indispensible | three. voice & private & spam. glory & gore go hand in hand.

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three. voice & private & spam. glory & gore go hand in hand.

If there were people who wanted to learn to dance, I know . . . other kinds.

I don't know how to cha-cha. Mark can teach that one once he wakes up. [:|]

[Also, Nathan, you don't get a choice.]

private } stark

[You probably don't get a choice either.]

What are you doing.

private } kelsier

I need to.

We should talk.

spam } marsh

[Vin is currently playing a stimulating game of 'acclimatize myself to Marsh's presence', which manifests in following him around for five-minute bursts at random times of day, whenever he emerges from his sad cocoon. She's not making a particular effort to conceal herself in any way at all. She just knows he won't do it.]

private } arya

I don't know your warden. How is she?

spam } polly

[Now Vin is playing a rousing game of 'follow Polly around to figure out her habits and possibly weaknesses'. Still not making a tremendous effort to hide her presence.]

private } morgana

I saw you in the breach. You smiled more, then. [Slightly bemused by this.]

spam } open

[She probably didn't realize the extent to which she felt trapped, before now. But while she isn't precisely happy, her step is a little lighter, especially with her wolfhound at her side.]

[She spends hours in the CES, once she catches an iteration of it with brightest skies and most sharply defined white clouds. Almost no time on the ground, though - she practices with coins, pleased not to be able to rely on metal in the deck for jumps. It's the work of precision and angles that pleases her.]

[After a few hours of this, she rests at the top of a smallish pine tree, examining its sap, while Clifford sits at the root and whines at her to get down occasionally.]

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A warrior and a woman.

An empress and a weapon.

You're strong enough to be two things, you know. Even if it's not those two things, or things even close to that.

An empress.

[No Vin, you are not a queen, you are nothing like Cersei or Sansa. Does not compute. Cannot be. Look at that wrinkle in her brow.]

[She sees the wrinkle, and does not smile. It was hard for her to understand, too. Maybe she can explain, maybe she can't. But she can try.]

The only empress there has ever been, in my world.

What do you think it means, to be empress?

It's the same as being a queen.

[Wearing dresses. Singing songs. Dealing with stupid people and attending stupid court. A thousand and one things Arya doesn't like - but things she'd hover on the edges of, learning.]

I don't know what it means to be a queen. We only had the Lord Ruler, and all he did was kill people.

How'd you get to be empress?

We killed the Lord Ruler.

[A beat. It felt like we, but when it came right down to it, to the hand that dealt the killing blow . . .]

I killed the Lord Ruler. And someone had to protect this people. Elend understood the politics. I understood what had to be done when politics didn't work.

[She likes the way that sounds - understanding, when politics don't work. They don't always work. There's an itch at the back of her neck, a reminder that she's not supposed to decide who dies, He of Many Faces is.

She wants to decide anyway.]

And you took his place? You and Elend?

Elend did. I didn't want to.

[She breathes, slow and careful, quiet but audible.]

I didn't think I was good enough. To be both. He didn't think he was good enough, either.

We both learned better. You can be . . . a scholar and a ruler, a killer and a queen. People are complicated. Even people like me.

[People like Arya, too.]

[She's quiet for a long while. A killer and a queen: maybe it's true. Maybe it's even possible. Arya doesn't know if she'd like that.

So she tells Vin something she's never mentioned outside of floods too bizarre to consider real.]

I was a princess.

[Vin reacts to this neither positively nor negatively. The majority of nobles she's met have been, in her estimation, unimpressive, if not monstrous. But her world is different from Arya's - and many people she came to care for, not least Elend, were noble in origin, given privilege through a system that would have chewed her up and spit her out if it had had the choice but good at heart anyway.]

[So she just makes a noise of acknowledgment, and shortly asks:]

Were, but aren't anymore?

[That gives her further pause, and she chews on her lip. It's a moment before she realizes it, forcing herself to stop. She is no one.]

My brother, he called himself King in the North. They called him the Young Wolf.

[Called, were. Without a King in the North, she's no princess.

Not that she ever felt like one. She was busy trying to stay alive on roots and acorn paste.]

[On the other end of the line, Vin closes her eyes. Not for long; it's an extended blink, more than anything. If you close your eyes in the face of grief, it'll come up behind you and shake you by the neck 'til you're dead.]

[She opens them again.]

Is your brother dead?

They cut of his head.

[Her voice is steady. She is steady. She's had years, now, to swallow it down. She's never going to see Robb again. She'll probably never see Winterfell again, outside the CES.

I will be as strong as Robb. Only Robb hadn't been strong enough. You can survive traitors.]

And they sewed on his wolf's.

[They sewed on his wolf's.]

[There are such great and ugly lengths that men will go to to prove their superiority. She's reminded of Straff - of the women he chewed up and spit out in hopes they'd provide him with an army of Mistings, of the illegitimate son he destroyed and the heir he tried to, of the pain he caused and took pleasure in. She thinks of Straff, and she thinks of cleaving him in two with her sword. It brings her a distant sort of satisfaction.]

My brother loved me. But he hurt me, too, to protect me. And then they tortured him so he would tell them where I was. He never told.

Family . . . confuses me. I don't know why you wouldn't be what you were before because he died. But there are a lot of things I don't know.

[She feels no shame in admitting this to Arya. To someone else, maybe she would. But not to her.]

Did they kill him, too?

[The Tickler killed people when they didn't answer him: he killed them when they did, too. They shared that, during the flood.

Arya's shrug is practically audible.]

He wasn't always a king. And I wasn't a princess. I don't want to be, anyway. Princess are stupid.

Yes. They killed him.

[She's curiously dispassionate about this, mostly because, even after years, she still doesn't know how to feel. Reen died for her. He loved her. He was terrible, but he loved her.]

[She moves on without really addressing the issue, as she always does.]

Then you aren't one. Unless you're a kind of princess different from the other kinds.

People told Elend I wouldn't make a good empress. But I was the best I could have been, I think. In the end.

[No one else gets to decide what she's capable of.]

I'm a wolf. [Princesses, ladies, they can burn in seven hells for all she cares. What matters to her is that she's a wolf. A Stark.]

...And sometimes I'm no one. To learn. [To serve. To change my face. They made her into another girl, in the House of Black and White. She wants to do that on her own.]

You are stronger than almost anyone I've met in my life.

[And while her life hasn't been very long, she's known some incredibly strong men and women in her time. Furthermore, she doesn't give compliments. This is plain, unadorned fact.]

[Wolf or no one, Arya has indomitable strength.]

[Wow that is. A compliment. One Arya is immensely pleased by. And a little embarrassed by, too: she still sees physical strength as a great part of what makes someone strong. And she's still small.]

Almost? [She wants to hear the stories.]

Elend had strength of will like yours. It looked different on the outside. Ham, who taught me to fight. Breeze, who was a liar. TenSoon, who almost killed me. Sazed, who saved all of us. Marsh, although he doesn't believe it.

And Kelsier.

[Something almost playful creeps into her voice now.]

None of them surpassed you. You have a lot of peers.

[If she wants to hear more, she'll have to ask about someone in particular.]

[Elend was her husband: Arya wouldn't want to talk at length about her family. Kelsier and Marsh are here: she can learn on her own about them. But the others, she can't do anything about them.]

Are you my peer? [She can tease!]

[Vin is of two minds about talking about Elend. On the one hand, she never wants to mention his name if she can help it. On the other hand, she's starved for talking about him - which once again makes her think she shouldn't. It's a conundrum.]

[Regardless: the answer's obvious.]</small. Of course I am.

But you're my teacher, too. You'll teach me to be stronger.

Why can't peers can't be teachers, too?

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