Cersei's shrieks of indignation were still ringing in Jaime's ears when the blindfold descended over his eyes the following morning, and he couldn't help but smile as he remembered how he, and almost the entire castle, had heard every word she had said. Nothing too interesting, really, just tiny tedious variations on 'Get out' and 'I will hurt you for this.'

He could hear Arya sighing in frustration in front of him, her tiny foot stamping on the ground.

'Hold the tip of the sword – '

'- up,' Jaime groaned in frustration as he complied, wishing that she would shut up about that particular piece of advice. It was the one, merciful, triumphant thing that she hadn't had to teach him from scratch, though one would never think so from the way she rambled on about it.

Arya's reaction to her newfound wealth had been quite unlike Cersei's. She had stood at the window of her bedchamber listening carefully to every word Jaime had said to her, the morning light like dew in her crow's nest hair, and she had stared silently at him for a good half minute without speaking at all, her arms folded protectively across her chest.

'Thank you for telling me,' she had murmured, and she had looked away from him and out of the window, saying no more than that.

Jaime's vision was black as he felt Arya's sword strike his chest, and as he struck out at her, he listened hard for anything that might tell him where she was; anything apart from the usual godswood sounds of leaves and water. They were a din in his ears like the waves beneath Casterly Rock; a powerful and thunderous shuddering and shimmering; and suddenly the sound grew louder and louder; so loud that it almost hurt him; his own heartbeat adding to the cacophony that seemed to force its way into his body on waves of sound; and he fought wildly and desperately against it, anger rising in his chest.

But the sound only increased in volume, and so did his hopelessness. Arya hit his wrist, and he lashed out again, his sword connecting with nothing, bloody nothing, and he couldn't beat down the infernal fucking noise in his head no matter how hard he tried. He could not find the sound of Arya; only the deafening pandemonium of leaves and water that grated on his ears and thundered so painfully in his mind that he wanted to fling his sword down and walk away.

Jaime came to a decision, then, and the decision was very simple.

Fuck it.

I don't give a fuck about improving my hearing or opening my ears or any of the shit that she says I should do to find her. I'll just ignore it all and do whatever the fuck I want.

The idea seemed ridiculous when it formed in his mind. But then the sound of leaves surged again, and he repeated the maxim under his breath, urging himself to obey it.

Fuck it. Just fuck it.

So he stopped thinking about the godswood sound, and he stopped fighting with himself. He stopped trying to beat down the waves and waves of distraction and frustration that were ringing in his ears, and he simply tried to be; to stand still for a moment, without fighting and without thinking. To stand still for a moment, and to be.

And suddenly he heard the sound of Arya drawing breath; loud and beautiful and loud; so loud that he was amazed he hadn't heard it before. The sound drew a kind of line in the darkness in front of him, a single line of sound that called out to its kin; and then everything that emanated a sound seemed to drift and crowd into his vision; to his lack of vision; in lines constructed from the invisible and the sonorous, the sound moulded into a world of dark and non-dark that he could see and feel; and out of the calm, a godswood appeared before his eyes; a godswood made of sound; where seeing and hearing were the same thing; where the trees reared up above him, their leaves green and red in the air and yellow and darker red on the ground; a symphony woodland of trees in a circle around him; and off to his left, a small, thin figure beneath them, poised in a stance she had taught him, holding the point of the fucking sword up.

He struck without thinking, without even deciding, and the resulting cry and sharp intake of breath made his heart warp in his chest, and he was plunged into darkness and nothingness again; alone with the leaves and the trees.

Keeping his sword upright, he raised his stump and used his forearm to push the blindfold upwards and off the top of his head.

Arya was right in front of him, and the tip of his sword was at her throat, forcing her chin upwards; the curve of her jaw like granite, and snow; her grey eyes damp, and overcome.

'You understand,' she rasped, the sword tight against her throat, 'you understand. You understand.'

The euphoria that he felt as she spoke the words and repeated them like a prayer was indescribable, overpowering, beautiful. He could hear her breath as it travelled deeply and rapidly from the pit of her stomach to her throat and right up the blade into his hand; the pallour of her face transforming as blood returned to her skin and her cheeks and her lips as she muttered, again and again, 'you understand, you understand,'; and as he lowered the sword and dropped it, she crossed the space between them and leapt into his arms. Her tongue as it thrust into his mouth and found his tasted like battle fury; like the beauty of the roaring of blood; and he opened his lips for her like hope and the fight and her as the fingers of his hand clasped her neck; and he could feel her sighs vibrating through them as she buried her fingers in his hair and yanked hard, as though daring him to cry out. Her small and calloused hands found his chest and the inside of his shirt, her fingertips like candle wax on the hard nubs of bone at his shoulders; and suddenly she was pulling his shirt and doublet over his head; her mouth sinking desperately into his as he kissed her again and pulled her closer to him as her fingers moved to the laces at the side of her gown, ripping through them like tiny knives.

Many things occurred to him as he watched her small, lithe nakedness shrug out of her gown and shift, and many more occurred to him as his fingers tangled with hers at the laces of his breeches; and they laughed against each other's mouths and teased each other's fingers as his cock grew harder and harder beneath their touch.

This is wrong.

So why does it feel right?

She's a child.

She's a woman.

I'm broken.

I'm mending.

Anyone could see us.

I don't give a fuck if someone sees us.

This shouldn't happen.

This was always going to happen.

I can't let this happen.

I'm going to let this happen.

After this, there's no going back.

I don't care. I don't want to go back.

Then she was beneath him on the godswood floor, and he only had one fucking hand to hold himself up with, but the entire world was a moving map in her skin, whose contours he traced with every pore of his own. Her ribs were pressing hard into him; like her lips that were swallowing his and chafing them raw; like her fingertips and her hands as they drew patterns on every bone in his back and shoulders. Her skin was beautiful, and so was her face, and he loved the way that she frowned as he teased her, his lips aching gloriously as she tried and failed to reach them; and when she looked away from him in annoyance, her chest throbbing madly against his, his tongue flickered suddenly between his lips and touched her breasts; and she moaned and swore and squirmed as each of her nipples grew hard in his mouth, her hips pulsing unconsciously against his. But then his arm began to tremble from the weight of supporting himself, and he felt her muscles tense up immediately.

'Do you need to – '

'No,' he growled, and she shouted in alarm, then burst out laughing as he wrapped both his arms around the small of her back and yanked her upright into his lap, almost falling over in the process; the laughter still trembling on her lips as she kissed him again; and growing in volume when she felt the corners of his mouth turning up in response.

I didn't laugh when I fucked Cersei, he thought suddenly, as Arya wrapped herself around him, not once. Not once in my entire life.

And trembling with the wish that every square inch of his skin could be covered with every square inch of her skin, he laid his forehead against hers; a question in the gesture. A nod and an intake of breath answered him, and he kissed her as he slid into her; the thought of how wet she was bursting into his head at the same time that she cried out in pain.

'No,' she growled, her legs tightening around his back as he tried to pull out again, 'don't.'

As he cursed himself for a fool who had no idea what he was doing, she remained frozen in his arms; her body seeming to shudder through the air itself; and as his fear grew that he had hurt her, he kissed her softly, his fingers trailing through her hair and touching her cheek, which was feverish and hot to the touch. She kissed him once, almost shyly; then again, for a little longer. Then her fingers pressed into his hair and she pulled him so close that he could taste her teeth with his tongue, and her hips pushed once against his, tentatively; then again, harder; and when he responded, his cock straining under the effort of holding himself in, she closed her eyes and leaned into him, sighing when his lips found her neck and thrusting with him as he moved in her. His mouth breathed in her skin as they found their rhythm together; her entire body seemed to live around him and to live inside him; and he heard nothing and saw nothing but the way that they gasped and moaned and panted together, as they would in a world without sound; nothing but her hips as they thrust faster against his and pulled him deeper into her; and nothing but her voice as she peaked and his cock as he exploded inside her; and neither of them could speak afterwards; a tangle of limbs, and similarity, and difference.

He couldn't hear the trees, and he couldn't hear the water. He couldn't hear the thoughts that he had had, or the doubts, or the utterances and the whisperings in his head that this was wrong, that this couldn't happen, that she was a child, that he was broken.

I'm not broken, Jaime thought, as her head drooped onto his shoulder, I'm whole.

Chapter notes

Candle wax on shoulders image shamelessly stolen from Angela Carter.