Summary: Arya kills the Night King during The Long Night, before driving her gifted dagger through his stomach, he grabbed her arm, burning her with his cold touch. Arya doesn't know what it means to be touched by death but waking up in a tournament that should have stayed long buried within history's walls and encountering a beautiful silver-haired Prince, she's about to find out.
Word count outside of Author Notes (Full Story): 18, 897 words.
Warning: Story contains Cheating/Infidelity and Mature Themes.
A/N: To start off I want to say that I have always wanted a Arya/Rhaegar fanfiction story but there hasn't ever been a concrete one in the fandom, I've seen little teases of them and hints of them here and there and also nowhere lol so I decided to stop waiting for someone else to make one and just take it upon myself and make my own. It's kind of amazing to me that more people haven't seen the potential in this relationship considering all the similarity's between Arya and Lyanna.
I feel I should mention that I am a huge Arya/Jon fan, so my bias does somewhat leak into this story. You can find it in the way Arya thinks about Jon and her comparisons to some things, I added this warning into my notes just to cover my bases but nothing ever actually happens with them. Just a forewarning, Lyanna's timeline is a little mixed up and muddled, some stuff might not match the actual time line in the books and/or the show.
I had a lot of fun getting this story started and I'm looking forward to writing the rest of it and I hope everyone will love reading it, please just keep in mind not to take it so seriously, it's just fanfiction (I mean this in the most positive way, I love fanfiction) there's no need to come for my head though if you don't like what I've wrote, please keep any reviews kind and respectful, that would be much appreciated.
I apologize for the long author's note, without further ado...
Hope you guys enjoy :)
Chapter One: A Frozen Touch
Her arm is cold to the bone where the Night King grazed his blue fingers before she killed him. Her grip on the dagger she used to stab him with, the one Bran gifted her not that long ago, loosens and the pretty weapon falls to the floor, no sound is made where it buries into the soft snow beneath her feet. The veins under her skin are like ice, she's scared to move her arm in fear that it'll shatter like glass. She wants to carefully cradle it to her chest but she leaves it hanging limply by her side.
From the corner of her eye, through the debris that falls from skies above, she sees Jon. He's running toward her but he stops when he sees her, motionless and still in shock over what she just managed to accomplish. The Long Night turned out to not be so long after all.
Bran is behind her, he's looking at her arm with knowing eyes but he doesn't say anything, for that she's grateful. She should be asking him if she's okay, if her arm will freeze off, if she'll die because she made the mistake of not moving fast enough to avoid the Night King's frozen touch. But she doesn't, she can't even say why she doesn't, the questions are there on her tongue, ready to be asked but her mouth doesn't move and no sounds come out.
Jon gets ahold of himself, snapping out of his self-induced shock and rushes to her, he's asking questions, his mouth is working for him unlike hers. Bran answers his questions with the monotone voice he seemed to pick up after becoming the three-eyed raven. Arya tries not to worry so much about what it means to be touched by death, she's almost positive that if something was wrong Bran would tell her and he doesn't look concerned so she tries not to be concerned about it to, but the sharp chill in her arm is bitter and distracting.
"I'm fine Jon." Her voice finally breaks through her throat, Jon is worse than a mother hen looking over her baby chick, he's convinced that she's not okay but with help from Bran she's able to escape his words of concern. Arya's not going to mention the unfortunate incident, not to Jon (not to anyone), it's the last thing that needs to be on her brother's mind. Plus it's likely if she says something, they'll lock her away in the infirmary to be looked over by a Maester and that's not what she needs right now. What she needs is to be warm, the cold is spreading, thinning her blood and turning her already pale skin lighter.
The wind around them blows with a fierce chill, a beast as large as a castle lands next to them to let off its rider before taking off into the darkness, it's black scales blend and hide it within the smoke. The Dragon Queen that Jon has been infatuated with is striding toward them with an air of confidence that Arya thinks is unwarranted. She doesn't care much for the Dragon Queen and truthfully she doesn't understand Jon's fascination with her either, she's very pretty Arya will admit that but there is madness in her eyes. She's walking wildfire waiting to be set off so she can destroy everything in her path, and Arya doesn't want Jon to get burned for being too close.
"Sister, perhaps you should go get cleaned up and get some rest." Bran suggests to her, in another life where Arya wasn't so foolish in battle she would have argued, saying she needs to be here, needs to know who's alive and who's dead. Instead of wasting breath that she doesn't have in a halfhearted argument that she knows is pointless though, she nods her head.
She doesn't say anything to the Dragon Queen, doesn't even look her way, Arya leans up on tiptoes and brings Jon's form down to crush it to hers, his arms wrap like a vice around her, she doesn't want to let go, but she has to so she pulls away. She stares at Jon's scarred and ashed face for a while longer before she turns away. She walks the small distance to Bran's wheelchair and bends down to hug him as well, he gives her a look she doesn't understand but with company present she can't very well ask without outing herself, so instead she turns on her heel and marches away from them.
It's a while before she's able to get through the debris and the people who seem lost with no direction or order. The bodies of the dead litter every inch of surface and Arya's short legs struggle to maneuver around them. She's walking as fast as she can, sidestepping the objects that get in her way, pieces of buildings, dead people, and live people alike.
It feels like years before she reaches the room Sansa assigned to her when she arrived at Winterfell. When Sansa brought her here that first time Arya was determined to not stay in the room, saying she was fine with a cot in any small space that was open, telling her sister someone else can have the large room with the big bed that has far too many furs on it.
Her sister's argument was that Arya is a Lady of Winterfell, a Stark, and in so being that she will have a room to herself and will not argue about it. She was unhappy with that at the time, not liking how she was dubbed "a lady" once more, a title she took no pride in. Now she's grateful and if she remembers she'll be sure to thank Sansa on the morrow for pushing the room on her.
Truthfully Arya is surprised to see it still standing, so much was destroyed of her home. On the walk here all she could see was fire burning everything that she ever held dear, her home, her people, her childhood, her father's home, the home she fought so hard to get back to. She was glad to see her room managed to go untouched, she doesn't know what she would be doing had it been burned along with everything else.
No sooner does the door close behind her is Arya stripping out of her leather jacket and pants that resemble the ones her father use to wear. She's trembling, her steps are rocky and uneven as she makes her way to light a fire. So much was blazing outside that it would seem unneeded but the air was thin and her shivers were getting worse. Once the fire starts going and the warmth from it starts spreading to the room, she walks to her bed, next to it is a basin of water with a clean rag the handmaids Sansa assigned to her brought in early that morning that she didn't use.
She expects the water to feel cold on her skin but it's not, her skin is frost, she tries to make quick work of rubbing the rag over the blood and dirt that cake her. Half her arm is purple, the veins around the spot the Night King touched are black, like an infection, it's spreading. It's impossible to wipe off all the grime that's on her, there's too much and the rag is dirty, it's just pushing the dirt along instead of removing it so she drops the rag into the water and gets in the bed.
The furs are soft against her skin, Arya bunches them up around her and buries her face into them. The last thought she has before she falls asleep is that she hopes if something was wrong Bran wouldn't keep that information to himself.
Hope you guys enjoyed, feel free to drop a review :)