Arya Stark doesn't remember much from before she was three, but she vaguely remembers following Jon around ever since she learned how to walk. Mother says her first steps were towards Jon, and her first word was his name. She remembers tugging on his trousers and demanding to be picked up.
When she is three, she smacks a wet kiss on his cheek, and declares, "Mine!"
As far as the three years old is concerned, Jon Targaryen has been hers since the beginning.
Arya is six when Aunt Lyanna and Uncle Rhaegar die. Everyone is crying, even baby Rickon, though she doubts he knows what is going on. Everyone is staring at Jon too, and she thinks it's making him very uncomfortable. They're waiting for him to cry, and she knows that he won't cry in front of them. So, she walks over to where he is, and wraps her arms around him, like she has seen Mother do when Bran cries. Jon clings to her, and Arya can feel the wet spots appear on her neck, but she doesn't say a word. She lets Jon hide his face in her hair, because he is hers, and Father says one should always take care of what is theirs.
Father has also told her the story about their ancestors. They were wolves, he said to her, we are wolves and wolves look after their pack.
I am a wolf, she thinks, and Jon is my pack.
Arya is ten, and she thinks Jon is her best friend. She thinks she is his too. He has said so. She thinks baby Rickon is her best friend too, or as much as a six years old can be. Mother calls her wild, and she thinks Rickon is wild too. Wolfblood, she once heard Father say. Arya takes it upon herself to tell Rickon stories of wolves and their packs. She can see that he takes her stories to heart. She teaches him how to play soccer, because even though Bran is closer to his age, he is always lost in the pages of books. Jon plays with them, too. It makes Robb and Theon mad, she can see, but she feels proud because Jon chose her as his best friend, not them. But she doesn't say anything to Robb or Theon because they would only tease Jon, and then she would have to kick them. Jon and Rickon will laugh, she knows, but she would get into trouble with Mother again. So she blows raspberries at them, and calls out to Jon, "Hey, Egghead!"
Jon laughs and joins her in teaching Rickon the ways of soccer.
Arya is almost fourteen when Jon starts to avoid her. She doesn't think she has done anything to spite him, but who knows with Jon. She loves him, she does, but her best friend mopes over angsty songs, so it is entirely possible that she may have made fun of something that may or may not have hurt his sensitive heart.
She tries to catch him after dinners, even conspiring with Rickon to hold him in place, but he always escapes somehow, and seven hells, that pisses her off.
As pissed off as she is, she still misses her best friend, and so she puts on her war paint, mainly her deadliest glare and scowl, and hides in her room waiting for him to pass by. When he does, she grabs him by his arm, rather forcefully, and pulls him into her room. He does not look surprised, or shocked, just resigned. She crosses her arm and glares at him.
"You've been avoiding me," she fumes, and is surprised by the pang of hurt the words still cause.
He doesn't say anything, just stares at her, with a queer look on his face. She pushes him onto her bed rather forcefully.
"Did I do something?" she falters when he grimaces, "I did, didn't I?"
She thinks she would do anything, even sit through one of Sansa's makeup lessons, if it would make him not mad at her. There's a twinge of something in her chest, and there may or may not be tears trying to fall from her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall.
Jon looks guilty, and he reluctantly answers, "It's nothing, I was just being stupid."
Arya does not believe him. She knows she has done something that drove him away, but she doesn't push for more. She flops onto the bed beside Jon and curls up against him. He presses a kiss into her hair, and she vows to hold onto Jon because she feels safe in his arms, like nothing can ever hurt her as long as she is with him. But, she muses, what about him? What if I hurt him?
"Hey, egghead?" she murmurs into his skin, before realizing that somehow he has fallen asleep. She shakes her head fondly and feels herself dozing off too.
Arya is fifteen when she has her first boyfriend. It's Gendry. Robb and Jon and Theon's friend Gendry. He's a senior along with her brothers, and she is a freshman, and when he asks her out in front of her locker, she says yes. He is nice, she thinks, and lovely. She smiles at him and goes out with him to the Riverrun's Coffeehouse after school. He asks her to be his girlfriend after that, and she accepts, even though she can't quite shake off the feeling of wrongness. There is a voice at the back of her head chanting "wrong wrong wrong" but she firmly pushes it back because Gendry is nice, and Arya thinks she may come to care for him yet.
Rickon is the first one she tells, and he does not seem happy with her decision. "He is not our pack!" he growls, and she might have regretted teaching him the wolf ways had the same thought not come to her before. As it is, she asks Rickon to give Gendry a chance, and he nods with a wicked smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. Poor Gendry, she thinks, he's in for a ride.
And in for a ride he is. The one and only time she invites him over for a dinner with her family, the boys glare at him as if he had suddenly turned from their friend to an enemy. Even kind and gentle Bran has a constipated look on his face. But Rickon, her little brother Rickon, has a murderous glint in his river blue eyes. Wolfblood, she thinks, hot tempered. He is seated beside Gendry, and he only glares at her boyfriend when he tries to make conversation with him. Halfway through dinner, Rickon stabs Gendry in the fingers, and she knows she ought to be mad at him, but for some reason she isn't. She glares at him for the sake of it, and the youngest Stark only smirks at her. When Father asks him why he stabbed Gendry, and when he says, "Not my pack," she can't quite hide her smile. Gendry glares at her over Mother and Sansa's fussing, and she schools her features into a sympathetic grimace.
She ought to break up with Gendry, she knows. He will be hurt understandably, but better be hurt now than being led on by her, because she knows she won't ever like him, not in the way he wants her to. She has an inkling why, but she refuses to acknowledge it.
Later, she confides in Rickon about what she is about to do. Rickon hugs her and declares, "It's okay. He was not our pack."
The words make her smile even as she says, "you can't always date your pack, Rick. Who in our pack do you think I can date?"
Rickon replies instantly, "Jon," he pauses for a bit, "and Theon, too, if you want to go for an asshole."
"Language," she chides him, "and I'm Jon's cousin. We can't date."
"Who says?" he almost growls, "if you like him, and he likes you, you should go for it!"
"That's the thing," she hesitates, "I don't think he likes me that way. I'm pretty sure he looks at me like a little sister."
"But you do?" he queries.
"Perhaps," she reluctantly answers, and Rickon smiles at her in all his childish glee.
(Two weeks later, Arya breaks up with Gendry. He pleads and he shouts, but she refuses to sway from her decision. It's for the best, she tells him. In the end, he sighs in defeat and asks, "Did you ever care for me at all?"
She wearily answers, "I thought I could. I hoped I could."
He nods, and that's the end of their short lived relationship.)
Arya is almost seventeen when Jon, Robb and Theon move into the Winterfell University's dormitories. She misses them, all of them, even Theon who has been Robb's best friend for so long that he is actually considered one of the Starks now. It's lonely without them. Even her friends, Hot Pie and Lommy, haven't been able to get her to cheer up for the first month. On top of everything else, the remaining Starks still at home have been so busy that they rarely see each other except at dinner. Father has his business, Mother busy with her charity, and Seven only knows what Sansa is busy with. Most of the times, she is out with Jeyne Poole and Margaery Tyrell. And when she isn't, Arya hears what sounds suspiciously like giggles coming from her room every now and then. Bran is preparing to enter high school with his friend Jojen Reed, and she has seen how he has been stressing over it. Jojen, though, is as calm as ever.
At least, she tells herself, I still have Rickon.
With everything changing around her, it feels strange, but she goes on. She hangs out with Hot Pie and Lommy, and even joins the school's fencing team. When things in her family have calmed down enough, Jon calls her.
"I have a girlfriend, Arya!" He excitedly tells her, "Her name is Ygritte."
It feels like someone has just squeezed her lungs. Stupid girl, you stupid little girl, he never liked you in that way. She chokes back the tears threatening to come out, because she won't cry. She will not cry because of a stupid boy.
Calm as still water, she silently repeats her fencing master Syrio Forel's words to herself, calm as still water.
"How did you two meet?" She asks, and she is pleased that her voice does not crack as she has half expected it to.
"At the campus coffee shop. We bumped into each other and I dumped my coffee all over her. She almost punched me, and I offered to buy her coffee, and then we got to talking. She –"
Something snaps inside her.
He is still talking about his girlfriend when Arya cuts him off by saying, "You egghead!"
"Arya, what –"
She hangs up the phone.
Later when Sansa asks her why she is sulking, Arya shoots her a glare, and locks herself inside her room. She is practicing her fencing almost venomously with her skinny rapier against an invisible opponent when Rickon knocks.
She lets him in, and Rickon, her wonderful little brother Rickom who will never break her heart, comes in with a tub of cake batter flavoured Ben and Jerry's.
"Sansa said these'll help," he informs her as he takes a seat on her bed.
"How does she know?" She asks doubtfully.
"She has her ways. Also, Robb called her," he shrugs.
"Wonderful," she scowls, but still takes a seat beside him on the bed, "If we're doing this, we might as well complete the package and watch pathetic romcoms."
Rickon wrinkles his nose, but still nods, "Don't choose anything too pathetic."
"10 Things I Hate About You."
"Whatever. I've got the spoons and you've got the movie."
(Two months later, Sansa tells her that Jon has broken up with Ygritte. Robb told her, she says. Arya still feels a little hollow but she smiles at her sister who wraps her arms around her skinny frame and whispers in her ears, "Things will work out just fine.")
Arya is in her last year of high school, and she is pretty sure that everyone in her family knows how she feels about Jon. She does not know how, because she sure as hell has not told anyone, and neither has Rickon, or so he says anyway. Personally, she is sure that he told Bran. But as it is, none of her family looks disapproving, nor do they look disturbed. Mother even told her that they have her blessing. Not in those exact words, of course.
"Lyanna and I always thought you and Jon would end up together," Mother tells her wistfully, "We would giggle about. Ned and Rhaegar would think us mad, but they agreed too."
If only Jon thought so too.
Arya doesn't say anything, and Mother only pats her cheek before leaving.
When Jon comes to visit for the holidays, her whole family starts dropping subtle hints. They are well-meaning, but it does nothing to help. Arya can see that it unnerves him, and she tells them to lay off him, but they only smile innocently at her. She does her best to act normal around him, even as she feels a pang in her heart every time he smiles at her.
Still a stupid little girl, after all this time.
Arya is almost nineteen when everything changes. It is the morning before Christmas, and she is standing outside in the snow. The whole world looks like it is covered in a white blanket from she is standing in their front yard. It's beautiful. She laughs as she stands there letting the snow land on her face, and for the first time in a long time, she feels content.
She doesn't know how long she has been standing there in the snow, but when she hears a noise behind her, and she turns around to find Jon sprawled on the ground. He looks flushed but his eyes are still sparkling. Arya offers him a hand, which he takes, but then promptly pulls her down next to him on the ground.
Lying there side by side on the snow-covered ground, they both burst out laughing. She looks at him as they're laughing, and she thinks she wants to freeze this moment in time forever. With the snow falling all around them, and she cannot help but think that this moment is the manifestation of magic itself.
She is still smiling when Jon turns to look at her. As his eyes bore into hers, she feels her heart burst with affection and love for this wonderful, wonderful man. Seven hells, I'm turning into Sansa, she notes in awe, but she does not care, because as hard as it is to believe, Jon is kissing her, and she does not feel so hollow anymore. She feels like she is finally whole again.
"Took you long enough, stupid," She says when he presses his lips to her forehead.
Jon is still smiling, but all of a sudden, he looks worried. "Do you think Rickon will stab me too?"
He looks so wonderfully panicked that it makes Arya laugh, "No, stupid. He stabbed Gendry because he was not you. You're his pack, after all."
They both burst out laughing again. When it's quiet again, he speaks, "Hey, Princess?"
She wrinkles her nose at the endearing term, but nods for him to go on.
"I love you."
It feels like time has stopped around them. She can feel her heart beating first. She can feel the smile coming back to her face in full force even as she says, "Thank you."
Jon looks panicked, and she laughs because this man, this beautiful man, her best friend, is hers now, and he loves her.
Jon's eyes soften when he sees her laughing.
"I love you too, egghead."
She is still laughing when he kisses her again.