A/N - So this is written at the request of a quiet a few Tumblrers :) mad props to broken-crown for chatting with me on the beauty of a vengeful Stark brood.
Wolf's teeth are so often the sharpest. Your horses do not scare me. The tremble of hooves wakes her just before dawn; she can smell mildew in the air, the beginnings of a bitter frost which tells of the winter ahead and the warning of a dying summer. A cool sun is creeping across the skyline and the first rays of light shine through the thick curtains, a slice of her bedroom momentarily illuminated before a cloud covers it all once again. From the open window she can hear screaming. Outside her door, swords are being drawn.
She scrambles from her bed to her sword in the corner, snagging the curtain open, just as ten men burst into the room. They are swathed in gold, their armour blisteringly bright in the sun, their swords and crossbows glinting as they find her fuming in the corner. At the head of them all is a familiar face. The Lord of the Seven Kingdoms himself, Tommen Lannister.
There is no joy in his face, not like there would have been in Cersei's or what Arya remembered of Jamie when they first met. Tommen does not revel in the butchering of innocents, or bursting in on a Lady's room armed to the teeth. His mind would not stray to rape or indecency, but there is no mistaking the fire in his eyes. Nor the desperation.
"It's over, Lady Stark. There's no where left to run," he says clearly, strongly, every inch the King the men behind him believe him to be. Arya scoffs.
"I think you'll find I've been here the whole time, and you are trespassing on my family's ancestral home. How did you get past the gate, by the way?" She asks, though she suspects she already knows. When she had Winterfell rebuilt, there were so few left who still remembered her father and so many that knew Sansa and her supposed guilt at murdering King Joffrey. Bad men are seldom remembered as such once they are dead and gone, but treachery lives on forever. She holds her sword a little tighter.
"You left it open," he says simply. His face grows serious a moment later; a man at his left raises his crossbow, the arrowhead pointed at her heart. Tommen draws his own sword and sighs, "I'm not here to kill you, Arya."
"You couldn't kill me if I lay down on the floor and let you hack for a thousand years," she laughs. Tommen does not. A shout from the stairs down the hall that she cannot hear - Robb, she thinks suddenly - has four of the men running out of the room. Six against one. She likes those odds better than ten to one. Her sword comes up a little higher, the blade straighter, and Tommen does not miss it.
"Arya."
"Tommen."
"Fine-" and he swings. A broad, powerful stroke she slides away from. His sword thunks into the wood of the window, the pane splintering loudly under the weight. For now, she ignores the King and slips her own sword between the ribs of the bowman, leaving it there in favour of the dagger at the man's back. She drives the smaller blade into the neck of the next man, stealing his short sword from his rapidly cooling hands. The next man she grabs by the throat and shields herself from the crossbow bolt from the second bowman; she dumps the corpse and opens the next man from cock to chin with a single stroke. And then it is only Tommen and his last guard. She parries a blow from the man and settles for landing a powerful kick to his jaw. He falls with a loud crack and as Tommen watches his last man fall, Arya turns on her heel and bolts, bloodied sword abandoned.
She dashes down the stone steps, whirls into her sons room and stops short. He's there, she can see his little feet under the bed, and she allows herself to let out a tiny sob of relief. Her boy is safe. On hands and knees, she pokes her head under the bed. He starts at first, but recognises his mother a moment later, and she has to forcibly push him back as he scrambles to her.
"No, no, stay there. Stay here, do you understand? Do not move from the spot, no matter what you hear, no matter how scared you are. Can you do that for me?" She says hurriedly, chancing a glance over her shoulder. Soldiers are shouting, Tommen the loudest of all, and there are more hurried footsteps drawing closer. Her boy whimpers and she grabs his tiny hands. "Robb!" He meets her eyes - and she notices for the first time in such a long time just how blue they are. My father's eyes. "Promise me you'll stay right here no matter what?"
"I promise."
And then she's gone, closing the door firmly behind her and dashing once again down the steps to the courtyard.
Miraculously, she makes it there without meeting another Lannister man, but what she finds in the open square breaks her heart. Bodies - men, women and children alike - lay strewn in awkward, painful angles, blood swirling with the rain and mud that has collected in banks along the keep walls and the homes on either side.
Some are still fighting in small skirmishes, but the men in gold are winning by almost no contest. Arya can see the butcher and his wife have been bound and gagged, their children weeping as men press swords to their necks; the blacksmith is bleeding on his knees, between them the body of his assistant, a young girl with a strong arm named Frieda; across the way, smothered in blood, are two kitchen boys, their bodies bent and still.
Such waste of life. She has no time to dwell: Goldcloaks spot her, charging in with swords drawn, and she dispatches of them quickly, methodically, with all the training of Braavos. They blur together after a while, every face is the same, every swing of her sword meets another just like it, one after the other and, soon, they surround her in a circle of decay. But the fighting stops as suddenly as it began, when a single, quavering voice cries out through the haze and it hits her harder than any warhammer blow: "Mama!"
Ten year old Robb Stark, bleeding from his nose and limping slightly, is pushed out into the morning daylight by a Goldcloak, Tommen standing next to him. Men armed with crossbows, axes and swords spill out behind them, surrounding her. And Arya knows there is no fight left.
"Enough," Tommen says, stepping forward with Robb, one hand on the boy's shoulder. "Surrender. We won't hurt the boy." She does not doubt the sincerity in his voice, only the loyalty of his men.
"So much death for such a small price." She keeps her eyes focused, determined not to look at her son's face for fear of letting weakness show.
"You are no small price, Lady Stark." He lets go of Robb's shoulder and steps closer, stopping to stand barely a foot from the tip of her blade. "When a dog becomes feral, the only mercy we can grant is that of death."
"So you're here to put me down."
"You are a risk we cannot take. Even at peace."
Arya nods, tightly. "Well, then." She drops her sword and Tommen sighs in relief, turning back. As he passes Robb, he almost misses the words, "Run. And do not look back."
Almost.
Everything slows down, for Tommen at least. A bright blur flashes by him, running for the gate and the grass fields ahead, and there is shouting, exclamations of 'Stop him' and 'No'. Then there is silence; a long, drawn out pause, permeated only by the soft thwip of an arrow passing by his head and the damp thud of finding its target. He can hear himself breathing, can hear his own heart in his chest. The leaves rustle and men shift and there is nothing in the world.
A scream shatters the calm, a quivering note full of sudden rage and tearful memories. "No!"
Arya Stark does not fall to her knees, but instead rushes forward towards the field and the tiny body encased in the foliage beyond. A second arrow is loosed and it pierces her shoulder, throwing her forward into the mud. She does not get up; she does not barely dares to breathe.
"Your Grace?" A voice, Ser Hathelas, says to him. It is done." Yes, it is done. Yet all Tommen can see is another Robb Stark dying with his mother. I should order them to bury the bodies. But he will not. This is not a lions den, this is the wolf pit and around him he can see only bared teeth.
"Assemble the men. We ride for King's Landing." The order given, they leave, and quickly. He does ensure they avoid the corpses of mother and son, their horses charging around them. He might be a murderer, a sinner, a bastard, a king, but he will not desecrate the remains of a child. There must be at least one Lannister with some decency left.