Wilting ♞ Sandor Clegane

ѕιх-αɴd-тнιrтy

SHE LAID ON his chest with one of his arms draped across her back. He ran a finger down her cheek, following a new scar that wasn't there when he last saw her. "Didn't think I'd see your face again." Anya leaned into his touch with little reserve and this time he did not take his hand away.

"I couldn't stay away forever," she uttered, knowing it was true. She could have stayed at the Wall longer, could have stayed with Erac Cleaber or Hyle Hunt longer but that was not where her heart yearned to be. It was here she wished to be. Next to Sandor Clegane.

His lips twisted into a smile, she found it delightful to finally see him smile. "Roses," he began without preamble. Her brows furrowed but then she understood. "You always smell like fucking roses. You've got plenty of thorns too." They both laughed. Anya bit her lip to stifle the swell of emotions that would come as tears. She kissed his chin and then his lips and laid her head on his chest. It was the closest she had felt to being at home and ease since leaving Winterfell.

Dawn had come and gone. The early morning was upon them and soon someone would surely be sent to the cottage where they lay with tangled limbs. It would be frightfully embarrassing if one of the silent brothers were to see them in such a state of undress. "And this one?" She found another scar, barely visible beneath the hair on his chest. It was shaped like a waxing crescent moon and oddly pink compared to the color of his skin.

"First tournament," he muttered, still half caught in the haze that sleep had left.

The next scar was on the underside of his arm. "What about this one?" Her fingers danced over the jagged mark, but unlike some, it was smooth and almost blended into his skin.

"During the sack of King's Landing." She remembered Ned telling her about the sack of the capital by Tywin Lannister. Jaime earned the title kingslayer. Robert Baratheon ascended to the throne while the bloodied corpses of Aegon, Rhaenys, and Elia had not even grown cold.

Sandor laid his hand over the scar on her hip. It was a short curved line that began at the point of her hip and extended downward for two inches. "Theon fell into a river during a winter hunt. I went after him but got caught up on a rock before I could get out." She remembered the cold water and how it stabbed like a thousand knives. By the time they had reached Winterfell both she and Theon had been frozen stiff. Jon and Robb had found the way ice crystals formed in her hair particularly amusing.

"And these?" His thumbs brushed over her nipples and the small brown scars that ran vertically through each of them. Her skin turned to gooseflesh. Anya held his hands against her breasts and closed her eyes, recounting how they came to be.

"I nursed Jon when he was a babe. The maester had to make an incision before any milk would come." He sat up and pulled her flush against him. Anya threaded her fingers through his hair and reveled in his strength and warmth. He pressed his face into the valley of her breasts and for a moment she swore she could feel his tender kisses. "Sandor," she gasped when he pushed her down on him. Wordlessly, he rocked her hips and she bit down on her bottom lip. "We should get dress -ah!"

Midday had just come when Anya and Sandor joined the brothers of the isle in the main sept. Brother Ray and Meribald had begun a travelers prayer while others readied baskets of bread, cheese, and salted meat. Anya watched and allowed the two septons to finish their prayer before inquiring where it was they were going. Ray told her that they would be leaving in the morn for a small village in the Riverlands, to help rebuild a sept that had been put to the torch during the war.

"I'm coming as well," she said. Perhaps Meribald had opened his mouth to object to her company but with the dark glare Sandor gave the holy man, he said nothing against it. Brother Ray wore a kindly smile. "Of course. Could always use more hands."