The cold slammed into Arya like a mace as she ran barefoot in her shift with her dagger boiling in her fist, towards the place of the screams; the place where she had set herself free.

Joffrey was on his knees cradling Ramsay's body, and as he let out a howl, Arya realised that it was Joffrey who had screamed rather than the servant girl or chamber maid that she had spent all night imagining might be the one to discover him.

Lord Roose was staring down at the king with barely-concealed disdain; his eyes like dirty ice that smouldered at the realisation that he should be the one howling in agony; not some spoilt child-adult that had known Ramsay for less than twenty-four hours.

Arya could not bring herself to think about the implications of Lucion's being left heir both to the Dreadfort and to the Wardenship of the North. Such thoughts had nested in her mind all night, like hornets of dread and foreboding and fear, so she silently joined the assembled crowd of people in staring bemusedly at the weeping king and in wondering what was going to happen next. And as she stared, her eyes began to take in the true nature of the scene: its redness.

She and Jaime had made much more of a mess than she had noticed at the time. The floor beneath Ramsay's body, and the wall behind it, looked as though several pots of crimson paint had been slung at them by a two year old. The eerie whiteness of Ramsay's skin was almost reptilian against it….that eeriness that she had always hated; the whiteness of his cock as he fucked into her and the redness as he fucked out.

I've covered your whiteness with your own red today, you bastard.

And as she stood looking at her dead husband; at the hole in his chest; at the holes in his stomach, and at Joffrey gingerly touching each of them as he cried, she realised that she had finally done it. She'd killed him. Not like those other times, when she had had the chance to, and had stood helpless and unmoving. She'd killed him. She'd finally killed him. He was dead.

Arya felt a shadow stir in the crowd, and looked up. Jaime was there, looking down at Joffrey, looking down at the work they had done together, and for a moment, she almost smiled; the small part of her that was still five-and-ten, and in love, and stupid.

Then he looked at her with his eyes that struck like hammers, and she remembered what had shot through her when his fingers had touched the scars on her wrists; the panic, the anger, the violation that she had felt, because her scars were there because of him, because he had abandoned her; because he had let them bring her here; no better than Ramsay; no better.

A burst of swearing, shoving and jostling announced the arrival of the Bastard's Boys: Ramsay's pets; Lord Roose's pets; the men that had held her down in the beginning, when Ramsay had been too hard and too lazy to take the trouble to chain her up. Ramsay had never let them share her with him, a concession that she refused to be grateful for, and as she remembered how her bruised body had felt, sprawled naked and writhing beneath their hands, the same shame and anger that she felt each time she passed one of them in the halls swept through her, and to her mortification, she found tears beginning to sting her eyes and her skin beginning to crawl, infested with vermin, with filth, with this place and these people that Jaime had sent her to, JAIME, who was no better than Ramsay, no better; I need milk of the poppy –

But every time she looked up at him, she wanted to smile, and every time she felt the corners of her mouth turning upwards, her heart shattered; and through her tears, she could see Lord Roose watching her.

She let the tears come and determined not to look at Jaime again, Lord Roose suspects something, he suspects, so she looked at the Bastard's Boys instead; ridiculous, unkempt and macabre in their various stages of undress, carrying whichever weapons they had happened to seize on their way out of their beds. Sour Alyn clutched a meat cleaver and wore only his smallclothes, Yellow Dick's cock was only half-concealed by an undersized sleeping shift, I need milk of the poppy and Skinner carried his whip with him; a weapon whose touch Arya could still feel in every bone in her back; in every groove; in every scar as Margaery arrived; pushing aside the Bastard's Boys to get to Joffrey's side; ignoring them as they formed a scraggly circle around their chief and stared dumbly at the corpse, and then at Lord Roose; like the body of a festering maggot that had lost half its head and had no idea if the other half still functioned.

Margaery had knelt beside Joffrey, and had begun to shush him and comfort him and hold him to her ample bosom; her chest heaving as Joffrey buried his face in her teats and began to blubber.

Arya felt eyes on her once more; a gaze that drew her own upwards like a siren song, and it was Jaime again, the stupid, yellow-haired shit; spotless, like she was; white, golden, not marked by a single drop of blood, his gaze enveloping her as he beheld her, bare-armed, barefoot and vulnerable in her shift.

Sour Alyn and Skinner were both staring at her as though they wanted to bend her over Ramsay's corpse and fuck her now that he couldn't stop them.

Jaime stared at her as though he wanted to drape a cloak over her shoulders.

'Arrest him!' Joffrey shrieked.

Arya's lungs turned to stone as her eyes ripped away from Jaime's towards the mad king, he knows, he knows, he saw, somehow he saw, someone told him, and a gaping void opened up within her; slicing her insides like battle-axes I'm going to die, he's going to die, dear gods no, Lucion, what will they do to Lucion –

But Yellow Dick was the one being pounced on by the Kingsguard, and he struggled as madly as Arya's thoughts within her as she watched without understanding.

'Your Grace?' Lord Roose was protesting.

'I WANT THIS MAN ARRESTED AND EXECUTED FOR THE MURDER OF YOUR SON!' Joffrey bellowed.

'My love, you cannot –' Margaery began.

'Did you just say I cannot?' Joffrey shrieked.

'I am touched by your grief, Your Grace,' Lord Roose calmly ventured, 'but there is no evidence that this man –'

'Ramsay told me that this son of a whore had designs on his life; he told me so himself, me, the KING!' Joffrey screamed.

'You can call yourself Emperor of the Fucking Universe, it won't change the fact that I didn't touch the bastard,' Yellow Dick unhelpfully interjected, 'wish I had, though. He used me bad.'

'Hold your tongue, idiot!' Lord Roose snapped, I need milk of the poppy

'Is there treason in this house that you can protect such a man as this?' Margaery demanded.

'I WANT HIM EXECUTED!' Joffrey screamed, I need milk of the poppy

'Your Grace,' Lord Roose continued to protest, 'as Lord of the Dreadfort, I must be allowed a certain – '

'You may be the Lord of the Dreadfort, but I am the KING!' Joffrey bawled, I NEED MILK OF THE POPPY

And Margaery was trying to calm Joffrey, and Joffrey was striking her across the face and crying as she crumpled to the floor, and Arya's head was beginning to spin, with the cold beneath her feet, with the sounds of her past and her horror, with Ramsay as he lay dead, with too lucky, too lucky by far, Lord Roose knows, he suspects, I need milk of the poppy, I need it, and worst of all her head spun with Jaime; with his infernal fucking gaze, with his near-death and near-life, with the words that he had murmured to Ramsay as he plunged his sword into his chest: 'This is for her.'

He did it for me.

'Mother?'

He's too late.

'Mother?'

Too late.

'Mother?'

Arya looked slowly downwards. Lucion was there. The colour was draining from his face as he looked at his father, dead.

'I told you to stay in your chambers!' Arya despairingly snapped.

'Why has Father turned red?' Lucion managed to ask, before falling to the floor in a dead faint.