305 AL
No sooner had Arya pulled on her boots that the noise started: the high-pitched grumbling that every day announced her daughter's final wake-up for the night; just before dawn, when the world was dark enough and cold enough to be terrifying if you were small, and vulnerable, and helpless. Arya passed through the inter-leading door and saw the nursemaid, Lanna, stirring promptly from her bed in a tangle of blankets and confusion.
'Sleep, Lanna,' Arya ordered, bending over the crib and taking Joanna in her arms as Lanna went noisily back to sleep.
Joanna squealed, and began to cry. Arya placed her firmly on her hip and took her back into the empty bedroom; where she walked up and down, and talked, expecting any moment to see Jaime peering at her from beneath the bedclothes; his hair a thick, delightful, morning mess; 'Little wolf,' he would say, 'is it not a little early to be up and about?'
But he wasn't there, of course, and he had not been for almost a year.
It had been a week after her awakening that he had come to her. She would never forget the face that he had worn; like that of a dog that not only expected to be kicked, but that would have inflicted punishment on itself had such a thing been possible.
When he had told her, it had been like a darkness passing over the sun: a deep darkness and a familiar one; the bits and pieces of Tywin that she saw and felt everywhere inside herself becoming one inside him: where she had never seen them; where they had never belonged. Everything that she had hated in his father, everything that she hated in herself: there, in front of her, in him; her husband and her love.
We told you so, she had imagined her ghosts saying to her, we told you so, but no, you wouldn't care to hear.
She had tried to reassure herself by thinking about the thousand infinite ways in which Jaime adored Joanna: he talked to her, he played with her, he sang to her, he told her stories, and he never seemed to want to stop holding her: all the time, he would hold her, until his arms ached.
Then she had thought about Tyrion.
And she hadn't been able to stop thinking about Tyrion.
And after that she had been able to think of nothing but what might happen if she died.
It would all have been so much easier had she been inclined to hate the child that she was too young to raise; whose birth had torn her body apart. It would have been easier, had she felt that way.
But she had loved the noisy little shit with all her heart and soul from the moment that Jaime had placed her in her arms; and her love, and her fear, had made her grow teeth.
'This is absurd!' Jaime had exclaimed.
'Is it?' Arya had snapped, 'how do I know that if I drop dead tomorrow, you won't decide that hating her is easier after all?'
'BECAUSE IT ISN'T!'
'DON'T YOU SHOUT AT ME LIKE I'M IN THE WRONG!'
Jaime had passed his hand over his eyes at that, and had made a visible effort to be calm.
'I am deeply sorry for what happened, and I despise myself for allowing it to happen,' Jaime had said, 'but…'
His calm had deserted him, then.
' – why am I always the one doing the apologising?' Jaime had growled.
'Why am I always the one doing the forgiving?' Arya had spat in reply.
She had wanted to take that back the minute she had said it. But she hadn't taken it back, of course, and they had argued, miserably, for another three hours before she had kicked him out of their chambers with despair turning her insides to charcoal.
Why couldn't he see? It didn't matter how much she had trusted him before. Before, she had not been a mother.
Even if I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.
Arya looked now at Joanna; who was still complaining vehemently (mercifully in Baby rather than the Common Tongue); her little face twisted in an agony of righteous indignation at the injustice of the world.
Arya sighed. If Joanna could only tell her what was wrong, then she wouldn't feel so stupid all the time. She glanced over to where Nymeria, a proficient in the art of understanding the child's incomprehensible googooing and gagaing, lay dozing at the foot of the bed.
'Is she sick?' Arya asked the wolf.
Nymeria sniffed in her sleep and made no sign that she had heard her. Arya took that as a good sign (the last time something had been wrong, Nymeria had bitten her), and began to scold her daughter.
'It's no use moaning about it, Jo,' Arya observed as she walked up and down and up and down and glared shrewdly into the expressive little face that glared right back at her, 'I fed you half an hour ago. There isn't any more that I could give you, and even if there was, I wouldn't.'
'Shit!' Joanna sweetly squealed, sounding very proud of herself as Arya's heart sank in despair at the repetition of what had been the first (and apparently the only) word that the child had managed to retain from her surroundings.
'Jo,' Arya said, as sternly as she could, 'I have told you that you're not allowed to use that word.'
'Shit!' Joanna grumbled; as though nothing could be more odious than being awake at this time of the morning.
Go back to sleep, then! Arya grumpily thought.
'Seven hells, you are in a bad mood this morning,' Arya said; her hand touching her daughter's golden hair; 'your father isn't a morning person either, which is odd; considering the Kingsguard, and…the army, and…all those other early morning things he's always had to do…what's that? No, stupid, I haven't seen him. I told you. He's up North dealing with the Westerlings…yes, I might have gone with him. Once upon a time. But then I'd have to take you, and if the stupid Westerlings are as bad at swordplay as they are at rebellion, then you could be hit by a stray arrow. Or run over by a horse. Or worse still, mistaken for supper.'
'Shit?' Joanna suggested.
'Yes, dear,' Arya acknowledged, 'I don't like the idea either…what?...I know. I miss him too. But he –'
She closed her eyes tight – and then squeezed her eyes tight – at the memory of Jaime's face on the day that he had left to deal with those idiotic Westerlings. Arya had stood in the forecourt, with Joanna in her arms and Aunt Dorna and Janei by her side, and the entire household at her back, to formally see him off. She hadn't spoken to him, nor he to her, in weeks. Jaime had kissed Janei, and let Aunt Dorna kiss him. The darkness of his crimson Lannister armour had only made his hair seem more golden and his face seem more pale, and the love she still felt had struck her so hard it had hurt.
I can't bear it. I love him so much.
Jaime came to stand in front of her.
Without looking at Arya, he had touched Joanna's cheek and kissed her forehead. Then his eyes had swept briefly from his daughter's face to his wife's; his cheeks reddening slightly, as though he didn't know what to say. The emerald in his eyes had burned like fire, and had then withdrawn, as though they themselves had been burned, and he had inclined his head slightly and formally before turning and beginning to stride away.
'Please don't get killed,' Arya had blurted; sounding like the child she was.
He had stopped in his tracks – a second, an eternity – his face in profile as he turned to look back at her, and then stopped halfway; remembering that they were arguing, and that she didn't trust him anymore.
He had remained in that position for several seconds. Then he had walked composedly away from her without a word of reply, and though Arya herself had stayed obstinately silent, Nymeria had begun to howl sadly, and had only stopped after a day and a half.
That had been…two?...three?...four months ago? Arya didn't even know. She received letters once a week that began, unfailingly, with little wolf or Stark, and that contained, unfailingly, questions about the welfare of their daughter and nothing else. Every single letter was dictated to a secretary rather than written in Jaime's own hand, and though Arya's rational mind knew this to be the result of his childish handwriting and the inconveniently long periods of time that it took him to produce it, her not-inconsiderably-sized irrational mind grew more irritated with it – and more hurt by it – by the day.
A contented sigh broke her reverie. Joanna had fallen asleep in her arms; one impossibly-pink cheek resting against the black brocade of Arya's high-neck gown, and her hair was so golden and her face so delicate and her eyelids so sweet and pale that all of her seemed a beautiful shock against the dark of the material.
'Jaime, she's beautiful,' she heard herself say.
But Jaime couldn't hear her.
The bells of the sept began to ring. In the corridor outside, Arya could hear the guards changing, and the castle waking up. In ten minutes, her maid would arrive, and scold her for dressing herself. Five minutes after that, she would return with breakfast. Half an hour after that, Hill would arrive with the morning's dispatches. And two hours after that, it would be time for her morning levy: sitting, listening, ruling, and pretending to care.
Joanna woke up again, and began to cry. She always did, whenever she heard the bells.
Arya kept walking, up and down, and sang softly to her daughter a Northern song that she could barely remember:
I heard a winter tree in song
Its leaves were birds; a hundred strong
When all at once, it ceased to sing,
For every leaf had taken wing.