A/N: It's been too long since I updated so I am trying to get this finished! Obviously the usual I only own what I came up with blah blah blah

I do hope you're still enjoying!

"Now just what is a Lady like you doing with a man like him?" Beric asked sitting down opposite Sandor and Adelais as they sat around the campfire eating the remnants of what the brotherhood had killed. "Last I heard you didn't need to pay anyone for protection."

"And I still don't." Adelais replied adjusting her seating. Sandor's jaw twitched at a smile that he didn't let cross his face.

When Adelais had caught up to Sandor he'd been bargaining with the brotherhood. The men who'd decimated the Sept waiting to be hanged from the thick branch of an old oak. Sandor wanted two but the brotherhood gave him one.

Adelais felt unsatisfied watching Sandor simply kick the stool away. The man with the fancy cloak struggling for breath. There was something about the blood and raw carnage of the campfire scene that felt much more like vengeance was being dealt out. This was not painless, but there was less fear, less anguish. Even if he did struggle after his face had turned puce.

"The last I heard you were dead." Beric swallowed down some ale, his eyes passing over the scars on her arms that were now visible.

"Good news still travels fast then." Adelais didn't want to talk, so she bit into strip of dried meat in her hand.

She wanted to keep walking, keep moving. She wanted to fight and run and kill. Stopping, sitting, it was giving her a moment of calm, a moment to acknowledge that the people she'd been getting to know. The people she'd said she would protect, would feed, would help were all dead. The people she'd come to care about were dead. Ray was dead.

What was she supposed to do now? Was this all life was going to be from now on? Was she going to open herself up, start to care and then have it all ripped from under her feet again? Maybe Sandors grumpy approach was a better way of living. A more protected way of living. If you scared people away, you never really had the heartache of them leaving.

With their little settlement gone Adelais had no idea what she was going to do now. She knew that Tyrion had escaped, she'd overheard people talking in town one day, maybe she could find him. He'd no doubt headed overseas, which meant finding her way to a ship, to the Dragon Queen. If she couldn't find him maybe she could slip into the life of a sellsword. Retire into the wilderness and hope that one day she simply disappeared.

Bronn the thought flickered across her mind before she could stop it. Chased quickly by a boiling rage, that made her fingers twinge. Even if she were starving to death, beaten and bruised she wouldn't be at his door asking for help. The rage she felt was directed in equal measure at herself and him. She had known what their relationship was, that he would choose himself and yet she had fooled herself that the outcome would be different.

"Enjoying yourself?" Thoros broke her thought as he sat down opposite Sandor.

There was still Sandor. The gods only knew how he felt. Would he want to travel together? Come with her to find Tyrion? Would he join the Brotherhood, leave her alone in the woods. Had she once again allowed herself to be lulled into a sense of friendship that wasn't built to last? Adelais' head swam as she took another bite.

"Would have preferred chicken." Sandor replied grumpily.

"You ought to join us we could use you." Beric said to Sandor. Adelais hated how weak it made her feel, to feel some sort of upset that he might agree, that he might leave her here. Leave her with guilt and no chance at vengeance for Ray and the others.

"I tried joining, didn't work out for me." Sandor retorted.

"Clegane we're here for a reason, the Lord of Light is keeping Beric alive for a reason. He gave a failed drunk priest the power to bring him back for a reason. We are part of something larger than ourselves." Thoros said watching the larger man.

Adelais shifted uncomfortably as a flash of something darted across her mind. The Everly Sisters saying something similar. Then a memory within a memory. A flash of green, a voice, then rage, and pain.

The sound of the other's voices faded out as Adelais tried desperately to grasp hold of whatever it was in her mind. A memory? A fever dream?

The smell of the forest around her, of wounded infected flesh, of salve being applied. The flash of green, the voice, the laugh. Adelais turned her hand over palm face up. There was a scar there, almost like a pale sun. An almost perfect circle with lines spreading out from it, like tendrils. She assumed she'd took an arrow to the hand, but the sisters had told her there was no wound there when she came into the camp. What then, had caused this scar.

How many times had Isla Everly tried to tell her she was a miracle? How many times had she rambled about flames and light and lore. How many times had the others shushed her, had Adelais discounted her for being a mad woman.

Maybe Adelais was here, had been kept alive for a reason larger than herself?

Internally Adelais scoffed at herself. What horseshit. She was alive because of luck. She was alive because the right people had found her at the right time. She was alive because smart people had warned her about plots and plans. That's all it was. There was no divine justice, no reason. If there was Ray, Baeli, The Everly Sisters and everyone else at camp would still be here and it would be her and Sandor in the ground.

"And what about you? Lady Adelais." Adelais pulled herself from spiralling thoughts at Beric's words.

"I'm not a Lady. Not anymore, but what about me?" Adelais asked, her brow furrowing as she looked between the three men.

"Would you consider joining us?" Beric asked.

"You're a brotherhood Beric and I don't know if you've noticed but I'm a woman." Adelais replied.

"We need good people, strong fighters and if memory serves me well you are a fighter. Like him. You keep trying to walk away and it keeps coming back to your door."

"Is that what you're doing? Joining them? Despite the fact they tried to execute you?" Adelais asked Sandor. She squeezed her fingers into her palm. Feeling a twinge of hurt and fear as the answer she knew was coming came.

"Aye, we may as well. Nothing better to do, better in a pack anyway." Sandor admitted taking another leg of meat and stripping half the bone in one go.

"We?" Adelais shot him a look of both surprise and protest.

"You got somewhere better to be? Someone to be with?" Sandor asked through a mouthful of food.

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