Darya had always loved the sea, her father used to take her out on his ship and they would spend months on end sailing and visiting foreign lands. That all ended the night her father's ship was attacked and Darya was taken to Astapor as a slave. Yea...
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The bells tolled, the sound carrying throughout all of Winterfell. Darya kept glancing wearily out at their assembled army, hoping the sight would bring her some semblance of confidence. It was one of the greatest armies she had ever seen but that was overshadowed by the knowledge that their enemy's would be ten times larger. She looked back at Theon as he and and the other Ironborn got ready for battle, or rather protecting the Stark boy. Her worried thoughts paused when she felt his hand on her shoulder.
"I can tell you don't want to do this," Theon said, a solemn expression on his face. "You don't have to protect me, you should fight. Fight for your Queen, just as I am fighting for mine."
"No. I promised Yara that I would keep an eye on you, I'm not breaking that promise. She is the Queen I fight for tonight," Darya argued, crossing her arms. "I will not abandon you, especially not when you're going to be directly in the path of the Night King!"
"I'll be fine. Go, I know you'd rather fight out there," the Greyjoy stated, shoving Darya in the direction of Daario. "What is dead may never die."
"What is is dead may never die," she responded, hesitantly wrapping her arms around the man before backing away. "But let's send these fuckers back where they came from."
Daario clasped her shoulder as she came to stand beside him, forcing a smile on his otherwise anxious face. He too was unsure of their chances, and his worry was only heightened by the fact that Daenerys was soaring above them. So far out of his reach, his protection...
"Are you ready for perhaps the coldest battle in fucking history?"
~~~
Screams surrounded Darya as she fought, the squelching of weapons finding flesh coming from both sides of the battle. The dead had breached the gate, flooding into Winterfell with no end in sight. For every wight she killed, there came ten more to take its place.
Darya was losing hope. Her ears had started to ring, a blessing since it meant she could block out the sounds of death surrounding her. Blood coated her body and she couldn't tell who it belonged to anymore. She knew her adrenaline was the only thing keeping her standing, the only thing blocking out the pain she no doubt coursing throughout her entire body. Darya tried to keep an eye on her friends but she had lost them in the crowd, their bodies blending in with the masses.
Her axe found its way into the neck of an incoming wight but her foot caught on another body. Looking down, Darya's eyes widened at the sight of their broken and mangled body. It looked as if every bone in their body was broken, their mouth frozen open in a strangled scream...
The only relief was that their face was not one she recognized.
A hand wrapped around Darya's arm and pulled her up, the woman getting her axe at the ready before calming slightly the sight of Jorah Mormont.
"You look like you're close to fighting for the other side!" the man commented, raising his voice so he could be heard over the chaos.
"You don't look so good yourself! New sword?" Darya answered, the two continuing to fight as they yelled over at each other.
"Yes. Have you seen the Khaleesi?" Jorah questioned, glancing worriedly at the woman beside him.
"She's hard to miss! She's on the back of a fucking dragon!" Darya replied, a wight's head rolling to the ground as she finished her sentence. "Have you seen Daario? Greyworm?"
She saw the man shake his head as he looked up at the sky and stare toward the direction of the Dragon Queen, making the woman roll her eyes.
"She's fine! Did you not hear the part about the dragon?!" Darya called after him but he was either too far away to hear or just didn't want to listen to her.
She paused her yelling when she saw a hand twitch from under a pile of bodies, recognizing the Stark armor. She lurched forward, harshly shoving the other bodies away to free the living man.
Except he wasn't a living man, not anymore.
The hand reached up and wrapped around Darya's throat, slamming her body to the ground as it looked down at her with soulless eyes. Blood was frozen on the side of its face and one of its legs was gone as it crawled on top of her with it mouth open, ready to bite. Darya seemed to be paralyzed in fear before her hand blindly started searching for her axe. It was getting hard to breathe when her hand finally wrapped around the handle, bringing it up and smashing it into the wight's skull.
Her heart was racing as the dead rose, her axe suddenly feeling small in her hand, insufficient in comparison to the overwhelming numbers around her. If she thought there were a lot of wights before... She had been so very wrong.
"Fuck," she muttered, her feet stumbling as she hastily backed up in fear. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!"
Their plan had to work, because if it didn't then every last one of them would die. Jorah was nowhere to be seen and no one came to help Darya as the dead descended onto her. One swing of her axe after another, every body that fell failed to even make a dent in the horde of assailants. Soon enough her legs grew weak beneath her, her adrenaline finally wearing off as pain enveloped her body.
'You will come back to me.'
Yara's voice echoed through her ears as her vision faded, a single tear escaping Darya's eye at the thought of never seeing the woman again.
