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"What if she hates me?"
Arya was sitting up in bed, her arms wrapped around her knees. Jaqen lay beside her, his hand warm against her back.
"Why should she hate you, lovely girl?" he murmured, tracing lazy circles around her vertebrae.
Arya shrugged. "We never got on as children. Sansa was... proper. Ladylike. Not me."
Jaqen chuckled. "I am unsurprised to hear it." It was strange, she noted, to hear him refer to himself in the first person with the voice of Jaqen H'ghar. His Lorathi accent seemed... wrong, somehow, paired with this new way he spoke. But he never asked if she minded, and she never told him she did. It sent a thrill up her spine every time Jaqen H'ghar's lips formed the words "I" or "you". Not a bad thrill, just not a particularly good one either.
"But that's not why I think she'll hate me. Not entirely, anyway." Arya scooted back to lie beside Jaqen. He pulled the blanket up to cover them both, though Arya liked the sting of the chill against her skin. "I abandoned her, is the problem. I got away, and she was stuck in that stupid castle, with stupid Joffrey and his stupid Kingsguard beating her every chance they got." Arya twisted her lips into a grimace and resisted the urge to spit. "I was off fighting and killing and learning, and I left her there in that castle, alone and hurting."
She turned on her side, away from Jaqen. "I should have taken her with me."
His hand was at her back again, rubbing circles into the taut muscles. "Would she have thrived as you did, lovely girl? Or do you think she learned too, armed in courtesies and smiles and deception?"
She yawned. "Maybe. Probably. But Sansa was never a good liar."
"A man wonders how a girl who cannot lie spent years pretending to be a little lord's bastard daughter." Ah. There it was. He slipped. She loved it when he slipped. She slipped too, sometimes, and found herself smirking the mighty smirk of Malena the Merciless or sighing the breathless sigh of Beqqa the Beautiful. Jaqen was always quick to point it out, quick to ask her, "Whose face?" before she forgot.
"I suppose she adapted. Like me." Arya snuggled closer into Jaqen's side and, as sleep moved to claim her, thought she heard him say, "Sleep sweet, lovely girl."
* * *
In the morning he was gone, though this was hardly surprising. Arya didn't know enough of her brother yet to know how he'd react to a man seen slipping out of her room in the morning. He didn't seem to care for Arrow much in the first place. Best not to risk it.
"She's four miles off," Bran told her at breakfast, "She's due to arrive by mid-afternoon, gods be good." Arya nodded, finding it hard to concentrate with Jaqen's fingers trailing up and down her leg. She aimed a kick at his ankles and missed, and he stuffed a hunk of bread into his mouth to hide his smile.
"Where will she be - um - staying?" Jaqen's hand was back at her thigh again. She glared at him. At Bran's confused look, she clarified, "I mean, in the guest house, or in the Great Keep? Being, well, a Targaryen now."
"She's still a Stark!" Bran laughed. "What do you think marriage is, Arya?"
"A trap," she replied, and kicked at Jaqen again. This time she didn't miss, and he grunted in pain and nearly fell face-first into his breakfast. She grinned.
Meera glanced at the two, a curious smile on her lips, and then at Bran. She said nothing. Well. Meera knew, then. Hardly a surprise. Women often did.
A thought hit her. Would Sansa know? Would Sansa care?
"Do you think - " Arya closed her mouth. The toe of Jaqen's boot gently nudged her ankle. Bran was looking at her patiently, expectantly. "Will she try to have me married off?" That was the least of her worries. Refusal was easy. "I mean - well - you know. I'm... different from her. Always have been. What if she forgot? What if, while I'd been gone, her memory of me... shifted."
Bran considered this, frowning. "If anything," he said slowly, carefully, "I think your memory of her might have... shifted."
Arya smiled. "Red hair, blue eyes, called me Horseface? Fought with me all the time? No, I think my memory's fine."
Bran laughed again. It was good to see him laugh, her stone-faced little brother. "You were the one fighting her!"
"I'll have you know, she started her fair share of arguments."
"Yes, over what you did."
Arya rolled her eyes. "Fine, you win." She tucked into her breakfast.
"Will you wear a gown, to see her?" Arya scowled at her brother over the ham, and he smiled back. "Perhaps it might ease the transition for her."
"You said her memory of me would not have shifted," she accused. "Besides, I haven't got any dresses."
"I'd be glad to lend you some," Meera offered.
"You're too tall." Beside her, Jaqen chuckled.
"Alright, alright." Bran's smile grew wider. "You've made your point. You won't be wearing a dress."
Arya stuffed a chunk of ham in her mouth and grinned.
* * *
"They're here! They've arrived!"
Something deep in Arya's belly clenched.
* * *
There was embracing, yes, and screaming, yes, and sobbing, yes. (All this on Sansa's part.)
Sansa held Arya too tightly. Sansa raked her fingers through Arya's hair and tugged at her scalp and made it sting. Sansa stepped on Arya's toes in her haste to touch her sister, see her sister, hold her sister. Sansa smelled awful, her breath was rancid, her hair was lank and unkempt, an odor of stale sweat hung about her person.
Arya loved it.
Arya loved every bit of it, because every bit of it was Sansa, pure, unadulterated Sansa.
There were no words - there was no need for words - what good were words when a red haired girl pulled your hair and held you too tight? - until a heated, "You haven't changed!"
That was a lie. Arya said nothing of it.
"Oh, look at me, I'm a mess."
That was true. Arya said nothing of it.
"I never forgot you. Not for a second."
That was a lie - but a lie Sansa wanted to believe. Arya had forgotten her sister too, at times. Arya said nothing of it.
"Arya - Arya, say something. Anything."
She didn't. She buried her face in her sister's shoulder and said nothing. Sansa didn't seem to mind and squeezed her tighter.
"I know your eyes," she whispered so no one but Arya could hear. "I know the look in your eyes. How many?"
"Sansa?" Her lips chafed as they rubbed against the wool of Sansa's dress.
"How many have you killed, Arya?"
She said nothing for a time, just pressed herself closer to her sister, so hard that her bones hurt, and shook her head. Everyone knew. But she could only speak of it with Jaqen. Not Sansa. Never Sansa. How to explain to your sweet sister the look in a man's eyes as his life leaves his body? How to explain the hot rush of air against your cheek as a dead man exhaled his last breath? "Too many." And a huge, resounding, Not enough.
She didn't want to kill again.
She'd kill again if Sansa asked her to.
* * *
Aegon did not know what to make of his sweet wife's sister. She was vastly different from Sansa, yes, but it was not her Stark face nor her trousers nor the knife in her hand that made the distinction between the two sisters so clear. It was the grace with which she moved, frighteningly inhuman. It was the purr of her Braavosi accent on her tongue, seductively soft. It was the slither of her sword being drawn from her scabbard, the whisper screaming both I am here! and Nooo, I'm not at the same time.
He wondered if the strangeness of her being was in part accredited to her shadow. The Northerner they called Arrow was not often seen outside of Arya's presence. How strangely he moved, each step so clumsy, so human, but carefully so.
It was stranger still to see the two in the practice yard. Arrow was fast, but he was big and tall and fought like he was used to his body responding to his wishes with much more precision, much more grace. Arya was faster.
Aegon loved to watch them fight. They whirled and twisted and writhed like the ribbons of a dancer he'd seen in the Free Cities. With their weapons they were deadly. Snakes. Vipers. Dragons. Without their weapons... there was something sensual in the way they moved. Something heated, something heady. On more than one occasion Aegon felt he was almost getting drunk off of it.
It was a guarantee that at least once during their bouts of sparring, one or the other would end up on his or her back. The question was who, how many times, and where would they be kissed?
Because they kissed, you see, every time one was at the mercy of the other. Never on the lips, that was too boring (as Arya so eloquently put it one night when she was well in her cups). The chest, the neck, the forehead, a long lick up the line of the jaw or along the collarbone - and no one ever said anything about The impropriety of it all! Aegon wondered if that was because they all knew how deadly Arrow and Arya could be - very deadly, as evidenced by their sparring in the courtyard - or because, when they were watching Arya and Arrow fighting, everything else ceased to exist. And when Arya and Arrow were not fighting - well, the fights were conveniently forgotten, stored in the back of the mind until a need to feel something intoxicating arose.
He had no doubt that the two lay together. There was a flush in Arya's cheeks some mornings identical to the flush in Sansa's after they'd made love. It was not from embarrassment, memory, or shame - it was the red hot knowledge that you had been well and truly fucked the night previous.
Arrow never had this flush upon his cheeks, though Aegon knew it had been present on his own many times before, but then again, Arrow was not a normal man.
Being a man, and, as a man, naturally curious, Aegon's thoughts could not help but be turned to the blacksmith. Aegon had more than once noted his electric blue eyes on Arya as she sparred with Arrow in the yard, but was it love he saw stirring in that endless blue? Or something else? Aegon had always loved a good story, and the bastard smith was a walking mystery.
Not so intriguing a mystery, however, as his pretty Northern wife. Aegon smiled at the thought of her fiery hair and turned away from the fight to seek out his wife. There was a babe growing in her belly, and he wondered what her red hair would look like paired with his purple Targaryen eyes. Fire and Blood, Targaryen words for a Targaryen babe, and his half-brother at the Wall told him that wildlings thought red hair to be kissed by fire. Her fire in the hair and my fire in the blood.
Fire and Blood indeed.
* * *
"I'm sorry I haven't been back to see you."
"It's no matter," he said carefully, his back to her. She saw his muscles working as he hammered away at a breastplate.
Arya hung up her cloak by the door and leaned against the table with the helmets - the bull's head was missing. She didn't mention it. "I'd like to have two knives made. Twins. That's why I came in here that first day. But you startled me."
He laughed. "Sorry about that."
Arya rolled her eyes. "Don't be - "
" - stupid. I know." He paused and put the hammer down and turned around to face her. "Arya - "
"Don't. I don't want a lengthy talk about how much you missed me or looked for me or thought you'd been the death of me. I don't care. I really don't."
He was looking at her strangely, almost as if he knew she was lying. Arya bit the inside of her cheek. At last, he said. "You have an accent, did you know that?"
Arya blinked. Well. That was... definitely not what she had been expecting him to say. "No." She shook her head. "No one told me. But I suppose it's not surprising."
"Six years is a long time." He smiled faintly.
"Apparently not long enough to forget."
His smile fell. "Did you want us to forget you?"
"In those brief moments where I remembered you all, yes. I hoped you had forgotten me. It was easier to be... who I was in Braavos than Arya Stark. Especially when I pretended I was forgotten."
"Who were you in Braavos?"
"None of your business."
Something in his jaw jumped. "But that Arrow bloke, he can know?"
She narrowed her eyes. "Yes."
There was an unspoken Why? in the look he gave her, so she responded with the set of her jaw. Because I wish it.
Gendry turned away. "Come in tomorrow. We'll talk about the knives then." He went back to hammering.
* * *
"Do you love him?"
Sansa's fingers were tight around Arya's, and her grip grew tighter still when she heard the question. "No," she said at once. At Arya's wry look, she quickly amended, "I don't know. Maybe. Probably?" She wondered if Arya could hear the unspoken Hopefully? as loudly as she could.
"You want to." When had her baby sister become so wise?
"Yes," she sighed. "And no. It feels wrong to love him. His grandfather - "
A muscle in Arya's jaw jumped. "I know what his grandfather did." Better than you. Oh, yes. Sansa heard that well enough.
"Is it wrong to love him? I don't know why it troubles me so, only - "
"Well, considering what happened last time a Targaryen loved a Stark, I'd say your fears are well grounded." It took a moment for Sansa to realize that her sister was joking. She laughed belatedly and lightly smacked her shoulder.
"I'm with child, you know," she said at last. "His child."
"Who else's child, then?" Arya laughed. "You're much too honorable. And of course I know, you're enormous."
"Only four months along!"
"Big enough. What will you name it?"
"It?" Sansa laughed. "Rickard, for a boy. Rhaenys, if a girl."
Arya grimaced. "And none named after me?"
"I had planned to name a daughter after you," Sansa said lightly, "But that was when I thought you were dead."
"Pity. I suppose I'd best go back to Braavos, then."
Sansa laughed but she gripped her sister's fingers tighter. Her eyes bored into Arya's. Don't. "We thought of Aemon, and Daenrya."
"I like that. Daenyra's closer to Arya than Rhaenys is."
"You're incorrigible! And besides, I suppose we'll save those names for future children."
"How many are you planning to have?" Arya squawked. She leaned in. "Tell me true, Sansa, are you raising an army?"
"Hmm." Sansa pretended to consider this. "Twenty children, at least. An army of ten is much too small."
"And who will this army be going up against?"
"Why, you and your lover, of course."
Arya coughed and sputtered on nothing for a good few moments before she fixed Sansa with a steely grey gaze and repeated, "Lover?"
"Yes, your bastard."
"What - I - "
"Oh please, everyone knows. I wonder if you two even know what goes on when you fight each other in the practice yard."
"It's not like - it's just - " She sighed and gave up. "Does Bran know?"
"Only if he sees you two fighting, which I hope he hasn't. Besides, there's nothing he can do about it anyway."
"He's King in the North, he could have J-Arron beheaded."
"I doubt he would. Juh-Arron," she mocked, "makes you too happy."
"Happy's a strong word," Arya said with a shrug, face carefully blank. "He warms my bed, that's all." She wriggled her eyebrows and grinned. "And my loins."
"You're awful!"
"So they say, princess."
"You're a princess too, you know," Sansa mused. And then, after a moment, "Do you love him?"
Arya's lips twisted into a smirk Sansa had never seen. "Strange," she said.
"What's strange?"
"I had not thought you lacking in originality, my sister."
It was only when Sansa went to bed that night that she realized Arya had never answered her question.