This story was originally written for the LJ community Game of Ships' Porn Battle II. The pairing is Arya/Jon, the prompts used were: i'll be your mirror, bond, identity, all in the eyes. I posted it originally to AO3 and was asked to also post it here since we lack Jon/Arya something fierce. Which is true, sadly. Title is from the lyrics to the song Ropes by In Flames.
Content Notices: incest, smut
Arya Stark has become just another facet of her personality a long time ago. She plays her role well but there are times when she sees doubt in Sansa's face, when Rickon looks at her strangely, when Bran sighs before glancing away. They will not meet her eyes and she convinces herself that the pain she feels is just a remnant of her old self and she is fooling herself by thinking it hurts.
Jon's eyes are different, having seen too much like her own have. They could keep staring into each other's eyes for eternity, she thinks, grey to grey, like broken pieces of looking glass that show only fragments of their reflection. They are both lost, trying to figure out who they truly are and it binds them together as securely as their dark hair and grey eyes did in their childhood.
Bastards get swords, girls get coats of arms. Only now she is the one with a sword, as thin as her body and as bloody as her hands and he with a sigil, as black as his clothing and as red as his wolf's eyes. She wields her father's title and he flies on a dragon and they are both wolves still, they are a pack and more, so much more.
She doesn't need to know her name when it's just the two of them, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hip to hip. They move together without words and names, their eyes open the whole time as they cling to each other, feeling right even if the world says it is wrong.
He doesn't call her sister/cousin or Arya or beloved and she doesn't call him brother/cousin or Jon or dear. They are both you to each other and they don't need more. When she looks at him, when he looks at her, they see themselves in reverse. They are each other's mirrors, so similar and so different. And yet, when their sweat mix from their exertions, when her body tightens around him and he shudders over her, in her, all distinctions are wiped clear and they find something that people less scarred by life would call happiness.
He tries to take her from behind once, mating like the wolves they are under their skins but the loss of the eye contact is too much for both of them and before long he pulls out and she rolls over on her back and when he slips back into her warmth, their eyes meet and stay locked together, filling the void inside with pieces of each other's soul.
They manage to always feel when the other needs them, their bond growing ever stronger and they meet in the weirdest places - the armoury where he sits down on a bench while she rides him as she would a destrier, their swords cast aside; the godswood of Winterfell where they frolic in the hot springs, touching and kissing for the longest time before he sits her on the edge and shows her just how nimble his tongue can be; there is an incident when the lift to the top of the Wall breaks and they are stuck inside for close to two hours and have to find a way to keep warm which is truthfully not that hard; they are laughing when they finally reach the top and she wipes her mouth surreptitiously.
It is a slow process, filling up that emptiness, finding yourself after being no one for so long, after dying and being brought back. But Arya tries and Jon helps and Jon tries and Arya helps and that must be enough. It is all they have.