Cuts deeper than swords.

[lonewolflives]

She'd come very close to cutting off her hair that morning, to simply hacking it all off with a knife. She'd been growing it for years, had only started growing it to prove a point to Lyanna. Why she'd kept it up after Lyanna had disappeared, she didn't know. What she did was that know the damn stuff went past the small of her back and took far

Comments

[giftless]

Those discs still unnerved Edmund. He watched Arya take them down from the relative safety of the treeline with his heart in his throat. He knew she could do it. He had seen her do so a couple times before. But low chances of injury and death still represented a chance.

The disc now safely lodged in the tree that he had been standing next to (and then promptly dashed away from when he saw what was happening), Edmund ventured closer. "Good day, then?" he guessed dryly. Little of that "calm as still water" nonsense today, apparently.

[lonewolflives]

"Just fucking great," she said, tossing her head slightly to flip her braid over her shoulder so that she could make sure it came out unscathed. "Who could be in a bad mood when it's so warm and lovely."

A Stark who was born for colder weather than this, for one.

[giftless]

It was almost funny, and only because Edmund knew with a surety that he personally had not done anything to upset Arya. Not recently and not yet anyway. He knew to tread a bit carefully and kept his grin slight.

"Did you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning or do you have a reason to be cross?"

[lonewolflives]

She tossed her braid back and picked up Romance, wiping it clean of any sand or detritus it might have picked up.

"Cross? No, of course not," she said, slamming the sword home in its scabbard and picking up Needle, "I just go around getting pissed off for no reason."

[prodigaljaybird]

There are no trees to hide in this close to the water, and when she shouts, Jason comes, even if it isn't him she's summoning. He's seen it all from far away, enough to leave his mouth hanging open, envy in his heart for those training discs, and wonder, too. They're like something he'd have trained with back home, but without the tech here, he can't imagine how she's made them.

"Impressive," he says when he's close enough, giving no nod to girl or weapons, and likely meaning both.

[lonewolflives]

She looked up, catching her breath, and offered a minute shrug with one shoulder as she stepped to pull one sword out of the sand.

"I can do better than that," she said, not in any kind of mood to be satisfied with anything.

[prodigaljaybird]

"I believe you." She looks like she's been at it for a while, but there's still fire in her belly, Jason can see it, in the whipsmart cut of her movements and the burn of her eyes. She's come out here to work something out of herself, and she isn't done.

"Still like to see it."

[lonewolflives]

"Well, that show's over," she said, sheathing the one sword and picking up the other, repeating her check that it was clean before also shoving it into its scabbard with less care than usual. "There's no satisfaction in hitting something as dumb as those things."

The challenge was keeping track of them, moving through the gaps the random shifts and attacks made, but you hit them and they went down, just pieces of metal after all was said and done. Usually she did find satisfaction in it, in testing that, but well-executed moves didn't ease anything inside her.

[_kinginthenorth]

Seeing Arya train is not unusual. Seeing Arya shout and fight like a (not nearly as small as she once was) thundercloud isn't that strange either. But Robb has known her, after all, for her entire life. There's a difference between adrenaline and anger.

"You all right?" he asks, skipping over the pleasantries and the comments about what crimes the flying discs might have committed and getting right to the point.

[lonewolflives]

She had, briefly, considered leaving Summerfell, trying to get some distance there. She'd thought about it, and dismissed it, since then she knew the first thing she'd do every morning was go and check.

"That's a stupid question," she pointed out, plucking Romance out of the sand and checking the blade.

[_kinginthenorth]

And she wouldn't be the only one. It's long past the time when they can make each other worry.

"All right," Robb says. This is an Arya he's used to dealing with, whatever that says about them. "What's wrong?"

[lonewolflives]

"What do you think," she said, slamming Romance home in its scabbard. "Duo. This place, it's this fucking place."

[lucked]

The first thing that Claire felt, as she came to a rest some distance away to watch Arya's progress battling those blades, was envy. Something about the movement looked fulfilling cathartic, motion that burned one's lungs and muscles and kept the anger and frustration at bay. How many times had she wanted to break everything within her sight? Or to run as quickly as she could in the opposite direction, fast enough that she would never have to look back? If she could move like Arya, Claire thought, then at least it would feel like she was doing something at all, rather than the way she was forced to bake cupcakes, to tumble about in a short skirt, those being the familiar things that she could do with muscle memory alone. They weren't half as satisfying.

And yet, the look on Arya's face at the end of it all was anything but relieved.

"Did it help?" Claire asked from some distance away, approaching the brunette.

[lonewolflives]

She'd been aware of someone else there, but had ignored it, focused on the discs. That was the point of the exercise, after all. You focused, or you got cut. And that pain wouldn't take away from any of the rest of it, it'd just add to it, so it certainly wasn't worth it.

"While I was doing it, I guess," she said, with a dissatisfied shrug, a jerk of her shoulders. "Not really."

[lucked]

While Claire couldn't claim to be the closest friend of Arya's, the two had shared enough secrets, stories of both of their worlds, that she felt comfortable enough pointing out that there was something clearly wrong, in her gait, in her expression, both normally carrying a quiet strength, constant and bright. Now, it was more like the lick of flames, rising and falling and burning everything away into smoldering ash.

It felt wrong.

"As amazing as that was to watch, you look just as... I don't know, tense after," Claire admitted with a sympathetic furrow of her brow. "What happened?"

[lonewolflives]

Arya made a sound somewhere between a snort and a grunt at tense. Yes, she was tense. She felt like her body was pressed into a space too small for it, like she wanted to explode with movement but could only get a few inches.

"One person," she said, "one fucking person doesn't make it back from that stupid space station. What happened? This place, this fucking place, that's what happened."

[chose]

Transfixed is a good word for it.

Watching from afar - close enough for the front row experience but far enough that she goes unnoticed - Buffy is utterly transfixed. She's known since she first started teaching at the island school that Arya is beyond skilled and talented, but this is something else. This is a side of her that she hasn't seen in class, where most are just trying to get by on what they've learned (or, in some cases, show off what they've already mastered). It isn't difficult to tell that whatever the other girl is channeling, it's coming from somewhere deep down, and probably nowhere pretty.

"Hey," she calls, tentatively, before moving forward. The last thing she wants to do is startle Arya and have a sword lanced at her head (unlikely, but still possible, which is the more important of the two).

[lonewolflives]

Even with the intent of burning away all but the necessary thoughts, she was aware there'd been an onlooker. Syrio had taught her too well for it to be otherwise. And now everything else was rushing back in. Maybe she should run it again. Just keep doing it until she fell down or started getting cut.

"Hi," she said, shortly, retrieving her swords, glancing over only briefly. "Don't worry, when they go down, they stay down."

[chose]

Hesitant to move forward too quickly, Buffy remains at what she can only hope is a healthy distance, not nearly close enough for a good look at those spinny thingies and, as such, no closer to quelling her curiosity. "What are they?" She asks, and even if she were so inclined, there wouldn't be any point in masking the interest in her voice. Besides, from the looks of it, Arya could use a distraction. Maybe even a distraction from her distraction.

[lonewolflives]

"I just call them the discs," Arya said, flexing her fingers, shifting on her feet. She bent down and picked one up, holding it up so that Buffy could get a better look. "They showed up January, a while back. One of the times the island was nice."