I recognize you're a hideous thing inside

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

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.

Comments

[wont]

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.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

Always. That was a good word, a nice word. Better than the nevers that had haunted her conversation with Jon. Never would Arya come back, never would she be revived, never would she speak again.

She did not return the hug that Alayne gave her - and she could not recall the last time this had happened, not even when she reached for Arya's memories. They were hazy, tinged with summer snows, and snowball fights, of snow dumped down the back of a Tully-haired girl's dress. But there are no embraces that she can recall, none like this.

You hugged Jon when he gave you Needle, hugged him because he understood and gave you what you needed.

Now it was Alayne who understood, and it was her Arya looked to to find what she needed (though she wasn't sure what that was yet). Awkwardly, her arms came up, clutching at the back of Alayne's dress, then holding tight, and her arms were protective in nature, even if she had nothing to protect Alayne from. She was no tail, but this was no pack, because they were no wolves.

I am, a voice whispered. I'm the night wolf.

When she speaks, it's without looking up, and without the Braavosi accent - though she clings to the style. "A girl spoke with a Lord Commander." And now a girl doubts.

[wont]

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.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

She knows how easy it is to slip a knife in someone's back, how easy ot is to drag its edge across their throat if you get close enough, if you trust them enough, and she remembers Dareon, remembers how he made himself a deserter who meant to marry a whore, and how she'd let him think she was no danger, so it had been no difficulty to kill him from behind.

She did not think Alayne would ever mean to kill her. She was not certain Alayne could kill. But these were the thoughts that now came to mind when people came close.

Arya did not pull away, only stared at the threads of Alayne's dress, directly in front of her nose. It was easier that way, to see part of her, but not really see her, because the things she wanted to ask were dangerous things, things she wasn't certain she should be giving voice to at all. "He doesn't," she agreed, and that hurt to say. Jon, Jon did not understand her. It might have been funny, but she could find no humor in it: Jon had lost his insight into her, and Sansa-who-as-no-longer-Sansa had gained it.

Arya Horseface would have scoffed and maybe laughed, if bitterly, had someone told her she would one day go to her sister before her brother. Arya Underfoot would have rolled her eyes. No-name Jeyne did nothing but lean, and hug, and, very quietly - as if speaking the words might ruin their truce, ruin all of it - speak. "Is he right?"