If Arya was praying, she was doing it in her head; her hands still clutching her son's right arm; her hands still helping Jaime drag him out of the water, even though the two of them were on the sand now, and Jaime was pressing down hard on the boy's chest; trying to bring his breath back.

'Lucion, please,' Jaime murmured.

Any other mother would have been hysterical, Jaime thought: crying and screaming and descending into a general state of uselessness. But Arya was covering Jaime's hands with hers, locking their fingers together and pressing down with him; her face blank and disciplined; hysteria reduced to a dull, frozen ache in her eyes that Jaime knew would slam into her later.

'Lucion, please,' Jaime repeated; pressing down harder as the little boy's gaunt face, blue lips and fragile fragileness swam in and out of his vision.

And he wanted to scream at her: where the fuck were you? What were you doing? WHAT WERE YOU DOING?

'Please,' Arya whimpered; looking down at her son; her jaw set so tightly that it might have been chiselled in stone; 'please, please, please…'

An empty bottle was lying three feet away from them in the sand. Its inside was streaked with white. And Jaime felt anger boil up in his chest and begin to sear at the corners of his being, and he slammed his hands down harder onto Lucion's chest, and harder, and harder –

'Jaime, stop!' he heard Arya shout in alarm; her hands trying to seize his.

But he shoved her away and didn't stop; pounding into the boy's chest as though he were made of straw, and Arya was pushing him now; her fingers digging into his shoulders like claws, just like they had dug into his hair when she had tried fucking him just to get some hands on some fucking milk of the poppy; the drug that had done this –

'You're pressing too hard; you're killing him!' Arya was screaming at him.

'He's already dead!' Jaime spat at her; a silent thanks to you hanging in the air between them like the red mist after a battle, and nothing could stop him now; he would make this little shit wake up, or tear him in half in the attempt; the boy felt pliable beneath Jaime's hands, like putty, 'STOP IT!' Arya was screaming, and his fists worked the boy's chest like hammers, pounding again and again and again; Lucion felt breakable and tearable, like some animal sacrifice to his mother's helplessness; and Jaime's hands were fisting in Lucion's shirt as a knife at his throat stopped him.

Arya grabbed a handful of Jaime's hair and yanked his head upwards; the point of the dagger nestling against the spot that would make him bleed out in thirty seconds.

He wanted to stand up and snap her neck.

Then the boy coughed.

A little splatter of water, so small as to be almost inconsequential, bubbled up from his mouth and splashed onto his face.

He moaned.

Arya screamed.

Jaime sank backwards into the sand as her walls began to crumble to pieces, as he had known they would. Guilt struck her face like a whip as she seized hold of her son and held him to her: deep, mind-numbing, mind-horrifying guilt; familiar symptoms to Jaime, so familiar. She covered the boy's face in kisses and berated him; calling him the greatest fool in the world and the most reckless child that ever breathed. Lucion said nothing; his eyes wide, staring and stupefied.

Arya looked at Jaime as she held onto her son. Their eyes met. And in that moment, though he hated himself for it later, he could find nothing within himself but anger.