In the night, Arya had dreamed of Sansa.

Her sister had sat before a mirror braiding her own hair; sobbing, then screaming as every strand turned slowly and horribly to wildfire. Her hands and face had begun to blister, and her bones to show through her flesh, and the restraints binding Arya's hands and legs had been made of Valyrian steel that sawed at her skin as she fought to free herself; to reach her sister in time.

But Sansa's body had already erupted into a pillar of helpless, eternal, towering flame that had screamed with a human voice as it writhed and fought and fled; only speeding up its own immolation, and Arya was bolting out of bed as she awoke, and wrenching open the window, and retching, and choking, and crying because nothing was coming out; the horror was in her, in her; trapped inside her naked skin.

She could still hear her sister screaming; she was clapping her hands over her ears to make her stop; then hands made of flesh, blood and gold were softly touching her shoulders and turning her around, and Jaime was enfolding her in his warmth; his embrace warmer than the heat of a thousand suns. She could feel his lips brushing her ear as he shushed her and filled her up with wordless light; she was sobbing his name into his chest and clutching him, afraid that he would vanish if she let him go; and 'you're not there, my love,' Jaime had whispered, 'you're here, with me.'

He had scooped her up and carried her back to bed as though she were a child; holding her softly against him and kissing her tears away as they ran down her cheeks. And he was scarred like she was, and beautiful like she wasn't; his body a sinewed, muscled, golden ruin of hardness and life; his bandaged hand caressing one cheek while his lips caressed the other and trailed fire from her eyelids to her jaw; brushing at her temples long after the last tear had fallen, and 'oh gods, ignore it, just ignore it,' Jaime groaned apologetically; shifting slightly away from her when his cock twitched suddenly between them; harder than a tree branch and apparently independent-minded as well.

Arya snorted with laughter, and earned herself a sullen glare, then a sheepish smile as she lifted her hand to touch Jaime's cheek; her fingers rustling against the coarse silver of his beard as her other arm snaked around his waist and pulled him against her once more; her breath aching and sighing and stopping as her lips brushed softly against his. Jaime's fingers stroked slowly against her cheek as his tongue edged into her mouth and flicked gently against hers; retreating almost immediately as he took her bottom lip between both of his and kissed it softly; nipping gently at the skin without once using his teeth.

His tenderness was making her wet. He was half on top of her now; his chest and stomach pressed against hers; her fingers gripping his thigh and imprisoning his right leg between both of hers. Her lips were touching his, then caressing them, then devouring them; 'Arya,' Jaime gasped, 'Arya, I –'; and the heat was surging violently between her legs as she seized hold of his waist and pulled his fragility against hers while she kissed him; her hands moving down his sides to the mysterious, calloused skin of his inner thighs; her fingers stroking his cock while his fingers stroked her breasts; and their moans and their tongues were moving in a frenzied dance that made her kiss harder; hold harder; love deeper; and when her hands guided him inside her and she felt him there, with her, she whispered, 'Jaime, I want you,' because they belonged to each other, and had done since the beginning.

Jaime's gaze locked with hers; wild in its emerald stillness; his face closeness and togetherness and everything as 'I am yours, and you are mine,' he whispered; his damp eyes moving inside her soul like his body was moving inside her body, and she had never felt so close, so achingly right with another human being as –

'So what do you think?' Loras insisted.

Arya blinked at her watch partner from her position outside Daenerys' cabin door.

'About what?' she asked.

Loras tsked in annoyance at her abstraction and punched her in the shoulder.

'Can you guard the queen this afternoon while I attend to some necessary business?' he repeated.

'What's his name?' Arya asked.

'Why don't you shout a bit louder?' Loras exclaimed; flashing her a distinctly naughty look and adding: 'impossible as that may seem, after screaming all night.'

'Loras!' Arya screeched; blushing to the roots of her hair as the Knight of Flowers threw himself theatrically against the opposite wall and began to rub himself through his trousers with a little too much enthusiasm, chanting:

'Jaime, Jaime, oh gods, yes, Jaime…do it harder, harder, HARDER, oh…oh… oh yes…oh love, yessssss… oh gods… oh fuck, yes; like that, just like that…Jaime, Jaime, Jaime, JAIME – '

'SHUT UP!' Arya shouted; clouting Loras so hard around the head that his helmet fell off.

He didn't seem to mind; grinning at her and giving her a good-natured shove as she stared furiously at her boots and tried hard not to blush any further.

'Did the whole castle hear?' Arya truculently enquired.

'Only the north wing,' Loras triumphantly announced, picking his helmet up, 'how fast the others find out depends on whether or not you –'

'I'll take your stupid duty,' Arya snapped.

'Thank you!' Loras sang, extravagantly kissing her cheek and dashing away as the cabin door swung open, and Daenerys limped slowly out into the corridor.

Just looking at her made Arya feel angry.

'What on earth is going on out here?' the queen stiffly enquired.

'Loras was cleansing himself of some pent-up frustration, Your Grace,' Arya replied; pulling the door closed and stepping up to her place behind the queen as Daenerys began to hobble down the corridor on her walking stick like some bad-tempered old crone.

'Loras did seem a little forlorn this morning,' Daenerys observed; a sting of resentful dragonfire in her voice, 'you,on the other hand, look positively radiant, Lady Stark. Can I take it that you slept well?'

'Perfectly well, I thank Your Grace,' Arya courteously droned; giving Daenerys her arm as they ascended the narrow flight of steps that led to the ship's deck, and dropping it as soon as she could.

Arya retreated to her traditional, silent position at the queen's back while Daenerys limped up and down the deck like a martyr; greeting her men and asking after their health, leaning heavily on her walking stick, and gazing wistfully up at the bleak blue skies where Rhaegal and Viserion were amusing each other and frightening the wits out of everybody else. Arya almost asked what the dragons were doing here, it having been determined that dragon warfare would not be used in this particular campaign, but if she did that, then the conversation might very well turn to Drogon, or to the 'mystery' of how the dragons had escaped, or even to the enigmatic, too-bloody-dangerous-to-reveal 'proof' of Aegon's lineage (non-existent, of course) that her masters had told her to mention to Daenerys on the day of her acceptance into the Queensguard; and Arya had no intention of mentioning any of those things until Aegon's corpse was rotting safely in the ground, being raped by worms. A day or two made little difference in a life doomed to eternal dishonour.

'Arya,' Daenerys suddenly proclaimed, stopping abruptly in her tracks and almost causing her Queensguard to trip over her, 'would you be so kind as to wait for me on the quarterdeck? I'm sure we can trust Rhaegal and Viserion to incinerate any seagulls that get too close for comfort.'

Arya peered curiously over Daenerys' shoulder, and complied with a small smile.

Tyrion was standing in their path.

Tyrion heard himself say something to make the uncomfortable silence go away. It could not have been particularly awe-inspiring, whatever it was, because Daenerys was at present hanging her head in a manner highly suggestive of a desire to translocate to the bottom of the sea.

'I am….relieved, and…happy…that you are alive,' she said; hesitation marring the sickly beauty of her face, 'but –'

'But I acted like a patriarchal little bastard and you can never forgive me?' Tyrion blurted.

Daenerys, still staring at the floor, said nothing.

'Why, then, did things get as far as your sending poor Arya on a suicide mission by commanding her to find me?' Tyrion pushed.

'It's Arya's duty to do what I tell her,' his silver queen rigidly replied; steadfastly avoiding his eyes and making his heart sink. He knew himself to be thoroughly deserving of every inch of coldness or rejection that Daenerys could throw at him, but he could not, however, suppress his indignation that the queen could so easily discount Arya's actions in the name of something so trivial as saving face. Her fucking orders had sent Arya to the very edge of the seventh hell, even if she had sworn an oath to frequent such distasteful locales on her queen's command.

'It might very well have been Arya's duty to find me,' Tyrion ventured, 'but we should not forget that she did so at great personal –'

'Tyrion,' Daenerys quickly scoffed, 'sweetling. You and I both know, especially after last night, that her going back for you was only incidental.'

'Is that such a terrible thing?' Tyrion asked.

'Forgiven your brother, have you?' Daenerys sneered.

'No,' Tyrion snapped, but everything that I hate about him disappears when he speaks of her, 'but I'm alive. Under the circumstances, I don't much care why.'

'Her violation of her vows does not offend you, then?' Daenerys righteously demanded.

'Not when the only one to blame for it is you,' Tyrion scoffed.

'Me?' Daenerys repeated; her eyes flashing.

'Have you really never thought about it?' Tyrion stormed; unable to believe his ears, 'you're the one who insisted on trying to 'wake her up' the moment she entered your service. You could have left her as No one, and she would probably have been happier that way. But no! Daenerys Stormborn has to be a saviour as well as a conqueror, even if the person on which you choose to lavish your mercy has no desire to be saved. So you irritate her and you pester her with things that she would rather not remember; you congratulate yourself on 'turning her into a human being;' on giving her 'feelings,' when everyone with eyes in their heads can clearly see that all you've done is pull her halfway and put her on the edge of a knife that could cut her at any moment –'

'Thank you for your poetic candour, Lord Tyrion.'

'– then my brother comes along and does what you failed to do, and you curse her for it? Perhaps you and Aegon have more in common than I thought!'

'Aegon and I have nothing in common!'

'Really? Both of you seem remarkably eager to condemn people – most especially her, I might add – based on who they do or don't fall in love with. I can think of no other reason why you would refuse to allow Jaime to come to King's Landing and fight. Was it your idea not to tell Arya until we'd set sail?'

Daenerys gave him a long look, and her 'righteous messiah, saviour of mankind' face.

'Ser Jaime cannot fight when his only remaining hand is so badly injured,' she said.

'You fear that Arya's pretty little head will be so filled with thoughts of him that she'll fuck up her mission,' Tyrion snorted; the performance not fooling him for an instant.

Daenerys put both her soft white hands on the railing and looked out to sea in what she clearly thought was an impressive gesture.

'I cannot have her distracted,' she declared.

'You've done nothing but ensure that she will be distracted,' Tyrion told her, 'especially with her Facelessness in the state that it is. But if I said that that actually bothered you, then I'd be lying, wouldn't I?'

'You would have done precisely the same thing were it not for this starry-eyed faith in her judgment that you seem to have acquired overnight,' Daenerys retorted; her head snapping to the side to face him.

'Are you jealous, my queen?' Tyrion grinned; thoroughly pleased by the idea.

'Is there something to be jealous about?' Daenerys replied; a hint of wrathful spite in her voice.

Tyrion's grin turned sour at how little she understood.

'I love that girl,' he said, 'I adore her. She has a kinder heart and a nobler spirit than any one of the thousands who claim to serve you by kissing your arse and never telling you the twentieth part of the truth. And she would lay down her life for you at a moment's notice; something that I'm finding harder and harder to understand.'

'You speak treason, Lord Tyrion,' Daenerys stiffly proclaimed.

'And you're blind as a mole; if somewhat better-looking,' Tyrion snorted; unable to believe that she could be this stupid, 'has it never occurred to you how your dragons escaped the Red Keep? How they were able to bring you to Dragonstone immediately and prevent you from bleeding unceremoniously to death in a ditch somewhere? She released them. The idea of their falling into Aegon's hands was so intolerable to her that she ran all the way down to the dragon pit, in the middle of a massacre, to ensure that they escaped; all before coming to look for me, or Jaime.'

Daenerys' eyes erupted in a blaze of fire and blood; anger lining her face and curling her lip in a way that reminded Tyrion too much of Cersei for comfort as she demanded:

'Arya is the one responsible for –?'

'Your dragons are the ones 'responsible for,' Dany!' Tyrion interrupted, exasperated, 'unless you intend to claim that the blood of the First Men can command the blood of Old Valyria, in which case you're royally fucked –'

'I claim nothing of the sort, my lord Hand!' Daenerys spat.

'– and as if that isn't proof enough of the girl's frankly-irrational loyalty,' Tyrion raged; her use of his title infuriating him; 'there was also a sweet little episode on our way to Dragonstone, when we ran into dear old Drogon making a spectacle of himself. She threw a bloody knife at him – and almost got herself incinerated, I might add – rather than run the risk of leaving him where the black cloaks could find him. She –'

Tyrion's words died on his tongue as Daenerys turned so shockingly pale that he almost seized hold of her and called for help. She tried to speak, and failed; her voice rasping and falling into nothingness, and he could feel his fingers twitching as he fought the instinct to take her hand, and kiss it, and tell her that everything would be alright.

'The dagger hit his lower neck, my queen,' Tyrion cruelly continued; ashamed of the concern that he felt and determined not to let her see it, 'it's probably fallen out already.'

'Where is he?' Daenerys hissed; her violet eyes brimming over with tears and her strength seeming to crash and burn.

'We haven't seen him since,' Tyrion shrugged; looking nonchalantly up at her, don't cry, please don't cry, please, please, please, I can't bear it when you cry, 'but as I've said, and as you know, it's highly unlikely that such a wound would kill him, or even seriously injure him. His skin is too thick.'

Daenerys looked at him for a long moment; naked in her vulnerability; naked, beautiful; before straightening up and donning the mask of monarchy once more; daggers chasing the tears from her eyes and forging them into her steel.

'The thickness of Drogon's skin is scant comfort to a Mother who has lost one of her children,' Daenerys snarled; her tone giving every indication that she was about to order the removal of Arya's head, 'as is Arya's betrayal of her vows and incessant dishonouring of herself in –'

'You may say what you wish about Arya's 'betrayal of her vows and incessant dishonouring of herself,' Your Grace,' Tyrion said, 'I'll agree with you when you can name me a single person who would have taken similar, absurd risks to protect her queen. Or her queen's children.'

Tyrion began to tremble as Daenerys' mask broke down again. The tears came, and the queen did not fight them; staring out to sea, and sobbing, and letting them fall.

He forced himself to watch her, and to remain silent; knowing that he would never call her 'Dany' again; knowing that it was fucking over between them, and that he'd better get used to the sight of her crying if he wanted to survive.

She'll be doing a lot more of it in the future; whether she wins or not.