She had dropped her gloves somewhere on the ground behind them. She needed to feel, to touch, to know. Her hands were buried deep in the wolf's shaggy winter coat, and the thick warm coarseness of it between her fingers struck at her heart like home. She was only half aware when the pack began to scatter back into the forest. Voices cut vaguely across her awareness, but they grew fainter. The men must be dispersing just as the wolves had, but Arya scarcely noticed either.

"I thought I'd never find you," she whispered into Nymeria's neck. "I'm sorry. So sorry I sent you away." Her voice was thick and hoarse, and her face was wet from tears and her runny nose. She could feel the tension in Nymeria's stance, could feel the wolf's urge to lick her face, sniff her hands, tumble her into the snow and wrestle as they might have long ago, but there was restraint there, too. "You know I need you to be strong now," Arya breathed. "Thank you." Her chest hitched and she pressed her face into Nymeria's fur.

Soon, when the only sounds were the creaking of branched in the winter wind and the sound of the two of them breathing, Arya raised her face.

And there she stood.

The woman wore a tattered grey robe, far too thin to protect her from the driving winter winds, and a long grey cloak. The hood shrouded her face, but behind it her eyes were burning, bright and terrible.

Fear cuts deeper than swords.

Arya swallowed a sob and stood straighter, teeth grit hard against the sharp pangs in her leg. Nymeria stood solid beside her, and Arya was more grateful than she could say. The wolf neither threatened nor welcomed this shade of a woman in grey as she stepped closer. Arya scraped a thick sleeve across her face to wipe away the tears and lifted her face.

Cold fingers slid over her cheeks, and cold hands cupped her face. Arya looked at the woman's ruined face without flinching, looked at the withered flesh, the deep, scarred furrows, the eyes shot through with red. She looked, and the Lady Stoneheart looked back. There was nothing of her mother here.

Calm as still water.

The Lady moved one hand to her throat, and pressed it there. "Trick," she rasped out, her voice broken and agonized.

"No," Arya whispered.

"Trick! Arya – is – dead."

"I am not the one who died," Arya said fiercely. She gripped Nymeria's fur tightly, so hard her fingers burned. "And no trick could fool Nymeria."

The Lady's other hand shook slightly against Arya's cheek. She slid her hand under Arya's chin and turned her face to the left, then the right, and stared with her terrible eyes.

No words could calm her heart in this moment.

"Mother," Arya said, having meant to say nothing at all. "Mother." Her voice broke and her chin trembled and she couldn't do or say anything right. "Please, hear me. Bran is alive."

The Lady jerked her hand back and choked out a sharp, keening sound.

"Listen to me, mother." The tears were hot as they slid down her face, and her breathing was labored. "Bran is alive. I've talked to him. I don't know about Sansa, mother, but you aren't – you aren't alone. I'm here. I'm sorry I couldn't come to you sooner. I didn't know. I didn't know." Her chest heaved and ached with the force of her sobs, and the last words came out as a whisper.

Nymeria shifted beside her, and Arya's hand slipped from its grasp. She slumped down into the snow with a soft thump, the impact sending a fresh jolt through her leg. Of their own volition, her numb fingers wrapped around the jagged edge of the Lady's robe. "You didn't say goodbye," she whispered. "When we left, I told you goodbye, but Bran was – I thought you would be glad to know he's..."

Her thoughts fled before her, and her words broke off. Almost a month's time she had known the truth, and in all those days she had wondered countless times what she would say to her mother, if any scrap of her mother remained. She had plotted this exchange day after day, framed it with her years spent alone and filled it with the certainty that her brother was alive, but nothing had come out as she planned and now nothing would come at all. Even the mundane escaped her now: no I love you, or I have missed you, or Mother, I am so afraid would pass her lips, and so she only wept.

Slowly, so slowly, the cold shadow that was once her mother knelt in the snow beside her. The tatters of her grey sleeves fluttered in the wind as she reached out one hand. "Child," she said. "Come. My child."

Arya leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her mother without thinking. The arms that embraced her were cold and too thin, the hair that brushed her face was stiff and brittle, and the scent was all wrong, but as Arya sat in the snow and spent her tears against the Lady's chest, it was almost enough.

Soon, too soon, the Lady pulled back and pressed her dry lips to Arya's forehead. She held them there for a long lingering moment, the kiss a burning brand against Arya's cold skin. And without another word she rose and turned away.

"Mother," Arya whispered. Through blurry eyes, she saw the men gathered around the massive fire, their gazes locked upon her and the slowly approaching figure of the Lady. They parted as she reached them, but she paused and pressed a hand to her throat. She seemed to speak to them for a long time, with Thoros of Myr hovering at her elbow and occasional murmurs rising from the crowd. When she finally moved again, her path became evident.

"No," Arya said, her voice stronger now. "No!"

But the woman in grey did not look back. She stepped to the edge of the fire pit and spread her arms wide as though to embrace its heat. The glow shone, muted, through the threadbare fabric of her robe as she fell slowly forward. The fire took to her grey robe quickly, and soon her form was wrapped in greedy flames.

Strong arms lifted Arya from the snow, and for a terrible moment she could no longer see the flames. "No," she begged, and Gendry understood. He held her upright next to Nymeria, and they watched as her mother burned, red and blue and silent.