A/N: Big Big Author Note this time. Obviously the usual I only own what I came up with blah blah blah

I decided to split this into two halves because I thought there was a clear end to the first.

THIS IS A PREVIEW: THE FIRST CHAPTER FOR THE SECOND PART/SECOND 'NOVELLA/WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL IT' IN THIS SERIES

You can read this second part on it's own (if you're looking for something more Sandor heavy) but you miss out on Adelais journey to get to the point where she is now.

Also: – So I have made a conscious decision to follow canon (as with the first), up to a point. Generally when I'm writing I like to stick as close to Canon as possible, having the original characters and things as people who appear between scenes of off screen. Where it's important that they feature in something that is canon and onscreen I like to try to insert them with little disturbance. Utilising dialogue and exact scene set up from the show. HOWEVER – I think most fans agree that Season 8 was…. Okay. It was great up to a point – so whilst I'm going to follow canon mostly, I'm also going to change shit up, like Sandor's ending for one, - I'm not saying it's a definite he'll survive in this version of things – but it'll be different.

I do hope you're still enjoying!

Adelais woke with a start, it was how she woke most mornings since Ray and his followers had found her. Her dreams were filled with something she couldn't place, something she couldn't work out. The old woman, the light, the pain. She didn't know if it was real or imagined, well apart from the pain. That had been real.

"Ah good you're awake." Ray said blocking out the sun that broke through the shade of the tree. "Need your help."

"What is it?" Adelais asked.

"Dreaming again?" Ray asked as she followed him up the hill, not bothering to answer her own question. "Same thing?" He asked when Adelais didn't reply.

"If you say anything about God's again-" Adelais started but didn't finish.

"I'm just saying Isla said wherever you came from they'd been patching you up. She reckoned you'd been recovering about a week before you stumbled off." Ray replied.

"Which means someone was probably helping me, or- I don't know, I don't remember. Just the woman and the voice and the light." Adelais shook her head and rolled her stiff shoulder.

"Someone isn't done with you. Otherwise you'd have died on that bed. Isla still thinks you're a miracle." Ray mused. "Brought into our lives to help us."

"It's not like you were starving before I came along." Adelais rolled her shoulder again. She didn't really want to think about the dream, didn't want to think about what had led to her stumbling upon this group of kind strangers. Barely enough for themselves but still willing to give to her, half dead from arrow wounds.

"No, no we weren't. We didn't have the luxury of fresh meat every day though, and you're a good teacher." Ray pointed out. "This is what I needed you for."

The settlement was based under the cover of the woods, though Ray had plans to build a Sept on the small hillock not too far away. They'd done well, small huts and tents erected mostly around trees or between them. They had the cover of the forest for nights and winters. Ray led them into what had come to be deemed the medics hut. It was mostly used to tend to minor injuries, as thankfully, there wasn't too many sick or dying. More than anything it was a store for the herbs and tinctures that the Everly Sisters had put together.

There was a man on the bed against the far wall, too big for it, they'd had to put a table under his feet. She could smell him from where she stood, he was filthy, caked in mud and blood and pus.

"I know you don't believe in violence anymore but if it's a mercy killing you're after, you'd have been better leaving him where he was." Adelais said, hand sliding instinctively behind her back to the two daggers there. There were three things she'd managed to salvage from her escape, her bow, the cuffs of her armour and her two valyrian steel daggers. This was another point Ray tried to press on her about whoever she'd woken up to in the woods. They'd left her with armour and steel when they could have stolen or sold it.

"I don't want to kill him. I thought he were dead, until he coughed." Ray chuckled.

"How did you even get him here?" Adelais asked moving closer and ignoring the stench. She smelt worse on the battlefield, she'd smelt worse in the yard when a smithy was injured.

"Dragged him onto the cart, couple of lads helped get him in here." Ray admitted.

Adelais had only ever really seen one man as big as this, well two, but only one she'd had conversation wi- Adelais stopped moving forward and Ray took in the expression on her face.

"Didn't take you for being squeamish." He said. "Oh, it's not that is it. You know him."

"He was a Knight in King's Landing." Adelais said, tilting her head so she could see his battered and swollen face more clearly.

"Anyone I'd have heard of?"

"I don't know his name." Adelais shook her head.

"Good man?" Ray asked still scrutinising her, like he was trying to work out whether he should just let the man die. Adelais had to wonder, if someone did come into his flock heavily wounded but a monster within, would Ray just let them die? Or would his new found faith win out.

Adelais nodded in response to his question. It was a split-second decision.

Sandor Clegane was lying half dead on a table in front of her. She could have finished him off there and then, maybe that would be kinder, but she owed it to him to at least try, and to Ray. She owed Sandor for the kick of a dagger when she was on her back. She was sure tales of The Hound would have stretched far and wide. Even though he'd given up violence, part of her worried that if she told Ray who this really was, he'd put him back out for the dogs. Sandor Clegane was known for his brutishness but Adelais had always known there was more there, because there was, somewhere beneath all that hard grumpy exterior, a heart. Before she'd left King's Landing she'd heard too that he'd been on the road with Arya, and whilst she couldn't say what his treatment of her had been, she couldn't imagine him being overly cruel. It just wasn't him.

"What do you think I can do? The Everly's are your Woods Witches." Adelais said. The Everly's had been the ones to save her, she was sure they could do the same for Sandor. "And you were a sellsword. You know how to take care of battle wounds."

"Yeah but your house was built on this stuff. Aelton is famous for it's Woods Witches and you know how to take of yourself you've already proven that. This needs attention from people who've been on the battlefield and around real war wounds. Not just concoctions." Ray pointed out.

"Aelton was built on a lot of fucking things, most of them horseshit." Adelais said bitterly. "I know the Everly's think I was sent to you for a reason but I wasn't. I'm not a Maester, I can't help with this. I can shoot an arrow, I can fight. I can tell you what not to eat in the woods but I can't magic bones back together or bring some poor fucker back from the dead." Adelais said frustratedly. She liked Ray, a lot. She appreciated his humour, his newfound kindness. She even appreciated how much he cared for his followers, but his keep mentioning she'd been brought here, kept on this Earth for a reason grated on her. There was no reason. If there was a reason it wasn't a good one, it was to keep her in some sort of hell. Tormented by demons she could barely escape.

"I don't think you can." Ray laughed. "I need someone who isn't squeamish though, and who isn't afraid of someone twice their size who'd probably going to be more trouble than a rabid dog when they wake up."

"We need to get him cleaned up." Adelais said, feeling slightly guilty that she'd become so frustrated so easily. It wasn't bad here, at all. There were worse places she could have ended up. She'd been dreaming of a life like this for years now. To be free from the house. Things were still raw though. Her own foolishness was a wound that could be pressed easily. New friends were good but she missed her old friends. The mismatched family she'd found for herself, that she'd forged despite being some sort of monster. Everytime she thought of Tib and Charity, of Tyrion, a hollowness formed in her chest. She didn't know whether they were alive or dead. Her days were mostly filled with hunting, teaching, keeping herself busy in every way she could. Pretending the hollow of a tree was Bronn, Tywin or Halle's face and practising her aim.

"The lads are bringing water." Ray gestured over his shoulder.

"That's not going to do it, look at him, he's already been festering for days. We need to get him to the stream, let the water run over him and away from him. The Everly's can make up some drawing ointment. Once we've got him relatively clean and new clothes on then we can see what's what." Adelais pointed out.

She didn't like to think about it too much, but between Bronn and Aubouroc there were things she'd learned about taking care of herself. Bits and pieces she'd picked up from soldiers too. Wounds needed to be clean everyone knew that and throwing a couple of buckets of water on Sandor was going to do fuck all.

"What happened to I'm not a Maester?" Ray asked with a raised brow.

"I saw one of the Smiths get injured once, something on the fire just caught, exploded out. He dropped into the mud and the first thing they did was carry him over to the water pump rather than any table. Just kept pumping until it was bloody but clean, all that mud gone. Then he was taken inside and the Woods Witches did something with him." Adelais replied.

"He recover?" Ray asked.

"Until the Baker caught him in bed with his wife. A lot can be done with herbs and water but curing a skull cracked by a rolling pin is not one."

And now Adelais finds herself on a new path!

CONTINUE TO FOLLOW THE STORY AT AUBOUROC: PART TWO - THE RISE

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