Chapter Text
It was hot, the day that Sansa's father had been murdered - murdered by the man that she was supposed to wed. Her crumbling illusions of the handsome, noble Prince Joffrey were shattered the moment he gave Ser Ilyn Payne the order, but all Sansa could care to remember was the sun burning her eyes as she looked upon the face of her father and cried.
He had been afraid; he'd had the eyes of a scared little boy and, as far as Sansa was concerned, he had never looked more gallant or more lordly than he did in those final moments.
She would later hear Lannister knights laugh about the fear in his eyes as he realised the betrayal of the promise he had been offered. She would hear them scoff and jest that Eddard had 'probably pissed his noble breeches' by the time the blade had struck.
But though Sansa heard these insults, she never listened to them. She would always remember the words that she had heard Bran repeat quietly to himself before she left Winterfell, words that her decent, loving and honourable father had left him with.
'The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.'
Sansa had been afraid almost constantly since it had happened. There was no shame in that though, she realised. She wasn't her sister, who had enough fight in her for ten men; she wasn't Bran, with his solemn wits; she wasn't Robb, who was brave and compassionate and undaunted in the face of adversity; more than anything, she wasn't Rickon - she was no longer a child and she couldn't hope to be treated like one.
There was no shame in being afraid and she saw that now, as she was forced to stare into the wide, unblinking eyes of her father, his head mounted unceremoniously on a spike atop the Red Keep. It was hot again and, this time, the relentless sun gave her mercy, almost blinding her as she looked in the direction of the heads that embellished the wall. It almost obscured her view of the dried up, bloodshot eyes of Ned Stark, the swollen, oozing face of her former Septa and the countless heads of good Stark men who had been slaughtered for the King's pleasure and vanity. Joffrey was taking great delight in torturing her with this sight and with his words. Rage swelled within, rage and tears and hatred, as she was forced to stare upon the sad remnants of her former, happy life.
"That's what I'll give you, Lady Sansa," the King said, smiling vaingloriously, "Your brother's head."
She tasted metal in her mouth as she ground her teeth to stop from crying and instead she steeled her gaze cooly in his direction. The words fell from her mouth before she could stop them.
"Maybe my brother will give me your head."
A stifling and sickening hush descended upon the company on the wallwalk but in her determined defiance, Sansa refused to remove her eyes from the king's. Joffrey made an effort to appear unfazed and nonchalant as he regarded her with cold eyes, but the young Stark could see the stringy muscles in his neck tense up with a flare of anger. He swallowed his contempt with some degree of effort and said in a low voice:
"You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord. Ser Meryn, teach her."
Meryn needed no second request in introducing the hard, sharp back of his gauntlet to her face, not once but twice. Pain exploded across her mouth as her lip bloodied and split but, though she wept, Sansa never once let out a cry of pain, not even as the force of the slap flung her to the ground. She would not give Joffrey the satisfaction. He regarded her with disgust all the same.
"You shouldn't be crying all the time. You're much prettier when you smile and laugh. Wipe off the blood. You're all messy."
Considering that dismissal enough, Joffrey turned his back on her, bored of his wounded plaything. He was, after all, still to marry her. His mother would be livid if he was too rough.
Sansa glared bitterly at him as he moved languidly about the severed heads and meandered the parapet. How easy it would be, she realised, to orchestrate an accident.
It was high, the bloody battlement of the Red Keep with its thorny crown of traitors' heads, high enough to kill with certainty, and the wallwalk was without barriers. One push was all it would take, and Sansa found herself bracing her jaw in determination. He would likely take her down with him, grab one of the delicate, fluttering sleeves of her dress and drag her to share in his death. Alternatively, he would fall and she would be executed and laid to rest beside her father, baking and rotting in the blistering sun. At that moment, with the tears burning hot in her throat and her eyes, with the rage balling tightly in her fists, she found that she couldn't find the will to care about her own fate.
She felt herself begin to rise from her unceremonious heap on the ground, her heart full of bloody intent. Before she was even aware of what was happening, however, she found herself face to face with Sandor Clegane, who put himself in the way of her sinister path, kneeling before her to join her station on the floor. She felt sickness rise in her throat as she anticipated another explosive slap across the mouth, lowering her face and squeezing her eyes shut in fearful apprehension, though what she felt against her lips was a much gentler sensation.
With a softness that was untold of from a man full of such anger, spite and ferocity, the Hound dabbed at the split in Sansa's lip with a small square of cloth. It stained red instantly, soaking up the evidence of her beating and illustrating for her the calibre of her wound. He wiped away the blood from her chin and her mouth, delicately, meticulously and with care, before he finally looked into her eyes with a purposeful intensity. Her vivid, glassy blues met his dark, scarred ones and that was where she saw it: the warning.
'Don't do anything stupid', the warning said, 'don't act in anger. If you give into your whims for revenge then he has already won. Think, girl.'
His gaze held for a moment more and then was gone, before he put the handkerchief in Sansa's hand and stood up once more. She watched him arise, her face unable to disguise the mix of wonder, confusion, gratitude and misery that she was feeling. Her spectrum of emotions was lost on him, however, as he had turned away from her once more, the gentle sliver in his personality already switched off and hidden away, as though it never was. He was the Hound once again, cold, bitter and unfeeling and he would not show his compassion to her again. If Sansa had not been its first-hand recipient, she is not sure she would have believed in it herself. It was fleeting, but it had settled the fire raging inside her, leaving her feeling hollow and exhausted.
All that remained within her now was a desperation to be alone to weep.