They had crawled around in the tunnels for hours; through the belly of a stone serpent with low ceilings, narrow walls, near-total darkness and almost no air. And while Jaime hated the fucking mosaic that he knew was on the other side, and wished to all the gods that he could have the chamber that held it demolished, he had never felt happier to see a three-headed dragon in his life as he and Arya finally crawled out of the tunnels and collapsed, exhausted, onto their backs.

Jaime breathed and breathed, the ceiling high and distant above his head, his muscles aching and cramping, his head spinning. Beside him, he could hear Arya doing the same, though she was wasting most of her breath on swearing, and it wasn't very long before she was lying on her stomach, laying her cheek against the floor, and staring at the mosaic that spread out across the entire floor of the chamber; stupendous, eroded, malevolent in its magnificence.

'It's extraordinary,' Arya murmured.

'You're in no position to make comments about dragons being extraordinary,' Jaime grunted; quietly enraged that she should speak of such things as though she were on a tour of the Free Cities.

Arya propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him; her grey eyes vivid with…was it disappointment? Fucking disappointment?

'Jaime, I couldn't have left the dragons where they were.'

'So you keep saying,' he snapped.

'I had to do it,' Arya insisted, the earnestness of her expression and the beautiful flush of her indignation only serving to make him angrier, 'you don't understand –'

Jaime snorted in disdain, looked pointedly at the ceiling and said nothing in reply.

She didn't hit him, or order him to look at her, but as she silently bristled beside him he fancied that he could almost feel her biting her lip and staring at her hands as they began to tremble in anger. Then she cast her eyes downward, so he couldn't see what was in them, and anger is the least of what she feels, he thought.

'Releasing the dragons will bring eternal dishonour on my name,' Arya softly pronounced; managing to sound tormented and uncaring all at the same time, 'people are hurt; people are dead; people who were somebodies to hundreds of other somebodies…'

'You should write poetry,' Jaime scoffed, still not looking at her.

' – but if I hadn't done it; if I had left the dragons with Aegon, he would have used them,' she plunged on, 'and the sieges of King's Landing, and Casterly Rock and Lannisport would be nothing compared to what he would do; because he can't be trusted; he can't be trusted to use them as the last resort they're meant to be; every time they were deployed in force during the conquest, it was his idea; his idea, Jaime, not Daenerys', and even if everyone told him not to, he would go ahead and do what he liked anyway –'

'What Sansa liked, do you mean?' Jaime spat, still not looking at her, 'your bitch of a sister, my wife, who is only my wife because you and Brienne somehow managed to –'

'Who's…Brienne?' Arya asked; a sudden change in attitude transpiring between the words, as though she'd guessed the answer while asking the question.

'I don't want to talk about her,' Jaime growled; furious with himself and furious with Arya for making him spill his guts just by preaching to him.

'As you like,' Arya snarled in reply, 'and yes, it's possible that thousands of people died tonight, and by my hand, and I admit it, I don't ask forgiveness for it, but if I hadn't done it, then the tens of thousands more people who would have died – that would have been my fault –'

'So that's why you did it?' Jaime asked brutally, 'to save lives? Or to save your own precious conscience?'

When she didn't reply, he finally turned his head to look at her, and all expression was fading, from her face and from her eyes. A realisation, or an instinct; some instinct-forming thing; was swallowing her and taking her away, and it was like she was dying in front of him; fading to black, fading to cold.

'I'm a Faceless Man,' Arya said matter-of-factly, 'I don't have a conscience.'

She rolled onto her back before he could reply.

Jaime fixed his eyes on her, and watched her. She was lying with her eyes closed, and breathing deeply, as though trying to control herself. Her eyelids were heavy, with a white transparency about them that made them look almost luminous in the half light, and her eyelashes were long and impossibly delicate; fragile and brittle-looking as they whispered tenderly against her skin…

'If you have no conscience,' Jaime asked loudly, 'then why are we having this conversation?'

'I don't know; I don't care; forget I said anything,' Arya drawled, as though the subject no longer held any interest for her.

'Even the bit about liking the mosaic?' Jaime insisted sardonically.

'I don't need to be human to like the mosaic,' she replied.

That made Jaime smile at first. He'd been manipulated so many times in the course of his life that the thought of this slip of a girl being arrogant enough to give it a go, and merely in the name of getting him to apologise, amused him greatly. Nevertheless, there was an indifference in her manner of expressing herself that wasn't quite–

'I can't fathom why you're so convinced of not being human, Lady Stark,' he chortled.

'You don't think I'm human,' she stated uncaringly.

And once again his first instinct was that she was manipulating him, though he'd never had cause to expect that from her… and once again there was something in her voice that made him hesitate; that made him think that he might not be quite…

It was the way that she had said it – 'you don't think I'm human' – as though she were making a cold, emotionless statement of fact on a subject about which she cared too little to lie…and now that he realised it, it became intolerable. The very idea of having heard those words in her mouth, in that tone, was…horrifying; just as bad, if not worse, as the first time that she had indifferently declared her inhumanity; in the Kingswood, lying tucked away in his arms with her voice about to break beneath the weight of the fact that it wasn't true; that she wouldn't have been talking this way if it were true –

'I do think you're human,' Jaime told her, with an earnestness that mortified him.

Arya turned her head and looked mockingly at him with an eerily tranquil air of maddeningly conceited superiority that clearly announced a total lack of interest in his opinion and a general disinclination to say another word.

The rage that shot through him in that moment almost made him choke.

'What?' Jaime snapped, propping himself up on one elbow and facing her, 'what is that? What's that look? Is that supposed to frighten me, unnerve me, make me say differently, make me think I'm wrong? Well I apologise, Lady Stark, but if your ridiculous posturing had anything resembling an effect on me, and made me yield to it and agree with you, I'd be lying through my fucking teeth. Because no matter how cold and calculating and oh-so-fucking Faceless you think you are; you were human when I met you, you're human now, you were human back there when I fell apart like some simple little squire, and you were human when you told me about Jaqen. Or was that all an act? Were you just pretending?'

She continued to stare coldly at him; her face like a blank slate; her lips sealed shut.

'Were you pretending when you kissed me?' Jaime demanded.

Arya continued to stare detachedly at him; as though he were some idiot who'd just asked her to recite the alphabet.

Then something in her changed. At first, he couldn't tell what it was. But then the smallest trace of colour began to creep back into the impassive marble of her cheeks: an elusive, unremarkable shade of pink, then a veritable blaze of Lannister crimson, and just as Jaime realised that Arya Stark was blushing like a maiden, life roared into her eyes like an inferno and turned their grey mist to iron, and she gasped suddenly and wildly for breath as though they'd been fucking rather than talking. She laid her head back against the floor and took several deep breaths, before turning her head to face him, ignoring the baffled look on his face, and steadfastly declaring:

'You kissed me.'

'Me?' Jaime countered, 'I most certainly did not.'

'Well it definitely wasn't me,' Arya insisted.

Jaime snorted with laughter, but said nothing.

Arya smiled at him, first with her eyes, then with her lips; a small smile, and sad.

She's distressed.

'No,' she said.

'No, what?' Jaime murmured.

'I wasn't pretending,' she murmured back.

She was looking at him so strangely: without expectation; without happiness; without any…asking…but there was a kind of sheen in her eyes when she did so; a kind of rain; that was new, and…indescribable. Her eyes were becoming a mirror; they were making him look back at himself; and for the first time since the end of the conquest, he didn't think to avoid his own reflection, because she was looking at him as though he weren't some broken shell of a cripple with a scarred face and a ruined body, but a man.

Jaime reached out and gently tucked a flagrant wisp of hair behind Arya's ear; his fingers brushing her forehead, her temple, her cheek. Her hand covered his and held it there; her skin warm, her palms calloused; and her eyes closed as their fingers laced together and held each other tightly, and it was…good; this; whatever it was.

'If I'd known I was interrupting, I would have taken a longer route!' a voice called out; its tones echoing luridly throughout the chamber.

Arya was on her feet like a slingshot; sword and dagger at the ready; her eyes fixed on the tunnel entrances at the far end of the chamber. Jaime stood with far more care, and did not draw his sword; his heart beating wildly as a dark shape collapsed out of the central tunnel and into the shadows; and memory and hope were crashing into his mind and blinding him; and reason telling them to be still.

'Reveal yourself!' Arya commanded.

The shape stumbled out of the shadows, covered in dirt and cobwebs and worse, and Jaime felt relief blazing through his veins, and weakness welling up in his eyes as the light fell on slight stature, mismatched eyes and spectacular sense of humour alike.

'Will you stop being so serious; it's making my head ache,' Tyrion groaned, 'have you got any wine?'