Chapter Text
Each night, Tywin Lannister would dismiss his servants, extinguish his candles and sit in the past with his two shades. Joanna and Arya, the ghosts of himself.
Often, they would appear to him alone: dancing out of the dark, wandering about the room, and speaking to him; calling him by his first name. Sometimes his younger self would be with them; blond and alive and smiling (not laughing). And sometimes he would see them, and many others, in the same translucent face: Jaime’s face behind Joanna’s, Joanna’s behind Tyrion’s, Arya’s behind Cersei’s. And he would think, and think, and no one would tell him to stop, or to rest, or to listen. It was…unpleasant. Joanna and Arya had been the only two souls on earth who had not found him remotely intimidating, and while being constantly surrounded by bootlicking crownlanders was convenient enough, the tediousness of it often grated on his nerves.
There was a full moon tonight, and the breeze brought with it the smell of salt, and earth. He might have been at Casterly Rock in the company of his fathers, and he smiled in welcome as a new shade emerged from the long shadows and came to him. Long, thick blonde hair framed a pristine and extraordinary face that was far too chiselled to be orthodoxly feminine; but she was beautiful nonetheless, and hard, and dark; her smouldering eyes like jade and ice and fire; like a wolf closing in for the kill; like the wrath and memory of the North.
‘Arya?’ he whispered, his eyes falling on the crossbow she was pointing at him.
‘No,’ the shade answered, and fired.