Hokuto

He took the place first because it gave him protection from his brother.

No matter how feeble, how cowardly, that might be, it was true all the same. Even his lordly, knightly, ser brother would not gut his king's bodyguard 'like a fish' as he'd once threatened, among other things, and Sandor expected that if he simply remained as he was his life expectancy would not be more than a few weeks, if that. Sandor rather valued his life, miserable, rotten thing that it was.

So he took the post. And because he was a Clegane and his brother's brother, the boy's mother was glad to have him.

His first impression of the crown prince was of a flax-haired, slightly plump, round-faced and soft little boy. His eyes were different. Green like emeralds and they might as well have been chips of a gemstone for all the childish warmth they held. The first time they faced each other, Prince Joffrey pursed his lips, frowned, and said in a strikingly high voice, "What did you do to your face?"

What did you do to yours, he thought to snap, but said nothing, just looked at the boy, who frowned more. "Can you speak? Mother, I don't want a stupid guard. Don't give me a stupid guard."

"I'm not stupid," Sandor said, flatly, "You ask stupid questions, I'm not going to answer them."

Neither the boy nor his mother had liked that very much, but the king himself had roared with laughter, as though it were a fine joke. Sandor loathed all of them on sight, but he asked for the position above any other he could have chosen. He didn't really know why.

Joffrey tested him for two weeks, hiding, dodging into dangerous places, wandering off alone. When Sandor killed the first man for him, the point of his blade coming through the cutpurse's chest bare inches from Joffrey's forearm, Joffrey regarded him differently, with something approaching awe. For a while, he tried to ignore it.

"Will you teach me the sword, Dog?"

It didn't last forever.

"No, I won't." His voice was short. "Someone else will. You don't want to fight like me."

**

Through half-lidded eyes, Sandor watched the boy strut around the courtyard, holding his small bow as though it were the greatest of longbows he'd bent himself, rather than a toy his father had handed him with an amused chuckle. The way Joffrey's eyes had lit up on first seeing the thing, tooled and worked to look like a real bow down to the last details, Sandor was almost amused.

"Look, Dog!" He said, turning and holding it up proudly. "My father gave it me. It's my own bow. My very own and I can shoot things with it."

Sandor let his mouth twist. "Proper little knight you are now, Prince. Your father would be proud." Joffrey grinned and turned away, and Sandor lowered his eyelids again, watching the boy prance about like an idiot. It was only moments before the bow lost its appeal and he dropped it with a clatter, instead waving the knife he'd gotten last year. It'd been blunt at one point. It wasn't now.

For the money. Just for the money. He stretched out his legs and scratched the side of his face that still had feeling.

"Dog, could I lift your sword?"

"No. It'd drop and cut off your foot. Prince." Joffrey frowned, seeming to be attempting to tell if there was some mockery there. Sandor kept his eyes lidded and Joffrey tossed his blond hair in irritation, looking haughty and sullen as he turned his head to display what he must have thought was a handsome profile. He wrinkled his nose.

"When all of this is mine, I will do something about the smell." Was there a smell? Sandor didn't notice anything. Then again, the whole city stank of shit and lies to him. He shrugged one shoulder noncommittally.

"When it's yours, you can do anything you want with it, Prince."

Joffrey's eyes shone, suddenly, startlingly bright as he looked up, eagerly. "Even burn it down, if I wanted to?" Cruelty was etched in the lines around his mouth, and Sandor felt a powerful urge to snarl at him.

"If you wanted to." He kept his voice neutral. "I suppose you could."

"What do you think of that, Dog? There's supposed to be wildfire somewhere, what if I took all the wildfire there was and lit the whole city, and I could just go and be king somewhere else, somewhere better. Maybe in Dorne."

"I'm sure the Dornish would welcome you." He could feel his jaw tightening like a spring being wound tighter. The boy was baiting him, the boy was fully aware of what he was doing, and the boy enjoyed the petty power he could wield of saying these things without retaliation. Couldn't mistake this one for anything but a bitch's whelp.

"They would have to." Haughtily. "I'm their king." A brief pause. "Or I would be. And if they didn't want me to be there then you could just kill them for me."

He could have said that taking a man's sword for granted was dangerous. He could have said that he was a bodyguard, not a murderer, though the distinction was fine enough and didn't matter particularly to Sandor. Instead, voice neutral, he said simply, "I do your bidding, my prince."

"I know," said Joffrey, maliciously. "Don't be stupid. I know you're only a Dog but there's a reason dogs don't talk, isn't there?"

He knew better than to respond to that one, and lowered his eyelids further, aware that only a sliver of grey now showed, watching. The boy looked briefly unsettled, but only briefly. Then he was whirling away, shoving the knife away and scooping up the bow, seizing an arrow from the dropped quiver. "Dog! Watch this." He nocked the arrow, drew back the small string, and shot it. The dart – a better word than arrow, really, arced leisurely through the air and clattered to the ground.

"Well fired," said Sandor, neutrally, but Joffrey looked disappointed.

"No," he said, "No, I mean like this," and he turned suddenly, and the same moment Sandor registered the young cat prowling across the parapet, the arrow shot free and even if it wasn't sharp and the string wasn't strong, it was enough.

The cat screamed, that horribly human sound, and he yelled a moment too late, and Joffrey was already pumping his fist in the air and whooping. Sandor was tempted, sorely, to strike him, and did stand, abruptly. "You idiot boy! Why did you do that?"

Joffrey turned, eyes full of malice and cruel amusement. He'd never thought he'd see eyes that nasty on a young boy. Not one other than his own brother.

"I was showing off my bow."

"You were showing off that you can kill things. That's what I'm for. Move." The cat was still screaming and the sound grated at his temper, his nerves, something tentatively attempting to be more sensitive. He quashed all of them, bent down, and put a knife through the kitten's neck with bared teeth. It twitched a few more times, but at least it stopped screaming. The arrow had gone through its bowels. It wouldn't have been worth trying to save.

He looked up to find Joffrey staring down at him, fist clenched white knuckled around the bow and white around his pinched nostrils. "I will have you flogged. Flogged! You are my Dog, you cannot speak that way to me. You would dare-"

Almost, he felt a strange calm and nearly told the prince to shut up. A moment later his senses returned and bowed his head, remaining kneeling. "I did not think, my prince."

"Obviously. Obviously! Idiot Dog. I could have you killed for this disrespect. I will have you punished. You are my Dog, mine, and you will do what I say!" His voice was shrill with anger, almost a girl's. "If I tell you to die, you will die. If I tell you to kill, you will kill. Dogs don't think and you shouldn't think."

His skin crawled. And what of the day when I refuse in earnest, what will you do then? Kill me? You; weak, soft woman of a princeling? "I will not err again." He had no wish to be flogged. One disfigurement was bad enough. An ugly man did not need a ruined back as well. "You know best. I thought that the beast's cries might disturb your ears."

"I am not so womanish to be so offended." His voice was haughty again. "You will serve me every day, in every way, so that I must do nothing for myself for two days. And I will see what other punishment I can make for you, Dog. Leave my sight."

Sandor went. He needed nothing more.

Except a drink. A drink he could certainly use. The cat's screams still rang in his ears. Gregor'd killed one of his first puppies when he was young, and it had made that same sound. Sometimes he wondered if it was the sound he'd made himself, burning.

He couldn't call the boy a monster, though. What would that make him?

**

Joffrey wept, almost screaming every time the needle passed through his skin. Sandor watched him, expressionless, and said nothing through the whole ordeal. The wolf could have taken his arm off, Sandor knew. This was barely a lovebite from something like a direwolf. "I'm going to die," moaned Joffrey. "I'm going to die, I'm going to die."

Sandor's lip curled, ever so slightly, with very slight disgust. "You're not going to die. Think about something else."

"I'm going to kill that girl, that girl and her wolf both," Joffrey moaned, and Sandor did not comment that he expected the Starks would not approve of that plan. Cersei pulled him aside, almost literally, and stared up at him pretending not to be afraid.

"Make up for your failure," she hissed. "Hunt down the butcher boy, the wolf, and the girl. Bring the girl back alive. Do what you like with the other two." Her mouth twisted in disgust, clearly thinking what that 'what he liked' might be. He deliberately did not smile, trained his coldest gaze into her eyes.

"I can only track one at a time and I doubt they're together. The boy or the girl first?"

Cersei hesitated, then nodded, very slightly. "The boy. Kill the boy, and if you find it the wolf."

"Very well," he said, flatly, and bowed his head just briefly before turning his back on her and her sobbing son both. A butcher boy wouldn't be hard to track. He could be back before nightfall.

The girl, he didn't concern himself with. She was none of his business. His business was what he was told it was. His mouth had a sour taste, but he would wash it out with drink when he returned.

It shouldn't take long.