When Arya finally slammed her chamber door behind her, the sound of it echoing through silent sandstone halls at the hour of the wolf, she burst into fits of hysterical, mirthless laughter, and began to cry. Her gown felt like blood and filth on her skin, and she started to tear desperately through the laces, her sobs growing louder and more painful as her fingers became more and more tangled up, and by the time she finally succeeded in getting out of the gown, she was lingering agonisingly on the borders of hysteria. She ripped out great chunks of her own hair in her eagerness to take off her wig, and she flung it into the fire as she crossed the room to the basin of water at the window. She washed her face and hands up to the elbows and half-drenched her shift in water, and she could no longer tell if she was crying or screaming as the sounds scraped at her throat and her chest like knives; the tears clawing through her cheeks like talons of iron and magma
She had done it. She had killed him. She had watched him die and she had felt happy; whispering 'Valar morghulis' to herself as Joffrey's face turned black; and longing, suddenly, to speak to Jaqen, just for a moment, as the taking of that single, hideous life pulled her into all her deaths at once. She cried and cried and cried as the sound of Ilyn Payne severing muscle and blood and bone resonated through the crowd; Bran and Rickon were screaming with her as their flesh blackened and burned and baked; Robb's head was ripped from his shoulders as knives punctured his flesh, while Mother's beautiful red hair was torn from her and her body thrown out like food for crows.
And Tywin's heartbeat was fading away beneath her hands, and his beautiful blue eyes were warm as he smiled at her.
'You resemble her,' he said.
And Tywin was the worst, because of what he had done; and her pack, her shades, her phantoms were disappearing around her; the last of them, Sansa, wandering in a darkness of the mind; far away from her and beyond her reach.
As Arya had dashed out of the great hall to look for her sister, she had seen Lord Varys watching her with something like pride; and she remembered the words that he had spoken to her, or that the dream of him had spoken to her, when she had been too thirsty and too delirious to know the difference.
'The revenge you want will be yours in time.'
But in that moment, she hadn't cared about revenge, and she had torn all over the Red Keep like a mad thing, shouting Sansa's name and knowing all the while that it was useless; that only one fate had befallen Sansa, and that its name was Petyr Baelish. A royal wedding that included a regicide was the only event chaotic enough to ensure both an unnoticed escape and an unnoticed, if brief, return from a diplomatic mission, and Arya sobbed harder as she realised that Littlefinger must have known about the plot all along; that he must have had some part to play that Lady Olenna had conveniently forgotten to tell her about while providing her with instructions about the correct way to straighten Sansa's blood hairnet, so that the 'black amethyst' (what a joke) would slip easily from its setting into her palm.
I've killed a king, but I'm still a pawn. I'm still a stupid mouse. I've been played. I've been played like a fucking high harp. I would never have agreed to it had I known that he was involved.
Don't be stupid. Of course you would have.
Taking Sansa away straight after Joffrey's murder was perfect, of course. It was the ideal way to ensure her cooperation. Her flight would be mistaken for complicity and she would have no choice but to stay with him; to exchange one jail for another; one solitude for another.
Arya sank to her knees; refusing to believe that Sansa had gone willingly and had left her behind. She wouldn't. She wouldn't.
They must have lied to her; or perhaps she changed her mind at the last minute, or maybe –
Arya pushed the washstand over and screamed as the porcelain struck the earth and smashed into choking clouds of powder and dust.
Everyone always leaves, you little fool, she spat bitterly at herself, don't you understand that yet? It doesn't matter what you do or how hard you try. Everyone. Always. Leaves.
She remembered Jaime's face at the feast; the face of the one person that she had left instead of its being the other way round; how angry he had seemed each time he so much as looked in her direction; how he probably hated her by now; and how much she had loved him when he had rushed to help his brother; like the stupid, loyal, honourable fool that he was.
She wished he were here with her. She wanted him here.
And she felt no relief that Joffrey was dead. She felt no joy, or fulfilment. She felt nothing but the desire to cry.
If this is what revenge feels like, then it's pretty fucking disappointing.
She cradled her head in her hands, growling at herself to stop weeping like a weakling, and wondering what the fuck she was going to do about Sansa. Her absence would be noted soon enough, and then Arya would have to say something, anything, to ensure that her sister wasn't blamed for Joffrey's death.
Why couldn't my stupid sister just leave the game to those who actually know how to play it? What am I going to do? What am I going to say?
I'm definitely not going to confess. They'd just chop my head off and go after her anyway.
She jumped violently as the door crashed open to admit Ser Boros and Ser Meryn, their eyes travelling from the smashed basin of water to where she sat cowering against the wall in her shift, crying like a child.
'Arya Stark!' Ser Meryn roared, 'come with us! The Queen Regent wants to see you.'
Arya got to her feet and wiped her hands on her shift.
'Mind if I get dressed first?'
When Arya entered the solar wearing her habitual conservative black; she found Cersei behind her desk in a glorious black velvet gown that she might have chosen for its fetching colour as well as for its symbolic attributes.
'Lady Stark,' Cersei greeted coldly and indifferently in a manner that did not seem at all natural to her, 'you may sit.'
Seven hells, Arya realised, she's trying to sound like her father.
'Your sister,' Cersei continued matter-of-factly, as though commenting on the price of wool, 'is not to be found this evening.'
'Yes, Your Grace,' Arya replied, too tired to congratulate Cersei on her quick work, 'I have spent most of the evening looking for her myself.'
The Queen Regent smirked triumphantly.
'Her disappearance naturally makes her an obvious suspect in Joffrey's murder.'
Arya did her best to look surprised.
'Murder, Your Grace?'
'Yes, murder; are you deaf? Twenty-year-old boys do not habitually drop dead at their own weddings!'
Ah. Not so very matter-of-fact after all.
'Your Grace,' Arya interjected hurriedly, 'men may…men may choke at any age.'
'Is every Northerner in the world hard of hearing, Lady Stark?' Cersei spat impatiently, 'your lord father had the same problem. If I say my son was murdered, then murdered he was!'
Arya swallowed her desire to tear Cersei's pretty white throat out and shouted at herself not to lose her temper. She couldn't help Sansa if she was locked up.
'Your Grace,' Arya insisted, without a trace of gentleness or tenderness, 'he choked. King Joffrey choked, it was an accident.'
Cersei vehemently slammed her palm onto the table.
'Then how do you account for your sister's conveniently sudden disappearance?'
'I can't account for it and I don't account for it! But Sansa wouldn't do this. She had reason enough, but she certainly wouldn't –'
Cersei sat back, her long white fingers grasping the arms of her chair.
'Yes,' she said, 'your sister certainly had reason enough. My son has inflicted every possible kind of misery on her without ever actually getting round to spreading her pretty little legs. I would have killed him long ago for less than that; were I in her position. But then I am a lioness; not a spoilt little wolf cub.'
'My sister may very well have desired your son's death,' Arya agreed, ignoring that previous remark and deciding to try flattery, 'but such a spectacle as today – the great occasion; the overwhelming possibility of King Joffrey's death being put down to choking on his wine or on some piece of food lodged in his throat; the panic that his passing will create – this is the sort of plot that would emerge from an intelligent and enlightened mind. I must grudgingly acknowledge Your Grace to be in possession of such a mind –'
'Careful, Lady Stark,' Cersei cautioned regally.
' – but I cannot say the same for Sansa. I love my sister dearly, truly, I do, but the poor girl is simple as milk. If she wished King Joffrey dead, she would very likely put her trust in some idiotic knight with a handsome face; or poison the King herself and expect everybody to believe that a young man in the very best of health died in his sleep. But the sort of thing that we saw today…that must have taken months of planning, the likes of which are far beyond Sansa's capacities. Surely Your Grace must see that.'
Arya watched Cersei consider that with more than a little thought, and she optimistically wondered if, by some miracle, she had convinced her.
Surely not. That would be far too easy.
She stared intently at the hardness of Cersei's face; at the low cunning and spite that seemed to mar every line and contour of her beauty; and she found her thoughts wandering to Jaime; and to how much he must have loved Cersei for all those years. Enough to have children with her when he must have known the risks; enough to push a ten-year-old boy out of a window for her; enough to renounce his own birth right for her.
'He was so deep in Cersei's pockets,' Tyrion had said, 'and in her cunt, most of the time – that he would commit any kind of insanity to impress her, or just to show her that he cared; and she would hold him to that; more times than I could count. Under her influence, he was as biddable as a lapdog.'
Arya closed her eyes, and briefly allowed herself the comfort of thinking that it had all been Cersei's fault; that she had trapped him and corrupted him and turned him into something that he wasn't; that she had made him do it.
But that was a lie too, and she knew it.
We always have a choice. Always.
The thought of lying to herself briefly made her consider telling Cersei the truth about Sansa and Littlefinger. Finding them would be much easier with the assistance of the Crown, and more importantly, with the help of Varys' spies.
Yes, very clever. She'll use Varys' spies to find them, then take both their heads without a second thought. That would be unfortunate.
Arya did not much care what happened to Littlefinger's head, but she didn't want to be responsible for the premature removal of Sansa's.
I could always approach Varys privately…
No. That was no good either. He had no reason to help her, and he'd probably run straight to Cersei in any case. She would need the help of someone that she trusted implicitly, and she trusted no one implicitly…except herself.
I'll have to leave King's Landing and look for them myself, she realised, it's the only way. Find a way to sneak out of the Keep, steal a horse, stay off the Kingsroad, decide where I'm going, at some point…
Arya almost laughed aloud, ridiculing her own stupidity and her own fear. Sneak out of one of the most heavily-guarded castles in the kingdoms…and then what? Wander from town to town and ask every person she met? She'd be picked up within hours if she did that.
Arya's eyes met Cersei's, and she saw cruelty there, and grief, and hunger for blood, and she was suddenly seized by a horrible, agonising certainty that she hadn't convinced her of Sansa's innocence, and that she never would. Because Cersei was no longer comforted by the truth. She was a mother who had lost her child, and she wanted a scapegoat. She wanted blood to cleanse her grief. And she wanted revenge on the world that seemed to have already forgotten her son; on the stars that hadn't stopped in the sky; and on the moon that hovered brilliant and silver over the sea as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened on the first day of the new century.
Get used to it, my sweet, accursed enemy of a sister, Arya thought, this is what happens when you lose someone you love. Your world ends…and nobody else gives a fuck.
'I will have your sister hunted down like a dog,' Cersei growled, 'I will have her raped while you watch. And then I will have her head.'
Arya stood up very slowly; anger incinerating her chest.
'Jaime will strangle you himself before he lets that happen,' she snarled in reply, 'and that's only if I don't get to you first.'
Cersei's face went very, very white, and she became like a caged animal as she considered a multitude of actions and orders, Jaime seeming to stand in the way of every single one of them; Jaime as he was now; the twin that Cersei could not forgive for changing; that she could not forgive for becoming himself; for closing his mind to her and making it his own. Her power over him had gone, and with it her power over everything. Jaime had taken it from her. Jaime and Tyrion.
And me, Arya thought, I took it from you when I killed your rotten son.
'Get. Out.' Cersei whispered hoarsely, the words like horror on her lips.
When Arya left the room and closed the door behind her, she lingered in the passage for a few moments more, listening to the muffled sound of the Queen Regent sobbing as it pulsed and resonated through the door.
Arya loved the sound of Cersei crying. It was like music.
