wildasever | (no subject)

When Arya awakens with a start, Nymeria's already sitting upright. It's almost as if she's ready for attack, though the moment she catches Arya's gaze and the tears in her eyes, the wolf nuzzles her instead.

It's nothing unusual. Arya has nightmares almost every night. That's what makes going to school even more miserable, the baggy circles under her eyes while the children around her shriek and play after what she can only guess are blissful dreams. They've never suffered anything, she can't help but think, a bitterness that can't be eased bubbling in her chest. It's like tar, turning her insides dark.

But while she always wakes with her heart racing, she doesn't always awaken crying, and that's what pulls Arya from her bed, feet padding along the carpet as she seeks out her sister in the next room, savagely rubbing the dampness out of her eyes. If Sansa's sleeping soundly, Arya knows she shouldn't disturb her, but she creeps in anyway, raising her fist to the door once she's already inside. She can't help it. There's no one else. No one else in the city, no one else in the world. That's what she dreams about every night, after all, the flocks of birds that fled when her father's head fell, her sister's scream and the rest of them, the rest of them that she could only imagine in gruesome detail: her mother, Robb, Bran and Rickon. Jon.

All gone.

"Sansa?"

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Sansa didn't always sleep soundly. There were nights she didn't sleep at all, others she woke up partway through the night with awful images in her head, the sort of thing that remained imprinted on the backs of her eyelids even while awake. She'd learned through a good deal of experience how to carry on through it, however, a skill acquired out of necessity in King's Landing, and continued to be put to use here in Darrow. She had too much else to worry about to let herself fall prey to them. It wouldn't have done her any good, and it certainly wouldn't have changed anything. The best thing to do, the only thing to do, was carry on through it.

There were no bad dreams filling her head, however, when she was roused from her sleep by a knock on the door and the sound of her name. Groaning faintly, she peered through the darkness, the small shape of her sister silhouetted by the thin sliver of light coming in from the hallway. "Arya?" she asked. "What is it?"

Once Sansa's awake, Arya's not sure how she can help her. If she even can. Only that it's a comfort to hear her voice after all of the nightmares. The one family left in her life, alive and breathing the very same air as her. "I couldn't sleep," she says, the only explanation she can manage that doesn't risk scaring Sansa, too. The blood and the birds and the cheers. "I didn't know what to do."

Stifling a yawn with the back of her hand, Sansa instinctively wanted to tell her just to go back to bed and keep trying, that coming in here wasn't going to make any difference. Maybe it wouldn't, but whether she wanted to be or not, she was awake now, too and chances were that sending Arya away wouldn't do either of them any good. "You can come in, if you want," she said, voice still a little rough from sleep. "You don't have to just stand there."

It's tempting to turn away, figuring that's what Sansa must really want. Figuring that's what she's always wanted, for Arya to leave her alone. She'd almost had her wish, too, until she'd had turned up a few months ago. Arya can't seem to make herself move any direction but forward into the room, though. Nymeria starts to follow but Arya turns to gently nudge her out of the room while she sits on the edge of the bed, leaving plenty of space for Sansa's long legs. "I wish I could forget," she says, voice small. "The good and the bad."

"It's the good parts that seem worst," Sansa replied without much thought, something she had never really admitted, mostly because there'd never been anyone to admit it to. Certainly in King's Landing she wouldn't have been able to tell a soul about the dreams she had where her whole family was safe and together and happy again, how much worse those were than the nightmares. They were pleasant enough at the time, but waking up was always so much more awful that way. "To me, anyway."

"They seem forever ago," Arya says with a nod and a sigh. The bad parts are vivid in her memory, not just in her dreams but in waking, and there are times when Arya can't help but wonder whether they ever happened to begin with. Without the people around with who they all happened, how is she ever to remember? There are technologies, now, that can capture a moment in motion like a paint brush or chisel never could. What she wouldn't give for a picture of her father's smile. Maybe if she had one, she wouldn't be so scared of forgetting what it felt like when he'd stroked her hair. How is she to hold the hate in her heart for Joffrey and Ser Ilyn and the rest of them while carrying the goodness with her, too?

"They might as well be," Sansa replied, glancing down at her hands where they were twisting in her lap. With everything that happened since, at least for her, and how much it changed their lives, it was practically another lifetime ago. Being here, in another world entirely, where none of that made a difference to anyone else, only added to that, made the distance seem even farther. She'd been someone else then, both in name and in feeling, though she had so far ignored the former here. Besides, she would never move on from it entirely, especially not when she couldn't get home. "It's been years for me now."

"Right," Arya says, nodding again. She forgets that, sometimes, the fact that Sansa has a wealth of knowledge of a future that Arya doesn't. A future that goes beyond the deaths of their family, although to her they're the only things that truly matter. As much as she's glad not to have experienced any of it first hand, she still feels further disconnected from her sister from it, and so much lonelier. If their blood and names weren't the same, she thinks she'd be entirely lost in this place. "I'm sorry," she says, after a moment, finding a loose thread on the blanket and looping it around her finger so she doesn't have to look Sansa in the eyes. It's never been easy. "For waking you up."

"It's alright," Sansa assured her with a shake of her head, trying her best to summon up a small smile, though it wasn't a very successful one. At a time like this, she didn't see how anything else could be the case. Most of the time, she was good at that, but where the rest of their family was concerned, especially here, where she could let her guard down some, that was a different story. It was for the same reason that she couldn't give Arya a hard time for it like she once would have. She'd dealt with too much of the same sort of thing herself for that. "You don't need to be sorry."

There's a lot more to be sorry for than merely waking Sansa up, Arya thinks, but each seems like the sort of thing that will only make the two of them feel worse if she dares to speak them aloud. Regret over their fights on the road to Winterfell, regret over the fact that she's been here alone for so long in her grief. Most of it nothing that Arya has control her (although maybe some of the fighting) but guilt that gnaws at her nonetheless. She nods. "Are you going to be able to fall back asleep again?"

"I was thinking I'd try," Sansa said, stifling a yawn as if on cue. It was still late, and though thoughts of their family never helped much where sleep was concerned, they also weren't anything new, anything she couldn't handle. By now, she'd grown used to it, and as often as not, sleep came anyway. Nothing was going to be changed by her staying awake all through the night. She wasn't sure where that left Arya, though, and frowned slightly. "Are you?"