And what do we say to death?

[needlebearer]

Who| Arya Stark & OPEN
What| Being revived for the first time has Arya thinking about death
Where| Training Centre
When| After she's been killed in the Caves, backdated to around 26/02
Warnings| None yet, will add as needed
Notes| Prose or brackets are both fine


a) Training Centre Common Area
Arya sits cross legged on one of the sofas in the common area, poking and prodding at herself. It's been several hours now, but it's still surreal to her to find that the wounds she'd sustained during the Arena have been healed so completely that there's not even the barest trace of a scar. She's a little disappointed, really: she'd have liked to keep the scars, the proof of all she's survived through.

...Except she didn't survive, did she? She tried to remember the events just before she'd woken up in the Capitol. She remembered the dim light of the caves growing fainter, the darkness growing and surrounding her, the warmth leaving her body. Then nothing. Was that what death felt like? It was rather anticlimactic, really. And it ran contrary to everything she'd seen of death before, the violence and the gore and the absolute indignity of it. In a way, she felt cheated.

She wonders whether her father and mother and Robb had felt the same. It was reassuring, if so. But then it would also mean that all those on her list would feel the soft lull of death too, and she wanted them to suffer. Perhaps killing them wasn't sufficient punishment enough.

Then there was her resurrection. She'd seen Beric Dondarrion brought back from the dead, but he had certainly not been in peak physical condition like she was now, and he'd made it very clear that he was the exception rather than the rule. Was it this easy to bring back her father? If so, why had no one tried? Was she the only one left who cared? Or did the rules work differently if a man had his head cut off? No, the rules must work differently solely because it's the Capitol. She glances around at the tall buildings and bright lights out of the window and feels hatred for this place seethe up in her once more. She hops off the sofa, storming out, unable to take being here a moment longer.


b) The Training Centre itself

There was only one god, Syrio had said, and it's name was Death. All men must die, Jaqen had told her. Those words are written in High Valyrian on the coin he'd given her, which she now carried as her token. She takes it from the pocket of the uncomfortable Capitol clothes she'd awoken in, tracing her words over the inscription, Valar Morghulis, before throwing the coin angrily across the training centre, where it clatters coldly on the ground.

She grabs a sword, a broad, heavy one, not the sort she'd use for Water Dancing, gripping it in both hands and striking at the training dummy hanging there. There's no technique in her movements at all, she's not really concentrating on training at all, she just needs to get some of the anger out of her system. Every time the sword strikes true she recites a name, something she's refrained from doing since she'd gotten here, knowing how much she was being watched, not wanting to answer too many questions on it by all the media roaming around.

"Joffrey. Cersei. Walder Frey. Meryn Trant. Tywin Lannister. The Red Woman. Beric Dondarrion. Thoros of Myr. Ilyn Payne. Polliver. The Mountain. The Hound."

Comments

[needlebearer]

"It isn't murder," she says a little forcefully. "I had to, they deserved it." All apart from the stable boy, which she still felt the occasional twinge of guilt over when she stopped to think about it, but she'd had little choice either way.

[a_minute_younger]

Gary opens his mouth to say something, but doesn't quite have the gumption to say it. Still. He needs another minute just to soak this in and be properly terrified by it before he can come up with something appropriate to say, for various definitions of 'appropriate.'

Eventually he finds his voice again. "I, um." Gary swallows hard and his face goes pale. "...I think that still counts? Like, isn't aggravated murder still, like...murder?"

[needlebearer]

"Murder and justice aren't the same thing," she insists. She knows deep down that her crusade was vengeance really, but it was also the closest to justice they were ever likely to face.

[a_minute_younger]

Unfortunately, this bout of culture clash simply isn't resolving itself in Gary's mind the way Arya would probably prefer it to. He remains thoroughly unable to compute.

"Yeah," he says, slowly. "They aren't. So like...you committed murder, and that's not a good thing."

[needlebearer]

Arya finds herself becoming increasingly frustrated, realising that she just isn't getting through to him. "If people murdered your family, what would you do?"

[a_minute_younger]

Well, that's a little more incriminating. Gary winces away and goes silent for a few tense moments.

"...Call the cops and hope they rot in jail?"

[needlebearer]

She looks confused at the terminology. "...Are they like the guard?"

[a_minute_younger]

...She doesn't know what cops are. Then again, he's not sure he knows what 'the guard' is, either. Gary struggles for a moment to find a reasonable compromise.

"...Like Peacekeepers," he decides, eventually. "Only, like, less...militarized? They've got the batons and stuff, but their not so, uh--" How do you say 'anal' without actually saying it? "--uptight. Casual, y'know?"

[needlebearer]

Arya nods understanding, before quickly changing direction and shaking her head vividly in response to his previous answer. "I couldn't go to them. They work for the people who killed them."

[a_minute_younger]

A win and a lose. Gary puffs his cheeks and props his hands on his hips. "No way! Are you sure? Who would do something like that?"

[needlebearer]

She looks at him a little oddly, thinking him either very naive or very lucky never to have encountered that sort of enemy, before glancing very pointedly at a Peacekeeper recruitment poster on the wall of the training centre, illustrating that the blindly loyal, brutal nature of the police-types is exactly the same either. "People who only see their job as being loyal to their liege lord, and not thinking about right and wrong."

[a_minute_younger]

It's a little bit of both, really, punctuated by how Gary is still very confused by Arya's explanation. The comparison to the Peacekeepers doesn't help--he's never viewed them as acting on loyalty, necessarily. He just kind of assumes that they're assholes of their own agency. But that's not really the argument that they're having right now, so apart from a blank stare at the recruitment poster, he ignores it.

"But who does that?" he repeats, slower this time. "I mean, I don't think anyone would do that on their own. Like, I'm sure if you just told them what happened, they would know that it's wrong and would agree with you."