A/N: Prompt: Inert.

03x09, 'The Rains of Castamere'

Everything hurts.

It's been a while since he was last in a proper fight. His bones ache, his bruises smart, his skin is stiff with enemy blood.

He's hunkered over the lukewarm basin of water that Missandei had fetched for him, sluicing the blood from his face.

His hurts are the least of his worries.

There's a hollow feeling deep inside him. A helplessness that he isn't used to feeling.

"And…Daario Naharis?"

It would have hurt less if she'd taken a dagger and plunged it into his heart.

He's laid his life on the line for her. His honour. His heart. And in that moment it had felt as if she'd thrown it all back in his face.

He knows he has no right to feel this way. Daenerys isn't his. She'll never be his.

But it doesn't make it any easier knowing that she…that she wants Daario Naharis.

He isn't stupid. He isn't blind. She's attracted to him.

Is she with him right now? Tending to his wounds herself? Rewarding his heroism?

He scrubs harder at his skin until it burns.

There's nothing he can do about it, of course. Nothing he can say. He is just a knight. She is a queen. But, gods, that doesn't make it sting any less. That doesn't make the burning jealousy in his stomach any easier to hold on to.

She'd asked for him first, a corvid distracted by the newest, prettiest thing to catch its eye.

Things have been changing for a while. It's not something he's wanted to admit, but since Ser Barristan and Grey Worm joined her ranks, she's been less reliant on him.

By contrast, his whole world revolves around her.

And as much as it hurts, as hard as it will be, he's going to have to learn that he is no longer her epicentre. That the further she goes down this path to conquest, the further she will pull from him.

And he has to accept that.