We just carry on digging our graves in solid marble above the ground…
Arya had been back in New Orleans for barely more than an hour by the time she and Jaqen were finishing their beignets. They were at the Cafe Du Monde, looking at each other across a small, marble top table amid the clinking of ceramic mugs and the quiet conversation of people stopping in for a bite of something authentic before leaving the French Quarter. It was sometime after midnight and the girl was licking powdered sugar from her thumb as she watched her neighbor sipping his coffee. Black. She didn't know how he tolerated the bitterness. She'd been raised on cafe au lait with plenty of cane sugar. She couldn't imagine a circumstance where she would willingly drink coffee without milk and something to sweeten it.
Arya's phone buzzed, making a gentle purring sound against the table where it lay. She glanced down quickly, noting the flash of text before the screen went blank again. Edric.
E. D.—Home yet, sweetling?
"Who's Ed?" Jaqen asked, one eyebrow raised slightly. "And what's a sweetling?" His skill at reading quickly, and upside down, was impressive. She hadn't even seen his eyes flick toward her phone. "Is it like a sticky roll or a muffin? I can't keep all your American pastries straight."
"It's a stupid nickname meant to annoy me," the girl grumbled, "and it's not Ed, it's E.D."
Jaqen's eyes took on a faraway look for a moment, as if he were trying to recall some important detail, and then he smiled slightly (well, it was more of a smirk, really). "Oh, yes, a girl's high school lover, the Dayne boy."
"High school lo..." she started, an expression of displeased incredulity marking her face. The German interrupted her tirade before it could begin in earnest.
"Yes. I remember this now. The boy gave you flowers and convinced you to wear a gown and those…" Jaqen's brow creased in concentration. "Those… schicke Schuhe… Stöckelschuhe."
"What?" She nearly laughed. Shoes, she understood, but what they had to do with Edric, she could not imagine.
"You call them… high heels? Fancy shoes. You never wear them."
He'd been paying attention to her footwear? She shook her head slightly, trying to remember if she'd seen Jaqen the night of the homecoming dance. Had he been coming in while she was going out? Was he drinking on the balcony outside of his bedroom when Edric had insisted on opening the door of his car and helping her in? Had her mother shown their overly-tolerant neighbor the dozens of pictures she'd insisted on taking before her daughter could escape the Stark home with her date that night?
" We never see her looking this elegant," her mother had embarrassingly told Edric. Arya was caught between mortification and fury but Edric had merely grinned in his good-natured way. "I can't remember the last time I saw her wear lipstick!"
" Mother!" Arya had growled through her unnaturally crimson lips.
" She's always in fencing whites or a t-shirt and jeans," Catelyn had continued, raising her camera once again, oblivious to her daughter's ire. "Oh, just one more, please. You're both so adorable. Smile!"
Arya had cursed her Stöckelschuhe then—they prevented her from fleeing fast enough.
"He didn't give me flowers," Arya insisted, frowning at her neighbor. How dumb would that have been? Edric showing up at her door with some cliché bouquet; red roses, or a cluster of sad, half-wilted daisies wrapped in colorful tissue paper. They were friends, for goodness sake; fencing partners, nothing more. They played Halo and went to the midnight premiers of Marvel movies together. There was no romance between them, and anyway, Edric was too cool to act like some goofy guy from a young adult novel. What would make Jaqen assume they had been a couple? Her face burned and she cursed herself, hoping the light was dim enough to hide her embarrassment.
"Ich habe dein hübsches Rotwerden vermisst, süßes Mädchen," Jaqen murmured, and a year of beginner's German was only enough for her to understand that he was referring to her blush. Dammit. She found his expression bewildering, though, for he did not appear to be teasing her. "Was a girl not wearing these flowers on her wrist? Dainty orchids? White?"
He had seen the pictures. She'd have to speak with Catelyn about her enthusiasm for sharing her amateur photography with the neighbors.
The girl snorted in a way she hoped conveyed disdain. "It was a corsage! Do you not have corsages in Berlin?"
Jaqen nodded. "Yes, lovely girl, we have them, but we also understand that they are flowers."
The girl sighed. "It was the homecoming dance. Boys give girls corsages when they go to formal dances together. It's not the same as bringing flowers. It's just a stupid tradition. And girls are supposed to wear gowns and fancy shoes." She waved her one hand dismissively. "There's a dress code. It's expected."
"A man knows very well how a girl always does what is expected of her." His eyes were wide and innocent, but a mischievous smile fought to reshape his lips. She tried to glare at him, but the dimple that indented his cheek coupled with his 'a man' and 'a girl' undermined her righteous indignation.
"Edric and I never dated," Arya finally huffed. "I've known him for years. We trained together sometimes and hung out. We're just friends."
"Indeed," Jaqen replied, his tone patronizing. "Friends. And sweetlings, it would seem."
"It's not even a real word," she groused. "It's something he picked up from this book series we both read. He just says it because he knows it bugs me."
"Yes, you do seem overly bugged," the man said with false sympathy. "I have also picked something up from my reading. Perhaps a girl has read this work as well? Hamlet?"
"Of course I've read it. I had to write a paper on it this past semester."
"Then you'll recognize the line I mean: The lady doth protest too much."
Her mouth dropped open and Jaqen could contain his mirth no longer. He burst out laughing at her expression. The girl set her jaw and sat back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. She turned her face away, gazing across the open dining area towards Jackson Square. St. Louis Cathedral loomed on the far side, its dark tiled steeple climbing high above Chartres Street, reaching into the blackness of the midnight sky. Even as Arya strained to see it, to make out its lines, she could feel Jaqen's gaze as he studied her profile. The German's laughter trailed off. He took his last swallow of coffee and then spoke, suddenly sounding very serious.
"You've been away a long while now. A very long while," he said as he set his empty mug down. "I am glad to see you again, Arya Stark."
She had always liked the way Jaqen said her name. Of course, with his accent, Arya liked the way he said most things, but when he said her name… she felt it, even if she wasn't exactly sure what it was. The girl sighed, relaxing and uncrossing her arms. She turned to look at him once again and tried to explain her protracted absence.
"School was so..." She shrugged. "And then fencing... Syrio runs a tight ship."
"His... ship is tight?" The German furrowed his brow.
"It's just an expression. It means he's strict."
"Ah."
"Honestly, a maritime lawyer should probably know that." She quirked up an eyebrow.
Jaqen bobbed his head in acknowledgment. "The language, lovely girl. At times, the idioms are confusing."
She didn't believe for one instant that English confused Jaqen H'ghar, but she let it go.
"Anyway, it was just easier to stay at school most of the time," she continued. "Less... distracting."
"Yes. I understand."
"I think it was good for me. To be away, I mean. It helped me focus."
"Oh? Focus was never something I thought you lacked."
The way his eyes bored into hers, the intensity of his look, caused her to drop her own gaze to the table top. Her eyes traced the rings of spilled confectioners sugar on the table, white mounds of powdered sweetness which had escaped the edges of their small dishes. She reached for her sweating water glass and took a sip.
"Maybe you didn't notice so much," she finally said, carefully placing the glass back on the table. "I imagine your attention was otherwise engaged, but my focus had definitely begun to wane at the end of my senior year." She sounded uncomfortable.
"Wane?" he questioned. "Did it? Or did it simply shift to something else?"
What was he asking her, and why? It wasn't like him to push her. Not about this.
Arya decided to push back.
The girl looked at her neighbor again, her eyes suddenly bright, and she leaned over the table toward him, speaking in a hushed tone. "Are we playing semantics now, Jaqen?" When he did not answer her, she sighed and leaned back in her chair, turning her head away to stare once again across the square. "You know, of all the dances we do, this one is the most tedious." The last part, she gritted out.
"I did not mean to upset you, lovely girl," Jaqen said. His voice was an apology; a regret. She met his gaze then.
"Wane. Shift. Falter. Waver. Fade. Who cares?" she hissed. "Ich war abgelenkt."
Jaqen's brow lifted. He looked amused. "Your pronunciation is excellent. I think it benefits from your anger."
She rolled her eyes. "It doesn't benefit from my anger because I'm not angry."
"Reizung, dann. You're irritated with me."
She'd been home less than two hours. How were they arguing already? Arya blew out a long breath.
"No, I'm not. I'm… just trying to explain."
"Apologies. Please, continue."
"Last summer, my mind wasn't where it needed to be." Between navigating her way around her relationship with Gendry, a relationship she had tried desperately to pretend hadn't changed even though it had, and alternating between feelings of bitterness and grief at Jaqen's gentle dismissal of her after her graduation party, her fencing had suffered. "Staying at school and training instead of coming back here got me on track."
He nodded his head once at her, a deferential gesture, but Arya could see it wasn't genuine.
"What?" she demanded. Jaqen smiled.
"It's just that a girl loves her home. It's in her blood. Staying away must have been difficult."
"The longer I was away, the less difficult it became."
"To be so long away from home… I think it cost you." There was a maddening sort of sympathy in his voice. It grated at her.
"Did it?"
The German gestured, indicating the cafe, and the broader city beyond it. "A girl has always loved this place."
"And I've loved fencing from the minute I held my first foil."
Arya could remember that moment with shocking clarity, considering her age that the time, and thinking of it brought to mind the pictures of his children that her father kept displayed on a shelf in his office. All of them had been taken around the same age; the age before baby teeth become wiggly and cheeks begin to lose their roundness. Robb, tiny pads giving his shoulders an humorously wide appearance, wearing the black and gold jersey of the pee wee football team he quarterbacked; Jon, ball cap askance, sporting a catcher's mitt on one hand while the other grasped a pristine baseball; Sansa, auburn hair smoothed and twisted into a perfect bun, dressed in a black leotard and pink tutu, arms raised and toes pointed; Bran and Rickon both adorned in sock-covered shin guards and cleats, too-large soccer balls trapped between their hips and forearms.
Unlike her siblings, Arya's own portrait was not professionally commissioned or posed, but was, rather, a candid snap taken of her in her beginner's fencing class, printed in a grainy black and white (evidence of her mother's artistic phase). Her mask was pulled up, sitting atop her wild hair as she held her tiny foil in front of her, mimicking a pose the instructor was demonstrating. That preschool training blade now seemed no bigger to her than a knitting needle.
She added quietly, "Fencing is the one thing that's... me."
"Yes," Jaqen agreed gently, "but must one trade away one love for another?"
Just then, Arya understood that they were talking about more than fencing and delayed visits home.
She looked at him as he leaned back in his seat, his expression changing as he regarded her, and she couldn't understand why he would ask her such a thing. Hadn't he been the one to send her away; told her to have adventures? Hadn't he said she was young and that she couldn't truly know what she wanted? That it was not his place to stand in her way? And then later, when she had gone once again to him, to say goodbye, hadn't he pushed her away when he might have chosen… something.
When he might have chosen her?
Arya's memory cast itself back to a night the previous summer, the night before she left for Virginia, a student athlete bound for Eleanor Remmings College. It was a moment in her life which had replayed itself in her head, over and over and over again. She had knocked on Jaqen's door, and he had invited her to sit with him in his library, to talk. She had been too honest with him, she suspected, and he retreated from her, rising and walking away, staring out of the library window. He told her again, in his way, that he was not good for her. She recalled that his words had pierced her, run her through, and that she had a notion she might bleed to death if she did not staunch the wound. She felt that if she could only touch him, the feel of him, the warmth of him against her palms, would somehow heal her. She had approached him then, tentatively, placing her hands against his back.
And truth be told, that's what had cost her. Not the staying at school, not the missing home. Not Thanksgiving spent in the dorm and Christmas spent fencing at a tournament an ocean away. The cost was in that moment of reaching out for him, in that briefest of touches, for in that touch, in just the act of rising from her seat and crossing the floor to be near him, there was an admission, and a question.
And in his response, a rejection.
" Please do not touch me, lovely girl. You make it too hard."
The thought of it still made her ache, deep on the inside. There was too much longing, too much sacrifice, too much anguish in that moment, both his and hers, and she did not know what to do with it all.
Must one trade away one love for another?
"Sometimes," she replied, her voice almost a whisper. "It seems that sometimes, one must."
Jaqen had offered to take the girl back home after the check was paid. Arya insisted she was not yet tired and so he dropped a tip on the table and they left the cafe, crossing Decatur toward the square and then walking down St. Peter at a leisurely pace. All foot traffic in the French Quarter at night seemed to flow to and from Bourbon Street, almost unconsciously, as if there were a sort of magnetic pull or invisible current directing the movement.
They walked side by side, Jaqen matching Arya's pace. He asked her uncharacteristically mundane questions, things about school and fencing and her family; safe subjects. The girl answered her companion somewhat absently, preoccupied with unraveling the hidden meaning behind Jaqen's behavior; his expressions and his questions at the cafe. Despite the benign nature of their current conversation, there was a thread of tension running through it; an undercurrent created by what was not being said.
When they approached Pat O'Briens, the historic haunt of tourists and natives alike, Arya suggested they duck into the piano bar. The noise and vigor there would make conversation difficult, and she needed a break to gather her thoughts (and to interpret the fluttering emanating from her middle). Jaqen had her off-kilter, unsettled, and she didn't like it. It was an unfamiliar sensation for a girl who was used to reading people with ease and that disturbed her. They squeezed through the narrow aisles between heavy wooden tables and found a spot in the far corner. Within minutes, a waitress arrived and took their drink orders.
"Mint Julep," the girl said. Jaqen looked at her quizzically and Arya batted her eyelashes, straightening in her seat, all innocence and probity. "What? You said no caffeine." He gave her a slight glare, but then let it pass.
There is a uniqueness to the New Orleans liquor laws that sets the French Quarter apart from most other places around which one may wish to wander in America. In the French Quarter, it violates the law to drink in the streets only if the container from which one drinks is glass (broken glass in the streets being widely regarded as a hazard). Barring the offending glassware, anyone, police included, will smile and nod as you pass them on the sidewalk, drinking your daiquiri or beer or whiskey mixed with cola. Hence, the plastic "go cup" was born. Additionally, while it is against the law for a bar patron to drink until achieving the age of twenty-one, a loophole exists which makes it completely legal for a bartender to sell alcohol to anyone who has reached the age of eighteen (this courtesy does not extend to clerks in liquor stores, gas stations, and supermarkets, where the sellers of beer, wine, and spirits are bound by an altogether different set of rules).
In the French Quarter, trusting the judgement of a teenager to purchase but not consume alcohol is in keeping with the many other contradictions evident in the Crescent City—violent crime committed in the genteel shadow of old-world extravagance; crumbling grandeur tightly embraced in arms of concrete and steel and the monumental crush of the modern city; the brash, brassy cacophony and raucous dancing of a jazz funeral woven through with the visceral wails of the grieving. There is cheering doggedly for a team with a deeply ingrained tradition of losing. There is a city so vibrant and animated which is actively burying itself alive in a watery grave. There is celebrating lasciviousness and intemperance on Tuesday then repenting it all on Wednesday with prayer and ashes and no hint of hypocrisy. The city's unofficial motto, laissez les bon temps rouler, permeates the collective psyche to such extent that amid constant threat of flood and wind, the populace smiles, shrugs, and drinks a rum punch concoction named for the thing which one day will most certainly be the end of it all.
"Can I get you anything, sir?"
The waitress was waiting for Jaqen's drink order. He asked for a beer, something local and semi-obscure, and the waitress scooted between the tables and through a door half hidden across the room. When she returned with their drinks, Arya saw that Jaqen's was in a tall, slender glass and nearly black, like his coffee, with a thick head of foam crowning it. She asked for a taste. Amused, the German pushed the glass across the table and watched as the girl sipped.
"Ugh," she winced. "So bitter! What is it with you and dark, bitter flavors? Black coffee with chicory, bitter beer..." She swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. "You probably eat that dark chocolate that's like eighty percent cocoa, don't you?"
"Eighty-five," he corrected, "and yes. I love dark chocolate."
"But, why?"
He had to lean close to make himself heard over the crashing piano and exuberant crowd. "A man has become accustomed to the dark and bitter things."
She took a sip of her julep and gave him a dubious look. "You don't like something sweet every now and again?"
"I leave what is sweet and light for others."
His expression was inscrutable but Arya thought she detected something in his voice; something… forlorn?
"If you want something different, Herr H'ghar, you should probably just try it. There's no harm in that." She spoke in low tones, but he had leaned in so close that he heard her plain enough. "If you don't like it, you can always go back to your dark, bitter things."
"Perhaps," he mused. "Perhaps." His eyes softened and his gaze moved past Arya's shoulder as he considered her words. Arya studied his expression intently and she felt her heart stutter, though she could not say why. There was just something in his look. Was it, perhaps, possibility? Then, quick as a snake, Jaqen swiped her glass from her and took a long swallow of her drink. The shock on her face must have amused him greatly because when he was done, his mouth curled into a delighted grin and he laughed, "You said I should just try it!"
She pursed her lips but accepted the Julep back without a word.
Of all the dances we do, she recalled herself saying, but she did not complete the thought.
Arya began to feel the alcohol midway through her drink. Thanks to Coach Forel and his tight ship, she hadn't had much time or opportunity to drink over the past nine months (there was some ill-advised celebratory champagne after her victory at the Paris tournament, a fairly disgusting light beer in a plastic cup from a frat party Daenerys had dragged her to during Fall rush, and the one sip of his Old Fashioned which Jon had allowed her when he took her to dinner during his visit to her school last winter), so her tolerance was extremely low. By her last sip of the Mint Julep, her toes were becoming numb and her cheeks burned.
At some point, Arya's phone buzzed again, but the noise of the pub drowned out the sound and she missed the message. The pair soon left the piano bar, only staying long enough to finish their drinks and sing along with one chorus of a Billy Joel song after that (well, mostly she sang along while Jaqen laughed).
When they exited the pub, the continued up the block and turned right, joining the buoyant throng on Bourbon Street, just for a bit, just to the corner of St. Ann; long enough to be part of the mob with its frenzied energy and unfounded joy, soon to be no more than a hazy recollection caught somewhere between memory and a dream. The crowd was sizable, it being the Friday night (well, Saturday morning, really) before Tulane's commencement. Black graduation caps tipped at dangerous angles atop the heads of several revelers, tassels swinging wildly like those usually pasted to the more delicate areas of a burlesque dancer's body. Packs of stumbling college students roamed, laughing and drinking and calling up to the watchers on Bourbon Street's balconies above them. Only the drunkest of the frat boys were brave enough to cat call Arya with Jaqen by her side. For their pains, they got a finger from her, eliciting roars of laughter from their compatriots.
Halfway down the block, slurred shouts down from a wrought iron balcony urged one of them to "show your tits!" Jaqen obliged, lifting his t-shirt for a moment and the tipsy assemblage cheered and hooted and laughed, raining plastic beaded necklaces down upon him as reward. He caught a long strand of cheap Mardi Gras pearls mid-air and dropped his prize over Arya's head while those around them scrambled to snatch the rest of the loot off the ground. For her part, the girl tried to recall if she had ever seen her neighbor's bare chest before. It did not seem familiar to her, so she supposed she hadn't, and she studied it with the same intensity that she studied her anatomy atlas before a quiz. Bourbon had lowered her inhibitions and she had to stifle a strong urge to reach out and run her palm over the planes and defined lines of Jaqen's form. Just before the German dropped his shirt again and hid his flesh from her view, she saw a well-healed scar on his flank.
Surgery? Or some violence?
She tucked her question away to ask later.
They were nearly to the corner when a young, blonde man lurched away from his group, stepping into Arya's path to wretch and heave over the curb and into the gutter. In one swift movement, Jaqen looped the girl around her waist, lifting and spinning her away from the miserable man and placing her on his other side. His arm he kept protectively wrapped around her, moving them past the scene and swiftly around the corner. Arya barely had time to process it all before Jaqen was slowing his pace again, walking her down St. Ann St., back toward the cathedral. He had released her waist but his fingers were threaded firmly through hers and she could not quite recall how that had happened.
"Thanks," she mumbled, and then laughed a little, because she was suddenly struck by the absurdity of her walking through the French Quarter at night while holding Jaqen H'ghar's hand (really, the idea of Jaqen H'ghar holding hands with anyone struck her as ridiculous). And because, to be quite honest, the bourbon had made her a little silly.
"Mmm," was Jaqen's terse reply.
The girl's phone buzzed again, and this time she felt it in her pocket. She pulled it out and saw two missed texts from Edric.
E.D.—Hello?
E.D.—did you decide to stop and get a room after all? Text me when you get this.
She was having a little trouble making her eyes focus on the screen, so she slipped the phone back in her pocket, meaning to answer her friend later.
They walked a bit further down the nearly deserted street, the German slowing more as Arya's pace lagged. Her fingertips now felt a bit numb, to match her toes, but she wasn't sure if it was her poor alcohol tolerance or Jaqen's touch which was to blame. She tilted her head back and stared at the strip of sky visible between the buildings lining each side of the avenue. The clouds reflected the glow of the city and kept the night sky from being as dark as the hour would otherwise have dictated. The girl mentally flipped through the various shades of dusty red and orange she might use to describe the color she saw at the brightest point.
"Mahogany… No, currant… Or, russet… Sangria… Gingerbread…"
"Are you speaking in some sort of code, lovely girl?"
"Well, I'm not quite the expert on codes that you are," she teased somewhat dangerously, her words only slightly slurred, "but I would think that nowadays, coding secrets this way would be considered… old fashioned? Don't you spy-types do everything electronically now? Ones and zeros and all sorts of unbreakable encryption?"
"A girl has been reading too many Tom Clancy novels."
"A scurrilous lie!" she cried. "I've only cracked open Shakespeare and the English classics in the past year!"
Jaqen's lone verbal response was a small grunt but his fingers tightened against hers almost imperceptibly. They moved along in silence for half a block and as time passed, Arya became unreasonably annoyed by her neighbor's quiet demeanor. It struck her as supremely unfair that he would get to walk alone with his thoughts as they left Bourbon Street behind when he had questioned her endlessly about classes and tournaments and how her brothers were enjoying their jobs as they walked toward it. She meant to make him talk, whether he wanted to or not. Let him be off-kilter for once! A thought popped into her head and she did not stop to consider it, but merely blurted it out.
"Where'd you get your scar?"
"What scar?" he asked, his eyes never deviating from the path ahead.
"The scar on your side, over your kidney. Did you have surgery?"
"A man has no scar."
"You liar!" Arya halted dead in her tracks, yanking back on Jaqen's hand, stopping his movement. She untangled her fingers from his and he turned to face her. They were standing beneath the canopy of a brick building, some historic place with a bronze plaque mounted to its wall, explaining its significance in both English and French. The façade was weathered in that way that modern construction often tried and failed to mimic, and there were flickering gas lamps mounted at intervals along its wall. Arya took a step closer to Jaqen.
"Why would a man lie about a scar?" One corner of his mouth lifted as he spoke. Arya's eyes narrowed and through the warm, rolling waves the bourbon was causing in her head, she managed to detect the subtle manipulation.
A man, he had said unnecessarily. And that dimple. He was playing her like an expert cellist plays his instrument.
Or, trying to, anyway.
"Ha!" she barked, though she had only meant to think it.
Jaqen chuckled. "What?"
"I know what you're doing," she said, poking one finger into his chest, hard. "And you are a liar. Lift your shirt, I'll prove it."
"Sweet child, you've had too much to drink."
"Don't patternize… patron…" She squeezed one eye shut with the effort to make her tongue obey her. "Don't… patronize me!" she finally managed. "Lift your shirt." She gestured lazily with one hand, in what was meant to be a lifting motion.
"This is wholly inappropriate, Arya."
"Fine, then," she said, taking another half-step toward the German and stretching her hand out toward him, meaning to slip it under the hem of his t-shirt and feel for the scar. He caught her wrist without even looking, stopping her, as he stared into her eyes. Startled, she gasped and then bit her lip, the stuttering of her heart starting anew.
"Was tust du?" he whispered, his hand still circling her wrist. She understood him. What are you doing? They stood frozen like that, just looking at one another. After a minute, his thumb began to move, stroking the delicate skin on the underside of her wrist. She wondered if he could feel her pulse, and if he could, did he know why it raced? She released her lip from the vice of her teeth and paused a minute, considering before speaking.
"Dies," she finally answered in his native tongue. This. She reached up with her free hand, cupping his jaw in her palm, her fingers gliding lightly over the stubble on his cheek. She didn't know what else to say, and so she said nothing. Jaqen stared down at her, still holding her one wrist, not moving, not pulling away from her. His failure to retreat emboldened the girl. She slid her hand down his neck until it rested on his shoulder and she curled her fingers into his jacket. Gradually, he lifted the fingers wrapped around her other wrist and released her. Her newly freed arm she slid around his waist, pressing her fingers into the small of his back. She willed the trembling from her limbs and from her voice before she spoke again. "You know, if you don't tell me to stop, I might start to think you're interested in me."
He closed his eyes briefly, taking one deep breath before he opened them again and looked down at her. He studied her eyes, her nose, her lips, and then smiled a little sadly at her.
"A girl has every reason to think that."
The girl moved her hands, placing both palms flat against the man's chest and pushing at him gently, walking him backwards until he was pressed into the weathered brick of the building's facade, the left side of his face lit by a flickering gas lamp mounted to the wall next to his head. The right existed in shadow.
"You'd best be careful what you say, Herr H'ghar," she warned, grabbing small handfuls of Jaqen's t-shirt in her fists. Her voice was low and thick. "I'm tipsy enough that I might take you seriously."
His lips twitched and he turned his face down, looking at her. "I assure you, Arya Stark, I am most serious."
He's teasing, her little voice warned, and Arya studied the wavering flame in the lamp nearest them. As soon as you call his bluff, he'll say you're too young and he hopes you don't lose your head, or some bullshit. The last part she recalled from an inscription on a bookmark he had given her once, tucked into an old and valuable edition of Lewis Carroll's famous work. She snorted.
"Well, off with his head," she mumbled.
"What?"
She tilted her face, smirking up at him, but made him no reply.
"When a girl looks at me like that, I think I would very much like to kiss her."
Her lids were heavy and her smile slow as she pushed up on her toes, tilting her chin up and whispering, "Well... why don't you, then?"
Jaqen's brow lifted, a question in his look. The girl did not move away and tilted her head slightly, waiting. In that, he had his answer. The man bent his head and she closed her eyes. Jaqen traced the shell of Arya's ear slowly with his nose, inhaling the faint honeysuckle scent of her shampoo as he did. His lips lingered for just a second over that tender spot on her neck, just below the angle of her jaw, but then he pulled back slightly and sighed, instead placing a sweet, soft kiss upon the girl's cheek.
Arya blew out the breath she'd been holding and opened her eyes. They stood staring at one another for a moment and then Arya smiled a little sadly.
"I get it," she murmured.
Jaqen matched her sad smile with his own and then held his hand out for her to take. She laced her fingers through his once again, and they continued on down the street.
As they walked past Jackson Square, Arya's phone buzzed again, and then again, and then a third time. She felt the vibration against her thigh and pulled the device out of her pocket, reading the screen. Edric. Of course.
E.D.—starting to worry, YaYa. Did you make it in?
E.D.—Are you in a ditch somewhere?
E.D.—Srsly, let me know you're ok.
The girl sighed and pressed her thumb on the home button, unlocking the screen so she could reply to her friend before he started calling her house and waking her whole family up, worrying them unnecessarily. When she opened the text window, Jaqen admonished her.
"You millennials," he sneered playfully. "Always with a screen in your face. It's rude."
"It's just Edric. If I don't text him back, he's gonna start flipping out call my mom."
"Here, let me see." Jaqen held his hand out expectantly. Arya did not hand him her phone, but she held it up so he could read Edric's increasingly frantic messages. The German snorted. "YaYa?"
"Another stupid nickname."
"Also from a book?"
"No, it's just a play on Arya."
"So many pet names for one small girl. And what do you call him?"
"Edric," she growled, and before she could say more, her phone buzzed again.
E.D.—ARE YOU DEAD?
Jaqen snatched the phone out of Arya's hand, muttering, "Genug von dieser Torheit," under his breath and texting a quick response before the girl could stop him.
"Hey! Jaqen! What did you…" She was flabbergasted, reaching for her phone as the man held it high above their heads where she could not possibly get to it. "Jaqen!"
In the blink of an eye, Jaqen had wrapped his free arm around Arya's waist, pulling her in close to him and bending to place a kiss on the corner of her mouth. As he did, the girl was vaguely aware of a bright flash of light, and just that quickly, he had released her and turned his back. She stood for a second, breathing heavily, trying to make sense of what had just happened, and then she realized what her neighbor must be doing.
"Jaqen, stop!" she cried, but it was too late. She grabbed his arm and he turned, holding up her phone to show her the blurry, angled photo in which only her half face was visible, the other half obscured by the back of his head as he kissed her. Arya snatched the phone back and minimized the picture, only to see that, yes, it had been texted to Edric, along with Jaqen's reply to her friend's last worried message.
No, just busy, the German had mischievously typed, and the words had undoubtedly already popped up on Edric's screen (likely next to the moniker "YaYa"), shortly followed by a picture of her with her eyes closed (how had she had time to close her eyes?) and her lips slightly parted, being kissed by a man who was a stranger to Edric.
"Great," she muttered, "now he's really gonna worry." She shot Jaqen an accusing look and started typing furiously, trying to undo the damage, but before she could complete her message, her phone buzzed again.
E.D.—WTF, Arya?
She sighed, finishing up her text. Sorry, Ricky. Just a friend who thinks he has jokes messing with my phone. He's so funny. She quickly inserted the eye-roll emoji and hit send.
Jaqen snorted again. "Ricky," he read over her shoulder, his tone derisive. "A man knew you had a pet name for this boy."
"Yeah, and I never use it unless I'm having to grovel, so thanks for that." She gave him a nasty look.
"Forgive me, lovely girl, I did not mean to cause trouble for you."
"Oh, yes you did! Yes, you did!"
"I'm sure your boyfriend will not hold it against you. Would you like me to speak with him?" He smiled sweetly. "I am sure I can clear up the matter. What's his number?" Jaqen pulled his own phone out and poised a finger over the keypad so that he could type in the necessary digits.
"He's not my boyfriend!" the girl seethed. "I already told you that."
"Then why are you so angry?"
"Because," she spat, folding her arms over her chest, clutching her phone so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her pinched face relaxed into an expression that conveyed more hurt than fury, but she said nothing further. How could she? How could she tell him what was upsetting her most in that moment?
Jaqen stepped closer and she turned her face away. The buzz from her Mint Julep had worn off and thinking on everything that had happened, and everything that hadn't, was giving her a headache.
"Tell me," the man cajoled.
"Take me home, Jaqen," she finally said, starting to walk toward Decatur. He reached out for her, gently grasping her arm, stopping her.
"I will. Just tell me."
Arya glared at him, pulling her arm free and saying, "You kissed me."
His expression read as both surprised and sorry. "Oh, lovely girl…" He shook his head and raised his hands in supplication. "I didn't mean…" He got no further in his explanation, for the girl interrupted him then.
"And that's just it. You didn't mean anything. You kissed me on the cheek, as some sort of placating gesture, I suppose. Run along and play, little girl. And you kissed me as a joke, just to irritate Edric. You can't kiss me properly, or won't, even though you say you'd like to, and…"
"Oh, Arya, you have no idea…"
"I have a pretty fucking good idea, Jaqen."
"No, you don't." The German groaned, then stopped, taking his head in his hands for a moment before raking his fingers through his hair, a visible sign of his frustration. He gathered himself and his head snapped toward her, his eyes pinning her in place. "There are things you cannot possibly understand. Things I cannot explain to you."
"Things you choose not to explain, you mean," she mumbled.
"Yes," he hissed. "Things I choose not to explain, because doing so…" He clamped his mouth shut, his jaw working. Arya's hurt expression dissolved into one that could only be described as cruel. She finally had the upper hand, and she intended to make the most of it.
"Because doing so puts me in danger?" she supplied. "Is that what you were going to say?"
He looked at her strangely but did not reply.
"And kissing me violates protocol?" she continued, bolder now. "You're not supposed to get involved with your targets, right?"
"Stop."
"How does giving me a ride to the French Quarter on the back of your bike and having coffee with me fit in with your objectives, Herr H'ghar?" the girl needled.
"Stop."
"What requirement did you fulfill by taking me for a drink in a pub? And how about texting Edric with that misleading picture? How does that help you?"
"It doesn't," he growled.
"Then, why do it?" she laughed. Jaqen grabbed her by her shoulders, looking down at her, his expression serious. Her laughter died.
"These things you think you know," he said, "you must keep them to yourself, lovely girl."
"But Jaqen, I already do. I have been, for years." Her tone was pleading. How could he not see?
"This is no joking thing," the German warned.
"No," she agreed, "it's not. And I'm very good at keeping secrets." Arya reached up for the man's head, guiding it down so that she could whisper in his ear. "How good are you?"
Jaqen drew back to look at her, his eyes narrowing and his mouth pulling into an undeniable expression of hunger. He licked his lips once, causing Arya chew her bottom lip in her familiar way as she awaited his answer.
For her, it was another admission, another question. It was an invitation. She watched him watching her, and she wondered if his response would be another rejection. She steeled herself for it, but all the while, she hoped. She waited and she hoped, her eyes reading again that thing in his eyes that made her hope.
Possibility.
It did not take long for her to get the answer she sought, and when it came, it was in the form of actions, not words. He reached his hand toward her face, and then his palm was warm against her cheek, his thumb tugging at her bottom lip, freeing it from her teeth so that he could claim it. His other hand he slipped behind her neck, holding her steady as his lips met hers, moving, tasting, pressing. Arya felt his tongue push into her mouth and she gasped, reveling in the sensation. But then, just as quickly, he pulled back. The girl moaned her protest, a soft, "no" escaping her lips as she chased his mouth with her own, but he placed a hand on her jaw, turning her head and then finding that spot on her neck, just below her ear. After a second, she felt his lips there, kissing her, nipping at her skin. She shivered. When the warmth of his tongue replaced his lips, she melted against him, lost in the feeling.
"Oh," she whispered.
"You," he sighed against her neck, "Du wirst mein Tod sein."
This City— Steve Earle