cw / explicit and vivid descriptions of wounds, blood, injury; attempted rape

She did not return to her rooms that night. Instead she did something very stupid, very risky, and something that could very easily get her killed.

She went out into the city. Alone.

Sure, she could have tried waking up Elia, or asked one of the soldiers to accompany her, yet she… couldn't. A full year she had spent travelling and exploring on her own, and despite everything that had happened to her and in front of her and because of her, she missed the feeling of independence.

So she had swung a light, green cloak around her shoulders, pulled the hood over her head, and disappeared through a side door.

(Her dagger had rested against her arm even in sleep, and she found no reason to discard it now. Just in case.)

The King's Way, upon which the Martell manse was located, laid in relative silence, merely a few shadows standing guard before the intricate gates of the imposing buildings blanketing the road in darkness. She felt their eyes in her back, yet did not let herself be deterred by it, steadfastly moving over the cobblestones as silent as the wind.

Laughter and singing echoed off the house walls, growing louder and louder the further she distanced herself from the King's Way and the deeper she ventured into Flea Bottom.

Elia had not been all that interested in the poorest part of the capital, preferring to explore the shops along the Road of Steel, the wharf, the tourney grounds. Being seen amongst the downtrodden and outcasted seemingly did not entice a future knight.

(It should not entice a current one, either.)

No one paid her much attention, she was a mere face in the endless crowds, a shadow without a name.

Multiple taverns, nestled into the tight alleys, whose inner parts hardly fit more than two dozen people, overflowed with customers, drunkards and dancers spilling out onto the entire street and taking up balconies and house entrances. One could hardly move past these spectacles without bumping into at least four men.

Some houses she assumed to be brothels, yet such activity was hardly restricted to their rooms. Naked bodies abound decorated the alleys, their moans and cries rising above the rest of the noise.

What her goal was she didn't know. But after the nightmare she had she could not return to sleep, not until the sun rose and set once more. So she continued her slow exploration of her city.

Then she saw them - Lannister soldiers, drinking with gold cloaks. Flea Bottom seemingly attracted the very worst the realm had to offer, though a small part still wondered if, just perhaps, it might be the other way around.

She decided she did not want to risk running into this sort of clientele, so she turned around - and bumped into a hard surface.

Her first instinct upon realising it was not a thing but an actual human she had collided with was to apologise. Yet the words rotted on her tongue as her gaze wandered up and up and up, until she finally met the gaze of the Mountain.

His grin was as predatory as she remembered, his dark eyes aflame with the light of the torches around them.

"Who do we have here?"

His hand grabbed her arm and ripped her entire body upwards to keep her from escaping. The tip of her boots barely reached the ground anymore as she limply hung from his grasp, fear slowly but steadily rising and spreading with every beat of her heart. Worse still, her hood had fallen off, releasing her golden hair to fall freely down her back.

"Let me go!"

"If that isn't the Golden Paladin." His breath reeked of cheap alcohol. "Don't think I have forgotten what you did to me in Fairmarket."

She clawed at his hand, tried to escape his grip, yet nothing seemed to work. "Let me go, I don't know what you are talking about!"

"You're pretty. I think me and my men would greatly enjoy ourselves with you."

As his free hand started to grab at her body she desperately clawed at his face, and as she stabbed at one of his eyes he let out a shout and threw her away from him in a wide arch.

For a moment, all she felt was weightlessness and the wind tearing at her hair, before her body crashed into the hard ground with full force. The back of her head rammed into something sharp with so much intensity her vision went black for a moment. Her breathing faltered, her heart stopped beating.

The blurry image of a man appeared above her, then another, then a third. Their voices rang in her ears and she had trouble understanding their words.

"I thought Lord Tywin wanted her unharmed."

"Shall we draw who goes first?"

"Shouldn't we bring her to Lord Tywin?"

"I caught her. No need for silly games."

"He will never know."

Hands grabbed at her body, ripped at her clothes, pulled at her hair, pawed at her chest and legs. And she was helpless to stop it. Her body felt like lead, no muscles adhering to her command, her head too preoccupied with trying to regain a sense of reality.

"What are you doing with that girl in front of my tavern?"

She did not know how she had managed to start moving again, yet as the men above her looked towards the origin of the voice shouting across the alley, she slipped out of their grasp and started running.

Stumbling might have been the better word, but she could not bother herself with trivialities. Not when one of the men had already ripped her cloak off her shoulders in an attempt to stop her flight. Her necklace hammered against her chest with every step she took, yet luckily still hidden beneath her dress. Somehow, she had not found the courage to remove it, despite what her mother had done to her.

She slipped through openings in the masses, jumped over chairs and tables despite her pounding head, bringing distance between her and the brutes behind her, who had troubles moving through the tight crowds with her fluid ease.

Running she was good at. Running was the only thing she was good at. She ran jagged twists and turns, first left, then right, then left and left again. Anything and everything to throw off her pursuers, while still trying to get home.

The men called out to her, flinging curses at their greatest enemy yet again escaping their hold, screaming at the people in their way to hold her back and deliver her to them. Barely anyone listened to them.

Yet there were some who, after hearing the name Golden Paladin yelled out, did join the hunt. Men half her size threw themselves at her, some pushed over crates and tables and the like to block her path, one even attacked her with a knife.

What normally would have been an easy thing to dodge or evade turned out to be almost lethal in the tight alley. Her sight still had not fully recovered from the hit her head had taken, so when the man charged at her, he was able to cut across her right arm and stomach before she had swept him from his feet.

Then she continued running.

For a single moment, she managed to find a tight, yet calm space between two houses.

She needed to defend herself. Draw her dagger and fight back. She had done so successfully before, multiple times even. The scars on her body proved it. All she needed to do was draw her dagger. Nothing more. Then everything else would come naturally to her.

Her hand hovered over the hilt of the small blade hidden beneath her right sleeve. Why was she hesitating?

Draw your dagger! she screamed at herself. Defend yourself!

Yet she… couldn't. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she wanted to, her hand refused to obey her. Something blocked this simplest of actions, and she didn't know why.

Her despair was disrupted when a Lannister soldier grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out onto the busy street.

"You're hard to catch, Paladin," he purred into her ear from behind as his hand grabbed at her chest. "But now I have you all to myself."

"Please," she begged, tears rising to her eyes, "I don't know what you are talking about. I am not who you think."

His hand would surely leave bruises on her arm, that's how tightly he held her. No chance for her to escape.

Defend yourself, her inner voice screamed. But if she did, then where would it stop? Was she able to restrain herself enough to only free herself, or would she injure him in the process? What if she killed him? What if she would feel his warm blood flowing across her skin and seeping into-

The man screamed out in pain, and she dropped to the ground. Spitting out parts of the blood and flesh she had ripped from his arm, she quickly started running again.

Wherever she went, no matter how confusing her path seemed to herself, a Lannister soldier waited for her. They stood at the corners, pounced at her from behind walls, grabbed her to throw her beneath them. Perhaps some of them were no soldiers. Perhaps most were normal people, who had convinced themselves to join in on this hunt in a drunken stupor. She could not allow herself to care.

Someone grabbed her arm and pulled her sideways. A door was thrown shut before her and she was about to scream when a hand clamped down on her mouth and a light voice said, "Hush!"

Nothing but pure confusion kept her from fighting against the person staring at her in the low light of the room. The person - the woman was almost two heads smaller than her, with short hair and wide, bright eyes. When she noticed Cerelle was not moving, she lowered her hand.

"Is it true?" she whispered. "Are you the Golden Paladin?"

Cerelle was exhausted and tired and there was some strange fluid running down the back of her head and she still could not see straight, but something about the hopeful tone of the woman made her breathe out a gentle, "Yes."

"I knew it!" She gleamed. "I knew you would come and save us."

Cerelle barely had an opportunity to process what the woman had said before she was being pulled through the small room and down a tight corridor. They exited out onto a small alley and entered the house right across, walking over wooden floors until they reached yet another door.

"Behind this is the God's Way. If you turn left you will end up at the Iron Gate and can flee the city. If you turn right you will see the Great Sept before you, where you can ask for sanctuary." She weirdly traced Cerelle's torn sleeve. "I hope… I hope you don't leave us yet."

With nothing but a nod - because she did not know what to answer - she disappeared through the door, and turned right.

The God's Way was not quite as busy as the alleys deeper into Flea Bottom, yet not as quiet as the King's Way either. She could take a shortcut through the houses on her left, and hopefully not land far off from her family's manse, yet she did not trust herself to find the way back. Not with the way the world was rotating right before her eyes and every step, no matter how softly taken, sent a shockwave through her entire body.

No, best walk all the way to the main square beneath the Sept, then up the King's Way. Staying in the light might possibly even provide her aid by the City Watch.

Yet she did not get far even with this plan, as a group of frenzied men suddenly burst out onto the street, led by the Mountain, and started screaming when their gazes fell upon her.

"There she is!"

She hastily looked around for a place to hide, a door to slip through, when something sharp cut across the skin on her forehead. A high-pitched scream passed her lips as her hand pressed on the open wound, yet nothing she did could stop the endless flow of blood running into her right eye.

The shouts closed in on her, and she didn't know what to do, where to go-

There! Crates and boxes and pieces of scrap piled up between two houses. Not much, and she didn't know what laid behind it, yet it seemed like the only way to shake them off. At least long enough to find a way to stop the bleeding.

Her hands stuck to the wood just as much as they slipped off, and perhaps the increased height above the ground worsened her grip on reality, but she could not stop. Not now. Not when they were so close behind her.

The moonlight that usually guided her stayed hidden, leaving her alone, abandoned. She stumbled over metal and wood and wool and cloth and junk, collecting cuts and bruises like some might collect flowers. A stumble sent her face directly into some blunt object she didn't recognise, its edge only barely missing her right eye. Her cheek did not get off as easily.

Finally, after an eternity, the alley ended. Only that she still stood high above the ground. Taking a deep breath, she tried to carefully let herself slip between the crates, but then there came a new wave of pain - she did not even know what from, anymore, but it made her lose her already sloppy grip and sent her tumbling to the ground.

Something cracked, at least she thought so, yet even if she had imagined it the pain in her right ankle was real. She tried to feel for it, stretch out her hand to assess the damage, yet every bone and muscle in her body screamed at her, so she simply laid back, clutching her mother's necklace.

One breath.

Then another.

Then another.

She was so tired. She wanted to fall asleep right here, and never awaken.

A sliver of purple slowly spread across the sky. Then pink, then even, if faintly, orange. Dawn was breaking.

Dawn. And with it, day. The sun. The light.

Dawn meant hope, it meant perseverance, it meant a victory over the forces of evil. Over herself.

She needed to get home.

Every step sent a new wave of burning and searing pain through her entire body, from her toes to the very tips of her fingers. Only one of her eyes had remained a semblance of its ability, and even then it could do little against the twisting her mind conjured up. Tracing the walls of the huts and houses buried small stones and dirt in her open wounds, but what else was she to do?

Slowly, she made her way forward. Led by the sky's ever-changing colours, she heaved her body towards the King's Way. There she would be safe, once and for all. There were too many guards to risk attacking her.

When she finally emerged onto the wide lane, her breath came in short bursts, her heartbeat had gotten so quiet she wondered if it even worked anymore, and her head felt like it would soon explode. Yet before her was a beautiful manse in blue and green, and she knew she had almost made it.

Just a bit further. Just a bit…

Something hard slammed into the side of her face, and she fell to the cobbled ground. A groan was all she could produce, lacking the strength for anything else.

"You truly thought you could escape me." The voice of the Mountain boomed above her. "Stupid Paladin."

He kicked her in the side, the force making her roll onto her back, and then his boot connected with her chest. All the air was knocked out of her lungs, and the small gasps she took in no way brought it back.

Faintly she realised he was about to kick her again when a voice called out.

"What is the meaning of this, Ser Gregor?"

"Stay out of this, Marbrand."

Home. It was so close.

"Being a lord does not give you permission to disfigure anyone of your choosing."

She dragged herself forward, inch by terrifying inch.

"She's mine."

Walking was not an apt description for what she was doing. Neither was crawling. Every move hurt, every connection with the cold, stoney ground sending a new tremble through her. The men argued behind her, yet their words had long lost any meaning.

Soldiers in yellow and orange stood ahead of her, with spears and shields in their hands, and she could not hold back the sob. Then a loud shout sounded from behind her, and the tears flowed for a completely different reason.

She threw herself against the wooden gate as hands started grabbing at her arms and back, and a moment later she stumbled into the courtyard.

A torch was lit behind the fountain, its light barely necessary anymore beneath the pale sky. She looked into a pair of familiar brown eyes.

The gate behind her was thrown off its hinges, and then the world turned dark.