in, her hair a curtain between them at the rest of the teaching staff as she brushes her soft ripe lips to the savagery of scars across his jawline. “How could Jonquil abandon her Florian in such a place as the Dreadfort? How could I leave you, when I have only just found you, Sandor?”

In full view of everyone, from headmaster to caretaker, Clegane slips his hand into the satin of Sansa’s beautiful hair and presses his mouth to hers.

Silence.

“Who bet on the last day of term?” Tyrion breaks the nothingness, devilish voice rich with laughter.

Dr. Selmy admits that he, indeed, placed his wager on that day, and the rest of the teaching staff chatter and congratulate and shake hands with their headmaster but, in their little corner, the one with knitting needles and balls of wool, Clegane’s pipe, and various little bits and pieces denoting this as their very own space, Sandor and Sansa are lost in each other, once more.