They have never tried this before. Warm hands touching, exploring damp, heaving skin. It's a new ache, even for she who had thought she'd felt every pain there was to feel. Every nerve, every inch is covered in sweat and spit and mud, but there's nothing as unclean as the reality of their sin. He knows he shouldn't touch her like this but no one is there to tell him no, not even the forest gods which she spends her faith in. She knows she shouldn't give herself to him like this but the feeling is so real, so intense that it's a dream she craves to satisfy. She's felt too much bad and she has the right to make those feelings good. Her body, her soul, her choice.
After, she thinks of her sister though, and her lady mother. They don't know of her choice. They cannot even know that she is alive after all of this time. Their faces sear onto the back of her eyes when she stares into the blackness over the bastard's shoulder and their disappointment rings in her ears as she tries to sleep with his grown weight on her chest. When he wakes, halfway through the night, she curls her hands around his manhood and listens to his groans as he spills on her belly, if only to drown out the judging murmurs in her ears. His passion for her is so great, he cares little about her intentions and more for her touch, desperately craving every second where they can touch and taste, and no one can see to say they can't.
The pain of her body leaves her quickly but the ache in her soul never will. Gendry can sate it temporarily with his sweet words and rough hands but come morning it's back, eating at her soul. Moons come and go, and still it does not leave.
When the Hound steals her, the ache intensifies and that's when she finally realises what it is. Emptiness, loneliness, nothing. Gendry would fill her, wishing for her pleasure and happiness, but he would always be disappointed because she had nothing she could give. She had no passion to love, merely desperation to avenge, and to kill. The bastard apprentice never understood her nightly prayer, but Sandor Clegane does. He never touches her but he fills the ache better than Gendry could. He says a prayer too, every waking second, but he doesn't say it with his mouth like she does, he says it with his eyes. The hatred for his brother matches Arya's hatred for the Lannisters, the Freys, the Slynts, the Paynes... he understands.
The ache grows less as she travels by the Hound's side, but soon he is gone and the ache is as great as ever, gnawing at her the way the Hound's loathing for the Mountain burned in his cold grey eyes. Sometimes she wonders if people can see her anger too when they look at her.
Then she is in the Temple and the Kindly Man sits beside her, the waif behind. They do not fill the ache either, but they teach her to hide it, and to be a servant to the Many-faced God. They give her tasks, small at first. She forgets her name, but she can't forget her hate. It refuses to leave, even when her name does. Even when she throws Needle in the canal it keeps on burning, loneliness so bitter it tears her soul apart.
Walder Frey isn't her first kill. She has killed many more than she cares to count, not through distaste but rather through disinterest. They were nothing important, victims of circumstance and bad luck. But Frey had done something. He had taken something that he had no right to take. The assassin couldn't remember what it was, but it wasn't his to take, of that much she iscertain. So she takes him, with the face of the Stranger.
The ache lessens that night, when she pulls the crossbow quarrel from her thigh in a dingy inn somewhere near Riverrun. She had ridden her horse to the brink of collapse and he sleeps in the stables while she celebrates alone in her room. Mayhaps it is just the pain that lessened the ache though, because come dawn there is nothing to hold her back. She steals yet another horse from the inn and runs, South this time. Walder Frey was not enough. After all, she had been empty for so long that one small old man could never be enough to fill the void.
The assassin had been born with words echoing in her mind. They were names, floating on the edges of dreams she shut out, and they were filled with such loathing that many would never wish to understand. She knows not to try to remember why the hatred was born, but she wallows in its potency all the same. The names draw her South, to King's Landing.
Cersei Lannister is well protected, but Cat of the Canals knows the secrets of the walls. She knows the Red Keep too, but how, she couldn't say. Not that it matters. For a woman who held so much power, the Lannister dies like any other when the assassin squeezes about her slender, perfumed throat.
The dead lioness proves to be even less fulfilling than Walder Frey. The ache remains, but soon the list is done. Men know her soon. They call her the Braavosi, and their tales spread wide and grow tall. Men come to her, give her gold and steel for deeds they know will be well done. She feeds well and lives in comfort those next few moons, restless and pacing with nowhere to go. Then she hears whispers of a legitimised bastard up North. Two, in fact. One is a pretender, with a false wife and a falser claim. The other rides against him, a Stag and a fiery heart on his banners.
The Braavosi rides North next to face the pretenders. She passes Harrenhall and Acorn Hall. She knows that the trees there have seen her before, but they only whisper between themselves, not daring to confront her. She is the Stranger's wench, not the child of the forest they had once known and she is sin they cannot bear to look upon.
Ramsay Bolton is so drunk he mistakes her for his wife in the darkness of their bedchamber, clambering atop her body before he smells the lifeless corpse to her right. When the pretender dies, she whispers to him, her words light on the winter air.
Valar Morghulis. Their glassy eyes speak volumes of fear, but she would have no fear when the Many-faced God welcomes her into his cold embrace and she scorns them loudly, hanging their naked bodies from their window.
When the guards come they block her escape but she knows where to go. She had not planned on the spectacle, and it is the first time she has deviated from her planning but it seemed right. Somehow, the Braavosi knows the way out, just like she had in the Red Keep.
The ache does not lessen when she leaves the winter castle, but she allows herself a small smile at the memory of the pale, dangling corpses. Who would rule Winterfell? The Braavosi doesn't care. But if it was to be another pretender, she will see that they kiss her blade just as Ramsay and Arya Bolton had done.
The other legitimised bastard still rides to Winterfell, adamant mayhaps to take it for his own. She stays, on the outskirts of an abandoned farm, until he arrives and sneaks into his encampment without being seen.
Ser Gendry Baratheon of Hollow Hill held empty titles, yet still he is a fearsome warrior. He is strong, tall with coal black hair and blue eyes which pierce through her when she slinks past him in the garb of a servant. He moves as though he is wary of everything surrounding him, more practical and distrusting of the men by his side. He is certainly no old man, or woman, or weak pretender. The Braavosi stays there in the camp for a day before she approaches him, intrigued by his intelligence and his lack of weakness. She soon discovers his weakness though, through the word of the squires and the servants. They spoke of women who sleep in noble Ser Gendry's tent, and leave sated in the morning.
It has been some time since she has cleaned or worn a dress but on this night she does both. The guards she passes pays her no heed, unfrightened of what a slight young woman could do to a man as powerful as their leader. They think they know what she is, but they're wrong.
The man himself is pacing as she enters, and grunts as she bows low.
"Don't," he warns, although his tone is not unkind. He can only be referring to her bow, so the Braavosi straightens up and tilts her head to the side to watch him. His voice is deep and resounding, and strikes some center in her body linked to her pleasure. Although he hasn't yet bothered to look at her, he extends one arm. "Come here please." Surely he thinks her to be a whore, yet he is refreshingly pleasant to her.
"You speak so kindly to me, Ser," the Braavosi purrs, sauntering closer and standing just beyond the reach of his fingertips. She could feel the warmth of him in this small tent, in this cold winter, and her lust flares.
"Don't call me that. Call me Gendry," he orders, and his voice is wholly commanding. It's not a wonder he makes such a good leader: weak men would quail beneath the weight of that voice.
"Gendry, do you mean to take Winterfell?" She likes to punish in accordance with crimes. "Or is it Ramsay Bolton you seek?"
"What is this? War council? You're here to fuck me." I'm here to kill you. The Braavosi ponders his downturned face, curious as to why he will not look upon her face. They stand an arm's breadth apart, yet he seems adamant for her to stay a stranger. It seems an odd way to treat a whore.
"You won't look at me," she observes out loud. It is not a question.
"You care if I do?" he snorts and his voice is bitter, and impolite now she has tested his patience. Clearly Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill does not take slights with dignity. Mayhaps that was why he rode on Winterfell. "Stop playing. I hate games." The Braavosi loves games. Slowly, she paces around his outstretched arm and flattens her hands on his back, rubbing her palms along the swell of his muscles. Grunting his appreciation, the knight reaches behind him on either side, fingertips digging into her thighs. It is peculiar, truly, the way he treats women.
"What colour is your hair?" he whispers, and she almost stops her soothing hands at the strange question. Intrigued, she decides to humor him before she kills him.
"Brown. Dark." She remembers it was like her father's, and so are her eyes, but she brushes away the thought. She couldn't remember what her father looked like anyway. Valar Morghulis. All men must die. Even her father had to die.
"Eyes?"
"Grey." He groans again, relaxing into her hands and she pulls him back, gently, so he can sit on the side of his makeshift bed.
"Light or dark?" It is then when she realises that he's creating someone.
"I am not the woman you seek," she warns him.
"The woman I sought is dead." His voice is hostile now, his shoulders once more tense. "I failed her and I gave you gold, so tonight you will be her. You'll be her like she was before..." He sounds so terribly wistful, and the Braavosi recognises his tone. She recognises his voice. Something suddenly makes sense, and she doesn't want to remember why.
"You were marching on Winterfell to save Arya Bolton." Something is missing.
"Arya Stark. She was forced into that marriage, I know it." The fingertips on her thighs grip harder, and she presses her breasts against his strong back, and her lips against his ear.
"Arya Stark died at the Twins, years ago," she whispers, her breath disturbing a lock of black hair. Everyone knows the story of Arya Stark's fall. "Arya Bolton was a power-hungry mummer."
"How do you know that?" His voice is suspicious.
"Whores talk more than knights, and what's more, they speak the truth."
"Knights don't like the truth."
"Too bad. I'm not a whore." Truth.
"Still paying you for the night," he reminds her, fully believing that he was. "And not for the depressing conversation." The Braavosi laughs loudly, into the shoulder of his tunic. Her voice is muffled by the material and she sighs, tilting her head and flicking her tongue against his neck. His sweat tastes bitter and metallic, and it makes her shudder and her heat flare.
"I killed Arya Bolton and her husband." Truth. But why does she tell it?
Immediately, he knows a truth that the assassin cannot understand.
"Arya," he breathes, longingly.
"No." Truth again. "Look at me and you'll see." Still he does not turn around. He reminds her of a bull, stubborn and unmoving. Rounding his enormous figure, the Braavosi kneels before him, unlacing his breeches. His eyes are closed, his breathing even and controlled.
"Arya did this to me once." Arya hadn't known what she was doing then, but they had both been curious after one of Tom's songs were left unexplained. A hand tangles in the Braavosi's hair and she takes him in her mouth and he groans, and she feels nothing. No hate, no love, no emptiness. The ache is gone, and replaced by a new one, between her legs, in her chest, soaking through her very bones. They're in the forest again and she loses herself to his rough touch and taste, and he murmurs a name she's long forgotten to the dusk. He's mourning his lost love.
"Open your eyes," she whispers, taking her lips from his skin just in time to see bright blue eyes, shocked eyes full of yearning, staring down at her. "I'm not her." The Braavosi thinks that mayhaps in that moment he understands, because he reaches down and lifts her onto his lips as easily as though she were a babe.
"You're as close to her as I will ever be," he admits, solemnly, and takes her in a wonderful kiss.
In the morning, the Braavosi leaves the winter town in the wake of a blizzard. Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill abandons his banners to follow.