Chapter Thirty-Four
Model release

Arya Stark had never been more exhausted in her life. Her shoulders and back ached. Her feet were sore, as well as slightly damp. A dull pain radiated from the left side of her bottom, which accounted for her current, odd slouch in the chair at her workstation. It was 3:15 on Saturday morning, and she had been tasked with the administrative burden of matching model releases to her pictures, and tagging them with as much information as she could.

She had been the luckless one at JHWire. The intern always gets the shite jobs, she thought to herself, grinning. If this were bad, she was perfectly fine with it. Just being included was joy enough, and she had had an actual photographic assignment for JHWire at the opening ceremony of the London Summer Olympics. She grinned. Her press pass was staring back at her whence it sat on the desk. Her name. Arya Stark. JHWire Photojournalist. Not intern. Photojournalist. Was this another gift from Jaqen?

Jon had texted her 19 times since she had last been home, some 21 hours previously. Almost a text an hour, though the last eight had come in a flurry in the last half hour. She had responded as quickly as she could to him, though her phone had been stowed in her camera bag while she was at the opening ceremony. He wasn't worried, but it was clear he meant to wait up for her return. His overprotective side is showing through, she thought.

While her compatriots at JHwire had shot the action, Arya had been left largely to her own devices. Her assignment had been "crowd reaction". She had managed several shots: (rubbish) longshots of the mass of the 80,000 audience members; (not half-bad) shots which used the architecture of the stadium to frame the crowd; and, when she grew bored, she shot the members of the audience themselves.

At some point, Jaqen had texted her with terse instructions. 'Find a cab and go back to JHWire when the OC is done and wait for us. We should be back around 2'. She had done just that, though neither Jaqen nor anyone else had shown up.

Much earlier, on Friday morning, Arya had arrived at JHWire to find Izembaro waiting for her with a sheaf of little yellow papers. He had thrust them at her, as if reluctant to hold them any longer.

'Model releases,' he had said. 'You'll need these. Anyone with a face.'

Rorge had stopped by later to wish her luck. And to tell her not to forget the model releases. About an hour before they were to leave, Arya was astonished. Several more JHWire staff had reminded her about model releases: Eleni with attitude, Gendry with kind concern, Umma with biscuits. It had become the theme of the day.

Arya could not help but laugh when Jaqen drifted into her office. He was different. His customary playfulness was gone, replaced by something harder-edged. More driven. He's looking forward to this, she realised.

'Lovely girl,' he said, taking the model releases and tucking them into her camera bag. 'You must not forget these. If a person is affiliated with the athletes or is a public figure, you don't need them. But otherwise, you must get your subject to sign...What is so funny?'

'It's just about the sixth time someone's reminded me about model releases!' She told him, chuckling.

He smiled with her. 'Good, then you won't forget.'

'No, I won't forget.'

'Are you excited?' he asked.

She nodded, unable to speak the half-truth: 'Yes, I am excited.' Part of her was in an agony of self-doubt: But what if I'm rubbish at this?

'Good. So am I. It's not often we get this kind of assignment with so little trouble to get to it.'

He sat and stayed a little while with her, going over the 30-page press photography kit. Who to shoot, what to shoot, when to shoot. He was warm, trying to calm her as if he knew that she was nervous. Which wasn't especially perceptive of him, since her hands were visibly shaking.

He traced the back of her left hand gently with his index finger.

'It's for you to learn. Don't feel that you have to get perfect shots. Just make sure that you get the model releases signed.' He smirked at his inadvertent repetition. 'And have fun, right?'

The city was swollen with both its summer glut of tourists and further, with Olympic spectators. In the air there was an excitement unusual for London, which was mostly rather buttoned-up and, occasionally, dour and sullen.

Arya moved throughout the crowd. Up stadium stairs and down again until her legs cried out in protest. She could not avoid the rain, which pelted her on and off, but she had a rain shield for her camera (in the form of a plastic bag that once had held a few biscuits).

Early on, she cracked off a shot of Gendry, huddled behind a tarped computer, looking utterly miserable. She caught a few shots of important personages. The Queen in pink lace. She shot ordinary people. All enraptured. It was a good show, even though Arya saw it play out mostly through shadows and light shifting and dancing on others' faces.

She was diligent at getting model releases.

At her desk, she browsed through her photos and flagged ones she thought were halfway decent. The model releases had almost all been compiled. Sixteen of them and counting. When did I shoot sixteen people?

She glanced at her watch. 3:30 am. Jaqen was still not back. JHwire was quiet; apart from the noises she made shifting in her chair to ease the aches in her body. The occasional soft chirp of her hard drive broke the monotone hum of the fluorescents.

A hand on her shoulder woke her. It was 4:09. The office had come to life again, while she had drifted off, face pressed to the keyboard. Furiously she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and surreptitiously surveyed the desktop for drool. Relieved to find none, she only then was able to meet Jaqen's eyes.

He looked utterly shattered, but broke into a broad smile when he saw her face. 'I see your work here has left quite an imprint.'

'Huh?'

He reached out and stroked her right cheek for a moment, which was crisscrossed with red gridmarks from her keyboard.

'Oh God!' Arya exclaimed, frantically rubbing her face.

His peal of laughter was heartfelt. 'Dangers of the business!' he said.

Jaqen moved to sit. Uncharacteristically graceless, he plopped into her guest chair.

'I am sorry for keeping you so late,' he began. 'We were searching frantically for a certain type of photo. You don't happen to have any protest or dissent shots, do you?'

Yeah, because there was a lot of dissent in audience members that paid hundreds of pounds to sit there for four hours. They were sore-arsed perhaps, but that's about it.

Something of this may have showed on her face, or perhaps it was her skeptical arched eyebrow that made him laugh. 'I know,' he said. 'Faint hope. A desperate man asks silly questions.'

'I just have crowd shots,' she said. 'But it's late. You probably don't want to go through them or...' she trailed off, for he had already pulled his chair up close to her and had clicked open her lightroom.

'Oh God!" Arya exclaimed, again. 'Jon!' She reached for her mobile.

'I talked to your brother,' he said as he began to search through her photos. 'He was getting worried when you didn't respond for a while,' Jaqen grimaced. 'But I told him it was all fine. I told him that I wasn't any threat to your virtue...tonight.' He yawned. 'Too tired.'

Arya laughed in spite of herself. Now Jon's going to want to have another talk with me. Great.

'There!' Jaqen pointed at the screen. 'That one. It's not precisely what they want, but we have no other options.'

'Not that one,' Arya groaned.

The photograph in question was of a young child. Arya had captured her attempting to leave the stadium, having had just about enough noise and spectacle for one evening. The child's face was scrunched up and she had begun to wail. Behind her, her mum was in pursuit, a giant whirly lolly in hand. Arya watched and photographed the half-coax, half-chase, and had helped the mum recover her child.

'Perfect,' Jaqen said. 'Excellent. It's whimsical and fun and still shows someone not enjoying herself. Look, even the lolly has the Olympic colours.' He was pleased.

'Not that one,' Arya reiterated.

'Why?' he said, looking back at her.

'Model release,' she said, timidly, and watched the anger begin to gather on his face.

'What?' he asked, quietly.

'I did get it,' she explained quickly. 'But I cannot find it. It's not with the others.'

'Fuck,' was his succinct response. 'Did you drop it?'

'No,' she shook her head. 'I couldn't have. I would have seen it.'

'Where is it, then?'

'I don't know.'

'Have you looked everywhere?'

'Stop badgering her, Jaqen, and find the bloody release instead,' Rorge called out, helpfully.

Jaqen put his hands over his eyes. 'I'm sorry. I'm being stupid. Bag?'

They turned her camera bag out on the table. He helped her quickly rifle through everything, though she balked when he opened the small pouch containing her emergency supply of sanitary towels, which she'd placed to the side, well away from him.

An audible crack sounded as she slapped his hand away.

He winced.

'It's not in there, Jaqen,' she growled.

'What the fuck are you two doing?' Rorge asked, laughing.

'My hand went somewhere it wasn't supposed to go,' Jaqen responded, laughing.

Gendry poked his head in, blinking at the chaos on Arya's desk. 'Right. Anything I can do to help? Need a bodyguard, milady?' he asked Arya.

'No, just gotta find this release,' she sighed. He withdrew, mostly satisfied that nothing was amiss.

'Coat?' Jaqen asked. She put her hands in the pockets of her jacket, which she was still wearing. Nothing in the waist pockets. She unzipped the jacket, thinking that a model release could have found its way into the secret inside pocket. She turned away from his impatience and frustration, which she could feel in his breathing (rapid and shallow) and in his body (his left foot beat a steady tap-tap-tap-tap rhythm on the floor). There was nothing in the breast pockets.

Just as she found that the breast pockets of her jacket yielded nothing, she yelped, for both of Jaqen's hands had found their way into the front pockets of her denims.

'Come on!' Rorge cried. 'What the fuck now?'

'He's just put his hands down my bloody trousers is all,' Arya called out, shimmying away from Jaqen.

Laughter sounded through the office.

He was stood with his fists closed beside him, grinning at her.

'Pick a hand, lovely girl,' he cooed. All anger was gone.

She not-so-gently tapped the left. He slowly turned his wrist and opened his hand, palm up. Her lip gloss.

She slapped his right hand. He smiled broadly before repeating the same action. On his right palm, a rather crumpled piece of yellow paper. She grinned at him before picking up the paper.

His hand snatched hers, holding on for a brief second before letting go.

'We have a winner,' he cried out. 'We have found our release!'

Arya blushed. It sounded rather naughty. His smirk confirmed that he, too, was aware of what he'd said.

'Thank fuck,' Rorge retorted from over the wall. 'Can we go home now?'

'Almost, almost.'

Arya emailed Jaqen the RAW file of the photograph, and he sent it off. Somewhere.

'Where is it going?' she asked.

'You'll see,' he said.

He sent her a text around 7:00 am. 'A6', it read, but it would be evening before she woke to see it.

A/N: Sorry, it's been a while since I've managed to update. Thanks for reading and reviewing: these things help me keep going!