After her defeat at the hands of a man, the apprentice was expected to work in the kitchens, helping Umma to prepare the small feast requested by the Kindly Man to mark the return of a brother of the house. The cook would be glad of her help today, as there were like to be more dishes and those more complex than the typical supper eaten by the servants of the House of Black and White. Celebration after the success of an important mission was not common so the preparations had the girl curious about the details of this particular commission of Jaqen's.
She left the training room to do her duty but not before reminding Jaqen, "You promised to tell all. I haven't heard a bit about your trip or where you went. I expect you to fulfill your promise later!"
He nodded, saying that he would tell her as much of the tale as she cared to hear when next they met. As she departed, though, the assassin wondered what exactly he should tell her about his visit to Old Town and the Riverlands and how much of what he learned there should remain hidden. Her conflicting feelings about her path to becoming a member of the order had never been more apparent to him. While he was away, Jaqen had feared that she might have left Braavos to pursue her dream of justice for those Arya Stark lost in another life, but when he found her still studying among the acolytes, he began to wonder if she had somehow managed to lay that dream to rest. He discovered only moments before that the blood lust still burned deep within her breast. It was proving harder to extinguish than he would have believed when he encountered that small, wrathful child on the King's Road so long ago. He recalled her, wispy bit of a girl that she was, whispering her bitter prayer to the wind, trying to call down the wrath of all the gods on the heads of her enemies as the dying embers of the night fires glowed and cooled; a lonely, vengeful girl pretending to be a boy as she trudged north among the criminals and outcasts and orphans without better prospects, on their way to join the noble band of black brothers serving the realm on a great wall of ice. The memory made him sad. She had been so wild and fierce yet still she had so much hope; hope of seeing her family again; hope of exacting her revenge; hope that someone would take care of her and soothe her hurts (her mother, her brothers, her friends) if only she could hold on long enough to find them.
Jaqen had seen the gods deliver her blow after blow. Any one of these might have caused her to crumple and simply give up her struggle but she did not. Yet undeniably, she had been changed by each of these calamities and even more so by her tutelage in the House of Black and White. The vestiges of hope still remained, but should she wish to take the final step and accept her place as a servant of the Many-Faced god, she would need to shed them. Whether this would be to her ultimate benefit or detriment, he was no longer sure. What he had learned about the Westerosi war and the state of the North was certain to confuse his apprentice about her choices even more and he was not sure which was the greater sin: to reveal what he knew and cause her more doubt about her destiny or to withhold information that might allow her greater control over it?
Upon entering the kitchens, the girl was met with Umma's reprimand for her lateness.
"I know they call you the Cat," the cook complained gruffly, "but does that mean you have to keep a cat's time and come and go as you please?"
The girl knew the cook's manner to be brusque but for all that, they really got along quite well. The Cat appreciated the older woman's dry humor, which became more apparent once the acolyte finally mastered the Braavosi tongue. For the hundredth time, she thought to herself how Hot Pie would love working in this kitchen under the direction of Umma, who was really an excellent cook and baker.
"Sorry, Umma," she apologized. "My combat training went long."
"Humph!" the woman responded. "Combat training, was it? Is that what you call it when you flirt with a certain Lorathi over crossed blades?"
Flirt? the girl thought, confused. With a Lorathi? Does she mean Jaqen? Preposterous!
The cook continued fussing while she nimbly chopped several tiny, brownish peppers.
"If you spent half as much time doing your duty as you do dancing with that assassin, you might have already been an assassin in your own right!"
"Umma, I don't know what you mean," the girl said, truly baffled. "Jaqen hasn't even been here these past eighteen moons and when he is, I fight with him because he's the best and I want to learn everything I can from him so one day I can be the best. And I don't flirt!"
It was such an odd thought that the girl wasn't sure what to do with the strange, twisty feeling it left in her. She had never had any sort of stupid romantic notions about anyone, much less Jaqen. She found herself concerned that if Umma thought such a thing was possible, maybe others saw it that way as well. Did Jaqen think she was flirting with him? She felt awkward and worried the more she thought of it.
Jaqen was not quite a brother nor a father but was perhaps the closest thing she'd had to either since Ser Ilyn had obeyed the order of that vile, repulsive Joffery and taken her father's head with Lord Stark's own sword. She had a huge, endless, aching hole where her heart used to be, consumed bit by bit as she lost those who defined and shaped her life: Jon, when he left her for the Wall, took the first little bit. Then, Nymeria. She perhaps hadn't realized how much at the time, but Nymeria's banishment had cost her dearly. Then, of course, her father, her mother and Robb. Later, Hot Pie and Gendry, though she was more angry with them than sad, since they were alive and chose to abandon her. When Jaqen was with her, the hole filled, just a little. He couldn't be everything she lacked, but he was all she had.
Arya had no interest in marrying, ever. When she stretched her mind forth into the future, all she saw for herself was blood and steel, never a husband or children. Never a home. She could not feel desire for those things, not when her energies were so consumed in her daily tasks for the order and her training. Not when her nights were filled with wolf dreams and her few spare moments with visions of putting a dagger through Queen Cersei's eye or plunging her sword through Ser Ilyn's heart. The girl had passed from childhood into womanhood within the walls of the temple of Him with Many Faces. She hadn't had dealings with boys and men beyond those who trained her, the other acolytes, those she used as part of her disguise in her clandestine assignments, and those whom she planned to kill. There was no one to tempt her thoughts away from her goals; no one to turn her mind toward those silly, flowery notions. There was no one she thought of that way, except maybe Gendry, and then only for a few seconds after waking up from a very rare dream (a dream in which he would put his rough hand against her cheek and call her "M'lady" and she would tell him he was stupid and he would laugh). Even then, she tried to push those half-formed feelings away the instant she remembered where she was, and where he was, and why they were where they were.
"Here," Umma chirped, interrupting her thoughts to hand her a spoon, "stir the broth and then add those mussels."
That night, the acolytes in their soft robes of black and white drifted in and took their places at the large table, all but the few tapped to serve at dinner. The Cat, having helped to prepare dinner, had done her duty for the evening and was allowed to sit and sup with the Faceless Men. Jaqen suppressed an amused smile when he caught Arya scowling at the large boy who had bested her in the training tourney earlier. The boy had been assigned to serve that night and attempted to hand a glass of watered wine to a the still spiteful girl who muttered under her breath to him. She spoke too softly for Jaqen to hear, or anyone for that matter, aside from the girl herself and the one for whom the words were meant. The muscular boy jumped back at her quiet expression, a look of concern shaping his features. Perhaps he was less ready to be inducted into the order than Jaqen and the rest of the council previously believed. It seems he had not fully mastered his fear, or his face.
Though he couldn't hear his apprentice, the Lorathi was adept at reading lips. She spoke Braavosi to the boy, saying, "It's not what's in that cup that I want. I have a thirst for another contest. Perhaps this time, we can see who is stealthiest. Or fastest with throwing blades. Or both." The implication was that she might creep up upon him in a darkened corridor and demonstrate her skill with the knives for which she was renowned amongst the apprentices. Jaqen believed it was merely bravado, a way to assuage the vexation and embarrassment pent up inside over her inability to best the boy with her tourney sword earlier, but her brother clearly believed the threat behind her words. Jaqen would have to ask the other masters what this little Cat had done during his absence to engender such apprehension amongst her fellows.
The waif led the prayer before the meal, acolytes and Faceless Men alike dipping their countenances, both real and false, in reverence. Soon after, they were eating and conversing. The girl loved the camaraderie of this time of day. The talk around her was friendly for the most part, and she still marveled sometimes at the fact that she could challenge the Kindly Man or Jaqen with questions and they would answer her honestly. She could discuss poisons and their effects on the body, swordplay, or the fastest way to kill a man over her broth and bread and no one judged her or chastised her for not being a proper lady. There were things she gave up to place herself in the service of the Many-Faced god to be sure, but had she not gained just as much? For all the times she felt bound and constrained by the requirements of her apprenticeship and the demands of the Kindly Man that she leave Arya Stark and all she loved behind, there were the times that she remembered that Arya Stark was never truly free, either. The restrictions placed on her as the daughter of a powerful lord of the Seven Kingdoms were legion, and would likely have worsened as she aged. Here, she was told she must forget who she loved, who she hated, and to whom she longed to show the pointy end of Needle but in Westeros… There, at nearly six and ten, she would be told what to wear, how and with whom to speak, and who to marry.
She closed her eyes and let her mind drift across the Narrow Sea, imagining a world in which she had never left King's Landing; a world in which she was managed, handled, and used as collateral; a world in which powerful men who bore her no love would choose who shared her bed, whose children she was to bear, and how her days might be occupied until they had all been spent. She shuddered, and her eyes flew open to see Jaqen appraising her keenly from his seat, arranged across the table and several spaces up from her own. She was sitting with the acolytes at the lower end of the table while Jaqen had a place of honor near the head. Still, from that distance, she could read the concern in his expression, subtle though it was. Then the Kindly Man spoke to him and her mentor erased all emotion from his face as he turned to reply. The Cat went back to her plate, vowing once again to push Westeros from her mind, at least for the duration of the feast.