Chapter Text
Delora’s birth was a cruel, bloody thing. There was something inherently twisted in it, in that after birthing two of the largest babes ever born in all of Westeros, it was the much smaller Delora that proved to be too much for Beatrise Clegane. Perhaps it was that the woman’s body could not take birthing another child, after her two enormous sons and several stillbirths in between. Perhaps it was simply fate. The will of the gods, to take the woman mere hours after the birth of her final child, and sole daughter.
Ivor Clegane was not a man for white lies, and he told none to his daughter. “Your birth killed your mother,” he’d grunted, when she finally worked up the nerve to ask, at age six, where her mama was. “S’not your fault, girl. Just how things are, sometimes.” He took a slow sip of mead, face blank, eyes flat and dark. He was long in the face and grey of beard; the years had always weighed heavily upon him.
And then he refused to say anymore on the matter, and Delora returned to her stew, fighting the anger brewing in her gut. It wasn’t fair. Her brothers had gotten a mother, even if it was only for a little while- Gregor was eleven years her elder, and Sandor five. But she had none. She was the only Clegane woman left; her father had been the only one of his siblings to live to adulthood.
Father was not a cruel man, but he was not kind either. Delora learned quickly that she’d get no tender embraces or even affectionate pats from Ser Ivor Clegane. If he was pleased with her, she might get an approving nod or tight, closed-mouthed smile. If he was displeased with her, she’d get a barked reprimand or a clout round the head, and be grateful she was a girl and could not be beaten like her brothers.
Ivor Clegane was a landed knight, son of a landed knight who’d been a kennel master nearly all his life. He’d inherited Clegane’s Keep from his father at the young age of eleven. He was the first Clegane to learn to read and write, the first Clegane to be addressed as ‘Master’, then ‘Ser’ after he was knighted at eighteen. He was the first Clegane to marry- if not a proper lady, then a merchant of middling wealth’s second daughter, a woman who would not so much have looked at a kennel boy.
He did not know how to raise… if not highborn, then certainly not lowborn, children. He did not know how to run a keep or manage the smallfolk in the surrounding village, and relied heavily on his wife until her death at aged thirty. Afterwards, he struggled. The matters brought to him were never very severe, but Ivor was not a man well equipped to lead. His rulings were often heavy handed, although he always tried to be fair.
There was a maester, Andon, and a septa, Ines. There was no septon; one came several times a year to the worn little sept that was no more than a wooden shack in the village. The household employed few servants; Ivor was a frugal man, and furthermore, as the years went on most refused to send their sons or daughters to work in a household with Gregor Clegane under its roof.
Delora learned quickly to avoid her eldest brother. She was lucky, being born eleven years after him. Gregor had little interest in a squalling babe, and by the time she was old enough to escape the watchful eye of her nursemaid, Gregor had become a squire and was away from home for long periods of time. But when he was home, it was a well known fact that Ivor had very little control over the boy, who was as tall as his father, himself a big, burly man, by the time he was twelve.
It was doubtful that Ivor’s main tactic of discipline; beatings and hard labor, had ever done much to daunt Gregor in the first place. But Delora only knew Gregor as a frightening shadow that lurked around the edges of her childhood. She remembered vividly the first time she had ever really met her brother. She was perhaps four, playing quietly in the hall in the late afternoon, when it was empty of servants. Delora was not a quiet child by nature, but by habit, for being unnoticed kept her safe. She was a skinny wraith of a girl with lank dark hair and her mother’s hazel-flecked brown eyes, pale skin covered in freckles.
She did not look up when she heard boots clicking across the stone floor, assuming it to be her father or one of the men at arms the keep kept. Then she heard his voice, and froze, huddled over her rag dolls. She did not look at him until he was mere feet from her, and when she did, she instinctively scurried backwards in alarm until her back collided with a table leg.
Gregor laughed. It was not the amused chuckle of an older brother. It was the hard-edged snigger of a cruel boy with a man’s rough face, and a man’s big hands and feet. “Do you know me, little sister?” he asked her, but it was more of a jeer. “Who am I?”
To hear her name in his mouth made her curl her small knees up to her chest. She stared at him, eyes unblinking in her sharp, freckled face. He took a step closer. “Gregor,” she said, and resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands or her hair. “My… my big brother.”
That seemed to please him. He crouched down. He was close enough to touch her, if he reached out. His arms were so long, and already sinewed with muscle, even at fifteen. “And you, my little sister.” It should have been warm. But she had never heard words colder, or more full of mockery. His eyes were angry. Delora was used to anger, even at that early age. But this was different. This anger didn’t fade or change. It was simply there.
Delora did what any pup would in the face of a potentially rabid beast; she scrambled backwards, under the table, trying to escape his grasp. His meaty fingers closed around the back of her brown dress like a hunter’s trap, and she squealed in panic as he dragged her back out from under the table. “You shouldn’t be rude to your big brother, Delora,” he growled as she squirmed and wriggled frantically to get away from his inescapable grip. “One day I’ll be your master.”
Several things happened all at once; the back of Delora’s thin dress tore and she immediately stumbled to her feet and darted across the hall with only the speed a terrified child can posses, and as Gregor rose ever so slowly to give pursuit, as if he was going to relish the chase, the doors to the hall burst open, letting in a small patch of faint sunlight. Ivor Clegane stalked into the hall, Sandor, heaving as if he’d just run a great distance, just behind him. Delora had no memories of her other brother before his burns, and his face had never troubled her. Gregor’s countenance inspired much more fear in her. She ran to Sandor, gasping and sobbing without tears, and clung to his legs. He easily picked her up, looking more like a lad of twelve or thirteen than his actual age, which was all of nine years.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Ivor demanded as Gregor straightened up with a scowl. “The girl’s hysterical, Gregor.”
“I was just playing with her, Father,” he sneered. “She’s a jumpy little thing.”
Delora buried her face in Sandor’s sunburnt neck; he smelled like horse and dog and leather, all things that comforted her. Her heaving sobs stilled, and she was silent again, confident that the great beast that was Gregor could not harm her now that Sandor, who had always been her protector, was here.
Ivor stared at his son, and Gregor stared back, a lazy smile on his face that said, ‘Well? What are you doing to do?’. He was a good head taller than his father already. Ivor did nothing, only said, in a voice of forced calm, “You’re near a man grown. You’ve no business playing with little children. You should be off, earning your knighthood.”
“I ride out at dusk,” Gregor’s ugly, smug smile faded, but only slightly. “I prefer the open road to spending another night in this shithole.”
He strode past his father and siblings. Delora did not want to look at him, but was too scared to take her eyes off of him. “Goodbye brother,” he addressed Sandor over his muscled shoulder, his tone deceptively casual. “Goodbye, sister.”
When he was gone Sandor carried her out of the hall and up to her room. He was shaking with barely suppressed anger when he set her down, his large hands on her slight shoulders. “Delora,” he said, “Listen to me.”
She looked at him, rubbing at her dripping nose with one small fist. “San?”
“Never go near Gregor again. If you see him, you run away or hide, or scream as loud as you can until someone comes running.”
“But,” Delora sniffed, “He’s my brother. Like you.”
“No.” Sandor shook her, albeit gently- a good shake from him, with his strength, could have given her whiplash. “Not like me! He’s- he’s a bad man. A very bad man. And if he can, he will hurt you. So don’t you ever give him the chance. Do you understand?”
She nodded so he would not shake her again, and he let go of her. “Stay in your room until Septa brings you to dinner,” he said, and closed the door behind him. It was only then that Delora realized she’d left her doll in the hall, and she sulked for the rest of the afternoon until Sandor gave it to her after dinner. A dinner that Gregor was notably absent from, and the air of relief amongst the servants, and even more-so, amongst the family, was palpable.
Two years later Gregor was knighted, and then the rebellion against the Crown began and Sandor was away too, off with Lord Tywin’s men. Delora was a lonely, solitary child. She was not so highborn as to gather friends through mere influence, but now lowborn enough to join the games of the village children. They were afraid to play with her, for fear of her menacing brothers, or they simply laughed and called her Dogfaced Delora. It was not inaccurate, as Delora’s only true friends were her dogs.
She had two fine, sleek black hunting hounds that were her constant companions. They slept beside her bed at night and ate their meals at her feet. She called the slightly leaner one Tybolt, and the other Gerold, after the great Lannister lords. Loyalty to the Lannisters was bred into the Cleganes, few as they were; all they had, they owed to Tytos Lannister, and the continued acknowledgement of the new lord, Tywin Lannister.
She was not happy, but she was not miserable either. Delora didn't know whether her life could be better, but she knew it could certainly be worse. She had a warm bed in a tower room to sleep in at night, behind the secure, if crude, walls of the keep. She'd never gone hungry or cold, and she had plenty of dresses to wear, although they were not so fine as those of other young ladies and she rarely wore them. Her father grew something approaching fond of her as she aged from a little girl into something approaching a young woman, and often took her hunting, or riding through their meager lands. He did not force embroidery or dancing upon her, and only insisted she wear dresses and comb her hair at meals and in the sight of their crofters. She missed Sandor, who, although he had never been sweet or soft with her, had always let her ride in front of him on his horse and had taught her how to skin a rabbit, and dreaded Gregor’s return.
Delora could safely say, looking back on her young life, that her childhood did not truly end until after they’d crowned the Baratheon king, when the Lannister party came to their gates.