On the scent (for ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fromporcelain)
Or perhaps it’s just that no amount of cloth can disguise his frame, taller than most men’s notion of tall – even with the limp in one leg dragging down his height – and muscled, where the robes don’t hang loose enough to hide it, like a bull made fit to swing a sword.
He doesn’t resist when they come, so it’s a bloodless affair. They don’t rough him up or even touch him much at all, save to check him for weapons, of which he currently carries none. Still, there was a time when he’d sooner pulp jawbones than submit to any kind of forcible escort; and maybe something of the inclination yet shows around his eyes, because they take him directly to the Gates of the Moon.
The guard’s captain locks him in a temporary holding cell, inside the castle’s great gatehouse itself. “For your safety,” the man says, straight-faced. “Lord Arryn is devoted to the Seven, and would protect those of the Faith who wander our roads in these troubled times.”
Lord Arryn is devoted to tit-milk and tantrums, the brother thinks. And I piss on his protection. But for once he keeps the silence of his order.
The captain leaves him alone, and when he’s gone Sandor swears aloud, the sound rasping even within the layers of his veil.
“Seven bloody hells.”
He takes a few steps around the space, not at all like a proper dog might circle its bed; he’s every inch the feral thing pacing its prison.
Then he heaves a sigh, and sits down on the cell’s lone bench, awaiting whatever, whoever comes next.
using this account whatever I do what I want
He knew who he was- there were few like him. He'd told Alayne, as well, and immediately she knew what she had to do. It was an awful, stupid plan, something perhaps Arya would do, but there was no getting around it. She had to see if he was alive. And why he was searching for her.
The door to the cell opens, and a young woman steps in with two guards. Dark hair frames her pale face, but her hood is up, keeping her from Sandor's full view. She takes one look at the man on the bench, and then looks at both the guards. "You may leave us- if he is truly a man of the Faith, he will not harm me. Remain outside the doors." The guards exchanged a look, but did as she commanded.
When was the last time they'd seen each other? When he'd come into her chambers in King's Landing the night of the battle. He'd offered to take her away, and he'd taken a kiss from her. A kiss and a song. He'd held the power that night. But now, with the door closed and the guards down the hall, it was a young woman that held the power.
First things first: "My name is Alayne Stone." He cannot call her Sansa. He must not call her Sansa.
you referenced the UnKiss and thus springs my forgiveness eternal
Between the hood and the shadows he can’t make out her face, but instinct serves him where recognition fails. He knows the guards are unimportant, ignores them even before she orders their exit. All his focus is for her, the intensity of it belied by his slack-limbed seat on the bench.
“Alayne Stone,” he repeats, his voice rumbling and rough-edged as ever. Though there’s a different tone from what she last heard, a deeper resonance that comes of his being so long sober – as if all the wine he once guzzled only made drier the cracks in his throat.
“You do things strangely in the Vale.” He leans back a fraction, broad shoulders shifting under the dun homespun of his robe.
“Pulling a peaceful man from his travels, then charging with his interrogation a bastard girl."
huzzah!
"Do we? I am unaccustomed to the ways of the Vale myself. I've only recently arrived with my father."
She moves cautiously in front of him, getting a good look at the burned, pockmarked skin that marred the Hound's visage. There was no doubting him. Sandor Clegane was alive, and here in the Vale.
"What business brings you to the Vale?" She won't address how she is, truly, a bastard. Not yet. Nor will she reveal her face until she knows she has good cause to. She may be safe enough here, but not if her name was revealed. Petyr's entire plan hinged on her identity being kept a secret.
no subject
Perhaps it’s a marvel that the disguise has served him at all, but most people see only as much as they want to see; and few people want to see the ruin of the Hound’s face revealed.
“The same business that brings many common folk to the roads these days.” He tilts his head, studying her, absorbing both the details of her words and the sound of her voice itself. His glance moves from her hooded face to the hair that spills down one shoulder, the strands a richer brown by far than the dyed wool of his robe.
“I’m looking for word of someone I once knew. Someone who’s lost.”
no subject
She raised her chin slightly, her neck pale in the dim light. She could hardly say her name out loud, with the guards down the hall. You never knew who could be listening, who reported to whom. She didn't trust any of them.
Nor, for that matter, did she trust the man before her. Even now, she felt a chill in the bottom of her heart at the sight of him. But she was Stone, and she would not be afraid. She'd faced far worse things than a hideous man.
"I'm sorry for your loss. What makes you believe he's come to the Vale? Or that he wishes to be found?" He- it was a safe assumption to make. He wouldn't think anything of it.
no subject
“Don’t know that she has come here. Don’t know that she wants to be found, either – by anyone, but especially by me.” He sits forward, calloused hands splayed across his knees.
“Do you know what they taught me, on the Quiet Isle? It wasn’t prayer and it wasn’t penitence. Oh, they preached both well enough, though it would’ve been quicker without all that holding of tongues.” He speaks with the old irreverence, but in his tone there are other layers: something uncannily like fondness, as if he recalled well-worn arguments with a worthy opponent. And under that a deeper well, sorrows and regrets whose fathoms he’s only just begun to sound.
“They taught me that sometimes the worst man gets to go back out into the world, gets to try to make things right. No matter how little chance he has, no matter how little he deserves that chance. And there’s no forgiveness in it, and there’s no redemption – the gods are silent on both counts, whatever the septons may say.”
“So here I am,” he finishes, his voice gone low and soft, soft as such a voice can be. “Trying to find her. To make right, if I can, this one bloody thing.”
no subject
Pursing her lips just slightly, she has to look away from him, to remind herself who she is and what she is doing.
"And what will you do if you find her? What could you have done to this poor girl to make you come all this way?" He'd terrified her, he'd kissed her. He'd taken a song. He'd stood by Joffrey's side, but Joffrey was dead now, that he had to have heard. She could only hope he did not believe that Sansa Stark was capable of such a thing. But she had to find out, before she decided to trust him or not. Petyr had placed the decision in her hands, though he had his reserves.
She would not reveal her face to the Hound. Not until she's sure he can be trusted; for there is no doubt in her mind he would recognize her face, changed though it is, just as she recognizes his.
"How will you make this one thing right?"
It's not a conventional interrogation, by any means- no lady should be doing it, and certainly not a bastard. But she wondered who would care, if word got around Lord Baelish let his daughter do the interrogating of prisoners. There were other things to worry about.
no subject
Looking through the glass, the familiar lines of everyday forms were masked by unimaginable combinations of colors and shapes. You had to play with the lenses for the clearest one to overcome the rest, clicking through them in just the right sequence. Only then would images show true, brilliantly, mercilessly precise.
There are pieces falling into place, signs that magnify the sense he’s had since she first walked into this cell. But he doesn’t yet lift that clear glass to his eye, as if on some level he’s not ready to see.
“She needed someone to keep her safe. Not a knight, though she loved her stories about knights, she did.” His voice still scrapes on that one word, but whatever surfaces at the mention of her stories, it isn’t contempt. “Just a decent man.”
“But I wasn’t that man. I was too used to my master’s leash – too savage in the hating of it, yet too scared to go free. Too drunk on blood, and too bloody drunk.”
“What protection I did offer her always had a price. I wanted to collect on it, too –” He breaks off, his eyes cutting away across the cell. “Wanted things from her, things that weren’t mine to take.”
“Truth is? I’m no more a decent man now than I was then. But I should have tried, for her. And if I find her that’s all I mean to do. Bloody try.”
He leans back, seeking again that sheen in the shadows where her eyes must be. “That’s more confession than they got out of me on the Isle, bastard girl.” He speaks the last two words without bite, his tone if anything gently lowering.
“What do you make of it?”
no subject
He wasn't a decent man then, no. But there were so few decent men in the world, she was beginning to think there were none, and if there ever had been, they were all dead.
She bows her head, tilting her hood over her face a little further. She couldn't let him find out who she was, not until she allowed him. And she would. The question was when.
"I believe you wanted someone to listen." Perhaps he recognized something in her, on some base level. He wanted her to absolve him of his sins, she did not doubt. But she was no Septa. No Priestess. "Even if that someone is just a bastard girl."