Andrew

The stars began to fade in the eastern sky and Braavos was filled in the morning mist. Outside the world was grey of fogs and pink in the first light of dawn. Andrew watched them all from his bed. Watching was all he did for the past few days. He woke up, stayed in the bed, watching the canals ran beneath the room on top of a stone building half submerged under water, watching Joy taking care of her household, watching the day rises with the sun and ends with the rising of stars and then slept again. He was too weak to do anything else. His bad leg ached when he moved it or when he tried to walk. More than half a dozen time he tried to get up from the bed and get away but no sooner did he placed his legs on the floor and took a step his leg bucked under him and he ended up on the floor.

As he tried again and again to walk it seemed more like starting it all from the first again. He felt like a child who has troubles making his steps and walking his way. He remembered the time when he learned to walk for the first time in Winterfell. He had started it in the godswood with his parents both of them there with him to watch him walk. Andrew had used the Old Gods of the north as a support when he first stood on his two feet. He had leaned against the white bark of the weirwood, getting up further and further until he found his feet. He remembered how he swayed and struggled on the moss covered floor of the godswood and before he could fall his mother had reached him gathering him safe in her arms. Only now, Ashara Dayne is not here to help him nor is Eddard Stark.

Joy helped him back to the bed now every time he found himself down. She helped him to his feet every time with a certain softness gracing from her. "You shouldn't walk until I ask you to," the girl would say every time as she eases him back on the bed. He would stay in the bed hearing her words until it would bore him again and he would walk and fall again.

Andrew sat up against the headboard and watched Joy as she went on about doing her morning chores. Everyday she would've been already awake by the time he woke up. He would glance her by the fires cooking something, or going on about his medicines or bandages. Somedays he would see her sewing or saying her prayers. Everyday they would talk and the more they talked he came to know more about her.

Joy had come to Braavos with her father when she was five. Her mother was a Braavosi and Gerion Lannister had brought her to Braavos so she could see the home of her mother. Her father had left her here with a promise and a kiss and continued his voyage to Valyria to find the long lost valyrian steel sword of the Lannisters, Brightroar. Gerion Lannister had promised her to take her back to Casterly Rock when he comes back from his voyage. An empty promise, Andrew thought sadly. No one enters Valyria and comes back alive to tell the tale of it. Darker stuff and remnants of the blood magic still reigned heavily in the ruined city and the air was filled with the use of dark arts. Even the Smoking Sea around the ruined city was dangerous as the land itself. Filled with volcanoes and smoking stacks of rock, it is said to boil in places and to be haunted by demons. Andrew had known many a men who had boasted of braving the Smoking Sea to enter the ruined city and get the treasures that might have survived the Doom of Valyria. But none of them did very much neared even the Smoking Sea. They would return back defeated and empty-handed.

Joy had faith in her father though. Even after all these years she still prayed for her father to come back. She still believed that her father would come back. Andrew felt sad for her. She was a sweet girl. She had hope that her father would return and he had no mind to break her hope just like that. He might even want to thank Gerion Lannister for briging her here. If it wasn't for her he would've been dead already.

After her father had left Joy lived with her mother, Briony. When Gerion Lannister did not return as he told he would, it broke Joy's mother. After her mother's death Joy made her life on her own here in Braavos waiting for her father. And it was then she found him almost dead on the streets one day. Her mother had been a healer and Joy had learnt the arts of healing from her mother. It was with those arts she saved him and took care of him.

He watched her as she went on to put a kettle over the fire. It has been long since Andrew had seen a sight so lovely as her. Joy may be a Hill but her looks proclaimed her as a Lannister. Everything about her screamed of the Lannisters of Casterly Rock and she was the utmost peak of the fabled Lannister beauty. Even in the gloomy fogs of Braavos she glowed so bright like the sun. Her golden hair caught even the faintest of the light and gleamed as if it was of molten gold. Her glittering emerald eyes were always kind and even in her simple gowns she was so beautiful and graceful as a queen.

She took the kettle and came to him with the kettle of steaming hot water and fresh new linens. "We need to change your bandages," she said.

When Andrew sat in a comfortable position she started her work.

"Are they still searching for me?" Andrew asked her, as Joy ran a blade up the linens of his chest, slicing the thin white cloth, crusty with old blood and sodden with new.

Joy gave a barest of her glances to his bandages. "Yes. They are likely to continue it for some more time. Highborn and their pride... They would want the man dead who had sent them running for their life."

"Rhaegar," Andrew winced as the girl's finger explored his wound, poking and prodding. "Is he here too—aaaaah, that hurts." He clenched his teeth. "Where are the men of Westeros?"

"They have left with their survivors." Joy's words hurt a hundred times worse than her fingers. Andrew remembered the dragon as last he'd seen him, standing behind his army with his men surrounding all around him. He has gone? Andrew had missed the chance for his justice.

"They left the place all of a sudden. They were searching for you as well and one day they just left. There were many men reported to be death and some disappeared too. "

Search for them in the canals and they would find their bones in the bottom. He knew he had killed many men that day but all he had wanted was to get to Rhaegar but the others put themselves between him and Rhaegar.

"Why did you saved me?" Andrew asked Joy as she patched up the wound on his chest. "You have put yourself at danger by helping me. Why did you helped me?"

Joy looked at him with her green eyes shining in the candlelight. "I don't know," she said as she applied some paste on the wound at his waist. "I brought you to my room at once I saw you. When I knew that it was you who killed all those men I just wanted to leave you away to your death." She looked up at him as she took the fresh linen in her hand.

Wrapping the linen around him she continued. "But when I saw you just lying on the bed it felt as if you wanted to live," Joy said. She wrapped it around him twice more and cut the linen and bound it. "All of them were dead but you were alive. The gods let you live for some reason."

Aye, they let me live to doom Rhaegar and his family. A stab of pain reminded him of his own woes. Joy squeezed his hand. "You are not yet properly healed. Sudden movements will not help you heal. Here drink this."

Andrew tried to rise. "I don't need—"

"You do," Joy said firmly. "This will hurt." Joy took a green flask and a rounded stone cup in her hand and poured it full. "Drink this."

Andrew had bitten his lip in his struggles. He could taste blood mingled with the thick, chalky potion. It was all he could do not to retch it back up. He coughed, trying desperately to keep the liquid down. "What was that?"

"Milk of the poppy," Joy said as she dabbed a cotton cloth in a basin of warm water, and washed the wound on his thigh. Gentle as she was, even the lightest touch made Andrew twitch his leg. It was his leg which took the worst of it. The arrow had pierced his leg from front to right through the back of his leg.

"Why did you killed them all?" Joy asked. "Did you came for the king? Did someone wanted the king dead?"

I wanted him dead, Andrew would've said. That and much more if it wasn't for the pain on his leg.

"You can say it like that," Andrew told her.

"One of the men you killed was my cousin," Joy said. "He was a kingsguard and a good man."

So the dead kingsguard was her cousin then. Andrew shrugged. "Never knew him," he told her. His thoughts went more and more to his uncle Arthur. Noble, honorable and fun-loving uncle. "My uncle was a kingsguard once. When I was a little boy in Westeros I've looked at the kingsguard as if they were some kind of heroes. I even wanted to join them. But as I grew up I came to understand that they are the worst of them all."

Joy paused, washcloth in her hand. "Will you go again to kill him?"

He never knew the answer for that. He didn't know how he would kill Rhaegar again. He might've burrowed beneath the walls of his castle for safety now and scaling a unknown castle and getting inside to kill him will be a difficult thing.

"I don't know," Andrew admitted.

Joy finished bandaging his thigh and stood up with the ruined linen and clothes. She looked down at him. Her green eyes were still soft as summer grass. "If you got injured then good luck finding someone to help you."

A/N: So some relationship build-up in this chapter. Leave a review about it. Thank you for everyone who left a review and everyone who followed/favorited the story.