This is my other Sansa/Sandor story 'Little Bird' from Sandor's POV, with a rather different flavour.

I'd LOVE to know what people think, and hope that it makes you want to check out my other story for a quite different style and lots of other details and dialogue that you don't get here.

WARNING: plenty of salty language in this one! Please don't read it if you're not keen on swearing...

All characters are George RR Martin's of course. It's chiefly TV canon. Sansa is sixteen and I imagine that Sandor is a bit younger than his tv persona.

She – fuck. She looks at me and that damned bottom lip starts trembling. Somehow, telling her I won't bloody hurt her isn't enough. Calling her bird again isn't enough. She still thinks I'm going to eat her up, rape her, worse. I could have done that a hundred times. I take one last look at those eyes, damned Southron pools fit for diving into stark – Stark! – naked and never coming up for air, and lean up, and away, away from her forever, and make for the door. She wouldn't come with me if I was the last fucking man in the Seven Kingdoms. Fucking idiot.

Wait! I'll – I'm coming.

I listen for the bolt from the other side. There. I move off, down the hallway. Hells. The sweetest two words I've ever heard. I'll ever hear. There's a lump in my throat that I want to scrape out with my sword. It's madness, probably. We could get caught. She'd never survive if she was dragged back here again, in shame, to that blackheart or to the boy and the Queen. And I'd be choking down on a spike before long. I have to get her away, quick, and stay well off the Kingsroad. Hells.

My room first, then the kitchens. A serving lass makes like she's a mouse I've stepped on when I barge in, and is out the door like a flash. I forget how I must look, worse than usual, a dead man wrenched out of the mud.

Then the stables. Ralf's snivelling at the door, not his usual yapping self. Battle's got him spooked. Everyone's spooked, and running, or hiding in a corner somewhere. Best place. I buck him up, and instruct him to get Stranger ready. I walk along the stalls. They're all spooked too. Eyes like boiled eggs. There's a palfrey, one of the lowerborn ladies' probably, good size, bit calmer than the others. She'll do.

Best get back to her, before she changes her mind.

Fucking whore. What are they doing in there? I can hear her, muttering, that foreigner's voice curling like a drawn-out Braavosi blade, words in the bird's ear, words to turn her. She was looking like a late summer leaf in there. It won't take much for her to sway. And all the while I'm waiting out here like a leashed fucking dog. Fucking whore. Fucking wall.

She's tripping after me. I want to dash so fast out of this castle, out of this city, before she changes her mind that I almost keep losing her. She's coming. Thinking of what's going to happen in the next days is like opening a maegi's box. Putting your hand in, reaching down and down into blackness that never ends. I'm going to be free to look at those hands, that skin, that hair – Shit. I turn round and she collides into me, and flies back. She's like her own damned doll. Or one of those stick figures that crones make to fright the spirits, not that it does. You could snap her like a young twig. Got to do something with that hair.