Chapter Notes

Guuuuuuuuys! I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

304 AL

Jaime had known from the beginning that something was wrong. Perhaps it was the colour of Arya's screams, or the way her small, fragile body seemed to snap as it writhed in pain: pulled over the rack of bringing a child into the world; tortured for the entertainment of gods, or men, or whoever the fuck was responsible for this.

You are responsible for this.

Jaime told himself that as he held Arya's hand; as he tried to calm her and was sworn at in response; as he realised, as if for the first time, how years of starvation and malnourishment, on the road and at Harrenhal, must have weakened her; must have turned her bones to glass and her veins to paper, so that now, the blood was pouring out of his wife; his love; as though their child were forcing its way out with a battle axe.

And she bled and bled and screamed and screamed; the midwives a tangle of bodies and crimson linen as they tried to stop the bleeding; Arya's fingernails scarring the palm of Jaime's hand; her eyes grasping at life and not finding it; her face turning grey and gaunt beneath the shadow.

'Jaime,' Arya sobbed, as the darkness took her, 'Jaime…'

And more maesters and more midwives were being called for, and Arya's head was drooping weakly onto the pillow and not lifting up again; and Jaime was clutching the back of her neck and shouting at her –

'STARK!'

And as her eyes closed, and his heart almost ceased to beat, and the midwives continued to flicker around them, Jaime continued to shout at her, wordlessly now. He shouted things that no one else could hear; things that were only for her: that he was sorry; that it was all his fault; that she was too young and too fragile; that they should have waited; that he should have thought.

That he loved her. That he'd killed her.

An Archmaester arrived from the court of King Tommen, and shouted for horsehair, wormwood and red wine as he took one look at Arya's face and another between her legs, and swore; his tone suggesting a desire to castrate every other maester in the room.

'I must operate immediately, or we will lose both mother and child, my lord,' the Archmaester told Jaime; without greeting; without ceremony, 'I can save one, not both. Choose.'

Jaime stared at him numbly, not understanding.

'You should consider the potential consequences, my lord,' the maester continued, 'if the child turns out to be female, then perhaps –'

'I don't give a fuck if the child is female,' Jaime growled.

The maester bowed stiffly and turned his attention back to Arya as blackness took hold of Jaime's heart and suffocated it.

I can't – I won't – I – she's – she can't –

Gods help me. Help me.

Help her.

The maester was cupping Arya's chin and pouring a little red wine into her mouth. When almost all of it spilled out again, a splash of blood on her alabaster skin, he tried again, closing her lips with both his hands and rubbing her slender throat to make her swallow.

Jaime stared down at Arya once again, and felt every thinking, sensing part of him pierced by pain and agony and horror at the sight of her: his wife; his love; grey and corpselike; quiet and small; still and helpless; a fragile little body with its life force bleeding out of it. She wasn't meant to be this way. She wasn't made for being this way. She was made for being upright, and alive; her face flushed and glowing as she sparred with him in the godswood; her lips curling into a gleeful smile each time she beat him; 'Feet, Lannister!' she would shout; her entire body quivering with rage as she shouted at him and he shouted at her; as they fought like cat and dog, a hundred times a day, about everything, about nothing. Her eyes darkening as one of her ghosts crossed her vision. Her face wrinkling comically as she laughed and laughed, and chuckled like a ticklish child as he kissed her nose, and earlobes, and ankles, and toes.

'I love you, little wolf.'

'And I love you, you stupid.'

He remembered what the world had been before her. He remembered what he had been before her. He remembered promising her, as late as yesterday morning, that he would save the child if anything went wrong. And he remembered how unconcernedly he had said it, as if nothing in the world could have been more unlikely.

'Save her,' Jaime blurted out, 'save my wife.'

And out of the depths the maester stared, nodded, and took out his knives.

The smell was horrific; the knowledge of the blood being hers making Jaime gag and clutch harder at her cold hand as his wife, his love, lay motionless and unconscious beneath the blades that tore her stomach open; like the ploughing of a field made of flesh. Vapour rose from the crimson abyss and clung to the clothing of the people who were stopping up her blood, and violating her red darkness with their hands, and wrenching out a bundle of flesh so pink and so bloody that it might have been her stomach, or her lungs.

The bundle of blood began to scream, and the midwives to scream in fright.

'Impossible!' one of their number shrieked.

'I don't care if it's impossible; get that child out of this room!' the maester roared, and the screaming bundle of blood was taken off someplace else while the maester – his robe stained up to the elbows in blood – sewed Arya up as though her skin were a dress; stopping only to bellow 'swab!' at the boy that was helping him, and to call for more horsehair, or more red wine.

Arya's hand was so cold in Jaime's – cold, and wet, and limp – as though she were already dead. Somewhere in the next room, their child was screaming – living – living when they were not meant to have lived, while Arya – Arya –

'Stark, don't go,' Jaime heard himself murmur; to her; to what was left of her; 'don't go. Please.'

And her face, with its closed eyes, was calm: far away from the people in black and the things that they were doing to her body; far away from him, pleading with her to stay; and gradually, the people, the shadows, the wraiths, began to ebb away from them– 'she is unlikely to breathe for much longer, my lord,' the maester said, 'you should prepare yourself,' – and finally Jaime was alone with her, with his wife, with his love, with Stark, and though the sheets had been changed and the windows thrown open to the sea, the room still smelt of blood.

Stark, don't go. Don't go. Please.

Aunt Dorna's voice spoke from somewhere close behind him; soft and heavy with tears.

'Don't you want to see your daughter?' she asked.

'No,' Jaime snapped.

He didn't turn around. The door closed. And somewhere in the next room, a child screamed and screamed.