Prelude

Seven summers, that was how long I had spent in Braavos. Seven long years spent training with the Faceless Men learning how to fight and how to lie; learning how to speak High Valeryian and Braavosi and more importantly learning how to change my face at whim. I had become a fully-fledged assassin by the time I was eleven and indeed my body count at that point was higher than the greatest Knights of the Seven Kingdoms. By this point I was simply just no-one, at least to those whose House I was living in. When you joined the House of Black & White you were expected to give up everything about yourself – your name, your belongings and if they could have their own way? Your memories. And although I had gone through the motions of agreeing that I was simply just "no one", I had held onto the fact that I was and always would be Arya Stark of Winterfell. They couldn't ever take that away from me; so long as I remembered who I was and what had brought me to this city in the first place. My father was dead, accused wrongly of treason and executed in the most heinous way possible; I had been at The Twins and heard the anguished screams of my mother, saw the body lead out upon that horse with the wolf head sewn to his shoulders. I could still hear the chanting in my nightmares, Here Comes The King In The North. I woke in a cold sweat most nights, screaming out for my brother. Yet there was no one there to hold me and take away the pain, to tell me it was only a dream. Because it was all so very real.

And so I went about my days almost as if I were in a dream, as if I were a wraith. I took my contracts from the Kindly Man, completed them with a vicious blood thirst that would surprise anyone and I felt no guilt over it. This was survival; this was me staying out of the way of those who wanted the rest of the Stark's dead. I didn't even know if the other's still lived. My father and mother were gone, Robb too. But what about Sansa, was she still alive? Bran and Rickon? Jon? Were they all dead, too? Was I truly the last Stark? I didn't have the answers and I didn't think I ever would, so I kept being no-one. That was who I was. No-one. The girl who changed her face and carried out contracts for the Many-Faced-God. He wasn't my God, never would be. My God was death, and I always told that bastard "Not today"

Now I stood upon the edge of the harbor, watching the ships as they came in. Many of them were from Westeros, others from lands I had never heard of before. America, that was one place that intrigued me. The people who got off those ships looked so different to the people here, they dressed strangely and spoke with a strange, lilting accent. I listened now to a group of them as they stood there with strange white sticks in their mouths that send up plumes of funny smelling smoke. I was good at eavesdropping. No one noticed the girl with the raven hair as she stood there in silence.

"Have you heard? The Stark's are in Mystic Falls?"

My eyes widened at those words and I turned, staring at the group with a mixture of horror and curiosity.

"The Stark's? I thought they were all dead?"

"Apparently not. The King In The North has been seen there, though many say he was killed at that wedding. And Ned Stark's bastard is there too. Seems they've made a new life for themselves."

"Just those two then? I suppose the others are dead."

"Word is that the cripple and the little boy are on their way there too. And the pretty red headed one. No idea about the wild little wolf girl."

A sob escaped then, tears pricking at my eyes as I stepped towards the group with the strange accents, "Did I hear you right? The Stark's?"

I was greeted with a raised brow, "What does the little wretch want to know that for?"

Swallowing back my emotion I met the man's gaze with my bright blue gaze, "Because…because I'm Arya Stark of Winterfell. And I want to go home to my family. Please, will you take me to where they are? I don't have much…but I can work. I've worked on ships before…"

A stony silence greeted me, hanging heavily in the air for a moment before the man nodded, "Alright little Stark. We leave in an hour. If you're not here by then? We leave without you."

I nodded swiftly, turning from the group and tearing through the streets of Braavos. The thin leather of my boots pounded against the cobbles of the backstreets of Braavos as I wound my way towards the House of Black & White. What I would do now was simple. I would retrieve the few belongings I had; I would tell the Kindly Man he would never see me again. And then I would go to this new land and be reunited with the family I thought I had lost.

I was going home.