indispensible | 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

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.]

[Arya shrugs. Vin isn't the first person to ask, and she isn't surprised by it anymore.]

It doesn't matter. I'll make it up to Death, or I'll die or I'll just go away. [It doesn't matter.]

[Vin hears I don't matter. Her lips purse, but she nods; doesn't argue.]

Then I would take you back to it, if I could. If you don't want guidance, or friendship, I could at least be a ferry.

But you can't. So it doesn't matter.

[And she wants - she wants to not be in her skin anymore. She wants to run and howl and be in a pack, just for a little while longer, because she wouldn't have that if she wasn't here. Unbuckling her belt, laying Needle down, Arya turns her back to Vin and tugs off her clothes, dropping them in a messy pile because she never cared about keeping them neat. She's changing almost before she's done, bones shifting and jerking and it hurts, but she doesn't cry out anymore.

She trusts Vin, or she wouldn't make herself vulnerable like this. But she needs a different skin. She needs to be a wolf for true.

It doesn't take long: where the girl stood, instead there's a gray wolf, still young and small, shaking herself post change. She looks up at Vin, almost an invitation, and takes off toward the hill she last saw Nymeria on.]

[Where others might flinch during the change, Vin does not. She's seen and felt pain like this before, not a change but a perpetual breaking, not a shift of form but an inability to stop fighting. Arya will just take the fight to a different shape, for now.]

[She nods, and follows, silent, swift, and sure.]

[She runs - not from or to anyone, she just runs. Faster than a human body, but nowhere near as fast as Nymeria: she follows the direwolf's scent because it makes sense to, but Nymeria is nearly full grown and huge, and Arya is no where near. Her legs are still short, but she runs hard and fast, pushing herself to exhaustion.

It's not easy. It takes time. Eventually, she slows to a trot, then a walk, and throws herself down on the grassy floor of the forest.]

[When Arya begins to slow, Vin slows, too, mirroring her pace and keeping some distance. She doesn't understand what her role is, now. What she can do to right the wrong she's committed by having power.]

[So she circles the space where Arya has lain, slow and quiet now, waiting for a sign.]

[It's good that she's tired: Arya thinks, in the sleepy part of her mind, that she might have growled at Vin other wise. She might have bared her teeth and snarled and forced her away.

Instead, she lifts her head, picks herself up and sits upright. Wolf body language speaks volumes: she is not aggressive, not contrite, she's proud, she's in charge no matter the situation. The last would make her laugh, if she saw herself. It wouldn't be a happy laugh.

Her ears prick, her head tilts. She's waiting for Vin to join her.]

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

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