What is West of Westeros?
It turns it is something vaster that mere sea- six months of a first journey discover nothing but more water, but Arya Stark was never one to be easily deterred by hardship.
She came back empty handed at Westeros ' shores the first four times- her ship testing how far they could go without incurring in food shortage, mapping the skies... putting at rest a couple of mutinies, avoiding one spectacularly vicious sea storm.
She learned that with too much time far away from land makes men become different - some downright crazy- that open sea elicits a special brand of fear, both when the weather is so still the ship is struck, and when it is so violent you are nearly sure you are going to die on the bottom of sea.
She learned that leading a ship, especially if you are a woman, is very much about keeping your head when others are losing it around you, and forcing them to keep themselves in check.
She learned that the sea is a stranger, giving nothing away, and that it makes her to feel at once powerfully alive and as powerfully close to her god as she was in the House Of Black and White.
The vast blue depths are both life and death.
What is West Of Westeros?
She finds out at the end of the fifth journey : a smattering of islands with a strange, dry but windy climate, sandy and rocky soil that gives nourishment to trees that grow twisted to not oppose the powerful, constantly hissing winds.
There are plants she has never known- some of them prove poisonous to the sailors that try to eat the fruits or touch the flowers.
What strikes her the most is the animals: a species of small sized, blue feathered falcons, pink birds that dwell near lakes with very funny nearly squared beaks, small monkeys that eat insects and move by night.
There's people too, living there, their skin black as coal and their eyes pale blue or green, their hair always frizzy and various shades of brown, dwelling in cities not too different from the ones she left behind.
The language barrier and the hostility of natives are probably an obstacle she would have not lived to get past if she had not stolen a couple of faces and warged in a couple of birds to get a lay of the land.
She tries to establish a ground for future trading with one the local kings, but she meets a lot of resistance in convincing them Westeros is not going to move to invade them, now they are going to be on their maps.
Because it scares her that she can't promise them that, can't promise that Essosi slavers won't target them too, she tries even harder to offer the protection of a formal alliance with Bran.
She feels like a fraud for it - the culture here is very different... each island is fractured in several indipendent states all allied through marriage, but all regions observe a nearly complete gender equality - women don't simply fight or inherit land here, but they are considered eligible to the same employment as men. Some states do allow the smallfolk to partake in 'temporary ' marriages with the one purpose of begetting children - lasting by contract from one year to ten.
Some families consider the woman as the head of the family, and not the man. Religious practices center around poisoning the initiates into ecstasy and trances.
Westeros would not enjoy the islands and the islanders would most likely not like Westeros.
Still, Arya tries to speak her piece while she weights her options, tries until she and her crew are 'taken in custody' by local government. The kings decided to eliminate the problem simply not allowing the newcomers to leave. Ever.
They are imprisoned for months, and five of her men die in cells, struck by a 'red fever' native children apparently experience often with no issue.
Arya thinks of biding her time, stealing a face, stealing back her ship.
*They* know what she can do tough- they found her faces in the cabin, and now deem her a special brand of criminal, guilty of killing three of their own ( no matter if they attacked her first).
She has chains with heavy iron balls to both her wrists and ankles, and they never lower their guard around her.
But she does not give up.
Even through the rage and the sadness and the isolation of her cell, she waits for an opportunity.
She has nothing but time.
Her mind wanders back, to Bran, to Sansa, to Jon.
It's against her better judgement she hopes someone might come looking for her.
There are no weirdwoods here, no eyes for Bran to see through.
He did not know what was west of Westeros neither.
He or Sansa might send ships after hers but perhaps not if they think her ship sank.
Would have Bran let her go if he had known she was not to return?
Certainly not, she wants to believe.
Yet he did let Theon die protecting him, even knowing from the beginning she was meant to slay the Night King - she is last to complain about Theon dying, but she does not understand why he did not hint the other man to just bide his time and slow down the ice creature. It might have worked out even better.
He also had allowed Jon to march straight to his doom, but that was also a point Arya did not feel free of debating.
She was guilty too, of encouraging Jon in that particular direction, even if she had not wholly believed how much she would have succeeded.
She remembers at the beginning, when Jon came to Winterfell with dragons, a foreign queen and an army of warriors unlike any other.
She had snuck among the common folk, content in that childlike surety her favorite brother would have looked among thousand faces and recognized *her*, grown up but still Arya Underfoot somewhere inside.
She had actually been stupidly disappointed when his horse went past her, and he turned to look at the Dragon Queen instead, leaning in to tell her something that made her to smile far too wide.
From that moment onwards, Arya Stark had felt definitely ill- disposed to like Daenerys Targaryen, although she would not admit it until much after.
Jon would just make it worse in the following days, split as he seemed to be between avoiding the other woman and staring after her with a look halfway between a longing and remorse every time she was not looking back to him.
Arya had been ... tired and homesick and half- bitter that Winterfell no longer felt like home. The pack was together at last, but nothing was going as it was supposed to. Sansa still had the mean streak of when they were younger, but her romanticism had soured into a chilly, biting diffidence. She was ... still Sansa, but she held other people at distance, in a way that suggested that her mind was constantly playing a game where she alone could be the victor. It was sadly evident her time with the Lannister's had left a lasting imprint.
And the more Arya stood by her, the more she felt her inner Lannister emerging too - where else could have come from, that attitude that everyone but them was the enemy?
Bran was the worst tough- he did not even consider himself Bran Stark when she first met him, and only gods knew if he even considered them his sisters.
Arya had figured that she would feel more like her old self when Jon came back, but despite their heartfelt reunion she had felt distant from him too.
She had felt adrift, disconnected from that childhood she held on in memory with all of her, when she was in Bravos. Like she wanted to chase something whose name did not know.
The one time that sensation had left her had been her time with Gendry.
Maybe because he had known different parts of her, maybe because he did not expect anything but her to be herself, maybe because he was soft and gentle in all ways she was not without being weak.
She was glad he had settled up fine without her in the end - he had married the daughter of one of his bannermen, and last time she had checked on him, he had looked well, an affectionate husband and father, decently handling his lordly matters.
He was well liked, and he had the family he always wanted.
Thinking he was safe and well left her always with a bittersweet feeling.
He could not be the last man she took to bed, but he was the one she could have settled, if she had felt ever remotely inclined to be a wife and a mother. He was the sort of man who would nnot have minded her ways and she could have loved him.
She had never found the words to tell him she came back to Winterfell wrong too - her pack was fractured from the inside and she felt restless, caged, like she wanted just to roam free, fly away somewhere nobody knew her, where she could be anyone and the past was only a shadow.
She had nothing to give to Gendry or anyone else anymore, outside a fistful of moments.
She had become the lone wolf that always survived but always wandered too, at the edge of other packs' territories.
Well, this time she had wandered too far.
Jon...
Maybe if she snuck her way out of this one, she would go to the Wall and apologize.
For what exactly? For trying to turn him against Daenerys Targaryen?
Her judgment of the woman had been proved right, for the most.
But probably a good sister should not have felt like she had to make her brother choose between two sides of her family. Possibly she should have felt guilty or ashamed because even before that she had stood by Sansa in trying to convince him to renege on his oath of fealty once they had finished exploiting the Dragon Queen armies.
That had been dishonorable and dishonest behavior in itself... it had been a very not Stark thing to think or suggest at war, above everything else, a thing that went against all Ned And Catelyn Stark had tried to instill in their children growing up.
Arya did not want to think she went along with it only because she had felt like she had to press Jon to remember he was on *their* side. She did not want to think she had helped to ruin Jon's life only because she had felt petty and insecure.