Visions of ice, and darkness and glowing blue eyes and impossibility chased themselves across the entrances to Jaime's eyes; across the burning, excruciating surface of his skin; a quilt of barbs and daggers; his scars made real again. Arya was frantic and predictably talking nonsense as he slumped to the floor before the fireplace; her shrill scolding punctuated by the deep, warbling clanging of iron as she roughly cupped his chin and ladled boiling water into his mouth from the pot that hung above the fire. It spilled out of his mouth and over his clothing, and burned like all seven fucking hells put together, and though he groaned in complaint, Arya did not stop until he had drunk all of it; tossing the ladle aside and putting another log on the fire in one swift, graceful movement, before beginning to pull his sodden furs off; her long dark hair falling over her shoulders like liquid steel. He protested weakly; covering her hands with the freezing, aching stumps that were his own and inexplicably trying to stop her, but the stubborn little shit was slapping his hands away and mercilessly pulling off his sodden doublet; the air hitting his frozen skin like a knife on glass as the garment hit the floor with a splat and Arya began to cut his breeches open with a knife. He complained as loudly as he could, and she shouted at him; her voice sounding miles away; her face seeming near:

'If we don't get you warm – now – you'll die. Understand?'

'Those were my…favourite breeches.'

'It's the breeches or your life. Choose.'

Jaime had to admit that dying would be something of an anti-climax after surviving the gut-wrenching shock of cold that had ripped through him when his body had hit the water; seeming instantly to become part of the frozen surface that it had shattered. Dying of exposure would have been an unpleasant death, but better; better than facing the thing with sapphire eyes that had stood on the bank; looking at him and keening with an eerie kind of disappointment, as though it could not follow. The sight had amused him almost as much as it had terrified him, and it made him laugh now as Arya's knife ripped through his smallclothes and left him completely naked against the cold.

The bloody thing lives in a land made of solidified bloody water and it can't even dive into a fucking lake and drown me?

Maybe it can't swim.

Jaime's laughs turned to splutters, and then to groans as Arya flung her cloak over his head and began to dry him off so vigorously that it felt as though the skin were being peeled from his bones; not in the overpowering, euphoric way of when he was inside her, and their skins and their voices and everything within them seemed to sear and burn together, but in the way of pain; of suffering. And Arya was chafing him all over, and he couldn't fathom why she was bothering. The cold wasn't getting any better; if anything, it was getting worse; it was in him, in his veins; killing him; turning the world to slowness, and taking him back to water.

She was trying to pull him up from behind now; her hands like wildfire on his bare skin, and he growled at his body to move, and stand, and take his weight, but his bloody knees kept collapsing beneath him; quickly at first, then slower and more painfully, until he could hardly bend them at all, and Arya's joints were cracking from the effort of holding him up. In his mind, he was screaming with the exertion; with the weakness; with his own helplessness.

I'm not helpless.

He couldn't be helpless; he'd only been fucking helpless three times in his life and on all three occasions he'd had body parts mutilated or cut off (soon we'll be adding 'frozen off' to the list, ha ha).

Arya swore loudly, and eased him to the ground again; propping him against the wall of the hearth and running to rip the wolf skin coverlet from the bed. She tore back across the room, dragging the cumbersome thing behind her on the floor, and proceeded to wrap him up in it like a fucking sausage, so that only his head was sticking out. He tried to summon the energy to glare at her, but found himself using it to smile instead when she stepped back, removed her boots and started to take her clothes off.

'I'm not at my best, Lady Stark,' Jaime muttered, 'but if you absolutely cannot wait –'

'Don't be such a bloody fool,' Arya snapped, pulling her breeches down, 'at this rate, I'd be surprised if you can even get it up.'

'Not…true,' Jaime mumbled; wincing, hard, as she got under the coverlet with him and wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his back; imprisoning the cold of the North and hissing in pain as it fought to free itself; to take two instead of one.

The feeling of their skins meeting was at once relief, and what surely counted among the most excruciating of any pain that Jaime had ever experienced. The ice was inside his fucking skin, trapped in it and making it burn, and only when Arya tightened the grip of her arms and legs around his body did he realise that the burning sensation was his shivering; tremouring; trembling; like there was an earthquake inside him; devouring both him and the world. The heat of Arya's body was like a pinprick of unattainable warmth that seemed to flare dully, then die once more as she methodically ran the calloused palms of her hands from his shoulder blades to his buttocks, before bringing them quickly round to his chest, across his stomach and down to his cock.

Jaime jumped in astonishment as Arya stroked him briskly with one firm hand, gracelessly cupped his balls with the other, then started on his back again; as blandly as though she were a maester performing an experiment on a corpse.

'If this is how they do things in Braavos, then I entirely understand why you left,' he mumbled.

'This, Arya replied, in a no-nonsense tone that amused him greatly, 'is how angry Northern women prevent their idiotic lovers from freezing to death.'

'By playing with their cocks?' Jaime half-laughed, half-mumbled.

'There's a lot of blood down there,' Arya shrugged, 'get it warm again and half the problem is solved.'

'Perhaps I should fall into the lake more often.'

'Shut up.'

Her hands ran in boiling, searing circles across his skin; clamping down like pincers on the shivers and lessening them in slow inches that made time measure itself out in the number of split ends of split seconds between the tremours that continued to ripple across his skin, and the heat that sought to drive them out. The ice encased Jaime's body with every heartbeat, then melted off again with every touch of Arya's hands; the hurt; the damp; his strength growing less and less across minutes, or hours, or days, and by the time he was nothing but a dull, throbbing ache of half-warmth and sweat, he was sitting limply with his head on Arya's shoulder and letting her heat enter his bones without comment. Her hands on his back were more like an embrace now; a caressing certainty that all the strength in the world was holding him up, and he felt sleep beginning to radiate out of her and take him; as though he were sinking into a great light from which he would never awaken. Dimly, he felt her shifting, and forcing his aching joints to move, and then he was lying beneath the wolf skin pelt with his head on her chest and her arms around him; with sleep and warmth seducing him.

As they claimed him, he felt her crying; her chest shaking against his cheek; and he tried to pull away from sleep, to wake up again and be with her. But sleep had him already, and it dragged him into his dreams, and left him there alone.

Weeks ago, they had been out on the ice in pursuit of a fox when the blue crystals beneath Arya's feet had crumbled to dust and given way; flinging her downwards into the jaws of a ravine that had been waiting, just below the surface, for prey. Jaime had heard the ice crack, and his own heart stop beating as she screamed, and then he had felt her, clutching the ice at his feet with nothing but empty space and darkness beneath her dangling legs. As he flung himself onto his stomach, she slipped and fell. His left hand had seized hers, glove on glove; and for a moment her grey eyes had become blue, and she had been as her brother had once been by his hand; falling into the empty air, dying; a punishment; a damnation.

Arya's eyes had become grey again, and she had slipped still further; tightening her hold on Jaime's hand and flinging her right arm at the ice; trying to get a grip with her pick. But the ice had crumbled to powder each time, and Jaime had shouted at her to drop the fucking pick and to take hold of his arm with her other hand; and she hadn't listened to a word that he said; swiping again and again at what anchored her to the world; destroying it; her body dangling beneath Jaime's and writhing as his shouts became pleading screams at the feeling of the muscles in his arm growing weaker; at his absent right hand that reached out for her without finding her because it didn't fucking exist; and the ravine had howled at him, 'kingslayer, oathbreaker, man without honour, cripple;' and he was holding onto her, but he couldn't protect her. He wasn't strong enough.

The ice beneath him was crumbling faster now; faster and without her help; as though she had made it a living thing that now wanted both of them, and she was looking up at him; her grey eyes like wildfire; 'run,' she had pleaded; 'run!' and her voice had sent blood and wrath and fire screaming from his heart and throat and flesh, and he had ripped her from the jaws of the ice as though she were a doll filled with straw.

He had dragged her up, and they had run together, into exhaustion and relief and more fear as the ice had crashed and burned behind them; an inferno that swallowed up whole forests made of ice, and by the time that they had reached safety, or as close to safety as anyone could be in this fucking place, water had been freezing on his cheeks and on hers as he pulled her roughly into his arms and tried not to smother her against his chest; tempting as it was, the stubborn little…

Her warmth had pulsed fiercely against him; the scent of her hair; the scent of her soul; and her fists were bunching into his furs and her head drooping onto his chest, 'you should have run, why didn't you run?' she sobbed, and he didn't even bother saying something clever; her death, his failure, her brother's life choking out of his throat and making him say, again and again, 'I love you. I love you. I love you…'

She hadn't been with him when he had touched blades with the shadow on the river bank; when it had driven him back with an inhuman strength and an inhuman cold of paralysing fear and stubborn disbelief, because such things existed only in old wives' tales and ridiculous Northern superstition, and if this was true; if this creature dancing with him and piercing the freezing air with a blade made of night was what he thought it was, then he couldn't win against it. He couldn't protect himself and he couldn't protect her.

The realisation had been pure despair.

Falling into the lake, on the other hand, had been an accident. Even had Arya not told him that there were few more effective ways to get himself killed, he would still have known that going for a swim beyond the Wall was a singularly stupid thing to do. Nonetheless, he had fallen, and the water had seemed to pull him in as the ravine had pulled Arya in; the cold sinking into his bones and heart and mind and bringing everything that he had ever been ashamed of, everything that he had ever hated himself for, into awful clarity: Brienne, who he hadn't saved, looking at him with no blame in her eyes as she was forced to her knees; Arya, who he hadn't saved, on the night that they had left King's Landing; her face bleeding, and swollen with bruises that Aegon had given her.

Because she chose me.

Because she chose herself.

Jaime started awake, weak and nauseous, to the familiar sound of a blizzard outside and the infinitely more pleasant familiarity of Arya pressed against him. He could hear, from her breathing, that she was awake, and he could remember, from his own unease, that he had fallen asleep with the sound of her sobs in his ears. He eased himself slowly onto his elbows and looked at her, and she stared up at him with not a tear in sight; her hair fanning out across the floor behind her and turning golden in the firelight.

'Why were you crying?' he asked; his fingers moving to her hair, unable to resist.

Arya regarded him softly, searchingly, and for a very long time, before she spoke.

'Did you see the white walkers?' she asked.

'No,' Jaime snapped.

Arya's hand touched his cheek and gently traced the line of his jaw.

'Jaime –'

'No.'

Arya's features promptly rearranged themselves into their habitual scowl, and she dropped her hand, stubbornly folded her arms and glared up at him like some petulant, if beautifully naked child.

'So,' she proposed, 'if you didn't see the white walkers, then what did you see that got you so shit scared?'

'A… shadowcat,' Jaime replied; trying to sound indifferent.

'A shadowcat?' Arya repeated; her sarcasm so devastating it was almost invisible, 'why did throwing yourself into the lake seem like a better idea than just running away? Or throwing a dagger at it, barring that?'

'I paid a lot of money for that dagger!' Jaime drawled.

'Why are you lying to me?' Arya demanded.

'I am doing no such thing, young lady!' Jaime retorted; wanting to tell her; not able to tell her; there was nothing to tell her; nothing in his rational mind that would convince him to deny everything that he had ever believed to be real; it's just the cold, it's just this place, it's only what I cannot know –

Arya was gazing silently up at him and looking luminously beautiful; her eyes filling suddenly and overwhelmingly with an awful, gut-wrenching despair that struck him to the quick, and made him want to demand what the matter was, so that he could make it better.

'Do you want to go home?' Arya asked; one step ahead of him.

Jaime cocked an eyebrow at her, and briefly wondered what she was talking about.

'I am home,' he pointed out.

'No you're not,' she said quietly, 'you hate it here.'

What?

'Most of the time, I'm too cold to be capable of something so exhausting as hatred, Lady Stark,' he quipped.

'But if you chose to,' Arya cut in; her hands glancing up and down his arms; 'you could go back –'

'I can't go back, Daenerys would have me drawn and quartered!'

'– you could go back without me –'

'What in seven hells are you talking –?'

'– you could hide yourself. There'd be hope for you. In the right place, you might even have a normal life. Nobody would know who you were; Daenerys would never find you. You could –'

She stopped talking; silenced, no doubt, by the sight of the blackness that she had just created in him as it clouded his face and infested his soul with its darkness.

She must be joking.

She has to be joking.

'Self-pity doesn't suit you,' Jaime tentatively mocked.

'Keep yourself warm,' Arya spat; shoving him roughly and trying to get up; 'I'm going for a walk.'

'You can't go for a walk,' Jaime observed; pinning her down; 'there's a fucking blizzard – again.'

'See what I mean by 'hate'?' Arya seethed; struggling to get free.

'I'm not allowed to complain about blizzards, now?' Jaime demanded; still refusing to let her rise and realising, with relief, that she doubted her own words enough to let him, 'I certainly dislike the thrice-damned things – everybody does – but I don't hate this place, love. In fact, I find it surprisingly beautiful…in a brutal, horribly uncomfortable sort of way.'

Arya stared at him incredulously, then avoided his eyes completely; her own growing blacker and blacker with a heartfelt desolation that he did not believe, did not understand, and to own the truth, that he rather resented.

'I can't believe that you still think you can lie to me,' she murmured.

'Of course I can lie to you!' Jaime loudly declared; dimly wondering why he still wasn't talking seriously; 'the two of us have been doing a prodigious job of fucking the Facelessness out of you since we left Westeros.'

'So you are lying to me?'

He groaned, and despairingly buried his head in her shoulder. Her skin smelled like home.

'I hate this place only as much as I hate every other place,' Jaime said; kissing her shoulder, 'I have no intention of leaving – it would be far too much bother – and besides, where the fuck would I go? There is nowhere for me to go.'

It was a rational argument, and one that he thought would appeal to her in her present state of mind.

'So you only stay because going somewhere else would be inconvenient?' Arya raged.

'Inconvenient and dangerous,' Jaime corrected; cursing himself.

'So what am I?' Arya was demanding; growing redder by the second, 'a distraction to pass the time?'

'A prodigy at making me angry?' Jaime volunteered.

'Don't make this about me!'

'Why not? It's obviously not about me, Lady Stark!'

'Yes, it is!'

'What is the matter with you today?' Jaime demanded; releasing her and abruptly getting to his feet.

'You shouldn't be walking around,' Arya said shrilly.

'What is the matter with you?' Jaime repeated.

'Put some clothes on at least!' Arya demanded.

'What is the matter with you?' Jaime barked.

'I've thought,' Arya snarled, 'that's what's the matter with me.'

'Well you shouldn't think,' Jaime snapped, 'you're obviously very bad at it.'

'What else am I supposed to do?' Arya shouted, 'you saw something today; something that scared the life out of you and made you scare the shit out of me and you don't even trust me enough to tell me what it was! I thought that you would die; I was terrified that you would die; and acting as though nothing happened, well: I'm exceedingly sorry, Jaime but that makes me ANGRY!'

'What do you want me to say?' Jaime shouted back; ignoring the sudden glow in his chest; 'that I believe in white walkers and grumpkins and snarks and all the monsters Old Nan would use to get your stubborn little arse to bed?'

'I want you to tell me the truth!' Arya raged.

'I CAN'T!' Jaime bellowed.

She fell silent at that, and remained wrapped up in the wolf skin pelt; looking at him; waiting for him.

'What is the truth, Arya?' Jaime uttered; a white sadness rising in him as he spoke the words, 'that you're stuck a thousand miles from anywhere that you might call safe, with a one-handed cripple more than twice your age, who can't even do a decent enough job of protecting you to make it all worthwhile –'

'Jaime –'

'– who pushed your brother out of a window, for fuck's sake –'

'Jaime – '

'I can pull you out of ravines and I can help you kill those wildling shits when they get too bloody audacious, but that thing that I saw today…I… knew nothing; I could do nothing! What if you'd been with me? What would I have done?'

Arya choose that moment to interrupt.

'You don't need to protect me, I can protect my –'

'None of that bloody matters, don't you see?' Jaime told her; his skin starting to burn from the cold air, 'no, listen to me before you argue. It wouldn't matter to me if you had lived all your days covered in plate and Valyrian steel. It wouldn't matter to me if you were better at killing people than all the Faceless Men combined. It doesn't matter to me that worrying about you is singularly foolish; it doesn't stop the fear; the…the knowledge… of what I would be; of...before…'

'What do you mean?' Arya asked; the sincerity in her voice, and the innocence in her eyes their own kind of maiming; their own kind of maddening anger at how little she seemed to notice the parts of himself that were blackened and smirched; the parts of him that would swell and become all of him if she died; if he let her die; and suddenly he was colouring, and plunging on, and blurting out what his pride had never permitted him to say; the gods take the consequences.

'Before you. Before you… without you… without…everything. I hate it, and I fear it, and I fear myself now, because neither me, nor any of those shadows of me can protect you as you need to be; as you deserve to be; not just from your bloody stubbornness, or from this habit that you seem to have acquired of running towards danger instead of away from it, but from what you've seen, and…felt; from this…erasing of yourself that's made you think that you don't matter. It's not true, and you need to be told that every day, or you'll forget; you need to be told by someone who deserves to tell you; someone who isn't…someone who hasn't…and if I could go back and change everything; the visit to Winterfell; Bran, Cersei, the tower…if I could be someone else; someone who wasn't this –'

'I would stop you,' Arya blurted loudly.

She looked rapidly away from him and began to study the wall next to his head.

Then she changed her mind and looked at him again, and her eyes were like molten silver that a man could drown in.

'I don't…' Arya stammered, 'I don't want anyone else; I –'

She grew angry.

'Why are you talking this way about not deserving this or that, anyway? Has one of Hrolf's daughters caught your fancy?'

For once, Jaime didn't bother feeling hurt by her words.

She didn't mean them.

She was like him.

He walked to her. Accusingly, she watched him come, with steel in her eyes and stone in her jaw, and Jaime let his gaze wash over her; the wolf skin pelt beginning to edge down her shoulders and leave her fair, maimed skin bare, and he remembered her as she had been when he had met her, hiding on a balcony at her own welcoming feast: cold; too cold, behind her shield of black ice; constantly announcing that she was leaving; constantly failing to do so; something deep beneath her Faceless mask stirring just enough to keep her sitting next to him; talking; arguing; listening; in the same way that life was drawn to a blade when it thrust into one's flesh.

Then she had looked inside him, and he inside her, and though each had terrified the other by doing so, that very act had revealed a kinship between them that was far more profound than blood.

He could see it in her as he approached; see it taking the iron from her face and leaving her with the unchannelled fire of what they had when there was no blade – no arguing – to take its heat, and by the time that he had reached her, she was rising to her feet and throwing the wolf skin pelt about his shoulders again, like a marriage cloak meant for two people: for a partnership rather than a transfer of title.

She pulled the cloak tighter around them. He stared at her. She stared back. They hadn't married before coming North. It would have been too great a risk.

Arya's hands were warm as she gently took hold of Jaime's right arm and brought it out from beneath the folds of the cloak; her fingers ghosting over the scarred flesh where his hand had once been. She kissed it softly and carefully, as though it had only been maimed a week ago, and a sudden wetness on her lips made him cup her cheek and slowly raise her face to his; her hair falling in thick, wild strands across the back of his hand as she looked at him.

He saw no defence; no fight; no shield of black ice; no mask. Just grey eyes filled with tears, and a face that he loved; a trust and an expression telling him that he owed her nothing, even though that would never be true.

'You have more than paid for Bran,' Arya half-murmured; half-sobbed her lips meeting the maimed skin once more; 'you've paid.'

Chapter notes

Valar morghulis, and that's it, awesome people! There shall be much more plot (and less fluff) in the follow-up, I promise! This was really just a little bridge to give us an idea of what living in the North would be like for our two darlings.

A massive thank you to everybody who read, reviewed, followed, favourited and left kudos! You are an indescribable inspiration!

Many thanks once again!

Gilraen