#nevermorered

A dog could sense a storm coming.

A well-bred working dog was one that did not cower in the face of noise, of danger, or violence—it stayed with its master and followed unflinchingly. But it didn’t matter how hard they were trained, and it didn’t matter if they obeyed and stayed still, a good hound would never lose that instinct that ran through them like the air they breathed: when a storm is coming, find shelter. Find high ground. There is a danger approaching.

It was an instinct, something settled deep in their bodies, a knowledge that need not be learned, a caution that could not be bred away.  

There is a danger approaching. A dog knew.

---

         A grey churn of clouds had been rolling towards them from the north, and Sandor had spurred Stranger harder the closer it came to them, swelling over the pines. The air had changed. He stiffened in the saddle, gripping the lead.

She, of course, noticed. She titled her head back to look up at him from where she was sat between his legs, crown of red curls bunching between their bodies.

           “Are you afraid of storms?” she asked.

           “No,” he snapped. “Do I look like a child to you?”

           “No. But you get so restless.”

           “I’m no fool, that’s why. It’s danger oncoming, could be in a hundred different ways—”

           “I know,” she sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that. You… when you get agitated about other thinks, it’s comes on quick, but when it storms, it seems like… like it’s slow, inside of you. As if it builds and you can’t get rid of it.”

           He was silent at that. It isn’t the storms he’s afraid of, he wants to say. He doesn’t.

           Since he’d spirited her away from the Eyrie, riding her away from Littlefinger before the cunt could even smell that a dog had snuck into the Vale, they had encountered a share of storms and downpours. A storm meant cover for their tracks, but it was also rougher going, more dangerous, both for Stranger’s footing through the forests and over slickened stones, as well as for the Little Bird. Arya had been small but hardier, hardened and bitter by the road north, and Harrenhall, and the Brotherhood. Sansa had suffered just as endlessly from the moment their father’s head had rolled, but not in the elements, and Sandor knew that. She was a wolf of the north, but she was also a lady. He’d been extra careful to get out of the rain in a cave or stay under the cover of trees. She never complained about the roughness, still polite with her “thank you’s” even after he snapped at her to stop saying them.

When the rain would pour in the darkness, she’d tuck in close at night, smaller body shielded and warmed nearer to him, rubbing against him in a way which no longer felt accidently. The water would soak her through and Sandor would watch the cloth cling to her body, curves that hadn’t been there before, and her little nipples press through hardened from the cold.

Storms were dangerous in that way as well.

The last downpour had caught them crossing open hills, the fog settling swollen over the pale grass. Much to his chagrin and despite his growling, she’d left her hood down. Though her teeth chattered and water had slipped down her neck to soak her dress beneath, she had been pleased to have the rain wash the last of that disgusting black dye out of her hair that Littlefinger had soaked it in. Though it was stupid, and vain, he’d allowed it. Secretly it pleased him just as much to see the black wash out in rivulets to reveal the auburn underneath, later drying like rich copper in the firelight.

But this was something entirely different. They were in the north proper now, and by looks of the distended and darkening sky crawling over them, winter had come for them. They both looked up at the sky, locked against each other in a slow sway on Stranger’s back. This was an empty and unfamiliar territory, and they were alone. Sansa blinked up at the clouds. Eye blue and clear. Sandor grew more uneasy.

           “There’s no avoiding this one.”

           “Aye. We’ve no choice but to keep riding.”

           It began snowing that night.

             ---

             The first night in the storm, they had found a cave, and lit a small fire, and slept next to one another. The snow was thin and quiet as it touched the earth. Sandor could not shake the disquiet.

           The second day, the sky had been empty of snow but heavy still with clouds. By midday it was falling, by evening falling more steadily. No sign of outpost. They’d found another cave, a little deeper than the previous one.

           The third day it had snowed straight through from daybreak to nightfall. The cold had sunken sharply into the ground and slid under his cloak and armor and clothes. When Sansa had to remove her hands from her cloak, her fingers would be red within minutes. She was flushed pink by the cold and shivered in her sleep.

           The fourth day, the snow came down sideways as the wind screamed. Sandor’s eyes burned and watered but he kept his eyes forward. He wrapped Sansa inside his cloak, having her press at tight as she could. She started sniffling by midday. When she’d lain down he’d run his hand over her back for warmth.

             The fifth day, Stanger slipped on ice and nearly threw the both them. The snow had not let up and the drifts were beginning to pile significantly. Sansa was coughing hard now. Her breathing rattled and by nightfall, with the snow coating her whole little body, she was not quite with him, not all the way. Sandor had rolled them together under every cloth and fur they had and unlaced the front of her dress and slid his hands up around her waist and back to try and get warmth back in her. She was soft and her skin was like cream, and damn him to all seven hells if he hadn’t imagined his hands on her like this a thousand times, but it is horrible because she is leaving him, she is sick and the storm wouldn’t end, and he begs with her to get better.

           The sixth day, it snowed and snowed and did not stop, as if every white star in the sky were collapsing down on them. Sansa had fever by mid-morning. They did not find the village until night had covered the North.

 ---

             Sansa thrashed on the bed, her white skin stained a splotchy grey. Sweat darkened a crown into her hair and slid into her collarbones. The fever was burning straight through her, and Sandor could feel the heat coming off of her without even touching her. He’d stripped her of dress and socks, down to just her shift and small clothes to try and cool her, and keep her from burning to death. Even then, she’d soaked through the white shift, sweat collecting on her thighs and chest, under her breasts. She had been in and out of consciousness all day

           She whimpered.

           “I know, Little Bird, I know.”

For the hundredth time, Sandor ran a cloth wet with melted snow down her brow.

When he’d carried her in limp into the inn, throwing his purse of coin at one of the maid girls and threatening grotesque physical violence if a room wasn’t prepared, it had been a blur. He’d settled her in the room, and gathered what he’d needed to treat her. It had been two days and Sansa only simmered in the sickness. She’d started vomiting this morning.

Sansa groaned and rolled limply to the side. Sandor moved a pail up to her, and she emptied herself, hardly anything now without food. She cried softly, exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Shrill unease slit through his stomach. He wiped her mouth. “Not a fucking, sir. Enough of that.”

She screwed her eyes shut, words sorrow slurred. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Enough of your fucking chirping, just get better. Gods damn you, just get better, you have to make it, Sansa.”

           She let loose a wet cough, and breathed through her mouth. He watched the swell of her ribs. She became quieter again.

           “Sandor,” she murmured. He strains his ears.

           “Sandor,” she repeats, “The night of the Blackwater… you…”

He chokes. She is dying. She is dying, and if her last memory is of the night the Blackwater burned, of what he did to her, he will kill himself. He will probably do that regardless. Her lips continued to move, but he couldn’t hear if she truly said anything. Minutes passed, and her movements slowed, then stilled. He held his breath and said nothing, just pulling her back gently to the center of the bed.

           The room was quiet.

           It was nothing more than a small hearth and a wide bed, a single window. In the silence, in the dark, he finally washed himself. Sandor laid down on the floor next to her.

           They had gotten so close to the end, and after so many years, so many years of her chained and festering in the heat of the south, waiting for a way home, she would die whimpering in her own sickness, north, but not far enough.

That had been the point of all of it, of all he’d done. All that time spent on the fucking Isle, to dig, and dig, and dig and never stop digging more graves, always—all so he could find her, at last, and dig one more. He had freed her only so he could put her in another cage, one she could never escape—the last cage, made of soil, where the earth would rip apart thread by thread. Her soft skin and auburn hair would disappear into the ground. No one would find her here, and no one would mourn her, a grave forgotten, a line of ink on a dead family tree.

           And then.

           And then Sandor realized it.

           Buried under the drifts of snow, which only grew greater by the hour, the ground would be frozen solid. There would be no grave because a grave could not be dug for her. Sansa would die and he would not be able to rest her in the earth, and the villagers would know her body would carry the sickness that had killed her. They would have to get rid of her corpse to prevent the spread of infection.

           If Sansa died, they would burn her body.

           Sandor stopped himself from screaming, but he could not stop himself from crying.

The thought of her body being so defiled, destroyed with blistering skin and charred opal teeth and splintering bones and lacy little eyelashes turning to embers, was too much to bear. She would turn to ash, and disappear with the snow, and become nothing at all.

If it was the last thing he did, he would not allow it.

           He would carry her away from here and lay her down among the pines and he would lie down next to her. He would be still with her and let the wolves devour them when they came. He would be still as the wolves took their lady back.

           ---

             Two days later, her fever breaks.

           It still fucking snowed, but Sansa was quiet and still, and she had her eyes open and watched him through her lashes the whole day. She is limp and weak, exhausted. He is there to stand guard and pull her back in case she begins to slide away.

           After he convinced the innkeep that Sansa wass not sick anymore, not dangerously, he manages to pay their serving girl enough to bathe Sansa. While he stays out of the room, he burns her clothing covered in her sickness, and find her a new shift, a new dress. He pays for a different room where the mattress is clean.

           She falls asleep again in the evening and will not wake up.

             ---

             He wakes to something dragging on his chest.

           The room is soaked in the darkness in the deep late of the night. The hearth has gone out. Alarm rears in him, but the touch is soft, and without seeing, he realizes it is Sansa’s hand.

           She was ghosting her fingertips over his upper chest and dip of his collarbone, over the hair there. The snowdrop touches of her skin, so small, light a fire in him. Even barely touching him, he could feel the shy hesitation, her arm hanging from the side of the bed. Sandor stayed still, controlling his breathing. He did not open his eyes to spook her, so he could not see, but he could feel her peering over the edge of the straw mattress. It is the sweetest thing he has ever felt.

           She shifted, letting her fingers flush closer to him. A few strands of her hair float down against his arm—it may as well have been lightning spun to silk for how it strikes him. Sansa’s fingers curled, dragging her knuckles through and pulling on the hair, as if to test the coarse texture. Sandor is already hard, and prays she cannot see well in this darkness.

           And then, she began pulling on the strings of his shirt, untying it gently, making the cloth looser and more undone, and she—