Just Broken

Titan's Lover

Yahbo had a way of talking that could make anyone drift to sleep, drunk or not. She felt her eyelids flutter with each passing word that crossed his wrinkly lips, continuing, without the slightest care, his story, that he'd told her six times before, about the time he got tangled up in a heist and used his 'wits' to escape the clutches of a greedy pirate who sought the tricky smuggler he'd bought fine wines from. She visited the poor old man at his bar every Tuesday and Friday, scouting for the Kindly Man as she had been told. He never told her what she was looking for, and she seldom knew if she had found it until a vile of Tears of Lys is slipped into the hem of her skirt while she is sleeping. In the years she had been training with the Faceless men, there was still so much she did not know, but it seemed she knew just enough that the Kindly Man had decided to let her stay in the temple and serve from the headquarters long after her initial training had been completed. It was a long Friday night, a night where lovers sashayed along the docks and the braavos howled at the big bright moon like dogs. 

Arya Stark would have loved a night like this. She would have loved the noise and the people and the chilly, foggy air that reminded her of home. Arya Stark would have left the stuffy four walls of the Titan's Lover and strode along the side of the canals, barefooted and bedraggled and without a care. Arya Stark would have a hearty conversation with the Westerosi sailors at the harbor and played a game of cards with gaurds stationed out in front of the Iron Bank. 

But she was not Arya Stark. She was instead a girl who listened to old Yahbo babble on for two hours waiting for something, anything, to happen. 

"Ah! A new face! I have not yet seen you at my fine establishment miss. Sit, I'll get you some ale!" Yahbo piped up, nearly startling her. She looked up to see, what was indeed, a new face. It belonged to a female, short and skinny, with dark hair and murky green eyes. There was a peculiarity to this girl, in the way she dressed for one. She wore a fitted sleeveless leather jerkin plated with tiny bronze scales at the shoulders over top a faded tunic. She wore no skirts, but a pair of fitted britches like the ones Arya Stark used to wear all those years ago. At her hip was a bronze knife and over her shoulder she carried a small satchel. 

"That would be lovely, thank you," The girl said. The voice was soft and infested with Westerosi accent. What she found so odd about the girl was not in fact, the way she dressed or the fact she clearly came from a country half a world away, but the strange, almost noble way she carried herself. There was something fair to the girl that looked like she had crawled out of a swamp and paddled here to Braavos. 

The girl's green eyes scanned the room with vague interest, until they fell upon her, sitting in the far corner with a stub of a candle to light her table. The stare lingered, an almost startled stare, like their was a familiarity between the two of them that only the girl was seeing. It made her feel exposed and uncomfortable at once. She struggled not to squirm in her seat, focused on the lessons she had had drilled into her brain. 

Stone face, she told herself. She had to remain calm like she had been taught. 

That was becoming increasingly harder as the girl's stare was unrelenting, and the hard gaze continued well after she had sauntered over to her table and sat down across from her. 

"Do you know this one miss?" Yahbo hobbled over, setting a flagon of ale on the table.

"As a matter of fact, I do." the girl said, a small smile playing across her lips. Was this some kind of trick? Was she another servant of the Many Faced God come to test her ability to play the game? She didn't put it past them, they were always lurking about, getting their noses stuck in other's business. It was their job to do so. She wondered why they had taken the time to seek her out, and what it was she would have to do to prove herself this time.