She's dead.
His brain is talking to him, but his mind isn't listening. She's standing there. Right there. It's her. He knows. His breathing has sped up and he can hear his heart pounding in his ears. He can't see her face, but he knows.
The years have changed her. What once was a young girl is now a woman full grown. Her hair is long, waves of thick dark hair falling past her shoulders to the middle of her back.
She's facing the the sea, the misty wind catching her tresses and billowing her dress about her. He can see the form of a woman beneath the dress, a form that surely wasn't there so many years ago on the road to the North. He feels on fire, his body threatening to alight in flames if he doesn't move.
He takes a step to her, up the small hill separating them. Another step and he's nearly directly behind her.
"Arya." It's not a question. She doesn't turn and he's close enough to see that she's trembling. His hand moves of it's own accord, reaching out for her but he stops it. He can't touch her.
"Arya." Still she doesn't turn to him and the burn he felt moments ago is on the brink of igniting. She always did get under his skin. He tries a different tactic.
"M'lady." She whips around so quickly he's afraid she's going to fall. But then he's face to face with her and he feels as if he's been punched in the stomach, the air forced out of him. Maybe he has, he has no idea. The only thing in his field of vision is her and though he hadn't needed any more confirmation, his eyes connect with hers- grey and stormy as he remembers- but older. So much older.
Everything about her is older. Her cheek bones framing her petite feminine (when had that happened, he wonders) face, her lips full and pink, and her eyes fringed by thick lashes. He quickly wonders why he never noticed what a beauty she was all those years ago before remembering the grime, the walking, the hunger, the filth they had lived in. He notices now though: notices how the sheer layers of her simple dress cannot hide her age, her beauty.
Something pools in her eyes as she stares at him and he wonders what it is before it escapes to make it's way down her cheek before she quickly wipes it away.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice, light and womanly, catches him off guard- nothing like the she-wolf girl he had known and more like a woman he doesn't know. He blinks. What is he doing here? He doesn't care, he just says the first thing that come to his mind.
"I thought you were dead." Her brow furrows at this and she blinks, a confused look replaced with an cool one. He's so close to her, just an arms length and he doesn't know if he really believes it.
"Dead or alive: I'm surprised you cared." She answer him evenly, without emotion and something akin to pain shoots through his chest. She hasn't forgiven him, hasn't forgotten him leaving her despite her being the one stolen away. She draws a deep breath through her mouth and lets it out, closing her eyes. She opens them, leveling a look at him that he can't read and moves past him, making her way off the cliff. He's frozen in place. She looks up at him having switched places now and her brow furrows again, as if she's trying to make a decision. She opens her mouth to say something, shakes her head making her long tresses whip around her elbows, and snaps it shut again before walking off leaving him alone.
A fear grips him, pushes him after her. He makes his way off the cliff back to the docks and follows her. His men yell after him about something but he waives them off.
"Figure it out!" He yells. He's not letting her get away, not this time.
She's walking quickly, but not fast enough to lose him and he wonders if she does this on purpose. He calls out to her in question.
"Arya?"
She turns to him, all eyes and lips and cheek bones in the wind of the sea. He catches up to her, tries to say something but she cuts him off.
"Come on, stupid."
Stupid. A name that should irritate him but when she says it then, he's never felt more at home.