'Is it the sort of thing that one can learn to do?' Jaime asked, 'or are you born with it?'

'I don't know,' Arya replied quietly, 'I don't know.'

She could see that he was trying hard not to hope; not to insist; not to look as though it mattered to him. It would have worked had she only been listening to his voice. But watching his face was…horrifying. There was a kind of glow in it that had not been there earlier that evening; a glow that she had felt in his hands and his lips on the night that Tywin had died.

If I fuck this up, that glow will never come back again. And it will be my fault. Mine.

'I'm not doing it,' Arya declared resolutely.

'Why not?' Jaime asked exasperatedly.

'Because it's not that simple!'

'What isn't that simple?'

Her heart was pounding as frantically and as anxiously as though she'd failed already; as though weeks and months had passed and achieved nothing; with Jaime dying a little more every day as the hope drained out of him, his eyes turning black and hollow.

That's what you wanted, wasn't it? she thought to herself, justice for Bran?

Arya looked back at Jaime and watched him watching her; his whole being appearing out of joint and off-center; the sword that was still clutched in his hand looking so out of place that it might have been writhing and screaming for him to let go of it.

If this suffering is your idea of justice, she thought, then you are the worst woman who ever lived.

'You can't spend your entire life fighting and training in the Westerosi style and then just change overnight!' she declared, sensing that gentleness that would only make him think she was patronising him.

'Why not?' he insisted, pausing as she abruptly clapped one hand over his heart, its beat gasping and thundering beneath her fingers.

'Because the way you fight is in you,' Arya vowed, meaning every word, 'it is you.'

His eyes turned pale for a moment; then returned to their customary emerald sheen.

'It isn't anymore.'

Arya dropped her hand.

'Yes it is. You're just too impatient.'

'Do you blame me for being bloody impatient?'

'Do I blame you for drinking too much, eating too little and then expecting to be as you were in one week? Of course I do, stupid! Do you even understand what's happened to you? What's happened to your body?'

As the desire to kill flashed in his eyes; his fingers tightening around his sword, Arya realised that she was the first person who had ever dared to ask him that question.

Good, she thought, he needs to hear it, even if he doesn't like what he hears.

'Say that again,' Jaime menacingly pronounced, 'and I'll nail your tongue to a wagon wheel.'

'No you won't,' Arya declared, 'you're much too fond of my tongue to do that.'

'Don't flatter yourself, Stark.'

'I will until you stop blushing.'

'Don't change the subject.'

Arya sighed.

'I can't believe I have to say this out loud,' she grumbled, 'I can't train you, I don't know how.'

'What do you mean, you don't know how?' he asked, with an exaggerated placidity that made her blood boil.

Don't lose your temper. It'll just make him fight harder.

Arya took a deep breath, and tried to explain.

'I learned Braavosi water dancing for a while,' she said, 'with Syrio, he taught me…it doesn't matter…but then I did nothing but throw sticks and stones and try to smash people's heads in, for weeks and weeks, or…or maybe months. And then when I met Jaqen,' Jaqen left me too, 'and when I started the Faceless – I mean, when I met Jaqen, all of that, everything from, from before, went away; except some of it stayed, because some parts are the same and some aren't, it really depends on where – '

'You're blathering, Stark,' Jaime interrupted.

'– I wouldn't know where to start!' Arya exclaimed, throwing up her hands in exasperation, 'Especially not with you. When you fight you probably don't even need to think about what to do anymore. Your body just knows.'

'Knew,' he replied quietly.

'Trying to unlearn all that will drive you mad,' she insisted, determined to ignore that previous comment.

'How do you know?' he insisted in his turn, 'how do you know that it won't be simpler to learn something completely new instead of re-teaching myself something that I know already - but without the most important part?'

He has a point.

Jaime's eyes were asking her the question, over and over again; the question; one word; that she knew he would never say aloud; that he could never say aloud without completely losing himself – at least in his own estimation. She admired that. She admired him.

He was still standing before her with the greatsword clutched in his hand; a ponderous piece of steel that seemed to melt away from him and to clad her shoulders in its own weight. She remembered the first, the only time that she had fought him and how beautiful he had been; a terrifying metallic kind of beauty that encompassed all of him; but that was also blood and flesh and life; aliveness and light. She could see it stirring in him now, along with hope, and she felt sick with the feeling of that hope on her shoulders.

If you fuck this up, it'll kill him, she thought; and for a moment, she heard Jaqen answering her, his voice like velvet as he spoke the words:

Valar morghulis.

'It'll be strange,' Arya said.

'Fine,' Jaime answered.

'And it'll be erratic,' she added, 'I'd be making it up as I go along. I can't see you chasing cats or standing on one toe for hours.'

'Standing on one – what?'

'And you do what I say,' Arya persisted, ignoring him, 'you can ask questions, but you do what I say.'

'Fine.'

That surprised her.

'It is?'

'Yes.'

'You're lying.'

'Maybe.'

'Stop it.'

'Yes, my lady.'

Arya bit her lip to stop herself from smiling. He was such a shit.

'Oh, one more thing,' she quipped suddenly, determined that Jaime would not leave this godswood thinking that she'd agreed for emotional reasons, 'what's in it for me?'

If he was hurt, he didn't show it; grinning widely at her with something like respect.

'Father taught you well,' he observed.

'It's a rare thing to have a teacher who knows what he's talking about,' she breezily replied, 'and the accusations that you made earlier this evening have made me rather reluctant to help you. So what's in it for me?'

She felt his eyes burning into hers as he thought; a far pleasanter feeling than the guilt that was burning into her stomach; and she tried to breathe normally through the tiny space between her parted lips as she watched him think, and look at her.

'I'll administer your household,' Jaime suggested.

'What?' Arya drawled, unimpressed. Was that the best he could come up with?

'I'll administer your household,' Jaime repeated, ignoring her tone, 'I'll ask my brother Tyrion to find you some servants that aren't spies. He's the only person left in the family who's remotely good at that sort of thing. And if any of my bitch sister's little pawns give you trouble, you have the luxury of sending them to me and of seeing said trouble disappear in time for dinner.'

Your bitch sister? Did I miss something?

'You're taking me under your protection,' she accused scornfully.

'In a manner of speaking,' Jaime shrugged.

'I don't need your stupid protection!' Arya insisted.

'I can see that,' Jaime cynically replied, and she could tell he was thinking of the guards.

Arya sighed, surreptitiously eyeing his stance.

Fine then. Fine.

'To begin with,' she said, 'you're going to have to stop standing like that.'

Jaime looked down at his body; then up at her.

'Like what?' he demanded.

'Like that,' Arya insisted.

'But I don't stand like –'

Arya walked towards him.

'Turn your body side-face,' she commanded.

'Side what?' Jaime asked.

Arya seized one of his shoulders and turned him roughly.

'Sideways,' she mumbled.