I know I said you could skip the first Arya chapter, but this one has a little SanSan so maybe you will read it? All the subplots are important, I promise!

Please let me know what you think of the story by leaving a review!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own ASOIAF, I just love it.

CHAPTER 15

ARYA

Arya never told anyone what happened to her in the desert temple, and no one ever asked. Sometimes she had nightmares about the girl, but that was only when she forgot to say her prayers. Most of the time her prayers were what she used to fall right asleep. Best of all, the wolf dreams were stronger than ever. More often her roommate, a soft girl with milk-white skin and dark eyes and hair, would shake her awake in the middle of the night. "You were growling," she explained when Arya protested.

Arya was eager to begin her senior training. Her duties became more serious as she was given more responsibilities. Arya helped her Lyseni swordmaster coach the younger students for an hour a day, and instead of one day of service a week at temple she put in three. But what Arya was really looking forward to was the class restricted to those students who had passed the desert test—the lessons she would need to learn to become one of the Faceless Men.

They met in a basement classroom. What light there was came from the candles on their desks. Jars of pickled pieces of things lined the shelves behind their teacher's table. Gogo was there, along with Arya's roommate, Mym, and half a dozen other students Arya didn't care for. Their teacher was a sour man with a hunched back, who barged into the room twenty minutes late on the first day.

Arya was disappointed that he was not Jaqen. "Everyone is here," he said, oggling his students with a misshapen eye. He walked up to Gogo, who could barely contain his excitement to start learning even with the long wait they'd endured.

"You. You look like you'd say that's a good thing. Would you say that's a good thing?"

"Yes," Gogo agreed.

"WELL IT'S NOT!" He slammed a palm down on the table and the candle wobbled in its stand. Gogo jumped.

"Who are you!"

"No one!" Gogo responded, the way they'd all been taught to.

"Then why are you here?"

"Uh!"

"If all of you are no one then why is everyone HERE!"

All of the students shrank into their chairs, trying their best to look like they weren't sitting in them. Their teacher's voice lowered to a menacing grumble.

"By the time I'm done with you, you will be able to melt into the shadows, impersonate kings, even fool parents into thinking you are their trueborn children. You will finally discard those meaningless identities you hold so precious. Only when you are no one can you become anyone. You there. Open the cabinet behind you, and get out the books."

Books? Arya frowned, but their teacher explained that only with theoretical knowledge would they be able to master the practical art of face-changing.

Gogo caught up with Arya and Mym when they were heading up the stairs. "I don't get what he was yelling at me about. Are we not supposed to come to class?"

Arya rolled her eyes, but Mym thought that was funny and laughed.

As it turned out, the class that was supposed to teach them how to change the shape of their face was easily the most boring one they had to sit through. They spent long hours pouring over dusty textbooks that were so old the faded writing looked like it had been penciled in a hundred years ago. Arya thought that was a stupid. She knew for a fact that half the students in the room couldn't read.

Every day their teacher would begin each lesson with "Today I am going to teach you the secret of becoming a Faceless Man," and every day they proceeded to open the big, ugly, musty, stupid textbook.

Arya propped her book up and rested her chin on the table. Inside were illustrations of human musculature and anatomy, faces with the skin peeled off. Her teacher was droning on and on. She still had skin on her eyelids, and it felt heavy. She smiled to herself. She didn't really need to listen, she already knew how to change her shape. She could become a wolf—in her dreams.

And suddenly she was. She was running through the forest with her nose to the ground. There were so many scents-rabbit, birch, wind, sap, reed, muskrat, mulch, stone. She caught a whiff of smoke and cooked meat. And there were other smells—horse, danger, iron, man. There were four of them, close, hunting. And there was another smell, something familiar. She lifted her head to the wind and pricked up her ears.

Sister! She bounded through the woods. She'd forgotten that her sister was dead, and almost died then herself. Only her ears saved her from the armored knights tramping noisily up the road.

She stopped, and remembered. Her sister was dead. She had smelt her blood hot on the wind when she ran from her man-family, and knew the truth of it when her howls for her were answered with silence. She could feel the loss even now.

But was she really dead? She could smell her strong and clear. Sister. She went cautiously, a shadow in the trees. She went over the hill as straight as a crow flies while the men took the flat path over and around and back. When she got to the top the smell of the ocean hit her in a blast.

And there she was! Her sister was resting on the bank where the river-water met the salt. She sniffed a few more times to be sure. But it wasn't her sister, it was a human girl.

It is, Arya thought. It is Sansa.

She stepped out to meet her. They looked into each other's eyes. Her sister must be in the body of the girl, she decided. No human would dare approach her.

The men were coming closer. She could smell them. There was one on the beach already. She lifted her tail at him and growled when he challenged her. He backed off. He was not important, but more were coming. She could smell them and their horses and their long steel teeth. She tried to tell her sister. Wolves had to run from men, there was no shame in it.

This way! Run! Hurry! This way!

She bounded into the trees.

"ARYA!" A ruler slammed down on the table and Arya jumped awake. The entire class was staring, and her gouty teacher was glaring down on her.

"Arya. I am so glad you could join us. Would you mind summarizing the main points of this lesson?"

"Uhhm." She'd been having a wolf-dream and in it was her sister and Sandor Clegane. Arya had barely thought about the Hound since she'd left him to die on the Trident. He's dead, she thought, and Sansa wouldn't be with him anyway. He'd like that if she were, though, Arya sneered.

"Well? You can start by changing the look on your face. Did you hear anything I said during this lesson?"

Arya stared at the pages of the book in front of her. There was a diagram of a man with the skin peeled back from his face. That's why I thought of him. He wouldn't be with Sansa, she told herself. It was just a dream. She had never dreamed of Sansa, either, but that didn't seem so strange to her. That was her sister. As much as they used to fight, she missed her.

Since she could not answer him, her teacher punished her, and later Gogo teased her while Mym laughed. "Geez, Arya, did you not get enough sleep last night?" She sneered at them, too, and didn't say anything to her roommate before climbing into bed.

The dreams came to her again that night. She sniffed out a path to the North away from the smells of men and roads, but there were other dangers here. She battled a bobcat and leapt clear from the jaws of a giant lizard. Over the next week she took naps, which was not her habit, only because her body seemed to need to dream at odd hours. The wolf in her was strong and urgent.

Sansa and the Hound were never far. She could find them anytime by smell; if she had ranged far to scout for danger, the smell of their horses was never faint. Today she found them with her ears.

"The bugs in this swamp are eating me alive! Whenever we have a warm enough day, it's ruined by their appearance."

"You could put mud on the bites."

"Will that help?"

"Aye. You can help cover mine, too. Those bloody fuckers are chewing me up."

She could still smell them, but they covered themselves in the smell of the swamp. That was good. Few predators besides herself could sniff them out if they had to hide.

"Isn't it dirty?"

"It sucks out the poison, and stops the itch. Cover the exposed parts of your skin, and they won't bite you there. Here—"

"Mph! My face, Sandor! I'm going to do that to you."

"Haha! Do it."

". . . There."

"Hold on, you've got two more bites on your chest."

"Those aren't bites!"

Nymeria couldn't understand the words, but Arya did. She crashed through the trees, and bared her teeth at the man who went with her sister.

"ARYA!" Her desk shook. Arya glared about the room, bleary-eyed. "That's the third time this week!" her teacher shouted at her. "You stupid, lazy girl! You will never change! You will never become a Faceless Man! I can't teach you anything!"

"You're not teaching us anything!" she shouted back. "This is boring! All you ever do is lecture from these stupid books, and Gogo can't even read!"

Gogo turned bright red. Arya knew she had done wrong—she should have held her tongue, or lied the way they taught her to. For talking back to her teacher she received a suspension, the worst possible punishment. When she asked Mym to catch her up on what she missed, the girl stammered and said, "It's kind of hard to explain." When Arya was allowed to return to class, her teacher sat her in a dark corner at the back of the room, "So I won't have to watch you sleep." Her other classes and duties went well, but she had begun to believe her teacher's words, and was no closer to changing the shape of her face than before she knew it was possible. Her only solace was in dreams.