Chapter notes
Please be aware that this chapter contains scenes of rape. If you are uncomfortable with this, then please do not read it.
Arya crept quiet as a shadow through Maegor's Holdfast; on the rafters, above the corridors, beneath the ceiling. The wood breathed beneath her feet; tiny cracks opening up, closing again and groaning silently as she moved on and on; her legs seeming to move for her; her limbs tied to strings held by an all-powerful master puppeteer.
Her Facelessness was still there. Bone deep. Unreachable. Eternal.
And yet it wasn't there. Bone deep. Unreachable. Eternal.
Every sound distracted her; worried her; slowed her down. Every whisper of night air made her pause in her tracks and fret and hear, when before she would have listened, evaluated, and moved on; all without pausing; all without blinking; as though the sound the world made was subject to her will and not contrariwise.
She wanted to be free of it; to take Jaime's hand and run and keep running; and her masters would never let her. She knew that. If she withdrew from the guild, she would be killed. If her master in King's Landing saw what she had become, she would be killed. If she avoided his house, she would be killed. And if she ran…
She jumped as two black cloaks passed beneath her; complaining loudly about double shifts and half pay. They were the only guards that Arya had seen all night, and the very thought made her shiver.
If a lovely girl sees an apparently too-good-to-be-true thing, then that thing is just so, Jaqen had once told her, luck is for soldiers, and for mummers, and for men at the end of all things. Luck is the enemy of Death, and we are Death, sweet child.
And the silence within the Keep and the silence outside it were like the voices of Death; cloaking Daenerys' ships, and troops, and what they came to do, in darkness. And screams were resounding clearly into the night and making Death's voice fade away, and for a moment, Arya thought that the battle had started. That was the way all battles began, after all. The silence. Then the screaming.
But the screams were all wrong. They were too close. They echoed beneath her in the corridor and above her in the ceiling, and Arya ceased walking on the rafters and began to run; her boots leaving no footprints in the dust; her defences slamming up, and her senses seizing sound and smell from the air as she rounded a corner, skipped lightly from one rafter to the next, and perceived four black cloaks standing somewhat obviously outside a single wooden door and listening to a man and a woman screaming. The man was screaming in ecstasy; the woman in pain, and fear.
Arya recognised Aegon's voice immediately. She had heard it a thousand times during the Targaryen conquest, roaring out 'Fire and Blood!' as he charged into the van; a Valyrian steel sword that he presumptuously called Dark Sister clutched in his hand and glinting savagely as he held it above his head. But now, tonight, that same voice was raised in a hideous arousal that she had not even heard on the lips of soldiers sacking a city. He was screaming a name – hers – again and again, and smothering the cries of a female voice that Arya did not recognise, and that was screaming in its turn, and crying and pleading, 'you're hurting me…you're hurting me…please, Your Grace, you're hurting me!' And her words were dissolving into hopeless, agonising wails beneath the weight of savage growls, low laughs and the sound of flesh tearing as Arya stood above the guards with bile in her throat and watched them stare at the floor and do nothing. And her Facelessness was freezing her up and turning her to ice; the worst kind of ice; the kind that told her not to intervene; the kind that told her to wait; to be practical; that Aegon would be at his weakest when he had finished whatever he was doing to her…I can't…I CAN'T…but the puppeteer was holding Arya's limbs and pulling her back: he had been from the moment that she had climbed into those fucking rafters and returned to where Facelessness belonged; to quietness; to silence, I thought I was free; I THOUGHT I WAS FREE, and the woman was shrieking in pain and Aegon was shrieking in ecstasy, 'you're hurting me…you're hurting me,' he cruelly echoed, and Arya's blood was shrieking in her veins, I can't listen to this, and she was digging a handful of Valyrian steel triangles out of her shoulder belt and feeling the edges as they cut her fingers, I CAN'T, and the guards were slumping to the floor beneath the weight of the steel, and Arya was dropping to the floor beneath the weight of the screaming, and she was charging into the room and catching only a glimpse of the tangle of naked limbs on a bed stained with blood before she had thrown herself forward, seized Aegon by the hair and torn him off the ravaged body of a girl; tall, boyish and brunette.
Like me.
The world turned red as blood, then red as the sandstone floor as Aegon dealt her a terrific blow that seemed to strike through her head like a morning star through a ripe melon. Its spikes pierced her lungs and sent blood spilling upwards into her throat as Aegon's naked weight plunged down onto hers. He smiled at her with blood-stained lips and grunted at her with blood-stained teeth as her right fist barrelled into his face and the nails of her left hand scratched wolf-claw wounds into his cheek; and her hands were closing around her daggers, then weakening, then slipping off them entirely as Aegon's fingers fastened around her throat, and squeezed.
Arya felt her throat crack. Her limbs began to twitch and shudder like the limbs of a headless corpse. Her vision trembled, and darkened; in inches; in objects; until only Aegon's hands were left; the feeling of his hands around her throat; squeezing; and she realised, as the darkness claimed her, that Jaime had been right all along.
When he sees you, and he will see you; he'll see it as confirmation of all his suspicions. He'll be reminded of the thousand-and-one times that you've rejected his royal advances. And when those two things come together in his head, the seven gods together will not be able to do a thing to save you.
She was tied to a chair with a curtain rope. She would have laughed aloud had she had the breath for it.
Tied to a chair? Really?
Aegon sat naked before her on the edge of the bed; his cheek bleeding where her nails had scratched him, and his cock standing erect in its mouse nest of silver hair. He paid no attention to the sounds of battle, or to the absence of the girl that he had been torturing, and cradled Arya's weapons in his hands as though they were made of glass; idly running his fingers over the steel studs of her sword belt. When he realised that she was awake, he looked slowly up at her; his eyes dark with lust as his fingers tapped relentlessly at the tip of one of her daggers.
'Your eyes have changed,' Aegon said softly, 'there is more life in them; more…'
'Did you rhapsodise about my sister's eyes before you killed her?' Arya spat.
Aegon tossed her sword and daggers onto the bed and leaned slowly towards her: close to her, too close. His bloodied fingers reached out and caressed the line of her jaw, and a small, sensual gap opened wantonly up between his lips as he breathed in her scent.
She wanted to struggle and fight and scream until blood stained her mouth.
If I do that, he will never stop.
'Only a short time ago,' Aegon murmured; his hair falling into his eyes as he stroked her face; 'only weeks ago, in fact…I would never have done anything to hurt my sweet Sansa… I would never have done anything to hurt you… despite your manifold…manifold cruelties.'
Arya snorted, admired his imagination, and remained silent.
'Even now,' Aegon whispered; tracing a finger down her throat and relishing the way it made her shudder; 'the very thought of blemishing your skin…or tearing it…or cutting it…even now, when I see that you have been awakened by a hand other than mine…the thought of hurting you is painful to me –'
'I wish I could say the same,' Arya snarled; dread boiling in her stomach.
'–though my bitch of a wife does surprise me by sending you to kill me in your present condition,' Aegon continued; his fingers catching at a drop of pre-cum as it glistened on the tip of his cock, 'does she know that your Facelessness has been exhumed? Has she noticed its absence? Has she seen that it is now as non-existent as your virtue?'
'My virtue has been non-existent for the past three years, Your Grace,' Arya growled; nausea stirring in her throat as Aegon lazily rolled his seed between his thumb and forefinger, 'don't think that I'm a maiden just because I haven't fucked you.'
'She didn't notice, did she?' Aegon cooed; raising his moistened fingers to her mouth, no, fuck, NO; seizing the back of her head when she tried to jerk away and spreading his stickiness into the gap between her lips while she struggled, and writhed, and gagged, 'but then, Daenerys doesn't know you like I do. She doesn't know…'
Arya viciously spat his fucking juices right back into his stupid face.
'You don't know a fucking thing about me, you dragon spawn scum,' she spat; grunting in pain as Aegon slammed his fist into her stomach, so hard that she doubled over in her chair and couldn't pull herself up again. She coughed and rasped and gasped for breath that didn't come; she spat at his feet because she couldn't spit in his face; and Aegon was shoving her roughly upright, licking his own fingers like a hungry cat, and reassuming his examination of her body as though nothing had happened.
The tip of his tongue poked out between his teeth; reptilian as he traced a finger down her neck. She could still taste him on her lips and smell him on herself as his hands moved slowly down her chest to cup her breasts, and she wanted to impale this insolent pup on the tip of her sword and roast his balls on a fucking brazier; but if I fight, it'll only arouse him more, she thought; and she swallowed the horror, the violation, the wrong; and yanked tentatively at the rope that bound her hands together. It was tight…and fragile.
She tried grinding her wrists together.
The bonds loosened.
He's never tied someone up in his life, the fucking amateur.
'You feel nothing like your sister,' Aegon was murmuring; his hands ghosting over her stomach and covering her cunt, no, don't touch me there, don't you fucking touch me there, 'all bones, and straight lines. All life. Every day, I miss her. I miss her voice. I miss her counsel. I miss the past. The past when she was wise… and you were beautiful. As mysterious as the mists that rise from the sea below Dragonstone.'
Arya tensed up as his fingers slipped inside her smallclothes, don't think about it, don't think, loosen your bonds, loosen them, break free –
'I would have cut out my heart,' Aegon was continuing, 'and offered it to every god that existed in exchange for a mere glance inside yours. You were my favourite enigma. The ghost that haunted my life and the ghost that haunted my dreams. Until you developed a taste for sucking Lannister cock, and proved to be as great a fool as every other woman that I have ever met.'
'I have no taste for sucking Lannister cock,' Arya loudly declared; sounding braver than she felt, loosen your bonds, loosen them, break free, 'I have always despised cock-sucking, in point of fact. A man's cock belongs in my cunt, not in my mouth.'
'And Ser Jaime tolerates this… strange distaste, does he?' Aegon purred; his fingers slipping into her cunt and pinching her nub; his mouth smiling as she failed to keep herself from squirming.
'He doesn't mind it,' Arya replied, just loosen…just work…break free…'not when I've tasted every other part of him that exists.'
Quick as a viper, Aegon pulled his hand out of her smallclothes and struck her so hard across the mouth that the blood boiling up into the space between her lips almost made her choke.
'Mysterious enough for you, Your Grace?' Arya rasped; spitting blood out of her mouth.
'Does House Stark breed nothing but whores?' Aegon was screaming; half-anger; half-despair; his face contorting like a hell mouth beneath the mad, staring blackness of his eyes as he hit her again, and again, and turned her mind to half-light as he seized a candle from the table and set it alight; 'are you all so fucking spoiled and tainted that I must burn you all to ashes to cleanse this country of filth? Or should I simply set your cunts on fire?'
His hands trembled with excitement as he drew fiery patterns in the air between her legs and held the candle so close to her cunt that she could feel the heat, loosen your bonds, loosen them, break free, don't listen to him, don't listen, 'gods, I've been a fucking fool!' Aegon was bellowing, 'I might have done as much to your sister instead of killing her, and at least there would have been a hole left for me to fuck!'
He seized hold of her hair once more and yanked her face up to his; and his other hand brushed her inner thigh as it held the candle in place like a dagger; 'shall I set your cunt on fire, Kingslayer's whore? Will you scream for me, if I do? Will you scream for me like you scream for your Kingslaying master when he sticks his cock in you and makes you peak?'
The laughter tore from Arya's throat before she could stop herself.
'You really have no fucking idea, do you?' she snarled; unable to keep a smile from her lips; 'I'd feel sorry for you if I had it in me to commit more than one major act of forgiveness in my life. But you really think I scream for him? You like to think that, don't you? You like to imagine me on my back; screaming and begging like a whore? Well I'm sorry to disappoint Your Grace…but I don't do any of that. When I'm fucking Jaime, I don't scream when I come. I SOB. I sob like the world's about to end; like I'm about to crash apart and disintegrate and DIE, because being any closer would kill both me and him. That's what happens when you have a real man inside you, Your Grace; not some petulant little boy with a tiny brain and an even tinier cock.'
Her words had the desired effect.
Aegon moved; screamed; writhed. She could feel his hand closing around her laces to tear the front of her breeches, and his other hand clutching the candle to press it against her skin. And she yanked once again at the rope that bound her hands, and felt it coming apart.
Her bonds fell into her hands like freedom. The wolf blood in her veins seared and burned; and she was spitting blood into Aegon's eyes; leaping to her feet; seizing hold of the chair she had been tied to; and smashing it hard into his face.
The chair shattered against Aegon's body in a ruin of splintered wood and nails and rope. He shrieked in pain and laughed in pain as a hailstorm of splinters cut his skin; as nails drove into his cheeks, and chest, and shoulders; and as Arya swung what remained of the chair against the back of his neck and watched him drop, like a weight, onto the bed.
She leapt onto him like a wraith and pinned his knees down with her heels; discarding the rope that had bound her hands and seizing hold of her sword belt that Aegon had thrown aside. She drew one of her daggers, hesitated for a moment, and plunged the blade straight through Aegon's thigh into the mattress beneath him.
The dagger pierced Aegon's skin like a pin cushion and brought his mind roaring back into consciousness like a fit of madness. He shrieked and flared and raged like a firestorm; lunging for her and lunging for the blade and carving-up his own leg in a gruesome dance between the two desires as Arya removed a pillow from behind his head and hopped off the bed.
'Careful, Your Grace,' she counselled; turning the pillow over in her hands; 'I've scratched your cheek with my nails and stuck a dagger in your thigh. Who knows what I'll do next if I'm provoked?'
Aegon was screaming for help and spilling more and more of his own blood; 'have you got any wine?' Arya asked; trying to sound nonchalant; 'I'm absolutely parched,'; the corridor outside was roaring suddenly and thunderingly with the sound of troops approaching; and Arya had only just located the wine and dropped the pillow on top of Aegon's cock (she was tired of looking at it) when the door burst loudly open to admit Loras and twenty knights sworn to House Tyrell: the people she had been told to expect at the end of the battle.
'Is it over already?' Arya asked, spitting blood out of her mouth and beginning to feel light-headed as Loras approached her, 'that must be the shortest battle in living memory.'
'The pretender king had more troops at his command that we had anticipated,' Loras replied; watching his men as they surrounded Aegon, 'it made the battle last about ten minutes longer than expected. Tarly, take your hands OFF that thrice-damned dagger; do you want him to die?!'
'Not that I give a fuck, but you should probably get a maester,' Arya cavalierly suggested; ashamed of the sudden weakness in her knees, 'otherwise Her Grace won't get her trial.'
'Are you alright?' Loras asked; staring at her, 'you look bloody awful.'
'I'm fine,' Arya told him.
She only just had time to wonder why she lied before she was dashing rapidly over to the wash stand and retching like a poisoned man.
Revulsion was spreading like a plague from her mouth to her entire being; nausea was overwhelming her at the memory, and the touch, and the taste; Loras was standing helplessly at her back and awkwardly rubbing her shoulder; and she was retching without vomiting, and weeping at how the ugliness wouldn't come out; at how it stayed with her; in her. Tremours violated her body as she washed out her mouth with the contents of a bottle that might have been soap, or perfume, or even disinfectant; and she spat, and gargled, and retched still further as she listened to Loras sending for a maester and demanding to know what Aegon had done to her; and her stomach was churning and her mind reeling and her cunt still smarting from the touch, his touch, that…it's alright, it's over now, it's over, don't cry, DON'T CRY.
She forced herself to straighten up, and to turn around composedly. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and ran her fingers distractedly through her hair, and looked suddenly at Loras, who was standing hesitantly in front of her and trying and failing to say something; his white plate soaked in blood and half an arrow still sticking out of his left arm.
He wasn't saying anything.
'What?' Arya snapped.
Loras did not reply, and continued to stare at her as though she were a jar of wildfire.
'What?' Arya insisted.
She raised a hand to clout him on the head, as she always did when she was angry with him. Then she noticed his face: twisted, despairing, wiped blank…the same look that it had borne on the beach…on the edge of the water… just before he had told her about Sansa.
'What?' Arya murmured; so softly that she could hardly hear herself.
'Ser Jaime…' Loras stammered, 'he…he's…'
'But…Jaime's not… here,' Arya told him; her voice sounding dense and stupid in her own ears; her mind; her chest; – 'he's in Dragonstone; the queen left him – what happened?'
'He tracked down a few Lannister bannermen who had declared for Daenerys without his consent,' Loras rushed on, 'and pulled rank to gain passage to King's –'
'What's happened to him?' Arya demanded.
Loras' eyes were huge and golden; the colour of a death mask.
'He…took a pike to the stomach during the storming of the Mud Gate,' he said; gently enough to make her scream; 'they say he lost his grip on his sword –'
'Where is he?'
'Arya, please listen –'
'Where is he?'
The Queen's ballroom already stank of blood and death when she shoved the door open and walked into bedlam. There were cots set out in rows, and mattresses laid out on the floor, and Targaryen men and Blackfyre men slipping in blood and drowning in blood and howling without limbs and howling with steel limbs that were lodged in their guts and their heads; and maesters, and maesters' boys rushing about with bandages and supplies and looking up in fascination at the gold filigree ceiling like they couldn't help themselves; and screams screams screams as Arya pushed her way through the chaos with tears stinging her eyes like the weak little idiot that she was; the fool, the bloody fool, he promised me he would stop if he couldn't carry on, he promised me, he promised, where is he? Where is he?
She asked the question of a thousand faces; all of which seemed to dissolve and disappear and flee without answering; and every moment of not knowing was a descent: a descent out of herself, and a descent into herself; herself with him no longer there.
She found Jaime unconscious on a cot at the far end of the hall. His face was a ghastly, blood-stained shadow of himself; the silver of his beard half-alive beneath the red. He was bare from the waist up, and his scars were almost invisible beneath the blood that covered them; his scars that she had kissed, his scars that were also her scars. Piles and piles of bloodied rags and strips held a poultice in place above his stomach, they're trying to stop the bleeding, they've gone for more bandages; and she could see the breath limping weakly in his lungs and pushing more blood out of him as she knelt beside him and peeled the poultice away. Blood spurted onto her hand, fresh and red from his insides that were now his outsides, and she pressed the poultice down again and took his hand with her other hand; his hand that was burnt by dragonfire, and cold as black ice; and her fingertips were gliding across his forehead and across his hair, as they had done a thousand times before; and all of him was cold, and half-dead.
An exhausted-looking maester arrived with fresh dressings and bloodied sleeves; peeling the poultice away and spilling more blood as he applied a fresh one.
'Will he live?' Arya asked; making the maester start, and glare.
'Who in seven hells are you?' he snapped, 'this is the Lord of Casterly Rock, you can't just –'
Who am I, Arya thought ironically; looking down at Jaime, dying, while the maester ranted on and on about nothing.
Nothing is what I have if he dies, she thought, No one is what I will be without him. Who am I now. Right now.
'I'm Arya,' she croaked, 'of the House Stark.'
Jaime stirred slightly, his eyelashes fluttering as though fighting to wake up. But his fingers remained cold as she clutched them tightly in hers, and his face remained cold as she touched his cheek, and when she looked up at the maester again, his demeanour had changed, to something that she hated more than disdain.
'You should –' the maester stammered; his earlier insolence forgotten as his eyes grew dark with pity; 'I believe you should prepare yourself before –'
'I don't need to prepare myself; just tell me!' Arya shouted; rather wanting to snap the man's venerable neck and burst into tears once she'd done it.
The maester looked her in the eye, and told her what she knew already.
'He will die tonight, my lady.'