The Last Name
Her world has gone completely black, but that blue remains in her minds eye, vacant and piercing and heart wrenching. Her brain is frantic and panicking; large gulps of air rattling in her chest as she tries to keep breathing - but from some small, barely rational part of her mind, she knows that should she survive this then that blue will never stop haunting her.
And she knows the body wears her own face, but how can she think of it as the body when it is his body? The faces mean nothing, she knows, but that one did; that face who had stared out at her across the bars of a cart and called her lovely, aware of who she was all along; who had given her that first real taste of power and made her The Ghost of Harrenhal. That face had given her a coin and a promise, and a piece of herself back that she'd lost: he'd given her hope and the strength to keep fighting.
And she had given him three names.
She reaches out blindly and feels for his hands, still warm, and grips them in her own; but they are too small, too soft, too Arya, and it occurs to her suddenly how alarming and terrifying it would be if she were not blind and could look down at her hands grasping her own hands, attached to her own arms, joined to her own small shoulders and neck and a face identical to her own, hair still covered in his hood.
But it doesn't matter, she doesn't care; she knows that whatever guise that body wears it had been entirely his own - entirely Jaqen's, entirely No One's. She grips those hands in her own like a lifeline, bows her head to hold them against the crown of her head and sobs.
And she had given him three names.
The Jaqen behind her had said that No-One was not her friend, but she had lied – she, because that Jaqen is the Waif, Arya knows with all her being. That heart wrenching split second of relief at the sound of his voice had died when she had turned to look upon him, because she knew the instant she saw the Waif's face. That face was impassive, carved from marble; it wore the curve of his lip and the red and white of his hair, the slight stubble of his face and that blue blue blue of his eyes – but she'd seen that haughty near-malice simmering beneath its skin and she knew that this Jaqen wasn't her Jaqen.
Her Jaqen had tilted back his head to swallow the poison meant for her, and before dropping to the ground had looked down at her; blue eyes wide and sharp and boring into her own grey, and she knew that that man had been her No One. Something terrible and unmentionable had passed between them in that moment and separated them in the next; her horror, his willingness, and the terrifying realisation that she had given him three names.
She lets out a choked cry, his fingers still clenched in hers, held tightly to her forehead, and thinks no, no, no, no, you don't die, don't die! She screams out in her head to anything that might hear her – the Old Gods and the Seven; the Lord of Light, the Red God and the Many-Faced God and The Stranger – please don't take him, please please please, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, I didn't know –
Because she had given him three names. He had given her three deaths and with it the power of justice, and so from her own lips had tumbled The Tickler; Ser Amory Lorch; and the last, the worst of all names she could have uttered – the one name she had taken back but realises now she never really had: Jaqen H'ghar. She had rescinded it at the time in favour of escape, and hadn't truly meant it when she'd said his name anyway; she was bluffing, and he'd known, surely, he must have known – he'd known, hadn't he, that he wasn't really her third name? –
"A man can go and kill himself," she hears inside her head; voice younger and haughtier but still definitely her own, and the agony of it rips a scream from her throat.
"I didn't mean it," she sobs, voice cracking beneath the weight of something dark and hopeless and desperate, and she grips his hands tighter and disentangles one of her own to grip the fabric covering his chest (but it's her chest, developing breasts beneath the robe betraying the illusion her blindness has offered her) and the cool air bites her wet cheeks as her eyes spill with tears.
"I didn't mean it," she gasps, air shuddering through her lungs, hands tangling in the material of his robe before sweeping his body, desperate to find some part of him still left, that hasn't been taken over by her own features, because he can't be gone, he doesn't die, he can't die. Her hands find her own small sloped shoulders instead of large, broad ones; the hair she touches only just brushes the curve of the neck and shoulder and it should be a little bit longer, wavier; the face she touches with her fingertips is smooth and round, devoid of the jut of his jawline and the stubble that should bite and kiss her skin.
"I take it back," she breathes, and when she does she finally finds something of him, something that is purely his – that scent of ginger and cloves, heady and mind-numbing, warmth coiling in her stomach as she breathes it in and for a moment she forgets. Just for a moment.
For a moment he's not dead. For one beautiful, blissful moment, Jaqen H'ghar – No One – lives, breathes, smirks before her, blue eyes glittering, some new lesson on the tip of his tongue and the curve of his mouth – but he doesn't speak, don't speak, because if he does then the illusion will come crashing down and she'll know it's not real. This alarming blindness is a blessing in this one instant, where she can't see the reality but can pretend otherwise – but if she were to try to imagine his voice, with all of its stresses and emphases and tones and the lilt and the colour and the shape of it, she wouldn't be able to do it – could never imagine all of him, with all of his complexities – and if she were to try and fail and this brief moment of respite were to come crashing down around her it would be the worst thing –
Lovely girl, she thinks, and the illusion shatters to pieces because she couldn't get the up-and-down right, couldn't get the inflection of his voice perfect inside her own head, and now No-One is dead and she has killed Jaqen H'ghar all over again.
But that scent is still there, the ginger and cloves fading by the second, and so she gathers her own small body from the cold floor and clings to it, nose buried in the crook of her own neck in a desperate attempt to cling on to it, to not have it leave her.
"I take it back," she says again. Her shallow breaths fall against the skin of a neck that isn't hers, the heat misting back to her instantly, and it's too jarring. "I take it back," she whispers. "I didn't mean it, the third name – I didn't. It wasn't yours to take anymore." Her voice cracks in her throat. "I took it back."
For weeks, she will live with the blindness. The other Faceless Men will give her orders, continue to train her as though all of this was a mere test; a simple necessity that she had to go through in order to grow. She will learn to walk around the hole in the world, his absence a gnawing void in her chest while someone who wears his face gives her commands in his voice, instructs her on how to mix poisons and how to adjust her footwork just so. One day the darkness behind her eyes will lift, but the darkness encasing her heart will grow and she will become the deadliest wolf among faceless monsters. One day, years from this moment, she will cross the Waif from her list; will take such pleasure in ripping his face from her body and slitting her throat, delicate features staring back at her in horror, but not those blue blue blue eyes.
But for now, she is still just Arya.
No Ones wearing Jaqen H'ghar's face surround her, but the real No One – the Jaqen who had seen that darkness in her and called out to it with his own; who had stared out at her from the burning flames curling around the bars of a cart, lifetimes ago, and started an unstoppable movement deep within her – is dead.
The Jaqen H'ghar willing to die for her is gone.
(A/N: Welcome to my first ever attempt to break into the Game of Thrones/ASoIaF fandom! I know I should be getting on with my Supernatural and Walking Dead stories but this wouldn't leave me alone. Reviews make me really happy so don't be afraid to leave one. :) Cheers!)