Winterfell again. The tower and the fall. The boy. Jaime's clothes damp as she stormed away from him, the cut on his throat nothing, a bite barely perceived. The godswood sighed and rustled around him, the red leaves sounding different from the green ones, an empty space in the wood where she had been, and an empty space in his mind that had always been filled up, night and day, by the knowledge that the Stark boy had no one to blame but himself; by the anger he had felt at watching Robert stumble off to Cersei's bed every night for the duration of that entire, accursed northern trip; of never being with her. The emptiness that howled out of him from the place where the knowledge and the boy and the anger had once been made him sink slowly to the ground where he was, his back against the tree; feeling as though something inside him had collapsed. But when the emptiness filled up again, the something did not rebuild itself, and he could only think, and think; with no shield and no armour.

Cersei had had that look in her eyes that he knew so well; that crushing pressure and inevitability in her voice:

'He saw us. He saw us.'

Releasing the Stark boy, Jaime had looked back at her expectantly, waiting, and her eyes had told him what needed to be done, just as her voice she hadn't risen to her feet, gathered her skirts and hurled the boy out of the window herself. He had done that, and she had wanted him to do it. She had changed her mind later, of course, cursing him for a fool and pretending that the entire incident had been an accident of interpretation. But he and Cersei had the same mind. They were the same person. And she still thought she could fool him. She still talked to him like he had no way of knowing that what she was really angry about was the fact that the fall hadn't killed the boy. What a minx she was; what a lioness.

He had dreamed of the boy again that night, or rather of himself. His boots slipped on the smooth stone of the windowsill with what seemed like leagues and leagues of emptiness beneath him, and his fingers scrabbled desperately at the shirtfront of a reflection; a reflection no longer of himself, but of his father, his blue eyes cold and cruel.

There was no smiling or joking. Father never smiled, and Father never joked. But he did look back at Cersei, a question in his gaze, and her beautiful green eyes had answered him, just as they had once answered Jaime.

And 'I'm your son!' Jaime had screamed, 'I'm your son!' and then 'I'm your brother! Cersei! CERSEI!'

And he had fallen once again, the smallness of his body ripping the wind in two like a sword through canvas, and he had felt each individual bone in his back crack before the hurt and the darkness had claimed him. It had been nothing like leaping off the cliffs of Casterly Rock as he had done as a boy, laughing madly as Cersei screeched at him to stop, the feeling of his body as it hit the waves a shock of heat and cold and adventure.

The Stark boy had been nothing but an innocent on his own idea of an adventure. He must have liked to climb, just as Jaime had always liked to fall. And a person who supposedly existed to protect him, and all others like him, from any accidents that might befall him in his innocence, had flung him out of a fucking window and crippled him forever. The boy had done nothing wrong. The boy was blameless.

Lannister, he mockingly told himself, I believe that at present your entire body is submerged in something of a quasi-pre-cum haze, and that when you have poured a barrel of cold water over your head, you will feel differently.

He remembered seeing the rupture between day and night in the Stark girl's eyes on the morning that they had met; a schism that he saw in himself every day: two different people warring together in one body; two different lives running from the same horror. Paleness, tranquillity and mockery during the day – facing memory and presentness without turning cold – but knowing that each night the mask would dissolve and blow away in shards of glass or dust, and memory would have free reign, rising up from the redness behind his eyes each time he fell asleep. The Stark girl knew what it was like to live that way. He had seen it in her, and he knew that she had seen it in him.

It had never happened to him before. He had never seen it with his fellow soldiers or his brother Kingsguard, or even with Cersei; Cersei to whom he told everything, Cersei who knew every thought that had ever passed through his mind. The very idea that there existed a part of him that Cersei did not understand horrified him, even though he had known it for some time now. He had known it since the night he had decided to stay, and Father had mentioned the ravens…and the wildfire.

If Cersei knew him – if she truly knew every thought that had ever passed through his head – then she would allow Stannis to raze King's Landing to the ground sooner that even think of using that fucking wildfire.

How could she know what he had done, what the Mad King had done, not just at his death, but for years and years; how could she have sat there with her arms around him as the story of the wildfire plot came tumbling incoherently out of him like a prophecy from the mind of some madman; how could she have done that and felt it with him and known all the horrors that wildfire could perpetrate; and then uncover caches of the bloody stuff that he had told her about, before commissioning more of it, like it was some precious variety of Arbour gold being stockpiled for a royal wedding? What was the matter with her? Had she listened to a word he had said to her? Didn't she know what happened to people when they burned alive, how they screamed as the skin melted off their bones? Didn't she understand what he had done, and why?

But something else, only the murmur of a whisper, had also flickered into the back of his mind while Father talked about wildfire, and he had banished it immediately, because he had known that it was true. If Stannis succeeded in taking the city, then Cersei would not hesitate to do what Aerys had failed to do. She would burn the entire city to the ground if it meant she could be queen of the ashes. The shadow of it was in her, though she would never admit to it. He could hardly bear to think of it himself.

He remembered how the Stark girl had looked and felt, why he had kissed her and why he had wanted her. The void that existed in both him and her was reflected in every line and fold of her nakedness, just as he had always seen it reflected in every streak of silver in her grey eyes; and with his mouth and his body and his mind, he told her what he saw.

It was so different from being with Cersei, because he and Cersei were one person, one living being and mind that could not be separated. But being the same person as the Stark girl, being the same person as…Arya…was impossible. They were two halves of some sort of whole… but they were two distinct halves; similar, but never the same. They were two identities, two people. Not one. Never one.

What he had with Cersei was not like that at all. Even the desire he felt for Cersei was different. Fucking Cersei was blood, and violence, and pain. It was its own battle cry. It was born from a lifetime of anger, anger at having to be quick, and anger at being apart. There was never time for lying entwined or whispering things in the dark. There was only time for war, for committing a kind of murder that made him love her desperately, agonisingly and furiously. They were the gods of torture, Cersei and he: sweet, irresistible, blood-curling torture that both excited and enraged him. To hurt her was to love her, and he only loved her more each time she hurt him.

The thought of hurting Arya, on the other hand, filled him with nothing but horror. Yes, passion had erupted between them (a lot of it) and lust (a lot of that too), but also laughter and…refuge and…gentleness.

Gentleness? Have you gone soft?

Of course I haven't. It's why I argue with her each time I see her. It's why she argues with me. Words like that are not in our vocabulary. We've purged them from us. We've had to. And spitting in each other's faces and trampling on each other's dreams makes us forget how fucking vulnerable we feel each time we see each other, how afraid we are; because we see things in each other that the rest of the world can't; things that the rest of the world would never dare to associate with me, or with her. Because we see through each other's shields to the fear beneath. And being together, doing whatever it was that we did, feeling whatever it is that we felt, makes the fear disappear. We make fear disappear by acknowledging it together.

And he knew, then, that the fall had been his fault; his and Cersei's, and that he felt…ashamed.

He stood up to leave the godswood; to find that barrel of cold water and to find it quickly. He loved Cersei, adored her, he was her, but each and every time he clapped eyes on this wretched girl from the North, Cersei would be one step further away from him, and he could not tolerate that; the thought was too wrong, too terrifying. He had spent his entire life being one of two corporeal beings that occupied the same mental space. He knew nothing about being one side of a coin.

The Stark girl still had hope in her. Of course she pretended otherwise, but he could see it. Jaime had been exactly like her once, his hope placed in an ideal that no longer existed, and today, he was half-dead from his own stupidity. But she could still run. She could still escape. She was young, and she was strong. But instead, she was choosing not to; wasting her time, her hope and her chances at freedom on Father; putting herself on a straight and appallingly easy path to ending up where Jaime was: a disappointment to his father and the bearer of an infamous name, however little he may have deserved either of them. He didn't give a fuck about himself or his father, but he could not let her carry on like this. He would not.

By the time he re-entered the castle, it was almost midday, and Harrenhal was in pandemonium. Weapons were being unloaded, trunks being brought down, corpses being cut down, wagons sent round to the kitchens, and messengers running everywhere, getting constantly in the way of the soldiers that swarmed over the mountains of melted stone like bees.

Jaime pulled a soldier aside and asked him what was happening. The man had foul breath and bad teeth.

'Stannis is two days from the capital, Ser,' the soldier said, 'your lord father has given the order to march.'