The greatsword at his belt was mocking him; its weight only worsening the thundering, humiliating pain in his body as he politely told Ser Ilyn to fuck off for the night and slowly began to make his way back to his chambers.

Feverish and nauseous, he watched the red stone of the Keep glow like blood in the torchlight. The pain swelled in time with his heartbeat in a way that was almost musical, pulsing from his stump, to the rest of his body, and back again, wave after wave after heartbeat after reminder after fear: it's not working. It's not fucking working.

'You're not well enough to train,' Tyrion had told him, 'if you try to train before you're strong, you'll just make yourself worse.'

'No I won't,' Jaime had said, 'I won't.'

People looked at him when he passed them in the halls. Some stared openly at his stump and some tried not to stare at it. None of them laughed, which was encouraging, but he could tell that they knew; and that Tyrion had lied to him about Varys keeping his mouth shut.

You've been too long from the capital, Lannister, he told himself, you've forgotten that secrets don't exist here.

He was contemplating whether or not he should go to his brother immediately and curse him for a brilliant little liar and a soft little fool, when he heard raised voices nearby. Two, he did not recognise. The third he would have known anywhere.

'But you let me go in alone the previous night!' Arya was protesting.

'That was before you stayed inside for three hours, my lady,' a much gruffer one replied.

'Am I a danger to His Grace even when I pray?' she hissed.

He found her at the entrance to the godswood; arguing with two red cloaks that Cersei must have commanded to follow her everywhere. Her voice was high and commanding, and she was wearing a gown that made her look like a little septa.

He smiled. It suited her.

'So I'm pious,' Arya was drawling, 'what is wrong with that?'

'The Queen Regent will not accept excessive piety as a reason for our allowing you to spend three hours in the godswood unsupervised, my lady,' one of her guards replied blandly.

'Why do you need to be alone anyway?' the other guard added, 'if my lady would only agree to visit the sept –'

'I don't keep the Seven,' she exclaimed, exasperated, 'how many times must I explain it to you?'

'Should we put her over one shoulder and carry her to the sept?' one guard suggested.

'Perhaps it will give her bad dreams,' the other mused, and both of them burst out laughing.

Jaime chose that moment to step into the light, relishing the way all three of them jumped in surprise.

'I'll see that the lady doesn't run away,' he declared, 'go and find a tree to piss on.'

They wanted to refuse. He could see it. But then he began to finger his sword, knowing full well how empty a threat it was; but when both guards immediately went pale, turned around and walked away, he took a bitter, awful kind of pleasure in the fact. The Kingslayer wasn't dead yet.

Even if I am.

Jaime turned back to Arya.

'Where the fuck have you been?' he demanded.

'Being a lady!' she replied briskly, 'learning to smile and sing and please. I have to train at night – in there – with a stick.'

'Why?' Jaime asked, surprised.

'Your stupid sister took my sword and all my knives away,' Arya angrily observed, 'and she has my handmaiden search me every morning.'

Jaime almost growled in frustration, furious with Cersei and ashamed of himself for the shock of apprehension that went through him at the thought of having to confront her again. Their discussion about Tyrion's chambers had been…unpleasant; even though he had won the argument. Eventually.

'I'll see to it, Arya,' he promised.

'Don't you mock me,' she snapped in reply; her grey eyes like lightning on a lake.

'Do I look like I'm mocking you?' he demanded, before reasoning that in the light of recent events, he couldn't really blame her for thinking so.

But he wouldn't tell her that, so they stood glaring at each other for a few moments more before walking together into the godswood; the sound of the place enveloping them in a rush of quiet and water and cold.

He was surprised by how confidently she walked in the dark; the dark that was the colour of her dress. The gown covered every inch of her except her head and hands, but was oddly provocative in its restraint; suggestive; making one want to see what she was hiding beneath it.

You know what she's hiding beneath it, Jaime thought, you've seen it; you've felt it. You've felt it with both your hands, with all of you.

He couldn't tell if she was also thinking about what had happened the last time they'd been alone in a godswood. If she was, she was doing a bloody good job of making him think otherwise. Her hands were clasped neatly at her middle, like a lady's, and she looked ahead of her rather than at him; away from him and into the dark.

'Cersei will never let me have my daggers back,' she said quietly, 'or the sword I picked up during the battle.'

'Arya, I've told you – '

She stopped suddenly and turned to him, her hand touching his right forearm. He could feel the heat of her skin through his sleeve.

'It's alright,' she told him, 'I don't care about most of them; they're easily replaced. But there's one. A Valyrian steel dagger with a red leather hilt. Your father gave it to me. And I'd sooner not have it end up as a wedding present for Joffrey.'

Jaime knew the dagger she was talking about. Father had never gone anywhere without it.

Oh gods. He must have loved her very much.

'I…I know it,' Jaime said simply.

Arya nodded.

'Then you keep it for me until I can take it back,' she commanded earnestly, 'I'd rather it be yours than his.'

'If you insist,' he smiled, 'though I can't guarantee that I'll put it to good use.'

Jaime felt her eyes and his travel downwards to the place where her fingers met his arm. They looked very white against the black jerkin he wore, and they were touching his sleeve; all one, two, three, four of them; just above the place where…where…

Where your fucking hand used to be. Not thinking it won't make it any less true.

Sensing his anxiety, Arya tried to let him go; and Jaime laid his left hand firmly on top of hers, her fingers like fire beneath his; so different from the night that he had washed the blood from her hands; when the shadow had killed both his father and all the strength that she carried inside her. She had seemed so small and fragile, then. He might have been a father cradling his own child.

Well, not quite. Most fathers don't kiss their daughters in the same way that they kiss their lovers.

He wanted to kiss her again, to raise his hand to touch her face, but his muscles tensed painfully as they realised, for the hundredth, for the thousandth time, that there was no hand left to touch her with. Just a fucking stump that no one in their right minds would want anywhere near their face.

'I'm sorry,' Arya murmured, looking young and beautiful and whole.

And suddenly, he was angry.

'Are you?' he snapped in reply, 'Sorry?'

Arya dropped her hand immediately and took a step away from him.

'If you have something to say,' she said testily, 'tell me what it is and get it over with.'

'You should be happy, don't you think?' Jaime hissed, not needing any further encouragement, 'this is more than you could have hoped for. If you'd succeeded in killing me on the day that we met, I would have had a clean death and that would have been the end of it. You might have felt that justice had been done. True, you wouldn't have had very long to appreciate it, but the thought would have driven all fear out of your stubborn little head while Father was having you raped, tortured and executed by Ser Gregor and his gang of hooligans. Except I would have been dead, and that's no true kind of revenge at all. This –' he waved his stump at her – 'is far better and far worse than anything you could have hoped for. I was that hand, and that hand was me. But it's also the hand I used to kill poor sad Aerys Targaryen; it's the hand I used to push your infernal little brother out of that tower; and it's the hand I used to slide between my sister's legs to make her wet. All of that avenged! In one fell swoop! Aren't you happy, Lady Stark? Are you not diverted? You get to see me hobbling bruised about the castle like some half-drunk fucking cripple every single fucking day for the foreseeable future and you get to listen to constant gossip and speculation about whether or not I'll ever fucking well be able to fight again, knowing all the while that I won't, because it's not working, it's not fucking working! You complain that Cersei has taken your poor little knives away from you; like it's the end of the world. What are you moaning about? It seems a reasonable price to pay for the spectacular fucking show you're getting in return!'

'Oh, now I want to kill you, you miserable bastard!' the girl seethed, trying to punch him in the arm and almost breaking her fist in the attempt.

'Please do! You'll be doing me a favour!' Jaime shouted in return, drawing his sword and offering it to her as she cradled her fist, 'Here! Use my own sword while you're at it – that is if you don't fall over on your scrawny arse from the weight!'

'Any decent fighter would fall over from the weight of that bloody monstrosity hanging on your belt!' Arya spat, making no move to touch the blade.

'So now I'm a bad fighter!'

'That thing you Westerosi do on the battlefield or in the stupid lists; that isn't fighting!'

He would have wondered at her narrow-mindedness, but he was far too angry.

'What do you mean you Westerosi?' he demanded theatrically, 'are you no longer Westerosi?'

'Not when I fight!' she bellowed back.

He remembered, then, what fighting her had felt like; how alien it had seemed, and how fucking fast she was; too quick for the air and too beautiful for the earth; playing a magnificent game with her body, her hands and her opponent; the weapon seeming no lighter than a needle as she passed it from her left hand to her right; disguising her sword hand as ruthlessly and as effortlessly as her eyes disguised her next move.

'Well?' Arya barked at him, 'I'm waiting! No more clever remarks for me, Ser?'

'Arya,' he stated.

'What?'

'You know how to fight left-handed.'