indispensible | six. list & private & spam. hail the pages turning.

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six. list & private & spam. hail the pages turning.

This is rude.

➽ Ben: Comfortable, dressy shoes to dance in
➽ Alana: A slim knife, with a note that I’ll show her how to use it if she likes.
➽ Nathan: Memorable smells from my home – the beer and liquor of our hideout, the perfumes of the balls, ash beaten into a Mistcloak, the smell of metal shavings suspended in liquid. A locket with a picture of her in it.
➽ Beatrix: A glass dagger.
➽ Megamind: A music box, with music and steps from home, if you can do that.
➽ Morgana: A comfortable gown with space in the sleeves for weapons, and a simple circlet.
➽ Kelsier: A gold pocket-watch, with a picture of Mare inside.
➽ Marsh: Fabric, as much as he wants and any kind he wants.
➽ Zane: Things to touch. Pieces of coarse furs, or soft leaves, lamb’s ear, rough bark. Things to remind him who he is when he gets upset.
➽ Stark: A koloss sword
➽ Arya: Ways to conceal weapons – thigh straps, arm straps. Thin, light mail. A key to my cabin, in case she ever needs me.
➽ Dean: Ten pies. They have to stay good until he wakes up and be next to his bed when he does.

private } arya

I want to talk to you.

[Because she feels weird and confused about this holiday, and she wants to beat it up.]

spam } stark

[Vin sends Clifford after Stark, not to monitor his behavior exactly, but to essentially bother him until he gets fed up with it and comes to find her. She has a question, okay.]

open spam } library

[She's looking for information - she's even writing it down. Not about the holidays, all of which frighten and annoy her in ways she can't even begin to articulate, but about dance. She starts with a history, gets frustrated with it, manages not to throw it across the room, and finds a book with more pictures and less history. Reading is still relatively new to her. She doesn't understand why it's harder when she's upset.]

[This is her gift to herself, if everyone is meant to get them: a search for movements that mean as much to other people as hers mean to her. Different ways of learning to speak.]

[Soon enough, she's surrounded by piles of books and half-crumpled papers, with her childish handwriting scrawled across it.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's . . . complicated. The gods, the real gods, each had power. Preservation had power over the mists, but Ruin was gaining too much power, too. Everything was out of balance.

Was Ruin your god of death?

[It's the only god she knows, now, the only real god at the end of the day. Death is the only god to answer prayers, and she can pray to him with steel and poison and blood. Better than praying at the trees the old gods held close.

(She doesn't even feel like she's betraying her father by abandoning his gods, not anymore.)]

In a way. The god of endings and destruction. But without Ruin, Preservation wouldn't have been able to make anything live. There wouldn't be anything but . . . pieces of life, floating around, not doing anything. It wouldn't be any good.

Sazed always said they weren't gods really, just - shards of power. Can't have one without the other. In the end, Preservation didn't really have a mind at all.

[Her brow wrinkles. Gods without minds, gods who are just bits of power to wield, she doesn't understand it, not entirely.]

Ruin had a mind?

Something like it.

. . . Ruin was cruel. It took Reen's shape, spoke to me in his voice.

Who is Reen?

My brother.

He was dead, then, so I thought . . . I don't know.

[That it was her intuition. That he was looking out for her from somewhere. She doesn't really know.]

Oh.

[There are no 'I'm sorry's. You don't apologize for dead brothers. You say nothing about the ache they leave.]

What did he tell you?

He told me how to save the world.

But it wasn't saving the world, really. It was ending it.

He lied through your brother's mouth.

[There's no pity, not even sympathy: just anger.]

If someone did that to me, I'd kill them. God or not. He of Many Faces or not. She'd kill anyone who came to her in Robb's shape, Bran's, Rickon's. She hopes to whatever god listens that Jon is still alive.]

[Vin's smile is thin. She is angry, too; in her anger, she comes back to herself, lets the grief fall away.]

[The message of her smile is clear: approval, and one other thing. What makes you think I didn't?]

[Arya matches the smile, slowly, as she teases out the secret message inside. Vin had her revenge. Vin paid betrayal with blood.

The smile fades a little. So why can't I? She doesn't ask it aloud. In the distance, she hears Nymeria howl, and wants to run with her.]

Good.

[It's complicated. Truly, Vin doesn't know the answer. Not in such a way as she could articulate it.]

[She hurts when Arya's smile fades; something in her eyes shutters.]

I'm sorry. This wasn't right.

[To come to her. To ask for help.]

[She's done something very wrong, she feels, and again, she can't begin to explain what.]

[Arya's brow crinkles at that; she doesn't now how to be comforting or kind, that was always Sansa's arena to shine. Arya knows how to hurt, how to be wild, but this is harder. She doesn't know how Sansa did it.]

Why?

Because I made you upset. Angry, [she clarifies, because she knows how Arya hates any implication of weakness, and anger is almost like strength if you squint.] And I don't know how to explain - I'm not -

I'm not good with people. I'm not good at . . . talking. About this.

[She never has been. It was always Kelsier and Elend. They were political in their different ways; Vin stood uncertainly in the shadows.]

[Arya shifts uncomfortably, because she wants to laugh. She bites her lip to keep it in, looks away.]

I'm not either.

[She pokes her toe at the ground, grinding down against the dirt.]

I'm not angry at you.

Then . . .

[She looks after Nymeria, not at Arya at all. A little girl hides in a corner of her mind, cowering under a raised right hand. She fears. Even now, she fears. And she always will.]

Who hurt you?

[She thinks of Amory Lorch, who led an attach on her and the others when she was pretending to be a boy. She thinks of the Tickler, who she watched torture a dozen people on the way to Harrenhal. She thinks of the Hound, who bound her up in blankets so she wouldn't run. She thinks of Gendry and Hot Pie, who didn't hurt her at all except by leaving.]

No one hurt me.

[Nymeria is enjoying the fields, enjoying running, and Arya wants to go with her, now. She stays rooted in her own skin, jaw clenched.]

Someone made you angry.

[That's close enough, in Vin's opinion. Anger hurts. It burns.]

Someone took away everything I care about.

[They even took Needle for a time, and Nymeria - the direwolf has been with her so long, now, that she can't imagine being without her. But for so long, in Westeros, she was alone.]

I'm really angry.

And I reminded you of it.

[Or else Arya doesn't need to be reminded. It always simmers under the surface, ready to rise.]

[She shrugs at that: being angry at Vin for getting away with what she's been denied would be easy.

So easy. She even considers it. But she likes Vin, too - and that muddies it up.]

You made it right. [Why can't she? She wants revenge, and every warden she's had has been hell bent against it.]

. . . I wish I could guide you. But I'm not good at guiding people. I barely made it through myself.

[Does that make her a bad warden? she wonders. Would Stark be better off with someone else? She doesn't think so, but maybe - maybe.]

[What would a light touch, a kind person, even do with him, though? She is blunt. Maybe that's right. Maybe bluntness is right for Arya, too.]

I don't want a guide. I know what to do, at home. I know what I have to do. They were going to train me, even better than I've learned here. I was going to be one of them, and then when it was right - when I learned enough - I'd make everything right.

[There is no 'and then' after that. After her enemies are dead, it doesn't matter.]

What happens after everything's right?

[It's a question Vin has to ask. She never had an after, either, until abruptly she did. Until she felt robbed not getting to experience it. Until she felt the need to make sure it happened, for at least one of them.]

six. list & private & spam. hail the pages turning.

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