'What kind of chicken shit idea is this, Stark?' Jaime asked, the blindfold a shock of velvet night against his golden hair, 'how am I supposed to fight if I can't see?'

'The point is to improve your hearing, stupid,' Arya snapped in reply, 'something which you evidently need help with if you're asking me this again already.'

'Nobody can fight blindfolded!'

'I can't believe I have to say this again; I'm not asking you to fight blindfolded; all you have to do is hit me before I hit you! We can't keep going, otherwise! Take it or leave it!'

It was far too early for him to have the slightest hope of hitting her yet, and she wished she could tell him that, if only to get him to shut his mouth. But she was determined to carry out the exercise as Jaqen had, and Jaqen had revealed nothing beyond its auditory advantages when she had been the one wearing the blindfold. Beyond that, he had done little but tie it around her head every day, order her to hit him and land blows on every part of her body that he could reach; enduring months of anger, frustration and swearing with almost supernatural patience and serenity.

Until the day that she had finally hit him; the moment that she had understood what 'calm as still water' really meant, and she had ripped off the blindfold in excitement to find him smiling at her; his eyes larger and more brilliant than she had ever seen them.

'A girl understands,' he had said, and he had looked at her without speaking for just a little too long.

Arya smiled at the memory, her mind holding tightly to Jaqen's unfailing confidence in her through all those months; to his unshakeable belief, no, his knowledge, that she could, would, was meant to hit him, and that it was only a question of waiting; waiting for something that would inevitably come.

But Arya had no such confidence in her own judgment. Training with a Faceless Man didn't make her one, and she had no idea of how Jaime's training would proceed from one day to the next. It was a thought that continually terrified her.

What if he never manages to hit me? What if he never understands? What if he gives up hope? What if I give up hope?

Then he'll do himself harm, most likely, and I'll have the justice that I wanted; the justice that I thought he deserved when I watched the maester cut his hand away and told myself that it pleased me.

The justice that he still deserves. Damn him.

Damn him.

She felt Bran and Rickon in every movement of every muscle in her body. She felt Tywin and Father, and Jaqen and Syrio and Nymeria; every ghost, living or dead, that she had carried with her since the beginning. They thronged silently and garishly about her; heavy like a cloak of stone around her shoulders as they twisted the ground beneath the feet and made it harder to tread on; the effort aching inside her and forcing moisture from her eyes, making her slow, and clumsy and exhausted.

Good thing you're only fighting some irritating old shit in a blindfold, then.

Quite as a shadow, her ghosts heavy about her shoulders, she crept towards Jaime, and noticed, with delight, that he had absolutely no idea where she was, his entire body turned away from her, and beautifully poised…like a Westerosi.

Her ghosts disappeared.

'Feet, Lannister!' she cried, poking him painfully in the toes.

He reacted immediately, his blade disembowelling the air in a way that would have been consummately elegant had she not already returned to her position at his back, silently wondering whether she should poke him in the arse.

Maybe Jaqen drew this process out on purpose, she thought, it's tremendous fun.

She stepped forwards once more and hit him on the shoulder, her feet silent on the earth as she danced through the gap between his blade and the air; circling him gracefully as he lunged and fought with nothing. He was turning on the spot now, as she had taught him to do (at least he listens to some of the things I tell him) and his hair was falling onto his forehead in thick, glistening strips of perspiration that made her think, strange as it was, that she could see herself in every one of them; herself as she was now, silent as the ghosts that lived with her as she moved in a circle about him; and herself as she had been; sweating and hurting and growling, lashing out violently in the hope that she would hit something.

That reminds me. He's been on his feet for far too long.

'Lannister,' she jeered.

And leaping out of the way as he lunged once again, she hit him hard in the knee and watched with satisfaction as he fell.

It was only when she heard him cry out in pain that she realised he had hit his stump.

'Seven…hells!' Jaime roared as he rolled onto his back, his fingers digging into his right forearm as though clawing their way back from death, 'Fuck!'

Arya's mind was assaulted by so many thoughts at once that she almost fainted dead away. She was agony and throbbing and dread and numbness; a frenzied negation of thought and being that grew more painful with every groan he suppressed and that made her want to mutilate her own knees and feet if it would only succeed in getting her to move and help him. She was the desire to run and get help, and the desire to do nothing because he wouldn't want help; the desire to fall down beside him and hold him and feel his skin beneath her fingers and his breath on her lips and tell him to stop this before he hurt himself further; and the desire not to do that either; because he would refuse to live without a sword in his hand, no matter how much it would hurt him. And then she was a scream and a memory and a feeling; she was a boy without legs, and all his pack, and they all had auburn coats and blue eyes, and their jaws were bared against the one that had betrayed them; the one that had forgotten that when the snows fall and white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. She was guilt and horror and pain, and anger and hatred at what Jaime had done, and why.

He had succeeded in removing the blindfold, and she struck him savagely over the head with her sword; the deepest intensity of joy and fury, and the most awful, debilitating misery and desolation piercing every pore in her skin when the sword came away bloody; and Jaime looked up at her as though she had gone mad.

'Arya!' he exclaimed, 'What the fuck are you doing?'

'Why did you do it?' she said, her heart like a morning star in her chest, 'Why? Why did you try to kill him? Why did you even think about killing him? Why couldn't you have let him go and just taken the consequences and…and died? Because you would have died a human being; perhaps even a good man; and I wouldn't have cared either way! I wouldn't have cared if you died and I wouldn't have cared if you lost your stupid hand! Can't you hear me? I wouldn't have cared!'

Jaime's face was the reflection and the knowledge of the inside of her; his face white and fragile as paper; and stained with blood that wasn't blood at all; but memory and blame and agony, and the certainty that all of it was wholly and entirely deserved.

'Arya, I'm sorry,' he said.

No justification escaped his lips; no protests; no jokes. And she knew, then, that she loved him, and that she was very likely damned as well.

'I don't forgive you,' she said, and walked away from him, the smell of his blood still fresh in her nostrils.

As she stormed back to her chambers, determined not to resort to tears or to any other such weakness until she was safely behind a bolted door, she collided head-on with Lord Baelish, the impact sending his letters flying skyward in a hurricane of neatly-folded parchment and raven scrolls. Despite his most stringent objections and enthusiastic calls that it was nothing, she chased his letters from one end of the courtyard to the other and back again until she had retrieved them all, instantly assembling them into a neat pile. She momentarily wondered why she had bothered at all, before concluding that years of sorting Tywin's mail had made letter-writing assume an almost sacred significance in her estimation, even if the person holding the pen in this instance was a liar and a thief.

The topmost letter in the pile was adorned with a flayed man trapped gruesomely in a bloodbath of red sealing wax, and as she looked up at Littlefinger, confused, he smiled at her in a manner that was clearly meant to be disarming, but only succeeded in irritating her.

'Your artistry is consummate, Lady Arya,' Lord Baelish complimented as she smoothed the pile down one last time.

'We all have our qualities,' Arya replied coldly, thinking of her sister, and handing the letters over, 'and speaking of qualities, why in seven hells are you corresponding with Roose Bolton, Lord Baelish? I would have thought him rather dull for your taste.'

Littlefinger's eyes were serene but fiery as he took in her short hair and conservative dress.

'I try to know as many people as I can, my lady,' he purred, bowing slightly, 'I never know when I might need them.'