AN: Hello! So as it says in the summary, this is pretty dark. It's going to be a three-shot, so this chapter is the first of two others focusing on Arya's frame of mind while she was imprisoned in Gil'ead. (This being more of an intro than anything really.) I left the writing intentionally rough here, because I want to reflect what's going on inside of her here. So, let me know how it works, ok? Enjoy. :)


No one had ever told her that life was easy. No one had ever mentioned that it was fair, or even fulfilling. But she had been told that it was beautiful. And it was this lie that caused her more pain than the slashes on her body or the burns in her flesh.

When she had first arrived here… when she had been unacquainted with the Pain, she had believed that nothing held beauty to compare with life. Now she could see how wrong she was. The only beautiful aspect to life was that it could end, and now even this was denied her. Forever she had been here, and forever she would remain. Perhaps one day she would be taken to Uru'baen, but until that time, the Pain loomed over her with all the authority of fate itself. And who was she to argue with fate? Most certainly, she would die here. After all, there wasn't anything left for her to live for anymore. Everything that she had ever had had been taken from her. Taken. And now it was gone. Gone, gone, gone, gone. And all that was left… well, there was nothing, if that could be considered something.

Not even the trees or the birds or the sky remained. Suddenly, she was swept with an overpowering desire to see them again. To see the grass and to touch the flowers: to scent the crisp air that slipped across the world in little eddies after it rained… how she used to love the rain. She loved the cool of it that trickled through her hair and over her skin, and she loved the sound of it; the drum-pa-pum-bum that it created as it struck the earth with undying persistence.

Undying… like her. She wasn't dead, and under no circumstances would she be allowed to become so until she divulged her secrets. But like the rain, she knew her mindless task and would cling to it for eternity. She would never give up, even if, sometimes, she couldn't remember why this was so important.


The others are longer, I promise. And reviews magically make them become longer and get done faster... *hinthint* :)