They rode along the coast until Casterly Rock and Lannisport became red mirages shimmering across the bay. The wind was brisk, and the smell of salt strong.

Jaime helped Arya to dismount; his arms tight around her waist; his eyes deep like fire on hers; and they danced for a little while on the beach; the sand complicating matters, as sand always did.

'You think I should go, don't you?' Arya grunted; her sword lashing out at Jaime's shoulder like a horsewhip.

'Of course I think you should go,' Jaime quipped; stepping neatly out of the way and looking thoroughly pleased with himself; 'what would I do all day long? In the capital? By myself?'

'Fight,' Arya shrugged; lunging at him again; missing again fuck, concentrate, 'drink. Hunt. Do man things.'

Jaime snorted with laughter.

'Man things?'

Arya snapped at him.

'Feet.'

In the split second between tapping sharply at his ankles and bringing her sword point up again, Arya felt a jarring, metallic pain in her fingers that reverberated deep into her bones and all the way up her arm.

It was followed soon afterwards by the sight of her sword boomeranging away from her like a child's toy.

Arya stared after it; seething with rage both at herself and at the smug look on Jaime's face.

'Goodness me, Stark, are you feeling alright?' Jaime purred, his emerald eyes sparkling; his body leonine in its water dancer's stance; and on normal occasions, she would have been delighted at how much his skill had grown, and how different he was from the bitter, angry, handless cripple that she had begun to train five years ago; terrified all the while that she would fail, and break him.

Today, however, she felt nothing but anger, and she glared mutinously at Jaime as he brought the tip of his sword elegantly to her throat; relishing the moment.

'Tommen will take it as an insult if you don't go,' Jaime sensibly observed.

'Then Tommen can go fuck himself,' Arya growled; hoping that her anger would disguise the despair she felt welling up within herself at his words; even though a part of her knew that he was joking.

Because that morning, she had thought that he was on her side. That he understood. That everyone being unhappy and angry didn't matter as long as he –

He was still standing before her; still talking; still tapping ironically at the collar of her doublet with his sword as though he hadn't just – like he hadn't –

'Very well,' Jaime was obliviously observing; grinning at her as though she were some stupid child; 'let's think about this, little lady.'

That did it.

In a rage, Arya threw herself violently at him, wanting to claw his stupid eyes out of his head. Jaime smartly tripped her up by setting his leg between both of hers; Arya smartly brought him down with her by seizing hold of his shirtsleeves somewhere between the proverbial saddle and the ground; and when they hit the sand, he moved like lightning; overpowering her easily like despair; like sadness having nowhere to go, going nowhere; like memories coming again; memories of the red city.

Joffrey forcing her to swear allegiance to him again and again while the entire court laughed at her. Cersei sending her ironic crimson gifts of gowns and wigs. Being in fear every second of every minute she spent with Sansa, because Cersei had wanted them kept apart.

She remembered the morning when the news had come about Bran and Rickon – her poor little brothers, her ghosts – news of them, and of Robb's decision to attack Casterly Rock; and Arya and Sansa had been summoned to the throne room to be punished.

Arya had been with Jaime at the time of the summons – he had come with her, to court – and when the beating had begun; when Ser Meryn had driven his fist into Sansa's stomach and Ser Boros had hit Arya's face so hard he gave her a black eye – 'this one's ugly,' Joffrey had said, 'her face doesn't matter –'

When the beating had begun, Jaime had been weak from malnourishment and half-mad with pain after the loss of his hand, but he had tried to intervene anyway. He only got as far as breaking Ser Boros' nose before Joffrey told the Kingsguard to smash his stump into the floor if he continued to 'misbehave'. Arya lost count of how many times it happened before Tyrion arrived, and stopped it.

While they hurt Jaime – while he suffered without uttering a sound, all the while growing paler and greyer – she had thought he was going to die. Before that moment she had not even been conscious of caring; of feeling anything for him beyond a great deal of vexation and usually ill-timed desire.

As she thought of him dying, she had thought that she was dying: dying of anger and dying of misery.

I mustn't go back there. He mustn't go back there. He'll die. I'll lose him. I'll die.

In the present, she felt Jaime's lips touch hers. The threads of memory binding the throne room together – the people, the pain – together in her mind pulled rapidly apart from each other, and the heat of fear was banished by the heat of him, the cold of him: his tongue nudging gently between her lips to coax them open; his fingers cupping her cheek as he kissed her; his voice sighing into her voice as her fists on his shoulders became fingers in his hair.

'I was well,' Jaime whispered against her mouth; his lips leaving hers to murmur into her ear and kiss the skin beneath it, 'I was well on that day; but I will never make you relive it if that is what coming to King's Landing will do. Never.'

Arya cupped both his cheeks to make him look at her, and his eyes were filled with sadness, and love; gods he was beautiful, and hers, and here; weren't these feelings meant to fade after marriage? Weren't people meant to get used to it?

'It was the stupidest thing,' she murmured; tracing the lines of his face; 'for a second – on that day – I thought they were going to kill you to hurt me. Then I remembered that nobody knew that killing you would hurt me. Not even me.'

'Oh, little wolf –' Jaime stammered, and kissed her again, fiercely.

The touch of his lips and the weight of his body were like a pain that didn't hurt. Arya's arms wound tight about his neck and crooked there; Jaime's lips and tongue traced the path of her jaw and throat in patterns made from breath; and as she began to rock her hips slowly against his, his cock grinding hard against her, she remembered the first time and moaned.

She could feel Jaime smiling against her throat; remembering too.

'There are some good things about King's Landing,' he observed; leaning up to kiss her nose.

'Oh please, like what?' Arya snorted.

'Well,' Jaime continued; innocently twirling a lock of her hair through his fingers, 'there was that one time in the godswood – or the ten odd times in the godswood, if I remember correctly – '

'Jaime!' Arya squealed.

' – which I wouldn't mind repeating, even if at the time I had no idea what I was doing – seven gods, are you blushing?'

'No,' Arya insisted; her cheeks burning.

Jaime grinned wickedly.

'But if the idea doesn't appeal, then –'

'I'm not going to give you the satisfaction of responding to that, Lannister.'

'– then I don't suppose you'll be much interested in hearing that Walder Frey's going to be there?'

Arya stared at him. For one moment, she thought she was going to burst into tears. Then a smile began to curl around her lips, and unpaid debts to seem long overdue.