Chapter notes
Please be warned that this chapter contains scenes of physical abuse and rape.
Ramsay followed her into her chambers. She ignored him and approached her dressing table; her fingers threading through the labyrinth of glass vials that sometimes caught the light on the snow. She uncorked milk of the poppy and drank deeply. The numbness took her. The pain stayed where it was.
The scars on her wrists were aching again; as raw and as painful as they had been at the beginning; when she had worn her chains for days and weeks and months; her arms and legs streaked with her own blood as Ramsay pounded away inside her; trying to make her cry; drilling harder when she didn't utter a sound; crooning sweetly at the blood that lingered in her smallclothes for days afterwards; as though the traitorous red stains were the cries and the screams that he failed to elicit from her; that he wanted to hear on her lips.
Then one day at breakfast – eight months into their marriage – she had reached for the mulled beer at the same time as her husband, and their hands had bumped together.
She had recoiled from Ramsay's touch as though she had been scourged, and to her astonishment, he had done the same; snatching his hand away from hers and plunging it deep into the pocket of his jerkin, before rapidly pushing out his chair and storming from the room. And in that moment she had realised – from the look on Ramsay's face; from the fear in it – that her husband had come to live for the screams of pain that she never gave him. Her only resistance. Her only wall.
The realisation had been like receiving a dagger as a surreptitious nameday present from some caring older sibling, and ignoring Lord Roose's testy demand as to what ailed his son, she had risen from her seat and followed Ramsay to his chambers.
She had found him lounged in a chair with his breeches tangled about his ankles and his cock bulging in his hand.
'What do you want?' Ramsay had growled; saliva flying from his lips.
She had walked silently towards him, hitched up her skirts and straddled him.
'I want you to fuck me bloody,' she had whispered; when in truth, she had wanted to vomit.
But his cock had impaled her body like a spike skewering a severed head, and she had screamed and cried as Ramsay had torn at her with his teeth and nails, and fucked into the soreness between her legs like a pig rutting in a barnyard.
She had never worn chains again, and had been lifted from the deepest of the seven hells into the second-deepest.
For all the good it's done me.
'Joffrey seems a pleasant enough cock!' Ramsay bouncingly declared from somewhere behind her.
'Joffrey chopped my father's head off,' Arya murmured; replacing the milk of the poppy on the table as Ramsay's arms locked hard around her waist and pinned her arms to her sides.
Immediately, she struggled. Immediately, he tightened his grip.
'Is little lady sad?' he crooned into her ear; innocent and sincere as a new-born babe.
'Little lady need to rest before the feast,' she retorted; trying to elbow him in the stomach; 'let go of me and go away.'
'Do you think that Joffrey would hunt a girl with me if I asked him to?' Ramsay mused; as though she had not spoken.
'Ramsay, you promised me.'
'But I grow so bored, my love. What am I to do when I'm bored?'
'Try reading a book.'
Ramsay hummed tunelessly, and tightened his grip on her; his fingers gripping her skin as he kissed her neck.
'The Queen Dowager amuses me,' Ramsay mumbled against her as she once again began to squirm in his arms, 'soft as a maiden's cunt, and convinced her skin is made of chainmail. Do you think she'd be open to correction?'
'No, I don't think she'd be open to correction,' Arya growled in frustration; her fingers digging into Ramsay's forearms, 'she only fucks people who obey every word that comes pouring out of her cunt mouth.'
'Whom do you mean?' Ramsay asked.
'Don't act like you haven't heard the rumours,' Arya snarled, 'now let go of me.'
Ramsay leaned into her and whispered; his lips brushing her ear; his cock hard against her arse.
'Shall we see if they're both open to correction?' he murmured.
'You can stab the sister with your cock, if you want,' Arya snapped, 'the only thing I'm stabbing the brother with is a carving knife.'
'Without fucking him first?' Ramsay hummed; sounding surprised.
'I don't like blonds,' Arya said.
'And I don't like him,' Ramsay snarled abruptly into her ear; in a tone that she knew, and feared, and hated herself for fearing, 'he looks at you.'
'Really?' Arya matter-of-factly asked; brutally swallowing the fear as it welled up within her; 'shall I make him stop?'
Ramsay was holding her hard enough to crush her ribs to powder.
'I can't breathe,' Arya whispered.
Ramsay's hand closed over hers, and he gently slid their fingers into place; locking them together.
'I will make him stop, my love,' he said, 'there's no need to worry your pretty head about it. Tell me, if I put his eyes out, would you wear them around your neck?'
Once again, she tried to break free, and once again, he stopped her; the rack and wheel of his arms turning her struggles to chains about her waist that tightened with every attempt to break free.
'I've wanted to gut Jaime Lannister since I was one-and-ten,' Arya snarled, raking over Ramsay's knuckles with her nails; 'I will make him stop. You won't touch him.'
'Pleeeeeeease?' Ramsay squealed; rocking her back and forth like a child.
'No,' Arya snapped.
'Why?'
'He's mine.'
There was a brief silence, followed by the near-tangible sound of the thoughts in Ramsay's mind clicking softly into place. Then he seized the collar of her coat and slammed her, face-first, into the wall, with the force of a butcher thawing a frozen side of beef. And she was tasting blood in her mouth and seeing blood in her eyes and swiping at Ramsay's face with a dagger torn from her waist as he plunged a fist into her stomach and another into her eyes.
For a moment, the world was red. The dagger slipped from her fingers as her strength left her; as the back of her head crashed into the floor, and pillars of grey mountain fog began to dance across her vision; like pain made people.
Ramsay was on top of her, and his hands were scarring her wrists. For a moment, she saw his face, sliced open from lip to ear. And yet he was smiling at her, like he had won. Like he would always win.
She spat in his face. It made blood pour down his cheeks like rain. And he dealt her a blow that made her vision crumble, and her thoughts turn black inside her.
'He can't be yours, my love, because you have nothing,' Ramsay whispered to her, 'nothing, nothing, nothing.'
And his fingers were at the laces of her breeches, and her silence was rising up. Her only resistance. Her only wall.
