Chapter Text
‘When I was nine, Syrio taught me something,’ Arya said, her eyes not leaving her lap, ‘I was too young and stupid to understand, of course, but…’
‘What did he teach you?’ Jaime asked quietly.
Arya’s eyes flickered to his.
‘“There is only one god, and his name is Death,”’ Arya recited, ‘“and there is only one thing we say to Death. “Not today.”’’
Jaime said nothing.
‘I prayed to the god of Death today,’ Arya continued, ‘and he heard my prayers.’
She had muttered nothing but ‘not today not today not today’ as Jaime had carried her back to their chambers, the maester in tow, her back looking like a carcass in a butcher’s shop. The maester had given her potion after potion for the pain and the shock, shouting at Jaime to build up the fire, and at the servants to bring more blankets.
‘Maester,’ Arya had asked again and again, ‘do you see any blood?’
‘I see none, child,’ he had replied kindly, ‘but you are not out of danger yet.’
An honest man. Jaime liked that.
She had reached out and gripped his shoulders with her hands when the maester had begun to work on her back, her knuckles whitening as salves were applied. She had looked at Jaime like today had never happened, and smiled, and bitten savagely on her teeth to keep herself from crying. She stared down into her lap continuously, terrified of seeing blood.
‘If we lose our child today,’ Jaime had said quietly, ‘I will kill every single one of them.’
Arya had surprised him by kissing him, softly and for a very long time, her lips warm and delirious.
‘Thank you,’ she had whispered.
‘Thank you?’ he had whispered back, ‘I expected you to tell me you could do it yourself.’
‘I mean thank you,’ Arya had replied, ‘for saying ‘we’ instead of ‘you.’’
When Arya had said that to him, Jaime had become fairly positive that he was going to burst into tears for the first time in thirty years, and he had bowed his head immediately, damned if he was going to show weakness in front of his wife when she needed him to be strong for her. This particular wife, furthermore, was more likely to laugh at him than be touched.
But the tears had not disappeared, and he had closed his eyes to disperse them, keeping his head bowed, praying that she would look at her lap and not at his face. But Arya had leaned forward and put her thin arms around his neck, drawing him closer to her and resting her small head on top of his. Her chest was drenched in sweat, and she was shuddering weakly, which had only made him feel worse.
They sat facing each other now, long after the maester had left them, Arya still looking into her lap.
‘Do you see any –’
‘No, my stubborn wolf child. I do not see any blood.’
He wanted to speak to her, to ask her a thousand questions, to know what was happening inside her. But asking would make her remember what he had said and done, and that meant he would have to apologise. Jaime was not good at apologising. Somehow, it always seemed to make things worse.
‘How long have you known?’ he asked eventually
‘About a week,’ she replied.
‘And…I suppose you’ll hit me if I ask why you didn’t tell me.’
To his astonishment, Arya was shaking her head emotionally.
‘I thought that if I told you, you would think that – you would think that –’
Oh gods. Name me the Lord Paramount of fools and be done with it.
‘Jaime, my back!’ Arya yelped in pain, squirming and wincing when he suddenly embraced her like he would never see her again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Jaime blurted, his hands moving from her back to her face, ‘I’m so sorry. I have acted like –’
‘An unmitigated arse and a true Lannister, yes,’ Arya interrupted, her voice breaking, her beautiful grey eyes like the rain, ‘but I know that Cersei is your sister. Who can you trust, if not your own blood? She loves you, she must be –’
‘No. If she loved me, she would have died sooner than do this to you.’
Arya tried to make light of her injuries, shrugging and mumbling something about a dancing lesson tomorrow, but Jaime would not let the subject drop.
‘Robert deserves to be sent to the deepest of the seven hells for taking such a risk,’ he growled, ‘Whipping a woman who is with child is the worst kind of –’
He paused as Arya grinned at him courageously, her tears shining on her face.
‘If you think that any child with your and my blood running in its veins would falter from so meager a thing as a whipping, you’ve got another thing coming, Lannister.’
The joy in her eyes was extraordinary, glowing with a kind of ecstasy that Jaime had only ever seen when fighting her, and though she now sat before him unarmed, unarmoured, vulnerable and in pain, Arya Stark had never seemed so fiercely, euphorically, beautifully alive to him as she did in that moment.
‘Arya,’ Jaime said, waking up inside, ‘I love you.’