The world had transformed, overnight, into the deepest of the seven hells. Her temples were throbbing, her eardrums were throbbing, her entire fucking skull was throbbing; her arm ached so badly that she rather wanted to draw her sword and chop the thrice-damned thing off, and her mouth tasted like the inside of a chicken coop that hadn't been cleaned in three years.

Somebody had wrapped her in an extra blanket during the night. It was rough, and scratchy, and smelled like Jaime: steel, leather, fire.

Oh, gods.

She shot up into a sitting position; the blazing pain that burned through her almost making her pass out again; and for a moment her vision and her heartbeat were floundering in panic at the memory of knife-throwing, drinking and a great deal of clumsy and very drunken lust, before she was sighing rapidly and painfully in relief at the sight of him snoring away next to Tyrion on the opposite side of the fire; the two brothers sharing a blanket, and what appeared to be a bed made of wine bottles. Jaime's arms were crossed tightly over his chest; his face was flushed and frowning; and he was murmuring something under his breath as though it were a form of penance:

'The things I do for love.'

Arya looked away and savagely wiped her eyes. She didn't like watching him sleep. Somehow it felt like prying, and besides, her head hurt too much to worry about what Jaime Lannister had or hadn't done for love. She kicked off her blankets and rose slowly to her feet; her knees buckling beneath her, then enduring.

It was hell. The world spun kaleidoscopically in one direction while her head spun in the other, bits and pieces of fragmented light, and trees, and the smell of the sea crowding in on her and making her gag, and as she covered her eyes and groaned, she thought about the number of times she had seen Tyrion in this condition and wondered, how the fuck can he do this every day?

She wondered, gave up on wondering, and tottered out of the trees and down to the water; an expanse of shining turquoise that stretched all the way across the bay to King's Landing, the burnt city rising black and red out of the water as towers of smoke billowed upwards into the sky; and she knew that today, as they travelled, the banks of Blackwater Bay would become cliffs, and the city would grow smaller and smaller; more distant…more forgettable.

Arya waded out into the shallows and dunked her head in the water. It rushed into her ears and made her eyes burn. She wrung out her hair and walked back to shore, droplets of water trickling slowly down her back, and when she removed her shoulder belt and tried to take her doublet off, the smouldering pain in her arm erupted into an inferno; the sleeve of her doublet welding stubbornly to her arm and threatening to take more skin with it.

She prised the doublet off one inch at a time. By the time she had finished, she was sobbing. The burn was large, and crimson – they'd used a greatsword to do it – and though the pain was the worst she had ever endured, she knew that this hadn't been done to her to make her hurt.

She had plenty of scars, and most of them were gruesome. She didn't really care what they looked like – if anything, she was rather fond of them. But this…this was a shoulder-to-elbow field-of-fire disfigurement, and though the pain of it would fade, the mark would always be there, reminding her in the same way that iron coins reminded everyone else:

Don't fuck with us.

Arya washed the burn in sea water and lavender oil, and bit on her lip till it bled, and as she fiercely blinked tears from her eyes, she looked out across the bay again at King's Landing the Burned, and thought about the Mad King who had liked to burn people alive. And she could not even conceive of how somebody could enjoy doing this to people; spreading this kind of pain across their entire bodies; laughing and watching them scream as the skin melted off their bones…

Am I the same as him?

She shivered.

The sun had crept behind the clouds and let in the cold. She put her doublet back on again, wiped her eyes again, and walked slowly away from the sea, and when she arrived back at the place where they had camped, Tyrion was still asleep and Jaime was gone.

She found him deeper in the trees. His tracks were easy to follow. He was standing with his back to her, and staring at the ground, and when she approached him, he didn't hear her coming. That pleased her.

His silver hair was a hilarious mess; standing on end in some places, standing too flat in others; and she noticed, for the thousandth time, the almost violently-commanding way that he took up space; his height and his beauty; his sword like a limb at his side to replace the one that he had lost, and suddenly, she was smiling, because she could see him starting to suspect that someone was behind him. She saw it in the way he tensed up; in every curve of his body as he fought with himself not to turn around, and the emerald fire of his gaze was boring into her even when he couldn't see her; calling to her and making her ache with longing for the feeling of his hands touching her body and his lips on hers; for the recognition of her missing thing that she always saw in his gaze, and for the way that he had…filled the missingness up with…her heartbeat and…his.

Jaime was turning, and looking at her. She knew instantly that something was wrong.

'I cannot go to Dragonstone,' he said.

And her smile died without fighting.

She could see him waiting for her to ask why. She didn't. She couldn't. Inside, she was screaming at herself to control her face at the very least; to pull down her mask and have some self-respect. Her mask didn't budge. Her weapons hung useless at her sides. And silence was the only weapon she had left against this…this…what the fuck is happening to me?

'When Casterly Rock and Lannisport fell,' Jaime told her; his voice business-like; matter-of-fact; cold; 'the Westerlands lost everything that could have had a hope of preparing them for another war: men, weapons, proper walls….a castle, for fuck's sake…and if war is truly coming –'

'War is coming,' Arya growled; breaking the silence, not able to help herself.

'– then I must do my duty by my people. I cannot defend them if I'm stuck on some jagged piece of rock in the middle of the sea.'

'The rightful queen will be on that jagged piece of rock in the middle of the sea,' Arya snapped, 'and if you come to Dragonstone, and pledge loyalty to her cause, she'll help you. She'll protect them.'

Jaime threw back his head and laughed at her. The laughter hurt worse than her arm.

'I very much doubt that the pretender queen of Westeros will rush to defend 'the last outpost of Lannister rule," Jaime jeered.

'And Aegon will?' Arya exclaimed, wanting to wipe that smile off his face with the tip of her sword.

Jaime was still laughing at her.

'Aegon can do whatever the fuck he wants, Lady Stark.'

'You're not declaring for either of them?'

'I don't particularly like either of them.'

'Stay neutral, is that what you propose? Herd all your people into a box, wait until the war is over and accept whoever sits the Iron Throne by the end of it? Really?'

'That would imply that I give a fuck who sits the Iron Throne.'

'Even if it turns out to be Aerys III?'

'If Aerys III leaves the Westerlands alone, then I'm sure we'll get along just fine.'

Arya's fist connected with his face. Something cracked and bled beneath the impact. And as she turned away and stormed back to camp, she found herself fighting back a scream as her disbelief was torn out of her and replaced with unholy, boiling, white hot rage. It tore through her body like a firestorm; bursting viciously out through every pore of her skin and clawing her to the edge of a frenzy of hatred and wrath and agony at how fucking unconcerned he sounded, as though the choice between Aegon and Daenerys were no more important than painting a wall black or white.

After Lannisport…after the wedding…after me, he would still…he would…

She clamped her hands over her ears and tried to make her mind shut up. It didn't. Her thoughts screamed into her head, and howled and gloated and screeched with laughter; and reminded her, with a sadistic kind of triumph, that Jaime Lannister was not Ser Aemon the fucking Dragonknight, but the Kingslayer: oathbreaker, sister-fucker, child-murderer; a son of Tywin Lannister, and her enemy, not good or noble or honourable or everything that was right with this fucking world, or any of the other stupid things that she had somehow made herself believe, you fool, you stupid, wounded, lonely, weak, pathetic little fool.

She couldn't breathe, or see, or think; the pain in her body was horrendous, unbearable, atrocious, and she couldn't take the fury on top of that, she couldn't, it would suffocate her, it would kill her; he would kill her; last night she had handed him the power to do it on a silver fucking platter –

'What's going on?' Tyrion was demanding, groggily raising his head to look at her, 'you stepped on my head!'

'Lady Stark is throwing her toys out of the cot,' Jaime sighed; emerging from the trees and looking at Arya at though she were entirely unreasonable (and quite possibly mad as well), and his eyes were glinting and his face was bleeding, and she was shoving him, and spitting at him with words pouring out of her mouth.

'There might be blood in your veins, but you're dead,' Arya spat, 'you're dead inside; you're a fucking corpse; you're crawling with maggots and shit and grey vomit; you're a cunt; you're a coward; you're scared; you'd let another monster burn this country to the ground sooner than bleed or hurt or do what's right; you've shrivelled up and died; you've shrunk; you're dead; the boy that stuck a sword in Aerys Targaryen's back was fucking beautiful compared to you; he was beautiful; where did he go; where the fuck did he go?'

'He grew up,' Jaime shrugged, unmoved, and grunted in surprise when Arya punched him again, this time so hard that he fell to the floor.

Tyrion was bellowing at her to stop, and she was kicking Jaime in the ribs and winding him and drawing her sword; holding it to his throat; wanting to use it.

She tried to use it.

She couldn't.

He wasn't moving, or trying to fight her; just glaring to the heart of her and spitting blood out of his mouth; blood that she had put there. She prodded his throat with the tip of her sword, and took no small pleasure at the sight of him wincing.

She felt sick.

'If you're still here when I get back,' Arya snarled, 'I'll put a sword through your fucking face.'

And she stormed into the trees without a backward glance.

'Where are you going?' Tyrion shouted after her.

'To take a piss!' she shouted back.

She moved deeper into the trees, and deeper into her rage; waiting for her anger to give her her Facelessness back; to make her a killer that would turn around, return to camp, and murder him without a trace of remorse or weakness. She waited. Nothing happened.

She could hear Tyrion and Jaime arguing; loudly, pointlessly.

Nothing happened.

Jaime was mounting up and riding away.

Nothing happened.

As the sound of hooves faded away, she tried to change her face.

Nothing happened.

It was only then that she sat down and cried.

Tyrion had had nightmares all night; most of them about Dany. He had seen her bleed to death and dissolve into pools of blood; her silver hair red with it; his own guilt black with it; guilt at what he had become; guilt at what he had said.

Two days ago, he had treated her like a fucking whore.

'You agreed to this,' he had shouted, 'it's a little late to start complaining about it now.'

Today, she might be dead.

(Yes, Arya had repeatedly assured him that Dany would recover quickly, but he had seen a serious thigh wound before. The soldier in question had bled to death two minutes after the blade was removed).

The marriage to Aegon was my idea, Tyrion thought, she might have agreed to it, but…I was the one who thought of it. I imagined myself to be putting the realm first, before me, before her, before what either of us wanted; to be proving to her…proving what to her? All I proved was that I cared more for a fucking iron chair than I did for her dignity; that I am my father's fucking son; that I treat the people I love like property.

With such things weighing on his mind, a headache was almost comforting. He had been hung over for so many years that the sensation was almost a friend; patting him on the back and telling him that everything would be alright.

Tyrion could tell, however, that alcohol and Arya were not destined to become similarly acquainted. She rode beside him in silence with her headache positively radiating out of her; her colouring ghastly, her eyes blood red and screwed up tightly against the sun, and her mood leaving much to be desired. And he looked and looked for the serene, quietly humorous, infuriatingly-ghostlike Arya that he had known in Braavos, and he could not find her. She was gone; vanished. And something told him she was never coming back.

Coming to that conclusion frightened him badly. You cannot un-train a Faceless Man. But he knew people, and he knew what they looked like, and today, the Arya riding next to him was looking less and less like a soulless killer and more and more like a person who'd just had her heart kicked in the arse.

Tyrion felt compassion welling up inside him; compassion, and disbelief too, because a part of him could still not believe it, not even after what he had seen over the past two days. Jaime? Why Jaime? How the fuck had that happened? He could easily see why any man (or woman) with all their parts intact could look at Arya, and want her. He could not say the same for his brother – not anymore. Jaime's days of causing mass fainting fits wherever he went were long gone.

And yet when Tyrion saw them together, it made a strange sort of sense. They seemed to… sustain each other in a way that was so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, and yet so unambiguously intimate that the mere act of looking at them sometimes seemed like an intrusion. How the fuck had it happened?

Whatever the answer, there was no doubt in Tyrion's mind that it was all Jaime's fault. But he didn't care about Jaime. He cared about her. And if he cared about her, then he should pry. It was what he was best at.

'There's no wedding without a bedding,' Tyrion said matter-of-factly.

'What?' Arya murmured; not listening.

'My dear brother and your sweet sister,' he prattled, 'the marriage isn't legal unless there's a bedding. So unless they somehow managed to fuck each other during the feast without anybody noticing, then they are not married, in the sight of gods or men.'

'I don't give a fuck,' Arya told him, sounding miserable and exhausted.

'I give a fuck,' Tyrion persisted, in a loud voice that made her wince, 'I was married to Sansa once, when she was still sweet and innocent, and while at the time I could not bring myself to fuck a dejected, petrified thirteen-year-old girl who had just lost her entire family, I still maintain sufficient affection for her to feel awkward about her marrying my elder brother.'

Arya stared in amazement, and Tyrion grinned wickedly.

'Doesn't mean I'd want to fuck her now, though. After what happening at her wedding, I'm starting to doubt she has a cunt at all.'

'She needs to have a cock to be dangerous?'

'My sister always believed the opposite. My sister is dead. Draw your inferences from there.'

Arya snorted, and smiled at him.

'You're a real cunt, you know that?'

'Thank you, Lady Stark.'

'You think women can't be dangerous unless they have cocks?'

'I don't assign any importance to genitalia when it comes to being dangerous.'

'You just did.'

'Yes. Ten seconds ago. You can't hold me to account for an opinion I had ten seconds ago. I might very well have changed my mind since then.'

'I'm dangerous, and I don't have a cock.'

'Yes, but you don't have an identity either.'

The smile departed from Arya's face like a small child fleeing a nightmare, and she gave him a testy sideways glance that clearly announced 'I know what you're about, Lannister. Stop it.'

Tyrion cleared his throat and hastily turned the conversation to other matters.

'How sure are you that the Faceless Men told you the truth?' he asked her.

'About?' Arya drawled impatiently.

'Sansa making Daenerys' death look like an accident in exchange for Northern freedom and the Stark name for little Lord Eddard?'

'They made it clear there was no proof, but…myself, I am inclined to believe them.'

'Then I am sorrier than I can say.'

Arya smiled at him again.

'I went to see her on the morning of the wedding, you know,' she said, ' I…I keep trying to think; to remember…if there were any signs…if I could have seen what was coming…'

She had a look in her eyes of one who had seen all the horrors in the world, but had only half-learned the meaning of numbness. The past seemed to roar into her present and play itself out in front of her as though it were happening again; as though Tyrion were some small part of her mind that hadn't seen what had happened and needed to be told again.

'It was awkward at first,' Arya continued, 'but then she was…kind…and funny…and once or twice that morning, she was even my sister. Then I thought about the things that she's done…I'm thinking about them now…and I can't bring myself to think badly of her. Am I wicked?'

'You never have been,' Tyrion murmured.

He had obviously said it with more affection than he had attended, because Arya was staring at him now with tears in her eyes; and he could not handle crying now; not now, not ever, he was not made for it.

'Look at me, for instance,' Tyrion hurriedly and flamboyantly declared, 'I've murdered both my parents –'

Her face fell.

'Tyrion –'

'– raped my own wife, prostituted the woman I love –'

'Tyrion, shut up.'

'– and allowed Casterly Rock and Lannisport to burn to the ground because I was too much of a coward to protect either of them. So you see there is really no contest as to which of us is the wickedest. I said the same thing to Jaime.'

Arya was looking at him with that touching impatience that she usually demonstrated when he told the truth about himself.

'You told Jaime that you were wickeder than him?' she mocked.

'No,' Tyrion scowled, 'I said that he was wickeder than me.'

'I thought as much,' Arya sighed.

'You disagree, do you?'

'Did I say that?'

'No, but you meant it.'

Arya groaned aloud and rolled her eyes at him.

'I simply think,' she said calmly, 'that the two of you need to stop brooding and just have a conversation. Even if it ends in a fight.'

'Who said anything about brooding?' Tyrion demanded, 'we had an excellent screaming match while you were gone.'

'I'm delighted to hear it!' Arya declared.

'Do you love him?' Tyrion asked abruptly.

'No,' Arya snapped, 'I hate him.'

Oh, gods, Tyrion thought, she adores him.

'My dear Lady Stark,' he declared, 'if there's one thing in this world that I know about, it's women.'

'Agreed,' Arya concurred, sounding suspicious.

'And such a stringent and immediate 'no,' on top of a declaration of hatred, often means the exact opposite when it comes to women like you.'

'You think there are women like me?'

He tried to answer, and couldn't, which naturally pleased her greatly.

'Why do you care, anyway?' Arya asked, 'I thought you hated him.'

'I do,' Tyrion agreed, 'but I'm not entirely indifferent to you. So naturally, I worry, I meddle and I plot.'

'You don't need to worry, or meddle, or plot,' Arya said, 'I'm a Faceless Man. Forgetting how to love is the first thing they teach you.'

'But they don't let you forget how to hate, apparently?' Tyrion drawled.

'Nobody's perfect,' Arya shrugged, and spurred her horse ahead of his.