fearcutsdeeperthanswords: (Ser Gregor. Dunsen. Raff the Sweetling.)
Arya Stark ([personal profile] fearcutsdeeperthanswords) wrote in [community profile] ataraxionlogs2012-07-11 01:41 pm
Entry tags:

I recognize you're a hideous thing inside

CHARACTERS: Alayne Stone, No-Name Jeyne
LOCATION: Alayne's room
WARNINGS: sad Stark feelings :c run :C
SUMMARY: After letting Jon know she's here but Arya's dead.
NOTES:--


She'd called him a bastard. He hated her. Ghost was angry. He didn't understand.

That was the worst of it; he didn't understand. She still wanted to scream, and rage, to rage at him for being so stupid as to not see, to not see how he'd get himself killed if he stays so honorable, like Robb did, like Bran and Rickon, even if they're all here, alive, now.

He didn't understand.

But Alayne did.

It was night, and most of the sounds of others had been drowned out by the time she pulled herself toward the engine room, where she could listen to whatever made the ship run and pretend to feel that power thrum through her skin. She couldn't take strength form foreign machinery, but she could tell herself she did. She dragged herself away from the hole she'd intended to sleep in, and headed for the passenger compartments. Alayne understood that honor and truth could kill you, even if, maybe, she didn't understand that killing could keep you alive too. Her weapons were all words, and Arya's words had failed.
wont: (DOLLARBIRD)

[personal profile] wont 2012-07-11 09:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Alayne was used to visitors, though most came to her during the day. Daytime aboard the Tranquility seemed a very arbitrary thing, given how there were no windows, no sun to rise and fall in the sky, and no rooster's crow to herald the morn. But a pattern had been established long before Alayne's own arrival, and so the passengers adopted to it and kept it as their own. And by the pattern's estimation, it was very late. She felt weary and now that she was alone, Alayne felt she was able to let her shoulder's droop. It was difficult work, keeping secrets, and though she'd been graced with the ability to sing and sing well, it was tiring business that held no promise of relief. So long as Sansa's siblings remained, so long as her father was aboard the ship, there would be twin points that pulled on Alayne's heart, each set at separate poles of a great compass at the very center of her being. And it was her task to navigate between one and the other, trading one face for another, erasing and rewriting the name upon her heart from day to day to day.

In that way, she was truly her sister's sister — Arya who was no longer Arya, Sansa who was no longer Sansa, each the sweet shadow of a dead girl who loved the other more than they'd ever managed to love their sisters.

At this time of night the ship was quiet, save for the hum of distant motors, that constant thrum that never stopped and buzzed always in the back of Alayne's mind, even when held by the deepest throes of sleep. The corridor outside Alayne's bedroom door still and without movement but then Lady, who'd been dozing at the foot of Alayne's bed as she sewed, pricked her ears and turned towards the doorway as if expecting something. Her first reaction was to think it Petyr, for often her father would visit her throughout the day. His trips at night, however, were much different and what happened behind those closed doors was not meant for anyone to know. (More secrets, more whispers, more weights hung around Alayne's shoulders and throat to tug her down, more boldness and bravery —between you and I, Sansa.— lining her skirts and lifting her up.)

In expectation, she stood and smoothed the shoulders of her dress. Atop his gilded cage, Castle flapped his white wings, unsettling and then settling again.
wont: (SYLPH)

[personal profile] wont 2012-07-12 02:29 pm (UTC)(link)
The knock came and Alayne smiled without thinking, a bubbling nervousness filling her as it always did just before her father came to visit. In private, he was always kind to her — much kinder than he ever was where other people could see. A necessity really, a practicality and not an unkindness. They both knew how their closeness made Robb bristle, how it inspired something fierce and feral inside him, something proprietary that wished to lash out and cry mine. Such things made Alayne anxious and sick with worry and so she did all she could to hide those feelings away when in Robb's company, for fear it would anger him or make him force Petyr away. But in her heart of hearts, she did care for Petyr, perhaps more fervently and fierce-heartedly than she should.

But how could she not, he'd saved her, hadn't he — not once, but again and again. He'd held her in the last moments of her life as she'd bled onto his hand and had been there in the moments after, when that life had magically been regiven. He'd stolen her from King's Landing, but for her own good, and when he stripped away Sansa's name, he'd given her a knew one — one that helped her be brave. He'd been her father — however unfatherly — when all of her family was lost and uprooted, or dead and given to the frozen earth.

Holding all of these thoughts in her heart, Alayne hurried to the door and quickly opened it. She was about to greet him, to dip a bow and claim, 'father', but no — the silhouette that filled the doorway was not that of Lord Petyr Baelish. This one was small and bald-headed, the fuzz of her scalp catching the light, making it seem as though there was halo set about her head. The sight shocked Alayne into silence. The girl with no name had never come here before and, in truth, Alayne had expected that she never would.

"You—" was all she managed. Not Jeyne, not girl. (And certainly not Arya.)

Her smile all but vanished.
Edited 2012-07-12 14:48 (UTC)
wont: (OSTRICH)

[personal profile] wont 2012-07-12 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Her first thought was what if Petyr should come but quickly after came a blushing shame for Alayne knew her answer (it had been there all along). If Petyr came, she would have no choice but to send him away. (He would understand, wouldn't he. He would understand, surely. Secrets become less so the more men know of them and this was a secret meant only for lost sisters. Not fathers nor brothers nor kings.)

Alayne was about to step aside and refix her smile, offer a word of welcome to the girl as it was the courteous thing to do even to a stranger. But then the girl stepped forward and did something very strange. Something that neither the stranger who was no one nor Arya who came before had ever done to Alayne, nor to Sansa. Never once, in all their young years. She stepped forward and touched her forward to Alayne's chest as if wishing for an embrace that had yet to make manifest. Terrible, really, how unexpectedly it came and how Alayne felt panic first before moving to shut the door behind her, closing the rest of the world off from the two of them, hiding them and keeping them safe. Embracing someone came easily to Alayne for despite the tempering of her heart to steel it, she still had the desire to trust and to love. Embracing the girl, however, came less easily and for that she felt a pang of guilt resonate inside her like a terrible gong.

Carefully, she draped her arms about the girl's shoulders. They were broader than she could remember and the girl was taller, though still smaller than Alayne. Her hands splayed themselves across the girl's back and she embraced her, properly, for the first time since she could remember. (And in realizing that, it broke her heart.)

Something clenched in Alayne's chest then, something protective and feral, and for a moment Alayne was no longer a Stone but a Stark of the North with a heart born of winter. Who was it? she thought to say, for she knew the girl would not come here unless there was need of it. What did they do? How did they hurt you?

But Alayne asked none of that, only held the girl and said: "You're always welcome here." And in her heart she thought: Your secrets are my secrets. I will protect them with my life.
wont: (CRANE)

[personal profile] wont 2012-07-12 04:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Alayne realized, perhaps too late, that this was a dangerous game they now played. The girl held her with arms unfamiliar (embracing) but spoke to Alayne with Arya Stark's voice. That Northern slant, not Braavosi, not a lie she pinned upon herself like a bit of dressing or a ribbon to catch the eye. It stopped the breath in Alayne's lungs for she did not know whose voice would reply, if it would be Alayne that spoke or Sansa instead. (Sansa is a mask. But the words did not take, she did not feel convinced; she felt Sansa, rising. Alayne is the name that will keep everyone safe. Alayne can protect the girl. Not Sansa. Silly girl.)

With a careful hand she touched lightly the strong curve of the girl's skull. The short hairs there, still growing in from where it had been shaved, tickled Alayne's palm if she brushed too delicately and so the hand fell down instead, to the nape of the girl's neck. A settling, rooted point of contact. A reassurance. You are what you are. Remember.

She thought to ask if Jon Snow had been cruel, if he had grown angry with the girl or perhaps even grabbed at her to shake some sense in her. Jon was not Robb, that much was known, and where Robb had grown soft at at Alayne's insistence, Jon had grown frustrated and thought her near to mad. What then would he have done to the girl with Arya's face, a painful reminder of what had been lost when the Lannisters seized the Tower of the Hand and the Stark girls were searched for high and low. Nothing kind, Alayne decided and felt pity for the first time for the girl in her arms. Quickly, she reassured her:

"He does not understand."

And how could he? Jon had never been taken captive by the Lannisters, had never been forced to flee the city and shave his head or dye his hair. He had been born broad-shouldered and with strength enough to wield a sword. And he had been born a boy.