In his heart, Jaime had always known. From the moment she had said 'I am of the North,' he had known. But he had hoped.

Fuck hope. And fuck belief.

Tomorrow, they would face the armies of the King in the North before the walls of Winterfell. She would be one of that Northern mass. She might have to sneak, and she might have to hide, but she would be there, no matter what anyone told her to do. He hoped they met. That way he could knock her out cold and hide her somewhere safe till the fighting was over. His wife the traitor. He could worry about getting her absolved later. Because the North would surrender. Everyone always surrendered. Daenerys had dragons.

Earlier that evening, the Queen had called him back after dismissing the rest of her commanders.

'Ser Jaime,' she had murmured to him, 'during tomorrow's battle, the gods may see fit to place your wife in your path.'

'If they do, I will do my duty, Khaleesi,' he had responded stiffly.

Daenerys had nodded thoughtfully.

'Ser Jaime. If you kill your wife tomorrow, I will have you executed. Is that understood?'

'But my oath, Khaleesi –'

'Fuck your oath. I would not have you survive this war only to die of grief straight afterwards.'

He had adored the little queen, then. She would be a far better ruler than her father.

When he returned to his tent, he found Tyrion swilling wine from a barrel in the corner.

'Wine the night before a battle, my dear brother?'

'I won't survive the battle otherwise.'

Tyrion looked ridiculous, his stunted legs jutting into the air as he lay on his back, pouring wine down his throat. He spluttered in fright as Jaime dropped his helmet onto the floor with a crash.

'You don't have to fight, you know,' Jaime snorted, his nose wrinkling.

'But of course I do!' Tyrion responded, 'if your dear little wolf bride intends to fight, I can hardly stay here, can I? A halfman is still more of a man than a woman!'

'Not if he's too drunk to stand.'

Ignoring Tyrion's protests, Jaime rolled the barrel out of the tent and gifted it to the guards.

'You are cruel, big brother!' Tyrion pouted, trying to go after the wine.

'What is the matter with you?' Jaime demanded, picking Tyrion up by the scruff of his neck and depositing him as far away from the flap of the tent as possible.

'I'm afraid!' Tyrion declared earnestly, falling onto his back again.

That makes two of us, Jaime thought.

What if I don't find her? What if we don't meet? What if she's killed? What if I kill her, without knowing her? What if she's burned alive, decapitated, raped, run through, all her limbs lopped off?

She may be small, but she's quick and brilliant. You should be worrying about the people who get in her way.

I can't. I hope she kills them all.

Jaime had seen Tyrion and Visenya briefly on the ride North from the newly-surrendered King's Landing. He and Arya had chosen to leave them in the care of their great-uncle Edmure at Riverrun until the situation in the North was resolved; and it was on his way to help kill their mother, their uncles, their aunt, their cousins and their grandmother that Jaime had last seen them and had tried to explain. They had not understood.

'Please, Father, tell Queen Daenerys there's been a mistake,' Tyrion pleaded, 'Mother isn't a traitor.'

'She isn't!' Visenya echoed. Jaime half-smiled at his little lioness. He doubted she even knew what a traitor was. Tyrion did, though. He could see it in his son's face. A pity. It might have been possible to deceive a less-intelligent child.

'If you see Mother, ask her,' Visenya said, 'you just ask her. Then you'll see. Promise us.'

Jaime promised.

Tyrion. Visenya. What had two such golden children done to deserve parents who were continually abandoning them, doing things that made it necessary to hide their children away? What kind of lives would they lead, with a heretic for a father and a traitor for a mother, bearing the marks of two disgraced houses?

Things could be worse. Father had played his cards well in proving House Lannister's loyalty to the Targaryen Queen. It would only take a similar gesture from Robb Stark for Jaime's children to have the smallest chance of a normal life.

He snorted.

You have no one to blame but yourself. None of this would have happened if you hadn't fucked Cersei.

You don't need the fucking goodwill of every petty lord in the kingdoms. You have Arya's. That's enough.

And what about the children? Is that good enough for them?

Realising that he wasn't going to get to sleep, Jaime wrapped himself up in his furs, pulled his boots on and left the tent, Tyrion's drunken snores whistling after him. It was bitingly cold outside. His breath gushed out of him like the white mist that hung thick in the air, and he looked across the plain at the fires burning on the walls of Winterfell as the guards on them kept watch. He would give anything to be behind those walls with Arya. But the Seven Kingdoms could not survive without the North; and breaking his allegiance to Daenerys would add another few centuries to the millennium's worth of disgrace that House Lannister had already accumulated because of him.

As Jaime moved through the camp towards the nearby woods, he cursed the cold in his bones that reminded him, at every step, that he was no longer a young man. His chest was aching, and his joints sometimes cracked when he walked. Arya had always accused him of being a grumpy old man. Perhaps she was right.

The woods would have been completely dark were it not for the snow and the shards of blue moonlight that struck the ice like sunlight on a mirror. He felt a fear of every shadow that he had not experienced since his earliest childhood, but the compulsion to continue and to warm up overcame his fear as he moved deeper and deeper into the dark.

Out of the snow before him reared a monstrous weirwood tree, its staring eyes and open mouth a form of terror, a form of exile, howling at him to keep away.

'You're a Southerner,' Arya had said angrily to him, 'you don't understand these things.'

She was right. He didn't. How could she pray to a horror like this?

But then a sudden wind stirred in the leaves of the tree, and in the sound, there was a kind of recognition that he couldn't account for. He'd never stood in front of one of these things in his life.

But then Jaime realised. In the northern wind, he heard Arya's voice; saw the grey silver of her eyes. The weirwood tree was of the North; as was she. The North was her, and she was the North.

'Old gods of the North,' he whispered, 'if it comes to a choice tomorrow – take me.'

Only the wind and the sound of trees answered him.