Arya had started drinking almost as soon as the horses and provisions promised by those Faceless bastards had turned up at the appointed place outside the city walls. She had paid absolutely no attention to Jaime's well-intentioned but transparent comments on the dangers of fighting when intoxicated, and by the time that they had somewhat unwisely stopped for the night (on their way to a smuggler's alcove at the outer edge of Blackwater Bay, which she claimed would get them to Dragonstone), she was drunker than a Pentoshi wine merchant, and Tyrion with her.

Jaime, determined that at least one member of their party would stay sober despite the manifold attractions of being the opposite, sat glowering at the pair of them as they enthusiastically commenced the playing of a bizarre Braavosi knife game that seemed to involve throwing knives at a tree, collapsing into fits of laughter no matter what the result, and drinking deeply each time someone missed. Since Tyrion made a point of missing deliberately (and of adding to the general hilarity by falling over whenever he did so), they were soon beyond the reach of any pleas for quiet or discretion, and when Arya came tottering over to Jaime, clutching an extra wine bottle and thrusting it into his face with a wide-eyed, pleading insistence that was utterly disarming, he rolled his eyes and accepted it, despite his best intentions.

The wine blazed through his body like molten gold, sharpening and numbing his senses at the same time, and everything in the world became golden, and fascinating, and enduringly hilarious: as though the sight of Tyrion falling to the floor would never be less funny; as though the sound of Arya laughing would never be less beautiful. It was like being drunk for the first time – and having no idea of what came afterwards.

At the present moment, Jaime was propped up on his elbows opposite Tyrion, staring intently into the tiny fire that they had made, while Arya, reclining beside Jaime on her left arm, seemed to be trying to do the same thing with her eyes half-shut; her entire face screwed up in concentration, like a child trying to remember her words and sigils.

Jaime declared with disappointment that he saw nothing in the flames; Arya grumbled that no one had told her what to look for in the flames in the first place; Tyrion snorted with laughter and stated that he had completely forgotten what he had seen in the flames, and

'Ooh!' Arya cried; almost knocking Jaime unconscious as she abruptly raised her wine bottle, 'wait! I remember! It was Aegon. You said we were supposed to be looking for Aegon.'

Jaime blinked at her in confusion, thought her exceedingly pretty when she was drunk (it made her so much more pink), and protested that they could not be looking for Aegon, because he had never seen Aegon's beady little eyes at the bottom of any fire, anywhere. Arya poked him rudely in the chest with her little finger and insisted that she had seen Aegon's beady little eyes at the bottom of many fires in many places, because whenever she pictured burning the king alive; his beady little eyeballs were always the last things to melt.

And Jaime was laughing uproariously and insisting that Arya provide proof, and Arya was scrambling noisily into a sitting position and pulling her knees to her chin, and Tyrion was ignoring her and insisting that he had indeed seen Aegon in the flames, 'I'm positive I saw him!' he sulked; and Arya was balancing a wine bottle crown on her head and elegantly placing her elbows on her knees, and disdainfully regarding Jaime and Tyrion from the proverbial 'on high' of her own Iron Throne, and roaring 'You did see me, you impudent rascal!' in such a frighteningly-accurate imitation of Aegon that Jaime almost forgot to laugh.

'Your Grace!' Tyrion squeaked; his mismatched eyes widening in terror, 'I throw myself utterly upon your mercy, but if I must die, then I beg you to feed me to Rhaegal: he is looking so very thin nowadays that I fear Drogon has been helping himself to the poor dear's victuals –'

'Silence!' Arya thundered; her 'crown' not falling off her head as she inclined it with proper Targaryen conceit, 'let us cleave to the matter at hand. My lord Hand, for the past three months, I have consistently been served Dornish red with my lamprey pie, when I have made it eminently clear to you on multiple occasions that the combination of the two makes me sick to my stomach.'

'My deepest apologies, Your Grace,' Tyrion grovelingly responded, bowing to her, 'I shall find the wretch responsible for this outrage and bring you his head!'

Arya's face went red.

'You always say that and yet nothing is ever done about it; must I burn my own fucking cook alive in order to be served Arbour gold with my fucking lamprey pie?' she bellowed.

Tyrion fell flat on his face.

'Mercy, Your Grace; mercy for your cook, Your Grace; he has a wife, three mistresses and eleven bastard children –'

'You have not considered, Your Grace,' Jaime interjected, taking a swig of wine, 'that the Hand of the King may be attempting to poison you by paying such scant attention to your diet.'

'What?' Arya roared; her fingers clutching at the arms of her ugly iron chair.

'Either that, or he just doesn't give a fuck about lamprey pie,' Jaime shrugged.

'Off with his head!' Arya shrieked, 'let the King's Justice carry out the sentence!'

'Queen Daenerys abolished the office of the King's Justice, Your Grace!' Tyrion whimpered, 'I fucked her handsomely for three weeks straight, but she could not be dissuaded –'

'Off with his head!' Arya insisted; bobbing up and down like a child having a tantrum.

'Off with whose head?' Jaime asked; confused.

'She means yours, dear brother,' Tyrion told him earnestly; patting the top of Jaime's head.

'She does?' Jaime lamented, crestfallen.

'She can't mean mine,' Tyrion assured him, 'there's more in mine than yours.'

'Dear brother, you wound me!' Jaime cried; tears forming in his eyes.

'Apologies, dear brother,' Tyrion replied; kissing both Jaime's cheeks and starting to cry himself, 'I'll never wound you again.'

Arya cleared her throat and called their attention back to the fact that they had not yet appeased the Dragon for waking him from his slumbers.

'I will pardon you, my lord Hand,' she declared, 'if you indulge my imperial munificence with a game and let me win.'

"I'm right, you drink; I'm wrong, I drink?" Tyrion proposed.

'I am in no mood for cyvasse; is this not immediately apparent?' Arya screeched.

'Yes!' Tyrion whooped.

'No,' Jaime groaned; burying his face in the dirt; has he still not tired of this fucking game?

'I command you to begin at once!' Arya roared, 'or I will take what is mine, with fire and blood!'

Tyrion hesitated; confusion spreading across his face.

'But – do I pose questions to Arya or Aegon, Your Grace?'

'Does the Lady Stark habitually wear a crown, you insolent wretch?'

'Why yes, Your Grace. In your dreams, she wears a crown and nothing else.'

'Dracarys!'

Jaime choked on both wine and laughter as Arya threw herself at Tyrion and set about attempting to strangle him for his insolence; her wine bottle falling to the ground and smashing as Tyrion's little legs kicked in protest; his voice alternating between begging theatrically for mercy and attempting to stifle his own laughter; and it was with considerable regret that Jaime was eventually obliged to stand up, seize Arya by the collar and pull her off his brother; her chortling suggesting that she was enjoying herself a little too much.

'Don't get lost in the part,' he drunkenly insisted; pointing an adamant finger at Arya as he released her.

Arya responded by jauntily confiscating Jaime's wine bottle and sauntering back to her place by the fire; sitting eye-to-eye with Tyrion and glaring into his eyes as though they had not played this same ridiculous game a thousand times in Braavos: as though Tyrion hadn't lost this same ridiculous game a thousand times in Braavos.

'I'll go first!' Tyrion sweepingly declared, 'and I will ask Arya questions.'

Arya glared at him and pursed her lips in sullen disappointment. Jaime rather wanted to kiss her lips. The sheer childishness of her anger was adorable.

I should get drunk more often, he thought; plonking himself down next to them as Tyrion began the game, absolutely everything becomes charming.

'You,' Tyrion declared, pointing gravely at Arya, 'were a very lonely child.'

Arya's eyes lit up like winter, her smile widened into a beguiling expression of utter mischief, and Jaime suddenly realised, with a shock that he couldn't quite overcome, that she was…what was the word?

Beautiful. She's beautiful.

He was thunderstruck. Why had he never noticed it before? It was so obvious as to be almost banal. Her cheeks were gloriously flushed, her eyes large and bright and alive; the firelight was uncovering strands of copper in her dark hair and dancing in them; and she looked very young and very happy…simple things, but…

Arya's gaze turned slowly to meet Jaime's and silently answered his call. And there was no judgment in the way that she looked at him; no revulsion; no embarrassment. Her breath was coming hard and fast in her chest; like his heart was, and her lips were parting slowly, as they did whenever she made a particularly delicious kill.

She was beautiful as a naked flame. And looking back at Tyrion, and chuckling.

'Drink,' she smiled.

'Fuck,' Tyrion swore; glowering at her as he tilted his head back and downed a good half-bottle of wine without stopping.

By the time he had to pause for breath, Tyrion's cheeks, nose and eyes had turned a particularly fine shade of Lannister crimson; and his words, when he decided to try his hand at a second question, were so beautifully slurred that Jaime began to laugh the moment his little brother began to speak.

'Your sithster,' Tyrion proclaimed, punching his chuckling brother in the shoulder without looking at him, and glaring at Arya as a snort of laughter escaped her, 'was always the golden child of the family; praished to the skiesh on a daily basis; never in trouble with Mother or Father or Septa; good at embroidery and singing and dancing; good at everything you hated –'

'You're right so far,' Arya chuckled; reverentially raising her wine bottle, 'don't ruin it!'

'Shut up!' Tyrion barked, swaying slightly, '– she was – she was good at everything you hasted – hated – brother, I will skin you for your rudeness –'

'I'm sorry,' Jaime wheezed; trying to swallow his laughter and only succeeding in choking on it, 'it's just –'

'– and though you loved her,' Tyrion continued, turning to Arya once more, 'though you loved her without ever wanting to bees her – what is so funny?'

'Nothing, nothing,' Arya insisted; tears of glee streaming from her eyes, 'please continue!'

'– you would sometimesh – dream of what it would feel like to be showered in complimenths – ths – thsssss – and – and good graces, even were it just for one day.'

'What a shame,' Arya declared pleasantly, 'you've ruined it. Drink.'

Tyrion spat out a string of obscenities, seized his wine bottle as though it were a morning star and drank with an enthusiasm that was strongly suggestive of a desire to consume both the bottle's contents and the glass it was made of.

Arya raucously cheered Tyrion on as he paid his dues for his guess about her sister; I'm married to her sister, Jaime thought, which is odd, all things considered; and Tyrion was triumphantly raising the empty wine bottle above his head, and shouting at the top of his lungs:

'I –'

He stopped.

He stumbled.

He hiccupped.

'– win,' he wheezed.

And he keeled over like a sack of potatoes and promptly passed out.

Jaime would later remember falling about laughing and descending into a state of such hysterical guffawing that it had felt as though his lungs were turning in on themselves. Arya, (in a similar condition) was bent over next to him, and was positively howling (both with laughter and at the moon); her right hand clutching at her stomach; her left covering her mouth as though afraid her intestines were about to spill out of it. Each time one of them managed to calm down, he or she only had to look at the other, and then at Tyrion, for the fits of hysterics to start all over again, but when Arya started to poke Tyrion in the side with her index finger, smiling and giggling all the while, Jaime found the laughter smothered abruptly in his chest by a quite unaccountable desire to make her stop at all costs.

'Don't do that,' Jaime half-commanded, half-chuckled; trying to swat her hand away from his brother.

'Why not?' Arya grumbled; pouting childishly and raising her left hand above her head and out of his reach.

Jaime leaned forwards and clumsily touched his lips to hers, once; his heart racing at his own boldness. When she didn't punch or stab him, he kissed her again; this time for a small eternity of a second longer, and when he pulled away from her the second time, her lips followed his like heat seeking a blade; a silent protest that was a universe in itself.

'Arya –' he mumbled.

She pulled him hard against her and tenderly brushed her lips with his; her teeth softly imprisoning his bottom lip and biting at it in the dark, and when he locked his arms around her back and held her there; the tip of his tongue nudging almost shyly at the gap between her lips; he felt her mouth curving upwards into a smile.

Her stomach muscles stiffened as his cock grew hard against her, and she snarled playfully at him as his tongue swept hungrily into the heat of her mouth; drawing it slowly between his lips and claiming it. She was crushing her mouth greedily to his and clutching the back of his neck in an impossible attempt to be closer; to kiss deeper; to feel more, and he was burning alive in the best way possible – no dragonfire, no pain, no melting flesh, just her: the taste of her, her smell, her heat; her tenderness and her ecstasy. And he couldn't conceive of why they hadn't done this again since the accident in the Kingswood; why they hadn't done this all day, every day, forever; why he hadn't handed the kicking, screaming little girl back to Ned bloody Stark all those years ago and asked for her hand on the spot. It would have been worth the look on his face. It would have been worth the wait.

His lips traced a line from her mouth to her neck and stroked languidly at the skin there; her pulse wild and hot against his mouth. She was burying her left hand in his hair and pulling it; her hips were moving slowly against his and making him gasp aloud, and she was whimpering now at the feeling of his teeth nipping the nape of her neck and his hips pressing hard into hers. His fingers ghosted quietly up her right arm to her shoulder; tracing circles against her clothing as they went, and suddenly she was crying out in pain, and Jaime with her, as her skin remembered, for the first time that evening, that it had caught fire and been burned in the worst way possible; in the way of steel and screaming. She was trembling violently and slumping weakly forward to lay her forehead against Jaime's chest; she was trying not to scream; he could hear her trying not to scream; and he was jabbering like an idiot and stepping away from her in fear; I knew I shouldn't have had that fucking wine…

'Seven gods, have I hurt you?' he half-pleaded; half-demanded.

'No,' Arya mumbled in a level voice, tears of shock streaming down her face as she slowly flexed the fingers of her right hand and grimaced at the pain, 'I put some lavender oil on it earlier; it already feels better –'

'Don't lie to me,' he growled; starting to panic as her chalk-white face turned grey.

Arya poked his forehead with her index finger.

'I'm fine,' she drawled; wiping her streaming eyes; 'if I was un-fine, then I would have stopped ages ago.'

'I'm –' Jaime stammered; still panicking; still furious with himself, and at a loss what to say, 'I'm so sorry, Arya –'

She kissed him; silencing her own name and softly snuffing it out as she slowly slid her left arm around Jaime's waist; her hand coming to rest in the small of his back.

'Don't be sorry,' she whispered, 'I'm not.'