A/N: All right. I caved. Two weeks in a row of angsty!Jorah was finally enough to break me into writing again. Who doesn't love some introspective mental anguish from a man who thinks his life is over?

Disclaimer: If it's dialogue, it's from Game of Thrones itself, and I'm just playing in the show writers' sandbox. The characters, obviously, are GRRM's. All of this is their fault.

"This is quite advanced." The Archmaester turned to Jorah with an apathetic gaze, apparently not one to mince words. "And beyond our skills, Ser. Were you a commoner, I'd have you shipped to Valyria at once to live out your life with the stone men. As an anointed knight, I'll allow you one more day." His stern blue eyes moved pointedly to the sword propped against the wall. "How you choose to spend that time is up to you."

Jorah nodded his understanding. From the moment he discovered the first dusky crags of skin on the inside of his wrist, he knew that suicide would be the inevitable outcome. He had made a good faith effort to seek out a cure, as his Khaleesi commanded, knowing full well that it was probably futile. As he suspected, there wasn't one – at least not at this stage. No matter how well prepared he had been for the prognosis, he still felt his heart sink at the finality of the Maester's words. It was not death he feared; it was disappointing Her. Daenerys had been explicit in her instructions, and he didn't like that he would fail her at the last.

The Archmaester left the cell without any fanfare or sentimentality, calling for his bumbling, wide-eyed apprentice to follow. The portly young man had not yet mastered the cool nonchalance of his elder's bedside manner; desperate apology was written into every line of his face.

"Should we send word to your family, Ser…?"

"Jorah." He lifted his chin reflexively upon being addressed by his formal title. There was little dignity left, under the circumstances – crusted in rotting grey flesh, naked from the waist up, and facing certain death – but he could at least still cling to that last scrap of pride. "Jorah Mormont."

"Mormont?" The apprentice stammered, obviously familiar with the name. That was unsurprising; it was an old name, and a proud one. For many years, Jorah had borne it brazenly, a sign to all that he was important, noble, distinguished. The name commanded respect. He was a Bear of the North – and, in his youthful ignorance, he had mistaken himself for invincible because of it. He'd believed he had every right to profit by selling off the poachers on his land, laws be damned. Ned Stark had disagreed. So had the rest of the Mormonts.

And even had he not been disgraced, who of the Mormonts was left to contact? His father was dead, murdered by his own "brothers" of the Night's Watch. From what little news Jorah had been able to gather in Essos, his Aunt Maege, the She-Bear, had died fighting in Robb Stark's rebellion. Her children were babes in arms when last he had seen them; they would have no memory of him. That proud old name was only an echo now of a life long lost to him.

"There's no need," he admitted quietly. "I've been dead to them for years."

The apprentice stared at him for a moment, dumbfounded. He opened his mouth as though he wished to say more, but the insistent call of the Archmaester interrupted him.

"Come, Samwell!"

After another beat of helpless silence, the apprentice waddled off to join his maester. The cell door latched shut with an echoing click, and Jorah was left alone with his thoughts.

For a while he simply stared at the stone floor, listening to the footsteps fade down the corridor. A few cells over, a man wheezed and hacked his way into to a wet, rattling coughing spell. Further down, someone retched. The moans of the sick and dying had blurred into background noise that he could almost tune out by now.

Jorah didn't feel like he was dying. The infected flesh burned when he moved, and felt heavy, taut and uncomfortable even when he didn't. It itched like mad. But truly, he had known worse. Of all the ways to go, he supposed this wasn't bad. He still had his wits about him. There would be no months of suffering, no intense pain. A swift jab of his sword and that would be the end of it. Clean. Dignified.

He reached for the sword and pulled it across his lap. This one didn't have a name; it was no Valyrian steel beauty like his father's Longclaw. The blade was a simple one – solid, well balanced and wickedly sharp. It had served its purpose, though, cutting down countless enemies in service of the woman he loved. He unsheathed the blade and ran his finger along the edge, trying to remember each kill… from Qotho, blood rider to Khal Drogo, to the Sons of the Harpy who pressed in around them in the Great Pit of Meereen.

All these years, he'd managed to keep her safe. Daenerys hadn't made it easy on him; she had a talent for landing herself in precarious positions. He marveled at how far she'd come from the trembling, pale child bride he met at the seaside. A smile lifted the corner of his lips at the memory of her asking for the word "thank you" in Dothraki. Look at her now: Khaleesi of them all, the Unburnt, leading a horde of a hundred thousand from the back of her fully grown dragon.

She didn't need his protection any more. She was more than capable of taking care of herself.

The thought gave him a measure of peace. He closed his eyes for a moment to savor the image: his fearless Queen at the head of the largest army in the world. The fact that she hadn't yet arrived in Westeros – at least according to Samwell – meant that she was taking her time, planning, strategizing, laying the groundwork for a successful takeover. She was being careful, which meant she was being well advised. Perhaps Tyrion Lannister was a better gift than Jorah had dared hope. That was some consolation, he supposed, opening his eyes to look at the grey flesh that had become his death sentence. It meant his desperate stunt to bring the Imp through the ruins of old Valyria had not been entirely for nothing.

It occurred to him, briefly, to write to Tyrion – a passing of the torch, perhaps some words of advice from her oldest confidante. Jorah knew Daenerys better than anyone in the world. There was plenty of hard-earned insight he could offer to help the turncloak Lannister in his approach to the queen. She had an unquenchable thirst for justice, no matter the personal cost. This was where her advisors were most valuable to her: in the ability to gently ease her toward compromise when her Targaryen instincts for fire and blood might lead to more harm than good. She would not be challenged in public, not ever – there was no faster way to get her to double down on her stance. A quiet, private appeal to her tender heart, on the other hand, could be enough to change the entire course of history.

Tell him I changed my mind. No… tell him you changed my mind.

He felt the threat of tears in the back of his throat as he remembered her face in that moment. The connection between them had been almost palpable, a deep current of understanding of the other's very soul.

There were no words to put that kind of understanding on paper, he realized. At once, he decided to abandon the idea of writing to Tyrion altogether. If the Imp wanted to build Daenerys's trust, let him do so on his own merit. It was selfish, he knew, but in Jorah's heart of hearts, he wanted to remain her closest and most trusted advisor. He didn't want to be replaced. He didn't want to be forgotten.

He sheathed his sword and rose to his feet, hissing through his teeth as his skin stretched and split. Set against the window was a plain wooden desk dressed with candles, sheets of writing paper, quills and ink. As Jorah eased gingerly down into the chair before it, he wondered morbidly how many other men had sat in the same spot, crafting their final goodbyes. Of all the people he'd known his entire life – family, friends, peers, rivals, acquaintances, mentors, priests, fellow soldiers, even Lynesse, his former wife – he found there was only one goodbye he could not leave this earth without saying.

He propped his sword up against the desk beside him, selected a fine-tipped quill, and smoothed a hand over a blank piece of parchment.

Khaleesi, he wrote, knowing that she would recognize the writer at once by the affectionate old title. I came to the Citadel in the last hope that the maesters could treat me, as you ordered. Even with all their arts, I am beyond any cure but the grave. He paused, brushing the feather tip back and forth across the hollow of his cheek. The easy part was done; the cold hard facts were down on paper. He was dying; he had tried to find a cure; he had failed. The rest was sentiment, and that… that was significantly harder to capture.

For a while he toyed with the idea of connecting his death thematically to Khal Drogo's. She had, after all, chosen to smother her own husband rather than allow him to linger in a soulless shell of a body. By that line of reasoning, she could not fault Jorah for choosing to fall on his sword rather than live out the remainder of his days as a feral savage. It was a solid argument, but Jorah balked at the last moment, fearing that he was being too bold by elevating his own death to that of her sun and stars.

He began to write, stopped, and started the next sentence several times over, crumpling sheet after sheet of paper in his hands and tossing them to the side. Each time he would start fresh on a new piece of parchment with the first two sentences again. By the tenth draft, the evening shadows had elongated, casting much of the room in darkness. Jorah lit the desk's candles, gave a harsh sigh of aggravation, and tried yet again. I have had a longer life than I deserved, and I only wish I could've lived to see the world you're going to build, standing by your side. That was better – softening the news with a bit of self-deprecation, and the echo of the very same wish she'd expressed to him the last time they'd parted. The sentence structure was perhaps a bit awkward…

He pressed on before he could crumple another sheet of paper. At the rate he was going, it would take him the full twenty-four hours just to compose a single paragraph.

I have loved you since the moment I met you. The sentence seemed to write itself before he was conscious of what he was saying. He stared at the freshly written words, reading them over and over, trying to picture Daenerys's reaction. The two most recent mentions of his love for her – both from his mouth and Tyrion's – had brought a soft sheen of tears to her eyes. Those reactions had been very encouraging indeed… but not enough to dim the memory of the first. She had been so shaken, so utterly devastated by the discovery of his initial betrayal that she couldn't even look at him. He remembered vividly her spitting his own words back at him – Love? Love, how can you say that to me?

Perhaps it was foolish to date his love back to their very first meeting; perhaps her ire would rise again at the implication that he would continue to spy on a woman he claimed to love. But the truth of the matter was that when he tried to pinpoint a single moment in time when he knew he was in love with her, there was no such sudden realization. His affection had grown with each interaction, a slow burn that built over time. When he placed the old stack of Westerosi songs and histories into the young Khaleesi's hands, he knew only that she was stunningly beautiful, and completely terrified. Though she sat at the center of the festivities, he had never seen a person look more alone. She had gravitated to him at once, trusting him implicitly based on the fact that he was one of her countrymen – a sweet summer child, unprepared for the sudden, violent loss of her innocence. There was something in her that stirred an unsettling sense of conflict in Jorah from the very first. He was there to spy on her for Lord Varys, yet at the same time, he felt a deep and unshakeable desire to protect her. Within a month, he began to dread each scrap of information he knew he'd have to send off to Varys's little birds. Within a year, he received his pardon… and promptly discarded it, choosing once and for all to devote himself to the stubborn, fiery little Khaleesi. It was the best decision he'd ever made, riding directly on the heels of the worst.

… And he was starting to think that trying to condense all of that history into any sort of coherent letter was going to kill him before his sword got the chance. He cast a baleful glance at the blade still sitting beside him – a constant, ominous reminder that his time was running out.

He gritted his teeth and picked up the quill again. No sooner had he begun to scribble the first word of his next sentence than the rusty squeak of the meal tray cart broke the silence of the late evening. The thought only vaguely occurred to him that it was far too late for supper before the lock on his door clicked open. Surprised, he placed the quill back in the inkwell and turned to face the unexpected visitor.

The bumbling, wide-eyed young apprentice shuffled into the cell, pushing the creaky old wooden cart. Instead of meal trays, however, the cart was laden with an assortment of ceramic bowls, glass vials, thick leather-bound books, and candles.

"Hello," the apprentice said tersely, shutting the door behind him.

Jorah eyed the maester-in-training with barefaced confusion. "What are you doing?"

Without bothering to glance back, the young man proceeded to unwrap a leather satchel filled with surgical instruments, and began mixing concentrations of powder and balm together in the various ceramic pots he'd brought with him. "You're Jorah Mormont," he asserted as he worked. "The only son of Jeor Mormont. My name is Samwell Tarly, sworn brother of the Night's Watch, training to serve as Maester at Castle Black. I knew your father. I was with him when he died."

Suddenly the pieces began to knit together. The odd tone in the apprentice's voice when he echoed the name Mormont… Tyrion's story of mutiny beyond the wall, of brothers of the Night's Watch stabbing Jorah's father in the back. But there was no trace of malice in the plump young man who stood before him, and he had chosen his phrasing very carefully: "with him" when he died. Somehow, he must have managed to escape the mutinous rebellion that had killed the Lord Commander. Jorah stared into Samwell's kindly brown eyes, and saw determination reflected back at him – the kind born out of fierce loyalty.

"You're not dying today, Ser Jorah," the young man promised.

Gods be good, was all Jorah could think. For the first time in months, he felt the faintest flicker of hope light up inside of him. Perhaps there was power in that old, proud Mormont name yet.

A/ N: I decided to stop there and spare you guys the, y'know, flaying alive part of poor Jorah's night. The cure couldn't have just been a nice cup of crushed-dragonglass tea, could it, Dave and Dan? ;)

If you enjoyed, please drop me a review!