Arya could feel something burning in her heart… joy? Relief? Hope?
She fixed her gaze upon her mother, whom she was helping up the stairs that lead away from the dungeons and into the keep. Bones pressed through the fabric that was once her dress, her once proud hair hung limply, trailing down her back like pieces of limp string, her cheekbones that were once just another feature that complimented her mother's face were now the only feature that Arya could focus on. Arya looked away.
Grief?
Guilt?
She focused on the nearing hall where just an hour ago, she had slaughtered the male Freys, believing she was avenging her family. The heavy scent wafted into her nose again, the scent of dead Freys, the scent of blood. The scent of vengeance… Arya frowned then. Vengeance? She glanced at Robb and her mother once again, trying to confirm that they were real. They are alive. Is that vengeance?
Arya recalled her time in the House of Black and White; everything she learned, every pain she endured, the Waif. Was that all for noting? She thought, her mind buzzing as the idea that she sacrificed who she was for nothing.
Seeing Robb and Catelyn only heightened this feeling, because despite everything they had endured, despite their gaunt faces, hunger stricken bodies and tangled, matted hair, Arya could see the spirits Robb and Catelyn Stark were still shining in their eyes. And seeing Robb and Catelyn Stark only reminded Arya of how much she had changed. Arya wasn't even sure if her mother or her brother could see the spirit of who Arya Stark had been amongst all the hatred and blood and death and anger that haunted new Arya's eyes. Will they see the person of death I have become or someone who should have been a person of life? She liked neither of those options.
The strong scent of blood threw Arya from her thoughts, becoming too heavy and pungent to ignore.
"What's that smell, Arya?" Robb asked her, his face locked in a frown as the smell hit him as well.
Arya didn't know what to tell him. Arya didn't know how to tell him, so she didn't. She said nothing, and Robb's question remained as they were, hanging in the air unanswered.
"Arya?"
Don't tell him. You'll lose them again.
You'll lose another piece of yourself again.
You'll stray closer and closer to no one until there will be nothing left!
Robb tried to meet Arya's eyes, but she looked away, whipping her head round only to be greeted by the watery gaze of her mother. Arya stared back, wanting desperately to peel away from those eyes that she once hoped she'd see again, but something prevented her from recoiling… something in those blue eyes of hers… something unreadable.
Her mother spoke then, her words and the emotions behind them just as obscure and indistinct and that look in her eyes;
"What's in that room?"
Arya felt as though she had been brought to her knees after she heard the tone in her mother's words.
Mercy, she thought.
Mercy, mercy.
When she first tried to answer, her words were quiet, getting caught in her throat, tangled on her tongue, confused as they were uttered.
"The Freys." She was sure her voice was completely unintelligible, but she could hear Robb gasp, and she could see her mother's eyes widen… with shock? Fear? Rage? Arya couldn't tell.
Silence.
Arya could hear no shuffling of feet, or ragged breathing. She could only feel the heavy weight of the stares and glares she received from the Northerners, stares and glares from her mother and brother.
No voice came to break the silence, not even after what felt like minutes after her revelation. So, Arya just stood there, unsure of what to do or say, unable to defend herself from the stares she was receiving. I am a trained assassin… but they didn't prepare me for this.
"Show me."
The voice caused Arya to turn her head, and as she did so, she was met with a pair of blue eyes, eyes like her mother's. But the eyes hold the same emotion, weight and look as another pair of eyes that she had once known, father…
Just seeing that familiar gaze in her brother's eyes brought Arya back to the time where she was a little girl, to when she was a scrappy horse faced child who didn't leave a trail of bodies in her wake. That girl enjoyed playing in the mud and annoying her sister, Arya thought sadly, still staring at Robb. Mother never liked that… She recalled as she glanced at her mother before turning back to Robb. She wanted that girl to be a perfect Lady, like Sansa. But I never learned, despite all the punishments mother gave me. She could scream at that girl, force her into dresses, lock that girl in her chambers and nothing would ever change, because as soon as the screaming ceased, the dresses fell to the floor in crumpled heaps and the chamber doors became unlocked, that little girl would run outside and continue soiling her clothes in the mud. But, one weighty stare from her father's grey eyes would be enough to make Arya Stark crumble. That's when she knew she had done something wrong…
And that hasn't changed…
Robb
When he saw it, Robb Stark was sure he would have vomited had he been fed something.
Blood stained the walls, the floor, the bodies. The bodies were spilling over each other, in messy piles. But as he lifted his gaze higher, the words "THE NORTH REMEMBERS" were written in…blood on the wall, and in front of those words, he saw another body, separate from the ones heaped on the floor;
Lord Walder… face somehow gone, but still the weasel Robb remembers.
His breath caught in his throat.
Robb's eyes roam over the corpse, taking in the missing face, the wide bulging eyes frozen in terror, the deep slash across his throat, the brown dried blood, the red blood, the blood…
Blood…
Talisa bled when she was murdered…
…and so did my son…
Robb could feel a sob threatening to escape his body, but by using whatever remaining strength he had left, he pushed it down. Instead, he casts his mind back to his father.
His honourable father.
Honourable.
This is not honourable.
He looks at the corpse once again. Strung up, limp, lifeless. Slaughtered in his own home. Robb focuses on the blood. It looks the same as Talisa's blood, my son's blood. It's the same crimson colour as the two Lannister boys, the men who died in my battles; Lannister and Stark.
It doesn't matter whose blood it is, Robb thought, the only thing that matters is the fact that the more people in this world bleed, the more it will happen in the future.
Killing is not the answer.
It's what he wants to tell his sister, but he is still too stunned at the realization that she did this.
She. Arya Stark, Arya horseface, Arya underfoot, Wolf girl… She once laughed and played in the mud, pranking Sansa and disobeying mother.
And now she has slaughtered fifty men at dinner.
Just as he thought things couldn't get any worse, Robb sees something on Walder Frey's table, directly below his hanging corpse. A pie?
"Arya, what's that?"
Silence.
"Arya?" His mother questions, finding her voice once more.
Another silence follows before Arya replies.
"It's a pie…" The next words horrify him even more than seeing Lord Walder's corpse, "… made out of Black Walder and Lame Lothar Frey." Her revelation causes everyone in the room to gag and retch.
Robb doesn't want his sister to continue speaking, but words spew out of her mouth regardless, the harshness of each word spilling from his sister wounding, swarming, stabbing him. All the shyness and hesitation is gone, replaced by something frightening. Anger, hatred, darkness;
"I served this pie to Lord Walder Frey before slitting his throat. I did it because I thought he killed you, because I thought it would bring you justice. Because thought it isn't honourable, it won't get me killed. Honour killed father, honour could have killed you! Because he was on my list. I have a list because every time someone dear to me was taken from my life, my heart grew smaller and smaller until I was sure I could no longer continue surviving. So, my list grew bigger and bigger, names being added whenever a piece of me was removed. JOFFREY, CERSEI, THE TICKLER, POLLIVER, ARMORY LORCH, WALDER FREY, MERYN TRANT, TYWIN LANNISTER, THE RED WOMAN, BERIC DONDARRION, THOROS OF MYR, SER ILYN PAYNE, THE MOUNTAIN, THE HOUND! So many people… so many pieces of me that I will never get back!" She is crying now, her voice becoming smaller and smaller.
"I know I shouldn't have done this… I knew when I looked into your eyes, Robb. Father's eyes… they share the same look. You and f-fath…" Her voice trails off, being engulfed in a mess of tears and sobs and the sound of Arya crumpling to the floor. The sight makes Robb want to cry too.
"Arya…" His mother splutters, running to her daughter, her face awash with emotion as she envelopes Arya Stark into an embrace. Robb can't help but do the same, despite the knowledge of what his sister has become haunting him.
They lie in each other's arms for some time, crying. With every sob, Robb could feel Arya's pain, and he was sure that she could feel his too. Perhaps from now on they'd understand each other.
xXx
The three of them were sitting in a room situated in the Twins. Arya had made sure Robb, Catelyn and all of the other prisoners had been bathed, fed and nursed back to health. Robb's hair was no longer a matted mess reaching past his shoulders, and his skin had begun to look less pale. But it didn't mean his mind was any less worried.
"Have you heard any news about Sansa, Bran, Rickon?" Robb asked Arya, "About Jon?" He added, avoiding his mother's gaze.
He held his breath waiting for the answer that would either elate Robb or destroy him.
"No." She replied, looking at the floor. "I haven't had a chance to ask any of the servants here about recent news regarding our pack… they seem afraid of me."
Before he had time to respond, she continued.
"But I found out something about Sansa…"
"What?" Catelyn spoke, her eyes wide in anticipation.
"I saw it in a Braavosi play." Arya in Braavos? Braavos? "In the play, Sansa was forced to marry Tyrion Lannister. Later, Joffrey was poisoned at his own wedding and it was revealed that Sansa and Tyrion had conspired to do it together." There was no hiding the smile on Arya's face as she mentioned Joffrey's death, but that was not the detail he focused on; Sansa is a killer too?
"Do you know what happened afterwards?" He asked.
"I think Sansa escaped Kingslanding… but that was years ago, I think. Many things can happen in the space of a few years."
After all the things Robb had seen in the past few days, he knew exactly just how true this statement was.