"She felt stupid for telling him. Nothing she could tell him was anything he didn't know already. But it was comforting, and in return, he told her something too."
Damn I got into GOT and now I can't get out. Set somewhere vaguely in early season 8.
Probably gonna be multichapter, going through her different interactions with different people at Winterfell.
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She had a hard time looking Sansa in the eye anymore. She feared that if she did, she'd see that same disgusted look she had seen when Sansa had sat on the floor of her room, holding the pale gaunt face of Walder Frey in her hands.
She feared that if she looked at Sansa, she'd be confronted with questions she didn't want to answer, questions she didn't have an answer too. Questions that would force her to dig up parts of her that she didn't want anyone to know about.
Where were you?
Where did you learn that?
Why did you abandon our family?
The list goes on.
So she avoids her sisters cold looks, and wonders at what point this had become part of her life.
Similar situation with Jon. He wouldn't ask questions, no, he would just give her this look of pity, remorse, a look that made her wonder what her sister had told him about her, made her fear what he thought of her.
She couldn't face her older brother like this. Hands covered in blood, a type of stain that no amount of good deeds or heroic acts could fix.
Because Arya couldn't show any weakness, show any fear, show anything to anyone. She couldn't . Her training had made her this, and it couldn't be undone. She would open her mouth and lies would spill out, not because she would want them too, but because that is what happens when you're beaten, bruised and broken beyond return.
When's the last time she'd laughed because she wanted too? When's the last time she'd done something that didn't have a larger purpose, something that wouldn't be another corner of her web or conspiracy and lies?
Why had her life have to come to this?
She supposed these questions were the ones that led her here, standing in front of her brother's door, mouth dry, wondering what to say when she enters.
No, not Jon. Bran.
She didn't have an outright question for him, she didn't have any important info to tell him. This was a waste of time, she told herself. Yet she raised her hand to knock.
"Come in," Bran softly calls from behind the door, before her hand even touches the wood.
She guesses that she shouldn't be surprised by this.
Arya pushes open the heavy wooden door and steps inside, closing the door behind her. Looking around, she realizes that she hasn't been here since she had first left Winterfell, and suddenly there's a small lump in her throat.
The rooms cold; Bran sits by the open window, staring down into the courtyard. She involuntarily makes a mental note that the window was her best escape option, knowing that underneath it was a roof and from there she could jump-
She hated herself for it.
"I thought you might not enter," Bran said in the same disinterested, absent voice he said everything nowadays. He stayed facing the window, but she could see the puffs of cold air that disappeared out the window as he spoke.
She didn't know what to say in response. She didn't know what to say in general. She didn't know why she'd come here in the first place. She cleared her throat.
"I came here to ask yo-"
"No you didn't", he interrupted her gently, turning his chair around slightly to face her, "You didn't come to ask me anything."
She then realized how stupid she must look, just standing around in the doorway. She took her spot leaning against the wall by his fireplace, hands folded nearly behind her back.
Arya heard someone yelling out orders down in the courtyard. Jon, by the sound of it. But a deep booming voice barking out commands in that northern accent like that- if she hadn't known better, she would have thought it to be Robb.
"Strange, isn't it?" Bran said, almost as if he had read her mind, "How alike they are. Their looks, their personalities," he paused, "In some ways, their story's."
If this were anyone else, she'd think this was just idle small talk. Knowing Bran, the new Bran, it probably wasn't. But her training hadn't taught her how to figure out greenseers. She didn't know how to read into his words- at least not yet. But she would adapt, as she always has.
"Sansa often wonders what were if mother and father could see us," Bran continued, and Arya gave a noise of acknowledgement, sitting down on his bed, "She wonders what would be if we had never left in the first place, all those years ago."
"Do you?", Arya asked.
"No. Everything had to happen the way it did."
He sounded so cold and empty to her, like a lifeless husk being used to read aloud the words in a book. She then realized; so did she.
She shrugged, "In the end it is, hopefully. So far it's worked out, hasn't it? No matter what happened, the Starks returned to Winterfell," She paused, "At least, the last of the Starks."
Bran turned his chair to Arya, and then he spoke in the softest voice to her, yet she felt pain pulse through her like he had screamed.
"But there aren't really any Starks anymore, are there."
She hated him, but he was right. By the gods, he was right and she hated him for it. Jon was bastard, a Stark by heritage, but never legitimized. Sansa, by law, was a Bolton - and technically also a Lannister, not a Stark.
And Bran was the Three Eyed Raven. And she was No One.
"We are Starks, Bran. All of us."
"Yet you gave up so much to lose that name," Bran said, and she heard a edge of emotion in his voice.
She swallowed hard. Rule your face. Rule your face. Her chest tightened and her breath hitched.
"I never lost my name Bran. I just...", she tried to think of a reason,"...had to leave it behind for a while, that's all."
Her brother looked down at his lap, thoughtfully clasping his gloved hands together.
"Leave your family behind, you mean."
That stung. Those were Sansas words from his mouth. She felt anger flare inside her.
"Family? Bran I thought you were dead. As far as I knew, everyone, my mother, my father, my brothers, any friends I'd ever had-all dead." She snapped, "Winterfell was a pile of rubble controlled by the Bolton's and I was utterly alone. I went to the only place I knew I still had."
He looked up, "And Sansa?"
"She was stuck in Kings Landing. I had no way of getting to her. I was alone. I didn't have an army, or a plan. I was only a child then."
Bran nodded slowly, not necessarily in understanding, but acceptance.
"Go on", he said softly.
And against her own will, she did. She started and then she couldn't stop. She talked and talked until her voice was raspy and her throat hurt, and at some point she had gotten from her spot by the wall to sitting on Bran's bed, going on and on and on.
She told him of Syrio Forel and chasing cats in the Red Keep, of fighting Sansa and hating Joffrey. She told him how it felt when she saw her father die. She told him about Yoren, and her journey to try to get to Jon. About Hot Pie and Lommy, about Gendry, the Red Woman, Harrenhal and Tywin Lannister. She told him about a man who called himself Jaqen H'gar, and who called her his lovely girl.
She spat out hateful stories from her time with the Brotherhood, and reluctantly spoke about her time with the Hound. Trying not to shake, words flowed out about the House Of Black And White, of how it felt to be blind and beaten on the streets, of being stabbed and almost dying. About how sweet Lady Crane was, how she had reminded her of her own mother. From there her tale of return, of exacting revenge for her family, she described how good it felt to slit Walder Frey's throat, of how gleefully she murdered his whole family.
She, knowing that Bran knew this all anyways, would sometimes omit even describing the situations, and simply tell him about how it felt, where'd it hurt, what she'd thought and Bran, still somewhere deep down being the dutiful little brother that he was, just silently listened, nodding along to her tales, his hands holding hers tightly on Arya's lap.
She told him of hating people, of loving them, of missing and hurting them. She blurted out how she did have feelings for that bastard, and how much it burned to leave her mentor behind- all three of them. How betrayed she felt when the man who she'd seen as her master had sentenced her to death.
Eventually, she was done, sinking into herself, emotionally exhausted. Bran squeezed her hands gently before letting go. He opened his mouth, and hesitated before speaking.
"You know", he said, "When I was once Brandon Stark, I met a boy named Jojen Reed."
His gaze was behind her, a faraway look in his eyes, and as far as Bran could even nowadays, he looked...uncomfortable.
"Jojen was a greenseer, like Bran, and had come to help him on his journey.", he continued quietly, emotion wiggling right under the surface of his voice, "He would share dreams with him, and they'd sit together at night and talk until the sun came up. They'd bathe together, and eat together- they were together, day and night. We found happiness in places where there never should have been."
Bran smiled briefly to himself in memory before it quickly faded. He turned to Arya, his Stark grey eyes fixing upon her, as sadness laced through his voice.
"Jojen Reed died on this journey."
And then Arya understood but didn't speak, her brother following suit. They understood and sat in silence together, basking in the freedom that was found in being free from their words and thoughts.
They thought about their lives, and both wondered how it had come to this (Brans thoughts more scattered, like many different leaves scattered from one tree).
After what might have been minutes or an hour, Arya stood up, placed a kiss on Bran's forehead, stood up, and left as quietly as she had come- maybe a little bit more happier.
On the way to her room, she felt as if she finally understood why.