Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to George R. R. Martin.

A/n: This is a companion piece to my fic Devoted. However, you don't have to read that one to get this one. They both stand on their own.

To Worship

"You didn't sleep again," it wasn't a question, but a statement.

"A man did not sleep," Jaqen conceded with a nod turning slowly to look at the girl laying nude beside him. A smile slipped on his grave features as he took in the beautiful young woman he'd given up everything for.

Arya sat up in the featherbed, her long dark hair falling like a tangle of silken tresses, curtaining her form and laying in stark contrast against the snow-like skin. Arya Stark had grown into a very beautiful woman... however, Jaqen H'ghar had always known that would be so. Even as a girl, he'd seen her beauty, though all the dirt and grime and rough-spun cloth.

Arya sighed as she sat up and straddled the man's lap. Immediately a brow was arched at her, as a grin fought its way to Jaqen's lips. "You have to sleep," Arya stated imperiously, gazing down into his eyes with her own grey eyes hard like and bright like steel. "What good are you sleep-deprived?"

Jaqen did not respond, his gaze drawn to her skin. His hands rested on the slight curve of her waist, where he rubbed his fingers along the delicate skin there. Goosebumps rose over her, eliciting another smirk from the man as he sat up a little straighter and leaned forward to capture the bow of her lips with his own. He could feel the heat between her legs intensify, causing his manhood to get even harder than it already was.

In the course of the last few years, Jaqen had worshiped the temple that was Arya Stark's body. He knew every curve and crevice, every mark and scar, sought out each and every one of them with fingers, lips and tongue. He could never get enough of her. A girl might have winter flowing through her veins, but she was hot like dragon-fire beneath it all.

He'd left the House of Black and White and the Faceless Men for her... all but forsaking his god. All for her. Everything was for her since their reacquaintance in Braavos. Back then she had just been a girl, newly flowered. He'd been brought in to train her in the art of seduction, and he thought now in retrospect that perhaps he had taught her too well.

"And now, a girl is ready," Jaqen told her as she sat over him, naked as the day she was born, his arms tucked beneath her knees while a knife was directly pressed over the skin covering his artery. Arya removed the knife and sat back, pulling a sheet over her slender body and covering herself while allowing him to stand.

"I don't know if I can do this Jaqen," she said it a small voice, her cheeks tinged pink with both embarrassment and flushed from their fight.

"A girl will not be herself. She will be a courtesan. Or one from a Lyseni pleasure house," Jaqen stated gently, trying to be comforting.

"But inside, I am-"

"No one. Are you not?" he asked, his voice more steel than silk in that moment.

She looked up at him then, her grey eyes wide and sad. The same sad eyes she'd had as a girl, pretending to be a boy, who became a mouse. The same clever girl he'd once called evil child. The same lovely girl, he'd known would become a gorgeous woman. "Am I? When you look at me, Jaqen, who do you see?"

Jaqen looked at her regretfully, the expression in his eyes softening and becoming tender. Her hair had been dyed red. Her features were more pinched. At five and ten, she was tall and slender with subtle curves. However, he could see beneath the veneer. "Arya," he said simply, unable and unwilling to lie, at least to her.

Tears that would not fall welled up in her eyes. "I can't give my maidenhead to... I don't want some fat spice lord someone's paid to be killed sweating over me!" she stated coldly and louder than she intended as a shiver of revulsion racked her body at the very thought of it.

"Is a girl's maidenhead all the trouble?"

Arya bit her lip, even though the waif had always hit her to remind her that No One did not bite her lip when thinking, only Arya of House Stark. And she was No One. "Would you do it?" she asked quietly, before gathering the courage to look up at him. "Please? You'd be gentler and I'd feel better-"

Jaqen was taken aback by the request. He looked to her, wondering if she meant what she said, but one look in her eyes had his insides twisting with the truth they held. He swallowed thickly before bowing before her, knowing he could not deny her this. "Valar dohaeris."

"Shall a man prove what good he is?" he asked politely as he drew away from her now bruised lips, his voice silky and husky all at once.

"No," she responded, rising from his lap to get dressed despite the telltale moisture she left behind on his lap. Jaqen sighed as he watched her pulling on a pair of breeches and throwing on a tunic, not moving from his place on her bed. And it was her bed... never theirs, at least as far as all of Winterfell was concerned. "Tonight we go hunting. I need you well rested."

"A girl could allow her brother to take care of it," he suggested, though he already knew she'd never allow it. This was personal for her.

"No Jaqen, he is the last one on my list."

"The trouble with lists is more can always be added," he pointed out, considering before they came over to Westeros the last name on her list had not been on it before. Arya shot him a glare as she pulled on her boots. Another sigh escaped his lips. "What of a girl's sworn shield?"

"We'll make him believe our privacy will be paramount tonight," she said with a shrug of her shoulders as she made her way to the naked man still in her bed; she sat on the edge and leaned closer to him. "Ser Gendry never sticks around when we're fucking, or has the great Jaqen H'ghar not noticed?"

"A man is aware," he stated simply as he played with her hair, before he leaned forward and planted a kiss on Arya's lips. "Lovely girl, with such a filthy mouth."

"You never complained about it before," Arya smirked as she pulled away.

"And how does the Princess of Winterfell plan to kill her lord husband? Surely, someone would take notice."

"But it won't be the Princess of Winterfell... I think Jeyne Poole deserves her revenge," Arya replied with a grin, imagining what Ramsay Bolton's face may look like when he saw Jeyne Poole seconds away from killing him.

"And when it is done, and a girl's lord husband dead?" Jaqen asked, causing to turn to look back at him with a questioning look. Jaqen looked away and studied his nails, as if to ensure they were clean as he feigned nonchalance and indifference. However, she knew him too well; she'd gotten to know him better than anyone else in the last six years or so; since he'd turned up when she was four and ten to train her after she had received her first moon's blood. "Will a girl finally marry the Targaryen prince?"

Arya looked at the slick Lorathi on her bed uncertainly, wondering why he even asked. He knew the answer to that... knew she'd never desire to marry. Unless of course he was asking because...

"Do you wish to go back, Jaqen? Back to your guild or order of whatever you want to call it?" she asked, almost snarling out the question as her heart hammered painfully in her chest as he looked up slowly, through a veil or red, while white curtained the other half of his face.

"Need a girl ask?" he asked, his eyes burning her.

As he stepped into the steamy room, quietly moving, not making a sound, his eyes were latched onto her. Her entire, lithe body was submerged from shoulders down beneath the water. However, he could see her face.

It was completely devoid of all emotions and her eyes stared forward without watching as a pair of girls washed the blood from her skin while she merely sat there, unmoving and unblinking, hardly noticing anything at all. The water around her was tinged pink with the blood of her latest kill.

What pained him most as he stepped even closer, walking around and edging his way to her side, was the hollow expression in her eyes. Taking the wash-cloth from one of the girls, he motioned them both away as he proceeded to wash Arya's body.

"I don't think I can do this anymore," she said, so quietly that he wasn't quite sure if she had spoken at all. Slowly, he looked up to her face, but saw that she still was not moving, or really looking. Her mind was elsewhere. His heart seemed to seize in his chest.

"Do what, lovely girl?" he asked, though he already knew.

It had been three years since he had taken her maidenhead. Three years since she became a Faceless Man. Since, he'd taken her to bed as often as he could, as often as his and her duties would allow. It had never been enough. More and more, it started to become even more painful to part from her. More painful to allow her to leave the safety of his arms, to allow her to ravage her soul and heart for the Red God.

Sometimes, when she'd snuggled tightly inside the crook of his neck with his arms around her to keep away the nightmares, he wondered. Wondered why he'd done this to her. Why he'd ever offered to bring her to the House of Black and White to train all those years ago when she was only a child.

Women rarely became Faceless Men, and children were rarely trained. He rationalized it in his head at the time, that Arya Stark was not a normal child. She was not a normal daughter of a lord. She was special. She had potential. He'd seen that... but that alone could not be the reason he'd wanted so desperately then to bring her with him to Bravos.

Of course, he hadn't brought her... he'd given her a choice. She was a child. However, with the coin he'd given her, he'd harbored a hope. Hope that she would come, that he'd see her again one day. It was hard to leave her, when she'd asked him to stay. But he'd had a duty, and his duty to the Red God was sacred, and he couldn't give it up for a little girl, no matter how lovely said girl was, or how beautiful her big, sad, grey eyes were and pleaded.

She'd remained with him. For years. Her memory never really left him.

"You know what, Jaqen. These jobs!" she spat, looking at him with fire and annoyance in her grey eyes that almost had him smiling.

Arya had no trouble killing men... the jobs she referred to where the others. The ones where she had to use her feminine wiles for either information, or to get close to the man she had to kill. She hated most when she actually had to perform sexual favors to get what she wanted... what she needed. On those occasions, she wouldn't let him touch her, even if all he wanted to do was hold her to provide comfort.

Jaqen stroked her hair back from her face. "A girl must obey, a girl must serve. Those are the vows."

Arya stood in the water and stepped away. Jaqen had to struggle to keep his eyes on her face and not look at her beautiful body which was dripping wet, as he too stood. "What if I don't want to serve anymore?"

Jaqen looked at her sadly. She'd made up her mind. She would leave the House of Black and White, he could see that but one did not simply leave the House of Black and White or the Faceless Men. "One only leaves the House of Black and White to join the Red God," he told her quietly as his heart broke. "A man must serve."

"Then serve, Jaqen," she challenged, her body tensing, telling him that if he planned to kill her she would go down fighting.

Jaqen did not move, which made his indecision clear. A ripple of something surged through Arya as she watched his unmoving form and his pained eyes as he looked at her almost pleadingly, as if to ask her to change her mind.

"The Red God has taken much from a girl," Jaqen said slowly, softly as he considered all that Arya lost as a child. "And a girl has served him loyally. A man can not-" he went on, but stopped, struggling with himself and at a loss for words for perhaps the first time in his life.

"Can not what, Jaqen?" Arya prompted softly, hope slipping into her voice which wavered slightly with fear.

"Kill his lovely girl," he whispered, his eyes never leaving hers. Her eyes seemed to light up at his admission. Silence seemed to stretch between them like an eternity as they both tried to process what was occurring.

"Come with me," Arya suddenly whispered excitedly, stepping closer to him but still out of arms reach, ignoring the water she stood in which was becoming cool.

Once more, Jaqen felt his heart seize. He had duties... he could not abandon them nor the Red God. However, his refusal stuck in his throat. This time, it was not a girl of nine or ten asking him. It was a woman of eight and ten, with the most beautiful face he'd ever seen, and a body men would kill or die for. A woman whom it was impossible to say no to. A woman worth leaving his world behind. A woman worth fighting for and next to.

"Where to, lovely girl?"

"A man has left everything for a girl," he went on, when she remained silent and staring intensely at him where he now stood in all his naked glory. He walked to her, his strides powerful yet measured, maneuvering his way like a shadow cat. Arya shivered at the sight of the Lorathi before her, trying to ignore the things his voice, and accent did to her; trying to ignore the fact that he was the most beautiful man she'd ever seen, his body and limbs all sinewy and corded muscles covered in light, white scars.

"Then why do you ask?" she asked, tilting her head up defiantly, though her voice was soft and unsure, showing her confusion.

"Because a girl is Arya Stark, and has duties," he replied, his hand reaching out slowly to stroke her cheek as he stopped less than a foot away from her. He knew full well that even though both kingdoms were both aware of Arya's more then questionable repute, that an alliance between the Targaryen Queen, Danaery's and the King of the North would be more stable if the two houses were united and marriage. A feat which could only be accomplished if Arya Stark married the queen's nephew.

"I will never marry, Jaqen, you know this. Especially not for duty," Arya retorted, crossing her arms over her chest in her vexation. "If the queen and Bran want an allegiance between our Houses so much, than perhaps she should marry Rickon. He's five and ten, old enough to marry."

"A girl would sacrifice her little brother?" Jaqen asked teasingly, raising a brow at his wolf-girl as he wrapped his arms around her waist, wishing she were still naked and not clothed.

Arya huffed. "If a woman can be sacrificed, than a man can too. Besides, Rickon doesn't need me to protect him; he's wilder than I am."

"Just so," Jaqen laughed before swooping down to capture her lips in a heated kiss. Arya moaned into his mouth as he slipped his tongue and brushed it teasingly against her own. The strain of his arousal pressed against her belly and Arya felt the blood beneath her skin become fire. With a groan, she pulled herself away from his lips, while his moved to attack he neck.

"You're supposed to be catching up on your sleep, I have things to prepare," Arya complained as she panted to catch her breath, her eyes rolled into the back of her head as he laved attention to the sensitive skin beneath her ear.

"Just so," he replied, his heated breath on the skin of her neck while nimble fingers worked to divest her quickly from her clothes. "But first, a man must worship," he replied, picking her up and tossing her onto the featherbed to once more worship at the temple of Arya; worship he would never tire of.

~FIN~

A/n: Hope the piece was enjoyable. Review, please and let me know what you think!