Rumors flew about Braavos like brightly colored birds, coming to nest in mouths and ears.
The girl heard them all.
They flit from merchant's ships to vendor's stalls, from the wealthy clientele to the urchins who stole the bread they broke.
The girl listened, but did not speak. She was not someone with a stake in gossip. She was not someone at all. She was a shadow on the wall, a dealer in death.
She was No One.
No One paid little mind to talk of a new claimant rising to take the North. Across the Narrow Sea, lord after lord appeared to make a claim to Winterfell. Nobody stuck for long, and No One only cared for rumors of the North so far as they served her purposes.
What did give her pause was when the alleged ruler of the newly independent North was said to be a beautiful woman with red hair.
Every time the Queen of Ice with Hair of Fire was mentioned, a bell resounded within her, even as she tried to repress it.
But no matter how deeply she buried it, it always resurfaced in her dreams.
And in her dreams, the pack was on the move.
The leader of hundreds of wolves raced morning and night, stopping only for meat and a few hours of sleep. Each time she fell from the waking world and into the mind of her wolf, the air was cooler, crisper.
She began waking in the middle of the night in her cell, shivering.
Ships came and went. She gave the gift to many men.
Voices rang, talking of grey granite walls rising, of the queen bringing in food and livestock for her recovering people.
A fortnight after hearing the first rumors of the Queen in the North, she dreamed of watching a large party of men and women riding in the snow through her wolf's eyes. She felt the strength in her iron jaws, but these people were not meat. Her wolves behind her, she ran alongside the party. In the distance, she saw a tall woman astride her horse, copper hair waving like a flag. As she came nearer and nearer to the woman, the shouts around her rose to a fever pitch. Men and women drew swords, but they meant nothing.
She drew closer and closer, and suddenly, the woman turned around, and the wolf looked directly into the eyes of Sansa Stark.
The girl opened her eyes, sweat on her forehead. She did not speak aloud, but in her mind, a voice rang out, true and clear.
Sansa.
Sansa, Sansa, Sansa.
Over and over again. Sansa, Sansa, Sansa.
Her sister's name merged with her heartbeat. Sansa. Sansa. Sansa. The refrain pumped the blood boiling in her veins.
She began hearing it pulse always. In the silence of her cell, in the streets of Braavos, as she gave the gift with dagger and poison and broken neck, it beat. Sansa. Sansa. Sansa.
"Treaty" became the new word on the crusty lips of sailors from Northern ships. All they could talk of was a pact allying the Northmen and the Wildlings. They said it was because of a man from the Night's Watch who was serving as diplomat and advisor to the Queen. Someone's Northern bastard.
She pressed her hands to the wall of her cell and breathed in slowly and deliberately. In. Out. In. Out. Jon. Jon lives. Sansa and Jon. Sansa. Jon.
She offered spilled blood and cold bodies to the Red God, and He accepted. She roved Braavos in smooth strides. Left. Right. Left. Right. Sansa. Jon.
Every weapon she wielded felt wrong in her hand. No blade was balanced quite right.
One morning, down by the docks, she heard someone cry out.
"Cat!"
She turned her head in response.
A small child was pointing to a kitten wending its way to the canals.
She turned her gaze back to the men in the street, heart hammering.
In her dreams, the wolf pack slept around the walls of a great structure. Her wolf came and went as she pleased. Sometimes she was even petted- a large gloved hand under her chin, a delicate hand brushing over her head.
After one such dream, she visited the pool on the main floor of the House of Black and White. The Kindly Man was there. He looked at her across the water, impassive. He knew. And she could no longer pretend not to know.
She was not No One anymore. Nor was she the girl that she had shed so long ago. She was not Arya.
Then who am I?
She knew the answer was not in the House of Black and White. Talk of the Queen and the Bastard buzzed under her skin.
As the sun rose in a purple sky, she slipped out the door. As though she was in one of her dreams, she sank to the ground before the steps leading into the House. She had expected some resistance as she lifted the stone step, but it slid out smoothly. Light glinted off silver in the darkness below. She reached inside and drew Needle out carefully, savoring the feel of it in her hand.
She packed next to nothing- coin, a bit of food, a cloak for winter- but she did not travel light. With every step, (Sansa, Jon, Sansa, Jon) the dead walked in a procession behind her. Most nights as she fell asleep, she could muffle their moans.
Most nights.
On the ship from Braavos to Westeros, the water was unnervingly calm. Men and women talked on the decks. They spoke of a man who was the image of the fallen King in the North. He had pledged to lead the Queen's armies into battle, riding the back of a monstrous wolf as black as night.
Surely not, she thought. It cannot be.
But as she voiced her disbelief in her own head, a memory stirred. Her wolf had sensed a new presence. There was someone new in the castle, someone who made the dark man and the red-haired woman, laugh with voices that seemed unpracticed in mirth. Something within her as deep and cold as winter knew. Rickon.
The ship banked. In Westeros, she switched between sleeping in the woods and in inns. In one southern tavern, she bound her chest and snuck into the kitchens to nick a little extra food for the road. The cook yelled out when she bumped into him.
"Boy! Don't get underfoot!"
She slept in the woods that night.
Several bought, sold, and stolen horses later, she approached the Eyrie. Passing through a tiny village, she heard a small boy, probably no more than ten, telling a tale. He stood on a rock with his chest puffed out.
"He's the Queen's brother! They say he is the wisest man who ever lived. They say he sees through the eyes of trees! And he's like you Cerdic, so sod what Towen said."
She glanced over. The boy had clambered down from his rock, and was bent over before a much smaller boy. The smaller boy lifted his arms up around the larger boy's neck, and the larger boy hefted him into the air. He turned, and she could see the two in full.
The little boy's legs hung from the larger boy's arms, withered by disuse. He could not walk. Just like…
She watched the boys until they disappeared into one of the little houses.
Sansa, Jon, Rickon, Bran. Sansa, Jon, Rickon, Bran.
Their names became a mantra, an incantation. She whispered them aloud before she went to sleep, making a new prayer.
When she reached Queen's Crown, four men accosted her. Their eyes were hungry and their hands reached first to grab at her sack, then at her.
They didn't stand a chance.
She broke the wrists of a man trying to grab her. Sansa.
She drew Needle from her belt. Jon.
Thrust. Parry. Thrust. Rickon.
The last man came at her with a grunt. She ducked under his arm, turned, grabbed him by the end of his braid, and brought her knife to his throat, slitting it. Bran.
She wiped the blood off her blade on the man's tunic. Valar Morghulis.
Her cloak had come in handy. It grew steadily colder the further north she traveled.
One night, her demons overcame her. The dead came to lie with her in the bed she'd fashioned of leaves and thrush. Their faces were more ghastly to her than the Kindly Man's worm had ever been.
She dreamt that a little girl sat at her side, watching. Queen Nymeria descended from above and placed a crown of red leaves on the little girl's head. The girl saw a scepter of mistletoe on the ground. When she picked it up, the leaves in her hair began to weep blood. The child plucked a berry, made a little hole with her hands, and buried it in the ground. When she was done, she began eating the berries off the scepter. The woman in the arms of the dead tried to cry out, to warn her, but her screams were silent. The girl ate until her lips were stained. When she had had her fill, she knelt where she had buried the fruit. The earth cracked, and a single green shoot grew up from the ground. In the distance, a wolf howled in triumph.
When she woke, she felt as though her limbs were on fire, even as her breath made clouds in the air.
She kept walking, beginning to recognize meadows and villages.
Whenever she came across a godswood, she picked a tree, knelt, and prayed to Robb and her parents.
She would keep her eyes open as she prayed, finding faces in the pale bark. Once or twice she swore she heard them whisper to her. Sansa. Jon. Rickon. Bran.
And here she was, nearly a year after she began her journey, and she ached with bone-deep exhaustion. The nightmares she'd lived surrounded her like a shroud. The dead clawed at her shoulders. Among them Lady Stoneheart stared with eyes that could not see. Father carried his head under his arm and Grey Wind and Robb had merged to become some hideous beast that whined piteously at her. It's too much, she thought, too much, I can't bear it any longer…
Robb and his wife, what must they have said? Warrior, maiden, stranger, crone…
And who are you, lovely girl? A voice asked in amusement.
Not Arya, she replied. Arya is ruined, Arya is dead, all men must die, and she is gone…
She fell to her knees.
All who knew Arya are gone and she had to die with them, there was no choice…
But they aren't, the voice reminded her. They aren't all gone. Sansa. Jon. Rickon. Bran. They live. They walk and talk and breathe in the sight of the old gods and the new.
Do they even know that I live? She thought, feeling as barren and desolate as the lands beyond the Wall. And who am I, when Arya is gone and I cannot be No One any longer?
Distantly, she heard the sound of hooves, as though they were above water and she was thousands of leagues below.
Winter has come, and it swallowed her, swallowed me, swallowed us. The girl I was sat beside me last night, and now there is a woman in her place, but oh, what happened in between, oh Father, Mother, Sister, Brothers, what happened in between…
"Does the wench need a maester?"
"Budge up now, Her Grace wants to see."
But she did not die. Not really. Still she hoped, still she survived, waiting inside you to step into her own skin again. You are she, now and then and always. You are Arya who killed and Arya who loved. You are Arya and you are not alone. You have Sansa Jon Rickon Bran, Arya. You are Arya AryaARYA-
"Arya?" A voice whispered, so tender, so familiar that it cracked her swollen heart in two.
And slowly, slowly, Arya Stark lifted her head to look into her sister's eyes.
Sansa was still beautiful, so beautiful, but early laugh lines creased the corners of her eyes. She looked at her in her rags like she was something precious, as though she was something Sansa had fervently prayed for but never dreamed she would see before she died.
Slowly, Sansa reached out with a trembling hand to touch her face. When Sansa's fingers brushed against her cheek, she felt a joy that burned like the sun, a joy so fierce it was pain…
And suddenly, they were in each other's arms.
At last, at last, Sansa was here, she was real, in Arya's arms, and her face was twisted with emotion. Then Arya could hear the crunch of boots, a large man running, and suddenly a rough fur coat was at her back and strong arms clutched her close. Jon, Jon, Jon, and the sun was glinting off the snow, blinding her as it refracted a million rays of light. The three of them fused together, bruising one another in an attempt to become so entangled that they could never be parted again.
In the crowd, a million miles away, somebody yelled for Lord Commander Rickon to come quick, for someone to bring Lord Bran in from the godswood, lads, and hurry…
Sansa. Jon. Rickon. Bran.
Somewhere a wolf howled.
Who is she, someone in Sansa's party cried, who is she?
And before anyone else could answer, she whispered, in a voice choked with grief and the glory of it all,
"I am Arya, of House Stark. And I've come home."