Chapter Text
The last thing Arya remembered was the Night King's hand around her throat and her dagger puncturing his chest, and then everything went black. The god of death had finally caught up to her, but at least she had taken the Night King out with her and protected Bran, Sansa, and Jon, all that remained of her family. Whatever afterlife awaited her, at least she could carry that knowledge with her.
But.
But her throat throbbed with blossoming bruises. It ached with every breath taken. And those weren't the only pains becoming more and more insistent with every passing moment. Every injury from the battle was slowly making itself known to her. She knew this well, the frenzy of the fight wearing off and the reality of her body setting back in.
Perhaps a person carried their wounds with them into the afterlife. She'd never been the most religious of the acolytes; she knew the barebones of what many of the religions of Westeros and western Essos thought of death and his aspects, but there were so many religions, and combat and stealth and poisons had always interested Arya more than religion; Septa Mordane would have agreed most strongly. If one of the many faces had claimed such a thing to be the case, she didn't know it.
But.
But her pain wasn't the only sensation she felt. She could feel her dagger still in her hand. She could feel the comforting weight of her furs and leathers. She could feel the damp ground beneath her hand and neck. She could hear the wind rustle through the leaves on the trees. She could even feel the breeze pass over her, far warmer than the winter winds she had grown to know the past several months. In fact, she was beginning to sweat from the heat of it all.
Arya opened her eyes.
She was still in the godswood, but there was no one around her.
No sign of Bran and his chair.
No sign of Theon's body.
Nothing and no one about.
More than that, this was the godswood of her childhood, sunlight flickering down through the bright red leaves of the weirwoods. There were small flowers in bloom, peaking up through the dirt.
No sign of snow on the ground.
No endless night to be found.
Where had everyone gone? If killing the Night King had suddenly and forcibly ended the winter, why had she been left out here on her own? Surely Bran at least had known she was still here and still alive. Even if she had died, someone would have taken her body in, buried her in the crypts with the rest of her family or at least burned it for extra precaution.
But no, Arya was still there. Still where she had last remembered. It was everything else around her that had changed.
Nothing to be done about it now; she could interrogate her family later and find out just what had possessed them to leave her outside. Arya hadn't survived this long by relying on others to take care of her and her problems.
Gingerly, she pushed herself up to a seated position, waiting a moment to make sure that she wouldn't pass out again before she stood up fully. Moving hurt, her muscles overworked in the frantic panic of the battle, and she'd had no chance to stretch and ease into stillness before passing out. And Arya already knew the next few days were going to be rough and full of work cleaning up the damage from the battle and helping tend to the injured. There was always so much that needed doing in the castle, and that certainly wouldn't have changed even if the Long Night had suddenly ended.
It would be a long time before she could properly rest and get her body back into form.
She sheathed her dagger and went to grab her staff - if nothing else, she could use it to support herself as she walked around the castle. And just because the dead seemed to be gone didn't mean that all their enemies were gone.
But it was nowhere to be found.
Now she was really getting annoyed - someone brought her staff in, but hadn't bothered to bring Arya in?
What in the hells had happened that Sansa, Jon, anyone would let that happen?
There was no point in waiting around for someone to just come across her. If no one had tended to her yet, it seemed unlikely they would any time soon. The godswood was large, but she couldn't hear anyone around at all. Nothing but the wind and birds and squirrels. She was alone, which was strange after so many moons in Winterfell and with her family again, but she had spent years taking care of herself because no one else would or could. She didn't need them.
If she was going to find out what happened, she'd have to go back to Winterfell and find them all herself.
The ground was soft beneath her feet, but it was the soft of rain a couple days past, not the endless, ceaseless mud that it should be if the Night King's death had caused winter to suddenly and prematurely end. If the snow melted, it should have turned all the ground to mush for weeks. But here it was, soft and moist, but not deep, thick mud.
As she walked, Arya started removing some of her layers. It was much too warm for the furs she was wearing. They were meant for the depths of winter, the kind whose winds bit through and chilled to the bones. The kind that didn't stop until all in its path had died. She'd needed them dam near every day since she'd returned to Westeros from Braavos. There had even been days when the winds had picked up and blown so strongly that the heated walls within Winterfell weren't even enough to overcome it and she'd needed a layer of furs even indoors.
And now it was too warm. A warmth that she'd nearly forgotten. Pleasant and breezy, the sun warming and the air cooling. Spring in the north. Against the Night King and his unnatural cold, Arya had thought she'd never known warmth again, but this was perfect. Not too hot at all even if she had to remove her layers.
At least it wasn't as warm as it had been in King's Landing; Winterfell, the North, never got that warm, and as adaptable as she was, Arya wasn't suited to heat like that.
The feeling that something wasn't right continued to creep up on Arya as she made her way back to the keep, back to Winterfell proper. There were just too many little inconsistencies, too many things that didn't make sense. Between dragons, the undead, the Faceless Men, Bran, Arya knew there was more to the world than what the maesters taught, more even than what the Faceless Men taught. She hadn't told anyone – she hadn't wanted to jinx it, but if she had survived the battle against the Others, she wanted to sail west of Westeros and see what else no one else knew yet.
It was with those thoughts circling her mind that Arya finally saw the walls of Winterfell in front of her. Walls that looked whole and strong, like they'd already been repaired from the damage the undead giants and dragon had caused. Arya was no mason, not in the way she was an assassin or a cockle-monger or even an actress, but she knew enough to know that repairs like that took time. More time than she could have been outside unnoticed and still survived.
It tracked with the state of the godswood and the ground and the weather, but it didn't align with the state of her own body. Arya's wounds were fresh – angry and insistent – and if she was any less than what she was, if she hadn't survived fleeing Braavos with a terrible gut wound, she would barely be capable of walking. No time at all had passed for her, but still, the world was deep into spring and Sansa and Jon and Bran had built Winterfell back to the way it had been in their childhood.
Arya was glad to still be alive, if that's what was happening, but she can't help but wish she had been there to help them. They had so little family left, and they had to do all of this without her. She had been so annoyed with them only a few minutes ago, but now all she felt was sadness. If she had been caught in some strange magic, did they think she was dead? Was she yet another piece of family they mourned? Or did Bran know that she was simply lost and would return to them now?
It was too much to consider, and she would never find out just by standing here.
But if that much time had passed, she knew she couldn't just burst into the main hall or Sansa's solar unannounced. She needed to know the current situation first.
A detour to the kitchens wouldn't be amiss; her stomach had joined the insistent choir of needs in her body. There was nothing to be done about the pain; she would just haev to deal with that until she could rest and the injuries healed - she had done it before and would do it again - but at least hunger she could deal with. She hadn't eaten since before the undead had reached Winterfell, since before Gendry, and without the adrenaline running through her body she felt every hour of it.
Arya knew Winterfell like the back of her hand and no matter how many years she had spent away from it, the halls and passages had never left her. It was trivial to pass unnoticed from the godswood gate around to the laundry. If she was going to learn the current state of affairs in the castle, she could not show up in the kitchens dressed as she was: her furs were a mess and inappropriate for the weather, her armor was scuffed and dirty and bloody, and even in the North where it was almost acceptable to be a woman and a fighter, a woman in breeches was still more noticeable than not.
If she had a man's face, perhaps she could have made some excuse for the damaged state of her armor and begged some stew and news off the cooks. But she had no faces, all Arya had on her was what she wore and held as the Night King almost killed her. And there had been no needs for faces against the Others, they cared not for appearances, only for the destruction of the living. And while an unknown knight or guard might get a little gossip, everyone knew that servants were most open among themselves.
She just had to disguise herself properly first. Even without a face, she could make it so no one who looked at her thought Arya Stark.
Thankfully the laundry was blessedly quiet, clothes and linens washed early in the morning in order to have the most time to dry in the sun; all the work mostly done for the day. She grabbed a simple rough-spun woolen skirt and linen blouse off the line and stripped out of her armor, and all of her remaining clothing - including her small clothes. She pulled the stolen clothes on, stretching her arms and kicking her legs to test the fit and her ability to move in them. They were fine, fit well enough, but they left Arya feeling uncomfortably vulnerable and exposed without any protection, but the disguise was armor of a kind.
She grabbed a shawl and tied it around her neck to cover the bruises she still hadn't seen but knew were there; she didn't need any questions or anyone taking any note of her at all. Unfortunately, her hair was too much of a mess to do anything with it; a braid would have fit the persona she was building better than the half-pulled back style she had, but at least it was out of the way enough to be kitchen appropriate. She stuffed her clothes and armor and furs in a dusty corner of the laundry and made her way towards the kitchens.
Her dagger she kept with her. She was going into an unknown situation, and she would not be unarmed.
The kitchen was abuzz with activity, preparations for the evening meal well under way. Arya grabbed a knife and a board and started chopping vegetables and began to listen to the talk around her. There were too many people and too many different conversations happening at once for Arya to listen to all of them, but even the snippets she could pick up could prove valuable.
"Such a shame the lord isn't here for the birth though."
"The king commands and the lords have to follow. Same as we follow the lord's commands."
The king? Daenerys had told Jon that she would not marry again; she must have changed her mind – it was the only explanation, no matter how unlikely it seemed. Arya had thought Daenerys too stubborn to bow to the whims of her advisors on that, but perhaps someone had finally talked her into it. It wasn't just a question of who Daenerys had married though. Who was the Lord of Winterfell? Jon? Or had Sansa married?
Arya kept listening and chopping and keeping her head down.
"He already missed the birth of his son. What's one more?"
"Another daughter though. A son would have been much better. One son and two daughters with that bastard lurking about is just asking for trouble."
"Hush, you know the lord doesn't like to hear talk like that."
"Well, he's not around right now to hear, is he?" Scattered laughter followed that, but there were also grumblings about the disrespect being shown.
But all of it only left Arya more confused.
If she accepted that there was some strange magic that held her until spring had fully come, then it was possible that enough years had passed for Jon or Sansa to have had several children. It was all just too vague. She was missing too many pieces still. And there were no questions she could ask without giving herself away as an outsider. All of the other kitchen women knew who the lord and his wife were and where the lord was; she could not expose her own ignorance.
"Does the babe have a name yet?"
"Aye, milady named her after milord's grandmother. A good northron name."
"Wonder if they discussed it at all before he left."
"Who knows. But at least she didn't name her after his sister. Terrible curse to lay on a babe, that one."
Again, Arya couldn't determine who exactly the lord and lady were. Was the lord Jon and her own name the cursed one? Or was the lady Sansa and her husband's family history nearly as tragic as their own?
"Lady Stark won't be at dinner tonight; she's recovering in her rooms until tomorrow at earliest."
"With the way that labor went, I'd wager anything that one's got the wolf's blood in her."
But the conversations around her began to drift to other matters, gossip about stable hands and the baker in Wintertown and other matters far closer to their own lives than the nobility they served. If Arya was more secure in her position in the kitchens, if this was a cover she had worked at and put time into making believable, she might have been able to redirect some of the talk back around to the lord and lady. But she hadn't even given this cook a name, let alone a backstory or mannerisms, so she held her silence.
Arya finished with the batch of vegetables she had in front of her and instead of walking over to grab more, she used the opportunity to sneak out and investigate further. She was going to learn no more useful information in the kitchen. Without thinking about it, her feet started taking her through the main hallways of the castle up to the family quarters. The instinct was right – she wanted to see just who it was that gave birth and get some answers, but the details weren't right.
She still needed to keep to the shadows, or at least the relative anonymity of the servants' passages, for a little while longer.
All her aches only became even more apparent as she climbed the steep steps up to the living quarters. Arya was too well-trained by the Faceless Men for her to give any outward appearance that she was in pain or struggling with the steps, but it took every trick she had to keep her breathing even and her steps steady.
She needed to rest.
She needed to heal.
But until she had her answers she had to keep going.
In the hall, for the briefest moment, Arya felt like a little girl again, quietly sliding into her mother's chambers hoping for comfort or some quiet away from Sansa and Jeyne's merciless teasing, but the moment was gone even before she had the door closed behind her.
All she had then was bare relief at seeing Sansa again.
With her hair unbound, Sansa looked even more like their mother. With the years that had passed, Sansa practically matched the image of their mother that Arya remembered from before leaving Winterfell. The resemblance was even more uncanny with how much the Lady of the Keep's Chamber looked just the way it did in Arya's memories. Once Sansa and Jon had secured Winterfell, she hadn't immediately tried to recreate what it had been before Ramsey, instead preferring to focus on the necessary repairs and making sure everything was functional, but perhaps time and motherhood brought a desire to feel closer to family and happier times.
For Arya though, it hurt just to look at her and remember all that they'd lost. Whoever was running Winterfell these days seemed to be determined to rebuild it back to how it once was and seemed just as determine to rebuild their family as well. Perhaps that was the nature of the Starks, endless cycles of tragedy and renewal, never able to be destroyed, but never able to truly flourish.
Sansa rolled over in her sleep, her shift bunched up and exposed her back, and Arya's heart stalled.
The woman on the bed's back was smooth, pale and pristine, not a single scar to be found.
Arya knew scars faded with time; there were many from her childhood that were basically invisible now, cuts and scrapes from climbing trees in Winterfell, and then some others from the initial flight from King's Landing. But she knew that scars like the one in her gut from the Waif or the burn on her arm from when Sandor refuses to go anywhere near their cookfire would never go away; some wounds were just too big, too deep to ever fade like that.
And the scars on Sansa's back should not be gone.
No matter how much time passed.
Sansa had always taken such care to make sure her scars were covered in public, not because she was ashamed of them, she was a survivor – she and Arya had that in common – but because she could not stand the pitying looks and whispers that followed if she left them visible. But in private, when it was just their family and closest allies (friends, even), Sansa didn't always bother to hide them. So Arya knew well what Sansa's back should have looked like.
And it wasn't what was in front of her.
The woman, the Lady of Winterfell, was not – could not be – Sansa.
Had Arya lost that much time? Was this somehow Sansa's daughter, the Tully looks breeding strong and true in her as well? Had it been not just a handful of years that some strange magic took from her, but decades and decades?
She had to go find Sansa or Jon or anyone else she knew and find out just how long she had been gone.
"...Ned..." Lady Stark mumbled in her sleep before turning over again.
That was one coincidence too many.
That name.
Her appearance.
The decorations in the room.
The state of Winterfell.
A son, two daughters, and a bastard.
An impossible hope began to bloom in Arya. But she couldn't let herself believe it, not without real proof. Magic might be unpredictable and capable of impossible things, but she had never known magic to be kind. There was always a price to be paid.
Even with all her willpower, all her training, and her desperate denials, she couldn't stop the wistful exhale of "Mother" from escaping her as she fled her mother's the lady's chambers.
The lord's solar would have the answers Arya needed. And with the info she had already gleaned from the kitchen, it should be empty now, which was a relief.
She didn't think she could handle seeing anyone right now. Especially not anyone she might recognize.
The lord's solar was clean and organized, but a little dusty from disuse; he had been gone for several months already and the castellan worked primarily in his own solar, not wanting to disturb the way Lord Stark preferred things. That made things a little easier for Arya, though it did mean that if she wanted any more current events she'd need to go to the castellan's solar and poke around there as well.
It wasn't necessary yet. Right now there were two key pieces of information she needed. She needed to know who the current Lord Stark (and Lady Stark) was and what the current year was, and those were both things she could find out here with less risk of getting caught.
Even still, Arya pushed a chair up against the door to prevent anyone else from coming in the room while she was there. If nothing else it would give her warning and time to escape if someone else did try to open the door.
She ignored the books; unless something had been written after the fight against the Night King and Arya's disappearance, it would be useless in helping her even narrow down when she was, and even if it was written after the fact, that's all it could really tell her.
Instead, she went straight for where her father kept the letters he had already sent replies to. As a child, she had snuck into this very room many, many times, on dares from Robb or Jon mostly, but sometimes she just wanted to find out what the boys weren't telling her, claiming she was too young or just because she was a girl. There was nothing young Arya hated more than being told she couldn't do something because of her age or gender.
Adult Arya held stronger and more complex hatred in her heart.
Despite the letters being in exactly the spot she had expected them to be, Arya vainly attempted to quash the hope still growing within her. It was probably just the most logical place to keep them, she tried to rationalize, but she could not rationalize away the fact that this was still her father's desk, not damaged or replaced from the one she had once known. Sansa and Jon had preferred to do their work in other, larger rooms to keep each other company and their advisors on hand as they attempted to keep Winterfell, the North, and all of Westeros from dying in the Night King's path. Arya could not recall what the desk in the lord's solar looked like then, though she didn't think it was terribly different from this one.
She pulled out a stack of letters and started to leaf through them, looking for dates, familiar names, anything that might give her something to work with. Unfortunately, while most of the letters were dated, they left off the year, under the assumption that of course everyone knew what year it was. Arya wished she could always be as confident in her knowledge of what year it was, but she just was not that lucky.
There was a lot of correspondence in a short period of time, responses from various bannermen primarily. Most of the letters only a handful of weeks apart and most of them said more or less the same thing. Yes, they would levy their armies and muster near Flint's Finger before continuing along as a united Northern army. While that did explain where the current Lord Stark had gone, she was still missing the why, beyond that the king had commanded it, which she'd learned in the kitchens.
Oh, that was a helpful reminder.
She dug back into the letters she hadn't looked at yet, hopefully finding something with a royal seal. That should at least get her the name of the current king, which would at least eliminate some options even if she didn't recognize the name itself. Arya shuffled through the stacks, more letters from Stark bannermen, a few from Riverlands houses that bordered the North, a few with personal seals she didn't recognize, and then finally one with a royal seal.
The bulk of it was clearly written in a scribe's neat, practiced, uniform hand. A quick look at the introduction made it clear that this exact letter was sent to all the Lords Paramount asking for help with putting down a rebellion. But what stood out to Arya was the much messier scrawl at the bottom, adding in a personal post-script.
Ned,
This'll be a grand adventure, like the old days. Get your bannermen together quick before Stannis steals all the glory.
-Robert
Ned again. And Robert.
Arya's heart rate picked up as she dragged her eyes back up the page and actually read the more formal part of the request properly. She still didn't want to believe it; there had only ever been one King Robert (of King's Landing, at least) that she knew of, and she had her doubts that anyone would ever give that name to a possible heir to the crown again.
Balon Greyjoy was the rebel they were seeking to put back in his place.
Arya slid to the floor.
It was impossible to ignore.
King Robert Baratheon and Ned Stark and the Greyjoy Rebellion and Lady Stark giving birth to a daughter all at once.
With all the evidence piling up, Arya knew exactly when she was.
It was the day of her own birth.
Arya Stark, named after Arya Flint, her father's grandmother.
Born while her father was away at war.
But now there were two Arya Starks.
One small and innocent and brand new.
One older and injured and tired of impossible things; one who wasn't supposed to be here.
She wasn't supposed to be here.
Arya was supposed to be in her Winterfell, damaged as it was. She was supposed to be teasing Gendry and Sandor about one thing or another. She was supposed to be listening to Sansa's lectures, not on etiquette and lady-like behavior anymore, but on politics and the small network of allies Sansa had built up and that Arya was needed to strengthen. She was supposed to be trying to find ways to keep Jon from brooding too much. She was supposed to be worrying about Bran and his strange magic.
Arya felt suddenly, endlessly adrift.
Ever since Joffrey had executed her father, Arya had run from one crisis to the next, always having some sort of goal, even if oftentimes that goal was simply to survive to the next day, she was mostly just trying to find her family and get home. And now she wasn't even sure what home was or if she could ever make it back again.
Yes, she was in Winterfell. But it was just a building filled with people who didn't know her. Her Sansa and her Jon and her Bran, strange as he was, weren't there.
What was she supposed to do now?
Could she ever get back home?
Her knowledge of magic was slim, she didn't even know how the Faceless Men's magic worked, even if she could perform a little of it herself. She had never heard even the slightest whisper of a magic capable of sending someone to the past; even Bran's visions only allowed him to see the past, not do anything to change it. She wouldn't even know where to begin to try to find a way back to her Winterfell, if such a thing was even possible.
Her breathing had grown harsh and panicked enough that she could hear it, and the sound was enough to shock her back to reality. She was still clutching that fucking letter, she was still in her father's solar. She couldn't stay here, if nothing else, sooner or later, someone would come in to clean. And she did not want to be found. She had no answers she could give about who she was.
She barely knew who she was some days.
She had to leave.
She had to figure out a plan.
She had to stay alive.
But first, she had to see. It wasn't enough to put together from these letters that her family was alive; though for a moment she stilled, frozen, at the reminder that Bran and Rickon weren't alive, not yet. But Robb was. And her father was. And so was her mother; she had to see her again now that she knew. And Jon and Sansa were here. Here, and young, and impossibly unaware of all the tragedy that would befall them all.
It was daylight still, and she had no idea where Robb or Jon or Sansa could be. Arya could form some guesses based on what she remembered from her own childhood, but guesses were all they could be.
Sansa was too young to be left on her own, and Arya already knew that she wasn't in with their mother, so it seemed likely that she was being watched by someone responsible. Which almost certainly meant Septa Mordane. And from there it was easy to narrow the possible locations down.
They were in the sitting room, several other ladies and children working on their own projects or simply gossiping. Arya couldn't pretend to be one of them, her disguise worked for the kitchen and halls, but it clearly marked her as a servant. But she could slide in and make herself unremarkable enough for just a little while.
"I want to see the baby!" little Sansa whined, and from the shadows Arya had to choke on her laugh. Sansa was practically a baby herself, but more than that Arya could hardly believe the enthusiasm Sansa had to see her younger sister. In just a few years they'd already be avoiding each other as much as possible or finding ways to torment the other when forced to be together. It wasn't until they were both back at Winterfell as adults that they'd learned to get along.
Arya wished that there was some way that this Sansa and Arya could have that closeness without all the heartache it took to get there.
"She's with the wet nurse right now; we can see her later," Septa Mordane explained gently.
Sansa pouted and stomped her foot, but didn't protest further.
Arya slipped back out of the room before she was noticed, but had to duck into an alcove to let her shaking laughter pass. By the time she had been old enough to form lasting memories, Sansa had always mastered proper behavior, which mostly just meant Arya had taken great pleasure in finding ways to finding ways to break her composure. But to see toddler Sansa not have that control and not get her way. It was just too cute.
Even though she now knew where other Arya was, she couldn't bring herself to see her just yet. It was a bridge too far, just too weird.
Time to find Jon and Robb then.
They were almost certain to be together, especially with her mother resting and unable to discourage Robb from being too close with Jon. Not that it ever worked, the two of them were always thick as thieves until everything fell apart. They were both six years older than her, and while she doesn't know what their routine was like back then, but she does remember what Bran did before he fell.
And with both Father and Mother gone or busy, they were likely at the training grounds, playing at swords. It was what she would have done after all.
But they weren't there.
The training grounds were strangely empty. Given the weather and the daylight, Arya had expected to see many of the household guard practicing or milling about or even just doing maintenance on their armor or weapons, but there were only a half dozen men there, engaged in some light sparring. After a moment, Arya felt like a fool. Of course there weren't that many men about, they were off ending the Greyjoy Rebellion.
It still wasn't dinnertime, and she had already checked the boys' chambers.
An idea came to her.
If it were her, and neither of her parents were around and available to catch her, she would have fled her lessons and practiced archery or gone swimming or something, but Jon and Robb were more responsible than her. So Arya made her way up to the room Maester Luwin used for their lessons and lingered outside the door.
He was testing the boys on the houses and sigils of the Northern bannermen – about as age appropriate a lesson on governmental diplomacy could get, she supposed. She only vaguely remembered being six herself, but she remembered Bran still had trouble sharing when she left for King's Landing, so it's not as though Maester Luwin could teach them complex negotiations and trade deals.
"The mermaid is the sigil of House Manderly," Robb said.
"And their seat is White Harbor!" Jon eagerly chimed in.
"Very good, boys. And whose seat is the Dreadfort? And what's their sigil?" Maester Luwin continued on.
But Arya's vision went red; she was filled with an unspeakable rage. It wasn't just her family that was still alive. All their enemies were alive again as well. Roose Bolton and Ramsay Bolton were alive. Alive and cruel and fully capable of destroying her family once again.
"- the flayed man," Robb said.
Arya had already gotten far enough away from the door that she couldn't hear how Luwin responded or what question he asked next. She just needed to get away before she screamed and gave herself away.
Boltons.
Freys.
Lannisters.
And so many others.
Arya had to get out, get away, find somewhere she could think without all these reminders around her.
But still.
She wanted to see her mother one more time, to look at her and know it was her, and remember her properly, instead of the fuzzy, time worn memories she'd been carrying for a decade. She crept back through the halls to her mother's chambers and opened the door just a crack to peak inside.
But her mother was not alone.
Arya took one look at tiny, impossibly small, baby Arya held so softly, lovingly in her mother's arms and fled from Winterfell as fast as her feet could silently carry her.