The girl threw herself across the room and knocked him over, ripping a knife from her belt and plunging it downwards to his exposed throat. Jaime blocked the blow with one hand, seized her belt with the other, and slammed her hard to the ground beneath him; his thighs crushing hers, his hands pinning her arms to the floor as she struggled ferociously to free herself. Somewhere in the background, Father was shouting for his guards, and the girl was shrieking like a demon about her little brother and that wretched tower and Cersei, spittle flying into Jaime's face.

As he heard the guards enter the room, Jaime waited for his usual justification of that particular act ('the things I do for love') to settle in on his heart and banish any thought of his being remotely to blame for Bran Stark's fall; but found, to his dismay, that it did not come. Abandoned by his own memory, he was armourless against her anger, her hatred sharper and more painful than any blow she could have dealt him.

Her eyes were horrifying to look upon. He had never seen anger so powerful, not even in the eyes of grown men; and he had never seen pain so deep, not even in the eyes of dying ones. He tried to tear his gaze away, but he could not. Her eyes were fire, and darkness and silence; a fresco, grey, black, and red, of the unholy, indescribable agony in the chest and throat that precedes the coming of tears.

But the girl had no tears left. He knew that. She had burned them alive and banished them; watching them die in silence while she willfully slaughtered the part of herself that made her feel. He knew that she had done this, because he had done it to himself once, and he had barely been older than her at the time. He had seen that look on his own face innumerable times; in glasses, wine goblets, diamonds, swords, oceans; and he had counted himself lucky because he had done this to himself; this and nothing worse; in order to continue living; in order to stay capable of watching Aerys laughing and pleasuring himself while people burned alive.

In order to stay sane.

But somehow, seeing it in this tiny, murderous creature, and thinking of the terror and innocence on the Stark boy's face as his fingers scrabbled frantically against Jaime's arm, did not make laughter bubble up in his throat or anger claw at his stomach, as they usually did when he thought of that day. Instead, he felt… no. He would not call it guilt. He did not feel guilty. He would do it again without a second thought.

The girl had stopped screaming and was lying limply on the floor beneath him, her face inches from Jaime's, her eyes searching his as intently as his had been searching hers. He realised, with some embarrassment, that the guards were waiting for him to release her, so he sat up abruptly, dragged the girl to her feet and handed her over. She did not struggle at all, and stood suspended between the two guards like a rag doll, awaiting Father's instructions. Her sudden silence made Jaime uncomfortable.

'Lady Arya is tired,' Father said, sounding bored rather than surprised, 'find her a suitable cell.'

The girl allowed herself to be led away, the guards already bickering about how to free up a cell for yet another high born captive, and Jaime turned to his father as the door closed, an inexplicable anger rising in his chest.

'How long have you known?' Jaime demanded.

Father's face remained perfectly serene.

'I have no idea what you mean.'