The girl shifted on the straw pallet of her cell, then slammed her knuckles into the stone wall beside her. The sound cracked sharply in the half-darkness, and as her hand came away scratched and bleeding, she growled savagely at herself.
Do not cry. Do NOT cry. You can't afford to cry now. You have to think.
But no matter how hard she concentrated, breathing deeply, as Syrio as taught her, thinking only made the pain worse. Arya Stark was awake again, and being Arya Stark hurt.
The girl had lived the past four years as two different people who were the same person. At the beginning, the part of Arya Stark where the horrible things lived had gone to war against the part of her that wanted peace; and they had torn at each other like wolves inside her skin, struggling to occupy a place where there was only room for one of them. Two halves of a person that she could no longer be were fighting to tear her in half, and sometimes she had wanted to scream with the pain of it.
But then she had become 'the girl,' and though it wasn't a real name, or even the whole truth of her, it wasn't a complete lie either. 'The girl' was her armour. 'The girl' allowed her to think like Arya, talk like Arya and fight like Arya; but protected her from the things that Arya had seen, heard and felt; at least when she was awake.
When she was awake, she didn't see Bran lying asleep beneath layers and layers of wolf pelts, his hair so thick with perspiration it was almost wet. She didn't hear Mother crying by his bedside on the morning they left Winterfell. She didn't feel the wetness of Nymeria's muzzle in her hand before she struck her with a rock, and watched her lope away and never come back. When she was awake, she didn't see, hear or feel the howls of the crowd and the cries for death before the Great Sept of Baelor. She didn't see, hear or feel herself crying and shrieking at Yoren to let her go, or Joffrey shouting out 'Ser Ilyn! Bring me his head!' while Sansa screamed at him to stop.
When she was awake, she was safe from the things that Arya Stark had seen, heard and felt. She was safe from the horrible things inside Arya Stark's head.
But whenever the girl slept, Arya Stark woke up; and hearing, seeing and feeling would force their way under her skin and into her blood, disembowelling her with the noise and the sight and the agony of her own memories, locking her up inside them and refusing to let her out. And she would scream and scream and pound her fists on doors, on walls, on breastplates, even on the merciless iron of the empty air, but there would be no escape and no mercy.
Then when she woke up and became the girl again, Arya, and the things that Arya had seen, heard and felt would go to sleep once more, giving the girl a chance to live.
Of course the fact that Arya was sleeping did not mean that Arya was no longer there. Sometimes – often, even - the girl would feel her or see her; her fingertips tingling in warning, the tiniest threat of flint glowing dormant in her eyes, most of it silent and innocent. But what was left was still dangerous enough to start a fire if the need ever came for something to be burned, and that morning had been the first time that the flint had become flame.
One look at the Kingslayer that had almost killed her little brother just to shut him up; one small, careless enunciation of her true name on his lips, and Arya Stark had woken up; her memories rising up around her like flesh and blood and pulling her into all of them at once. She had been in Winterfell with Bran and Mother; running helplessly in a dark wood with Nymeria; and trapped once again in the square and the crowd, a stupid mouse who couldn't save her own father. She could see all of them, hear all of them, feel all of them, and she couldn't save any of them now. She could only avenge them, and that had been the only coherent thought in her head as the wolf blood and the flint and Arya had howled out together; and she had flung herself across the room to cut Jaime Lannister's throat, no matter how stupid it might make her look or feel later.
He was quick. Hopelessly quick. When he had flung her to the ground, such a sickening crack had rung out from her bones that she had felt certain he was going to kill her, her memories still rushing into her as she struggled; the sight, the sound and the hurt so powerful that she could barely see what was happening in front of her.
She hadn't been prepared for the silence that came as he pinned her arms to the floor.
When he looked at her, the sound of her memories had left her so quickly she almost gagged; Mother's tears, Nymeria's whimpering, the roar of the crowd before the sept; all of them, gone, though she still saw them, fluttering in and out of her line of vision.
The Kingslayer's face had drawn closer to hers, like he wanted to ask her a question, and she had glared at him to make him look away from her. But his eyes had a hint of gold in them that seemed to burn brighter and brighter the closer he came, and when they had begun to pale slightly, she had seen that gold was only a tiny part of his eyes. They were green, not gold; just as her own were grey and not black. And she realised.
He is also two people at the same time. He is also running from himself.
Then the sight of her memories had left her along with the sound, and she had lain on the floor looking up at him – Arya had lain on the floor looking up at him – and being Arya hadn't hurt anymore.
Being Arya hadn't hurt anymore.
It hurt now, of course, lying in this freezing little cell, wondering what was going to happen to her. Nothing pleasant, if she knew Lord Tywin at all. He was attached to her, and she had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she was attached to him, but she didn't delude herself for an instant that he would let her get away with this.
He killed the Reynes and the Tarbecks for rebelling against his father. He killed the Targaryen children just to prove a point. When Mother captured the Imp, he set the whole of the Riverlands on fire, killed and raped everything in sight and hasn't stopped doing it for the past four years. The gods only know what he'll do to the person who tried to kill his eldest son and heir.
Hang me? Behead me?
Maybe he'll let me do it myself. No harm in asking.
The cell was growing darker, and colder, and sleep was sneaking up on her, calling her into memory again.
I'm Arya, she realised, when I wake up, I'll still be Arya. I'll never be the girl again.
And for the first time in four years, the concept did not frighten her.
'Raff the Sweetling,' she yawned to herself, curling into a ball as the cell grew darker and darker, 'Dunsen, Chiswyck, the Hound, Ser Gregor, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei. Valar Morghulis. '
She lay in the darkness for a few minutes, warmth tingling beneath her eyelids, then sat up suddenly in a fury, flinging her injured hand so hard against the wall that she cried out in pain.
And as her fingers dug into her palm, pain spasming through her joints and down to her fingertips, she bit her lip so hard it bled.
She'd forgotten to say 'Jaime Lannister.'
