keep_counting | Fic: Land over Land (Game of Thrones)

Title: Land over Land
Characters/Pairings: Sansa Stark, Sandor 'The Hound' Clegane, mentions of Cersei Lannister and Joffrey Baratheon. Can be seen as Sansa/Sandor
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Angst, spoilers up to and including 2x09 Blackwater
Genre: Angst/Character-study
Word-count: 347
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in relation to this
A/N: Because rewatching Blackwater gave me all the Sansa-feels. Title taken from the Florence+The Machine song Heartlines
Summary: She's never been much of a wolf. Now she's just insignificant.

Cersei called her little dove, because doves were harmless. Doves could not kill, or maim or replace her on the throne. Doves where pretty to look at, pretty to think about – beautiful to behold. But they were not a threat, not like the wolves howling in the night. The wolves coming to tear them apart.

Sansa has never been much of a wolf. But maybe that’s not true: maybe it’s just that she’s never wanted to be a wolf. Never wanted to run through the forest, getting muddied and dirtied, never wanted to intimidate and growl. It is not fear she wishes to strike in the hearts of men.

Of course, now she wishes she did. Just a little. Wishes she was different. Maybe not a wolf, because she still does not know if a wolf can hold its own, can survive, in a den filled with lions, but a dove…

A dove is just a plaything. Insignificant.

Not a threat.

A wolf could bite and tear, until both Cersei and Joffrey would be dead. A dove can do nothing but flutter its wing against the bars in its cage.

“Little bird,” the Hound says, drunk on his feet, smelling of sweat and blood and ashes. “You could come with me.”

(it’s the fire, she thinks, he is terrified of the fire)

She hadn’t realized before, what he calls her. Little bird. Not dove. Not like Cersei – in that mocking tone, only half-hidden contempt filling it, because it is such a thin pretence that Sansa isn’t even sure why they still try to hold it. Come here, my little Dove. Oh, I am ever so fond of you.

“Little bird,” he says again and she is not frightened. Not of him – not anymore.

He leaves, and she doesn’t come with him, and it’s partly his own fault, she thinks, because…

Little bird.

The skies are filled with birds. With messengers and flyers, feathers and shrieks.

And a dove may not be anything but harmless to Cersei, but an eagle or a falcon could tear her eyes out.