Myrcella said nothing for some minutes after Arya finished speaking; her iron green eyes staring fixedly at the ground; her hands quivering in shock; and her jaw tightening in emotion as silence fell. And there was no sound but that of the Blackwater; of the river that remembered, like the North.

And then Myrcella had looked up at Arya as though nothing had happened; a thoroughly girlish smile on her face; and had offered her the immediate use of her septa to make sure that she was indeed with child, 'before you tell Uncle Jaime.' And Arya had known, as she had gratefully accepted, that that was the only reply that she could expect.

Myrcella's septa had turned out to be a crotchety old crone of eighty who asked Arya a thousand penetrating and seemingly irrelevant questions before poking her, prodding her, and somehow inflicting worse bruises on her than she had ever received at the hands of Jaqen or Syrio; and by the time Arya had finally managed to get an answer out of the tough old bag ('Yes, my lady, my lady is indeed with child'), the sun was high in the sky, Tommen's unmissable first day of holding court alone was starting in fifteen minutes, and Jaime hadn't yet heard the news.

Arya pushed past the guard who moved to open the door for her; excitement and annoyance and gut-wrenching nervousness pounding in her chest as she opened up and slammed shut the doors to the breakfast room, the solar and the privy respectively; before finding him in the bedchamber; fully dressed and sitting in a chair by the window; his face lined with worry, and his eyes smouldering with the only hurt that he chose to bear alone; the lingering, unmistakeable, ghost-like ache of Myrcella; the girl who was and was not his daughter.

'Where in seven hells have you been?' Jaime demanded impatiently.

'Trapped in the clutches of a septa,' Arya shrugged, closing the chamber door behind her, 'I told her I'd sooner face a thousand swords than speak to her, but she pretended not to hear me.'

Jaime's face darkened.

'I thought,' he growled, 'that I'd told every single one of those shrivelled-up shits that I would complain to the High Septon if they did not cease their ludicrous attempts to convert you –'

'I'm with child, Jaime.'

There was a silence and an audible gasp as Jaime's breath caught in his throat; and Arya had barely remarked the change in his face and the brightening of his eyes before he had broken down completely; sobs crushing his chest and tears coursing down his face in rivers; turning him red with shame.

Arya ran to him and embraced him, crestfallen and panic-stricken because she'd never seen him cry before; and because she hadn't expected him to cry, not about this of all things. But as his breath on her neck turned to warmth and then to heat; his fingertips moving gently up and down her back as though calling her closer; she realised that what he felt was everything; everything that was too much. She kissed his hair, and his forehead, and his cheeks; his tears salty on her lips; and she felt his hand move from her back to her face; his fingers touching her cheek.

'Are you?' Jaime whispered, 'really?'

'Yes,' Arya nodded.

Jaime laughed, and cried, and kissed her forehead; his lips still trembling, but trembling in the shape of a smile.

'Oh my beautiful, stubborn, maddening, glorious love, my wife – it's – '

'– nothing to cry about, stupid,' Arya finished, laughing with him as his words disappeared; his hand still clasping her cheek; his stump resting on her shoulder as his sobs began to heave in her own chest and the laughs began to fade from him; to be replaced by memory that ached and burned like molten gold in his gaze.

'You're distressed,' Arya said, her anxiety returning as her hands came to rest on his shoulders, 'you were distressed when I walked in.'

'Yes,' Jaime murmured; his eyes intently meeting hers; and he softly kissed her lips before continuing.

'When I awoke to find you gone,' he told her, 'the guards told me – well, they told me they suspected – that you'd gone for a walk by the river –'

'I did,' Arya replied, kissing his fingers as they brushed her lips.

'I know that you like to go there,' Jaime whispered, trying to smile, not managing it, 'so your whereabouts did not concern me – much. But then while I dressed…I began to think about that day at Riverrun…when you were washed away downstream…when you sank into the water and let it take you…when you sank when you could swim…'

Horror gripped Arya's soul in a strangle hold.

How the fuck does he know about that?

I don't want him to know about that.

I don't want him to know.

'I did not let it take me,' she insisted stubbornly, the lie sounding feeble on her tongue; and when she saw that Jaime did not even intend to contradict her; that he knew…that he had known all along, what she had tried to do…she began to cry in earnest.

'I sank, but I wanted to come up again,' she sobbed, 'when I sank, when I got to the bottom; I knew that I was wrong, and that I wanted to live; because there was so much living still ahead, with you; I wanted to sink, I wanted to, but when I did, I wanted to come up again; I wanted to, I wanted to –'

He kissed her softly, and she kissed him back; both of them trembling and crying like idiots; and when Jaime broke away from her once again, still sobbing, his eyes were a horror.

'I know what you wanted to do that day,' he told her, 'and I'm happy; I'm so happy…that you're still here; that you're still in the world; that you're not –'

Arya stepped back into his arms and held him tighter; and when Jaime wrapped one arm around her waist and another around her shoulder, pulling them so close together that they could feel each other's blood; she felt the sobs that wracked both of them beginning to abate as relief was born in their place.

'I'm sorry,' Jaime mumbled into her shoulder, 'I've been so buttoned-up and so fucking miserable.'

'Yes,' Arya mumbled back, 'you have.'

He disentangled himself just far enough for him to be able to look at her, and his eyes were very green.

'Every time I think of Myrcella,' Jaime said, 'every time I see her; I see that look in her eyes…and I think…'I did that.''

No.

'Jaime –'

'How will we live if I someday see the same look in the eyes of our child?' he insisted brutally, not allowing her to interrupt, 'what will I do if that happens? What if I see him – or her – looking at me in that way, and know that I did that? That I destroyed my own blood, in that way? What will I do if that happens?'

Arya felt her fingers balling into fists on his shoulders.

'It won't happen,' she contradicted fiercely, 'the Jaime Lannister I know wouldn't let that happen.'

'I've already let it happen.'

'Aren't you listening to me? I know you. And I know that you will not let it happen.'

Jaime's lips parted as he stared at her, and Arya kissed them; smiling as they moulded to hers; and his hand fastened around the back of her neck and pulled her closer and closer; a heat rising in her mind and her body that was further and better and richer than desire.

'Do you have… any idea…how much I love you?' Arya whispered; the words like a prayer against his lips.

Jaime paused, and thought, and smiled wickedly at her, and she could tell that she had reached him, and that everything would be alright.

'No,' he declared.

Arya grinned at him.

'Remind me to show you after court,' she said.

And she briskly kissed his forehead, skipped out of his arms and ran to get dressed; her departure heralded by the sound of Jaime cursing and wringing an imaginary neck.

'After court?'