Jaime was woken in the middle in the night by the sound of Arya taking a futile but considerate amount of trouble to enter their bedchamber quiet as a shadow; only to have her efforts thwarted by Nymeria, who bolted straight through the gap between door and wall and leapt noisily and longingly into her habitual place at the foot of the bed.
'Shut up!' Arya hissed, and Jaime almost groaned aloud at the thought that six months ago, the nocturnal movements of both girl and wolf would not have disturbed his sleep at all. But now he lived in a world of shadows and footsteps and invisible lines; of violent sounds and slipstreams of thought; of swiftness and soaring and lightness. He lived in the world of a water dancer, and 'quiet as a shadow' was no longer quiet to him.
Arya tiptoed across the dark room, undid the latch on the window and opened it wide, so that moonlight crept softly into the place where she stood; and Jaime watched, fascinated in his half-waking state, as she removed her sword belt, gown, shift and smallclothes. Moonlight fell across her form like droplets of water; touching and caressing and trailing open-mouthed kisses across her skin; just as Jaime had done earlier that day in the godswood, when he had succeeded in disarming her for the second time; the second time since the beginning. Her reaction had been both different and the same; and her mouth had been both different and the same; and every inch of her had been covered in him; and every inch of him had been covered in her; and their limbs had been wrapped around each other, not wanting to exist apart; and as they moved with each other and in each other; their bodies a dance and a praise song; Arya had whispered 'very soon you'll be better than me,' and he had thrust deeper and she had thrust harder, and the world had contracted dizzyingly into the place where they were joined so that release came within moments; his voice leaving red lines in the leaves; her nails leaving red lines on his back. He could feel them even now. He could see them.
Arya was groping about in the dark for her sleeping shift. When she found it and pulled it over her head, her hand came to rest on her stomach; and Jaime watched as she paused for a moment, thinking.
'It's a girl.'
Jaime blinked at her.
'How do you know?'
'I had a dream about her last night. She was riding a direwolf the size of a horse – a white one. She had golden hair.'
He smiled at her.
'A warrior.'
It was not a question.
'Yes.'
Arya came to him and slid into bed; closing her eyes as Jaime's fingers moved automatically to tease the braids from her hair; the last shreds of her mask unraveling for him in coiled ribbons of thick brown hair and coming away even more rebellious than before; framing the lines of her face in raw, wild curls. Her scalp was icy cold, and he shifted to make room for her as she curled up against him and sighed deeply.
'Where have you been, Stark?' he asked; his fingers remaining tangled in her hair.
'With Uncle Kevan,' she replied softly, 'I had heard…that is, he confirmed for me…that the small council – except Tyrion, of course, who thinks it's a stupid idea – have somehow gotten it into their heads that the South needs to start making amends for the Red Wedding –'
'How the fuck does one make amends for something like that?' Jaime interjected disbelievingly.
'The way they always do in the South,' Arya smirked in reply, 'with wedding bells. They want to present Tyrion and Sansa's marriage as the first step towards some sort of…reconciliation between North and South; and then to curry favour with the Northern lords by stripping Roose Bolton of his Wardenship and giving it to Tyrion instead.'
'And what exactly makes the small council think that the Northern lords won't just chop Tyrion's head off and declare war again?' Jaime remarked, 'they'll never accept a Warden of the North who isn't one of their own; even if he does have a Stark wife.'
Arya's face transformed suddenly and brilliantly into a smile like the moon coming out, and Jaime felt his heart beat faster.
'Remember that they know nothing of the North,' she whispered, her fingers playing with the collar of his shift, 'Southerners think that marriage solves everything. It's all about appearances for them…the surface of things…why are you smiling?'
'Because you didn't say 'you Southerners,'' Jaime replied, his grin widening, 'am I no longer a Southerner in your eyes?'
'No,' Arya observed matter-of-factly, kissing his lips, 'and yes.'
And her smile died just as suddenly as it had come; the grey ruins of Winterfell replacing the summer mist in her eyes, and Jaime laced his fingers through hers as she nestled closer to him.
'I heard about it from Sansa, and I went to see Uncle Kevan directly afterwards to tell him what you've just told me. Putting a Southerner, and worse, a Lannister, into a position that has been occupied by a Stark for the past three hundred years will make things worse than they are already, and that's before we even begin to contemplate the effect Sansa's being his wife will have on them. They'll never believe she's married Tyrion of her own free will, and even if they do eventually believe that, it'll achieve nothing save convincing them that she's a traitor…and that the Crown seeks to rub defeat in their faces. So I told Uncle Kevan that he needed more; that…that for even the tiniest step towards reconciliation to take place, there would need to be an enormous gesture of goodwill far more lasting than a marriage; something…something symbolic enough to be touching, but concrete and definite enough to prove beyond any doubt that reconciliation is something that the South, and the Crown, takes seriously: that it's not merely…the surface of things…that interests them.'
Jaime watched her, listened to her, trusted her, as her body tensed up with an unbearable kind of certainty, and inevitability, and fear as she continued.
'So I told him to have Tyrion rebuild Winterfell,' she said in a rush, 'exactly as it was, with no changes, and done in clear remembrance of the sons and daughters that House Stark, and its bannermen, has lost.'
'An excellent idea, Stark,' Jaime remarked, a hint of mockery creeping into his voice despite his best intentions, 'and…whose gold is going to pay for all this?'
'Mine is,' Arya responded promptly, 'I still have your father's twenty million dragons lying in the bank, and I certainly don't want them for myself.'
You are idealistic, my love.
'I…I am very happy for you,' Jaime stammered incredulously, 'but…can you really believe that rebuilding a castle will be enough to convince the North to let bygones be bygones?'
'No,' Arya replied, 'that would be ridiculous.'
'I'm delighted to hear you say so,' Jaime remarked.
'But I do think that rebuilding the ancestral home of the Starks, just as it was, and with Tywin Lannister's money, is unusual enough, respectful enough and expensive enough to make even the biggest idiot in the world realise that the South means business when it comes to paving the way for this 'reconciliation' that everyone keeps blabbing out. Because that's all that anyone can expect for a good long while yet. No reconciliation, just…steps towards it.'
That's better, Jaime thought; and as he looked at her, he understood for the thousandth time why a cold-hearted bastard like Father had loved her. She could see beyond her own lifetime. She understood legacy.
Arya's eyes were stubborn, and dark, and anguished; and Jaime was once again gripped by the same sickening disbelief that he had felt on the morning that Tyrion had told him of the Red Wedding: disbelief that Father could have done such a thing to a person he loved. Yet with his disbelief came an awful kind of certainty that Arya still loved his father in spite of what he had done. Because telling Uncle Kevan to rebuild Winterfell in restitution for the Red Wedding instead of demanding that he dishonour and attaint Tywin Lannister was not the action of a person blinded by hatred. It was the action of a person who wanted to forget.
He watched her remember countless days and nights around a council table as mist poured through a hole in the wall. He watched her remember the lighting of candles and the heating of wine on the nights when his father did not sleep. He watched her remember grinning cheekily when she was asked the question 'and what were you smiling about so impertinently today?' And he watched her remember the blood bubbling over his hands and hers, and the smile on Father's face as he died: 'you resemble her.'
'Stark…' Jaime hazarded softly, 'you may not want to hear this…I know you don't want to hear this…but in spite of… you must know that he loved you very much.'
'If he loved me so very much, then why did he do what he did?' Arya spat.
'He did it,' Jaime murmured, 'because he spent his life hurting the people he loved the most.'
Arya smiled sadly, as though remembering something, and said to him:
'That's sick.'
And Jaime thought of Father, and remembered him, and agreed with her:
'It was.'
And suddenly he was moving away from her; opening the cabinet beside the bed and taking out the dagger with the red leather hilt; and he could tell, from her eyes, that she remembered it.
In her eyes he saw the day she was adopted; saw his father doing everything in his power not to kill her, before casually tossing the weapon into her lap and calling it hers; an affectionate gesture from an unaffectionate man. He saw her fling that same dagger into nothingness as the Kingswood shuddered and groaned around them; the shadow roaring as it drained his father's life from him. He saw her remember him after the Battle of the Blackwater, and he remembered himself: the pain that had pierced his body, and the fever, and the weakness, and the incompleteness. He saw her remember walking boldly and silently with him, in the godswood in the middle of the night; asking him to take the knife from Cersei and to keep it until she could reclaim it; because she would rather it be his than his sister's. But then the Red Wedding had happened, and she had left him, and she hadn't reclaimed it; and then they had journeyed, and married, and she still hadn't reclaimed it; and though he could not blame her for having no desire to look upon the bloody dagger ever again, he knew; and he could see that she knew; that unless Arya Stark could take that first step towards peace; then rebuilding Winterfell would achieve nothing at all. If she could not take that first step, then the North would follow her to failure.
Her face was desolate, and her breath was ragged in her throat, and when Jaime offered the knife to her hilt-first, she seemed terrified that it would shatter at her touch and blind her.
'It's yours, Stark.'
'I don't forgive him. I never will.'
'I know.'
Her eyes darkened, but with prophecy rather than memory; with the centuries of war and hatred that were still to come; that could still come; that might still come.
And she reached out and banished them as she took hold of the red leather hilt; the Valyrian steel glowing gently in the darkness.
'Yes,' she said, 'it's mine.'
Chapter notes
Valar morghulis, awesome people, and first of all, thank you.
Thank you so much to all the people who have read, and followed, and favourited, and commented. When I started, I never imagined that Arya and Jaime would turn out to be this popular, or that the writing of this story would turn into such an epic undertaking in my life. The support has been absolutely inspirational, and I know that no longer waking up at 2 in the morning to check my reviews is going to be a serious hole in my life J
Speaking of serious holes in my life, I've been asked by many people if I plan to write a sequel to I Became the Daughter and the Son. The answer is 'yes, but not immediately' – 1. I know that there are many conversations that still need to be had, and I have some ideas about what could happen, but they're all hellishly complicated and they need time to grow. 2. There is another Arya/Jaime story in my head that is positively screaming at me to be fleshed out and written, so that is definitely what I'll be doing next. 3. I need a decent rest! I would like to recharge some batteries, read some books and eat some chocolates.
That being said, this ship is awesome and it would be helluva nice to sit back, relax and read some Arya/Jaime fics instead of just writing them, so please please please will somebody write one? Or two? It's kinda lonely being the only one in months and months.
Once again thank you for the support and the love! You are all awesome!
Gilraen
