A little girl leaping through the snow, a little girl lost in the dark caves beneath the Red Keep, a little girl stabbing a stable boy by accident and fleeing - the images shot through her head, different moments of a life she'd told herself was no longer hers. A girl had no past, no family, no homeland. A girl was faceless (she remembered obtaining her first face, the darkness behind her eyelids, the was of blood across her skin).

But absurdly, there were other memories, fleeting and faint. A boy who had lived all his life in Baedal, who had failed in school and lived in the Spatters, who didn't want to be a Stranger but didn't know how to change his life, who grew up and eventually died, blood spilling over his face.

Arya lurched back a step. The attack was alien to her, and in the distance, in her mind, she could feel Nymeria snarling. She lashed out, throwing a punch at Severus' jaw, not even certain he was the one who was causing this, but she had to do something to make it stop.