They had been spotted at dawn: Jaime, alone, holding Jo in front of him in the saddle while Nymeria loped sulkily beside them.
The guards had allowed Arya to dash out of the chamber they'd locked her in; the after-effects of the essence of nightshade making her limbs feel like cement. She had flown down the stairs, and arrived in the forecourt, and…and…
She couldn't talk about what she had felt. It would drive her to madness.
She and Jaime had given Jo a bath and had put her to bed. The little shit had kicked and splashed and laughed quite innocently, and now, while her parents sat side-by-side on the floor of her nursery with their backs against the wall, too exhausted to get as far as a chair, Jo was sleeping soundly, as though she hadn't just gone off on a mysterious and unsanctioned adventure.
Nymeria lay in front of where Arya and Jaime sat, trying to sleep.
She did not succeed.
'I swear by the old gods and the new that that's all there is to it,' Jaime testily insisted; his emerald eyes wide and exhausted.
'You were napping in the saddle and you had some conveniently-prophetic dream?' Arya snorted; growing more frustrated by the minute; 'that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!'
'Why is it?' Jaime snapped; looking hurt; 'you say you had one too.'
'I did!' Arya exclaimed; feeling guilty; 'I just…I just don't understand what's happened.'
'Well I don't either,' Jaime declared; folding in his arms in that way of his way that he thought made him look intensely serious, but in fact made him look quite hilarious; 'so let's not quarrel about it.'
Arya snorted, and looked away from him. Of course she didn't really think he was lying. Jaime was capable of many different kinds of stupidity, but staging a disappearance to get back into her good books wasn't one of them.
Arya wondered if Jo's little outing would have ended differently if she had decided, after she woke from her long sleep, to trust Jaime instead of shutting him out.
She looked down at Nymeria, and realised that it wouldn't have happened at all.
'They tell me you stabbed two people and attempted to strangle a third,' Jaime ventured; by way of a conversation-opener.
'I lost my mind,' Arya testily replied, 'been doing that a lot lately.'
Jaime cast his emerald eyes downwards, and they flickered, first from her, to Joanna's cradle a few feet away.
Arya felt her heart soften.
'Jaime, was it…very awful for you?' she asked.
Jaime turned his golden head and looked at her as he might have done in the old days; with a tender lack of surprise at her concern.
'When I first received the letter, yes,' Jaime quietly replied, 'but then I thought of you alone in this, little wolf. And I –'
His jaw tensed, as it always did when he was agitated.
'Why didn't you write to me immediately?' he suddenly demanded; his tone hard like ice; 'why wait until hours had passed?'
'I thought we might find her before we needed to write to you,' Arya snapped in reply; her heart raw, like steel; 'with you fighting a war and everything.'
Jaime leaned abruptly forward as though he wanted to snap her neck, with no trace of his earlier gentleness.
'You waited because you thought I would find her and kill her, didn't you?' he growled; his hackles raised for battle; his eyes fire, and filling her up with nothing but misery.
Arya tried to spit out a reply that would make her look strong.
'That's…that's not what I thought at all,' she stammered instead; like a child learning to talk; 'I'm…I'm just telling you what happened.'
And suddenly she couldn't be in the room anymore. Her heart was throbbing suddenly and painfully in regret, Jaime's face was dissolving as tears stung her eyes, and she was in no mood to play the stupid adolescent girl by shedding them.
She barked at Nymeria to follow her; she leapt up into a crouch in order to be out the door so much more quickly – 'Stark, don't –' she heard Jaime say; and she lashed out as she felt his hands pull her back.
She struggled as he pulled her into his arms as though nothing had happened, as though the months hadn't happened, as though today hadn't happened, and the things she loved about him began to flow back with touch: his warmth, his smell, the safeness of him, his merciless compassion, and as she gazed into his face that was more lined than she remembered it – though the eyes gazing no less deep, the spirit no less all of her – the fingers of his hands were at the tears on her cheeks; and then his lips were kissing the tears on her cheeks; and then his lips were kissing her lips and his arms circling her back, and she was falling and being caught and aching that they were two people instead of one.
How could I ever think that I could be without – that I couldn't –
Arya buried her hands in Jaime's hair, and let him coax her mouth open and make her groan against his lips and surrender. His tongue was hot in her mouth and his mouth hot on her skin as he kissed the base of her throat, and the nape of her neck, and her eyelids and nose and mouth; everything familiar, everything intoxicatingly wonderful for being so.
'I'm sorry,' Jaime murmured; his lips brushing hers as he spoke.
'I'm sorry I –,' Arya whispered, 'I never thought you would hurt her, I…I was just…afraid, I'm so afraid…'
Jaime tucked a loose strand of hair behind Arya's ear; his fingers lingering at her jaw and the skin at her earlobe; his smile wide and sad; his smile him, him –
'What are you afraid of, Stark?' he gently asked.
She wanted to put her head in the crook of his shoulder and sleep there.
'Too many people I love have died because I couldn't save them.'
'That is nonsense, Stark.'
'What if she needs me some day…really, really needs me…and I'm too busy falling apart to help her?'
Jaime smiled softly at her, like someone waking from a long sleep to a beautiful sight.
'That's simple, Stark,' he said, 'don't fall apart.'
'It's not that simple,' she protested.
Jaime kissed her gently, and pulled her closer to him.
'My love,' he murmured, 'it's that simple.'