A note on universe

This story takes place in a modern Westeros that is similar to our world.

They told him that they had held the girl for two days already, and that for every moment of those two days, she had refused to talk.

They had sent for him as a last resort born from some absurd belief that sitting face-to-face with Cersei's grief-stricken brother would make the girl descend into an agony of guilt and confess what she had done. Jaime laughed aloud at the thought. He hadn't seen Cersei in years, and something told him that he wouldn't have been grief-stricken even if he had. Oh, he'd felt a pinprick of sadness when he'd heard the news of his twin's rather gruesome demise, but it had been swallowed up relatively quickly; by anger, by resentment, by a sense of feeling free, by a sense of feeling imprisoned, by several days and nights spent camped out on Tyrion's living room floor, helping his brother drink the entire contents of his liquor cabinet. The pinprick of sadness had been so small and so brief that it hardly justified calling him fucking grief-stricken at all, but he had come in to work nonetheless, partly out of curiosity, mostly for the pleasure of stepping foot inside the building without every man and his fucking dog telling him to go home again.

When he entered the interrogation room, he almost snorted in laughter. The girl was a bloody mouse. He'd been told she was sixteen, but she looked twelve…well, her body looked twelve. Her eyes might have belonged to someone who'd survived three world wars: grey, empty, inhuman. And yet there was a threat in them as well…a kind of menace that made you want to avoid her gaze…

Yes, yes, very impressive. She probably glares like that at every person she speaks to, and they back off immediately.

Jaime seated himself opposite her and tried hard not to think about the dozen or so idiots that he knew were watching curiously through the glass and jostling each other for a place at the keyhole. The girl, it seemed, was having similar thoughts; gazing with undisguised amusement at the mirror; her diminutive form, her bloodied and torn clothes and her dirty hair doing little to disguise the fact that she did not believe herself to be in prison despite the cuffs that bound her to the table and stained her wrists red. To her, Jaime and the interrogation room and everyone beyond it were under her control and not the other way round.

The girl folded her arms, and stared at him like she recognised him, even though they'd never met before. Her features were delicate and elfin, and her alabaster skin made them seem all the more refined, but it was not her face that drew the eye. It was what she did to the air around her; how she seemed to make it shimmer, and change, and flee; as though she were something that should not be; as though her existence was an affront against nature.

Jaime opened her file and flipped through the photos of what she had done to her victims; well - to the people that he believed were her victims (she was almost as good at cleaning up as she was at making a mess). What he saw in the photographs was horrifying. Sickening. And yet, masterful. Petyr Baelish, his face covered by a thousand, perfectly symmetrical holes, made by a knife no thicker than a knitting needle. Gregor Clegane, castrated, geometric circles and squares traced prettily out in the blood that coated his legs like paint. And Father, of course, strangled to death with a piano string that had cut through his skin like butter. Every act, every crime, every photograph, documented a gruesome relish in the very act of murder that could only have come from a will of iron; from a frozen, utterly lifeless soul that was somehow the soul of an artist. She was unique, even for a psychopath. She was…a painter.

'Do you understand the charge against you, Lady Stark?' Jaime asked.

'Do you happen to have a cigarette?' the girl replied; smirking at him as a flurry of activity and embarrassingly-raucous shouts of 'she's talking!' began to echo outside the door and down the corridor.

Imbeciles.

Jaime dug into his pocket, pulled out a crumpled cigarette and leaned forwards. The girl's breath was hot on his hand, and her glare hot on his glare as he nestled it softly between her lips and lit it for her.

'Seven hells, aren't you sweet,' Lady Stark mumbled; the cigarette hanging from her bottom lip as she sat back in her chair, drew deeply and sighed in satisfaction; the smoke pouring from her mouth like mist on a winter's morning; her smug expression telling Jaime that she was fully aware that the cuffs weren't so tight that she couldn't see to her own bloody cigarette.

She inhaled a few more times; the smoke forming a kind of infernal halo around her head, then smirked at Jaime as though she were dangling him over the edge of an abyss with every intention of letting him fall.

'I killed your sister,' she flatly declared.

'Congratulations,' Jaime blankly replied; her words hurting deep within him; her words drawing him to lean slowly forwards so that his elbows rested on the table.

'Let's not talk about it,' he added.

'Fine,' Lady Stark sighed.

And she leaned forwards also; as fearless as fire approaching flame; her cuffs glinting like her eyes and sending a disturbed shiver down Jaime's spine; an unnatural curiosity; a rope being forged in steel.

'How did you do it?' he asked.

'I stuck a knife in her carotid artery and watched her bleed to death,' Lady Stark replied.

'I see,' Jaime said; trying to ignore the grotesque thrill rippling suddenly over his skin, 'you don't need to tell me more.'

'Fine,' Lady Stark agreed; her tone more of a challenge than an agreement.

'Did she scream?' Jaime asked; the words breaking on his tongue.

The girl's response was to blow a cloud of smoke into his face, and Jaime felt his blood turn black with anger.

'Did she scream?' he growled.

Lady Stark smiled at his reaction.

'Like a stuck pig,' she purred.

'Did she scream for me?' Jaime rushed on.

'Yes,' Lady Stark replied, making Jaime flush painfully; I'm questioning her, he reminded himself as the blood pounded in his chest, there's nothing to get excited about; I'm questioning her.

So why does it feel like I'm talking dirty?

'Did she scream for me to come and save her?' Jaime asked.

'Yes,' the girl crooned; her lips parting sensually.

'What did you do?' Jaime questioned.

'I told her you weren't coming,' the girl said.

'And then?' Jaime asked.

Lady Stark shrugged.

'She died.'

The girl's eyes were pools of grey darkness and flame, infernal as they sparkled and lit up at the memory, as though she were recalling something precious; and her forearms were white, like marble, and covered in red, bite-like marks left there by clawing fingernails; by Cersei clawing for life as she was torn out of it. The girl wore them like gloves, and as Jaime searched himself for the grief that he should be feeling; for the anger; for the nausea at what this cruel, monstrous animal of a human being had done to his sister, he felt nothing but fire in his skin and a euphoric, appalling hardness in his cock, and for one, awful moment, he found himself wanting to wrench away the table between them, and the crimes, and the photographs, and to seize hold of her and fuck her against the glass; his teeth sinking into her neck and making her hurt the way she wasn't making him hurt.

'Am I boring you, Ser?' Lady Stark asked; her voice hot as a glacier; her cigarette still dangling from her lip.

'My brother officers found severe bruising on Cersei's wrists,' Jaime replied; clinical, and relieved at the thickness of his mask as he consulted his files.

The girl answered the question by shrugging indifferently. That angered him.

'Did you use your hands to hold her down?' Jaime suggested; his voice severe and punishing.

'No,' the girl replied, 'I didn't use my hands to hold her down.'

'What were you doing with your hands, then?'

'Touching myself.'

Jaime felt bile rise in his throat, and heat surge between his legs.

You're a monster, he wanted to say.

'Did you come?' he said instead.

The girl took a moment to observe him, before smiling conspiratorially, as though she were telling him a secret.

'Yes,' she said.

'Hard?' Jaime asked; his cock stiffer than a fucking tree branch as Lady Stark leaned even further forwards, until her face was only inches away from his, and he was sure she could see into his soul.

'I screamed louder than she did,' the girl whispered.

You're magnificent, he wanted to say.

'You're sick,' he spat instead.

'You're just getting that now?' she asked; smiling at him like she pitied him; her eyes boring into his; the same colour as the cigarette smoke. He had seen the same look in the eyes of the hundreds of men in the moment just before they realised that he was going to kill them.

It was the look of a hunter contemplating his prey.

'How did they catch you?' Jaime enquired, 'they never got round to telling me.'

'I let them,' Lady Stark replied.

'And why would you do that?' Jaime asked.

'I've finished,' the girl declared.

'With what?' Jaime demanded.

The girl shrugged at him once more.

'I have a list.'

It took Jaime a moment to realise what she meant.

'A list of people you want dead?'

'That's right.'

'Who was on it?'

'Cersei.'

'Just Cersei?'

'She was the last one left on it.'

'Who else was on it before she was the last one left on it?'

'Joffrey. Your father. Petyr Baelish. Ilyn Payne. Meryn Trant. The Hound. The Mountain. You.'

The laugh ripped from Jaime's throat before he could stop himself. Yes, it was foolish of him (and utterly unprofessional after a confession of such magnitude) but the notion was so funny; the idea that this little mite, handcuffed to a fucking table, could possibly be a threat to him.

Jaime continued to roar with laughter and theatrically wiped his eyes. And then, through the moving, boiling frosted glass that their wetness left on his vision, he saw that the smile on the girl's face had been replaced by a look; an impenetrable hatred so deep that it might have belonged to some unknown devilry too evil for its name to pass the lips of men; and no sooner had his instincts cried out to him that aggravating a person in such a state might be unwise that the girl had thrown herself across the table and had hurled her thin, impossibly herculean fingers in a death grip around his throat that made his vision turn black in a sudden and horribly inescapable whirlpool of death, and fragile, choking mortality.

'I killed all of them except Joffrey; is that funny to you?' she screamed into his face; tightening her grip as the voices of panicking observers began to shout for help; as Jaime's breath dried up, then stopped completely; paralysed by a sudden and impossible fear, 'I killed every single one of them slowly and painfully; I always do if I can help it –' Jaime dug his fingers into hers; they didn't budge; he tried to move; he couldn't budge; he was going to faint; he was going to – '– but in your case I'll make an inconvenient fucking exception, Kingslayer – ' she shrieked; atrocious as a harbinger of death; and then the breath rushing back into his lungs was hitting him like a sledge hammer and throwing him violently back in his chair as three different pairs of hands pulled the screaming girl off him.

'I'll kill you!' she screamed; crying out as she was beaten across the face, shoved back into her chair and had her cuffs shortened, 'I'm going to kill you, I'll fucking KILL YOU!'

'Pipe down or we'll be ripping your fucking arsehole instead of your face!' an officer roared.

'Are you alright, Ser Jaime?' another asked; bending over him

'Should one of us stay?' another added (to the conversation and to his humiliation).

'No,' Jaime growled; startled and ashamed by the wheeze that escaped his throat; 'wait outside.'

The girl spat blood out of her mouth as they retreated; her lip curling mutinously as she glared viciously at him, and he smiled at her in as smug a manner as she could; a balm for his wounded pride and for every intolerable, insupportable thought he had had since entering the room, and she was spitting at him again, and she was glorious; the hate coursing through her like blood and making her eyes glow like wildfire as it ripped through a fleet of ships; through wood; through steel; through flesh.

'Do contain yourself, Lady Stark,' Jaime smirked.

'Fuck you,' the girl spat, 'I hope your cock falls off; I hope it withers and falls off; since I can't chop it off myself.'

The wildfire in her eyes burned higher; a glow becoming a conflagration; and the flames were scarring her face and making it terrible to look upon; twisting it into an inhuman mask; a scream of distorted flesh that somehow hurt worse than her fingers around his throat; that was somehow more unbearable than everything his life had become; what his life had been with Cersei alive; what his life was now that Cersei was dead.

'Seven gods, you despise me,' he said.

'You threw my brother out of a window,' she spat.

'I fear I did,' Jaime shrugged, 'sorry about that.'

'You tried to kill my father,' she growled.

'Yes,' Jaime acknowledged, 'sorry about that too.'

'I piss on your sorrow,' she snarled, and he had never seen a human being who was more like an animal in that moment; her teeth bared, her eyes black, her breath coming in short pants, as though her lungs were half their size; as though what was between them pumped blood, and nothing else.

Then the sun returned to her eyes, and she was smiling again; breezy and confident as a whore seducing a lordling; the loveliness of her face regaining its full colour, and he realised, as if for the first time, why she was so dangerous; why life itself was offended by her existence; and why she had to remain confined for the rest of her life. There was no rehabilitating a person like her. They would try, of course. The do-gooders, the blind. They would talk about her age, about her life. And he would stop them. He would do everything in his power to make sure they didn't win.

'No matter,' Lady Stark said pleasantly, 'we can talk about it tonight.'

Jaime stared at her.

'Tonight?' he repeated.

'Yes,' she replied.

Jaime sat back in his chair, folded his arms and smirked at her.

'Is something happening tonight that I should know about?' he ventured, 'are you having a feast in your cell for all the other axe murderers?'

'No,' the girl unconcernedly observed; as unconcernedly as though they were taking high tea in her living room; 'tonight, very late, when whichever mediocrity you've got on guard duty is fast asleep at his post, you're going to come to my cell and set me free.'

'Am I?' Jaime asked in a delighted tone of voice; grinning at the magnificence of the joke.

'You are,' Lady Stark replied; her voice level, perfectly serious and as warm as it had been at the beginning of the interrogation, 'you're going to unlock my cell, take me out the back exit and drive me to the train station. We'll probably end up fucking, but you never know. You seem the type to be seized by sporadic attacks of holiness that stop you from taking what you want. So. We'll go to the train station. We'll fuck. You'll let me go. And in the morning, when news of my escape goes viral and the inevitable manhunt begins, you're going to do everything in your power to ensure that I am never recaptured.'

Jaime laughed at her.

This time, she observed him instead of attacking him; smiling pleasantly as he cackled to himself; the heat of his blood pouring out of his mouth.

'And why would I do any such thing, Lady Stark?' Jaime coolly asked.

Arya shrugged at him.

'Because we're the same.'

He wanted to throw up.

He stared at her, and hated her.

He wished with all his soul that his body would shut up.

He wished that his ears would stop hearing. He wished that he couldn't hear her voice, or feel what it did to him.

She continued:

'You may cover it up with your smiles and your bullshit and that revolting badge you're wearing, but you're a killer, like me. You love it. It makes you feel alive. It reminds you that there's blood in your veins. Only unlike me, you're a coward. You care what people think of you. You don't kill when you want to kill, only when you have to. But each time it happens, you love it, and you despise yourself for loving it. But really, you're like me. You're my brother in blood.'

She smiled at him.

'Why don't you come with me? I'm sure you have much to teach me. And I you.'

Jaime closed her file, pushed back his chair, and left without looking at her.

That night he went to her cell. He took the keys as a precaution.

Chapter notes

This chapter contains tributes to Sherlock and Ripper Street that fans may recognise.