In the moments following his father's death, the voices of the other commanders had begun to writhe and resonate in the air in front of him, bursting across his vision like siege fires. Every voice suddenly assumed a colour of its own, and not one of them was making the slightest bit of sense.
'Put my uncle in charge of the right,' Jaime snapped, his blindness lifting as his voice brought silence to the cacophony, 'put me in the fucking vanguard. And change nothing else. Unless you want the old bastard haunting you before he gets himself shoved into a marble hole somewhere.'
And blinking feverishly to clear the chaos from his eyes, he left them to do whatever the fuck they wanted.
He ripped open the flap to Arya's tent; not even bothering to ask himself what he was doing there; expecting to find her screaming in a crumpled heap on the floor. Instead, she stood wordlessly before her washstand, her bloodstained hands poised just above the water; her fingers twitching and tremouring like the limbs of a decapitated man. Her hands were a horror, as his had been; the blood more solid than liquid, and in some places more black than red.
'It still feels warm,' she murmured softly as Jaime approached.
She means it still feels alive, he thought, stepping closer and closer to her until his chest touched her back; ashamed of how her whole body loosened in relief as he bent almost double to nestle his chin in the crook of her shoulder and neck; ashamed at the nausea rising in his throat at the sight of her hands and the thought of his father's blood touching his skin again.
But he laced his fingers through hers anyway and lowered them into the water; Arya's skin like ice beneath his, no warmth, no light, as together they created a fountain of blood from a simple basin of water.
The water shuddered and quaked as Jaime's fingers journeyed up and down her hands, tracing the lines of her palms and the delicate skin between each of her fingers; his thumbs rubbing at the hardness of her knuckles and the skin beneath her nails; his fingertips touching the callouses that marked hers. Blood came off everything in hot crimson sheets and granules of red sand, and it rose up out of the water to float on its surface like the bloated bodies of drowned men.
And suddenly she fell, so abruptly that he hardly had time to seize her before she hit the ground; her limbs like liquid as Jaime sank to the floor with her and pulled her into his arms, not caring if she tried to kill him for doing it. She curled up against him like a cat, her eyes grey and red and exhausted; tired of shining, tired of being strong. Her heartbeat collided with his fingers as they travelled gently through her hair, her scalp beneath it damp and warm from her tears.
She trusts me, Jaime thought as her eyes flickered desperately shut; their lids swollen and enflamed as her cheek came to rest against his chest.
Arya's every breath wrenched hard against his stomach each time the shadow came over her; the memory poisoning her limbs and breaking them until it decided to release her. Then she would breathe quietly, her eyes closed, but unsleeping, until it came for her again.
'Oh, gods,' she murmured, trembling and hurting, 'gods.'
Jaime kissed her hair; her forehead; and eventually, her lips; her mouth tasting of tears; and gentle and beautiful as a child's breath.
'Go to sleep,' he murmured, 'try to sleep.'
And he watched her try, every part of her holding a part of him.
Why don't I feel grief? Jaime thought, listening to her breathing against him, why don't I feel this? Why don't I feel anything? Shouldn't I be feeling something, even if its relief, even if it's happiness that the old bugger's dead? The girl is distraught. Incapacitated. And he wasn't even her blood.
Just thinking of the future made Jaime sigh. There would be a funeral, of course, and there would be mourning. There would be mass hysteria. There would be mass plotting. There would be talk that House Lannister was finished without him. Perhaps it was.
Cersei will kick up the biggest fuss she can manage. She'll want to show them that they're wrong; that she can continue where he left off: a daughter continuing her beloved father's legacy.
So why can't I imagine his bloody legacy without the absurdly tiny little brat that's lying in my arms?
At the crack of dawn, Uncle Kevan appeared fully-armoured at the tent flap, letting in the smell of horses, and the crack of hammers on steel.
'Jaime – '
Jaime put a finger to his lips and motioned politely to him to wait outside; Arya still fast asleep, deathly pale and beautiful.
'Arya,' he said softly, shaking her.
Her eyes flickered open immediately.
'It's time to move,' he said.
Arya nodded mutely and disentangled herself, getting to her feet and crossing the room to where her trunk lay open. She did not look at him or speak to him.
There's no time for deciphering the minds of adolescent girls, Jaime thought as he got to his feet and left the tent without comment, you have Stannis bloody Baratheon to smash.
Uncle Kevan looked ghastly; his appearance rendered all the more disturbing by the neatness of his armour and his freshly-shaven face.
'Uncle,' Jaime said, 'I'm so sorry about Father.'
'As am I,' Uncle Kevan responded, smiling weakly, 'he was…he…oh, you understand what I mean.'
Jaime nodded, not understanding; trying to smile back, failing miserably.
'How does the girl do?' Uncle Kevan asked by way of easing his discomfort, 'last night she seemed…disturbed.'
'She's devastated,' Jaime replied simply.
He didn't know what else to say.
