A/N: Hey, sorry for being a day late. I'm at that point in the semester where I have a lot of work I need to do and I can't find the right balance between getting things done and doing things for myself so I don't go crazy. But yeah anyway, here you go. As always, many thanks to my beta reader (and sister) GrowlingPeanut. Reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Bethesda Softworks and George R. R. Martin. Except for Solara but she's really barely in here, so it's barely worth mentioning.

Rating: M for violence and gore.


Arya found herself unable to sleep once again, her mind whirling as it presented endless scenarios for her journey to Driftshade Refuge. In one, she saw herself tearing the Silver Hand limb from limb and stripping the skin from their bones. In another, she imagined being captured and tortured as Vilkas had once been, stretched across a rack as she was flayed alive out of petty hatred and fear.

Finally, she rose, the sky still dark and the twin moons hanging high above. She opened the satchel that sat atop a chair in the corner of her room and began to fill it with dried, salted meats, some hard bits of tangy cheese, and a few bruised apples. It wouldn't take long to reach her destination, but she preferred to be over-prepared, and did not know what to expect when she reached the fort.

For a moment, she considered donning her armor, but it would only prove a hindrance if she transformed, and she did not want to be Arya Stark the Stormcloak Snow-Hammer when she arrived. She wanted to be Arry, and no one more: a girl, tainted blood surging hot through her veins, foolishly in love, and most importantly, intent on revenge.

She donned a loose white tunic and a pair of dark, fitted trousers. It was an outfit that Taarie and Endarie would loathe, and she appreciated it all the more for that. As the High Queen's sister, they insisted on fitting her for myriad ornate gowns, but as of yet, she had been able to avoid their attempts under her guise as a city guard and former soldier.

Shouldering the pack, Arya nudged open her door and then hesitated. She returned to the table beside her bed, opening the top drawer and removing the sketched likeness of her dead lover. Before she could reconsider, she tucked it into the pack, hastily shoving it to the bottom when she heard approaching footsteps.

As she turned, Ralof passed by her open door and she heard the sound of his boots falter and then turn as he appeared in the doorway.

"Are you leaving?"

She nodded.

"For what?"

"Something personal," Arya replied vaguely.

He cocked an eyebrow. "What should I tell Ulfric if he asks?"

"He won't. He already has a Stark to occupy his time."

At that, Ralof quieted. Eventually, he nodded, sighing. "I'll keep watch over your sister while you're away."

Arya laughed bitterly. "Feel free, but I can already tell you what you'll see. She'll go to the Temple, praying to the Gods she still somehow believes in, and then wander through the streets until it grows dark. At night, you'll hear Ulfric let himself into her chambers and when he leaves you'll hear her crying. The next morning, it's back to the Temple, but this time she'll have a new bruise somewhere, because even when she doesn't fight back he likes to hit her." Ralof opened his mouth to speak but she shook her head. "Don't try to deny it. I wish more than anything else that I could save her from this life, but instead, I helped push it upon her. We both did."

"Whatever else Ulfric is," Ralof said quietly, "he is still our king."

Arya scoffed, her expression dark. "I won't claim to know your motivations, but I didn't fight that war to put him on the throne."

"Your brother did."

She took a step toward him, lips curled back in a snarl. "Don't you dare presume to speak for Robb. From what I've heard, you're the one who put his head on the gods damned block."

Ralof recoiled visibly at that and she saw a guilt in his eyes that was all too familiar. "There's not a single moment that I don't regret the part I played in his death. He was..." He trailed off, looking distractedly over her shoulder. "Robb meant a lot to me, and I fought to give Ulfric the throne in his memory, and in his honor. Your father and your brother both died for Ulfric to rule and I wouldn't let that be in vain."

Though she was loathe to admit it, the man before her knew more of the man her brother had become than she did, and so she stayed silent. For a moment, they simply held each other's gaze. It was Ralof who broke away first, his eyes falling to his boots as he stepped back to allow her past.

"Go then. Do what you need to. I won't stop you or demand an answer. We all have our secrets."

Arya nodded and shouldered past him, the weight of his gaze on her back as she walked down the hallway and out into the yard of Castle Dour. The city was quiet and still. For now, Solitude slept, but come morning the fourth day of New Life festivities would commence, and her streets would fill with light and laughter once more.

The slapping of leather on cobblestone was loud in the silence of the night, overshadowed only by the lapping of waves as she made her way to the docks. A Nord named Jolf sat on the dock beside a small rowboat, rings of smoke puffing from the pipe between his lips and getting swallowed by the early morning fog.

"Looking to go somewhere?"

"Dawnstar."

He nodded slowly, exhaling a puff of smoke and squinting across the bay. "Fifty septims and I'll get you there by sunset. One hundred and you'll be there by midday."

She silently withdrew a handful of ten septim coins and let them drop into his waiting palm. He counted them as she settled onto the far end of the rowboat. One hundred septims was more than she was willing to part with, and she had much to spend the day thinking about.

After putting the coins in his purse, he tapped out what remained in his pipe and then took the seat across from Arya.

"You just enjoy the fresh air and leave the rowing to me. You'll be to Dawnstar by nightfall; on that, you have my word."


As Jolf had promised, the sun was just setting below the mountains when they tied off at the Dawnstar docks. Thanking him, Arya stepped to the snowy shore. Nearly three moons before, she had left Dawnstar to join the Stormcloak army, and she could hardly believe what had transpired in that time.

She could so vividly remember the feel of the nobleman's blood as it seeped between her fingers, and the touch of Jaqen's cold hands on her skin that night when she slipped into his bed. She had asked him to take her that night, with the body of her dead lover, and she sometimes wondered what would have become of them if he had accepted. She was sure he wouldn't have been able to face her after if he had given in and allowed them both to live out the lie of her desperate fantasy. Instead, they had fallen together without pretense, Gendry's blood still staining her skin as she sought vengeance for the injustice that had been wrought upon Vilkas.

Though she doubted she would ever stop loving Vilkas, she hoped that wiping the Silver Hand from the face of Nirn would help put his spirit to rest, and her own. Jaqen deserved her whole heart, and she could not continue to live with her guilt.

Driftshade Refuge wasn't far from the edge of the town, nestled in the snowy hills that lay beyond Nightcaller Temple. She walked toward it slowly, her footsteps silent but her heart pounding loudly in her ears. Turning away from its heavy iron door, she approached from the back end of the fort, her eyes trained firmly on the sentry that sat above the entrance.

He was not expecting an approach from behind and so there was no resistance when she slid her dagger across his throat, only a momentary tensing of his muscles before his blood flowed hot across her clenched fist. She let his body fall to the ground as she lifted her hand to her lips, tongue darting out to wipe the crimson stain from her skin. Her nostrils flared as a sharp heat surged through her veins, but she closed her eyes until it passed. When the time came, she would allow herself to turn, but not until she had the human flesh that would be needed to sustain her.

Untying their laces, she left her boots beside the door with her pack, keeping her gaze away from the stakes that flanked the doorway, each topped with the severed head of a werewolf. She allowed herself a cursory glance to see if either belonged to one of her fellow Companions, and relief eased her muscles when she saw that they did not. Many others in Skyrim had accepted Hircine's gift, and though the Silver Hand had declared the Companion's Circle their highest priority, the others were not immune to the silver of their swords and the hatred in their hearts.

She slipped through the heavy iron door, closing it silently behind her as she ducked into the shadows and allowed her eyesight to adjust to the dim light. Pupils wide, she began her careful descent down the stairs that greeted her. At their end was another door and beyond it, a balcony that surrounded a large room. There were two warriors in the chamber below, one sharpening his sword and the other cutting apart a venison steak.

Arya could hear the blood that pulsed through their veins as its iron tang filled her nostrils. With a snarl, she gave over control, descending the stairs to their level as her body began to shift and change. For a moment they stared at her in stunned silence and by the time their hands reached for their weapons, her claws had opened the first man's chest, ripping out his heart. The other watched in horror as she tore into the still pulsing organ, her snout stained black as she stalked toward him. His head was twisted from his shoulders with its eyes still wide in fear.

She heard a cry of alarm from an adjoining chamber and dropped to all fours, racing across the room with inhuman speed and slashing apart the soldier within. The woman gurgled unintelligibly as she fell heavily to the floor, her throat ripped free as her face was sprayed with blood.

Arya knew that the woman's alert would have been heard but she found that she didn't care. If the Divines or Daedra decided it was her time to join Hircine then she would go with the blood of her lover's killers heavy in her belly, and if they had a plan for her yet, then she would tear through each and every one of them until not a trace of the Silver Hand remained.

She was met at the next room by two soldiers, their silver swords in hand. She hissed as one slashed across her tough hide, its glinting metal leaving an ugly scratch. Before the other could do the same, both were shredded by her bloodied claws, their tortured cries ringing in her ears.

A long hall met her as she continued on and she took the time to check each room that lined it, intent on leaving not a single soul alive. The Silver Hand would end here, tonight, before anyone else could meet the same horrible end that Vilkas had endured.

In one of the rooms she found the fort's barracks, and a soldier who had managed to sleep through the dying screams of his companions. Arya ripped a jagged hole through his torso and bent her head to shred the warm, sweet meat from his ribs. Vilkas had only rarely allowed himself to eat humans while in his beast form, and for the most part, Arya had followed his example. But she couldn't deny the satisfaction that filled her as she reduced the Silver Hand soldiers to mere scraps of flesh, their meat tender and yielding beneath her fangs.

Licking her thin lips, she returned to the hallway, loping to the door at the end and descending to the fort's cellar as it opened before her. A winding maze of barrels and crates met her and she wove through them, stalking the sound of patrolling footfalls. A shrill cry of terror was all the sentry could manage.

As she crossed another large chamber she saw cells shrouded in shadow, the corpses of her kind rotting within. The smell of decaying flesh and burnt fur made her stomach turn and she forced herself to peer through the haze of buzzing flies, searching for those she had known. Again, the slaughtered beasts were not those from the Companions and she breathed a sigh of relief.

The room beyond had been carved from a natural cavern, its floors slick with ice and coated with the powdery snow that had fallen from the sky only barely visible above. Several more cells had been erected in the chamber and she approached each in turn. After a brief glance, she prepared to move on, but a slight flicker of movement in one of them made her pause. She turned to see a human man curled in one of the cell's darkened corners, his chest only barely rising and falling with dangerously shallow breaths.

He was unconscious but still alive, if only just, his chin lolled down against his chest. His lips were cracked and bloody, his long, dark hair matted with dirt and oil, the black paint around his eyes smudged in a way that made them look bruised and swollen.

As she stared, heart in her throat, a vision flickered to life behind her wild eyes. She could see that same body, torn and mutilated. Eyes lifeless, beard crusted with blood and vomit. The flames had reduced that ruined corpse to ash, but its image remained clear in her mind, projected onto the man before her.

"Vilkas...?" His name left her lips of its own accord, softly, almost desperately. She knew who it was before her, but her heart longed desperately to believe that it had been deceived.

At the sound of his brother's name Farkas raised his head and met Arya's gaze through a familiar pair of ice blue eyes, hazy with pain and fatigue. They brightened with recognition and he shuffled to his feet, hands curling around the bars of the cell for support as he stood before her.

"Arya?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak again.

"What are you doing here? We haven't seen you since..." He trailed off, and the responding pang of guilt sent a defensive reply tumbling from her bloodied lips.

"He deserved to be avenged."

For a moment, she thought that he would condemn her quest for revenge, but after a long sigh, he nodded.

"I know. That's why I'm here. Aela wrote me, saying she found a map in some of Kodlak's old things that suggested this might be a fortress for the Silver Hand. She was supposed to come with me, but she went into labor, so I came alone. I was reckless and angry and I've never been as smart as Vilkas was, so they caught me too. I'm glad you're here."

"So am I." She knew well enough that the Silver Hand cared little whether the members of the Circle had renounced their gift and burning the tortured body of Vilkas' identical twin would have been too much for her to bear.

Arya could feel the haze of rage fading slowly to the fringes of her mind and she hurriedly released Farkas from his cage, unwilling to return to her human body.

"Follow me," she ordered. "Fight if you can, and if you can't, wait until you hear the screams die down."

Farkas nodded, his expression grim.

As they walked on, the floor grew slick beneath their feet, leading the way from the farthest cage to a gruesome torture chamber. Farkas raised a hand to cover his nose and mouth as he surveyed the scene. Arya looked around with a mixture of disgust and anger. It was somewhere like this that Vilkas had been beaten and flayed, ripped apart piece by piece until Gendry Waters had finally given him the mercy of a swift death. Now, both men responsible were dead, but it did not make Vilkas any less so.

"I never thanked you for burning his body," Farkas said quietly, voice muffled beneath his palm. "I don't know if I could have seen what they did."

Arya nodded silently, her throat painfully tight as hot tears welled in her eyes.

"Come on," she said finally, the words shaky and unsure. "There are others still here."

The hall that met them led to another balcony, overlooking a massive chamber with a fire burning at its far edge. There were two soldiers pacing its length, neither aware of the eyes that watched from above. Arya exchanged a glance with her companion and he nodded.

Her paws had just touched the stone below when she heard a roar from above and she turned just in time to see a massive black werewolf leap from the balcony, teeth bared and blue eyes wild. For a moment, she was frozen, painful memories drowning out the shrill cries of terror. She had refused to be a wife, but not a mate, and she had loved him desperately: the beast with the dark fur and pale eyes, fierce and powerful, but in the end, not strong enough to survive.

It was the silence that broke her from her trance and she turned her gaze to her companion as he sat hunched over a steaming corpse. His shoulders were too broad, his fur a shade too dark, and where Vilkas' eyes had shone with a sharp and frightening intelligence, Farkas' burned only with a dull and unquestioning anger.

The sounds of combat had drawn the attention of the fort's last inhabitants and they rushed into the room, swords raised. One wore the armor of an officer, no doubt the last remaining leader of what had once been a full branch of the mighty Imperial Legion. Four others flanked their commander, weapons at the ready, but eyes filled with fear.

"What are you waiting for?" the leader snarled. "Kill these abominations."

They advanced obediently and Arya and Farkas met them in the center of the room, silver blades clashing against claws that dripped with what remained of their fallen brethren. Farkas snarled as the glinting metal slashed across his chest and his retaliating strike sent a fine mist of gore splattering across five pairs of boots. The first body fell with a heavy thud and the next two joined it in moments, Arya's teeth rending through leather and bone as Farkas' massive paws twisted a soldier's head clear around.

When only one remained, the officer joined in the fray. He managed to cut a deep gash across one of Arya's shoulders and she knew it was only a matter of time before the silver's poison seeped into her tainted veins. If she could turn human soon enough, it would be nothing more then a deep cut, but if she stayed in her beast form, it would fester and burn.

Farkas killed the final soldier with a savage growl and then turned his attention to the last living testament to the Silver Hand. Sidestepping a vicious swipe of her claws, the man lunged forward, his sword plunging through Arya's chest and wrenching from his grip. She howled in pain and he staggered backward, the color draining from his face as he found himself unarmed and faced with two pairs of narrow, rage-filled eyes.

"Please," he begged. "Don't kill me. I don't want to die. I'll run away, I'll forget all about you and your kind."

Arya lumbered forward, her gaze black and unforgiving as she ignored his pleas. "The Silver Hand once killed a man. His name was Vilkas, and your men at Gallow's Rock tortured him for nothing more than what he was. I burned a body I hardly recognized and then brought your stronghold to the ground. Do you remember?"

His eyes widened at that. "Gallow's Rock? That was...that was you?" She snarled and he flinched away. "I had no part in what happened there. I never knew a Vilkas, I swear."

"But if he had been here," Arya growled. "You would have been his killer. And so here we are. The Silver Hand will die with you so you can never make another feel the pain you caused us."

Her teeth bared in a grimace of pain and he wailed through his final moments, allowed a death that was cleaner and swifter than what his kind had granted Vilkas.

As his head rolled to her feet she allowed herself to succumb to her pain, sinking to the ground as she felt fumblingly around the blade of the silver sword buried deep in her shoulder. In a moment, Farkas was at her side, his claws retreating as a wan face returned to meet her frenzied eyes.

"Don't turn back," he said desperately, offering a shoulder when she staggered toward him. "It'll kill you if you do. Stay angry, Arya. Remember what they did to him."

She did as he commanded, closing her eyes and conjuring up every image of Vilkas that she could still recall. She thought of their mornings spent in bed, their days under the heat of the sun, the dust of the training yard clinging to their boots, their nights hunting beneath the full moons. She remembered the anger that gripped her tight as Gendry's life flowed into the dirt beneath the Gildergreen.

Their life together flashed behind her eyelids as Farkas dragged her out of the fort, his steps weak but persistent.

"Where can I take you? Who knows what you are? You won't live to reach Whiterun." They emerged beneath the light of the moons and she opened her eyes, gesturing vaguely toward Dawnstar's thatched roofs.

"On the beach," she said hoarsely. "There's a door. Innocence, my brother."

Farkas frowned, but followed the direction, using what remained of his strength to support her weight as they stumbled toward the stony shore. The edges of her vision began to grow dark as the door appeared before them and she fell from Farkas' grasp as it rasped its cryptic question.

"What is life's greatest illusion?"

Her body felt cold, too cold, and as the snow drank the essence from her poisoned veins, she answered the voice that echoed in her mind.

Peace, my brother.


For eight long days, Babette treated Arya's wounds while Farkas and Solara took turns watching over her. The scar from Rorge's blade had barely healed and now there was another beside it. Whether she wanted to believe it or not, it seemed that the gods had a plan for her which she did not understand. If it was peace that she longed for, she would not find it in death. Not yet.

Farkas was at her side when she woke at last, looking decidedly out of place in the Dark Brotherhood sanctuary with his bulky steel armor and heavy war paint. Arya coughed weakly as his gaze shifted toward her and she pulled herself up, a longing ache rising in her chest as she realized that she had been placed in what had once been her and Jaqen's room. It was empty now, save for her lingering memories.

"Farkas..." she rasped, coughing once more. "What happened to you? When I left, you were...human. You had left the Circle behind."

He nodded slowly. "Yes. I did. But then Vilkas died. Our curse had been so important to his life with you, and I thought...I thought that if I turned myself again, he would seem nearer."

"Did it work?"

Even before he shook his head, she knew the answer. "He's still dead, and I lost my wife to my anger. She was forgiving for a time, but I cared more about revenge than I did her, and when she realized it, she left." He looked back at the woman who had almost been his sister. "Don't let that happen to you."

Arya avoided his gaze. She knew what he said was true, but she had tried to forget, and each time Vilkas returned to her in her dreams, his lifeless eyes all-knowing. He saw her guilt, felt the weight of her responsibility, and when she woke, every smile that Jaqen brought to her lips felt like the worst kind of betrayal.

Her eyes began to fill with tears and as she wiped them angrily away Farkas spoke again, his voice soft. "Are you happy, Arya?"

She hesitated, clenching her damp sleeve in her fist and contemplating a lie that would leave them on better terms. In the end, she couldn't lie to him, not when he had nearly been family to her once, in another lifetime. "I don't know."

Farkas nodded. "He would want you to be, you know. It wasn't your fault what happened. Don't spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for something someone else did to him."

Arya nodded silently. Although she hadn't dealt the killing blow, she did feel as though she held some measure of the blame for Vilkas' death. If she had agreed to marry him he would never have been in the woods alone that night, and he would never have been captured. When she was with Jaqen it was easier to forget, but with him gone and Vilkas' twin sitting beside her, she could do nothing but remember.

"If you ever tire of the politics in Solitude, there's always a home for you at Jorrvaskr."

Though Arya nodded again, she knew that she would never return. Jorrvaskr had been home to a woman she no longer was, as had the sanctuary around her.

That night, when the sky grew dark and the moons found their rightful place among the stars, she left those lives behind her. There was still a weight upon her shoulders, but she felt that its burden had been lightened and she began the walk to Solitude with a mind that was clear and blank.

Someday, the gods would grant her her peace, but while she waited, there were those who still remained, and it was for them that she would live.