'I want wine.'

'You shouldn't have drunk it all on the first night, then.'

'You drank it too!'

'Not half as much as you did.'

'I maintain that we're being too careful.'

'Since Varys' little birds haven't found us yet, I will take that as a good thing.'

'This is worse than the black cells!'

'Shut up.'

'We could have stopped for wine at Rosby –'

'We would've been seen.'

'We could have stopped at Stokeworth –'

'We would have been seen!'

'Some things are worth capture and imprisonment; wine being among them!'

'For fuck's sake, Tyrion, will you shut up about wine?'

'I know you're angry at my brother, little lady, but don't you talk to me like that!'

'I'm not little, I'm not a lady and I don't care about your stupid brother!'

'Really? You must be the first woman in the history of the world not to care about my stupid brother!'

Tyrion was spared being subjected to more of Arya's utterly-unjust and ill-placed ire by a chilling and hauntingly-familiar screech that seemed to tear down to the very foundations of the trees and make both their voices die in their throats. The air around them filled suddenly with smoke and the smell of burning trees, and as Tyrion looked slowly at Arya, and she at him, he knew from the look on her face that he wasn't imagining things; that the sound they heard was a voice, and a voice that they both recognised.

Drogon.

Arya, apparently unconcerned by the smoking and the screeching, put a finger to her lips, dismounted and moved quietly off; making no more noise than a non-existent gust of wind. The smoke swallowed her up and grew thicker and thicker as Tyrion half-dismounted, half-fell and scrambled after her; tendrils of smoke fastening around his throat and making him choke, and soon enough the natural light between the trees was dying, to be replaced by the light of fire.

Drogon sat, monstrous and magnificent, in what Tyrion imagined had once been a clearing, but what was now a shallow, nest-like crater in the forest floor. The bones of both animals and men littered the bottom of this charming arrangement and stared eyelessly up at Drogon as he spat great, volcanic rivers of flame into the trees directly opposite Tyrion and Arya; turning the blackened corpses of trees to ash and the living bodies of trees to blackened corpses as veritable mountains of smoke and ash churned upwards into the sky.

'He looks happy,' Arya drily observed.

'I recommend that we leave,' Tyrion said sharply, 'now.'

To his amazement, Arya glared at him.

'If they can see the smoke from the city, and I'm sure that they can,' she said, 'then it won't take Aegon long to put two and two together –'

'Let him put two and two together if it helps his arithmetic,' Tyrion drawled, 'we should go.'

'What if he sends men out to capture –'

'A bunch of inept lickspittles are sent out to capture a dragon and you're worried the dragon might get hurt?' Tyrion mocked in disbelief.

'Not entirely,' Arya shrugged, 'I'm also concerned that the lickspittles will pick up our trail.'

'We'll be long gone by the time any black cloaks get here,' he told her.

'I'm going to chase Drogon away,' Arya declared.

'You're going to do what?' Tyrion repeated, aghast.

'So that he's also long gone by the time any black cloaks get here!' Arya drawled.

'I do believe you've lost your mind, Lady Stark,' Tyrion pronounced harshly, a hint of desperation in his voice, 'if you absolutely have to do something stupid, then why not try to lead him away?'

'With what? He's already killed everything interesting enough to make him want to move!'

'Arya. This is reckless and stupid.'

'Is that meant to deter me?'

It would have. Once.

But she was looking down at him with a new and irrational courage in her eyes; a recklessness that he had never seen in her, and that he had seen far too many times in Jaime; a thrill at the prospect of looking the Stranger in the face and spitting in it that made almost all hope of reasoning with her sink sadly and desperately down to Tyrion's boots; and he bitterly regretted not being tall enough or strong enough to simply crack her on the head and drag her away.

Arya once again began to speak.

'If Aegon gets his hands on just one dragon –'

'Any person he sends to help him 'get his hands on one dragon' is going to find himself burnt to a crisp,' Tyrion replied.

'Drogon knows me,' Arya insisted.

'You aren't bonded with him, and he hasn't seen you in five days,' Tyrion half-reasoned, half-begged, 'he's probably forgotten you exist by now.'

That seemed to make her stop and think, and he watched her thoughts turning inwards, and reason winning over insanity.

Got her.

'I'm going to chase him away,' she said.

'Arya, don't!' Tyrion hissed.

And she walked to the edge of the crater, and shouted.

'DROGON!'

Drogon turned slowly, his black scales rippling in the firelight, and regarded Arya with what Tyrion could only call amazement at her nerve as she walked slowly and carefully down the side of the crater and spoke to him; the liquid gold of High Valyrian sounding harsh and threatening on her tongue.

Is she threatening him? Seven hells, is she threatening him?

Drogon's eyes widened, red and black and red as Arya reached the bottom of the crater and faced him down; her legs planted firmly apart; her muscles stretching taunt with all the murderous grace of a wolf going in for the kill. And her voice was growing louder and crueller as Drogon snarled, then roared at her; his breath picking at her clothing and her hair; and though Tyrion couldn't see her eyes, he knew that they looked like wildfire. Drogon was raising himself up to his full height and screeching down at her; the spikes on his head bristling and impaling the air around him, and Tyrion wanted to open his mouth and shout at her to run for her fucking life, but there was no breath left in his lungs, no life left in his limbs. His knees had turned to jelly.

Then a torrent of flame burst forth from Drogon's mouth; Arya darted gracefully out of the way; and Tyrion was screaming at her; cursing the day that he had ever met this…insane child as she drew her dagger and dove back towards Drogon instead of running away from him. The dragon sent hurricanes of flame tearing after her as she sprinted a circle around him; trapping her in a labyrinth with walls of fire, but she danced through every gap in the flames as though she were made of air; the blade of her dagger in her hand now, poised for the right time to throw it.

She means to injure him rather than allow the slightest chance of his being caught, Tyrion thought, Daenerys will knight her for this – or kill her.

Arya leapt between Drogon's legs and emerged behind him in an elegant crouch as he spat out another conflagration of fiery Targaryen revenge, and a shroud was thrown over every one of Tyrion's senses except his sight as a multitude of dangers and events and horrors crammed themselves into the space of a single second.

Arya flung the dagger at Drogon. As she threw, he looked back at her over his wing; his jaws open wide, an inferno between them, the flames roaring out of his mouth to engulf her whole. Then somehow, inexplicably, Jaime was there; emerging like a wraith from thin air and barrelling into her; his lower arm catching fire as he knocked her out of the way of the flames and sent both of them sprawling into the dirt.

The dagger found its mark; burying itself up to the hilt in Drogon's lower neck. The dragon screamed in pain and hurled himself into the air faster than a quarrel launched from a crossbow; and the beat of wings threatened to knock Tyrion over as he raced down towards Arya and Jaime; the dragon's shadow blotting out the sun, then letting it in again as Drogon rose up to the heavens and soared away.

Jaime lay unconscious and still as a corpse as Arya threw great handfuls of ashen soil onto his burning arm with one hand and checked his pulse with the other. The colour in her face was dying along with the flames, and by the time that Tyrion had thrown himself down beside them, she was screaming.

'Tyrion, there's no pulse, there's no pulse, THERE'S NO PULSE!'

'Don't be an idiot; of course there's a pulse,' Tyrion snapped; digging his fingers into Jaime's neck and ignoring the hysteria that Arya's words made well up inside him people do not keel over and die because their arms have been set on fire; the very notion is impossible.

The impossibility of it was not sufficient to prevent Tyrion from sobbing aloud when Jaime's eyes opened; opened, then screwed up again as the pain hit him; a scream lingering longingly on his lips and failing to escape them as his entire body began to convulse in pain; his face contorted in agony; his left hand, the only one that he had left, red, swollen, burnt by dragonfire, oh gods, his hand, his fucking hand, no, no, please, NO.

Jaime was muttering to himself and desperately attempting to grasp at his left hand with the golden fingers of his right. Horror was gripping at Tyrion in a similar way and making bile rise in his throat; and Arya, crying and trying very hard not to, was attempting to open one of the compartments of her shoulder belt with fingers that trembled so badly that they were worse than useless; every stifled groan that escaped Jaime's lips only making the trembling worse.

'What is it, what are you looking for?' Tyrion demanded.

'The fucking lavender oil,' Arya sobbed; pulling manically at the straps and achieving nothing; yelping as Tyrion leaned forward and roughly pulled the belt over her head.

'Calm him down while I look for the bloody lavender oil,' Tyrion commanded in his best Hand of the King voice as he began to rifle through the compartments of the belt; his own level-headedness surprising him as he tried to block out the sound of Jaime moaning 'no, please gods, no', and the brutal, violent pain that burst almost visibly from his brother's thrashing body when Arya took hold of Jaime's shoulders and forced him onto his back.

Jaime was clutching at her sleeve, burnt hand and all; and looking at her with a face the colour of chalk and eyes the colour of pitch:

'No fucking maesters and no fucking knives, you do not let them touch my fucking hand; you do not let them take it; if anyone tries to take it, you have to kill them, do you understand; I don't care how bad it is, it'll heal, I know it'll heal, tell them I'll shove my sword up their fucking arses if they come anywhere near me, Arya, please, promise me, promise me–'

'Nobody is going to touch your hand or try to hurt you; you just need to lie still so we can make you better,' Arya replied; tears streaming down her face and her arms shaking from the force of Jaime's convulsions as she held onto his shoulders, told him to lie still, told him that nobody would lay a knife on his hand while she drew breath, and Jaime's eyes were fixing upon Arya, and slowly closing, and opening again; the fear a little less each time he blinked.

Tyrion, still raking through Arya's shoulder belt for the lavender oil, soon found himself losing patience with both of them; Jaime gazing at Arya through each new inferno of pain and fear as though she were the most beautiful fucking thing in the universe; Arya, still crying like a five-year-old, behaving with the most flabbergasting and mildly-disgusting tenderness that Tyrion had ever seen; stroking Jaime's hair, kissing his forehead, and whispering, again and again, that it wasn't a bad burn, that he only needed to breathe, that they only needed to make him better. And Tyrion stared at Jaime's hand, noted the absence of blackened flesh, and found himself praying and hoping: please. Please. Please.

Jaime's eyes were green, and shining with pain by the time that he was calm enough for Arya to apply the last of her lavender oil to the burn. Tyrion looked at the flesh and away from it more times than he could count as Jaime swore and screamed and ground his teeth, maybe it's not so bad, it doesn't look too bad, maybe he'll be alright, and by the time the bottle was finished, Arya had progressed from childish crying to all-out bawling, and was looking down at Jaime as though he had run her through rather than saved her life.

'Why did you do it?' she sobbed, 'you stupid, why did you do it?'

Jaime, his eyes delirious with pain, somehow managed to look up at her like she was mad, and to say, in a flatly-exasperated voice:

'I haven't rescued anyone in years, Lady Stark. I must keep in practice.'

Arya sat fuming beside the fire; Tyrion's snoring prickling her temper, and the sight of Jaime's fitful dozing making it smoulder dangerously.

The burn on Jaime's hand was not serious. The dragonfire had only touched it for a moment. It was red, and swollen, and angry-looking, and probably hurt like all seven hells put together, but it wouldn't take long to heal. She saw that now…now that she wasn't panicking and bursting into tears like a stupid little idiot.

'There's no pulse?' REALLY?

It hadn't been difficult to go from tolerating Jaime to hating him. The manner of his departure had certainly given her reason enough. What had been difficult was the way she would slip down into dreams of him with relief rather than hatred, because of the knowledge of what she would find there.

Every night, she would dream of returning from her master's house to the dragon chamber beneath the Red Keep, and every night, the terror and the madness would grip her, just as mercilessly as they had gripped her then. She would pace, and shout, and laugh about nothing, and hate doing it; and yet she would cling to it because of what the alternative was; the alternative consequence of recognising that she'd been held down by her own people and had a red hot broadsword pressed into her flesh.

She would experience that horror all over again. The fear would turn her mind inside out…and then Jaime would be there: speaking, shrugging, stretching his hand out to her, and then suddenly, holding her; enclosing her in a cocoon of relief, and warmth, and home. And she would remember everything about what that had felt like: the temperature of the skin of his neck; the smell of dust, smoke and blood on his doublet; the way he had rocked her slowly without ridiculing her for crying; the way his fingers had stroked her hair and his lips had kissed her forehead, and the words that he had whispered: 'it's alright, my love. You're not there, with them. You're here with me.'

She would be safe and warm in his arms all night. Then she'd wake up in the morning and remember that he'd left like a fucking jackass; as though flesh and blood mirrors of grief and understanding had never even existed between them, and she would tell herself that for all her posturing, she was just as bad as the rest of them, 'them' being the thousands of women who tolerated being treated like the contents of the average sewer in exchange for the odd kindness every now and then.

And now, as if his initial behaviour hadn't been bad enough, the bastard had not only come back, but had almost gotten himself killed saving her life, which naturally made her feel guilty and dream up vision after horrible vision of what might have happened to him had he jumped in one second later than he had.

I shouldn't care what happens to him, Arya thought stubbornly; her temper flaring as Jaime began to mutter in his sleep 'the things I do for love,' the same thing that he had muttered on the morning of his departure; and Arya promptly leapt to her feet, walked over to Jaime, crouched down beside him, and poked him in the ribs, hard.

His eyes opened languidly; pain swimming deep within them like wildfire beneath the waves of Blackwater Bay, and she hated herself for the sweet, sensual throb of blood that paralysed her entire body as his eyes met hers.

Jaime cupped her cheek. The touch of his skin burned her. She slapped his hand away. He winced. Then his face settled into a comfortingly-familiar expression of exasperated conceit, and she knew that he would not try that again.

"The things I do for love,' Arya snapped, 'what does it mean?'

The colour drained rapidly from Jaime's face.

'How do you –'

'You talk in your sleep,' Arya impatiently interrupted, 'what does it mean?'

Jaime hesitated.

'It's…what I said to Cersei just before I crippled your brother,' he said.

The remark was made with complete honesty, and with absolutely no hint of expecting forgiveness. It disgusted her.

But he isn't the same –

It disgusted her.

He was watching her intently; his eyes fixed helplessly on every movement of her face, and as Arya pictured Jaime in her mind: younger, crueller, shrugging in resignation, and shoving Bran from the window without a second thought, his leaving suddenly made sense. She knew him far too well to doubt it.

'Is Bran why you left?' Arya hissed.

Jaime's eyes shifted from her face to her throat; his eyelashes long, and blonde.

'I left because it suddenly occurred to me that carrying on with the man who crippled your brother might bring you into dishonour,' he shrugged.

'You and I are not 'carrying on',' Arya imperiously corrected, 'we've fooled around on two occasions; once when we were drunk; another time when I might as well have been.'

'Oh, is that what we were doing?' Jaime mocked, 'fooling around? Of course! What was I thinking? Do you and Loras Tyrell have a bet on how long you can betray your white cloak before Barristan the Bold finds out? Or are you simply taking pity on the poor, scarred cripple while he can still get it up?'

'Don't twist things,' Arya snapped.

'No, no, I'm delighted to know the truth,' Jaime spat, 'you make me feel quite a fool for concerning myself with something like your honour.'

'Do you really expect me to believe that you left because you feared your presence would bring me dishonour?' Arya retorted, 'are you fucking joking?'

She waited for a smirk and a laugh to tell her that he was.

Instead, he looked at her like she'd just spat in his face.

Arya stared at him in amazement as the naked, unarmoured hurt of Jaime's expression scrambled to arrange itself into a sardonic smile, and she felt her heart melting into a stupid, weak, pathetic little puddle on the ground between them.

Jaime kept trying to smile. All he succeeded in doing was making himself look guilty. She had no idea what her own face looked like, but whatever her expression, it made him speak to her as honestly as though he had never left at all.

'Do you want to know what the worst part is?' Jaime murmured, 'I hadn't even thought of what I did to Bran before the morning I left you, that is, you and my idiot brother. I should have thought of it, don't you think? Any normal person would think of it. Any normal person with the slightest sense of dignity would consider it sufficient reason to avoid you completely. Even after our talk at that ridiculous welcoming feast, when I knew that avoiding you was going to be impossible…what I did to your brother should have been incentive enough to stay the fuck away from you; to refuse to put you in a position where there would be the slightest chance of…of course it's eminently possibly that I did not wish to think of it. Perhaps some part of me hoped that I would wake up one morning and find that I had never done it at all. Perhaps I was too drunk on you to think straight. But whatever it was…I did not think of Bran.'

Arya stared mutely, mesmerised in spite of herself.

'I dreamed of him the night before I left,' Jaime continued, 'all fucking night. Again and again. I pushed him from that tower a thousand bloody times. And when I woke up, and realised what I had forgotten; what I had done to your blood, and what it meant, I… I had…imagined…after Casterly Rock, after Brienne, after this,' he slowly raised his stump, 'that I had…changed somewhat…that I had purged myself of that innate fucking Lannister instinct for thinking of myself and no one else…and then to realise that even now, after everything; I haven't changed one fucking bit…it seemed as though every second I'd ever spent with you had been…a deceit; a kind of theft; an act of selfishness…with no regard for your honour, or…or your peace. It was incredible what went through me, I…I couldn't…after that, do you wonder that I wanted to leave? That I had to put as many leagues as possible between us before we ended up doing something that couldn't be undone?'

'Fucking, do you mean?' Arya demanded.

'Arya,' Jaime sighed.

'Why didn't you just tell me that?' she asked, bewildered and annoyed, 'why did you have to act like such a cunt? And please don't say it was in order to make me hate you.'

The guilty look on Jaime's face was all the confirmation she needed.

'Arya –' he started.

'You fucking shit,' she growled.

'I'm sorry,' Jaime mumbled.

'You're sorry?' Arya exclaimed, 'I lost my Facelessness because of your sweet little stunt, Jaime; I was scared to death!'

In her own ears, the complaint sounded rather feeble, and she rushed to compensate for it with a look of fury that didn't seem to fool Jaime for a second.

'Yes, I can see you're crushed,' he remarked infuriatingly.

'Can you?' she spat in reply.

'I noticed it the moment I saw you again.'

'How nice for you. You don't ever get to decide what's good or bad for me. I'm not a child.'

'I left to protect you; not out of a desire to dictate your life to you.'

Arya threw her hands up in exasperation.

'So instead of just asking me what I felt about Bran; you automatically assume that I have this sinister boiling ball of hatred deep inside me that I'm sitting on and ignoring…why? Because I feel like it? Because I'm a stupid little girl? Because you're so convinced of your own magnetism that you think it would somehow make me forget what you did to my brother; that I'm so busy contemplating throwing myself on your cock that I need you to remind me of what you've done; not now, please note, but at some ultimate, inevitable date in the future when it will just occur to me and make me hate myself! Pop!'

'Don't you dare mock me, little girl.'

'I will when you've been a stupid arse.'

'So that's what you think? That I left because I'm a "stupid arse'?'

'No. I think you hate yourself so much for what happened to Brienne that you think the rest of the world has an obligation to hate you too.'

Jaime glared at her with an intensity so violent it frightened her.

'You know nothing about what happened to Brienne,' he growled.

'So explain it to me,' she drawled in reply.

'Why do you care?' Jaime snapped.

'I told you about my ghost when you asked about him,' Arya shrugged.

Jaime looked away from her, then at her again; his anger transforming into a fragile kind of caution.

'You…you really want to know?'

Arya moved backwards off her haunches, sat down next to where he still lay on his back and crossed her arms. The skin of his hand was a bright, aching Lannister crimson, and he was opening his mouth and closing it again; as though unsure where to begin, or unwilling to begin at all. His missing thing was shimmering around him; she could feel hers welling up and acknowledging his, and he was opening his mouth, slowly, and beginning to speak.

'When I was Robb Stark's prisoner after the fuck-up at Whispering Wood,' Jaime began, 'Tyrion made a deal with your lady mother: behind your brother's back, of course.'

'She would never –'

'Ensure my release from captivity, and safe return to King's Landing,' he continued; ignoring her; 'and you and your sister would be sent back in exchange. She had no knowledge of your disappearance, of course, and it did not much plague Tyrion's conscience to keep it that way. So one evening, Lady Catelyn graciously pumped me full of as much wine as I could take without throwing up, and forced me to swear an oath –'

'She would never!' Arya exclaimed in desperation.

'Will you stop interrupting me?' Jaime snapped.

Arya felt tears forming in her eyes. She didn't like thinking about her mother. She couldn't remember what she looked like.

'Arya –'

'Shut up. Keep talking.'

Jaime stared guiltily at his lap. He didn't apologise.

'Lady Catelyn, may the gods give her rest, made me drink an awful lot of frankly dreadful wine; made me swear a solemn vow never to take up arms against Stark or Tully again; and sent me off on my merry way chained to the most excruciatingly righteous, stubborn, irritating, unbearable wench that I had ever –'

'You loved her,' Arya interrupted.

'Seven hells, must I gag you?' Jaime snapped.

Arya rolled her eyes, bit her tongue, and looked slowly back at his face. It had softened at the memory.

'Now you must understand,' Jaime said, 'that she was no ordinary woman, Brienne. She was a good two inches taller than me, and wore armour, dagger and two bloody swords everywhere she went, all as if the lot didn't weigh a thing. And by all accounts, she was ugly. The first time I saw her, I wanted to die laughing. It was as if the gods had decided to consign her to misery before she was even born. And so, of course, she had built walls. At the beginning, I thought it might be…amusing to break them down. By the end I was tearing at them with my fucking fingernails. Gods, we hated each other. We would argue day and night. She was utterly humourless and utterly innocent; her mind filled with ridiculous notions about chivalry, and the duty of every anointed knight to protect the weak, defend the innocent, blah blah blah. To make matters worse, she had a pair of…frankly glorious blue eyes that would shine whenever she talked or even thought about this bullshit. It was maddening. You can imagine what she thought of me – for a good long while she wouldn't call me anything but 'Kingslayer.' So I devoted myself to making her miserable – I was bored, you understand – and all I really needed was to distract her for long enough to get my hands on one of her swords, cut her great thick throat and disappear. I managed it once…well, the first part.'

'What happened?' Arya asked.

'Let's just say that the results of that particular encounter were…mixed,' Jaime stammered.

'She beat the crap out of you.'

Jaime glared at her resentfully.

'Yes, alright, she beat the crap out of me. But I was weak from imprisonment –'

'I'm sure you were.'

'I was half-starved –'

'Gods, you're a shit.'

'She could have killed me. She would have killed me; she was certainly good enough. But we were captured before she got the chance, by a slimy fucking goat called Vargo Hoat and a collection of other oddities, freaks and mediocrities who somehow got it into their heads that it would be a spectacular idea to chop my hand off and hang it around my fucking neck.'

Jaime paused momentarily; the words slipping through his burnt fingers like rain as he looked into the darkness, and feared it.

'I lost…I wanted…I wanted to die. I prayed to die. And she wouldn't let me. Stubborn bloody wench. She wouldn't leave me alone for two seconds together; cleaning up my shit and my vomit and whispering a load of bullshit about revenge that she knew would make me want to live. She didn't have to do any of that. She'd led me to believe that she desired my death from the moment we met. And yet she did it until we reached Harrenhal, not because she had any particular regard for me, you understand, but because she would have done the same thing for any man in the same situation, whether he deserved it or not; she was exactly that sort of fool, and…a part of me must have appreciated it, grudgingly at the very least, because when we eventually got to Harrenhal…, once the maester had cleaned me up, and I was half-dead from fucking pain, of course… I told her…'

'What?' Arya asked.

He was silent, and did not continue.

'Jaime,' she insisted.

But he was looking at her with a kind of fear in his eyes; a pleading to remain silent that was a part of what he had lost; a thing that he wanted to keep for himself; that like Arya's 'three lives I will give you,' couldn't fully be explained to anyone else, at least not yet…because it was his. His and his ghost's. She knew it. She understood it. And to her own surprise…she accepted it.

Jaime was looking intently at her, and seeing her thoughts in her face.

'Thank you,' he said softly.

Arya gave him a small, mute smile, and motioned to him to continue.

'Harrenhal,' Jaime muttered, 'was held at the time by Roose fucking Bolton, who got himself into such a panic at the prospect of my father's blaming him for my fucking hand, that instead of sending me back to your brother, he set me free. Brienne, too, after allowing Hoat to throw her into a pit with a dress, a bear, and a fucking tourney sword.'

'Excuse me?'

'No maiden in the history of the world had ever been rescued quite so eventfully.'

'Now you're making this up!'

Jaime reached out, gingerly took her hand and placed his blistered fingers on top of hers. This time, she didn't slap him away.

'It was important, that fuck-up with the bear,' he said, 'because I was the one who decided to go back for her. True, I was almost a day's ride away from Harrenhal when it happened, but I still –'

'You left her there?' Arya screeched.

'I'm a bastard; as you're so fond of telling me,' Jaime pointed out, 'and bastard or not, I went back for her because I dreamt about her…about her and Cersei...Cersei left me in the dark, accursed be her memory; Brienne didn't, blessed be hers…it would turn out to be true, eventually, but even so, I didn't have to go back for her. I could have told myself that dreams were dreams and didn't mean anything; that her ransom would mean more to Hoat than an evening's entertainment. But what I realised, when I had that bloody dream, was that I still believed all that bullshit about honour and duty that I had ridiculed her for believing; that I believed it in spite of myself; in spite of not believing it at all.'

'Did the two of you get on better after that?' Arya asked.

'Not really,' Jaime remarked.

Arya rolled her eyes.

'Not really?' she repeated.

'No,' Jaime snorted, laughing lightly, 'we fought all the way to King's Landing. And then when we got to King's Landing, the bells were tolling for good King Joffrey, and everything was falling apart. The Kingsguard was full to overflowing with halfwits and flatterers that Arthur Dayne would have drowned in the nearest privy sooner than allow them to take the white; Father's first words to me were to resign, marry and fuck trunkloads of golden-haired babies into Margaery Tyrell; and Cersei…' he snorted in derision, 'the endlessly obliging, glorious other half of her glorious fucking self had left her two years previously, and a broken cripple with his own mind had come back to her. You can imagine how that pleased her. Though I still loved the jumped-up bitch with all my heart and soul despite it. But now I'm forgetting about the wench.'

'That's a very rude thing to call her, you know,' Arya said.

Jaime glared at her.

'Sorry,' Arya mumbled.

He did not accept her apology.

'It was my lord father's idea of a joke to gift me with a Valyrian steel sword. My own fault, really. I'd assured the old bastard that I'd be able to fight again when I had absolutely no idea if it was true. But I was angry with him for trying to make me leave the Kingsguard, and I was angry at the wench for still treating me like the disreputable bastard that I was, so for a lark, I gave the sword to her and sent her off on a bit of a quest after your sister; it being obvious, at the time, that you were dead as a doornail. 'Sansa Stark is my last chance for honour,' I said, and off she went, biddable as a shepherd's dog, to find Sansa, return her to her mother and win my redemption for me. Gods, she was a fool. I still wonder that she didn't spit in my face and throw the entire suggestion right back at me. I wanted her to. I would never have admitted it, but I wanted her to. But she truly believed…in me. I didn't understand it. Of course I was too much of an idiot to realise that she'd been hopelessly in love with me for months. A pair of eyes like that, and I didn't realise. But then I was too busy thinking of Cersei to think of anyone else.'

Jaime snorted in laughter.

'My sweet sister and I fell apart not long after Brienne left. Largely because Cersei seemed to have lost her fucking mind, and because I had unwittingly developed a sort of…allergy…that made tolerance of her bullshit more and more impossible from day to day. Eventually, she trundled me off to the Riverlands to deal with the Stark loyalists still dissenting after the Red Wedding. I began to train again, on the road, and it was a fucking joke. I might as well have been holding a wet fish in my hands, for all the good it did me. I thought about the wench from time to time…felt guilty from time to time…but for most of the time, my thoughts were largely with myself, with Cersei, and with my bloody left hand. Then one day…Brienne came to me. Well…was dragged to me would be nearer the mark. Bloody Freys. We were camped in the middle of nowhere, and she was just…there; as though it were nothing at all. She looked the same as ever – except that some creature appeared to have taken a few gigantic bites out of her cheek.'

'Biter?'

'You know him?'

'Once. Carry on.'

'I had never been…so angry in the entire course of my life, when I heard about what had happened to her. She was talking to me all the while, saying something about your sister being nearby with the Hound, and that it was essential that I come alone…but I wasn't thinking about your sister. In my mind I was devising an entire series of gruesome and horribly painful deaths for Biter, even though he was dead already…the very thought of somebody doing that to her…I was ready to dig up his corpse, chop it into little bits and piss on it. I was violently angry for hours after we left. I was even angry at her for placing herself in such danger, when I was the bloody fool who had sent her out in the first place. It was only when I started berating myself that I realised that I loved her…but I didn't tell her, of course. I was too much of a fucking Lannister to do that…and I certainly didn't believe this sob story of hers: your sister, the Hound, 'come alone or the Hound will kill her.' Brienne could chop a man in half with her eyes closed, but she never learned how to lie. Nevertheless, I was intrigued, and mildly amused, and I was curious to see how long she could hold out before her conscience claimed her.'

Jaime's grip on Arya's hand tightened, and the smile faded from his face.

'We'd been riding for two days when she told me about… the Brotherhood without Banners,' Jaime said, his speech growing ever more hesitant, 'she'd been…captured, along with her squire and some bloody fool who wanted to marry her for her money, and she'd been required to…prove herself to…them…by killing me, or be killed herself.'

Arya smiled at him and softly squeezed his hand.

'I appreciate the lie, but I already know about Stoneheart,' she said.

'How?' Jaime exclaimed, taken aback.

'Sansa,' Arya replied, 'during the conquest, she told me.'

Jaime remained silent; looking at her as though she were made of glass.

Arya spoke, not wanting to think about her mother.

'So Stoneheart took Brienne for an oathbreaker and told her to kill you or meet some suitably grisly end herself. What happened next?'

'Brienne refused to choose.'

'Oh, gods.'

'So they found a nice stout tree and prepared to hang her. Which the wench did not mind at all, you see. As I've said, she was the most dreadful imbecile. Then the bastards decided to string her squire up beside her, and hang him for her stupidity, so she duly swore to deliver me to Stoneheart and to cut my throat in exchange for his freedom. She couldn't ask anyone else to die for me, she said. Fair enough, but it still didn't stop me from wanting to clout her over the head and ask her why she hadn't sworn to kill me, then run for her life and let them have her bloody squire.'

'What did you do?'

'Nothing. I wasn't particularly hurt by her so-called betrayal, you understand. If anything, it was so typical of her that it made me want to laugh. And there were worse ways to die than impaled on the sword of such a woman. The wench didn't see it that way, of course. She thought she was the scum of the fucking earth; despite my efforts to convince her of the contrary; that, and of the fact that she didn't owe the Brotherhood, or Stoneheart, anything. But to her, breaking a vow to Stoneheart was the same as breaking one to Lady Catelyn. She didn't see…'

Jaime's face was growing paler and paler, and his grip on her hand was growing tighter.

'The night before she brought me to Stoneheart, she…told me that she loved me and we fucked,' he blurted in a rush, 'I didn't tell her that I felt the same way, though after some of the things I did to her that night, she would need to have the intelligence of a tadpole not to realise it. And then, when we eventually reached Stoneheart, after all that, the stupid, stubborn wench suffered a change of heart, and stuck her sword into Stoneheart's chest instead of mine.'

Jaime sucked in his breath like he'd been run through, and his fingers clutched Arya's so hard it hurt.

'The sword was useless in my hand,' Jaime growled, with a degree of self-loathing that Arya found unbearable, 'I could feel my fingers closing around the hilt, as I had a thousand times in my life…but they were the wrong fucking fingers. Nothing I did was…I couldn't fight…I couldn't…feel, I…I couldn't defend myself, let alone her, I couldn't do… the one thing that I am good for, she…she killed…a lot of them…I managed to maim a few…but there were too many of the bastards…too many for us…'

Jaime's hand slipped out of Arya's and bunched cruelly in his hair; his eyes crumpling up like fuel for a fire.

'They beheaded her and made me watch,' he muttered, his voice…dead, 'they brought her head right up to my face and made me look at it. I wanted...I wanted to kill every last fucking one of them. Once upon a time, I could have. But there I was – helpless, without a fucking sword hand, watching her die, and hoping and praying that the bastards would kill me too. I wanted it more than revenge; more than…anything...but when they released her bloody squire – just to show me that they had upheld their end of the fucking bargain, you understand – the boy came for me. A simple, podgy little lad whom anyone in their right minds would send to a kitchen rather than a battlefield. He killed every guard on duty to get to me. He could fight. I couldn't.'

Jaime's eyes opened. They were blacker than hell.

'I've learned how to fight since then, of course. I couldn't stop myself, not with all…that…in my head, not with Brienne screaming at me to run each time I shut my eyes; as though I would just leave her there. And why wouldn't she think that? I'd done it before, after all. So when I fight…now…it's a punishment. It makes me feel dead. Because every time I put a sword in my hand, I'm reminded of the…one person that I could have saved, had I only…she was…she was one-and-twenty. A child. An innocent. And she died for me. Me. There's no greater joke than that.'

Arya tentatively reached downwards to touch Jaime's shoulder. She ended up touching the back of his neck instead. It was boiling.

'Jaime, it wasn't –'

'Don't you dare…tell me it wasn't my fault.'

'It wasn't your fault.'

Jaime looked pleadingly at her as though begging her to understand; his face a silent scream that murdered her slowly.

'I killed her in every way that fucking existed. I killed her by making her love me; by loving her too late; by not learning to fight fast enough; by thinking of no one fucking else but Cersei. If I'd been less wrapped-up in myself, I would have realised earlier, I would have married her, I would never have sent her away, and she would still be alive; I know she would, and…and I will be damned before I let the same thing happen to you.'

Arya stared at him; her heart tearing in her chest as Jaime continued.

'That's why I left; when I realised that I hadn't changed at all; that I'd forgotten what I had done to your own blood. You might think differently about it now, or you might not. But someday, you will think about the way that I forgot about crippling your brother; the way that I had no reservations about kissing you a second time when I knew full well that the first bloody time left you branded like a slave. Someday you'll think about it, and you will hate yourself for thinking it was worth it. And that's only in the unlikely event of my not getting you killed first.'

Arya bent over and seized both Jaime's shoulders.

'If you were still who you were ten years ago, I'd hate myself for even talking to you,' she said, 'but you're not –'

'I'm the same bloody person that I was ten years ago,' Jaime told her impatiently.

'No, you're not,' Arya insisted.

'You seem very sure,' Jaime snorted, 'why?'

Because anyone with eyes could see it; because I knew it the moment I saw you again; because I know it every time you look at me, or touch me; because knowing it is all of you and all of me.

'Because…I saw it. Back when I still knew how to see.'

Jaime was trying exceedingly hard to look at her like she was mad; every line in his face a mockery, a lie and a shield from what he had just told her. She wanted to shake him; to scream at him 'it's me; why the fuck are you hiding from me?' Then she saw the instinct of it in him, just as she always saw it in herself, and she was lying next to him and holding him before she could stop herself. Jaime's heartbeat drowned out half her hearing as she laid her head on his chest and wrapped herself around him. She could feel his limbs sinking slowly down into hers; his breathing ragged, and stirring the hairs on the top of her head, and sighing deeply with an exhausted, grief-stricken relief as his burnt hand ghosted slowly to clasp her back and hold her against him.

'You don't deserve what you do to yourself,' Arya whispered.

'Neither do you,' Jaime whispered back; his voice breaking as his arms tightened around her back.

'If you really believe all that shit about yourself…if you left to protect me…then why did you come back?' Arya asked.

'Because I have shit for honour,' Jaime murmured.

Arya shrugged, closed her eyes and snuggled closer to him.

'That's alright. I do too.'