DISCLAIMER: This story is entirely based on characters from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire

DON'T LOOK BACK

Seven days on duty and all Sandor wanted was a drink. Only one, he swore to himself. And so he stopped in at a bar where he would not know anyone; or so he thought. When he saw her across the darkened room, his heart lurched: certain at first that it was his imagination. A dream. A mistake.

It had to be a mistake because a young lady of good family like Sansa Stark would not be sitting in a darkened bar in a seedy part of L.A. like this. She should be at a swanky nightclub, wearing a beautiful gown and jewels; or more likely at some college function where all the wealthy young kids dressed in summer whites and pretty girls wore orchid corsages to dances.

For Sansa Stark was really just a girl. A lovely, auburn-haired, blue-eyed girl with a delicate beauty and gentle manners; a product of her old-world upbringing and the finest girls' schools in San Francisco and later on Hawaii when her father came to help his old friend Robert Baratheon try to sort out the mess he had made of his business and estates. The self-titled Pineapple King had let strong drink and his wife Cersei's spending get out of hand. Beneath the façade of lavish living, he had gotten himself heavily in debt to his father-in-law, the oil baronTywin Lannister.

That's when the Stark girl had come into Sandor's life and done the impossible: she'd made him care. He was a big man with severe burn scars on his face that made him so horrible to look at that people turned away. Children cried and women cringed and averted their eyes. He'd lived inside a hard shell of anger and loneliness for so long that he had almost forgotten what it was to be anything but indifferent and even callous towards others.

He'd mocked her polite pleasantries and her happy, innocent nature. He'd once compared her to a little bird that chirped pretty words and fluttered around in gilded cages: so secure and sheltered it did not know how stupid it was. He had smirked when she had looked hurt, thinking she would learn soon enough. He had been right too: within a year her family would be decimated and her happy smiles and her trust in others would be gone, replaced by shadowed eyes full of grief and pain. All that was left to her was a pretty face and body and very likely the need to learn how to use them. But by then Sandor was gone. Fed up with the Lannisters, he decided to join the marines and either serve his country or die trying. In truth, he had hoped to die and when he didn't he came back angrier than ever. Why had good men died and he lived? He'd gone back to being muscle-for-hire for shady types and drinking himself into stupors off-duty. Finally he'd simply walked into the ocean one night; staggered really. But he'd fucked that up too: he'd washed up on the beach and was taken to dry out at a veteran's facility and counselled by a chaplain named John Elder; Elder brother, the vets all called him.

"You've been given your life, Sandor," the man had eyed him shrewdly but kindly, "reborn, almost. Might be you've got a purpose that you haven't figured out yet. You're tough. You're strong. Use it for something good."

"Like what" he'd challenged sneeringly. "Guarding douchebags? Killing Japs?"

"The war is over," the priest had replied levelly. "Who do you want to fight now?"

Sandor remembered his childhood: the sister he lost and the brother he hated. "The ones that hurt people," he rasped bitterly.

The chaplain nodded thoughtfully. "That's a good place to start, Sandor."

So he'd become a cop. His scars were still ugly, but a number of men had been disfigured in the war so they assumed he had been too; and though people still cringed, they did not judge or reject him. He'd been just over a year on the force but he'd risen fast: long hours and hard work and less drinking. He used his head as much as his muscle and he was straight too: no graft or bribes or dope or party girls for Officer Clegane. He'd seen what greed and moral relativism, a term of Elder brother's, did to people…people like Sansa Stark. And he'd stood by and let it happen to her; just as he had with his sister but he'd been a boy when his sister died and he had supposed to have been a man when Sansa was effectively held hostage by the Lannisters.

He saw her leave the bar that night with a man in uniform. He had been buying her drinks and squeezing her thigh under the table as he talked in her ear. A rhinestone clip held her hair back on one side and her dress was form-fitting and dark. She didn't encourage him but neither did she resist him or try to get away. As the man led her out the door, his hand trailed from the small of her back to her ass. Sandor saw red: he had wanted to follow them out and shoot the shit-for-brains dead for laying his mitts on Sansa like that. But it couldn't be her, he reassured himself as he lay in the dark on his bed or sat up in the tiny kitchen staring out the window into the night; the girl had been just another pretty girl with bad luck and no one to save her. This town was full of them.

Fucking idiot, who was he kidding? He'd lived and worked all over the western states before Hawaii, then fought in the Pacific. He'd never known any girl to look anything like Sansa Stark.

He went back three nights in a row and nursed a single scotch while keeping one eye on the door. He worked some overnight shifts before he could return; then he saw her again. This time she was already there when he arrived and she sat alone at the bar where her face was clearer in the light of the shaded lamp over the cash register. This time he knew: it was her.

She had dyed her hair brown, which was why he had thought his eyes had been playing tricks on him that first night. And she looked tired, he thought now; though only someone who had known her as a radiant girl could see it. She wore a flower-printed dress and her hair was parted deep on one side and fell forward over her face in waves, like that blonde Veronica Lake. Sansa's hair was dark now but her eyes were that deep blue she got from her Tully mother. She outlined them now with black liner, making them seductively cat-like, and her lips were a tantalizingly rich red that blew smoke out from her cigarette. Her long legs were tucked under the bar stool. She was still beautiful, but hers was a delicate type of beauty that got lost under the heavy makeup and would have looked oddly out of place in a dump like this. It was clear to him that she had come down in the world and was likely due to getting by on her own in a town that chewed up and spit out pretty girls; but every man in the place was looking at her, probably watching her drink and weighing their chances. They all turned away when Sandor approached her.

He cleared his throat. "It's been a long time," he rasped as he put his hand down on the bar next to hers.

She looked up at him with an unfocused curiosity and he saw that she was already drunk. Her hand with its long slender fingers idly twirled the cocktail glass on the bar beside her. Suddenly her pupils dilated with recognition and fear and she turned her face away. Just like she did the first time, he remembered grimly.

"It has," she replied shortly. "Andy, bring me another whisky."

The bartender reached behind him for a bottle. "Whatever you say, Alayne."

"She's had enough, I'd say," Sandor called to him.

"Yea? And who are you to say?" the bartender inquired lazily.

Sandor flashed his badge. The bartender blanched and swallowed hard. Another man quickly slid up on the girl's other side.

"This guy bothering you, Alayne? Say the word and I'll protect you, baby; I'll do anything for you, you know that." He was awkward and eager. Sandor wondered if he was just another man she had left with, or one who watched her and dreamed of his chance. He jerked his head to warn the man to clear off.

"Just leave me alone," she answered thickly. "All of you."

She slipped gracefully off the barstool but tottered slightly on her heels before turning for the door. Sandor grabbed her arm and steadied her. "Let's go, girl."

She looked up at him. She looked momentarily like that lost and broken girl he remembered and then a cool, coy look came over her face. She gave a mirthless laugh and played up to him now. "Your place or mine…officer?"

"Yours, girl," he growled, "I'm taking you home…and don't you flirt with me neither. I could run you in for drinking underage, as it is I should beat sense into you for being in a place like this. What are you now: seventeen, eighteen?"

"I'm old enough to know what I'm doing. What do you think you're doing?" she slurred slightly and tried unsuccessfully to wretch her arm from his grip.

"Trying to keep you safe, girl," he rasped.

There was pause before she answered. "You're too late," he thought he heard her say but a bus had passed by as he opened the door and he wasn't sure and so he chose to ignore it.

She tripped outside as he led her out behind the bar. His Buick, bought second-hand from some B-actor who was out of work, was parked in the last spot.

"Easy now," he rasped as he tried to hold her up and open the rear door of the Buick at the same time. He prayed that she didn't puke so that he'd be stuck cleaning it up. He took her in his arms and carefully lowered her in. She lay sprawled out on the back seat, the skirt of her flowered print dress hitched above her knees. He gulped and looked down at her face. She was looking back languidly, as slight smirk on her full lips.

"You want me," she whispered. It was not a question. She slid her hands down her thighs and began to raise her skirt. The fabric slid against the silk of her stockings and Sandor caught a glimpse of garter before trying to stop her.

"Don't," he rasped harshly. "Don't do that."

"Why not? I know you want me…they all do," she scoffed softly. "I remember how you looked at me then. I see how you look at me now." She licked her lips. "It's alright…I'm not a little girl anymore," she mocked as she unhooked her garter.

Sandor saw the knowing look in her eyes and knew it was true. It hurt him to see it but he had grown painfully hard at the first sight of the milky white skin of the inside of her thigh. Still he hesitated. He had dreamed of seeing her again and keeping her safe; not having her like easy pickings in the back of a car behind a dive bar off the strip. But when she unhooked the other stocking from her garter, Sandor could not stop himself from reaching between her legs and groping at the soft skin of her thigh with a big calloused hand.

"Fuck me," he breathed when he felt the cool flesh. It seemed to melt in his hand, yielding to his touch.

"Yes," she laughed softly.

She's laughing at me, he thought angrily. The old rage returned, and his feelings for her with it. He pushed her thighs open with a growl and fell on top of her. His hands fumbled for his fly as she wiggled out of her panties. He tore them from her when she got them below her knees. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, thick and soft and, oh Christ, so wonderful to feel, he drove into her as hard as he could so that she cried out incoherently.

Sandor shut his eyes and grunted to feel her soft, wet, tight heat around his throbbing cock. He took a deep breath and began pumping her rhythmically. The girl sighed and gave a hum of contentment. Her legs fell open wider and she closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the leather seat.

"Come on, girl," he urged her through clenched teeth.

Sansa panted softly as she bucked her hips to his steady rhythm. She arched her back so that her breasts pressed into his chest and he felt how firm they were and how hard her nipples were through the light fabric. The sensation spurred him on faster and they were both reaching a fevered frenzy as the car rattled and shook and the springs of the back seat squeaked loudly beneath them.

"Yes, hard like that," Sansa whimpered, "harder, harder!"

In the faint light of the sign over the back door of the bar, he could see her tongue curl in her mouth as she moaned yearningly. She reached her arms over her head and latched onto the door handle. Her submissive abandon, her wantonness even, was so unlike the girl he had known and yet it unleashed a lust in him that made him come on like a runaway freight train. He grunted and fucked her harder.

"Jesus Christ, I'm coming, girl. Don't stop, don't you fucking stop."

His rhythmic pumping hitched and he thrust in hard, rough jerks that made her flinch with pain but still the girl bucked and churned against him until she shuddered and gasped sharply. Then she let go a gust of warm breath over his neck. Sandor clutched her thigh in a brutal grip and pushed into her deeply, mercilessly, with a savage need to possess her completely, to mark her as having been his, as a man plunges a stake into the ground to claim his territory.

He came when he did, with a deafening, drawn-out groan and a powerful spurting of semen from his cock that felt like a dam bursting. He kept all his weight on her as he kept on pulsing and throbbing, emptying himself into her. His release was so strong and so complete he almost sobbed from relief.

He raised his head now to look at her. Her head was turned away slightly, and her eyes were closed and her mouth was slack and open. He suspected that she had passed out.

"Sansa?" he murmured hoarsely.

After second she twitched slightly. "Hm?"

"Never mind, girl. I'll take you home."

"Hm." She settled again. He wondered where she thought home was. He adjusted and zipped himself before pulling her dress back down. He shut the rear car door and walked around to the driver's side, jiggling the keys in his pocket. He got behind the wheel and sighed. Then he turned on the ignition and drove to his place.