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"No," Jon had told him a thousand times. But after so many times, he realized that he didn't care what Connington said. She would be his.
He stole her quickly, he stole her hastily. He stole her with the only indulgence of greed he would ever experience. He had no idea she would fit his home more than he did. It was too cold and dark for him, too drastic, too lonely. She loved it.
He'd taken her under her father's watchful gaze, her mother's careful eye. She swam with the others -- the beautiful red-haired beauty and her auburn brother, the small boys with their toes still on the sand, the stern, long-faced one who'd thrown her in. Just one tug on her ankle and she's mine, he'd told himself.
Just one tug and he had her -- but that didn't mean she was his.
Everyone knew of Arya Stark, with the claws of a wolf but a cunning all her own, more likely to growl or snarl than to dance or sing. He'd heard the tales of her beauty and had gone for a look, never expecting the overwhelming urge to bring her home that he couldn't combat. He took her to a world of spirits, of solemnity, of never looking back.
"I'm sorry," he kept saying, the words escaping through his lips, a free fall of lies. She could see it in him, she could detect his desperation, his longing, his determination. She tried not to speak to him. It nearly killed her.
"Can Gods die?" she asked him once, after he'd blown out the candle in their room, both of them on their separate sides of the bed in the pure pitch black.
"Yes," he answered after a while. "I suppose so."
She scooted closer to him in the dark.
Her mother missed her terribly, she knew. Robb would have no one to laugh at, Sansa would have no one to pick on, Bran would have no one to unwind with, Rickon would have no one to run around with. But father and Jon -- they understood. She felt them down here, felt them in the hollow stone and dark halls and the past captured in the present. Perhaps that was it. Her Tully ancestors were lost in the smog of the next world, but she could hear her Stark ancestors howling to her from below, pleased she'd come to join them, excited that one day she'd be a park of their pack.
She didn't miss her mother, or Robb, or -- yes she did, she missed them everyday. But however much she'd loved them, it was a small price to pay to call this beautiful abyss home.
"Who are you?" she asked him once, lounging in the bed he'd once slept in alone, head hanging off the side and hair cascading to the granite that separated them from souls he cared not to think about. She let her arms hang down, her fingertips grazing the floor, her chiton bunched by her shoulders.
Eventually, her grey eyes drifted up to his violet ones, which were scrutinizing her intently. "I -- I don't know."
Still upside down, she raised her eyebrows. "You what?"
He bit his lip. Anxious. "I don't know."
"You don't know who you are?" she questioned. Her skin turned pink, the blood rushing to her face dangling inches from the granite floor. He shook his head. She snorted. "Swell."
One bite, they said, one nibble and you're done for.
He watched her rip off the juiciest chunk with her teeth. He could almost hear her family's collective sigh from somewhere in the lands above them. She gave him a haunting, maniacal grin, teeth bloodied from the juice dribbling down her chin.
"I adore pomegranates," she told him before heading off for a half a year, back to whence she'd came -- the family he'd stolen her from.
He shuddered, but replayed the memory that night under his lonely sheets.
While she was gone, he missed her. He missed the crack of her neck in the morning, the drone of her snores while she slept, her hungry eyes following him across hell. It was emptier than it had been ever before, echoes lining the walls where her footsteps might have sounded, the whispers of the dead floating up to him when her deep breaths weren't there for him to listen to. She killed him, but he needed her back -- now more than ever. He needed her face sneaking up on him while he studied his reflection, her flippant comments about those below them, her hidden curiosity about him.
After two moons, Jon Connington sent a whore to his rooms. It had been a terror to get her down here unnoticed, and she had demanded an atrocious price from him, which he had begrudgingly agreed to.
But she would accept the gold afterwards. When he asked why, the whore told him she'd been sent away within minutes.
When Jon returned to his rooms, there was a message awaiting him.
I suggest you not try that again, Connington, lest you wish to be castrated. But if you do, wouldn't you think it more clever to send a Northern girl?
It killed him to watch the flowers bloom up above, vibrant and lively and reaching up to the heavens where he might have been, once upon a time. Ready for their life to begin.
But when he saw the flowers die, he sunk back into his -- their -- bed with a grin. She was coming back to him, and he could hardly wait.
"Aegon!"
It was her fierce bark echoing down the corridors, and not a dream this time. How titillating, to hear his own name roll so freely out of her perfect mouth; it sent him reeling. He stood in the shadows when she neared him, and in secret he could watch her journey down the aisle in a rush. In a rush to see him. She would deny it to her death, he was sure, but he grinned all the same.
In a fortifying act of courage, he embraced her from the back without a word. She jumped and let out a yelp, and he allowed himself a small laugh before she elbowed him away. But she grinned wildly.
"It seems your days above have treated you kindly," he said, taking in her glowing skin, her red mouth, her flaring hips. She grew nearer and nearer.
"It seems your days without me have made you bolder," she said liltingly, with a haughty smile upon her face. "I hope you didn't have too much fun while I missed you up above."
"It was torture," he told her honestly. She drew closer, and his heart jumped into his throat.
"For us both," she agreed, but Aegon couldn't wrap his head around the fact that she had missed him as well.
"Arya …" he mumbled, not able to look away from her feral grey eyes. "You're going to be the death of me."
With a catlike grin, she crashed into him, knocking him back into the underground stone, kissing him hard and full. His mind jumped around -- wondering if she could hear his heartbeat, feel his stick sweat -- before he replied in equal intensity, flipping her back against the wall. Her moan went straight to his cock and he shivered as she pushed him into the bedroom he'd been alone in for so long.
"Yes," she said, though he couldn't remember what he'd said before she kissed him. "I suppose so."