m_findlow

Title: The Needle and the Damage Done
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Characters: Arya Stark
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 736 words
Content notes: Spoilers for Season one.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 7 - Duran Duran Song Titles (The Needle and the Damage Done) at ficlet_zone
Summary: Arya knows that she will do whatever it takes to escape King's Landing.

Arya hadn't meant to stick her sword through the stable boy's guts. But she'd been so angry. Not that she'd known real anger at that point. That had come later, when she'd stood amongst the crowd and heard the heavy sword remove her father's head from his shoulders. She imagined what it would feel like to stick her sword into Ilyn Payne and poke him full of holes like a fat, suckling pig. She'd have her revenge on the city's executioner, and on Ser Meryn Trant, for killing Syrio Forel. She knew what it was to kill a man now, even if that man had only been a boy.

He looked so pathetic just lying there, the fat little boy who'd stood in her way. He'd expected her to cow and cry like a little girl. He'd been nasty and horrid, intending on calling the City Watch and having her dragged away. Men from Winterfell were being slaughtered all around her and the stable boy had meant to add her to that list. Perhaps the men in her father's guard weren't as good as ten Southron men as they'd claimed, but she would be ten times a match for anyone who thought to capture her. She'd be like the cats she'd been chasing. Calm as still water, swift as a deer, fierce as a wolverine. The lessons Syrio had taught her had been there all along, but only Jon's advice had saved her life. Stick them with the pointy end.

The stable boy would have given her up to the Red Cloaks or the Gold Cloaks; it didn't seem to matter. If they were after her father, then they meant her harm as well. Now she understood why. They meant to wipe out every Stark in the city.

Hiding away in the filthy city streets, like just a peasant boy, she'd felt guilt at killing him. She could have perhaps only maimed him, stuck him in the leg or something, if only to allow her to get away. Instead he'd lunged at her, and her hand had gone up instinctively, skewering the boy, Needle's point glistening red as it poked all the way out through his back.

He'd whimpered and begged her to pull it out, so that's what she done. She expected he might survive it, since her sword was so small and skinny just like her - barely a pin prick - but no sooner had she whipped it back out from whence she'd stuck him, he dropped to the ground, dead. Needle had done that. It was as sharp and deadly as any sword. Small wonder Jon had warned her to handle it carefully. It was no toy. Her father's blade Ice might have killed him, a sword so huge and heavy that most men would struggle to lift it let alone wield it, yet so too had her tiny weapon.

She held it up now in the muted afternoon light, herself tucked under the awnings of a market stall closed for the day. She wiped the blade down on a discarded burlap sack that earlier in the day might have held potatoes or peppers. It left a rust brown stain behind, the stable boy's blood. Her stomach growled out its hunger, even though she hadn't thought she could bear to eat, not meat at least, having seen how easy it was to butcher, yet if she spotted a pie cooling on a sill, she knew she wouldn't hesitate to steal it and wolf it down.

She couldn't get out the city right now, but nor would she hide away and starve. They would be looking for her, but she doubted they'd recognise her, grubby and stained as she was. She would get out, somehow. The city gates could not stay shut forever. Perhaps she could wait until nightfall, when only one or two guards might keep watch on any gate. She might creep up behind them and show them what her Needle could do. It would be revenge for Jory and Desmond, Alyn and Tomard. Perhaps she could sneak out through the Mud Gate and slip away in a small boat down the Blackwater. How she would come ashore and find the Kingsroad from there she didn't know, but as she gripped Needle in her left hand she knew one thing. No one would stop her. If she had to kill again, she would.