Chapter notes
Please note that this chapter contains graphic psychological descriptions of drowning and an implied suicide attempt. If you are uncomfortable with either of these things, please do not read it.
'I still don't think we're lost, Stark,' Jaime said, gazing up into the branches of the oak.
'I'm not the one who forgot to bring a map!' came the characteristically testy reply from above.
Jaime didn't think that that was entirely fair.
'You could also have brought a map!'
'I wasn't thinking about stupid maps!'
'Neither was I,' Jaime grumbled, stalking away from the bloody tree and leaving her to waste time in it for as long as she wanted.
Teenagers.
They were loitering on the edge of a river that stood a reasonably good chance of turning out to be the Trident, but the thrice-damned thing was so dangerously in flood from all the rain that he couldn't be entirely sure. The uncertainty of this caused Jaime very little concern. They had left the Westerlands days ago, which meant that unless they had somehow managed to ride an extra thousand leagues without noticing, they were deep into the Riverlands and only had to pick a river and follow it east. But Arya was having none of it, and he was beginning to feel annoyed.
'For fuck's sake, Stark, it's the bloody Red Fork; would you please come down so we can move?'
'It is not the Red Fork!' Arya shouted back, and made no move to come down.
Jaime rolled his eyes and flopped down on the river bank; stretching his long legs out in front of him and staring detachedly at his stump. Sometimes in the past, he had been unable to tell what was irritating him more: it or Arya. Today, however, he had no such problem. The little wolf's sudden obsession with the idea that they were lost had made her even less amenable than usual, and something told him that if he hadn't insisted on going to Casterly Rock, ostensibly to ask Uncle Kevan for 'news,' she would have been more inclined to trust his judgment in the matter.
The impulse to return to the Rock had seized Jaime shortly after telling Arya 'you remind me of Cersei when you act like this.'
When those words had come tearing out of him, he had meant every one of them. He had wanted to hurt her and to see her in agony; he had wanted to cause her pain because of the pain that she was causing him; and when he had observed the resulting suffering on her face he had determined, then and there, that he would do more than just distance himself for the rest of the journey: he would not speak to her at all. It would hurt him, but it would hurt her more. That had been his first instinct. It had always been his first instinct…with Cersei.
But his silence hadn't lasted very long, of course, because he didn't really want to hurt her. He never had. But he kept to the distance that he had promised himself. He couldn't pretend to be her friend, or her brother. The idea was absurd to him; an impossibility.
Either we can be everything to each other or nothing at all. Anything in between would be a lie - and I am done with lies.
He was done with lies, but he was evidently not done with secrets, because in the place deep inside him where he kept Ned Stark glaring wordlessly at him while the Mad King lay dead; where he kept Queen Rhaella's screams as her husband ravaged her; where he kept the look on Tyrion's face as Father commanded him to bend over and rape his own wife…it was there that Jaime knew and denied and forbade and refused to accept that he was afraid: horribly afraid. All that he had ever known of love had been Cersei; Cersei…and slavery. So when he and Arya had set out again; silent, awkward, and unspeaking, Jaime's courtesies had come pouring out of him instead of his real voice, because they were the only means by which he could speak to her, without hurting her and without being afraid of himself.
Because the events of that night…they had frightened him. Even now, he would swear that he had not intended to lay a finger on her. He wouldn't have touched her at all if the bloody Mad King hadn't decided to put in a rather more vivid appearance than usual. But as Arya had sat facing him while the words came wrenching out of his mouth like knives from a wound, he had watched the sadness, and then the depth of the anger on her face, and he had seen himself. He had seen his every thought about the day he became the Kingslayer as it crashed right through her; every thought that he had ever acknowledged and every thought that he had ever denied; every dream; every nightmare; every memory. Her grey eyes had come alive with it; and as she had sat there chastising him and calling him a bloody fool, her body had come alive with it too. And even as he had reached for her and yanked her roughly against him, a subtle, infinitesimal part of him had been afraid by the depth of what he had felt; by the wildness and the longing and the despair with which he had wanted every part of her; every part of her body that was a different, intangible trace of her; of her her-ness, her Arya-ness; of the entity he loved that had no form at all, only mind and heart and colour…and red. If Arya were a colour, she'd be red.
What nonsense, he thought, burying his face in his hands, what absolute nonsense.
But nonsensical as it was, it was what he felt and what he believed…and what he feared would once again make him a slave and a murderer of himself. Yes, Arya had treated him like a slave that night, but only because she was so fucking young. She had so little experience that the thought probably hadn't even entered her stubborn little head.
He did not think that Arya would want or demand unquestioning and slavish devotion from him. But he did fear that he would demand it of himself. He had already done it once before. The tendency and the weakness were in him, and knowing it did not make him fear it less. Then for some reason that he still failed to understand, the realisation had made him want to go home.
Jaime had never been overly-attached to Casterly Rock – Father had made sure of that – but he had nevertheless felt a kind of reassurance in the idea of being within its walls; a feeling that going there would reveal to him what he was meant to do, both for himself and for this miserable fucking situation that he was voluntarily trapped in.
At first, nothing much of import had happened at all. Seeing his uncle had been pleasant enough, as had the sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs below the Rock. But then he had gone to the Hall of Heroes, and he had felt nothing at all. He had sat on his haunches before his father's tomb, surrounded by the glorious dead of his House, and he had seen nothing more significant than a block of marble among other blocks of marble. The desolation of that emptiness had been excruciating. How could it exist in one part of him, when all the others were groaning in agony under the weight of countless emotions, most of which he could not even name?
But when Arya had put her hand on his shoulder, the void had been filled up with hatred for his father, and for the merciless cruelty of his last will and testament: the will that had predicted that Jaime would leave the Kingsguard; that had made him the Lord of Casterly Rock, and Arya a Lannister heiress. And the will, the iron will, that had planned the slaughter of the Starks while loving one of them like a daughter; doing the best for his fucking House no matter what he felt. Jaime still wondered how his father could have done it.
To realise something that we did not yet realise ourselves, to take such a risk on a whim, to bring us together like that…and then to take everything away. How could he have done it?
So when Arya had touched his shoulder, Jaime had risen to his feet fully intending to ask her whether she wanted to make love right on top of the old bastard's sarcophagus and send him a hearty 'fuck you' from the world of the living. Then he had seen her face, and the impulse had left him as quickly as it had come.
If we somehow survive this mess, and decide not to be parted; if we marry and have a family and decide to fight like lunatics until the day that we eventually do kill each other…we'll decide it for ourselves. Not because some bitter old man thought it was a good idea. Not because he made it easy for us.
A light flumpf on the grass behind him announced Arya's exit from the branches of the tree. Jaime looked up at her, and was not at all surprised to see irritation written all over her face.
'I've got no idea where we're going,' she declared, 'we should follow the river.'
Jaime bit on his tongue to keep from barking 'I told you so.' He then got to his feet and walked back towards the tree.
'What are you doing?' Arya demanded.
'Taking a piss!' he called cheerfully over his shoulder, 'would you like to help unlace me?'
A considerable amount of swearing and calls for patience from the old gods and the new followed his statement, and then a lot of splashing as Arya washed her hands and face in the shallows.
'Don't go too far out!' Jaime called in as irritating a tone as possible as he began to unlace himself.
A strangled yell and a splash answered him; and when he quickly turned to face her, fear gripping his chest and panic curdling his blood, Arya was nowhere to be seen.
The skin of Arya's hands screamed out in pain as every branch and weed and leaf she tried to cling to tore itself out by the roots, casting her away from dry land and hurling her right out into the heart of the swollen, crashing river. She screamed for Jaime once before the force of the current began to pull her viciously along by the feet, and as she choked and spluttered and sank she felt like a prisoner being dragged behind a war horse in punishment for something she had done.
My dear, they are your family, Kevan had said, they would never –
They would never hate you. They would never want you dead. They're your family. They're your family.
She had allowed the thought to consume her mind until it had become a single, insistent, infectious flame in a room torn up by the winds of winter. She had called on that warmth to fill her up, and the warmth had heard her. It had persisted. It had lived. But the water tearing at Arya's clothes and filling up her pockets with the desire to sink killed it again so quickly that she would have sobbed at her loss had she had the breath left to do it.
The comforting flame had died, because it was impossible to build a fire without air, and as the water crashed over her head and forced her under, she found that the loss of the tiny yet resilient flame that Kevan had created did not trouble her. Had her pack still lived, they would have cast her away from them no matter what Kevan said, and that loss would have been far worse than drowning.
The noise beneath the surface of the water was terrific; worse even, than the noise above it. She could feel her breath writhing in her chest as it gasped and cried and fought, and she wondered why her breath was doing all of those things while she remained perfectly still and made no move to gasp or cry or fight. She couldn't fight, because her limbs weren't moving, and she wondered for a moment if she could blame the cold for that…or if she wasn't moving because she didn't want to. Because she didn't want to live. Because she wanted to drown.
Arya felt her breath dwindle down to a wheeze inside her, and she looked up at the surface of the water, willing the gods, or even her ghosts, to tell her what she should do. She didn't know. Maybe she didn't care.
Her mouth opened, and it was beautiful. The water was like life and light; the water in her mouth and the water above her. She closed her eyes, and she was home.
Father was staring across the godswood at her as he polished his greatsword Ice. The leaves were rustling in the wind, and he didn't say anything, but he did smile at her. He smiled at her. Then out of the leaves came myriad multitudes of memories that had taken place in that godswood, and they piled one on top of the other so that she could remember them all in the same moment: Sansa screeching like a maniac as Arya tried to pack wet earth inside the collar of her new gown; the day Rickon had thrown a tiny wooden sword at Bran and almost taken his eye out; Jon mussing her hair and calling her 'little sister' while Robb stole the loaf of bread she'd only just managed to steal herself, and Mother coming upon her more times than she could count and scolding her, her beautiful auburn hair hanging to her waist, and 'the entire castle is looking for you, young lady!' Then the colours of the North went out of the leaves, and Arya was sopping wet and scowling at Jaqen for pushing her into the godswood pool at Harrenhal: 'a girl is forgetful about the spear and defence,' he purred, his eyes twinkling at her, 'now she will never forget again.' Her fingers were slamming hard against Jaime's chest, then winding around his neck as he kissed her for the first time; then the godswood air became choked and filthy with the smell of King's Landing, and Jaime was looking at her in the moonlight and saying with a breathlessness that he could not conceal: 'Arya. You know how to fight left-handed.' And she remembered the day that he had understood: how they had fought and kissed and made love without stopping; but above all how they had laughed while they were doing it; how she had known, on that day, that she would never love anyone else like that again; how she wanted to live for that and be alive for that; how she didn't want to die.
As she tried to kick, or swim, her eyes darkened, and as they began to burn from tears; even with the Stranger whispering soothingly that he hadn't expected her so soon, she felt two arms fasten tightly around her waist from behind; two arms…and one hand.
She went to the darkness, and everything was black. She was pulled to the air, then plunged once again into nothingness; and the arms around her waist were trying to tear her in half, yanking her and shaking her and hurting her; and as water began to pour from her mouth she went to the darkness again; and saw the Stranger smiling at her.
Then she felt her stomach slam hard into the earth and her whole body being yanked upwards once again, and she spat out the Trident and all its dead like vomit; sheets of it pouring from her mouth and drenching the earth; and she was collapsing forwards and being flipped over; the coughs and the water still raking her throat, and Jaime was grasping her face hard, his hand on one side, his stump on the other, and talking to her; his green eyes like wildfire and death.
'Stark!' he shouted, his voice breaking, 'Stark!'
