Chapter 37: A Day to Cherish, Part III. Lion's Jaws

I am utterly confused

By the power of your ruse

And the trick you've played on me

In your unforgiving glee.

Why your face holds me entranced

I cannot know at a glance,

But there's something in its lines

That with my heart intertwines.

Why your eyes are so appealing

I have never truly known —

You will not begin revealing

All the secrets that they own.

I have wondered if your lips

Are tantamount to bliss,

Or whether in their red

Lies the reason I'll be dead.

I have contemplated why

My mind can you stupefy

And what magic feeds your hold

Over my immortal soul.

I have yet to know the reason

For the way you make me feel

Or if to gods I should appeal

To be rescued from your prison.

I guess I'll see you below.

He had not understood her words: they had seemed to have come from a place of absurdity, so little sense they made. He had seen her move toward the edge of the platform but, his mind still deciphering her last sentence, he had not suspected any danger in it, or he would have grasped her without any intention of letting her go until they were somewhere from where she could not jump. These same words had acquired a terrifying meaning, however, when he had seen her step into emptiness and disappear. He rushed toward the edge but only caught sight of her red hair, which, worn loose by her that day, had effected something akin to hypnosis on him so many times in the past hours; the red locks, which he had watched being caressed by the wind with some envy of that element, had taken the shape of a fiery teardrop as she fell. That tear of flame kept gliding further and further away from him as he watched, petrified into immobility, how Sansa flew through the nearly two-hundred feet of nothing that separated the place where he now stood alone from the sea below. He had never felt such utter, gut-wrenching dread. Indeed, he had never conceived that such all-engulfing fear existed. There seemed to be acid in the place where his heart had jumped and disappeared when he understood what she had done. Had the world been suddenly turned inside out and he had found himself in its burning center, he would not have been so utterly confused or felt such trepidation. His blood chilled, seemingly unable to move through his veins, he had grown cold in the blaze of Southern sun as he followed with his gaze the seemingly immaterial dot Sansa had become as she neared, faster and faster, the waters' surface, and he was entirely, brutally incapable of stopping the terrifying progression. He kept watching, aghast, how her feet touched the waters' surface, how the green-blue substance swallowed her slender form, and Sansa — that kind-hearted, beautiful, talented, magical creature, who was his comfort in a world that was neither kind nor beautiful and had so little talent or magic in it — metamorphosed into sea foam. In that moment, while he watched the white splash she had left in the wake of her dive, had the Stranger materialized before him and offered him that the minx may come up for air at the price of his own life and more besides, Jaime would have considered it a bargain. The Stranger, it seemed, was preoccupied with other matters that early afternoon and did not appear. However, as, in a mixture of panic and absolute concentration, the green eyes frantically searched the aquamarine waters, they beheld the red hair and the ivory-white skin re-emerge from the depths of the sea. Re-emerging, Sansa laughed, gave a triumphant, jubilant cry, and waved to him from below. The relief that followed the monstrous fear he had experienced was so great, he staggered. His heart had returned to fill the acid hole left by her abrupt and, he thought now, utterly inhumane departure, and it was beating wildly, pumping blood through his veins with such force and rapidity that he felt lightheaded. He lowered his hands to his knees and stood bended thus, focusing on catching his breath and not letting his heart jump out of his body by way of his mouth.

She's alive.

Then, on the heels of that relief, came a terrible suspicion.

Is she hurt?

Immediately, he restored his gaze to where she floated indolently, apparently unhurt. But how to make sure that she was, indeed, uninjured and that the adrenaline that must have flooded her bloodstream — even if its amount must have been nothing in comparison to what he himself had been awarded by her actions — did not conceal a sprain or something akin to it? Something worse, perhaps? Moreover, what if, in case she was injured, she would have trouble staying afloat before he reached her? These and other such thoughts flashed through his mind with such celerity, his brain retained only the vaguest impression of them, which culminated in one absolute, dominating imperative: he had to get to her, and he had to do it now. He did not even consider taking the stairs, or the fact that if, in jumping, they were both injured, it would be so much the worse for them.

He dove after her, headfirst.

Thus, the stupefied public of the quay of Blackwater Bay was presented with the bizarre sight of two people jumping off the Red Keep tower within the space of less than five minutes.

Sansa had never liked heights and, evidently, had never tried jumping from them. But — as with so many things she had discovered in King's Landing, many of them in some ways connected to Jaime Lannister — she had found an incomparable thrill in having the world zip past her and entering the water, feeling her body permeate with rapid force the welcoming depths of the warm sea. She came up for air and shouted happily, proclaiming to the world her elation and her love, as if she had performed a sacred rite of passage. Then, she looked up and discerned Jaime's silhouette on the tower's platform. She waved to him, taking satisfaction, as always, in doing something he enjoyed with him. She watched him plunge into the void, his straightened, agile body flying through the air like a well-carved arrow, its trajectory perfect, its speed terrific. She traced his jump — although, in his case, it looked more like a professional dive than a fall — and saw him enter the water with few splashes only a couple meters from her. Giddy at having forced her way into his secret hobby, she smiled as she waited for him to come up to the surface. Through the crystal-clear sea, she saw him turn once his inertia had slowed and swim toward her underwater instead of coming up directly for air. He emerged from the water right in front of her, his wet hair clinging to his face in a chaotic fashion. At seeing him like this, her heart jumped in that familiar way. As soon as he had broken through the surface of the water, his hands reached for her, as if to connect her to earth, like tying a balloon so as to prevent it from drifting off into the sky.

"Are you all right? Are you hurt?" came the questions.

His face a picture of seriousness, his eyes narrowed, his hands, entirely devoid of the sensuality that usually seemed to emanate from him, felt the bones of her arms as he tried to ascertain if any one of them was broken. He would have carried out a similar, medically distant, inspection of her legs, but that she pushed him away, laughing at his concern.

"Don't be ridiculous! If nothing has happened to you — or to your ten-year-old self, for that matter — why would anything happen to me?"

Jaime watched her, happy and unharmed as she was before him, his brain slowly catching up to the fact that, indeed, the enormous fright she had given him had had no serious repercussions, although it would certainly account for most of his grey hair, when they came. His fear was translated into fury.

He grasped her by the shoulders, his green eyes blazing:

"Are you completely mad?!" he screamed. "What in the Stranger's name were you thinking, jumping like that?! What if you had hurt yourself?! What — "

But she cut him off by wiggling out of his hold once more, her long legs pushing lightly against the water as she drifted some two feet away from him, the happy expression never fully leaving her face, even though defiance came to her features:

"Oh, please," she said, and he thought her careless tone the height of insolence, entirely unwarranted after she had used him so ill, "you begin to sound like your father."

This remark made Jaime speechless, as his sense capitulated before the cognitive dissonance her words had produced in his mind. Taking advantage of his shock, she continued, swimming closer to him before she made her point.

"You," she said, stabbing his chest with her index finger, as had become her habit whenever she desired to stress the words she addressed to him, "are not my father, and, as we've already established, I don't even listen to him, or I wouldn't be here." She paused for emphasis. "So, you, especially, don't get to tell me what I can and cannot do, Jaime Lannister."

Though he was livid, or perhaps because of it, he could find nothing immediately to answer her. Nevertheless, he felt a gnawing, impotent rage at being unable, as she herself had just pointed out, to prohibit her from doing something so idiotic ever again.

"Idiot," he grumbled under his breath, the sounds gritted through his teeth.

"Hey!" she protested vehemently, "I might take offense!"

"It would be better if you could draw conclusions instead!" he barked, still palpitating with anger.

She came closer to him, her temper rising, and her own eyes began to flare:

"Why is it you think that I should not be allowed to do what you do?!" she exclaimed, "You yourself admitted to jumping from the tower!"

He did; but to him, it had always seemed that his death would have been nothing particularly troublesome, while Sansa's…

"When I was a child and didn't know any better!" he countered.

He refused to address the fact that she was now only eight years older than he had been when he had started jumping.

"Of course, you knew!" she countered, "You've been told so by Osha, and Tyrion hated it when you jumped! You said so yourself: there are no rocks at the bottom — what could possibly go wrong?"

Too late had she realized that she should not have posed the rhetorical question, because Jaime did not consider it rhetorical in the slightest.

"It was over twenty years ago, you little fool! What if something had changed since then?! What if there were rocks there now, huh?"

He would have said more, but she interrupted him.

"Tell me true, Jaime, when you were jumping all those years ago," the time she had pronounced in a mocking tone that irritated him, fail as he had to discern in her mockery a desire to lessen the difference between their ages rather than exaggerate it, "did you begin by going into the water below the tower," again there was mockery in her voice, "and carrying out a detailed inspection of the sea bottom — or did you just jump, headfirst?"

He had jumped feet-first, but that was not the point.

"That's not what we are talking about right now!" he exclaimed, driven to the end of madness by what he considered her stubborn foolhardiness.

"Of course, it is!"

"We are talking about you doing something utterly daft that puts your life in danger! It's just like that stupid transition all over again!" She could not believe he decided to bring up the movement she had pushed into the choreography weeks ago. He continued: "Only this time, it's by far more dangerous! Why would you do something so exceedingly moronic?!"

His exasperation availed him nothing by way of reasoning with her: his words did not reach her in the slightest, it seemed, for she splashed him with water as a way of cutting short his monologue. She had the temerity to laugh gaily and start swimming away, as if to escape from his possible retaliation. Noticing, however, that his fury had not abated and that he had not accepted her invitation to a splashing contest, she halted her progress. He brushed his wet hair away from his face, and she recognized immediately this gesture of exasperation. Upset in spite of herself and feeling guilty for having provoked his anger — and, she guessed only now, his fear — on a day when, in all fairness, Jaime deserved more gentle treatment, she swam back to him. If their relationship permitted her such liberty, she would have wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her body to his, to appease him, but, as this was entirely inappropriate, all things considered, she dove and came up behind him, throwing her arms around his neck in this, far more friendly and less intimate, way. He pretended to ignore her.

"Fine! I'm sorry I've upset you," she offered in an almost sheepish way.

He hemmed, indicating that, while he had heard her, he was not prepared to accept her peace terms that easily.

"Hey!" she protested, "I'm trying to make peace here!"

"Why don't you begin by promising you'll never jump off that tower again?"

She was still clinging to his neck from behind, but he knew she had thrown back her head as she laughed.
"Oh, miss Osha," the vixen's voice mocked him, "I promise to be good! I'll never jump — Oh, wait! I'm not ten years old, and you're not my nanny! I don't have to promise you anything!"

That's it!, was all that had flashed through Jaime's mind before he acted.

She had expected him to talk back to her, bickering further. However, she had not been prepared for a momentary pause that followed her jape — the first sign that something she had not anticipated was afoot. Like when he had scooped her up easily into his arms on the evening of the gala months ago, so now she had not even had the time to realize what and how he had moved to achieve his ends. All she had been aware of was that, somehow, she had lost her grip on his shoulders and neck and his hands had pushed her over his head and into the water in front of him. A little disoriented by this occurrence, she had been powerless to evade the swift hands that brought her close to him. In a space of some seconds after the quip had left her lips, she found herself staring into green eyes that, while, still, there was concern and anger in them, were softer now. As she had had cause to think on several other occasions, this time, too, she believed that Jaime Lannister looked very much like a lion — albeit, wet and disheveled, but still glorious. She rested her hands on his forearms, not daring to place them on his shoulders, like she so desperately wanted to.

"Promise you'll never jump off that tower again," he said in a tone that was soft and serious, entreating in its quiet strength. A prisoner of his quiet voice that seemed to reverberate through her very being, still she shook her head.

"I can do whatever you do…" she countered quietly, stubborn even in her newly found timidity.

"You can, I don't doubt it," he answered, "I'm just asking you not to. Promise me," he entreated her again.

"No," she mumbled.

She wanted too desperately to preserve her right to this new part of him that loved flying through the air from the height of two-hundred feet; that part of him Cersei had not already claimed. He sighed, exasperation warring with patience on his face.

"Sansa — " he began.
"I'll make you a bargain, Lannister," she interposed, rediscovering her spirit.

"What kind of a bargain?" he asked warily.

She spoke quickly, as if to utter the words before they had frozen on her lips.

"I can promise you never to jump from that tower on my own, if you agree we'll come back and jump together sometime."

Having made the bold proposition, she searched his face, trying to ascertain if she had crossed a line. He was watching her, too, and she did not know that, for some time now, even in spite of his anger, he had been thinking that her eyes were even more beautiful than the water of the Narrow Sea: bluer, clearer, more dazzling. He sighed again, realizing she had cornered him.

"All right, minx, that's a deal," he agreed.

But I'll make sure to catch you before ever you jump away like this.

Their peace deal brokered, he released her as unwillingly as she was reluctant to leave his arms, and they started toward the shore. She proposed to race and lost long before they reached land: he outswam her considerably in a matter of minutes, waiting for her to catch up with a celebratory grin. Acknowledging her defeat with a puff, she swam next to him the rest of the way without suggesting contests.

"Tell me, minx," he said in a voice full of humor as they were nearing the beach that lay between the castle walls and the quay, a liminal space between the past and the present, "what do you think we should do now, wet to the bone as we are?"

She was silent. She had not exactly thought through these details when she had stepped into emptiness, and now, faced with the prospect of walking around the city with hair from which water would drip for at least a quarter of an hour and a wet dress that clung to her body immodestly, she was beginning to perceive the less well-worked out aspects of her actions.

Jaime's voice, mocked her with its feigned seriousness:

"I'm very curious as to your plan."

They had reached the shallow water and were walking knee-deep in it, toward the beach.

"I don't know, Jaime, you're the jumping expert!"

He only laughed at her.

"Well," she improvised under this pressure, watching the sun-lit rocks and sand, "we can always dry a little here in the sun before considering what to do next."

He looked around the beach and then at her, an infernal smirk on his lips.

"Why not? After your madness earlier today, I don't suppose that a sunstroke will do me much harm…"

I hope he will not be grumbling about this the way he has been about the transition…

"Oh, for gods' sake, Jaime!" she cried out. "It's probably not even possible to get a sunstroke from sitting in the sun when you're completely wet!"

"I suppose you're the expert in sun matters, Northern Princess," he returned.

Annoyed at his use of this new nickname, she pushed him, hoping he would lose his balance and fall in the shoal, but he did not, bringing her to him instead.

"You're awfully fond of pushing me around," he observed. She rolled her eyes and snorted but did not try to get out of his grasp. "Is that the sort of violence with which you bully your brothers?" he asked before releasing her.

"No," she said, a little abashed. "And what does the way I treat my brothers have to do with you?"

They left the sea and walked along the beach toward the large rocks that could serve for seats. When he answered her, there was so much teasing in his voice, it was inordinate even by the standard of his generally taunting attitude toward her.

"Oh, you treat my hangovers the way you do Robb's, you generally harass me the way I still suspect you do your brothers…" The latter was not true, but she did not have the time to point this out, because he continued: "I suppose I'm wondering if you think me one of them…"

A brother is, perhaps, the very last thing I'd ever want you to be, she reflected, feeling a little stung by this gibe of his.

"I don't know, Jaime," she answered, suddenly brazen in her retort, "it seems to me that, with you, it's a bit of a trick question."

His eyes rounded, astonishment the absolute ruler of his features. No one, except Tyrion, had ever dared tease him about his relationship with Cersei (and even Tyrion did so very rarely): no one really knew about the affair, and those who did suspect something kept quiet. Notwithstanding, here was the minx, making fun of this hidden aspect of his life, dragging it into the sunlight as if it were just another peculiarity of his biography — nothing to be concerned about, a fact of life, fair game for taunts. He watched her, too astounded to speak. Seeing his shocked expression, Sansa grew conscious of the low blow she had delivered him unwittingly and cursed her own stupidity as well as her insensitivity: such brutality came from having as one's only object never to find oneself without a retort and not watching one's tongue as a consequence. She came to him and took her hand in both her own. He looked at her in stupefaction, empty-eyed, but she was relieved not to see pain in his expression — not yet, at least.
"I'm sorry," she said guiltily, "it just sort of slipped out… I… I was just teasing… I… You see, I forgot for a moment about what happened last night and — "

He faced her fully, then, his eyes re-focusing on her, losing the emptiness.

"What do you know?" he asked. "What did I tell you last night?"

She sighed.

"I… You…Well…"

Realizing that she was not exactly eloquent, she pursed her lips as if to physically prevent any more stuttering from leaving her mouth. She did not know what to say to him or how to say it. She made her way to the rocks, trying to escape the conversation. He came to sit next to her.

"It's only fair," he said in a tired voice, "that you tell me what I was saying."

"I don't know, Jaime, you weren't exactly coherent…" she tried.

That's not even a lie, she thought, I only have my guesses to go by.

"And yet, you seem to know that whatever happened last night had strained my relationship with my sister," he countered with evil sarcasm.

"It's only a guess," she protested weakly, in a quiet voice.

He saw her face redden, and her blush told him that her deductions had hit the mark.

"Clearly, a fairly good guess," he said, his voice growing cold.

Not realizing that the coldness had been provoked by his recollections of the risqué position in which he had surprised his lover last night and not by her, Sansa grew fearful and desperate. She turned to him, her eyes searching his face.

"You didn't tell me anything!.. You only mumbled your sibling's names and about betrayal… I…"

She felt herself reddening further in a painful sort of way. Talking about the unfaithful sister-lover of the man she herself was in love with was hardly an easy or a pleasant task, and she feared how he would react to this conversation. She was again animated by the powerful loathing of Cersei Lannister that she had felt the night before.

I hate her, she thought, for not loving him completely, for not treating him right… I would have hated her less, had she but loved him… Like I do.

"You looked so hurt…" she continued quietly, shifting her gaze to her hands when he turned to look at her. "You kept saying their names… Something about a beast and a red kimono — I didn't understand that… Then, you said 'whore,' so I concluded that…" she thought the capillaries under the skin of her face would burst, "I thought that your sister… that she wasn't… faithful," the last word she had pronounced in a whisper — a tortured sound that may have hidden her own sob and certainly did conceal a shaky release of breath.

To her surprise, Jaime laughed at the end of her bungled monologue, but this laugh was not the joyous one she usually heard from him when they were together; instead, it was an angry, hate-filled sound.

"I must say," he stated, and his tone was cuttingly cold, "I'm rather gratified that, even unconscious, I was able to characterize my sister with so much precision."

So it's true, Sansa thought and found that this confirmation of her suspicions — nay, her insights — filled her with astonishment. True, she thought this was what had happened; and yet… And yet, she could not fully grasp how — or why — a woman whom Jaime loved could betray him thus. It was so utterly incomprehensible to her, who dreamed of simply spending a few hours in his company, that she could not entirely give credit to this truth, so entirely preposterous it seemed to her. The memory of Jaime's tortured face from last night rose before her, and her heart wailed in anger and pain. Overcome by these emotions, she embraced him from the side, her arms encircling his shoulders, her hands joining on the deltoid muscle of one even as her head came to rest on the other. She felt him tense for a second.

"I'm so sorry, Jaime," she said in a quiet voice that served well to conceal how it was breaking, and felt him relax a little into her touch. "I… I am so sorry…"

His hand turned her face to him, and she found the narrowed green eyes watching her with suspicion.

"Why?" he asked with genuine incomprehension. "You don't particularly like Cersei… You cannot possibly think our relationship normal — if anything, I'm quite certain it revolts you… So why in the Seven Hells would you say you're sorry? And, what's more, how can you mean it — as you genuinely seem to do?"

She dared touch his cheek, feeling the angular cheekbone with her hand, like she had done the night before.

"I'm sorry because you're hurt," she said slowly.

I don't care what's 'right' — I care that you're hurt, flashed in her mind.

He seemed quite surprised by her words. He smiled that rueful smile she recognized from earlier and took her hand from his cheek, watching her fingers the way, although he did not remember it, he had done last night.

"You…" he laughed softly. "You're quite possibly the single kindest, most generous person I've ever met," he said before placing a chaste kiss on the back of her hand.

Her heart seemed to have burst from the adrenaline, then, regenerating, did a somersault in her chest.

I'm not that good, she thought, I just love you.

Emboldened by his gesture of affection, she traced her free hand over his hair lightly, as if, truly, it was a lion's mane.

"Do you think you can forgive her?" she asked, hoping that, perhaps, the twins could be reconciled, and the pain would leave Jaime's face.

I can't have him, she reflected, and I can't make him happy, like she can. At least, if they patched things up, maybe he'd be less upset.

But Jaime, it seemed, was not disposed to even consider her suggestion. He got up, leaving her embrace, depriving her of that rare closeness between them.

"I'm far more likely to wring her neck," he bit out.

She knew instinctively that he had put the distance between them because of his anger at her suggestion, but she did not give credit to his threat toward his sister.
"I didn't mean to upset you," she said in a pacifying tone, "but, perhaps, it was just a mistake, and one she regrets."

He nearly scared her, and certainly unsettled her, with his malevolent laugh.

"Two decades for the same mistake, I doubt she regrets it very much," he bit out in a quiet, dangerous voice.

"What?" she asked, completely misapprehending his meaning.

He paused. He was looking out onto the sea again, his back to her, as if, by turning away, he could bear facing the truth in Sansa's presence with a blind kind of courage.

"Last night… After — " he sighed and rubbed his face with his hands.

"After you've seen her?" Sansa asked.

She probably confessed to him that she'd made a mistake and said how she regretted it.

"Yes, her and that swine, Osmund Kettleback."

The name meant nothing to her; the heinous manner of the revelation Jaime had received left her feeling nauseous.

Poor Jaime. She hated his sister with renewed venom. No wonder at all he drank so much — probably, to forget what he'd seen.

"But it's not just that," he continued, still with his back to her, "I also learned from Tyrion that she had other lovers since we were teenagers."

Another wave of nausea. Another wave of hatred. Another wave of pain she felt for him. No sooner had she battled these waves than Jaime continued.

"And my brother…" he paused, anger and pain ringing in the silence. "My brother knew about it — from the very beginning — and he did not tell me. Cersei and I had problems for a long time, but I've always thought that Tyrion…"

She couldn't leave him alone anymore, standing in solitude on this beach, nothing but the heartless sea in front of him. She came to stand by his side and took his hand. He half-turned to her and half-smiled but restored his gaze to the water.

"Jaime…" she began, "I hope you… I hope you can… eventually… I hope you can recover from this…"

He smirked sadly.

"It's twenty years of my life, Sansa," he said and looked at her. "It's longer than you've been alive."

She smirked, too, rueful in her turn.

"I don't know how, but I wish I could help…"

"You already have," he smiled, "imagine if I had a hangover in addition to everything else…"

Or if I was alone… I would have probably kept drinking…

Sansa smiled sadly.

"I wish I could help more than that… I know I can't, but I wish I could."

He smiled at her again.

"Like I said: the single kindest, most generous person I've ever met."

"Don't exaggerate," she advised him.

"I don't," he answered. She had nothing to say to that.

In silence, they started walking along the beach toward the quay. Their clothes had at least stopped dripping water, allowing them to venture into public spaces. As they walked, Sansa was thinking about what Jaime had said concerning Tyrion. She had always thought the relationship between the Lannister brothers very touching: the warmth, the love, the care that was so clear in the way they behaved toward each other. She remembered how Tyrion always said Jaime's name: a little, it reminded her of how very religious people pronounced the names of their gods — the way her grandfather used to talk about the godswood, for instance. Rickard Stark had died when she was very young, but the way he used to say, "godswood," was one of the main things she remembered about him; he would often take her there with him, telling her about the sacred trees and the Old Gods, while his weak hand held her little one. She had no doubt that the Lannister brothers would die for each other, and it often seemed to her when she looked at them together that it was just them against the world — and had been so for a long time. So why would Tyrion lie to his brother, the person whom he loved best in all the world — better even, she suspected, in some ways, than Margery? No, she could not believe that Tyrion had willingly betrayed his brother. It was simply impossible — not because she could not imagine it; but because she knew it was not true.

She spied an empty bench on the quay, near the water, and started walking toward it. They sat there in the same silence that had marked their stroll from the beach.

Jaime had always trusted his brother; in fact, it had never occurred to him not to trust Tyrion, and if, with time, he had come to see that Cersei was not always genuine and did not always have his best interests at heart, he had always believed that Tyrion was the only person who would never betray him or do anything to harm him — after all, Jaime had always loved and protected his little brother. To discover Tyrion's betrayal was, in many ways, far more difficult than to witness the last mask being peeled off Cersei's face. And now… What could he not blame on his brother's treacherous silence! Aerys; a life-long devotion to a woman who clearly did not love him back — at least, not in the way he had loved her or had wanted her to love him. In these moments of bitterness, when rational thought was very far from Jaime's mind, it seemed to him that, had he known about his twin's multiple infidelities, he would have walked away from her long ago… And then, Sansa would have met a very different man, perhaps: one not accused of murder, no longer guilty of incest… A man a little more worthy in her eyes, if not sufficiently so… His children were perhaps the only strange gift of his fate that he would not bear to fade away if the wheels of time were turned back; but even as he could not wish them gone — no more than he could wish his heart to be something else — so he could not help imagining these same children being born to a different woman and calling him 'father.' Of course, he never imagined them being Sansa's, perhaps because he subconsciously stopped his mind before it could paint before him images too enticing and torturous to contemplate. There was much he could reproach Tyrion with, much to add to his account against his younger brother. In spite of his brooding, he had noticed Sansa start walking to a bench and joined her there.

"Jaime," she called and he turned to watch her. "I know that it's not my place and that you may be angry with me for saying what I'm about to say — "

"I don't think it's possible for me to be really angry with you," he smiled.

"Just wait until I come up with another choreographic step or jump from that tower!.." she teased.

"Oh, then, I make no promises!"

They laughed softly.

"You realize," he said, "that it's more fear than anger, even?"

"When you yell at me for jumping?"

"Yes. I'm in great fear of how many bones your foolhardiness may cost you," he said, as if his joking tone could distill the meaning of his words.

She nodded, blushing a little. It was not strange that she should blush, when her heart was like an over-worked engine, puffing and puffing in reckless rashness at his words. She took a deep breath and faced him — or rather, made herself face him. She caught the same gentle expression on his face that made her feel as if sun was a liquid and had been spilled in her chest.

"But I was going to say…" she said, and he indicated by his raised eyebrows his readiness to hear her, "about Tyrion — "

He turned away from her quickly, acrimony invading his eyes.

"I know you're angry and you don't want to hear it, because you're hurt!" she started, speaking quickly, more loudly than she had intended, certainly with more feeling than she thought was due to entreat him peaceably. "But that's like medicine: it hurts because it's useful, and I think it's useful for you to hear what I'll say."

He made as if to rise from the bench, but she held onto his arm.
"Please, listen to me," she begged, urgency in her voice. "I have two elder brothers, Jon and Robb, as you know. They love each other very much — we, my siblings and I, we all love each other very much… And my father, he has a younger brother, Ben…" She saw a muscle jump in Jaime's jaw at the mention of her uncle's name — the man who had been the prosecutor initially dealing with Aerys' death — but she soldiered on, regardless: "What I'm trying to say is this: I've been around brothers all my life, brothers who love each other dearly. I cannot speak about your relationship with your sister, because I've hardly ever seen you together, but I have seen you and Tyrion. A lot. And, Jaime, I've never seen — not between Robb and Jon, or my father and uncle — a bond like the one you two share. I know, because it cannot be otherwise, that Tyrion, whatever mistakes he's made, never meant to hurt you — "

Carefully, Jaime broke free of her and moved to stand on the parapet of the quay. Undeterred, she took another deep breath and followed him.

"The least you can do is hear him out," she said, "because, Jaime, I can promise you this: you will regret losing your brother, even if you think now that he deserves your anger."

He turned to look at her, who contributed more even, perhaps, than his sister's actions to his wrath against his brother. Blue eyes looked out at him from her worried face; looked out at him entreatingly, pleadingly — and for what? His own good, most likely, since, aside from his brother, he had discovered in Sansa one more person he could not suspect of ulterior motives, though, in her case, that did not make him an exception.

"Please," she urged quietly, "promise you'll give him a chance to explain."

The same arrogance that had led once already to a quarrel between them when he had tried resisting her influence, which, like honey, was sipping into and drowning his soul, that same arrogance anew revolted against her. He turned to face her fully, intimidating her with his height in the way he had not done for a long time now, and his green eyes seemed to be showering her with biting sparks:

"What makes you think you can make me promise anything?" he asked, irrationally, since only an hour ago he had extracted a promise from her.

She was not fooled by his animosity and smiled:

"Last time you told me to mind my own fucking business, Jaime," she said, "I slapped you across the face, and then you came to apologize." She paused to let her reminder sink in. "The reason I decided to put my head in the lion's jaws again, knowing you'd likely bite it off, is that I happen to care about your and Tyrion's well-being. And to answer your question: there's nothing I can do to make you promise me anything; but then again, this isn't how promises work. You don't force them out of people, they are given freely. I was asking you," she laughed a little, "begging, really, to promise — not to me, just to promise — that you'd hear Tyrion out. I was only thinking of your own good, because you are too angry and hurt to do so."

Her tirade ended and her courage spent, she shrugged her shoulders and shook her head in a defenseless kind of way, before starting to walk away. She did not really know where she was going. She had not had a chance to contemplate this, either, because he had caught up with her and reached for her hand to halt her progress. She turned to face him, noticing that, for some reason, his temper had passed, and he looked almost remorseful. She considered him expectantly, wondering what he would say. He surprised her by giving her a sly smile:

"Tell me," he said in that beguiling voice of his, "would I get credit for apologizing right away instead of waiting for twelve hours like last time and making that promise?"

She raised an eyebrow:

"Sure, you would. You'd get to keep your credit card from Tyene."

"No, that's not nearly good enough, I think," he complained with a dramatic flair, and then the sly grin was back on his face, and the green eyes sparkled: "How about a smile instead?"

She laughed.

"Fine, Lannister, a smile it is. But remember: you promised."

What trick have you played on me, minx, that I drive such strange bargains?