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janie_tangerine“He was no true knight.”
Sansa speaks quietly, and she doesn’t know if it’s her hand shaking or if it’s The Hound’s shoulder trembling, but then he throws his head back and laughs and said that no, he was no true knight, and then stands up and if Sansa isn’t wrong, he looks... somehow shaken, and she can’t believe she was the reason, and then she remembers what he had said, if you tell of this to anyone else I will kill you, and she’s afraid, maybe, but -
But some part of her knows that he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t mean it, or why would he have told her when from what it seems he had never told such a thing to anyone else? She doubts he did, or the cause of those burns would have been widely known.
Her palm feels scalding.
She follows him back to the castle and she wonders why would he tell her out of everyone and why knowing what she does she feels like crying, but she cannot ask him, not when he looks like he’ll lash out if anyone even dares touching him -
He had sounded so, so sad as he remembered his brother being knighted.
And he keeps on saying he’s no ser, and maybe she gets it now, but -
But it’s unfair, isn’t it -
Sansa’s eyes slam open as she sits up on her bed, breathing heavily.
It’s not the first time she has that dream.
Or better, it’s not the first time she dreams of him, scars and armor and all, talking to a younger version of her, wearing clothing that these days would only be acceptable in medieval fairs or something of the kind, but…
It’s the first time it feels that vivid. The other times, she couldn’t exactly remember what happened in those dreams, just… his face, and hers, and his voice, low and sad and telling her to stop buying into what the songs say, and what does that even mean?
She shakes her head, falling back down into her pillow before giving up on it and going downstairs. There’s a tingle running down her spine as she stands up in her dorm room, the streets of King’s Landing still empty under her windows.
Of course.
It’s seven in the morning and it’s the middle of summer, no one is out now.
She takes a shower, dries her hair, puts on clean clothing, and she still can’t stop thinking about that ruined face and those grey eyes, and by now some people are actually out, and gods but she can’t shake that dream away, she cannot, his face and his hands and his voice and the way he looked at her -
And then it hits her.
I’m a right idiot, she thinks as she sits back down on her bed.
After all, hadn’t Robb dreamed of Theon for months before they ran into each other in middle school and proceeded to stick to each others’s hip for the next fifteen years or so before getting married?, hadn’t Arya admitted that she had been dreaming of this handsome blacksmith in the Middle Ages before she ran into Gendry at some of her martial arts tourneys and he actually blurted at her that she had been in his dreams since forever, hadn’t her mother told her that she and her father dreamed of each other for years before they met and recognized each other?
She’s a right idiot. Years wondering why she didn’t have those soulmates dreams when everyone she knew did and she kind of envied them the sheer romance of it, and now she doesn’t even realize that she had been getting them too?
It makes sense, after all. It makes sense because even in that dream she wants to touch him and comfort him for all that she can, and he looks up at her like he can’t believe she’s real and -
Oh.
Oh.
Well then.
Sansa smiles to herself, slowly.
So he doesn’t look exactly the way she had pictured an eventual partner when she was younger - she used to go for prettier faces, admittedly, but she got over it after her first boyfriend turned out to be a right idiot -, but now that she thinks back on it… he is handsome, very much so, regardless of that burned face, and actually… now that might be part of the charme, she considers, because it’s - well. She doesn’t… not like it, all things considered. And the way those grey eyes looked up into hers, like he was expecting her to let him down and he didn’t -
Sansa shakes her head, trying to not lose herself into that trail of thought lest she never gets her head out of the gutter.
Well.
It’s summer, she has no lessons, she’s not going back home because this summer no one is actually there so there’d be no point, she was pretty sure they were on the walls of the Red Keep in that dream, so if it’s sending her a message, he must be in King’s Landing or nearby.
She smiles to herself.
She is going to find him.
She has the entire summer to do it, after all.
--
First, she buys some fabric and sews herself a dress as similar as she can make it to the one she had in the dream - good thing she brought her machine from home.
Then she goes on the internet and finds a list of all the medieval fairs in the area - it should be choke-full, considering that the entirety of the Crownlands’ summer tourism banks on re-enactments.
Then she buys a ticket for each single one of them.
--
Fair number one is a bust.
Fairs number two, three, four and five also are busts, though everyone compliments her on how accurate and beautiful her dress looks, and Sansa comes out of them with a lot more phone numbers added to her contacts list, so she doesn’t consider it a lost cause.
Fair number six, though -
She has a feeling that it could be the right one, maybe because the day before attending she had dreamed of her and him sharing a passionate, searing kiss in a dark bedroom while flames burned wild outside the window.
She fixes her hair in the same hairdo she had in the dream, dons her dress and goes to the Red Keep on foot - that is where this one fair is held. It’s one of the biggest in the area, and when she’s handed a flyer with the list of events, it fills both sides of it.
Well, she’s here for the entire day, after all.
--
She doesn’t find him in the morning and she doesn’t find him in the afternoon, even if she does make a few friends as usual.
At sunset, she heads towards the space where they’re supposed to hold a mock-joust with fake weapons, finding a seat without too much of a problem - in those dreams, she thinks she had come back from a tourney, so maybe it could be the right time.
She puts away her phone as they announce that they’re about to start, wondering if she’ll have to attend a seventh fair after all -
And then she sees him.
Oh.
She was right.
There he is, standing in between the mock-contestants, except that these people all have proper armor, and he’s the tallest of them, not that he hadn’t been exceptionally tall in dreams, too, and then she’s hit with a sense of deja vu so strong when he gallops in front of her side of the pit that she almost faints with it.
He’s the exact same as in that dream, scars and raven hair and armor, and when he fights he’s as graceful and efficient as she had pictured him to be or maybe as she had known he would have been.
She also had known he would win, and she’s not surprised when he does, because it feels - it feels like what should have happened, and that deja vu hits her again strong enough to make her lose her breath…
That is, until it’s time for him to choose a queen of love and beauty.
She doesn’t think that in her dream she got that crown. But when he glances at the audience and his eyes meets hers, she can see that he gasps, looking down at the crown in his hands -
And then he moves his horse towards her and says nothing before nodding in her direction. She stands shakily and he nods again, and her heart is beating so fast in her chest it feels like it might burst out of it -
He puts the crown on her head.
It feels right.
She raises her head to thank him, but a moment later the herald has grabbed his arm and raised it up and telling the audience to give a cheer for Ser Sandor Clegane, and Sansa immediately starts clapping her hands.
He doesn’t quite look at her.
That’s quite all right.
She knows he’s here, after all.
--
She asks the herald if there’s some way she can talk to him after everything is done and over, and the guy smiles at her somewhat knowingly, says something about Sandor really needing to get out of his shell and tells her that she’ll find him in the tents on the road that leads to the castle’s ramparts without passing from the yard.
She thanks him and the closer she gets, the more she feels like this is familiar, like she’s done this already, like it’s not the first time she meets him here, until it hits her in the face - oh.
This is where they had been in the first dream.
The exact same location.
She swallows, speeding her pace, until she sees him to the side, petting his horse and feeding him something, and - she stands still, not wanting to interrupt it, and doesn’t clear her throat until he pats the horse’s mane and lets his hand drop.
“What is it now -” He rasps, until he turns and looks at her, and -
His eyes go wide and his mouth falls open, his head shaking ever so slightly.
She takes a step forward.
“Why are you here?” He asks, but it doesn’t sound… very sure.
Sansa half-smiles back, eyes locking with his.
“I think you know,” she replies softly. “I have looked for you.”
“You - you didn’t.” His hands are clasping the horse’s reins.
“Oh, I did,” she replies, taking another step closer, and it feels so right she could almost faint with it, “and I think you dreamed of me same as I dreamed of you, or am I wrong?”
For a moment, they just stare at each other, and she can see that he’s… different now, but not in a bad way. He doesn’t smell like cheap wine in this world, and he doesn’t seem as angry as he was in her dream, and she doesn’t break eye contact until he slowly, slowly kneels in front of her.
“Maybe,” he says, keeping his hands to his knee, “but - this can’t be right -”
“So you gave me that crown just because I was the first person you saw?” She smiles, tentatively -
“It was what I wanted to do -” He starts, then shakes his head. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m saying.”
Sansa thinks she knows.
“And you don’t know what you are doing,” he rasps, but then she shakes her head and moves closer still, raising her left hand -
“I know that this when you tell me how your brother is the reason for your burns and you sound like the world has thoroughly disappointed you when you tell me that he was knighted while you’re no ser, or am I wrong?”
He shakes his head minutely, and gods, she wants to kiss him, or she wants him to kiss her the way they had in that dream where all of the city was burning around them -
“Maybe you’re not,” he concedes. “That’s not everything you tell me, though.”
Oh.
He’s looking up at her as if he’s daring her to say it -
Sansa smiles wider, and her hand doesn’t tremble when it touches his shoulder, grasping it firmly. He is shaking a bit under her fingers, his own hand grasping her wrist softly.
And she’s never felt surer in her life as she squeezes and says -
“He was no true knight.”
End.
