"To Robert, you were," Ned replies simply. He had realized, carrying Robert's banner and waging his war, that they were fighting for two wholly separate things. Robert was fighting to reclaim the woman he supposedly loved, the woman over whom he felt he had ownership. He was fighting to win and prove his strength to the entirety of Westeros. Ned, on the other hand, was fighting his way back to his beloved sister - not to plant a banner at her feet, but rather to be back at her side, to bridge the unbearable distance that separated them both. And, at the time, to save her from what he believed to be her jailer. Doing it all in Robert's name was more straightforward, though his heart had never aligned itself with Robert, not in that regard.

"I would've burnt all of Westeros .. to bring you back home safely .. if I knew it was what you had wanted."

The fever begins to creep its way back into his mind. He begins to flinch, almost rhythmically, as though in response to something constant, like the clanging of swords. "I watched him kill them all," he murmurs, seeing the face of Ser Arthur Dayne. "Two swords. He used two of them. I'd been bested, he was going to kill me. He was going to keep me from you." His head turns to one side, eyes closed and brows tugged together. "Howland. Howland! I took his life, but only because you had saved mine, Howland."

His head turns the other way.

"I heard his voice. I heard him call me. I hadn't known it then, how could I have? But I heard him. He called me 'father.'"