Arya grunted as the stag's entrails came spilling out of the hole that she had sliced in its stomach; guts cascading off the work table into a bloody pile at her feet. The hole steamed gruesomely in the freezing air, and for a moment that she would later be ashamed of, Arya wished that she were indoors instead of beside the house in her shirt sleeves; stabbing at a dead animal. But it couldn't be helped. The stag that she and Jaime had caught the day before could easily feed them for a month if they took good care of it, and that meant skinning it, cleaning it, chopping it up and storing it in the little shed out back before it started to rot.

Of course Jaime had had different (stupid) ideas about the way the stag should really be prepared, and they'd had a titanic disagreement on the issue which had culminated in Jaime's storming away from her and declaring that he would catch himself some bloody fish for supper, since the stag would be rotted away by nightfall if she kept doing what she was doing. She had shouted after him that he was welcome to eat as many stupid fish as she wanted: she was eating venison, and would not share it with him when he asked her to (and he would ask her to), and Jaime had shouted over his shoulder that she was a stubborn little shit who deserved every chilblain that was coming to her.

It only took Arya a few minutes to realise that he was right. It was terrifyingly cold, and her hands, red with both ice and blood from the stag, were already beginning to show tell-tale signs of red, freezing pain. Still, she would not put gloves on. If Jaime returned before she was finished, she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that she had actually listened to him. She was winning this fight, or losing all her fingers in the attempt.

Arya drove her knife beneath the stag's skin and began to remove it; tearing rather harder than was necessary as she remembered, for the hundredth time, that she and Jaime had done little else but fight since the day that they had met, and that things hadn't changed much since leaving King's Landing for the Land Beyond the Wall. Fighting was what they did. It kept them warm; it was an amusing way to pass the time; and apologising (or refusing to) beneath the coverlet of wolf pelts every night was fucking indescribable.

Sometimes, however, the thought of the sheer amount of fighting that they had done since their arrival beyond the Wall was enough to make Arya want to bury her head in the snow and never come out again.

Choosing where to build the fucking house, for instance. Jaime had wanted to ensure a good view of surrounding country and a degree of immunity to potential attack by constructing the house on a hill. Arya, however, had favoured an icy plane on the edge of a lake with vast forests on the other side: close enough to fresh water and food, far away enough from constant wight attacks, plenty of places to hide should the need present itself, and absolutely no chance of an enemy sneaking up on them.

'We'll be far too exposed,' Jaime had told her as they stood on the edge of the latter location.

'We'll be far less exposed than living on top of a hill,' Arya had snorted.

'Nothing is less exposed that living on top of a hill!' Jaime had stormed.

'Is that so?' Arya had replied.

Jaime had taken a deep breath, then, and had proceeded to explain it to her as though she were a child:

'There's a good view from all sides, AND it's harder to attack,' he had said, 'and the enemy's out of breath, and being pelted with arrows and boiling oil by the time they get to the top.'

'Exactly how big is this castle – I mean, house – that you're planning on building?' Arya had mocked.

'Your lack of battle experience is starting to show, Lady Stark,' Jaime had replied; turning red.

'I have plenty of battle experience, Ser Jaime!' Arya had snapped; turning red too.

'And what is that experience?' Jaime had demanded.

'I was that bastard Aegon's sword shield through every siege and every battle of the Targaryen conquest!' Arya had declared.

'Which lasted how long?' Jaime had enquired.

That had made Arya hesitate, and curse inwardly.

'A year,' she had mumbled.

'So in fact you have only a year's battle experience,' Jaime had smiled.

'Yes, but –'

'I have thirty. So you should listen to me.'

Arya had stared briefly at her boots; not enjoying being wrong.

Then she had decided to hit back.

'Were you on the battlefield for every one of those thirty years?'

Jaime's face had fallen at that.

'Well, not exactly –'

'In fact, one might even argue that for a good three-quarters of those thirty years, you were either standing outside a room guarding the king, or sitting inside a room ruling the Westerlands.'

'I have commanded armies, Lady Stark. All you've done is make sure Aegon didn't get himself killed earlier; which was no great favour to anyone, was it?'

Arya had been struck dumb for an instant, before clouting him in the face and trying to restrain herself from stabbing him instead.

'How dare you speak to me like that?'

'Have I said something untrue?'

'You've said something stupid! And cruel, and UNFAIR!'

'Perhaps, but you're still wrong.'

'I am not wrong!'

'We're building the house on top of the hill!'

'If we build the stupid house on top of the stupid hill, there is no place to escape to once we're surrounded.'

'What, unlike here?'

'There's much more opportunity for escape here!'

'Like what? Diving to the bottom of the lake and hoping we don't freeze to death?'

'I'll keep you warm enough.'

The change in tone (and tactics) had made Jaime pause, and silently observe her, and wait; the space between them beginning to writhe as she edged closer to him; close, but not touching.

'Is that right, Lady Stark?' Jaime had purred; his green eyes sinking into hers as she paused in front of him.

'Hmm-hmm,' Arya had replied; moving close enough to kiss him and screeching as Jaime seized hold of her, scooped her up and promptly tried to throw her into the lake; chuckling to himself as she beat her fists on his chest; wriggled against him like an earthworm and kicked frantically as he attempted one or two swings to give him leverage.

'Underhanded tactics will get you nowhere with me, Lady Stark!' Jaime had playfully pronounced.

'Put me down, you stupid!' Arya had raged.

'Just imagine what your septa would say!' Jaime had declared in a scandalised tone; dangling her over the water.

'Don't throw me into the lake, don't ever throw me in the lake!' she had screamed; kicking.

'And why not?' Jaime had asked; pulling her to his chest again; an arm around her waist; another beneath her knees; strong; close –

'The cold can kill you!' Arya had snapped.

'I'll keep you warm enough,' Jaime had said softly.

She had looked at him, and had found that her hand had come to rest against his neck; as it did each time she came down from release. Jaime's eyes were burning, and his smile was like sunlight on the ice.

'Put me down,' Arya had murmured.

'No,' Jaime had murmured back, and his lips had brushed hers, then devoured hers, and they had kissed for a very long time while the world froze around them; their fire immune to the ice for just a little while.

Arya had won that particular argument, and had gloated about it for days afterwards, but no sooner had they worked out how to lay the foundations of the bloody house that the first group of wildlings had come over the proverbial hill.

It seemed that she and Jaime had chosen to settle on the lands of a chieftain named Hrolf, who despised Mance Rayder because of some childhood insult and had thus refused to join The King Beyond the Wall in the Frost Fangs. He now spent all his time hunting, fucking and ordering the slaughter of any unfortunates stupid enough to set foot in his lands.

'You're telling us this before you murder us?' Jaime had laughed as the raiding party surrounded them, 'what sort of wildlings are you?'

'We tell you this so that when you meet your gods in a few minutes,' a huge wildling with tangled black hair had replied, 'you may tell them that Hrolf, son of Wulfgar, sent you.'

'Is that you?' Arya had asked.

The wildlings had laughed at her; as though nothing could be more ridiculous.

'She's funny, this one,' the huge wildling had cackled; 'maybe I'll keep her.'

'If you want your balls to stay attached to your body, then I suggest that you keep someone else,' Jaime had growled.

There had been a chorus of disdainful hoots and catcalls at that, which Arya had rapidly silenced by seizing the front of Jaime's cloak and kissing him violently; her hands, still clutching her sword, encircling the back of his head to pull him closer, and she had felt surprise, then understanding take possession of his mouth as he rolled his tongue against hers and bit softly at her lips; dragging them gently through his teeth and imprisoning her breath inside her.

Tingling all over, Arya surreptitiously opened one of her eyes, and peeped. And as she had expected, the wildlings were still there, but looking rather more confused than they had before.

'They're still there,' Jaime had murmured; his lips brushing hers.

'Should I ask them to go away?' Arya had asked; gasping as Jaime's lips moved from her mouth to her neck.

A beautiful, affirmative-sounding grunt rumbled up from the depths of Jaime's throat, and he kissed her neck a final time before finally granting the wildlings his full attention; his right arm draped firmly about her waist.

'Hrolf, son of Wulfgar sounds like a regular coward to me,' Arya had declared to the surrounding group of wildlings, 'sending other men to do his killing for him.'

'Hrolf is a great warrior!' the black haired wildling roared.

'Hrolf is a son of a whore!' another declared.

'Hrolf is our chief!' another thundered.

'Me and mine are free, and piss on all chiefs!' yet another shouted.

'What you doing here, then?' another enquired.

'Living!' the former snapped.

'Sounds like you're living with Hrolf's cock up your arse, my friend.'

'And you're not?'

'Them wights are coming so regular now, I'd live with anyone's cock up my arse!'

'I'm willing if you are!'

'Hrolf protects us!'

'These are Hrolf's lands!'

'Lands beyond the Wall don't belong to anyone!' Arya had roared; raising her sword above her head in what she hoped was an impressive gesture, 'any free man, or woman would know that! Then again, you lot are probably so used to wiping Hrolf, son of Wulfgar's arse for him that you've forgotten what freedom means. I spit on you, for presuming to preach freedom to your fellows and to me! I see no free men before me! I see a group of arse-licking slaves!'

There had been a brief, rather stupefied silence, followed by a predictable cacophony of indignant roars and further drawing of weapons, and the wildlings had thrown themselves forward with all the ferocity, chaos and total lack of discipline that she'd expected from them.

Arya hadn't had a real fight in weeks, and the sword felt glorious in her hand as she offered up sacrifices to the Faceless God; sacrifices that she had chosen. Jaime had fought with her; at her side; at her back; and she had found herself seized by the same sweet, magnificent euphoria that she had felt the first time that she had seen him joust, at the tourney for his wedding to Sansa; how he had turned fighting into something beautiful; how he had made blood rain down from heaven and drench the earth in Lannister crimson; how his sword had seemed a part of him that governed how the rest of his body moved, twisted, became; wrenching in and out of flesh and bringing death to what was trapped in it, and she had found herself watching him from the corner of her eye as she made corpses; hoping, wishing that someday she would be able to fight like that.

Jaime had stood over the last body as it fell into a tangle of fur and broken bones at his feet; his presence seeming to tear at the ice and make it warmer; his cheeks flushed with unspilled blood; his hair falling like molten silver into his eyes; his chest rising and falling and his lips parting as he breathed in death, and when his eyes had flashed up to hers, they were like sunlight on a forest floor; exhilarated; irresistible.

'What?' Jaime had asked, as Arya stormed towards him.

'Shut up,' Arya had growled; kissing him deeply and snarling into his mouth; her hands moving beneath his furs to his laces, and they had fucked right there on the ice amidst the corpses of the slain; their souls burning hotter than the bonfires they built afterwards, to ensure that the dead stayed dead.

'Does this mean I only have to kill a few men each time you're angry with me?' Jaime had asked later that evening; grinning suddenly and wickedly in the middle of an argument (conducted while huddled together under the coverlet) as to whether or not wolves were good for eating as well as for skinning.

'No, you don't have to kill any men,' Arya had snapped; turning her back on Jaime and starting as the wind tore at the walls of their sealskin tent, 'you just have to apologise when you're wrong.'

She could see the smug grin on his face, even though she had her back to him, and she was seriously considering removing it forever when Jaime proceeded to enrage her still further with additional ruminations on whatever bullshit was occupying his mind.

'I've known of your admiration of my technique for some time now, Lady Stark –'

'Admiration of your technique?'

'– but I never thought you'd act on it quite that way.'

Arya had pouted in annoyance.

'I don't admire your stupid technique.'

'Hmm,' Jaime had replied; his voice deep and laden with innuendo, 'I must have been imagining things that day at the tourney, then.'

'What tourney?' Arya had impatiently asked, though she knew very well.

'The one,' he had purred, 'where you were so overcome by my great good looks and sparkling personality that you fainted when I crowned you Queen of Love and Beauty.'

'I was pretending to faint!' Arya had exclaimed.

'So you say, and I still don't believe you,' Jaime had laughed.

'I was!' Arya had insisted.

There was a brief silence, a brief tension, and Jaime's arm snaking slowly around her waist; his hand resting flat and warm on her stomach.

'So…you were utterly unaffected by my performance that day?' he had casually enquired.

'That's right,' Arya had drily told him.

'So…that look of undisguised passion on your Faceless little visage,' Jaime had observed; relishing the gasp that escaped her as his hand slid surreptitiously downwards, 'you know…the one suggesting that you wanted to take me right there on the tourney ground…are you saying that was a figment of my imagination?'

'I am,' Arya had stiffly declared.

'Liar,' Jaime had also declared; shifting so that his chest touched her back; so that his fingers could move further downwards to her cunt.

'Don't think that by fighting with me about this I'll forget about that other thing we were fighting about!' Arya had snapped; trying to keep her voice level.

'What other thing?' Jaime had pleasantly enquired.

'The thing we were fighting about before you started blabbing on about your technique!' she had insisted; her breath, her heartbeat, her will disintegrating as Jaime's lips suddenly kissed the back of her neck.

'Can I tell you something?' he had murmured against her skin; his breath hitching and dying.

'No,' Arya had mumbled; as truculently as she could with Jaime's hand still buried between her thighs.

'When there is a strong attraction between two people,' Jaime had hoarsely whispered, 'they fight a lot.'

'That's… stupid,' Arya had whimpered; her eyes flickering closed as the muscles of her thighs began to tighten around his hand, gods, you're a weak little idiot

'It's stupid, but it's true,' Jaime had breathed; his hand still moving despite its prison; his smile branding itself into the back of her neck.

'But… why do people fight if they feel that way?' Arya had gasped.

'Because it's the opposite of what they really want to do,' Jaime had whispered, and then his lips were brushing softly against the skin behind her earlobe, and she was gasping in surprise and wondering what the fuck there was in that tiny piece of skin to make him capable of doing this her and not really caring about the details as her blood thundered within her; in her heart; in her stomach; between her legs; the unbearable, yet magnetic prickling and caressing of Jaime's mouth making her neck jerk unconsciously beneath him as he pulled her closer and started to use his tongue. Arya had gasped and moaned and squirmed in his arms and felt her breath burning hotter in her lungs as she struggled weakly, more for the sake of pretence than from any real desire to escape, and felt him growing harder against her with every passing move she made, and every short, hitched, breathless breath that escaped her lips.

'Tell me I'm wrong,' Jaime had gasped; his tongue assaulting her skin, 'about the day of the tourney. Tell me I'm wrong,' and in the space of a second, she was out of his arms and on top of him; her hands holding his arms down and her lips teasing his; nudging softly against his bottom lip then lingering just out of reach and taking on their own triumphant smile as Arya watched him look up at her with a powerful combination of rage and arousal; entirely at her mercy; his hips imprisoned by her thighs; his arms by her hands.

'You're not wrong,' Arya had whispered; tightening her grip on his arms as he tried to kiss her.

'Were you wet for me?' Jaime had panted; his eyes bright with want; his body hot with it, beautiful –

'Yes,' Arya had said; leaning forward and smiling as the space between their lips lessened, but not enough for them to touch.

'Did you love me?' Jaime had asked softly; frowning, arching his neck, not reaching her, 'then?'

'Yes,' Arya had repeated; and it was true, 'yes.'

Jaime had stared up at her with what could have been confusion, or amazement, or both.

'Why…why didn't you mention it before?'

'I had confused the issue and taken it for hate, love.'

His body had been taut as a bowstring beneath hers, and his mouth slightly open, in supplication for air and for her.

'Arya,' Jaime had said.

'Yes,' she had replied; her heart racing.

'Put your tongue in my mouth,' he had growled, 'now.'

Instead, she had brought her mouth to the same place where his tongue had caressed her only moments before; lapping gently at his skin and smiling as she felt it rippling beneath her touch and Jaime swearing loudly beneath her tongue. His cock was grinding hard against the sleeping shift that separated his skin from hers; she was lifting her hands to touch his face and caress it, and his arms were out of their restraints and around her waist in an instant and pulling her hard against him; his hand travelling from her buttocks to her shoulder blades to the back of her neck as he crushed his mouth to hers. Her entire body surged with desire as Jaime's tongue sought out hers and filled her mouth with his moans as she filled his with hers. She was tearing her shift and pulling it off and gasping as she felt Jaime's mouth on her breast, and he was thrusting slowly into her and sinking into her eyes and her body as her legs pulled him in deeper, and they had fucked until the next morning; melting into each other; holding each other; as though they'd never meet again.

When Jaime had spilled his seed inside her for the final time, and she had sobbed out his name for the final time; her body quivering in ecstasy astride his as the sun came out, she had lain there with her head on Jaime's chest; with his fingers moving through her hair; her loins throbbing and her mind crying out against coming back to the world, and she had thought once again of the wildlings, of the shadowcats, of the North; of the place that would never be safe for two runaways who loved each other; of the place that had to be safer than either Westeros or Essos; than Separation or Death.

'Should we leave before the next mighty gang of marauders arrive?' she had asked, 'Hrolf son of Wulfgar sounds terrifying.'

Jaime had grinned at her, and had softly kissed her nose without replying; she had grinned back at him and had fallen asleep in his arms; and over the course of the next few weeks, the pair of them had made a point of steadfastly refusing to do what any sensible person in their situation would have done; namely packed up what little they had and moved someplace else.

Hrolf, son of Wulfgar, had been predictably enraged by their cheek, and had sent two more raiding parties and countless individual knifemen to avenge the honour of his land; the latter coming back to him with daggers or arrows speared through their eyes, the former not coming back at all; and eventually, the great man had condescended to pay them a visit himself, this time with overtures of friendship that Arya had thought prudent to accept and that Jaime had rejected outright; as though nothing could be more ridiculous.

They'd fought about that one for days. They'd fought about everything that they could possibly fight about, and they'd continued to drive each other mad and to entertain notions of murdering each other on a daily basis, but Arya understood now; understood what she had always known, that arguing was the only thing, apart from lovemaking, that could render the depth of the love that existed between them expressible. It was what made her start awake at night and seize hold of Jaime and shake him awake when he murmured, then spoke, then screamed tales of dragonfire and torture and Brienne in his sleep. It was what pulled her out of nightmares in which Aegon murdered Sansa a thousand times, in which Jaqen's dead hazel eyes never stopped staring, in which the throats of her pack were cut in quick and cruel succession right in front of her; and she would hold Jaime tightly and rock him softly until the tremours stopped; and he would kiss the tears on her cheeks and stroke her hair; and he would whisper, and she would whisper, 'You're not there, love. You're here, with me,' and the dark would go away for a little while as they disappeared into each other's warmth.

But the Land Beyond the Wall was not good for him; the ice; the cold; the savagery of the landscape that seemed to swallow life rather than create it. Every day, it seemed to kill something in him; something fundamental of which the term 'from the South' didn't seem a proper description. Not that he complained of it. He never complained of it; she only sensed it; but she could not bear to ask him for fear that he would confirm what she already knew: that he hated this place almost as much as he loved her; that he blamed her; that he must blame her, for allowing him to come here with her; for not making him stop; for existing – because if she existed, he could not exist without her. She would have resented him, had he dragged her off to hide in Asshai for the rest of her life with only the dimmest knowledge of what it was really like there. But she would have gone with him anyway, because if he existed, she could not exist without him, and she would not have breathed a word to him of her newfound distaste, even if she had found the place to be less tolerable than the deepest of the seven hells.

That coming North had been Jaime's idea rather than her own hardly seemed to matter anymore. He hated it here. He must do. And it was her fault.

Arya was brought back to the shock of the cold in her hands and the heat steaming from the dead stag's stomach by the sound of Jaime's footsteps approaching at speed. Perhaps he'd changed his mind about the fish.

'That was quick!' she called out, expecting a wry reply.

Instead, Jaime appeared around the corner of the house, soaked from top to toe and trembling like a man with shaking sickness. His skin was a haunting shade of blue, and his teeth chattered together audibly, and Arya would have been alarmed rather than horrified by the state of him had his eyes not been wild with…was it fear?

'What the – did you fall into the fucking lake?'

'I saw –' Jaime rasped; his face turning grey with terror, oh gods, he's afraid, he's worse than afraid, what, what? 'I saw – I saw –'

Arya felt the dagger dropping out of her hand, and a primal, sleepless horror take hold of her, and she was sprinting around the table and arriving too late as Jaime collapsed senseless into the snow.