A/N: The formatting is still wonky, so faint horizontal lines separate the sections, which is driving me nuts. In that vein, does it bother anyone else that the 'S' isn't capitalized in the category "A song of Ice and Fire"? Just me? Hmm...

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to George RR Martin, I'm just borrowing them to make them do my bidding, as can plainly be seen. All time is fuzzy. :)

Hot breath on the back of his neck pulled Sandor fully from his already uneasy sleep. He knew it was that pesky girl again, trying to taunt him into doing something he was quite sure she'd regret when it was too late. He turned over quickly, fully prepared to scare her into jumping backwards. Instead it was Stranger's wicked dark eyes and black angular face that he came nose to nose with.

He let the fact that it wasn't Sansa at his back with her lips on his neck disappoint him for a moment before he sat up to gather his wits about him. Stranger nearly walked right over the top of him, the stallion standing on Sandor's bedroll and nibbling at his shirt.

"He got loose," the little bird complained from somewhere nearby.

"He'll do that," Clegane agreed, rising to his feet and leading Stranger to a tree to tie him again. "Did you try to catch him?" The disgruntled expression on her face told him she had indeed, and he chuckled to see it.

"If you're awake, does that mean we'll be going soon?" She asked hopefully, her eyes flicking back to her already tacked horse. The idea of riding out again reminded him that he had no clue where exactly they were going. Somehow, going north seemed to make the most sense, and the rest would follow after. In the north, it was much harder for things to catch fire.

"And where does the little bird think she's flying to?" He asked as he reached for his saddle and one-armed it easily onto Stranger's back.

"I told you, anywhere away from here."

"Back to your little nest at Winterfell?" He tightened the girth and barked a guttural noise of dissent at Stranger when the stallion pinned his ears and lifted a hind leg threateningly.

"No, not Winterfell, not there. At least, not for awhile. I don't want...I don't want anyone finding me." Such a silly little thing, she seemed to think the entire population of the Red Keep knew she was missing and was out looking only for her. Perhaps he wouldn't disabuse her of that notion quite yet, as it might save her from doing something rash.

"We will ride north, though," he said with finality, marvelling that for all she warbled her constant questions, she didn't seem to care about where the hell they were going.

"North," she repeated, saying the word as though it were a short prayer.

It was midafternoon, as they made their way along the kingsroad, when they were caught in a sudden flurry.

"Snow?" Sansa asked in confusion, holding out her palm and collecting a small drift of salt and pepper flakes on bandages now soiled and fraying.

"I wouldn't be trying to catch it on my tongue, little bird, unless you like the taste of dead men." When she gave him a puzzled look, he rolled his eyes. "All that burning back there, homes and ships and men? The ashes must have caught a good breeze out of King's Landing to be this far out . You're probably holding some poor soul hostage right now," he said with a smirk. She recoiled a bit, brushing the ashes off hastily.

"Only cowards fight with fire," she said, catching his eye as she spoke. He turned his head slightly, legging his horse a pace ahead. It unnerved him when she looked straight at him, and unbalanced him. Before, he would go out of his way to force her eyes onto his face, and to watch her withdraw from it. He believed in sharing the wealth of his ugliness and giving everyone a good long look at it. He scoffed at the idea of hiding away or wailing about such things as couldn't be undone. If he had to live with himself, why should anyone else be spared?

Why he had always made such a point of making HER look, he couldn't have said. His ability to scare folk away gave him a sort of power over his gods-cursed face, that he could make them turn away before he saw them turn away on their own. When she looked right at him of her own accord, he could feel that power ebb. He turned back and leered at her, but she only gazed at him knowingly, her eyes solemn. Damn her.

The travel was quiet for a time, the only sound that of hooves striking the hard packed surface of the kingsroad with a regular, hypnotically soothing rhythm. On the very rare occaisions that anyone passed them in either direction, Sansa would tense up and tug at the hood of the cloak Urtha had given her. She might as well have screamed 'I'm hiding from something' to whoever was riding by.

She had wanted to wear the white cloak, the one he had left behind when he should have snatched her up. After a rather graphic description of what might be done to her should anyone the wrong folk see her wearing it, Sansa had readily taken Urtha's proffered dark brown cloak. Stubbornly, she donned it over the white one, and no amount of talk about pillywinks or being drawn and quartered would shrug the once-white thing from her shoulders.

She needn't have worried about hiding, of course. Most of the folk passing on the kingsroad kept their eyes down and their business to themselves. No one wanted to be called out. it was why he had chosen to ride the kingsroad over keeping to the trails they had taken the first day. The more you looked as though you were hiding, the more attention you drew to yourself.

A gentle hum snuck into his thoughts, luring him away from them and back to the road. His little bird was singing quietly to herself, her head tilted back and her eyes half closed. The song was one he'd heard often enough in the more boisterous inns and taverns he had frequented, though it was strange to hear it sung in so gentle and plaintive a tone.

"And do, she said
Do come to me
As often as you like
For I have weathered all alone
A night upon the Pyke

If you bring your lance, she said
You'll win a maiden fair
The man who next sees this place
Will find no maiden there."

He knew by the way she sang it that she had no inclination whatsoever of its true origins. In all the times he'd heard the song, certain words were emphasized and paired with lascivious gesturing, while roaring laughter followed each chorus. "Who taught you such a song?" He called over to her, startling her from her reverie.

"My father's ward, Theon Greyjoy. He taught it to me when I was five." Sandor laughed to think of the smirking iron whelp teaching bawdy songs to children for the fun of it. "I always thought it was such a pretty song, I'm as surprised as you that he knew it. I suppose it is funny, a boy knowing such a pretty song as that."

"I'm not surprised he knew it, I'm more surprised that you did." He didn't elaborate, not wishing to answer another volley of questions. "At least it's not that Mother hymn."

"Yes, well, I do remember more songs when there's not a knife to my throat," Sansa said quietly, adding, "and I like to think I sing a bit better then as well."

"Then what the hell did you stop singing for?" He snapped back at her, earning an infuriatingly patient smile for his trouble.

"You could have taken me that night," she mused after a moment, ignoring his question."You didn't. Why?"

"I was too drunk to piss, let alone fuck."

"I don't think it was that at all. You're not drunk now, after all." Why was she nattering on about this? It should have been relief enough to her that he hadn't held her down and had her until she was bruised and sobbing before dragging her away with him by the hair. She had to keep worrying over it like a crow over entrails.

"Unfortunately for me," he growled, grinding his teeth.

"You said before, in the barn-"

"Leave off what I said in the barn." Sandor cursed himself for an idiot when that came to mind. It wasn't the first time he'd gone and said stupid things to the little bird under press of strong drink or a lack of sleep. There had been the time before the tourney, when he found himself telling her things he'd told virtually no one else. And after he had, she'd stood beside him, whispering her consolations in the darkness.

"I think it was quite honorable, what you said there," she murmured quietly.

"Oh, bollocks," he groaned, exasperated with her and her foolish notions of courtly love and honor. Had getting the shit beaten out of her at the Red Keep truly taught her nothing? "Girl, if your only idea of an honorable person is someone who hasn't yet harmed you, then you're sillier than I thought. There's not a scrap of me that's honorable," he said defensively, proudly even.

"An honorable person doesn't harm others when they have the chance, and they tell the truth, when they have every means to lie. When everyone is lying to you and harming you, what else is there to believe in?" Her eyes were soft and sad in a way that transcended tears.

"This," Sandor said, reaching across his body to unsheath his sword. "No one can hurt you if you hurt them first, and there's nothing like a blade to bring the truth out of someone. Bugger the gods, old AND new, if you've got steel in your hand and a strong arm to swing it, that's all you need to believe in."

"As you say," Sansa agreed quietly, averting her eyes and fidgeting with one of her bandages. He looked at her properly then, for the first time since he'd carried her on foot up to the backwoods little farm she had passed out near. Her boy's garb and artlessly hacked-off hair weren't the only things that had changed about her, he saw now.

She met his eyes and his words in a way he knew she wouldn't have dared back in the courtyards and hallways of the Red Keep. However, she wasn't so tremendously different otherwise, still insisting on irritating courtesies, thanking him for stupid things like stopping and waiting while she went and pissed behind a tree. Now, though, when he laughed at her or derided her courtesy, she'd often chirp curiously at him and step nearer as though expecting breadcrumbs to fall from his hands.

"Dusk'll be on us soon. We'll run a stretch, at the next fork in the road there's a village with an inn. " And a tavern, he thought to himself.

"Is it safe? We're still awfully close to King's Landing," she said. Fretting, she reached up to twine her fingers in hair that no longer fell over her shoulder. His answer was to drop back a pace and slap her mare's rump with the flat of his blade. The little thing half-reared and then took off, Sansa yelping in surprise as she clamored to gather rein. Shaking his head in amusement, he sheathed his sword and then legged Stranger after her.

Her mare was much faster than Stranger, and Sandor knew she didn't try especially hard to make sure the stallion kept up. Only when the road forked into two did she slow, uncertain which path to take. The road sign at the fork wouldn't give her any clue, it had been made for illiterate smallfolk and contained only crude, indiscernable pictures. When he came upon her, he saw tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes as she stared at the signs.

Hearing his approach, she turned and wiped her eyes, trying to marshal her tears back in. As she swiped her hand across her face, he caught sight of the blood that had soaked entirely through the bandages. Dismounting, he came to her as she held up her palms in protestation. Taking her gently by the waist with both hands, he swung her down and turned her to face him.

He began unravelling the bandages over her palm. As he wound down to the skin, she gasped, but bit her lip to keep from crying out. When the bandages stuck to the now ragged skin, she couldn't stop herself and shrieked in pain. The tender, blistered skin had been sawed through by the leather of the reins, the bandages settling nicely into the ravines of flesh. Placing one hand on her shoulder to brace her, he tugged the last bit of linen free.

"How long has this been hurting you?"

"Since this morning," she admitted, crying openly with obvious relief. "I thought if I ignored it, it would go away. It used to work for the other things. When...when they'd hit me, I could just ignore it and it would stop hurting."

"No, it's a special torment, burned flesh." His voice was an iron horseshoe scraping cobblestone, and when he looked at the sad and tattered remnants of Sansa's bandages, it was his own he saw. They had stuck to him with the same stubbornness, especially when his father forgot to summon the maester to have them changed. "This'll hurt, my little bird, until it heals."

"I can make it," she hiccuped through the last of her crying, "I can make it the rest of the way to the inn."

"Of course you can, we're not bloody camping out on this road. Stay right there," Sandor added as she tried morosely to get back onto her horse. He unshouldered his cloak and tore the bottom of it once, twice, and again until he had three ragged lines of fabric. "This is going to hurt," he said in a voice that was nearly sympathetic.

He rebandaged her hand awkwardly, barely noticing when her other hand clawed the air before sinking into the meat of his shoulder and digging in. He lifted her back onto the mare, pulling the horse's reins over her head and leading her over to Stranger so that he could remount. "We'll be there before full dark. Don't fall off." he called back over his shoulder as he moved forward again.

The room his coin had paid for was dismal, dank, and full of splinters. The bed sagged worse than the breasts of even the most shopworn Flea Bottom whores and he was sure that the small table beside it was home to a comfortable kingdom of rats. It wasn't even a fit place for a dog to lay his head, and yet it was probably the best room there.

At any rate, the wine was strong, which was a relief in more ways than one. He had demanded a bottle of it before they had even set foot in the inn, earning a disappointed, judging look from Sansa that said plain as day 'Really? Before we're even inside the doors?' That self-righteous expression was wiped clean off her face when he peeled the bandages away, uncorked the wine and poured half the bottle over her wound, taking care that it filled the deep gouge in the center. She didn't struggle too much, but she hissed and ground her teeth.

"No more wine for you," he said with a snort of laughter as he clutched the bottle's neck and tossed the rest of the wine down his throat. He had walked her up to the room, finding himself not unpleasantly reminded of those times when he'd walk with her through the Keep.

"Bolt the door," he told her when they came to their room. "Give me the key."

"I'll wait here," she said needlessly, handing him the key and then studying his face for a moment, as though trying to make up her mind about something. The small rusting key was swallowed up in his hand, and he turned away before she could say anything else. Behind him, the door closed and there was the definitive sound of a bolt snicking into place.

Sandor Clegane was profoundly drunk by the time he made his way up the stairs once more. It hadn't been a merry experience, to be sure. He and another fellow, a frequent customer by the fellow's overly ruddy cheeks and broken veins, had huddled silently around the sputtering hearthside. Sandor drank steadily, methodically, making up for time lost on the road. First ale and then another bottle or two of the wine found a home in his belly.

He staggered up from his chair and climbed the stairs in a half-crouch. He waved the key around, fumbling it into the lock with enough noise to wake the dead. Shouldering the door open with unnecessary force, he fairly tumbled into the room. The moon was nowhere near full, but there was light enough to dimly make out the form on the bed.

Even for all that racket, she didn't wake. She had rolled into the valley at the center of the bed and lay curled there, hands drawn up to her chest. Without much care to the noise he might be making, he shucked his outer tunic, followed by the leather jerkin beneath it and the ringmail beneath that. The ringmail hit the floor heavily and she stirred, turning onto her other side and reaching across the bed with an arm and a leg.

Down to an under-shirt and breeches, he turned to regard the girl. She was stealing the entire bloody bed, so rather than try and move her, he took the torn remnants of his travel cloak and balled them up for a pillow. Lowering himself to the ground with a heavy thud and a grunt, he shut his eyes, only to open them a second later at the feeling of something brushing against his ear.

Sitting up, prepared to snag a rat with his bare hands and smash it to the floor, he looked into Sansa's sleepy face. Her fingers had been dangling over the side of the bed. "Sorry," she murmured, scooting closer to the edge of the bed to peer at him.

"Sleep, girl," he rumbled, throwing himself back down onto the floor and covering his ear for good measure. It did little good, as her fingertips danced across the back of his hand. "Can't a man sleep?"

"Why are you down there? It's cold down there."

"Because someone up there likes to take the entire bed for her damn self."

"Not anymore, I've moved," her voice said from a bit farther away. "There's room now."

"Sleep," he said with finality. For a moment, there was silence, and he thought perhaps she'd given up.

"I can't," she admitted, a bit of apprehension creeping into her voice.

"Looked like you were doing a fair job of it before I came in," he grunted.

"My dreams have been bad."

"Looking at me a day straight'll do that."

"NO," she said emphatically, and Sandor could almost see the frown on her face, knowing that the line that creased right between her eyebrows whenever she scowled at something would be there. "No, not you. It's dreams about Joff finding me and killing me, about Arya and...and my father."

"And what can I do about such things?"

"Whenever I had bad dreams at Winterfell, I'd wake and cry. My brother Robb's chambers were the closest to me, he heard me and he'd come and stay with me. He'd huddle in bed with me and told me if the things in my dreams came out, they'd eat him first."

"I'm not your brother." It sounded as though she was crawling back toward him and sure enough her face swam into view, pale against the darkness.

"You aren't. But I thought you were my friend."

"Friend?" He sneered into the darkness at that as he shook his head at her silliness. "Your friend?"

"Aren't you?"

"The Hound does not have friends, little bird. He is loyal, but he does not have friends."

"Sandor Clegane has one," Sansa said staunchly. His mouth quirked to the side at that, and he looked up into her face. She looked back at him plaintively, lower lip beginning to quiver.

"Seven blood drenched, rat infested, whoremongering, sheep buggering, sword spitting hells," he railed as he swayed to his feet. "If I lay here, will you quiet your cheeping and go the fuck to sleep?"

"Yes," she said simply, scooting back as he mostly fell onto the bed. He tried for a moment to stay on the outermost edge, but found himself rolling into the center of the feather mattress that must have been crafted when Aegon the Conqueror was losing his milk teeth.

"Sleep, then," he said to her for what felt like the hundredth time, turning his back on her. She nestled herself back to back with him, burrowing down like a terrier. He could feel every slight movement she made, and kept absolutely still himself. Within a breath, she had flipped to her other side, so that she was flush against his back. This close, he was more than aware of how she pressed against him, with naught but two layers of cloth between their skins. He shuddered, hands clenching convulsively. Damn her, damn her.

Her arm tried to slide across his ribs, as though she meant to hold him fast. Though he held himself tense, she wriggled until her hand rested on his chest. Burying her face against the back of his neck, she sighed in relief.

"If this is how your brother comforted you, it's a wonder they weren't spreading rumors about Winterfell along with the Lannisters. My brother never comforted me thus, thank the gods," he muttered. She made no answer, having fallen almost immediately asleep.

Eventually, he followed her.

A/N: Okay, I lied. Seems as though I'm not done writing this tale of OOCness and shipping, unfortunately for anyone silly enough to come across this. If you HAVE come across this, you're as doomed as any character in an ASOIAF prolouge. Sorry. Be on the lookout for...a chapter three! EL GASPO!