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Soon all of the realms hear it — Princess Myrcella Baratheon has survived an attack by Dornish poison.
Arya tries to imagine that cheerful, golden-haired girl from her earlier memories in King's Landing, with her lovely, cream-bright embroidery and pale pink dresses and how she would beg Arya to join her for an impromptu tea-and-cakes feast in the Red Keep, purposely avoiding Cersei's glare, insisting they were to be friends, to be sisters when Joffrey and Santa wed. Nothing ever came of that, of course.
And yet, Arya found herself hating this girl. Someone who would always be the embodiment of purity.
No other child-maiden, young and spirited, had been so gentle. So kindhearted and full of wisdom. There were moments when Arya guessed that even Myrcella's night soil even had a pleasant fragrance to it.
It doesn't seem to fit this woman of twenty-and-two namedays, with her silken, armored sleeves and bodices, dark red and browns and ebony, with her waist-length, golden curls hanging about her thin, pallor of a face as Myrcella calmly presents out a vial of toxic mushroom oil and basiliak's venom and nightshade.
Jaime Lannister has been keeping her in the depths of an empty, mildewing fortress in the North. Away from those who would mean to harm Myrcella or whisk her away on promises of security and marriage and riches.
Arya doubts they would live long enough to use Myrcella. Not with the gleam of a hardened, otherworldy malice in her dead, vibrantly blue eyes. Only those who walk alongside the Stranger and do not embrace them… shall understand what it is to feel no end to their journey, Jon warns her. Feel nothing.
She cannot say what is true, when Myrcella does not complain at a wound or when she flees from torches.
But Arya cannot hate this wretched thing, profaned and mysterious with shadowy intentions. She's only twenty and has never felt a longing such a this — to have Myrcella's ice-cold fingers on hers.
Myrcella survived.
But only so.
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Game of Thrones isn't mine. WE ARE GETTING CLOSE TO THE END OF FEMSLASH FEBRUARY. IT MAKES ME KINDA SAD. I had this pairing kind of sneak up on me in the middle of nowhere so HAVE FUN READING. ANY THOUGHTS/COMMENTS APPRECIATED. I got "Hate" prompt and "Touch-starved" for challenge prompt!