King's Landing
Like cattle, Lyra was branded.
"Outsider" was forged by flame and a sharp wire on the underside of her right forearm. The cruel boy had taken over the beatings and brainwashing of Lyra now that her body and mind had broken, and thought it would bode him well, and make Ser Deacon proud, if he were to mark the girl forever. The engraving of the dreaded word was a token for all to know that the girl was a monster.
Lyra was barely conscious, and had closed her mind. She lay there, dead to the world, all day and every day. No thoughts, as it would seem, entered her mind but one – Vicious little monster.
No longer could she deny it, it was now engraved in her skin. Forever shunned, forever hated, forever to be spat upon and kicked into the dust. The girl accepted what she had tried so hard to fight – the crime was that of being an Outsider, and that crime deserved a punishment.
At once, all the weeping she had concealed deep within her little body, all the nights she'd howled to the moon in a desperate plea for mercy, all the times she bit her lip until it bled as the axe handle cracked down hard on her body tumbled out with furious haste. She was on her knees, cowering in the shadows, her weak and bone thin arms were hiding her face in terror.
She was raising the white flag to the figure looming above – the God of Death – and yelled, "I surrender!"
She was broken. She was shattered. She was a whisper, a ghost, of the girl that departed Winterfell, and suddenly she had to accept the reality that she would never return home.
She would be beside her father once more, yet in a way she had never fathomed. Her head would be on a spike, blackened by tar for preservation. Dead, but together - the Stark chain was breaking here in this world, but as each of the Stark's howled in surrender at the end of their days, they would yield to the God of Death and die…and the Stark chain would bind once more.
Only in death was there mercy.
In life there was no mercy. Mercy did not exist.
Proving her theory that for so long she tried to deny, the cruel toad of a boy cackled at the door of her room and picked his teeth with a knife. Not just any knife – Wolf. Wolf wasn't just some chunk of steel, it was Jon. It was the memory of his kindness, his love for her, his similarity and understanding. He was a Bastard, she an Outsider – they bonded as outcasts. They were alone, but together; they were different, but the same. United by their uniqueness, and the hatred all had for them.
When Lyra hugged Wolf, it was her way of hugging the brother she longed for, it was like he was hugging her back. And now there he was – Jon – picking the teeth of the boy who would probably beat her and torment her until the sun rose once more.
Yet, Lyra just lay there, trying to think anything but "vicious little monster". It rattled around in her mind, but she was certainly not gone. She was still clever, and a convoluted escape was unfolding. It was to come in the way of the only two weapons Lyra knew for sure she had with her presently – her brain, and the rusty nail she had been twisting out of the floor boards for the past days.
Such an escape could only happen if Lyra embraced her inner monster. If she were born a monster, she would make those who unleashed her regret it. They would claw and scratch at the earth, they would dig their way to hell to escape the hell she would bring upon them.
An Outsider, as her wise Maester had once said, always had a plan.
She had no name.
She had no family.
But, boy, did she have a plan.