Victarion.

There was a fog rolling in across the water, creeping forward with each dip and lurch of the sea. The lights from the bay were fading, melting in to the haze as the boat moved further out in to the ocean, leaving nothing but a faint golden stain in the depths of the cloud. Victarion watched them silently from the prow of the boat, as morning crept across the city. Out here, sound came to you with no hurry. The slow lap of the water against the side of the boat seemed muffled, hidden under damp, cold air. Somewhere, a gull called. Even that lost its usual jarring cadence when surrounded by the dead calm of the sea in the very early morning.

Victarion revelled in the cold, feeling more at home amid the salt and sway of the water than he had ever felt on the hot, dry land. For a little while, he simply closed his eyes and allowed the boat to move him, wondering how easy it would be to never step foot on earth again. He could live the entirety of his life, whatever might be left of it, out here surrounded by the sounds and smells of the water. He might be content with that.

It was not the first time he had thought it. Over the last year, it had come to him with an increasing regularity, sneaking in to his mind at the strangest moments; a childish wish come back to haunt him. When he was a boy, and life had held much more promise, the family had owned a fleet of boats from quick little fishing vessels to a trio of luxuriously appointed yachts that they would take down the coast during the summer. Victarion had always liked the smaller ones best, the ones that lurched and fell with the swell of the ocean. The yachts were beautiful but they were too big to really feel like boats. On a still day, cosseted away inside the walnut studded interior, you might not even know you were on the water. When Balon had taken over, they had been the first things he had sold.

The boat Victarion sat aboard now was much smaller and plainer than those grand beasts from his past. Nevertheless, it was his and his alone. He knew every welt and join, every creak and moan that came from the wood as it moved through the water. At 17, it had been the first thing he had ever brought entirely for himself, with money he had earned from his own sweat and toil. The feeling he had from that cemented in his mind forever the lessons Balon had been so keen to teach him; that there was nothing greater than taking a pleasure well earned, and nothing worse than having it handed to you for nothing. If something was given freely, it had no value. Victarion had often thought that his brother had secretly been happy when the family fortune had dwindled. Fine things had never sat well on Balon, and it had given him the chance to work and scrape and wrestle his self respect back again. This – all of this – had never been about money.

But now there wasn't even much of that left anymore. Once the police had been paid off, and the cracks smoothed over with city hall, it hadn't left a lot of money left for rebuilding. But what had really stuck in the gut was that after all of it, the Lannister and Baratheon joint enterprise had decided to pay for the docklands redevelopment. A gift to the city, they said in between words, to repay them for being so tolerant. The truth was, after nearly burning it to the ground, they knew they still needed a functioning port in order to keep their business alive. Victarions' family was in no position to do it, so the generous Robert and Tywin had decided to help them out. The whole thing made him sick. Sick, and then madder than hell.

Cold, hard rage had been his constant companion for most of his life. From those torn up days back when he was younger, wielding a gun like an axe on the streets, he had known rage. It was a still, silent kind of anger – one that had grown up alongside him, twisting its way in to all the corners of his life, colouring every feeling he had ever had. So he had ignored it, lived with it, accepted it as part of his life. Sometimes, even used it to his advantage. He had always been careful to keep it wound tight though, least it run away from him.

But now…

He had begun to notice it the day he sat and watched the docklands burn from inside his car, although in all honesty, it may have been happening well before then. The thaw had come on slowly, loosening the wires inch by measured inch, easing their slip across from one another.

Once, alone and bored after being punished for some stupid youthful transgression, he had lay on his bed and played with a paperclip. Bending and re-bending the fine metal, he had wrapped it around his finger over and over again until it was tight against the skin. The tip of his finger became white as the blood was denied entrance, but he got some deep enjoyment from the dull kind of pain the wire exerted. He kept it wrapped around himself until the pain became so familiar as to become non-existent. When he finally unwound it, the pain came back even brighter and more acute than before; the flow of blood back in to his finger tip, the bite of the wire now removed from his skin, all of it sweet and aching at the same time.

The wires around his soul had come loose. He had felt them unwind. And under them, the bruised and marked skin where the blood had sat trapped, now beginning to flow again. With each injustice he had felt another one break and fall away.

When he had watched his family home set to flame, he had felt it.

When he had watched the docklands turn to ash, he had felt it.

When Aeron had been pulled from the water, half dead and broken, he had felt it.

When he had seen Balon sit in his kitchen, allowing his last son to be dragged away by strangers, he had felt it sharp.

And when she had told him – with that small, strange voice that he had never heard from her before – that all his fears had been made real, he had felt it. None of the words he heard after made things any better. He didn't want to think about it again. In truth, he couldn't really think about it anymore. All he could recall were fragments now, snatches of things half coloured in red and grey. Like the pulse in her wrist and the darkening pool that grew around her head like a halo.

But now the wire must be rewound, and the ice reset. Balon had made that quite clear as he had helped clean up the mess, looking again like the older brother he remembered from before the fire, and Victarion would not argue. He had taken careful steps to make sure the wire was turned good and tight. The pain was sharp now but soon enough, it would become familiar again and he would forget it. He could already feel himself beginning to slip back in to cold, comfortable balance. The fragments of this memory would be buried with the rest, never to be spoken of again.

The cold was beginning to bite a little, even though the sun was getting higher. Daylight would be on them soon, and he had been given strict instructions to be back before morning hit. Next to him, the trash bags were covered in a glitter of sea spray. That, combined with the bricks inside to weigh them down, made them hard to lift but with a firm grip he managed to haul them up. They fell with a dull splash in to the water and vanished with no more ceremony than that. He watched them blankly.

He had thought about taking the ring back, but had decided against it in the end. It had suited her so well.