She is kinder than she has been in months and she pets him again.

He is fed the scraps from her table again.

Flowers bloom and suitors come calling.

He retreats into himself and he sees her courting these young men.

Attractive, intelligent, strong, gallant, everything he is not.

He is not a young man anymore. His strength wanes with every passing moon and his limp starts to become more and more pronounced.

He is only three-tens and six, and he can feel the Stranger creeping closer and closer to his door each night.

He stops drinking, tries to stop sleeping, until he can take it no longer and passes out. He stopped drinking because he found that the wine does not dampen the voices like it once did in Kings Landing oh so long ago.

Though she has thawed with the false spring, the voices in his head are louder than ever before.


He helps pull the structure into place and once it is done all the workers go their separate ways.

He may be dying but he still can muster the strength of twelve men.


They left him with the rope.


He had visited the maester. For the voices, to see if anything could be done.

He was suggested milk of the poppy, which he refused, he shall not become helpless.

Only evermore hopeless.

Little does he know the Maester goes to her.