( She could call it honor, maybe. He'd scoff at her, maybe try and sell the same line he'd told himself back at the start of it — that he'd planned on ransoming her, that he'd only picked her up for her worth in gold, but in the end... in the end, he carried on protecting her after her aunt was dead, after her mother was dead, after her brother was dead, after every living Stark that might've paid for her was long under the dirt. He's never been anything but honest to a brutal fault.
Still wouldn't much like the insinuation that he's honorable, though. Sounds too false in his ears, feels too false for the corrupt shit of a man he knows himself to be.
He stares away from her, out the open doorway to the falling rain and the bonfire in the yard, the scorched earth from the fight, the passing bodies politely cleaning up the remains of the forest beasts — he doesn't see any of them. He sees a girl, her eyes steely as she crouches, staring at him distantly, calculating, cold, thoughtful.
At length, he finally answers: )
Arya Stark, of Winterfell.
( Something he could have withheld, would have withheld from anyone else — but she's earned the rapport, his trust, and he thinks... were the girl to arrive, were Wanda to find out about it, perhaps if she knew the name... She'd tell him. )
no subject
Still wouldn't much like the insinuation that he's honorable, though. Sounds too false in his ears, feels too false for the corrupt shit of a man he knows himself to be.
He stares away from her, out the open doorway to the falling rain and the bonfire in the yard, the scorched earth from the fight, the passing bodies politely cleaning up the remains of the forest beasts — he doesn't see any of them. He sees a girl, her eyes steely as she crouches, staring at him distantly, calculating, cold, thoughtful.
At length, he finally answers: )
Arya Stark, of Winterfell.
( Something he could have withheld, would have withheld from anyone else — but she's earned the rapport, his trust, and he thinks... were the girl to arrive, were Wanda to find out about it, perhaps if she knew the name... She'd tell him. )