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[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[Arya has stayed well off the network since she first showed up, but a girl can only go so long before making grabby hands at such a useful, chock full of information system. She's been teaching herself how to work her communicator off the network, which is good, because it probably took a solid twenty minutes to figure the spacebar out. But she gets it now! Mostly. :v]

i have questions.

1 - how many people are here/ [Okay she still doesn't understand shift, so no question marks or capitalization for her :C]

2 - are there maps/

3 - has anyone explored the ship/

4 - are there gold cloaks guards/ ['Gold cloaks' is there for a few seconds, maybe a minute, before she figures out how to delete it. No need to indicate who she is or where she's from to the people who might know, right.]

Comments

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[Words are wind, she thinks, but she does not say it. Honor and oaths are only kept as long as they are useful. A promise means nothing, even to her. There's a long pause before she types her response; once, a girl was rash. Then she lost her eyes, and learned patience. Maybe it is patience she needs to survive on this ship.]

A girl will try very hard. But a girl cannot predict what she will find.

[wont]

[ The words make Alayne smile but it is not in a kind way, nor does her heart feel happy. It is with a bitterness that she does so, something of a poisoned pride settling in her breast. She has little doubt how he girl has survived, having grown clever and mindful, having tempered what had been once so rash inside her to grow to become— become what. Sansa Stark had been a bird and Alayne Stone is a bird as well, but a bird of a different kind. What then had become of Arya Stark, a girl who was a wolf; was she a wolf still? ]

Then try very hard, but do not promise. [ Honor killed Sansa's father and mother and brothers. It would not kill her sister, too. ] I would grieve to see you made false.

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[On that, they would agree until He of Many Faces came for them: Arya would not let honor kill her.]

Falseness is not frightening. A woman need not grieve for a girl. [Falseness had saved her, time and again. Falseness had been the greatest advice ever given to her.]

A girl will bring a woman a map, when she returns.

[wont]

[ Falseness had saved Sansa Stark many times, as well, had spared her the metal greaves of Joffrey's guard on occasion and had curbed his childish wrath more than once. Falseness had saved her and then had given her a new life and now that she is Alayne Stone, falseness is her true armor and her greatest weapon. In that way, they are not so different — the daughter of the mountain and the girl with no name. ]

Falseness is not frightening, but I would have your truth instead. [ Not wholly true, but she trusts Jeyne to know the difference. There are lies and there are lies, and Alayne wishes the girl to never lie to her, not unless the lie is too close to the bone and becomes truth in the telling of it. ]

Your truth and a map.

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[Her truth. There are many truths, and many of them conflict with each other. Sometimes it is hard to tell where one truth ends and another begins, and differentiating between others' truths is even harder - but she knows the message Alayne intends. She does not mean the truths a faceless girl learned for a kindly man, and she doesn't mean the truest truths, the ones that strike hard and painful when they're spoken.

She understands. And there is only one thing a girl of the House of Black and White can say to such a direction. (Another girl would not agree, she would rail and argue and do things her own way, but that girl is dead.)]

Valar doeharis.

[wont]

[ A pause. Alayne does not recognize the words, not the tongue with which they are written. She squints at the words and then sounds them out carefully, her tone lifting at the very end, turning it into a question. ]

Valar. Valar doe—haris. [ Her eyebrows lift. Was it Braavosi? The girl was careful with her words so Alayne assumes she would not share them if it did not have meaning. ] What does it mean?

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[She opens her mouth to say the words, to show Sansa how it sounds - but she is not speaking, and this is not Sansa. Her fingers type the words out easily, and she runs a thumb over the words on the screen before sending it, thinking of all the times she's hears these words in the past months, of all the times she's tried to follow them. She can follow them now; she's no longer some lord's daughter.]

All men must serve.

[wont]

Valar doeharis, [ Alayne says again, whispering it to herself now, the accent still clumsy and wrong in her throat. They are not her words, they are Arya's words, or perhaps they are the words that (like the name Alayne Stone) replaced whatever was left of Arya Stark. Again, that makes them precious to her, more precious than No-name Jeyne or Cat or whatever else the girl may call herself. ]

And what of those who cannot serve? Who will not or refuse to take a knee?

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[She knows the answer, asked it in the blood of a black brother, answered it with poison coins. But she does not know if she wants to tell Alayne, who was once Sansa. Sansa is gone, she reminds herself, and Alayne is stronger. Alayne must have been, to survive.]

Then valar morghulis.

All men must die.

[wont]

Valar morghulis, [ Alayne says instead and this time her voice is even quieter, more secret and more reverent, for it is a truth that she has learned too well (though by ways and means different than once-Arya). It is not fear with which the phrase is met but understanding, like an old but unloved acquaintance. For a long moment Alayne is silent, then: ] Who taught you this?

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A man with a coin.

[She pauses after that, and remembers the great ebon and weirwood door that led into the House of Black and White, where she found Arya Stark again and abandoned her forever, where she tended to the dead and learned the truth of life and death. These were not things she could tell Alayne. She did not think anyone outside the House was meant to know.]

And a kindly man. A girl had many teachers. [But first there was a dancing master.]

[wont]

Were they all kind? [ Alayne asks but does not ask for the teachers' names or where and how she'd met all of them. If Jeyne were truly nobody then she would not have a story to spin of her past, or rather, those threads were to be held close to her chest — secrets that no one else should know. ] Your teachers.

[ Alayne has had but one teacher. And Sansa had a few, though none of them were kind. ] Sometimes teachers can be unkind.

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They did not teach me kindness. They did not need to be kind to me.

[The kindly man attacked her with sticks when she was blind, called her a liar, called her stupid. She couldn't begrudge him too much for it; he'd taught her to use her other senses, to find other ways to see, to become no one.

And Jaqen H'Ghar. He had never been unkind to her, though she had been cruel to him. He'd killed the people she named, and cooked the weasel soup with her. He had been good. He had showed her what she wanted to be; a girl did not need honor or truth to be strong.]

But they were not cruel. Did a woman have teachers?

[wont]

[ Sansa Stark's teachers had all been cruel and their lessons had been cruelty. (The world is not good. Men are not good. Kings are not merciful. Queens lie.) Littlefingers lessons had been cruel as well. (Clean hands, kept secrets, silent graves.)

Only Petyr had been kind. Petyr, stripped of his mask. It had been Petyr who taught Alayne to be bold, to be clever, to watch and listen and know how to move men. ]

I have had but one teacher. My father. [ He gave me this coat of lies. He taught me how to sing and survive. ] And he taught me well.

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[Unbidden, the Septa's face springs to her mind, surrounded by the grey walls of Winterfell. Their first teacher, in all things Arya hated. She is dead, she reminds herself, and isn't certain if she means Mordane or Arya.]

And was he cruel?

[wont]

Never cruel always kind, [ Alayne says and then regrets the words, even though they are true. Robb was loathe to listen to her speak of Petyr and would often bristle simply at the mention of 'father' from Alayne Stone's lips. Bran, too, was made uncomfortable by him but Alayne knows that is because they look for Sansa and not Alayne. And Sansa should have love for a dead man, not one who lives in his place.

If anyone is to understand, it is you, Alayne thinks. She hopes: Please understand. ]

I was all alone for a very long time. [ Too close to the truth, she adds: ] There, among the sisters. He taught me how to be brave.

[fearcutsdeeperthanswords]

[Understanding Alayne's story is difficult, but Arya knows that is what she must do. If she raises questions, then Alayne will raise her own; allies do not unbalance one another, she knows this, and must hold to it. Or else the purpose of this not-quite-friendship is lost.]

A different bravery, a girl thinks, than the kind she learned. But useful, all the same. This is a good thing to know.