Arya (297 AC)
Arya woke up to find her arms and legs were still the same shade of off-white pink as yesterday, with no metal wheels for feet, no black iron dragon's horns on her head, and as the mirror in her room showed, her eyes were still the same as a Dead-Eyed's shade of dull gray as before. Once again, her prayers to the Old and New Gods alike to be reborn a Doll were met with rejection.
She mechanically walked herself toward the Great Hall to break her fast, so that she would have the energy needed to endure yet another day of boring and pointless lessons on needlecraft, proper manners, letters and numbers (which she already knew, a to z and 0 to 9, what was the point in studying them even further), and history only had the benefit of teaching stories of war and dragons, especially about the ancient warrior-queen Nymeria, and the sister-wives of Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys, who aided him in his Conquest. The only thing she hoped to do was get in some practice with archery.
Black Rock Shooter turned the corner from the hall in front of her on her intended path and spotted her. "Arya, I was just looking for you."
"Shooter!" Arya's eyes lit up and her pace quickened as she came up to the Doll and threw her arms around her. "Good morning!"
Black Rock Shooter, finally accustomed to Arya's displays of affection, returned the gesture (it wasn't until weeks after Arya first started doing it that she realized she wanted her to do that) and gave a small smile (a very rare treat for the eyes!). "Good morning, Arya."
The two let go of each other. "Shall we head to morning meal together, then?"
"Yes!" Arya enthused as they headed for the Hall. "There's no one else I'd rather be with."
Black Rock Shooter judged it an appropriate moment to let her smile fade. "No one else? Why not your father, or your mother?"
Arya's certainty wavered. "Okay, maybe Father, 'cause he understands I'm not like Sansa, but not Mother, she wants me to be just like her."
"Like who? Sansa, or your mother?" Black Rock Shooter asked.
"Both," Arya emphasized. "They want me to be a proper Southern lady, always wearing dresses, but never wearing armor, always getting trained to be married off to some stranger, and never learn how to fight because it isn't ladylike."
"I will admit not to knowing or understanding all of the customs of Southern ladies, but that is simply because I have never needed to know more than just enough not to accidentally offend your mother and make my job harder," Black Rock Shooter noted.
"I wish that I didn't have to learn all these stuffy customs," Arya whined, then puffed her chest. "I'd rather be a warrior, and fight the North's enemies in their hiding places."
Black Rock Shooter replied, "I can understand going out to defeat your enemies, Arya, but unlike Dolls, girls and women like you rarely grow in strength or stature like men, meaning a greater likelihood of your getting killed in open battle, and the carrying of children can weaken even the strongest of women to being vulnerable to even the weakest of men."
"If I were a Doll, I wouldn't ever have to worry about being weak ever again," Arya retorted.
Black Rock Shooter raised an eyebrow at that remark. "You wish to become a Doll?"
Arya turned from her and blushed, embarrassed. "I know, it's stupid and childish and it's never going to happen-"
"Why?"
Arya did a double take at Black Rock Shooter's question. "Wait. What?"
"Not what. Why?" Black Rock Shooter asked.
"Why, what?" Arya repeated.
"Why do you wish to become a Doll?" Black Rock Shooter asked again.
"Oh," Arya realized. "Well, it's like I said: If I were a Doll, then I wouldn't have to learn all these stupid lessons about stupid things and I could just go and do the things I like."
"I see," Black Rock Shooter understood what she meant. Highborn customs and ceremonies could get tiresome very quickly, she saw no point in changing her clothes (they were a part of her in a loose way, which meant they could repair and clean themselves given enough time), and she was under no threat of starvation or dehydration, with only the absolute worst of the elements posing any real danger to her.
"But," Black Rock Shooter added, "are you sure you want to deal with the downsides of being a Doll as well?"
It was Arya's turn to raise an eyebrow. "There are downsides? Like what?"
Black Rock Shooter hummed a moment. "After you all go to bed, the only people left awake are guards trying to keep from falling asleep, criminals taking advantage of people's sleep, and us Dolls. We can't sleep, no matter how hard we try, except when we're very badly injured. Although we've bonded ourselves to you all, that time spent while you're asleep can be very lonely, and tests those bonds daily."
Arya knew they didn't need to sleep, but she hadn't considered how that felt for them to have to live with people who needed it every night.
Then Black Rock Shooter stepped in front of Arya, turned and stopped, forcing Arya to halt as well. She then lowered herself to look her in the eye, her own eyes filled with an unusual intensity. "As for being a warrior, I assure you that war is nothing like the show battles I and the other Dolls perform during festivals, or the tournament fights we engage in. In real combat, most fights are a lot shorter, and they're so much more brutal, because there is no arbiter to step in and stop the fight when rules are broken, as there are no rules to break. It's fight until you are dead or a killer."
Then Black Rock Shooter gently grasped her cheeks, something else had never done before. "I understand that you aren't like your sister or mother, and you like a lot of the same things as your brothers. You like sword-fighting and archery and that's fine. But your father would smelt Ice to be reforged as a cooking pot if it meant no more war, especially if it meant you and your siblings never had to see it."
Arya swallowed a stone. No one in her family aside from her father knew the stories told of Black Rock Shooter's exploits better than she did:
The Greyjoy Rebellion.
The Bolton Bastard Hunt.
The Storming of the Eyrie.
The Torment of the Tullys.
In each one, she had at least one epic duel with an enemy Doll, which were her favorite parts of every Shooter Story.
But now she also remembered that, before the ballads of duels were the tales of the horrors the villains wrought upon the hapless and weak. Farms, villages, even castles were torn apart and burned. Unspeakable crimes were committed.
Every time Black Rock Shooter was deployed away from Winterfell and from Lord Stark, it meant people had died, that a Doll had Awoken to evil, and she was needed to prevent more cruelty and death from being heaped upon the world.
"Do you understand what I'm saying, Arya?" Black Rock Shooter pleaded.
Arya nodded, too choked-up to answer with words.
"Good." Black Rock Shooter stood up and walked away. "Now let's hurry, or else your meal will get cold.
Arya rushed to catch up.