No sleep comes to him the night that they return to Valyria. He is restless and agitated and feels like a caged animal in his chamber though he is free to come and go as he pleases. The night feels endless and he would beg morning to come but he doesn't care enough to bother.

He feels like he's holding a white flag in his fist, eager to wave it in surrender. Enough of this life! He thinks he has had enough, he's lived enough, he's made one too many a wrong decision and he's ready to give up now.

Who would even miss him?

Daenerys sits alone in her dining room on the morning of the second day, and has his meal sent to his room by her most senior servant. She is told that he does not touch it. Nor does he touch his mid-day meal or his supper.

He will not starve to death. It is normal. You didn't eat for nearly a week, she tells herself. Nevertheless, it nags at her, his absence, his obvious inner torment. And it eats away at her as well, almost as if she is living her own anguish all over again. But she made a mistake of pushing him to face his inner demons too soon once in her life and paid a terrible price for it. She will not do it again.

On the third day, he realizes that he has not eaten anything the previous two days. He doesn't feel hungry, but he finds himself so weak when he stands up that he instinctively reaches for the porridge left in the same place as all his meals had been for days. He stifles the urge to vomit and purge the contents of his stomach after, though the food does not sit well with him.

He feels like he is living through a mental fog and it is difficult to string coherent thoughts together.

The tears continue to come, surprising him with their insistence and urgency. Just as he wipes his eyes, they come again, spilling over his cheeks.

The guilt is overwhelming, and he feels guilty about that too, so he tries to concentrate on his sorrow instead, so as to make his suffering more selfless.

He wonders if Daenerys has noted his absence.

On the fourth day, he starts to talk to his daughter, the child that never was. He says sorry a million times and assures her that he loved her mother deeply and saw a world of potential in her but that he was stupid and wrong. He tells her about the happiest memories of his childhood in Winterfell. The first memory he has, his small hand in Ned's large, calloused one as they stood watching the first snowfall of winter when he was 4 years old. The first time he got to hold a real sword, and how natural it felt in his hands even though it was so much heavier than his toy wooden one that he'd wielded with ease. The first horse that was his, just his, and how he was shown by the stable boys to trim his hooves in winter when they did not get adequate war and how proudly he was to don his first grooming mitt and run the comb through his mane and tail so gently. Running through the woods with Robb, who was always slightly faster than him. The day that Arya was born and how she had opened her eyes immediately when he offered her his index finger to hold and the inseparable bond that would follow.

He tells these tales until the sun goes down and he starts to think that he is losing his mind.

On the fifth day, he punches the wall of his chamber until the knuckles of his right hand are bloodied, then holds his hand under the corkscrew tap until the cold water renders it numb, mirroring how he feels inside. The tears are starting to abate, whether as a result of dehydration or exhaustion, he doesn't know. The sadness and guilt continue to gnaw at his insides.

How did she survive this? He wonders. On the heels of betrayal, all on her own, and it happened to her body. In a strange place with no reminders of home and no hope of a future. How did she rise from bed in the morning? How did she gather the strength to go on? How did she care enough about the world still to go about rebuilding it?

How can anyone survive this? But she did. She did.

It gives him pause.

On the sixth day, he starts to grow tired of his chamber. He spends a long time in front of the window, looking out at the boats and ships close to the shore and further out on the horizon. He thinks about how there is no end to the sea or its waves. They come and go only to come again. He observes the wild flowers hanging in baskets from the palace windows and how they turn eagerly towards the sun, then bend in the evenings as if resting before a new day arrives. Life finds a way, he thinks again.

He thinks about the hungry children of the North, and the ones growing up with violence in the South. This cannot be our fate, he thinks. Valyria is a testament to the ability to survive even the greatest of tragedies and turn it into something positive. Give meaning to one's life.

But there is more to his tragedy than the outcome of Westeros. He has lived his life with the goal of duty as his paramount guide. It's what has allowed him to put aside his own needs and desires, and it strikes him now how heavily that has been weighing him down. The weight of the world's expectations, the disregard for his own happiness. No more, he promises himself. While may be too soon to sort out the complexity of feelings he has for Dany, he is suddenly acutely aware of the sense of responsibility he bears towards her and accepts that he will never manage to fulfill it if he throws his life away.

There is nothing he can do to change his situation. He cannot pull the dagger from her heart anymore than he can revive his child. He cannot erase the last 9 years, or the year that preceded it. He cannot bring back his parents or Ned Stark or Ghost or anyone else who has passed on. He cannot have a redo of his reunion with Dany and he certainly cannot control how she feels about him. All those things have come and passed.

But in letting him know the whole truth, she has set him free and given him a second, or third, chance at life; this one with the benefit of foresight. He cannot change his situation, but perhaps he could change himself.

On the seventh day, he rises before the bright rays of the sun dawn on him. He bursts into the hallway and walks aimlessly around a still unfamiliar place, searching for whatever soul will cross his path first. He finally finds one of the kitchen maids who does not understand the common tongue, but he somehow manages to ask that a bath please be drawn for him. It strikes him later, when he takes a better look at himself that the girl surmised what he wanted by his appearance and not his words.

He waits as two servant girls go about setting up the bath in his chamber and the moment they are gone, he sits in the warm, bubbly suds then slowly slides down until he is underwater, lying flat on his back. He opens his eyes and they sting from the soap and the heat as he lets his breath out through his nose, then follows the bubbles as they rise to the surface. Pop. Pop. Pop. One by one, and they are free once again.

He sits up sharply, breathless, and the water sloshes over the sides of the bath tub, on the floor. For a moment he thinks that he is so aware of his surroundings that he can hear each drop as it falls and flattens against the ground.

The cool linen feels rough against his skin as he wipes himself dry, then does the same to his hair that spills carelessly across the nape of his neck and bounces. He trims his beard until it is much shorter and neater than it had been in weeks.

He reaches for the clean clothes laid out for him on a stool near the bath tub and dresses himself.

It is a long walk down to the dining room where Daenerys always breaks her morning fast, but he feels as if today he is floating. He notices the nuance of every painted wall he passes, the clean lines of the doorway arches, the lattice of carved stone leaves in the dome of the central hall, like a stylized crown of foliage at the top of a tree meant to be breaking through the ceiling.

When he opens the heavy wooden double doors of the dining room, she all but jumps in her seat, growing accustomed to not expecting him. He knows that his face bears the strain of exhaustion and sleeplessness, but he nevertheless manages to greet her with a smile.

"Good morning, Your Grace," he says.

He feels alive.