Chapter Text
Sufferers of Capgras Syndrome report that suddenly, their entire world has shifted, having been replaced by a nearly identical, yet subtly different one. Exact duplicates have substituted for the sufferer’s family, placed there by an unknown, unseen force. Even the dog has been swapped for another. Over time, the sufferer notes the personality differences in these impostors, comparing their behaviour to that of his missing loved ones. In most cases, the sufferer learns to live with the replacements, since no-one will listen or believes his story.
Less powerful, and thankfully far less dangerously delusional, is the recognition, usually occurring in late adolescence, that one is out of phase with one’s home and family. It is as if, somehow, the world has shifted on its axis and something irrevocable has happened.
In a certain class of young women, who have been taught that Such Things Matter, this typically happens when they lose their virginity: as if the breaking of the hymen, itself a physiological and evolutionary accident, carries with it such particular meaning so as to catapult the body to which it belongs into some different space of being.
In Arya’s case, this hadn’t happened, nor was it likely to be An Event, given that her family was most nonchalant about these things. But by the time she had reached the door which she had exited scant hours before, pausing to allow her breath to catch her up, she too was out of phase with her life. As she opened the door, facing the blast of heat from both the cooker and the bodies now moving within the room, everything seemed somewhat different, displaced from the reality she had left a scant two hours since. Feigning nonchalance, she went to the table, grabbing toast from the silver toast rack, a banana from the ugly brown bowl that had been in the house probably for a hundred years. Catelyn, with that special economy of movement known only to mothers, neatly landed two eggs, yolks like unblinking orange eyes, onto her youngest daughter’s plate. And by the time Jaqen walked through the same door, bringing the frost with him, Arya felt more normalised, felt as if she was a figure, painted like the others, into the kitchen canvas. It was as though she had always been there. Her early morning on the hill, her first kiss, and her subsequent run from the shift in her reality had been subsumed into the quotidian routine of breakfast at Winterfell.
__________
She spent the rest of the morning with her youngest siblings, thinking that time spent watching Bran’s struggle to do the most basic of physical tasks would cure her of the emotions that she knew she barely held at bay. And it worked, for a time. They played draughts for a while, with Rickon reading beside her. However, all too soon, Osha called for Bran to do his daily physical therapy, and Arya saw the mute appeal in his eyes. Don’t see me like this. So she, gracefully for her, withdrew to her part of the house, taking her thoughts with her.
It was as if her mother was clairvoyant, or perhaps just supernaturally perceptive. Arya wasn’t to know that Catelyn, who found her widow’s bed unrelentingly empty, often rose earlier than the dawn since her husband had died, finding solace with domestic tasks that she had never enjoyed before, let alone given any thought to doing. Catelyn had watched two tiny figures high on the hill, embracing once, then again, unnoticed by the rest of the family who gradually filtered into the kitchen. And she saw one of those figures running, and didn’t need to guess who it was.
So Arya, when she withdrew to her room, found a smallish blue box on her bedside table. She blushed profusely on discovering its contents: a leaflet on contraceptive options, lubricant, a box of condoms, and a puzzling pink object. Turning it over in her hands, she clicked the button and it began to buzz. She dropped it hastily, yelping as if she had been stung, only to have the entire box begin to vibrate. She quickly dug through everything and clicked the button off again.
My mother. Oh God. Arya wasn’t given to pleading to any deity or other, but she lay back on her bed feeling the livid flush of mortification on her cheeks, praying, in a not particularly original way, that the earth would simply open up and swallow her. Two years ago, Sansa had experienced something rather similar: in fact, Arya had discovered The Box with her, though Sansa had quickly shut the lid before Arya saw more than simply a box of condoms. Arya had teased her sister mercilessly about Joffrey before Sansa tossed her out of the room and locked the door behind her. Arya now closed her eyes, vowing to apologise to Sansa. Hug her even. Faintly, she could hear her own braying and triumphant laugh coming to her from time’s great void as she had sung, if you could call it that, ‘Joffrey, Joffrey, sex with Joffrey!’ over and over outside her sister’s room. She winced anew. It must have been awful for Sansa, for it seemed that she had led something of a double life for months, if not years.
‘Why did Mum do this?’ Arya wondered, vaguely, before her mind, shocked with the embarrassment of this peculiar Stark family rite of passage into adulthood, wandered further and further, and she sunk into that greatest of spontaneous occurrences, the unplanned afternoon nap. S
he woke, hungry and cold, and quickly scrambled to close the blue box and put it in with the junk in the drawer of her bedside table before anyone should find it. Her embarrassment mingled with defiance. Her own mother had, it seemed, given her tacit consent for Arya to pursue something with Jaqen. Why then would Jaqen not do so? She smoothed her hair in the mirror behind her door, looking at herself appraisingly. Perhaps it’s because you’re a child, Arya thought. Grow up.
The regret he’d shown her that morning. What did that mean? As she descended the stairs to join everyone for tea, this thought of hers echoed as loudly as if it had been spoken aloud.
She slipped into her chair, ruffling Rickon's hair beside her, and was too late to avoid Jaqen's gaze on her. Grey eyes met blue ones that bore a look of deep concern. She smiled at him, though she did not feel like smiling. She looked up to find her mother wearing a similar expression; so, were they colluding somehow?
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The soft knock on the inner door of her darkroom startled her from her thoughts, which were occupied with Jaqen. She dropped the tongs she was using to move the print she’d just developed. No matter. The phosphorescent paint of the switch beckoned to her, and she flipped on the safelight, flooding the room with red. She didn’t often use it, having grown accustomed to working in the utter blackness of the little room. She opened the inner door, hearing its customary pop, for the weather-stripping she and her father had installed made a solid seal between the darkroom and the light that always threatened.
Jaqen, of course.
‘May I come in?’ he asked. Arya felt the absence of his customary term of endearment. She nodded, flushing at his nearness.
He looked around, and smiled at her. ‘This is a very good darkroom,’ he said. She shrugged, feeling very awkward. He was undeterred, and went to the water-bath in which she had placed the print she had made.
'Black and white sunrise', he mused. She snorted. 'And yet, it works. More or less.' He grinned. Arya snorted again.
She took the print out and hung it up to dry on the line that criss-crossed above them. A large, fat droplet of water fell on her nose, and Jaqen brushed it off, catching her and holding her close, feeling her heart through her ribs, tremulous and fast.
‘We can’t do anything about bad timing, lovely girl,’ he said, wrapping his arms tightly around her. ‘All we can do is make the best of it,’ he continued.
‘I don’t want to make the best of it,’ Arya replied sullenly. ‘And what does that even mean? “Bad timing?”’
‘Try to understand,’ he began. ‘Please. You are just beginning. What kind of person would stand in the way of that? Don’t let yourself be tied to anyone, not just yet.’
‘That’s not the whole of it,’ Arya replied. ‘What about Mr Forel? It seems as though you obey him, or something.’
‘I do,’ he smiled at her.
‘Did he save your life or something?’
His smile vanished. ‘In a manner of speaking, yes, he did. Though this is a story for another day.' He opened the door and took her hand, leading her out and into her bedroom. Arya sat down on her bed. Nymeria sprawled, asleep, on Arya’s small sofa. Jaqen took a seat beside her, as if he had meant to do so all along. He kept her hand in his.
A mutinous heart pounded.
'Nevertheless,' Jaqen continued. 'He has chastised me severely and he was right to do so.' He swallowed. His thumb drew small circles on the back of her hand.
'This isn't fair,' Arya complained.
'To you, I apologise,' he said, contritely. ‘It’s not fair. But you and I are in very different places right now. Six months ago, we were going to get married, Melisandre and I, or at least I thought we were.' He smiled ruefully.
Arya heard the emotion in his voice, but instead of engendering sympathy, his words invoked that great disquieter, Phthonos, whose whispers fuel all insecurities and jealousies; he who is anathema to the human heart. She looked down, numb to his warm hand in her own.
'Is this you letting me down gently?' she asked. 'because this is shite.'
‘I don't think so, lovely girl,' he replied, grasping her hand more firmly as she tried to wriggle away. 'Letting you down, as you say, would imply that your feelings were one-sided.'
He had, however obliquely, acknowledged his own regard for her. She felt the telltale blush suffuse her cheeks for what seemed like the seventh time in the day.
'But making the news, for instance with a scandal with my seventeen year-old intern, is perhaps not the best idea. This is what Syrio is concerned about. My career, and probably yours.’
He kissed the top of her head. Nymeria stirred in her sleep.
‘Jaqen,’ Arya began, mollified a bit, yet she found herself upset. Is it all about him?
'This would be nothing,' he said, squeezing her hand to apologise for his interruption. 'But for one thing.'
'What?' Arya asked, her tone verging on rudeness.
'What were you thinking about in the darkroom?' he asked abruptly.
Arya paused. 'You,' she said boldly.
'And earlier, on the hill?'
'It's a fell, not a hill,' she responded.
'Winterfell.'
'Fine,' he said, impatiently. 'What were you thinking about on the fell?'
'You,' she responded, less certain.
'And on the train?' Arya was silent for a long time. 'You,' she sighed.
'How can we do what we do,' he began, 'if we can't focus? Our work takes us to dangerous places. Distraction could mean our deaths. But more importantly, being distracted from our art means we become mediocre. I will not be that, and I will not let you be that either,' he exclaimed.
Arya began to protest.
‘Think about what you shot today,’ he urged, interrupting the words on her lips. She had looked at the twelve negatives in the roll, carefully examining them through her loupe on the light-table. Only the black and white sunrise was passable. And it wasn’t brilliant.
‘Eleven shots were complete rubbish,’ she said. She felt nauseous.
‘For me as well,’ he replied gently, though Arya suspected he might be lying. He must be lying: how could he, a great photographer, be so distracted by her?
But it didn't matter. It was true for her. She didn’t have the focus. Not yet, anyway.
'I understand,' she said, feeling utterly defeated.
He brought his right hand to her cheek, and leaned in to kiss her gently and briefly: the kind of kiss a man gives to a maiden aunt. Still, she relished his closeness. He pulled away from her. Only a faint smell remained of him: a whiff of ginger and cloves lingering in the air, likely from her mum's maddeningly addictive ginger biscuits. He is spot on, Arya thought. I have to stop focusing entirely on him. This will drive me barmy.
‘I wonder...’ he began.
‘Wonder what?’ she asked.
‘I wonder which part of a man your dog prefers to savage first...Leg or arm?' He grinned at her.
Arya looked at Nymeria, who had awakened and appeared unamused. Arya laughed, a bit shakily. ‘She won’t hurt you...much.’
A/N: I wish to apologise, sincerely, for my long and unscheduled absence; a number of reasons, including a re-occurring illness and a death in the family, kept me from this. I'll try to be more regular in updating from this point forward, though who can predict what life has in store.