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i.
Thoros slept under the kitchen table with the dog. The dog kept him warm.
This is the only memory Thoros has of his life before the Lord of Light. Sometimes he imagines that he remembers his mother taking him to the Temple, but sometimes he thinks that he remembers only a dream. His oldest brother comes too, in the dream-memory. Thoros cannot recall his name.
He cannot remember any of them. He has long given up trying.
Except the dog. She was called Inya and she always seemed a giant to him. He supposes that she was not really so large. He just never lived with his family long enough to grow bigger than her.
His earliest memory of the Temple is much clearer. He had stolen a hot bread roll when he sent to the kitchen to fetch breakfast for the oldest novices. He remembers being made to kneel before the fire and hold his hands over it until he cried. It had not taken long. He’d born the scars for months afterwards.
He was five name days old.
His childhood memories are lit by firelight.
It was his constant companion, never allowed to burn out even when the days were so hot that the youngest novices and the servants would faint from the closeness of it.
It was his worst fear, the reason for – and source of punishment. Thoros grew to hate the fire.
He hated R’hllor long before he ever learned to love him.
He knew how lucky he was though. He always knew; whenever he was allowed to leave the Temple he saw children like him, eighth sons, ninth daughters, who lined the streets and begged for bread because there was none at home. Thoros never ran from the Red Priests because he saw the truth for what it was – as terrifying as R’hllor may be, He was nothing compared to what Thoros’ life could have been.
So he learned the words and the rituals and the prayers, and he learned to read and write and count, and he never told anyone the truth – that he never saw a thing in the fires.
He never told them that to him, fire was nothing more than a force of nature, so strong that he lived in fear of the day it really would burn him.
ii.
When Thoros was eighteen name days old, they caught him with a serving girl in his bed and a flask of Dornish red hidden amongst his meagre possessions. The girl’s name was Kenna and Thoros never saw her again, after she was dragged from the room. She might have been sent home.
She might have been given to R’hllor.
Whatever happened to her, he remembers that he mourned the wine more than he mourned her.
He was thrown into a cell beneath the Temple and they held him down whilst they poured the whole flask into his mouth. Then there was another one, procured from somewhere, and then another and then they left him, alone except for a fire that they had built to burn for hours.
Thoros lay beside it, trapped in that tiny room with what felt like the full fury of the Lord of Light Himself. He grew hot, eyes blurred, sweat pooling beneath him on the floor, and he watched the fire desperately.
It was too close.
Too close.
This was it.
This was how he would die.
The Red God had been waiting for him, all this time.
He reached out and forced his fingers into the embers, less than an arm’s reach away from his head, praying for the strength to resist the flames.
It burned. It burned still. He was not meant for this life. The fire burned him just as if he was a non-believer.
He remembers screaming, before the world went black.
He awoke in his own bed, his hand covered in salve and one of the novices sitting over him, the boy’s eyes wide as he watched Thoros stir. He left without a word and returned with Jawin, the oldest priest in the Temple.
“R’hllor will never answer you when you insist upon acting like a beast in the field,” the old man said by way of greeting.
“I’m sorry,” Thoros whispered, his throat full of ash, “I’m sorry, Jawin.”
“It is not I that you must save your words for. He is watching you, Thoros. His patience will not hold out forever.”
He left and Thoros curled on his side, warm tears snaking out from beneath his closed eyes.
They still thought that if he applied himself, behaved like a Red Priest, the Lord of Light would take him back into the fold.
They did not know the truth – that Thoros had never been in that fold to start with.
If R’hllor even existed, He had abandoned Thoros of Myr years ago.
iii.
There was a storm in the Narrow Sea and Thoros clung to his bunk, murmuring prayers to the Red God for want of a better deity, begging for safe passage, begging for his life at least as the ship was tossed and thrown from wave to wave, lightening cracking and thunder rolling and rain hammering.
The Iron Born prayed to a god of water and Thoros wondered if the storm was His doing, the Drowned God defending Westeros from the invasion of the Lord of Light.
Thoros wondered if the storm was only for him.
He was sent to convert the king, the mad Targaryen, and perhaps the realm at that. The Red Priests had chosen him because of his tricks, the things he could do with fire, the things he could show off, entice the king with.
They had sent a conjurer in the place of a priest. That did not seem to matter to the Drowned God.
Thoros never met the mad king.
The only Targaryens he ever saw were the children; the little princess, Rhaenys, and the little prince, Aegon. The babes were wrapped in cloaks of red, laid at the feet of the new king. Rhaenys looked peaceful, as innocent as in sleep apart from the blood clotting in her silvery blonde hair. There was not enough left of the prince to see.
The king balked and ordered the bodies removed, and Thoros knew that here was a man he could follow. He swore loyalty to him and was treated as a novelty, the Red Priest from Essos who had a sword of fire and could match the king drink for drink.
Robert had no faith, not really, and Thoros could have done as he was tasked. He could have converted him to R’hllor. He could have.
But the Lord of Light was not there.
For the first time, Thoros was free of His gaze. He had to come all the way to Westeros to escape, but he escaped nonetheless.
He could breathe, finally.
And so he drank and he gambled and he whored, because no one was there to stop him. He performed his tricks and he learned how to fight and he had the adoration of the court. The king’s brother, the Lord Stannis, was the only one who saw him for who he really was and sometimes Thoros would shiver under his gaze, as though R’hllor had found a way to watch him even here.
He fled from the man’s eyes, that stare so intense that Thoros felt as though he was still being burned.
iv.
His first taste of battle.
A rebellion in the North, the Iron Born trying to claim what was not theirs.
The Drowned God once more against the Lord of Light.
Lord Stannis had control of the fleet and they broke the Greyjoys wide open, effortlessly it seemed.
King Robert led the armies on the land, delivered to Pyke under the cover of darkness. The morning dawned cold and misty and they struck, before the Iron Born could even know they were there.
The stories would last for a generation he knew, the Red Priest with the burning sword who was the very first through the line. People would speak of his bravery, his strength, his Red God who would help him no matter what he did.
They did not know he was drunk, drunk enough to quieten the voices who told him to be afraid. Drunk enough to believe that perhaps, just once, R’hllor really was with him.
He was first through the line, followed closely by a great bear of a Northman, Jorah Mormont of Bear Island. Mormont, if he was still alive, would be the only man who knew Thoros was not in the protection of the Red God. He was the only one close enough to hear when Thoros cried out as he took a throwing knife to his leg. Mormont was the one who picked him up and heard Thoros scream for his god, tears pooling his eyes from the pain.
“R’hllor, what more do you want from me? What more can I do?”
Mormont never said a word about it. Thoros heard rumours he was dead now, exiled to Essos for the sake of love, and murdered by Dothraki hoards in the Red Waste. It was not a fitting ending for a good man.
A man should not die so far from his gods.
Thoros knew though, that if a man truly believed, his gods would go with him wherever he was.
It was only him, miserable wretch that he was, who left his god behind.
There would be nothing for Thoros of Myr when he died.
Nothing except darkness.
v.
Thoros did not much care for the new Hand, Lord Stark, but he did care for the tourney held in his name. He cared for the ale and the wine and feasting.
He cared for anything that would give him a chance to forget.
Before he came to Westeros, Thoros had never ridden a horse before. He did not trust the beasts, dumb, wild animals, but the king had presented him with one soon after the Greyjoy Rebellion and he had not refused the gift. He was not dumb himself.
He learned to ride the animal, a mare who he named Inya after the half remembered dog. She was a gentle thing, placid but fast when he pushed her and she was good for a fight. When the prize was five hundred dragons, Thoros was good for a fight too.
Especially when the gold dragons were Lannister money. He had never quite forgotten the dead Targaryen babes, no matter how he might smile at Lord Tywin.
He was listed against Beric Dondarrion, The Lightening Lord. Dondarrion was a whip of a lad, the sort that made the girls swoon and the ladies blush when he spoke to them. He wore black silks, a cloak covered in stars and when he arrived for the tourney, he had a lightning bolt adorning his purple armour.
Purple armour. A cloak of stars. If Beric was not such an easy going and cheerful man, utterly without airs and graces, Thoros would have found it very easy to hate him.
They were both as bad as the other in the joust. Thoros unseated Lord Dondarrion but only through the most tenuous of lucky hits. The crowd cheered at the crunch of bone as Beric hit the ground but Thoros just felt the familiar rise of vomit in his throat.
He hated fighting.
Bloody well hated it.
Dondarrion was smiling, when Thoros pulled him to his feet. He laughed, a cut above his eye the only wound, a dent in his pride the only real injury. He clasped Thoros' hand in his own and shook his head.
"Well played, sir, well won," he said, "Now come. An ale before the melee. Tell me tales of Myr. I hear it ist he most beautiful of the free cities.“
Tales of Myr. If only it were ever that easy.
vi.
The only thing that made sense after that was to follow the man. With the gold in his pocket following his win in the melee, Thoros decided to leave the court. He liked the king well enough but he was not a man to follow any longer. He was not that brave man who stood for the people. He was lost now. Thoros knew something of what it was to lose yourself. There was no way back.
And Dondarrion was chasing The Mountain. If Thoros was ever to believe in Fate, he would have done so then.
Beric's band was young, all of them, to the last man. Thoros was the oldest by far, Beric's squire Ned the youngest. The boy adored his lord and distrusted the Red Priest who had come to join them. Young Ned believed in the Seven, worshipped the Warrior with all the conviction a child could give, and thought the Red God a demon come to haunt Westeros.
Thoros could not tell him R'hllor meant less than nothing here. The Lord of Light never had caught up with him.
Nights around the fire were long, once the horses had been left to rest and the rations had been shared. Young men had no stories to share. None of them had been old enough for the Greyjoy Rebellion. Ned had not even been born. They asked Thoros for his tales to pass the time, the only one of them who had really lived at all.
"Can all priests like you make fire from the air?" Alyn of Winterfell asked one night, his face half cast in shadow from the flames.
"Not all," Thoros said, "It is a skill R'hllor does not allow all to learn."
Lying came naturally to him now, a thing he was better at than anything else he had ever done. Sometimes he even convinced himself.
"And can you really see things in the fire?" Ned asked, his voice sceptical and mocking, "Visions and prophecies?"
"I can," Thoros nodded, "I see more than you would believe, my young lord."
Beric's eyes were on him. Thoros could feel them, boring into him.
He could feel them burning.
Beric knew.
Somehow, he could tell that Thoros was lying. The man already knew him better than he knew himself.
Thoros took first watch, sat in his place at Beric's side. Beric's hair, reddish in daylight, shone in the firelight like burnished gold. Thoros felt his face burning as he reached out a trembling hand and touched Beric's hair.
The man was so good. So achingly good when Thoros was so bad. He believed in what he was doing. Thoros had forgotten what it was to believe, until he met him.
Because now he believed in Beric Dondarrion.
vii.
Gregor Clegane.
Gregor fucking Clegane.
Of course it was his lance that killed Beric. Of course it was. The Mountain that Rides was too much for the smiling, laughing Lightening Lord. Ned Stark had sent a boy after a monster and Thoros could have cried, if he remembered how to.
He was the first to find Ned, crouched over Beric's body, that he had dragged from the Red Fork in the midst of the battle. The boy was sobbing, his sword clasped so tight in his hand that his knuckles were bleeding, and when Thoros lifted Beric onto Inya's back, Ned did not argue like he once might have, not even when Thoros lifted him up too.
They limped slowly through the battle field, Thoros leading Inya. She whickered softly as she nuzzled the back of his neck. It was like she knew.
They had no septon to perform the ritual for the dead.
A Red Priest was all they had.
A liar.
They wrapped Beric in his cloak of stars. He looked like was sleeping.
They were all watching him, watching Thoros. Waiting.
His hands shook.
R'hllor, if you have ever loved me, give me strength now. Prove to me that I have been blind.
Thoros leaned down and stroked Beric's hair.
Save him now and I am yours.
He pressed his lips to Beric's forehead, murmuring half remembered words for a ritual he did not believe in.
Save him, my lord, and I will be yours, forever and always.
He finished the ritual with a kiss to Beric's lips. Their first kiss. Their last.
Nothing happened.
Then Beric gasped, a choked noise, and opened his eyes.
"Thoros? What happened?"
Oh my Lord of Light, forgive me.
Thoros fell to his knees, Beric's hand clasped in his own.
Forgive me, R'hllor.