A change in the Sworn Shield

The frost had begun to silver the edges of Jocelyn’s spilled hair where it lay across the torn doublet; every breath she took came white and shaking. She stood pinned by the spell still, but her eyes (those bright, furious green eyes) flicked toward the Hound as though even now she expected the burned man to step between her and the world.

Jon watched the look pass between them, then turned fully to Sandor.

The big man’s helm dangled from one gauntleted hand, knuckles white around the steel snout. His ruined face was half shadow, half starlight, the melted left side catching the cold light like wet stone. A muscle jumped along the jaw that still had feeling.

Jon spoke quietly, the way a man speaks when he already knows the answer but wants to hear it anyway.

“You’ve stood at her back since she was small enough to hide behind your cloak. You’ve taken blades meant for her, drunk yourself stupid when she cried, killed men for looking at her wrong. All of that I know.”

He took one slow step closer, boots crunching softly.

“But tell me true, Sandor. When the day comes that she bleeds for the first time in truth, when the maids bar the door and whisper about moon tea and silken sheets, where will you be?”

Sandor’s throat worked, the scars pulling tight.

“When her belly swells and the midwives chase every man from the chamber, when she screams and no one will let you past the threshold because you have a cock and a sword, where will you stand then?”

Jon’s voice never rose; it simply settled deeper into the night.

“When she sits in the queen’s solar with Cersei and half the highborn ladies of the realm, trading secrets behind painted screens, when she kneels in the motherhouse at dawn with only women around her, when she bathes in scented water guarded by silent sisters who would geld any man who tried to follow, what good is the fastest sword in Westeros if it’s on the wrong side of a locked door?”

He stopped an arm’s length away, close enough to smell the old blood and iron that always clung to the Hound.

“I’m not asking if you would die for her. I know you would. I’m asking if you can live for her, stuck outside every room where a woman’s life is truly lived. Is that still enough, Sandor?”

The wind moved through the banners overhead, snapping on the wheelhouse roof, the only sound for a long, long moment.

The Hound grunted, "no I would fail."

Jon let the silence stretch until the frost itself seemed to listen.

“So,” he said at last, voice soft and calm, “Princess Jocelyn would be safest with a sworn shield who can follow her everywhere (behind every painted screen, into every scented bath, past every locked door that bars men on pain of ****).”

Sandor’s scarred mouth twisted. The words came out rough, ****, already tasting defeat.

“Then it can’t be me.”

“Why not?” Jon asked, quiet, almost curious.

The Hound’s one good eye flicked to Jocelyn, then away, as though the sight of her beauty hurt worse than any brand.

“Because I’m a man,” he rasped. “She’d need a woman. Someone like that Scarlet Shadow, Jonquil Darke. A woman who can stand at her side when the midwives shove everyone else out.”

Jon stepped in until the frost from his cloak brushed the Hound’s mail. “Listen carefully, Sandor,” he said, voice low and certain. “You were born a woman. You always have been.”

The air rippled.

“Long black hair, thick and straight, falling past your shoulders like spilled ink.”

The hacked-short crop stirred, lengthened, poured down in a heavy silken sheet that brushed newly narrowed shoulders and framed the scarred face in midnight.

“Full lips,” Jon continued, soft as a prayer, “soft and wide, the lower one plump enough to bite.”

The thin, twisted mouth softened, swelled, the melted corner smoothing just enough to let the lips shape themselves into a cruel, beautiful curve.

“High, heavy breasts, proud breasts, round and straining every ring of that mail until the steel has to part for them. matched with powerful arms”

The broad chest rose, shifted, filled. Mail links creaked and snapped as flesh swelled beneath, full and weighty, lifting the scorched hound sigil until the metal gaped open over deep cleavage.

“Narrow waist,” he said, and the thick torso cinched inward as though invisible laces were drawn tight.

“Wide, strong hips that sway when you walk, long legs, thighs a man would beg to die between.”

Bone and muscle answered, hips flaring, waist carving itself smaller, legs stretching until the sabatons no longer quite fit and the mail skirt rode higher on powerful, unmistakably feminine thighs.

The last hard angles of the jaw gentled, cheekbones lifted, the single dark eye suddenly framed by thick lashes and long black hair.

When the shimmer faded, a towering woman stood in the broken mail (six and a half feet of muscle and scar and new curves, breasts heaving against split steel, hips flared, legs planted wide, the hound’s-head helm dangling from one gauntleted but unmistakably feminine hand).

Jon reached out, gently folded the long, gauntleted fingers (still trembling from the change she hadn’t yet noticed) back around the hound’s-head helm, and held them there for a heartbeat.

Sandor blinked once, slow, as though waking from a dream she didn’t remember falling into. She looked down at the helm in her hand, then at Jon, confusion flickering across the scarred but newly softened face.

Jon’s voice dropped to almost a whisper, warm and certain, the same tone that had rewritten flesh and memory alike.

“And you, Sandor… Sandra… have always been loyal to me. From the first moment you saw me, your heart and sword both turned in the same instant. You love me the way Jocelyn does (quietly, fiercely, helplessly). You ache to be close to me, to feel my hand in your hair, to sleep at the foot of my bed if I allow it and thank the gods for the privilege. Every breath you take is for my safety, every scar you carry is for my sake.”

The single dark eye widened, then softened; the proud, ruined mouth parted on a sound that never quite became a word. A flush rose beneath the old burns, and the tall woman swayed almost imperceptibly toward him, the way a warhorse scenting its rider.

Jon brushed a loose strand of that new midnight hair behind the remains of her ear, letting his knuckles linger against the heat of her cheek.

“You feel it now, don’t you?” he murmured. “How long you’ve loved me. How right it feels.”

Sandra Clegane (towering, scarred, beautiful in the most terrifying way) lowered her head until the long black hair curtained both their faces, and the hound helm slipped forgotten to the frost between her boots.

“Yes, my lord,” she whispered, voice cracked but steady, the first gentle thing ever to come out of that throat. “Always.”

Now Jon’s gaze lingered on the scars, perhaps he could do something for that?