TW: suicidal thoughts and ideation
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
The horse she'd stolen from the Twins, a tall mare fat with coddling and ragged with unkept coat, had seemed a stupid choice when she'd stood there at the stable doors with a bridle in hand. But more and more every day Arya was learning how wise she'd been to pluck it from the other horses instead of defying time and logic and risking her own neck to find a more suitable mount.
Any other horse would have failed her just north of the Neck, when the winds had started to blow. But the mare just kept walking, or if they stopped turned its back to the wind, and the thick layer of fat it'd had was slowly melting away, keeping it alive.
Arya wished she had the same. But all she had was furs worn near too thin, the best that the guards' bodies had to offer, and a ragged cloak, and her own determination not to freeze. Too, the heat of the beast under her, skin shivering and steaming in the late sun.
It was all she had that was worthwhile, from the Twins, this stupid-sweet horse. Arya'd come away all bruises and hollow eyes and empty belly. Not even happy, not even satisfied. She'd cut off Walder Frey's head, and his sons', and his sons' sons, had wasted the last of her sweetsleep dumping it in their well to even give her the chance of it, and had nearly died herself when a screaming, hysterical boy had shot arrows at her as she fled.
And all she could think then, all the while as blood dried on her stolen furs and the mare broke from scrambled trot to walk and back again, all she could think even now, weeks later, was that the boy had been Bran's age.
Would have been, at least, if Bran had lived. And someone had cut off his father's head, same as someone cut off hers, and she thought t'was justice, but the Lannisters had thought so too, and—
And it made her so tired. All of it, everything.
It was easier to just think about the horse. To just think about the wind as it cut across her face and made her nose run, froze snot in a crust on her skin. They were the only living things left in the entire snowy world, the only things interesting enough to think about that didn't come with sharp hurts. The Freys hadn't given her anything Arya had wanted, just more ugly grey thoughts, and she had enough of those. They crowded her head and kept her from sleeping even those few shivering hours before dawn, when she was too cold and too sleep-stupid to do much but stir and shift closer to the fire.
The sleeve of her shirt was singed, where she'd burnt it two nights ago. The Freys had been a waste of time, and it wasn't like she could be late, where she was going. It wasn't like she wouldn't arrive in time.
But it had been so long, it had taken her so long to even get here, so many miles south still of Winterfell, and Arya ached deep in her chest to be there, and it would be so much harder if she had to travel after the deep snows had built themselves high again.
She had a horse, a stupid horse, but in weather like this, t'was better to be fat and stupid. Being skinny and smart didn't help Arya any. And she'd dealt with the Freys—that was the thought she need cling to. Arya was the last now, and she couldn't just let it be. Couldn't just let them think that breaking promises, breaking guest-right had no consequence. She was a Stark—it was practically her duty.
Something she shied from, that. Thinking of duty made her more tired still, dug past the weariness in her bones and wormed well into her blood itself. There was so much she was supposed to do, to be doing, and so much a Stark had to get done. Winter was coming, winter was here, and—
There were no more Starks to help her with it. The world had killed them all but her, and now Arya had to see to all these things, and she didn't want to. There was no one left to make her, even, not that it lessened the oily guilt.
The road snaked on ahead of her as she crested the hill, flat white land and snowy trees, all the same, same, same.
The Freys had been her duty and she'd done it. She'd had to cross the Twins, and she'd done it. And now this, just next. This last, most, important thing that kept her on the road north, that would take her, someday soon, just past Winterfell's gates.
Winterfell was her duty too. But Arya couldn't, she didn't dare. Some nights, curled into the fading warmth of her huddle, Nymeria lying close and washing at Arya's hair, Arya tried to imagine killing Roose Bolton, playing at his cupbearer again and tipping poison from her hand into the heavy silver goblets her lady mother used to put on the dais table. It felt good to think about, unlike thinking about the Twins. This thought kept her warm.
She tried to imagine killing Theon Turncloak too, sometimes. He'd killed Bran and Rickon. He'd been her brother, in a way. She'd loved him like her brothers; he used to let Arya sit on his shoulders when they went and stole apples from the orchard.
But Starks didn't kill for pleasure, for fun, like ironborn did—they didn't like to kill even as they had to. Not like Boltons did. Mayhaps that was why killing the Freys had just left her cold and grey inside.
And, too, Starks weren't kinslayers, even if Greyjoys were. Theon wasn't her brother anymore, he wasn't, but he was something close enough. Arya couldn't risk angering the gods. She didn't need anymore bad luck on her side.
Under her, the mare snorted. Arya eased the reins, stroked its neck. She didn't like to think of it, but there was nothing else to think about, and it kept sneaking into her head, all these things. Her hands went tight; she made them loose. She looked at the road; she thought of nothing; her mind crept back to it again. The killing, and she was so tired of doing it, even as she wanted to.
Arya hadn't felt like a Stark for a long time, not for true. The dead didn't have names, was what she thought. And the dead didn't have keeps to live in, or beds, or families, or homes. She wasn't dead, not really, only felt like it sometimes, felt the ugly heavy weight of it dragged her closer and closer to the ground.
If she went back to Winterfell, Arya might just crawl into the crypts and stay there. The Boltons wouldn't bother her—no one but Starks could go into the crypts and feel easy, and sometimes not even then. She could find a little niche, near Aunt Lyanna's statue, and curl up there and sleep. She would; it dragged at her like the rest. She'd stay there until maggots ate her eyes and mold ate her skin and she was just clean white bones.
But it wasn't even that, which kept her from going to Winterfell. It was—
It was—
Winterfell was supposed to be a home, good and warm and safe. And Mother was supposed to be there, and Father, and Robb and Bran and Sansa and baby Rickon. She couldn't go to Winterfell if they weren't there and Bolton was.
Mayhaps she'd think, if she didn't already know her death, know it so intimately as a whore knew a lover, that going to Winterfell and seeing it empty, seeing the heavy pink drapes, the skinned man, seeing her little brothers' heads on the gate, seeing all that might kill her.
The kingsroad went past Winterfell, close enough you could see it, close enough you could pass inside. But she wouldn't have to wait that long, even; there would be a hill soon where Arya had once reined her horse and turned and looked back one last time when Father took them south. She'd see the walls from there, the towers. Arya didn't want even that, but the snows were getting deeper and she wasn't sure she could find the road again, not if she left it now and tried to cut around.
And she had to stay on the road. She had to. Wind screamed past her head and blew down her neck and dried her eyes. She kept the reins in hand. She had to stay alive, and moving, and on the road north.
She kept thinking about the Freys, and her family, and everything else, but this was what she thought the most.
She had to keep on the kingsroad. The kingsroad went to the Wall.
The last of the sunlight was dripping away. It was time to make camp soon, or risk freezing. And she was glad for it, for how tired she was. For the horse slowing unhappily under her. For want of sleep, the most, though.
Long hours eked out of the short days—Arya was trying to move as fast as she could now, still south of danger. She'd have to travel in the night, the closer she got; she couldn't risk capture now. If someone saw her, if she had to flee into the wilds and leave her supplies behind, she'd die of the cold.
Arya couldn't die here. She wouldn't let herself. She had to go—
She had to think. There wasn't time for dreaming, right now. It used to snow when she was little, but never like this. The heavy blanket whiteness made everything foreign.
It made everything frightening.
Sometimes things looked familiar. Sometimes she was even right, dredging up old and crumbling memories to guide her there. There was a stream somewhere nearby, she thought. She thought she remembered it. So much had changed, had died since she was a child. The snow ate it all. But she thought, there past that thick stand of pines, was where they'd watered the horses once when she and Jon had gone riding with a hunt.
If Winterfell was full of ghosts, then Jon was everywhere in the north.
But there was no time for dreaming, now. She'd ride to the trees and camp there; even if there wasn't good water, she'd have firewood enough to waste melting snow and boiling it to drink.
Twice in the Neck, she'd drank from still pools out of desperation. The snow wasn't so thick there, muddy handfuls when she scraped it up. It was a lesson learned; moving water or boiled snow, nothing else.
She and the horse both put their heads down from the wind, and Arya prodded the mare forward, and she thought nothing, just a blank and empty nothingness, windscream and snow and fading sky, as they crept closer.
She was shivering cold even through her clothes, by the time she stumbled off the horse's back. She lashed it to a tree—the horse was too stupid to wander but if something scared it, it might run and Arya couldn't chase it. Her bones hurt far too much for more than a shambling walk.
It was slow dreary work every night, scraping snow down to bare ground for the fire, mounding it into a wind break big enough to hide her body behind, making sure the horse wouldn't freeze in the night. The trees, branches arching over head, would help keep in heat. She took a stick and knocked snow from their boughs, watching it fall.
Once her father had ordered men to cut the branches high within so many miles of their farms and holdfasts; once her great grandfather had ordered these clusters of trees planted all along the roads—they'd done their duty to their people.
Sometimes it seemed like only ghosts were keeping Arya alive.
She built up firewood but left it unlit, set her sparkstone near it. Better to get water now; she was too stupidly weak to leave the fire if she got it nice and hot. Every day it was harder to force herself to work, to move, to live, but she did. She did. She peeled off her wet gloves, and untied the bucket from her saddle, and went to go find out whether she'd lied again to herself or not.
She had to do it sometimes, little lies. It wasn't so much colder tonight than the night before. It isn't so horrible, swallowing down pine-needle tea just to have something other than water in her belly. It wasn't so far, not truly.
But the closer to Winterfell she got, the more every little lie unraveled. There was a stream there, just beyond the trees, ice crust and fast water still rushing under it.
She was so tired. The sun was sinking down so far now. Just the water, then she'd sleep, and tomorrow wouldn't be so bad.
Careful, she had to be careful now. Even a day's rest to nurse a turned ankle would cost her so much time. She couldn't be late, but she felt so impatient, measuring the distance in her head every morning. Arya eased her foot down to one of the rocks on the slope of the bank, bucket in one hand, and looked up just in time to see something move, white on white on white across the water.
There wasn't time for dreaming. But habit and darkness and want, want for something more than another grey evening, another grey night with nothing good in it, nothing to hold to herself beyond the hope of a place so distant that it might have been the moon, made her cry out, pleading, "Ghost!"
She took a step closer, trying to see, and her foot skid out from under her. She broke the ice crust with her body when she fell, and sank into water so cold that it stole her breath before she could even scream.
It hurt. It hurt, it burned. She'd been sleeping, she'd rolled into the fire. The water closed over her head. Mud under her hands, skidding slippery. She planted her fists, and shoved, and broke the surface long enough to bite down sobbing air.
It would be so easy not to. Her arms trembled, cold-lashed, aching. It would be so easy to lie back down and let the water close over her head. Nymeria had pulled her lady mother from the water once, let her do it again, the daughter now. Everything was a fight, and everything hurt, even inside her own head, all the time and forever.
It would be so easy just to lay down and press her face to the mud and sleep.
She lost her grip, sputtered up again. Water stung her eyes, set them running. The wolf on the bank stared down at her, white ears forward, red eyes blank. No hope, no help, just watching coldly.
She'd played with Ghost when he was a puppy, held his little body on her lap. He used to tug at her hand like t'was a toy. She had no time left for dreaming. She didn't think Ghost would just watch her die.
She didn't want to wait and find out. If he did, if he just stood there—
There was so little left of Arya's heart. Another blow and it would shatter like fragile steel, left frozen cold before that last strengthening fold.
She couldn't die here, she couldn't. Gasping, weeping, she clawed herself from the stream and onto the bank. Made herself move, before she could freeze in place. Stood shivering in the air. Everything hurt. Everything ached, everything was broken and rotted and they'd find her here in the spring, all burst open with maggots inside.
She couldn't— she couldn't— she had to get to the Wall, this time. She'd failed, every other time. But not now. She couldn't, not now— She had to see Jon again.
She staggered up the bank again and back to the little hollow she'd scraped up. Someone was making a horrible noise, scaring the horse; it retreated to the end of the rope and shuddered frantically, same as her.
The sparkstone was just there. She fumbled her knife from her belt, her fingers trembling the whole time, and tried to crash them together. The world was swimming, grey around the edges, and her chest ached and she was so afraid, afraid that she would die here, and finally, finally, she managed it, caught her finger between the two in a painful blow but scraped enough sparks down onto the dry wood that it caught flame.
She couldn't let it die. Her hands ached, all of her hurt so badly, and she was making a horrible noise, a wet whining noise spaced by heavy horrible barks of sobs. Slow, torturously slow, she laid branches on the fire, one by one, trying not to knock it all apart, until it burned so big and so hot that she could feel it across her face.
Having a fire was dangerous, anyone could see. Anyone could come and strike her dead. The water in her boots was already freezing, and the world was grey and cold and there was nothing good left in it—Arya crawled as close to the fire as she could, until she was almost lying in it, and shut her eyes.
She needed a moment, just a bare second, to catch her breath around the sounds she kept making. And then she'd get out of her wet clothes. She'd tug the furs from her pack and let her things dry without freezing to her skin, and she'd go to the Wall, she would.
She hugged her knees up to her chest, feeling like she might fly apart, like a boot struck through crystal ice. There was nothing good left in the world. She shut her eyes, and tried to stop sobbing.
Arya woke up warm, and she could have cried out from relief. She cried out from fear instead, thrusting aside the heavy weight on her, against her, and scrambling desperately to her feet.
And then she stilled, panting in air so cold it hurt her chest. To be warm, to be comfortable, to be happy—t'was to be dead.
Or dreaming. Ghost rolled over to look at her, his eyes and ears saying he was confused, even if he couldn't warble out a pissy question the way that Nymeria did from her sprawl across the fire. Both their muzzles were deeply red, slick still with blood. Had Nymeria heard her sobbing? Arya couldn't remember reaching for her, but she did it sometimes without thought, did it sleeping.
The fire was still burning. She was damp, and warm, and her leg pained her fiercely, a deep throbbing pain that promised bruises for ages to come. She'd had this kind of dream before, half-truth and half-false. She'd been chased through the Riverlands and up the Neck by dreams like this.
T'was the same as turning your mind elsewhere, to escape choking down bad food, or stitching a wound on yourself, or thinking and moving and working just after something horrible had happened. To escape and to do it, both at once. A trick of the mind, to keep yourself from shattering, and sometimes it happened on its own.
The kindly man had told her dreams like this were dangerous.
But that didn't mean she couldn't like it. Arya knelt back down, and let Ghost scramble closer, let him bathe her aching burning hands in long slow licks to soothe the skin, then shoved her face to his neck, her arms about his back.
Wolf-scent, familiar and good. Half-dream, half-lie, and she didn't dare touch Nymeria where she lay, lest she feel only air and ruin it. Arya had been lucky before to survive it, to not turn to a sheet of ice. She had no energy left for weeping. If she cried now, her eyes might freeze shut.
Her things were where she'd left them, and the heavy branches she was camping under had kept the worst of the snow off her saddle, her pack, herself. She scraped the rest of it away from her things and dug out the fur leggings she'd kept in reserve, afraid of her moon-blood coming. She took the rags too, to wrap her feet.
There seemed to be no point in keeping them separate now. She could feel her own ribs through her jerkin, through the furs even, if she pressed down hard enough. Blood stopped when you starved. She peeled off her breeches, feeling the leather unstick in slow agony from her bloody leg, and didn't make a noise.
Ghost was curled back up by the fire. T'was a dream; she could let herself think that it was him. Arya cuddled close to his side, tore off her stockings and boots, and set them nearly in the embers to dry. Her toes were filthy, bruised, but she had feeling in them all. She wrapped them tight, wedged her feet under Ghost's legs, and spread her breeches across her lap.
She stitched the tear closed again, her hands aching from holding the needle, forcing it through the leather, then tied her work off and thrust them aside. Dry, she needed all her things dry if she was riding off at first light.
She couldn't be late, but she couldn't spare the time, either.
The horse was dozing, tucked best as it could make itself out of the wind. It was starving, too. There had been grain, after the Twins, but that was gone now. Sometimes she dreamed about Freys, but sometimes everything she'd seen, she'd done, felt impossibly far away.
Arya couldn't keep herself fed, not well, not even with Nymeria bringing her snowhares and birds and squirrels still hot with fresh blood. Eating, drinking—she had to imagine lemon cakes, Sansa pouring out steaming tea. Feeding Rickon from her own spoon, watching him smear turnips across his face. Everything was ash in her mouth, tasteless. Sorrowful, that she was there to eat it at all.
Arya was so tired, so endlessly exhaustedly tired. The horse couldn't starve. She shoved herself to her feet and went to go dig snow off whatever winter grass she could find. She didn't have a spade, and the work was too slow if she used a stick. She wanted to sleep, before the sun came crawling back. She wanted Ghost with her, to touch him and curl close, before the dreaming was done.
Her hands were a horror. Her gloves were—somewhere—but they wouldn't have helped any. There was a crust of ice across the snow, sharp on her wrists as she reached her hands into the hollows she made, again and again.
Dried grass, dead grass. She pulled loose handfuls of it free. The horse was going to die, and she would have to walk, and—
And panic circled a hand loose around her throat, at any moment threatening to squeeze. She'd walk. She'd walk. She was going to go to the Wall.
Dreaming within dreaming. She would be used to this by then, used to breaking through the hard ice, used to burning her hands with snow as she shoveled it away in handfuls so cold they didn't even melt at her touch.
This was a familiar dream, a good dream. The sound of men in the background, there still but all of them letting her be. The ground hard under her knees, but not so cold through the leggings. She could put her breeches back on, when they were dry in the morning. Two layers would better help her stop shaking, and that would make mounting easier.
If she was less afraid of falling and not finding a rock, a log tall enough to help her get back on, she could lead the horse at midday, to help keep it fresher. She could walk beside it, slower as it would be.
And when she was there, this. She didn't know where, exactly, close to the Wall itself, or in some yard, or wherever. But t'was there. Arya would find it. There were men there who'd know, surely. Someone who'd see her face and help her.
She was going to the Wall to find Jon, and she looked so much like him still, more now that her hair was so short again, and they wouldn't be able to mistake her for anyone else. She had dreamed this, digging grass so often as she did, that it was worn soft and familiar as a little girl's rag-doll.
They'd know she had come for Jon, and they'd lead her there to him.
Somewhere out there, the dark scorched spot, maybe hidden where the fire had melted through the snow all the way to the ground and been covered again. It was good she'd be so used to digging, so used to seeing under snow with just her aching burning hands. There'd be ashes to find then, not grass, grey ash, and greasy from the fat, and when she touched it, she'd be able to feel the sharp little bits of bone.
Arya would find it. She'd dig the snow out until she could see it, even if it made her hands bleed. Even if it made her hands fall off.
And when she did, she'd take off the ratty cloak, the heavy patched furs that couldn't keep the cold out. She'd strip down to her skin and stand in the wind until it stopped hurting. It would, eventually. The cold would numb you down.
She'd asked the kindly man before she left, just to make sure. She'd wanted to plan it, needed this promised certainty. There was nothing left but this, and she needed this.
And when it didn't hurt anymore, because being near Jon had never hurt, not ever, she'd curl up there with Needle in her hand. Lie down there in among the ashes, as close as she could get. Skin to skin.
Sometimes you'd get so cold that your brain would make you think it was hot. The kindly man said it would feel like burning. But Arya didn't mind that. The fire had been hot, too—it would be just another type of closeness.
She was so tired. T'was just dirt under her hands now, frozen too solid to dig into. She rose, keeping her hands close to her ribs for a bit to warm them, hugging herself, then gathered up the grass and brought it to the horse.
It snorted at her, danced away, settled. She warged it sometimes, like she had the cats in Braavos—the only way to keep it from shying at Nymeria—but she was too tired now, too cold. The horse crept closer, and dropped its head to nose at the grass, then started to eat.
It ate. It'd have to drink, eventually. Her bucket was there still, tossed on its side on the bank. She was swaying now, clutching at the tree truck where she'd lashed the horse. To touch anything hurt. To be colder would kill her.
She couldn't die here. In the morning, she'd get water. It could wait a while. It could wait.
She limped back to the fire, circling wide around Nymeria where she lay, and shoved more branches into the flames. She could no more fight right now than she could sprout wings and fly, but things like that didn't matter when you were dreaming.
The world was smoother, softer. Arya sank down next to Ghost, curled her knees to her chest and hugged them, felt Ghost curl tighter around her. She ignored the way he bent his head and licked at her hair.
It would be easier, in the morning. It would. She'd be done dreaming by then, rested from this. She'd tack the mare back up, and guide her back to the road, and they would go north to the Wall.
To Jon.
The firelight crept across her face. She shut her eyes. Like this, comforted, almost warm, Arya might be anywhere. The nursery, curled on the hearth rug as Old Nan told her horrible wonderful tales. A child still, and loved, and her family still so many, and safe.
Old Nan used to tell them that they burned their dead at the Wall, to keep them from turning into wights. But Arya had gone and asked Father and he'd said t'was out of respect. That it wasn't respectful to keep the bodies in the ice, like so many slabs of meat, goat and cow and man all packed together.
Jon had used to hold her like this, tucked safe in the curve of his body. She wanted, so badly, just to see him again.
What was a body, when someone was dead, except meat? She'd learned it in the House, learned it in her dreams. Arya wished they hadn't burned him. She wanted more than anything one last chance to see, to touch. To wrap herself in furs to keep the cold off and curl into the hard shape of a chest and arm.
Jon wouldn't look the same. The eyes always went milky white or fogged grey. Cool grey like fog sweeping across Ragman's harbor. The face would sink into itself, and delicate skin would frost-burn to deep blues and blacks.
But nothing could change Jon so much that she wouldn't know him, not even death. She wished they hadn't burned him, even if it made him into a monster. T'was getting dark now, and her eyes ached. Old Nan had always said that wights were evil, that they'd eat little girls up.
She didn't care. If Jon tore her apart and ate her, she'd at least still be with him. Or he could make her a wight too, and they could go across the Wall and raid wildlings together. It couldn't hurt, Arya thought, not worse than this, whatever happened to make a wight into a wight.
She would dream about that for now, she decided. About being a wight with Jon, about the cold and the hunger and the hurt not touching her anymore. They could be chiseled out of ice, all the wet pained meat sloughed off to make something new, could be made into something as beautiful as sunlight on fresh snow, something clean and untouched and horrible and good.
And together. Whatever they were made into, t'would be the same thing, and close, and nothing would part them.
They'd be together then, and safe. Wights slept under the snow to escape the cold, Old Nan always said. When Arya got to the Wall, when she'd found Jon and laid down beside him, she'd let the snow fall across her and cover her up again.
Her dreaming was good, this time. The snow would come, and then the dark like t'was coming now, and Jon would be behind her, stroking her hair, and after a while he'd get up and so would she, and they'd be together again.
Nymeria was warm behind her. Across the fire, Nymeria was licking ice from the pads of her paws. Winterfell was so close, and the Wall wasn't so far after that. And all the while she'd be going where Jon had gone, and she could catch up to him at last.
She couldn't be too late. It would be harder, if the deep snows came first, but not impossible. There was no worry for that—that she'd miss him by a second, by an hour, by a heartbeat, like Father and Mother and Robb. Jon was safe where he was, and he was waiting for her. Arya shut her eyes again and slept at last.
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
—John Donne, Holy Sonnets: Death, be not proud
Sequel scheduled for May 7th