Chapter Text
Many thanks to kimberlite8 for beta-reading!
“Mommy, mother, merciful Mother,” Sansa whispered under her breath. The city was burning with green flames behind her back, the sinister red comet was flying over her head, and in front of her the angry and terrifying man was riding his huge black horse.
She couldn’t remember why she’d agreed to elope with him. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure she had agreed. She remembered him putting his sword to her throat. She remembered how he had cried when she sang to him. Had he forced her to leave? Probably. When she’d been packing her things she must’ve done it on her own accord, but later, in the stables, she hadn’t wanted to mount a horse. She had asked him to take her back, repeatedly, but did she really want to be returned to Joffrey and the Queen? It was like a dream in which one knew one was doing something strange and uncanny but forgot to be surprised. Sansa pinched her hand to make sure she wasn’t, in fact, dreaming; she felt no pain, then realized she had riding gloves on.
Many years ago, when she was only four, she was scared of one of Father’s bannermen (Lord Bolton, mayhaps?) and Jory Cassel laughed and said: “Lady Sansa has a gut feeling”. She took such offence that she burst into tears – even when she was four she hadn’t liked to admit she had a gut – but Mother embraced her, patted her head and said that Jory had meant: “Lady Sansa feels things in her heart”. From that day on Sansa had been sure that she, like a heroine from a ballad, had a foretelling heart: she knew her friends from her foes, and should her beloved perish in a battle she’d feel it the same instant, give a sorrowful cry and fall dead.
Since then, Sansa had learned to mistrust her heart. It hadn’t cautioned her against Joffrey, hadn’t warned her against the Queen, hadn’t foretold her Father’s execution. Yet it was at this moment that she began thinking that Jory could’ve been right, that she really was able to foretell things, only not with her heart, and certainly not with her gut (her thirteen year old self still maintained that a true lady didn’t have a gu), but, say, with her stomach, which for some reason seemed to her a decorous part of the body. She listened to her stomach but the only thing she felt was an impending nausea from the horse’s jolts.
Her father had talked about Robert’s Rebellion but sparingly and reluctantly, however Sansa remembered his tale about some long night march when he and his men had slept on horseback. Sansa rarely recalled war stories that had no glorious deeds in them, but that tale became etched in her memory – she couldn’t believe it was possible to fall asleep on top of a horse, a living, breathing, galloping horse. “I’d never do that,” she thought and yawned.
She woke up when she hit the ground. The Hound dismounted, ran to her and started touching her.
“Look at me! How much is two and two?”
“I fell from my horse,” said Sansa in a dazed voice and whimpered with pain.
The Hound swore and grabbed her right foot.
“Where does it hurt? Here? No? And here?”
Sansa realized that he was very close to touching the place that did hurt.
“Four!” she exclaimed.
“Four of what?”
“Two and two is four. I’m bruised, held me to stand up, please”.
She knew her mistake at once – the Hound grasped her by the shoulder and roughly lifted to her feet. She should’ve kept him thinking she had some bone broken, if only for a while.
“Why the fuck can’t you keep in the saddle?” he asked and shook her. “The road is even, the horse if calm, what else do you need, silly girl?”
“I fell asleep,” Sansa whispered pitifully.
He screamed at her, asked why he had gotten involved with such a helpless hen, suggested leaving her in the forest to be eaten by wolves, shook her by the shoulders again and spluttered in her face, and all the while Sansa was standing with her head down, sobbing. At last he took his knife out and went towards the horse.
“Oh, please don’t kill it!” Sansa exclaimed.
The Hound came back and explained to her what a bloody fool she was. Then he punched the horse in the belly, pulled the saddle-girth tighter with the help of another hole he pierced with his knife, took sable-bags from his destrier, put them of Sansa’ horse and said roughly:
“Come here”.
Sansa saw a leather belt in his hands and moved back. The Hound looked at the belt and swore again.
“You idiot, you think I mean to whip you? Come here, I tell you.
He mounted, dragged Sansa up in front of himself and tied her to himself with the belt.
“Sleep all you like now.”
Sansa thought she’d never fall asleep now. It hurt her to sit, she’d been very frightened by her fall, and the Hound stank of sweat, blood, sour wine and vomit. Not one heroine of the ‘being rescued from the besieged city” songs had suffered these indignities. To comfort herself Sansa began humming the ballad of Florian and Jonquil and fell asleep at the penultimate verse.