Hey guys! Here it is at last, the final instalment of AxG Week, split into three chapters. I was going to upload them separately, but decided not to because I love you all and honestly this is already far too late for such shennanigans. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you so so much for reading, reviewing, favouriting, alerting, and everything else you've done to show your support and interest. Seriously, you guys are amazing. I can't even.

So yes, this is goodbye for now from me, feel free to leave a review on the way out.

And a three, two, whun...

~Drug~

There is a man locked deep in the dungeons of some godforsaken rock that is ever drowning in an ocean wracked by storms, and no matter how he tries he can find no peace.

When he closes his eyes, he sees the red woman with terrifying beauty and words of poisoned honey. He is bound and naked and ashamed, and the knowledge that he has again given into this monster beneath his skin is too much to bear.

When he sleeps, he sees her, more wolf than girl, with storm-cloud eyes and her voice crying out to him. I can be your family, she tells him, and it is all he has ever wanted to hear, but it is too late, too late, and he has already abandoned her before the words have even left her mouth.

When he is awake, there are only prison bars. Sometimes the strange knight Davos comes to speak with him. Sometimes he is fed. Water trickles through hidden cracks in the wall and his mind is unravelling with every drip.

A rat's hungry gaze glitters in the torchlight.

Gendry will die soon, he can feel it in his bones. No good has ever come of a noble asking questions, but this time it will not be the Hand that pays the price; he can still feel the bite of the leeches and the awful feeling of his blood being slowly drained away, and knows it is only a matter of time before Melisandre comes back for the rest. But for all the misfortune he faces, he does not regret trying to leave Arya. He knows this feeling, this all-consuming desire that sweeps through his body and leaves him breathless. Above all else, he knows how dangerous it is.

When he was young and first learning his trade, he had been obsessed by the forge's fire, drawn to the flames as they danced and leapt and crackled in the smokey room. They had whispered to him, beckoning and seductive, and what hope had a child when faced with such beauty? That first night he'd kept watch over it and fed it when it got too low, fascinated by the changes that overtook it – from the deep roar of the working day to the gentle flicker of the evening – and oh how his fingers had itched to feel the heat. His master had caught him in the morning and beaten him for wasting fuel, but he hadn't cared. The next night found him crouched over the fire, and the night after that, and the night after that, again and again until his body was black and blue with bruises, the firelight burning in his eyes.

A week later, his master had sat him down.

He'd taken off his shirt and heavy gloves, and there had been a mess of scars covering his body, the skin angry and red in the glow of the fire. Gendry had been disgusted; for all the horrors that Flea Bottom held, he'd never seen such a sight. He'd started and tried to run away, but Mott had been resolute, forcing the boy to look and touch every knotted twist of flesh. They'd been rough and cool beneath his fingers and, despite himself, he'd felt the stirrings of doubt. Had his flames truly done this – the same gentle ones that sang and danced for him each night?

"This is what happens, boy," the man had said, eyes locked onto his, "when you get too close. It cannot be tamed, it cannot be kept, and it will not hesitate to burn you alive."

And then with the boy sick to his stomach, his master had taken his small hands and thrust them into the fire. Only for a few moments – a craftsman's greatest tools is his hands – but enough to make him scream himself hoarse.

It was a long time before he was able to look at it again.

That had been many years ago, but despite Mott's lesson and his own impressive collection of burns, the fire calls to him even so. He craves it with the same reckless abandon he feels when he thinks of her, but knows all too well what happens when enchanted boys get too close to the flames.

Water drips through cracks in the wall. No one brings him food.

He closes his eyes and sees Melisandre, fire made flesh, and knows that she will burn him alive without a second thought. He thinks of Arya and feels the bite of winter in the breeze that blows through the bars of his cell.

I can be your family.

It is better this way, he tells himself. Safer. This is the only way he can be happy. He wonders how long he can go on lying to himself.

The rat scurries over his hand.