The pack was on the move.

Something had set her mood on edge and raised her hackles. The pack sensed it, sensed her agitation, and stayed well to her rear. But it was different, a heightened awareness, a doubling of the vision that sharpened her sight rather than diminishing it. The air was different, the smells were all strange, and there was an itch about her shoulders that scratching could not touch. And now, as she loped through the forest with her pack following in her wake, the softly crunching snow chilled the pads of her feet and muffled the sound of her passing. There was a rightness to it that was both alien and achingly familiar, conjuring absolute acknowledgements of yes, and good, and home. And above it all was the pull, the drive, the pressing need to run, run, run, because home was so far, but home was so near, and she could taste the faintest hint of it in the air and that was enough.

Nymeria. The word was foreign, jarring her ears as she ran, but it pulled her in like an anchor. Nymeria. Dim shapes of men in brown robes moved at the edge of her vision and phantom fingers brushed across her face softly, but she ignored them and ran.

Arya dreamed she was flying.

But, no. That wasn't quite right. Someone else was flying, and she was riding on his back, cradled in deep black feathers that were smooth beneath her fingers.

The skies were open and deep and old – the grey-blue summer skies of the North. Riding on a bird's back wasn't gentle and flowing as she might have expected –it was more than a little bouncy and jarring, point of fact – and the wind whipped at her hair and clothes like it was trying to pull her away. Arya had half a mind to let it. Her arms stretched out to greet the northern sky like an old friend, and the bird bearing her aloft tilted in flight to accommodate her shifting weight.

"You have to open your eyes," he told her, with a smirk in his voice as if what he was saying was terribly funny.

"They are open," she retorted, and rolled them to prove the point. "Besides, you don't get to tell me what to do. You're younger than me. And dead. And a bird."

He laughed. "I thought getting older might have made you nicer. But it's good to see you're still you."

"I'm nice when it suits me. When did you turn into a bird?"

"Oh, I've always been this way. What about you? When did you turn into a wolf?"

Bran tucked in his wings and dove down, down, down towards the dim earth, which showed only a hazy grey green where the crowns of the sentinels brushed the clouds.

"I'm not a wolf," she said, reaching out a hand to touch those branches as they shot past. "Things might be better if I were."

"You are," he insisted as he dodged a branch. "You just have to open your eyes to see it."

He pulled up suddenly then, and she slid down his slippery feathers, landing with a soft thud in a heap of soft brown needles. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to fall back and stretch out on the springy foliage. She breathed in the good clean scent of the forest and smiled.

Bran flittered to a branch above her head and settled there. She peered up at him curiously. "I still don't understand," she admitted.

"Lies are easy to hide when the truth is hiding too," he said.

"I hate riddles," she growled at him.

The bird that was her brother gave her a chiding look worthy of Maester Luwin. "Feel it – don't try to think it through so much. At night, when you aren't thinking, you know you aren't alone, don't you? You know it right now. We're still here, Arya. Just like you."

Before she could reply, he hopped on the branch and a smattering of water drops cascaded down from bark and leaf and smattered across her face.

"Hey!" She screwed up her eyes and mouth and batted at the water. "Stop it."

He hopped again, and more of the warm drops slid down her face.

"There now, miss, it's all right," the bird said, in a voice that was not her brother's.

At those words, Arya drew in a startled breath and opened her eyes, dazed and disoriented. Everything about her body ached, and the world was strangely nebulous around her, dim and cloudy in a way her dream had not been. She blinked rapidly to clear her vision and was met with the sight of a damp cloth hovering above her face and a young woman standing over her. Arya scrabbled about frantically for a blade that was not there, and the woman jerked backward in alarm at the sudden flurry of movement. Instinctually, Arya threw herself forward and dug her fingers into the flesh of the other woman's neck, holding her thumb just there, poised to press.

The woman let out a strangled cry of alarm and pain and tried to jerk away, but Arya's hands held her close. "Who are you? What do you want with me?"Arya demanded. She stared hard at the woman's face, searching for any familiar features or indications of motive, but found nothing. She saw only that the woman was younger than she thought at first, perhaps only a handful of years older than herself. The woman wrapped surprisingly strong fingers around Arya's wrists and tugged at them; feeling a twinge of uncertainty, Arya loosened her grip.

At once, the woman twisted them away from her body, hands wrapped protectively around her neck. She coughed hard and rubbed at the reddened skin. "For mercy's sake," she choked out, "Calm yourself! I mean you no harm, girl!"

Arya tried to push herself backwards on the bed for a better vantage point, but when she tried to move her lower body a hot stab of pain shot through her leg, so intense it blurred her vision and stole the breath from her chest. Her head felt suddenly heavier and larger than it should. Somewhere at the edge of her vision she could see that the woman had crossed her arms and was watching her with disapproval. Arya bit down on her lip to keep herself from crying out, and tried shoving herself back again. She succeeding in pushing herself back a few inches, and then drooped back against the headboard in defeat. "What have you done to me?" she asked the woman accusingly, and tried to glare at her through crossed eyes.

"Look at you. You can barely even sit up and you're still trying to fight," said another voice from somewhere off to her left.

Gendry was standing in the doorway, arms crossed, frowning. Oh, she remembered suddenly. Him.

"I think she's trying to kill me," she told him, annoyed. "A lot of use you are, just standing there."

"Oh, rubbish. You should be resting," the woman said, sounding wounded, "Not trying to pull my head off with your hands!

"I'll tend to her, Jeyne," Gendry said, ignoring Arya's words for the moment.

"As you like," the woman said, but she did not sound convinced.

Gendry stepped away from the door frame to let her slip past and out of the room. It was hurting Arya's neck to keep looking over at the doorway, so she gave up and let her gaze drift back up to the low beams of the ceiling above her. I hope he hits his head on one, she thought uncharitably as he walked across the room. His steps were heavy on the floor and Arya could feel every one of them vibrating in her own head. There was a dull sound of wood scraping on wood as he pulled Jeyne's stool closer to the bed, and a soft whoosh of air as he sat.

"Lie down proper, would you?" he asked. "It isn't good for your head to be propped up like that."

"I'm fine," she said shortly.

"I can move you myself if you're difficult, you know," he told her.

Arya expelled a breath, annoyed, but clenched her teeth and wriggled back down the bed just the same. In a few seconds, her head was back on the pillow and eyes were watering at the throbbing pain that seemed to cling to every bit of her body. It was a few minutes before she could breathe without gasping and focus her vision.

Gendry had leaned over, elbows on his knees and hands loosely folded between them, and was just looking at her.

"You were at the Saltpans," she said, not knowing where else to begin.

"I was," he affirmed. "Supply run for the inn. We've a lot of mouths to feed here, and the Brotherhood gets us goods from all over to help us along." The edge of his mouth turned up in an almost-smile. "You were at the Saltpans," he repeated back to her, and she knew it was a question.

"I was. But I've been somewhere else. I've been someone else." She frowned, trying hard to think, but thinking hurt. "I can't – my head's all fuzzy." Why was she telling him these things? She didn't know who he was anymore or who he was working for. She thought it might be the fever.

Gendry reached down to the floor and produced the water-filled pan that the woman –Jeyne, she told herself– had been using before. He pulled out a sodden cloth, wrung it out, and then set the pan back on the floor with a metallic thud. "You took a blow just behind the temple," he told her, as he gingerly dabbed at her face with the cool cloth. "That's why your head's hurting."

Her hand shot up to the right side of her head, and her fingers immediately found a large knot that crackled with dried blood when she touched it. She didn't need to ask about the throbbing pain in her leg. She remembered that well enough: slipping through the sleeping little town after the boat landed in the dark hours before daybreak, three men stumbling out of the shadows wielding lecherous words and rusty blades, deftly luring them into the confined space. Then, the one time she let them all surround her, one had landed a hit, clearly convinced by then that if he was going to have her he'd have to kill her first.

"Don't fiddle with it," Gendry scolded, as she pressed and prodded at the knot on her head. "It wasn't so bad that it needed wrapping up, but you won't do anything but make it hurt more unless you leave it alone." He leaned down to dip the rag in water again, and then gave it a good squeeze. "I brought you back here two days ago, and Jeyne's been tending your wounds. She's good at patching people up after a battle – wrapping cuts and setting bone and the like."

"I don't remember," she said truthfully. Time was a blur of colors and sensations, of wolf and woods and names she didn't want to remember. "I just remember dreaming."

"You had a fever," he agreed. "Jeyne used some root. She says it helps the pain and makes you sleep. But it didn't keep the fever dreams away. You even talked some."

"What did I –" He cut her off with a swipe of the cloth over her nose and down across her chin. She batted at his hand weakly. "Stop that."

"Names, mostly," he answered, before she could finish her question. "Bran. Jon. Mother." A pause. "Mine a few times. And... Nymeria?" The last was a question that she didn't have the heart to answer, but her thoughts flit back almost immediately.

Bran.

Bran!

"I must have talked more than 'some' to say all that," she said, distracted. Remembering.

He smiled a little. "You woke me more than once with all your mumbling. I thought you were having some kind of fit more than once."

"What did you do, stay with me all the time?"

"Of course I stayed with you," Gendry said, a little too harshly. He tossed the rag into the pan and stood abruptly, walking the few steps to the window. Seven hells. She was too tired and too addled to be sure what he was offended about now.

It was a long time before he spoke. "We thought you died," he finally said to the blackened pane. "After that night you got taken. We were sure the Hound took you to the Twins for ransom, and that you were—"

The Twins. Mud and drink and blood and drums, drums, drums. They pounded hard and unforgiving in her head before she could block them out.

Calm as still water.

"He did," she said after a minute. "We got there just... after. Or during, I don't know. And we turned right around and left." She looked away from his back and up at the ceiling.

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

After a minute, he shifted and half turned so that she could see his face. "Arya," he said, his voice crackling a little.

He had that stupid look on his face that meant he had something to say and didn't much relish saying it. She didn't have the patience to look at him for much longer, and her leg was hurting. "Spit it out," she said crossly as he fiddled with the heavy window covering.

"There's someone you have to see," he blurted out, too fast, as though he had been holding the words in by sheer force.

A startled hope and sudden memory pushed the words out before she had time to think. "Have you found my brother? Bran? Because I – it's stupid, but I dreamed, and I think he might be–" She trailed off when she saw the look on his face and just waited.

Gendry looked utterly confused. "Your – what? No, no. It's something else."

She let out a breath in a hiss of disappointment and annoyance. Of course they hadn't found Bran. Bran wasn't here; he was in the North, where he belonged. Suddenly she knew it for a certainty. Bran was in the North.

"Gendry," she said, "You did me a kindness, pulling me out of the shack and bringing me here and tending to my leg and all. But I don't see why I need to see Lord Berric or Thoros or whoever again. There isn't exactly any of my family left to ransom me to, and if you're telling me they mean to hand me over to someone else, you can all go right to hell."

Gendry got that look again and Arya spread her hands impatiently. "Listen to me," he said urgently, stepping away from the window. "It isn't Thoros or the Lord. It's – I know you're not going to believe me, but you have to know." He looked down and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"Just spit it out," she said. She moved to sit up without thinking, and then shuddered back down onto her pillow with teeth clenched to avoid crying out. She was useless with that stupid wound.

"Try to trust me," he pleaded to his boots.

She snorted. "Would you just—"

"It's your mother," he said.

All at once, all the breath in her body seemed to have fled. Arya stared at Gendry mutely as he stood beside the bed, all shuffling feet and bobbing Adam's apple and avoiding her eyes. Finally she forced the words out thickly: "My mother is dead."

He looked up at her then. "Yes," he said. "She is. And no, she isn't."

Arya shook her head hard. "I don't – no, I saw—"

"You knew Lord Berric," he interrupted. "You know what he – was. What he could do. He found her. Someone had pulled her–her body from the Trident, and–"

"No," Arya told him, her mind and mouth unable to formulate any other response. "No."

"Yes," he said softly. "The Lord gave her the gift himself, breathed the fire right out of his body into hers. Not everyone knows who she is. But ever since, she's been our –"

"Gendry," she said, "Shut up."

He shut his mouth.

Her mind was a void, a cacophony of silence, only the thundering of her heart in her ears and the shuffling of Gendry's boots to cut through the din.

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

Fear cuts deeper...