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JAIME
Jaime scrambles back and tries to thrash himself free as the Stark girl approaches with a noose in her hand but the girl has talent with ropes and knots and his legs and arms are secured tight.
“Hold still,” she scolds him, like he’s a naughty puppy. “You look like a caught fish on dry land.”
Jaime has to laugh at the picture her words make - the brave golden lion dying like the Tully sigil, squirming on a hook. “Mayhaps honourable Starks go to their death easily but Lannister’s fight,” he retorts.
“Don’t talk about my family,” she snaps but Jaime feels a surge of satisfaction at the surprise on her face. He might be an old crippled lion but he still has claws.
The Stark girl’s aim is true. She flings the rope in her hand with a flick of her wrist and the noose falls neatly over his head. Jaime twists harder, desperation giving him strength, waiting for the knot to tighten, dig into his neck and cut off his last breath as it’s hoisted over a branch over the nearby tree to hang him like all the other broken men swaying from the riverlands’ trees.
Except it doesn’t.
The noose is a tight fit around his neck but not a cruel one. There’s not a spare inch of give to it, no space for Jaime to try and work his fingers through and pull the noose off but easily enough space for Jaime to breathe.
The Stark girl flicks the rope and it stings lightly as it kisses the bare skin of Jaime’s neck. “Come on,” she says. “We’re wasting daylight already.”
-
They spend half the morning in silence, the only sounds to hear are the murmurs of the Blackfish and Lady Roslin ahead, the dancing wind and murmur of rivers.
The Stark girl is different than she was before. He remembers glimpses of her at Winterfell and King’s Landing - laughing as she flung food at her proper sister at the feast, laughing and teasing her brothers, laughing and playing with common children in the wagon train - but she’s a sombre, still shadow of the girl she was.
“Are you going to walk me all the way to King’s Landing like I’m some Reach lady’s lapdog on a jewelled leash?” Jaime complains finally as he trudges along beside the Stark girl on her horse.
She looks at him like he’s lost his wits. “Why would we bother going to King’s Landing?”
“I’m worth a good ransom to King Tommen,” Jaime says persuasively. “The Lord Commander of his Kingsguard, the Lord of Casterly Rock, his uncle.”
“His father.”
There’s disgusted contempt in the Stark girl’s voice, though her face stays as smooth as the unbroken surface of a pond. Jaime thinks he should be used to the scorn of Starks by now but it somehow still smarts. But if he’s learned little else from Tywin Lannister, Jaime’s learned not to show weakness to an enemy.
So he smiles, even if it’s more like baring his teeth. “Even better for you - the ransom for a father is higher than for an uncle.”
“Too bad corpses don’t pay ransoms.”
“What?”
The Stark girl’s face is as serene as a marble statue of the Stranger. “Tommen’s dead - killed himself by jumping out of the highest tower in Maegor’s Holdfast.”
A man should grieve his children, rend his clothes and swear screaming vengeance to the Seven for them, but Jaime feels no more at Tommen’s death than he did at Joffrey’s.
-
The Stark girl’s a better gaoler than Brienne. As fondly as he remembers the big wench, she dragged and shoved him across half the realm until he was covered in bruises and his skin as purple under his clothes as a bunch of Arbor grapes.
The Stark girl isn’t cruel, though Jaime admits to himself that she has the right to be, after all that House Lannister has done to her and her family. If she was, she’d ride at a gallop and force Jaime to trot on foot alongside or be dragged skinless. Instead she walks her horse at a gentle walk, even slowing when they go uphill or over rough ground to ease the pace for Jaime.
But she’s no fool either. The rest of them sleep in bedrolls - Lady Roslin’s is tucked awfully close to the Blackfish’s - on sheltered ground. Jaime’s tied to a tree, his arms pulled tight behind him to stretch around the trunk. Even his legs are bound in front of him, at ankle and knee. And all those ropes are linked to the noose - if any of the other knots slacken, the noose tightens around Jaime’s neck.
“You might as well let me go,” Jaime says, as the Stark girl checks his ropes again. “Cersei won’t ransom me back for Riverrun - she won’t give you a copper groat for me.”
The Stark girl’s scorn is obvious. “She’ll pay something for her twin - after all, you’ve got her favourite cock. She’ll want that between her legs again. And she’ll need more bastards off you since she wants to play at being queen.”
Jaime’s laugh is as bitter as betrayal. “She’s been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy, for all I know. I’ve been away too long, changed too much, she says.”
It still hurts to remember looking at Cersei and seeing only a stranger.
The Stark girl studies him thoughtfully. “They say Lannisters lie - I thought you’d be better at it.”
“It’s no lie, Stark. My sweet sister needs the Warrior and a Hand and a lover too and she won’t waste good coin on me when I won’t - can’t - be any of them.”
If the Stark girl’s disappointed at the thought of a worthless hostage, she doesn’t show it. “Mayhaps she just needs convincing. What if we sent her an ear? One of your pretty green eyes? Or your left hand?”
-
Jaime sleeps poorly, between the howling of wolves, sour thoughts of Cersei and his dreams of the Bloody Mummer’s fat Dothraki, Zollo, swinging his gleaming arakh to cut off his hand. Dream or not, his stump burns with pain afterwards.
The tiredness and his grim mood give his tongue - rarely gentle, even at his best - a sharper edge.
“I do wonder why you’re bothering to keep me, if I make such a poor hostage,” Jaime asks. “Of course, House Stark does seem to like taking me hostage, don’t they? First your brother Robb, then your mother, now you. A shame they’re not better at it.”
“Don’t talk about my family,” the Stark girl growls.
Jaime grins, bright and taunting. “Now your brother liked me tied up, as you do - is it something Stark’s fancy? - and visited me every day. I’ve seen lovers less constant. And I never saw him with a girl - well, not until he married the Westerling chit and doomed himself. He would’ve done better to bend me over and fuck me, if that’s what he really wanted. He might have kept his head that way.”
“Robb should’ve cut your head off as soon as he captured you,” she spits.
“Most like,” Jaime replies easily. “Locking me up didn’t help him, not when his own mother set me free with her own hand - only after visiting me almost as often as he did, of course. Her bed must’ve been cold after Joffrey cut the head off the honourable Ned Stark-”
“Don’t you talk about Father!”
“- alone in the cold Northern winter and no man to warm it for her. When she came to free me, I actually wondered if she’d have me fuck her first. I’m sure she wanted to.”
“Mother wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire,” the Stark girl snarls.
Jaime ignores her as he continues. “You’re my favourite Stark goaler though - nothing quite like being tied up by a beautiful girl. Now, the fools all said your sister was the beauty but I never thought so - too vapid. No, I like a woman who can kiss me or kill me and I’d enjoy either.”
The Stark girl’s stony mask of indifference is nowhere to be seen now and she bristles like Jaime’s flung a deadly insult at her, instead of telling her she’s beautiful. “Shut your mouth, Lannister.”
“Shut it for me, Stark,” Jaime challenges, bracing for a slap across his face or cold steel shoved between his ribs.
It’s been an age since he’s been kissed with desire. He used to think Cersei did, when he was a bigger fool than he is now and knew no better. But Cersei’s mouth is like a lamprey’s bite - nothing but cold, empty hunger - compared to the warm yearning softness of Arya Stark’s kiss.
Their lips slip against each other as Jaime smiles with pleasure and delight, bringing them closer together. Arya Stark gasps as their tongues brush in the lightest graze and Jaime strains toward to her, pulling against the rough ropes.
But she stumbles back away from him and there’s no delight on her face, only stunned horror.
ARYA
The Blackfish doesn’t ask why she refuses to tend their hostage anymore, just takes the duty on himself, even though it takes time away from Lady Roslin. Arya accompanies her instead and they stay far away from Jaime Lannister because Lady Roslin is so nervous of him, of all Lannisters and anyone else who allied with her repulsive father.
Arya can feel Jaime Lannister’s eyes on her, even all the way across the camp.
She deserves it.
The shame curdles inside her like old milk. She saw Tywin Lannister’s reavers at their work in the riverlands - not just killing, but raping. She remembers the Mountain and the Brave Companions and even so called honourable southron knights, falling on women like starving beasts devouring prey.
She’s no better, kissing Jaime Lannister when he’s their prisoner and had no chance to deny her.
Most like that’s why he’s watching her, even so many days later - he wants to make certain she doesn’t come near again.
-
There are some tasks that need two people though. The Blackfish is strong and almost tireless but even he needs to eat and shit and piss, and it’s quicker to have her hold Jaime Lannister’s rope than to tie him properly to a tree every time.
Father always said you owed amends to someone you wronged but Arya can’t un -kiss Jaime Lannister, only make sure she stays as far away from him as she can - the rope is stretched to its full length, almost taut.
Her mistake is glancing at him.
Everyone gushes over Queen Cersei’s eyes, “like emeralds”, all flat surface shine. Jaime Lannister’s are far lovelier - a thousands shades of green flecked with gold, like sunlight falling through leaves onto a deep cool spring.
“I’m sorry I kissed you,” Arya blurts out. She bites her lip - Father always said words were wind. “I know you didn’t want it.”
“What?”
“I shouldn’t have - we took you prisoner and you don’t deserve mistreatment. I promise I’m not a raper.” Arya bites her lip again - empty apologies and lying denials. Father would be shamed of her, if was still alive to see her.
“What?”
“I’ll leave you alone, I swear it.”
“If you want to treat me well, you’ll kiss me again.”
It’s Arya’s turn to goggle now. “What?”
Jaime Lannister’s smile makes Arya’s heart clench in her chest as it races, like she’s just swallowed nightshade. “It’s terrible mistreatment of a prisoner to let him kiss a beautiful girl only the once. It’s a law, I’m sure - one of Jaeherys the Conciliator’s, when he was flying all over the Seven Kingdoms sticking his pointy Targaryen nose into everyone’s affairs and ordering them around like fucking his sister made him fit to rule the realm.”
“You fuck your sister,” Arya points out.
“I used to,” Jaime concedes. “But at least I never claimed that everyone should kiss my arse and make me king for it - I leave that to sister-fucking Targaryens.”
“But you like Jaeherys the Sister-Fucker’s law - secret law, since no one except you seems to have heard of it - that prisoners should get kisses.”
“No kisses is worse than no water,” Jaime informs her with a haughty air.
It’s been a long time since Arya’s laughed. She’s feigned it, wearing other names and other faces while giving gifts for the Many-Faced God, but there’s been little to laugh at these past years.
“Food, water, shelter, healing and kisses?” she asks sceptically, a gurgle of laughter still in her voice. “That’s what we owe our prisoners?”
“Kisses from beautiful girls,” Jaime corrects her, smiling in conspiracy.
“Truly?” she asks.
His smile softens, turning impossibly fond. “The best kiss of my life from the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
It’s not true, Arya knows - she last bathed two days ago with a hasty scrub in an icy stream, her hair is a birds’ nest of dull brown tangles that defies even Lady Roslin’s best efforts and she has a red pimple growing on her chin. But the Faceless Men taught her a thousand and one ways to see through a man’s lie to his true face and heart beneath and she can’t find any deceit in Jaime Lannister.
JAIME
Arya refuses to kiss him again.
She takes back her gaolers’ duties from the Blackfish - he only rolled his eyes, muttered something about fools in springtime and hurried back to Lady Roslin - and does them as diligently as ever. Jaime falls asleep with his cock half-hard every night after Arya tightens the knots that tie him to the tree.
“The honourable Ned Stark would disapprove,” Jaime says, pulling his face into an expression of false despair. “His precious little girl, mistreating the helpless prisoner at her mercy.”
She only shakes her head with a smile - she’s left her masks behind and her expressions are as free as they were when she was the girl he first saw at Winterfell.
“Don’t talk about Father,” she says but there’s no wrath in her words, just as there had been no malice in Jaime’s. “It’s not right to kiss prisoners. It’s not right to kiss anyone who can’t refuse you freely.”
“I’m as far from refusing as a man can be! I’m begging for your favour . A kiss for Riverrun,” he offers. “For Riverrun and half the gold in Casterly Rock. I’ll trade a kiss from you for Riverrun and Casterly Rock with all the gold inside it.”
“Goodnight, Jaime,” she says, still smiling.
He’s fucked Cersei in her marriage bed with her husband in a drunken stupor on the floor beside them. He’s fucked Cersei in the Great Sept of Baelor beside Joffrey’s rotting corpse. Cersei’s tried to suck his cock in the Lord Commander’s chamber atop White Sword Tower. He’s killed and lied for Cersei more times than he can count. Jaime’s honour as the Kingslayer is worth less than nothing but being with Cersei and the things he’s done to be with her sullied it even worse.
But Arya - a daughter of an enemy House - cares enough for his honour and her own to refuse the simplest kiss.
It feels like drinking pure cold water after an endless night of heavy cloying wine.
A chilling thought crosses his mind then as to why Arya cares so much for his dignity as her prisoner. “Arya, did someone hurt you-? My father’s men-?”
Arya meets his gaze steadily, her Stark grey eyes dark as swirling smoke with sparks of silver like the stars above them in the sky. “No. But I saw what they did. They hurt a lot of people.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaime says helplessly, uselessly.
“Good.”
Arya tucks the blanket around him so that the ropes will keep them in place - she’s clever, it wedges them tighter too and makes it even harder to work loose, if he tries to escape. Her hand brushes his cheek as she arranges the blanket around his shoulders, almost a caress.
-
The weather grows colder as they travel and winter stalks further south by the day, a harsher invader even than House Lannister. Even with a thick woollen blanket carefully wrapped around him, Jaime starts to wake each morning with numb limbs and chattering teeth.
Jaime expects another blanket, mayhaps a Northern fur-lined cloak, not Arya’s offer to sleep beside him.
“Two people sharing is warmer,” she explains. “We do it all the time in the North.”
“Are you certain?” he asks. Jesting about kissing is as different from lying next to someone in the darkness as riding at quintains in the yard is from the carnage of war.
She mistakes him though. “It’ll be hard for you to escape,” she says, shrugging. “You could kill me - you don’t have a weapon but you could break my neck or smother me easily enough - but I don’t think you’d get far dragging my corpse after you, tied to your wrist. And my Uncle Blackfish wouldn’t like it.”
Sadness surges through Jaime that Arya’s first thoughts of lying next to a man, who admires her, are all of death and the ways the Stranger could catch her.
The Blackfish ties their wrists together using a short length of rope - Jaime could strangle her if the rope was longer, Arya explains helpfully - so short that the easiest way for their hands to lie is to meet, palm to palm and fingers entwined.
Jaime wonders if he’s the only one of them to think of taking marriage vows before a septon, binding wrists with ribbon instead of rope.
ARYA
She flushes when Jaime wakes to catch her admiring him. Father never said so specifically but Arya doesn’t think treating prisoners honourably includes spying on them while they sleep because they’re so beautiful.
But Jaime just smiles at her like she’s done something charming. “Good morning,” he rasps.
“You didn’t run away.”
“Of course not. Sleeping beside a beautiful girl is almost as good as kissing one,” Jaime informs her impishly.
Arya rolls her eyes, even as she blushes. “Not just last night. How long have you been with us? You’ve never even tried to escape.”
Jaime’s smile turns rueful. “Escape to what? My sweet sister? She’s so greedy and crazed for power and an ugly metal chair and hat - she might as well be Aerys. She’ll destroy the realm - and House Lannister - before the end of the year.”
There’s something sad in that. Who prefers to be a hostage sleeping in the dirt rather than with his family and House, the richest and most powerful in the whole Seven Kingdoms?
“We’ll stop her.”
“She’s the queen.”
“Only because of who her husband and children were - and they’re all dead. All because of her too. And queens die.”
Arya thinks Jaime might be wroth at that but he only nods, not pleased but accepting. “There’s rumours some stray Targaryen wench woke dragons from stone in Essos and ice demons are waking the dead beyond the Wall.”
Arya nods - she heard the rumours of the new dragon queen before she sailed from Braavos and every child at Winterfell drinks in stories of the Others with their mother’s milk. “Winter is coming. It’s almost here.”
“The Seven Kingdoms can’t afford to be squabbling like children. Fighting on two fronts - North against the ice zombies, South against the dragons - is difficult enough. Our chances of winning are even worse if all our armies are exhausted by sieges and battles against each other in the riverlands.”
“So fight with us, instead of against us,” Arya proposes. “The Lannister army will be years besieging Riverrun. Most like your army will starve or freeze to death before any one of them sets a toe over Riverrun’s threshold.”
“Walder Frey won’t like it,” Jaime warns.
“Walder Frey - and his whole damned House - won’t live long enough to matter.”
Jaime’s eyes widen at Arya’s grim promise but he only nods. He smiles suddenly then. “We should seal our grand new alliance with a kiss.”
Arya’s startled laugh is loud enough that the Blackfish grunts from across the clearing, as he and Lady Roslin sleep beside each other. “No kissing prisoners,” she reminds him.
Jaime groans as if she’s stabbed him with Valyrian steel, prompting another snoring grunt from the Blackfish. “I see you’re as harsh of an ally as you are a goaler,” he teases.
“I’ll kiss you at Riverrun,” Arya says. “When you’re not a prisoner and I’m not a gaoler. And mayhaps you won’t want to kiss me anymore.”
“I’ll want extra kisses,” Jaime replies smugly. “To make up for all the ones I’ve missed so far.”
JAIME
It’s chaos as they ride into Riverrun. Lannister and Tully and Frey knights and soldiers shouting and scrambling to sally forth and meet them, uncertain if the battle is starting now or not. But many of them notice that a Stark and a Lannister and a Tully and a Frey are riding together easily - and the sharper-eyed also notice that Lady Roslin is clutching nervously at the Blackfish’s hand.
Jaime grins at the thought of how Arya would react if he tried to take her hand - most like tell him holding hands with prisoners wasn’t honourable and respectful either.
Jaime doesn’t doubt there’ll be worse chaos to come as they negotiate the new alliance - House Frey will be wroth, unless Arya does as she vowed and kills them all first. And then there’ll be a peace to forge, somehow always harder than the war before it. There’ll be new wars to plan, against the cold dead in the North and the dragons in Essos and mayhaps Cersei in King’s Landing.
And Jaime will have kisses to win from Arya, however she wants to give them - on her hand like a gallant knight to a new flowered maiden, or sweet and chaste as they walk in the gardens with chaperones, or even abed after a night of loving.
Or mayhaps before a septon and under a weirwood tree. Jaime beams at the thought - after all, marriages are the best way to seal a new alliance.