Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Day 4: Exile 

“…ed il diverso esiglio

per cui bello di fama e di sventura

baciò la sua petrosa Itaca Ulisse.”

A Zacinto by Ugo Foscolo

“…and of the broad exile

after which, great by fame and by misfortune,

Ulysses kissed his rocky native Ithaca.”

Arya feared she would never see the North again, Winterfell, her home. 

Winterfell with its grey walls and solemn halls, Winterfell with its snowfalls and deep woods. 

She had been just a child running wild, looking for flowers,

riding and climbing trees and howling at the moon. 

In her veins was running the same blood of the lost hero who had built Winterfell, the blood of wolves.

Brandon the builder had made a home for him and all his descendants,

hoping his children and the children of his children would always have a home.

Maybe that was why Arya’s exile tasted so bitter; she had Winterfell to miss.

How many places? How many years? How many names?

Every time the chance of home appeared on the horizon, it slipped further and further away from her.

She had turned into a runaway, a servant, a ghost, a killer and yet nothing had been enough.  

Was she going to be exiled forever? To be no one forever?

Arya had always thought her bones would have rested in Winterfell crypts

together with the Kings of Winter but now her fate was unsure. 

Arya didn’t know it, but it’s true, as she missed Winterfell with all her heart,

the heart of Winterfell missed her as well, the empty halls missed her laughter, the woods her adventures.

The people of Winterfell missed their Arya Underfoot,

her brothers missed the scrappy wild child she had been,

her mother, even in death, searched restlessly for Arya’s tracks. 

In her exile, even as Arya tried to forget her name, she wasn’t forgotten.