@inhej sent for a starter: “You cannot fear and flee from death. You must face it.”
SHE SOUNDS LIKE THOROS. Like Thoros with Beric sitting silently behind him, still and suffering and breathing wetly through his broken body. It’s nonsense. It’s worse than nonsense. It’s the kind of dangerous thing they try to teach you while they’re pushing a sword into your hand. They say that running from death makes you a coward—but what they mean is that you running from your death makes it harder for them to get out of the way of their own. Thoros had meant that, even though Gendry had thought he might have loved him. He’d been trying to keep Beric alive. Throwing lives at the wall. Beric, too, who was always talking about death like it was a warm bath he wished he could fall into.
Thoros wouldn’t let him though. He said it was the Red God who wanted Beric, who wanted to keep him alive, but Gendry always thought it was just Thoros. Thoros who wanted him, Thoros who was keeping him alive. Scared to be without him. Scared to be alone.
He’s alone now, isn’t he? Beric had seen to it in the end.
Inej is right about some things—you can’t avoid anything forever.
Gendry screws up his face and turns his cheek to her, pressing his chin into his shoulder. The cart rattles over a rut in the road and his broad body rocks with the motion. It’s hard to avoid notice when you’re a head higher than a horse but, as though he were a boy still, Gendry tries to make himself small enough to fit amongst sacks of half-rotten grain. There’s a mist of cold rain and the ride is miserable, but they’ll be to a stop soon—an inn with a hearth and a bad meal that he can’t afford. He can see the lights ahead; blue and yellow in the bitter purple night.
He tries to think of what he’d do instead of dying. He’s run rather than fight plenty of times. When he was young, or when he had to carry one of the others. When he had other work to do. They like to make life or death of anything. Die for your Lord, die for your Gods. Die rather than let a plowman insult the colour of a Lady’s dress. Seven hells—
“If a horse was charging towards you, you’d be stupid not to step out of the way if you could,” he looks back at her under a drawn and heavy brow. The way his face gathers in on itself makes him look confused, or in pain, but Gendry is certain of what he’s saying. Death is just a thing that happens. Everyone knows that, whether or not they’re willing to stop dressing it up in silks and stories.
“Facing death doesn’t make you a saint. It just makes you dead.”
