sixthiterationlogs | "Forget about the bloody gods and listen to what I am telling you"

There's little offense in the abrupt meeting--little offense in their meetings since the first, Kira imagines. His hands aren't so quick to steady her as they might be, wary of her arms, but eventually he sets a palm to her side, asking, "Are you alright?"

He'd only gotten a few days back before the less useful of his gifts returned, strong as it's been since he arrived. This time, he's trying not to run. This time, he's trying not to lose anyone. But he still finds himself wandering the canyon, giving himself breaks from the larger groups, and he can't imagine touching anyone. Even with the fabric of her dress against his hand, he pulls away once he's sure she's holding herself up: there's some kind of ire under his skin that wasn't there before, and a pinch behind his eye.

He's not going to run. He's not going to be rude. Kira backs up a step like it's space he's giving, instead of taking, and looks around them. "I called your name a couple of times," he points out, "but I was still on the other side of the field."

"I didn't hear-" her voice breaks off as he places a hand at her side, the physical contact cracking through the walls placed around the visions. A flash of crimson and the taste of copper appeared on her tongue. She felt her legs grow weak as the pressure and feeling of despair knocked the wind out of her. Her head seemed to be vibrating as a flash of images ran through her, quicker than before. A coat, a lover, the swirl of the fountain around her.

She felt herself kicking and clawing at the air, fighting against the weight of the water and the bursting relief that filled her heart. Loss, despair, replaced by hope and relief.

All at once, it disappeared and she was gasping on the ground, her hand clutching her head as she looked back up at Kira, seeing him but not registering at first who he was. She blinked, pressing the palm of her hand against her eyes. "Kira?" That was his name, she thinks.

He shouldn't have let her fall, he was right there--but when the pain behind his eye started to bloom and the familiar rush of--the familiar rush of a vision overtook her--Kira recoiled. He's still recoiled, hands at his own arms, posture focused away even as he stares at her. It was a chicken and egg question, which skill came first. Did he have his own predictions thrust upon hi at a young age, or had he simply felt them happening to the people in his family, in his mother's building?

Some of them happened like this. Some people only feigned the spectacle of the fits. He can't imagine Margaery trained to do either, and the pain and fear is enough to have him breathing between gently parted teeth when she looks up at him and asks a question with his name.

He doesn't know the answer: she's apparently stolen that ability from him. "Yes," is all he can say, remembering the old tricks in his moment of need. Ground under his feet. Grass against his legs. Those are his lungs breathing, that's his heart beating. He's one person in a body, and he can touch her. This crisis isn't his, and he doesn't need to run from it. Instead of offering a hand down, though, he crouches at her newly strewn feet, the grass brushing up to his elbows. "What happened," he asks, then, eschewing the pretense: "what did you see?"

She stared at him in amazement, surprised by his quick understanding for what happened. When she collapsed in front of Robb, neither of them had been aware of what happened. Only now did she understand that these were visions, but only one of them had come true since those first ones. The rest, it was hard to say. None of the circumstances in the images existed yet. It wasn't Winter and there was no barn.

She pressed her palm to her eyes again, trying to force away the blooming pain. It seemed to radiate through her head, causing little things to slip away. Names, days, for a moment, she even forgot why she was in the field. There was only the images in her head, fresh and sharp.

"I saw a coat." She murmured, describing it to him. "There was blood on it. I can still smell it. There was the fountain as well. I felt as if I were drowning in it." There was loss and pain too, but that was harder to put to words. "I feel emotions sometimes, not just images." She paused. "How did you know I was having a vision?"

Kira had nearly buried the coat: hearing it spoken of now, even obliquely, he wishes he had. It had smelled of worse than blood in his hands--the blood was old, the fabric permeated with gunpowder and garbage. Fake fur matted with old sweat and dirty snow. It hadn't just been something from home, something no one had received before--it had been like one of his cards. A symbol of a thing. A story in a single object.

And Margaery had seen it when he touched her. Everything missing had just echoed back through his palm.

His face doesn't fall as she speaks, only grows more placid. The curiosity frosts over, and he clings to the calm of summer grass waving around them, insect song. "I grew up with people who had them," is as much as he admits. "I've seen them at work all my life."

She can't tell or say for certain, but for a moment, there seems to be signs of recognition. She spoke of something he might know or had once. It was difficult to say, only that she had stumbled upon something personal. Her head ached, dulling any guilt or embarrassment she might otherwise feel.

She gave a soft sigh, pressing her fingers against her temple, trying to make the pain go away. For a moment, she forgot where she was and who she was speaking to, his name slipping away from her again. "Kira?" She asked once more.

It was a relief to know that this wasn't something she was suffering on her own. She had heard of others that claimed to see the future, but it seemed only like stories until now. "Do they get any easier? The pain from them?"

He wants to ask more, just as much as he doesn't want to know--knows she might not be able to get any more specific than that. A coat. A fountain. A sense of loss. It's the past as much as it's some kind of future, and that's--that's what scares him. The turning circles of life are the most inevitable. He can't pretend she isn't speaking truth, even as she seems to lose him again, and come back.

He can't press her, not yet. He needs to let her sit, and breathe. "Yes, Margaery," he answers, as if she might have lost her own name too.

That much he doesn't know. Only a very strong gift for prophecy could break the mind that used it, and even his mother hadn't been that good. It was a common gift, in doses, but his family had always excelled at something else. His mother with her charms, him with his empathy, his sister with--they didn't talk much about his sister's gift, it was so slight. They preferred to give her a normal life. "I don't know," he answers truthfully, holding out his hand for her to take if it might steady her, for all that it would likely unbalance him. "They didn't always pain the people I knew. Usually only during, and they were fine with a little rest. Are you--does it keep hurting? Have you told anyone you're unwell?"

She wouldn't be able to answer him, even if he asked. The images were brief and had gone by in rapid succession, some merging into each other, as if swirled around in a coursing river. She only sort out small images for now, distinct feelings and overpowering emotions and pictures. Perhaps in time she could grow better at it, but it seemed at the moment that it was becoming more and more difficult to deal with.

The sad truth was that she had lost her name for a moment, along with a number of other things. Just as soon as it flickered in her mind, it returned at full force. The village. She was in the village.

Discussing these things were difficult for her, even before the visions. Discomfort and troubles were something she never brought up, hiding them away as she focused on others. Only now was she learning to do so, which was all the better for her. With this new ability, she didn't have the luxury of keeping it to herself. "It begins to hurt just before I have a vision and then the pain stays with me for awhile afterwards." She admitted softly. "Robb knows about the visions as does Jude, but I don't think they know how much it hurts."

She paused, her heart hammering in her chest. "No one else knows that I am starting to forget things."

It might not be specific to the onset of the gift, but her withholding is common enough in their community. For Kira, who has always just known, who grew up with psychics in his household and upstairs--its' hard not to just expect the same returned. To never have to talk about it, to have someone reach out of their own accord.

That's less and less true, the further he gets from home. Less and less true as the village takes people away.

It's taking Margaery slower, he thinks. He might only know as of today, but in his own gifts, building over the last couple of months, he can feel the pain. The flash of it in the vision, the lingering cloud of it in the air over their heads. Like a fog so thick it clogs the sinuses, sparks some rebellion of nerves behind the eyes. "You should tell Mark," is the first thing he says, and he realizes he should do the same. "Everyone's powers disappeared after Credence, but clearly they're--they can still come back. How much are you forgetting?"

His future might have something ugly and uncertain ahead, but her present is ugly and uncertain right now.

She was never one to share things as it was. Her feelings and traumas, she carried herself, too busy shouldering others instead. Now she had to learn how to let others in, to let them see her weakness. It didn't always happen, as instinct won out over necessity.

He at least knew without her having to say anything. It was a relief that someone understood.

"Little things." Which was something, at least. "I forget names and places, where I am, who I am. It only lasts a moment before everything comes back. The pain in my head only lasts a day, but then it slowly disappears. It's the forgetting that worries me." There could come a day when she simply forgot everything, the very essence of herself. What would happen then? She would simply fade away and be left empty and blank.

"Why tell Mark?"

Who and where aren't little things, in his opinion, and the size of what's disappearing seems less important than the fact of it happening at all. It sounds like she's being overwhelmed in the moment, but it's such a specific and worrying symptom. What if it didn't come back, what if the pain kept getting worse? "You don't ever--your nose doesn't bleed," he asks, not because he's seen it, but because even he's susceptible to the images movies shove into his head.

Her question forces him to reassemble his idea of--well, her or Mark, and whether Mark is as important as Kira believes him to be. Having someone save you from hypothermia and tell you the world is a simulation might inflate things a bit. "Mark's the smartest person here," he still says, and he means it. "At least talk to Ravi or Helen, getting headaches and forgetting things is a serious medical problem."

Who and what she was had ceased to matter in her life. Once that identity held a great deal of significance for her, but now they were nothing more than arbitrary names. There was no power attached and she was only a woman in the village. Considering though how briefly that confusion lasted, it didn't hold as much importance or concern for her. It was everything else, the people around her, the memories that had become precious.

"No, it doesn't. My head hurts a great deal and I faint, but there is no blood." Yet. Given how it seemed to be increasing, it would be a shock if blood did suddenly appear. "I don't know if this is something a doctor can cure. The headaches aren't normal, none of this is. I don't think they would know how to make any of it stop."

"No offense your highness," he says with a grain of salt, though his voice keeps a rather gentle pitch, "but Mark and the other people with doctorates will know more about what medical practices can do for your magic headaches than you or me. To his knowledge, a couple ibuprofen never hurt after an especially strong vision.

He'd never fainted or felt any pain after his own, but those months before the plague, he'd had to go upstairs and sleep after a particularly bad reading. Sometimes fate spoke louder to them all.

It's clearly been screaming at Margaery. "Do you remember the visions themselves, or do those fad as well?"

"I'm not a queen here." Or anymore. She was fatigued by the idea, the game having run its course in her mind and in her life. Now it was only a painful reminder to all the mistakes that were made, her own and other's. "A temporary relief but not a cure? Do we even have the medicine of their world?" Ibuprofen or whatever it was?

As much as she wanted a solution or at least something to ease the pain, she had lived long enough in the village to know it was never that simple. An easy fix wasn't something she would find. The Observers were doing this for a reason and it required suffering. She wasn't self sacrificing or one to believe in punishment from the gods, but these Observers weren't such moralists. They seemed to simply enjoy their struggles.

"No, I remember them, for all the good they do. Sometimes they are simple pictures or feelings, vague."

"We had some as of the earthquake," he answers, the bright backpacks from last year's strange holiday part of his scavenging throughout the year. "Medicine arrives sometimes too, in the brown boxes." Aspirin might work too, if it was a matter of decreasing bloodflow to her brain, but--there were different kinds of headaches. It might just be the stress of it all, some lost sleep.

There isn't really a reason not to have the conversation in the grass, but it feels--vulnerable, unhelpful. She'd been staring into the trees before it happened; maybe he should take her away from them for awhile.

Standing first, he offered down his hand, knowing what it might be to touch her. "Why don't we get you inside for a bit, get you some water?"

She nodded, but pulled back instinctively from his hand, offering an apologetic look. It was hard to say anymore what would trigger a vision and what might not. Innocent touch was suspect to her and she found herself dreading the moment someone brushed against her and the visions came.

"I think I should rest as well." Sleep would be a relief, if she could find it. "Please, don't tell anyone about this yet. I'll speak to the healers when I am ready to, but I don't want anyone to worry or ask questions just yet. I'd rather know more first."

"Sure," he says, fully prepared to take it all to Mark once he's sorted out the relation to his own mounting power. It isn't just the harm it's doing her--it's the fact of something he can no longer do existing in someone else. But he's not about to argue the point with her while she recovers, and he's not about to distress her further with the truth.

He'd only have to suffer the distress with her if he did. He understands holding the cards close, especially things that feel like weaknesses, or something to be exploited--but even he's learned the value of information in their situation. If this is happening, can happen, someone like Mark needs to know.

Not begrudging her the desire to stand on her own, he simply backs off to give her space. "Let me walk you home," he asks; "Is there someone to stay with you? Anyone at all who knows what's going on?"

"Yes," a partial lie. Robb was aware that she was suffering from visions and her head hurt, but he didn't know how painful they were or how her memory was starting to fade. Such things were better left unsaid. When the time came, she would tell him. Right now, she only wanted to rest and let this experience fade away.

"I will be all right." She gave him a soft smile, silently thanking him for his concerns. "Don't worry."

It had been obvious from the start that Margaery had been preoccupied with what she'd discovered in that improbable room from the start. Robb had hoped her worries might ease with time, but she'd seemed more and more edgy the longer she went without answers that surely they had to know were likely not coming.

He'd visited the cave himself, had spent a good deal of time within it staring at the artifacts behind the glass. It all seemed to him far beyond the reckoning of a man like himself, and while he'd not forgotten any of it, he'd managed to put it from his mind enough to get on with daily life. Winter was coming, however briefly, and would be here apparently before they knew it.

If it worried him a bit to find Margaery standing listlessly in the middle of a field, Robb attempted to shove that aside as well, at least for the moment.

"Didn't you hear me calling?" he asked, catching her by the elbow.

She shook her head, slightly embarrassed to have been found doing something as strange as staring across the fields, as though she were some mad woman. Whatever pressure or doubts were in her head, they dissipated in Robb's presence, as easily as her nightmares seemed to. It was easier to forget the room and all of her questions when he slept beside her, protecting her not only from her dreams but from her thoughts as well.

"I was trying to see if those images would come again." There was no reason to hide any of this from her. However embarrassed she might be, she trusted him enough to understand why she wanted the visions to come again. "When we were together on the porch, I saw a barn here, right where we're standing. You and others were building it."

It wasn't a secret that she wanted to build a barn, but she never fully approached the project or gotten it moving. Seeing it though, it made it all seem more plausible. "I wanted to see if it would come back, if I were standing here."

Robb hesitated; it had become clear enough that these occasional visions were plaguing her, but he scarcely knew how to combat that apart from simply offering himself as an anchor amidst it all. Had he not known better, he would have thought it all a dark magic.

"We ought to build a barn," he said at length, and reached to tug Margaery in against him. "You've been wanting one, and the animals will need it come winter. If we start soon, there ought to be time enough to build it before the snows come."

With a simple tug and the feel of him next to her, she's drawn away from her darker thoughts and back towards his warmth. She brushed her thumb over his cheek, leaning in to press her brow to his for a moment. Her headache was subsiding, now that the focus was gone from forced visions. "Do you think we have enough materials to begin?" They had enough manpower to get in done in time, as he suggested.

"The police station is becoming too crowded with the new arrivals. When winter comes, I won't be able to let them graze as often anymore. They need somewhere they can move around and be warm enough in." She shivered instinctively, not looking forward to the cold. "As will I."

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I've never built a barn before," Robb replied with a smile, gently teasing her and glad to see she seemed a bit more like herself. "I'll have to find someone who knows how to go about it, but I can begin making inquiries today, if you like."

He didn't imagine it would be a large structure with the little time they had and what was on hand, but perhaps it could be improved upon in later seasons.

"You've taken up with the Starks now, my lady, you'll have to get more used to the cold," he added, and pressed a warm kiss to her brow. It seemed clear enough that he might have married Margaery back home had fate been kinder and presented the opportunity, but he still had a difficult time imagining her abiding the cold grayness of the North. She was truly a creature of the summer, lush and bright.

"I hear it helps to have a warm body in your bed," he added, arching his eyebrows.

"No? I never would have guessed." It was hard not to smile around Robb. Despite being born of the North, there was no chill or ice about him. "I would like that, but perhaps later this day?" Her arms wrapped around him. "Not just yet. It will give me some time to draw up estimates in terms of space and amount of livestock."

It would need consideration and planning. The project had long been on her mind and the thought of moving forward thrilled her, almost as much as having Robb at her side again.

"Roses wilt in winter, my lord, unless they are tended to. Do we have glass gardens for me to bloom in?" As much as she complained of the winter and cold (and she was far from fond of it), it was easier to manage and imagine now than before. She knew what to be prepared for and how cold it could truly become, as well as what to do to weather through it.

Despite her experience, she still found herself blushing as she returned his look with one of mild amusement. "Shall I place myself in your care and hands? Warmth is something I shall need often."

"I like to think my hands are quite capable in that regard," Robb replied, watching the color in Margaery's cheeks with a bemused smile. Blushing had never been something she'd done often.

"They've certainly had their share of practice in recent months, but it's possible more training is needed. You can never be too careful, you know. Frostbite can happen before you know it."

It was a new situation to find herself in, being a lover with love attached. She was never a vulnerable person, but this relationship introduced that unknown aspect to herself. There was something liberating about letting him in as much as she had. Everything was different and intimate now, even these flirtations had lost the blind, lustful passion. It had been impersonal. Now, there was more to it than before.

"You do have clever hands." She lifted them, kissing each finger tenderly. Calloused, just like her own. "I will have to be careful not to let them become cold either. They need to remain warm and active."

She was grinning like mad, unable to stop even as the corners of her mouth ached. "That quickly? I think we may need to train them to respond the moment the cold comes."

For a moment, Robb simply watched as Margaery pressed her lips to the backs of his fingers, watching him coquettishly over his knuckles. It relieved him that he might find some means to pull her from her melancholy and help her smile and flirt again, even if it had been a rather cheap gambit. When in doubt, change the topic to something pleasant.

"That's likely wise," he agreed, sobering with a slow nod. Without warning, he reached for her, lifting her easily over his shoulder, arms holding her firmly across the backs of her knees. "Best to start now," he said, and turned to carry her back across the field.

Margaery was a practical woman. While she was no longer driven down a singular path, angled and focused on the Iron Throne, she still thrived on reason and reality. Even so, there were soft moments with Robb that left her wondering and dreaming of the life she might have had as his wife. Being queen no longer factored into it, just being Lady Stark. Would she have been content and happy?

There was no question of that as Robb slung her over his shoulder and carted her across the fields. While the village was small, she knew there were eyes that could catch them. Somehow that made her laugh even more than she already was.

"You are very dedicated to training. No idle time spent walking, you merely carry your partner." Not that she was protesting. "And where are you abducting me to, my lord?"

"I would have thought that was obvious," Robb replied, hefting her a bit higher onto his shoulder and suddenly glad for all these long months hunting and having to carry home what he'd caught alone. She might as well have weighed nothing.

"If you know of a better place for my hands to practice their work than your bed, tell me, my lady. I'll gladly take you there."

Her hair cascaded over his back, shielding her from the world around them, save for the ground and the view of Robb's backside. The ground was still soft and each step he took brought the sharp smell of soil to her senses. She never took much pride in the land before, but this was their land and their world now. What was more natural than "practicing" in this way, surrounded by the wildlife and greenery she had come to love.

"I seem to recall a certain tree," she swatted him in encouragement. "You taught me to climb it. Where better to practice with your hands?"

"Ah, yes," Robb replied, and immediately began a wide, arcing turn back toward the direction of the forest. Personally, he could have thought of a good many more methods for practicing with his hands, but if Margaery was feeling sentimental or adventurous, he could certainly oblige.

"Shall I carve our initials into it?" he called back to her, smirking.

"Perhaps on a day when your hands won't be otherwise occupied." She certainly wasn't going to give up the chance to explore this more adventurous side of him. For all she thought she knew about him, this was a surprise. Though, there had been so many new sides to emerge between them. She couldn't imagine being this way with someone before, yet here she was, teasing and playing with him as she never had, even as a child.

She placed her hands on her head, "Ah! I've had a vision just now. I see...I see you with me beneath the tree, spending the day practicing with your hands."

Robb laughed, still carrying her dutifully beneath the trees, looking for the particular one where they two had first properly met, so long ago now.

"I was just picturing the very same thing; you must have given me your ability to look into the future. I saw it quite clearly."

It was a bit further in, where the ground became soft and the sounds of the village disappeared. Silence surrounded them, languorous and soothing, where only the heaviness of nature existed. A few branches caught in Margaery's hair, leaves tangling in her curls as she was given another crown, this one made of the world around them.

The large tree wouldn't be hard to find. It was the only one that rested on a gentle slope, slightly tiled, enough that it offered them some leverage. The gnarled branches just as she remembered them. "What else do you see, my lord? Perhaps we have another shared vision?"

Funny, because he thinks of himself as pretty clumsy. Bodhi looks entirely too sheepish for such a little lapse. He didn't even drop his bag, which is respectably full of the local wild herbs. He's getting better at this green plant thing. "You know, I get that more often than you'd think. Are, um, are you alright?" He's not sure of her name, which, on the other hand, does happen as often as you'd think. His memory for people isn't great, even with the population as small as it is.

"You are very quiet." She said, managing to smile at his easy manner. It shouldn't matter that she hadn't heard him, but it was embarrassing. Knowing that others, even in jest, could miss his coming was comforting, if only in a small way. "I am. I was thinking." Very hard, enough that she felt exhausted, as though she worked an entire day.

"I was thinking of a barn that could go here. Something for the animals."

"Oh." Bodhi's learning a little more about the practical aspects of life planetside with no technology to speak of, picking up some simple skill with repairs and plants, but animals remain fairly mysterious to him. "Do we... have that many that you'd need a separate building?" Maybe he just hasn't been paying attention, but most people who have any animals seem to have a few small ones they just house wherever they already live.

"We do." She turned, searching along the line of houses for the police station. When she found it, she pointed towards it for him. "My livestock are kept there. Six sheep, six goats and seven cows. One of mine recently gave birth. A police station is too small for them." Winter was coming and they would need somewhere better.

"I am surprised you haven't seen them grazing."

Bodhi is entirely willing to pretend for the sake of streamlining this chat that he knows what a cow is and what grazing is, exactly. He has seen animals around, but he doesn't always recognize which ones belong to people, and the ones he's asked about or seen in little houses have been little. He understands very little about what goes into keeping livestock... doing whatever they're supposed to do that he misses a lot.

Police stations, well, not precisely police, but he knows more about those in general. "Doesn't, um, sound like a good spot to keep a lot of animals in, no."

"It was all we had available. The cells had to stand as stalls, but there is little room for them to move about and the window is broken, which will allow the cold in." They didn't have very long until Winter and her intention to have the barn built was slipping away. "Were you here when it was cold and the snow fell?"

Others seemed to have experienced Winter in some capacity before coming here, save for her. The temperature had been a shock to her and the snow had fallen so deep that she hadn't been able to leave her home sometimes. She didn't want the animals to suffer in that weather again.

"Not here, no. I'm used to cold, but we never got much snow." Jedha was uniformly cold, and the brief wet season came in the warmest months, turning a few weeks a year into a relentlessly chilly monsoon. He's seen a lot of planets that aren't his own, but he's mostly seen them from a spaceport without much nature to get in the way.

"There will be a great deal soon. It sometimes can trap us in our homes. It would be wise to begin cutting wood and stockpiling in anticipation for the cold. We are at least better prepared to face whatever comes, however much we can be here." Which was sometimes very little. "During the last winter, there were gifts that appeared for us and a feast that was laid out. It might happen again."

He keeps hearing about firewood. Someday he'll have to learn to use an axe. He never thought he'd miss heating coils so much. "I have been to a big meal, but, well, that was... I guess it was sort of toward the end of when it was cold?" His memories are extremely hazy, due to the fact that he almost immediately drank himself stupid. His impulse control isn't great.

They had furnaces, but she didn't want to consider what might happen if they stopped working or ran out of materials. Considering how cold it became here, it was likely they would freeze to death. "They are rather common here. Each season seems to be marked with some sort of feast. It seems the Observers continually wish to reward us for surviving so long."

"I always just thought it must be funny to watch." Observers. He's never thought of them that way. After all, they're obviously interfering, manipulating, tweaking events for some purpose, whatever that purpose is. Observing would suggest just putting them all in a box, not throwing feasts and causing earthquakes.

She'd spent enough time training with the Waif that such a thing was easy enough to dart back out of the way from on first contact, gaze snapping up as Arya realized she'd all but blundered her way into almost mowing Margaery over.

Arya couldn't help the little huff of surprise that slipped from her, eyes widening slightly. She... didn't remember everything perfectly from her feverish haze but she was well aware that she'd said some rather... damning things to a few of the others, Margaery included. She didn't think the woman would shout her secrets from the rooftops, that wasn't her way, but she wondered what she thought now. It was one thing to manipulate a situation and orchestrate someone's downfall indirectly, another thing to seek out that bloodshed herself. To take a more... direct approach.

She hadn't meant to avoid the woman, but she'd been uncertain how to approach the subject so it seemed it had happened accidentally.

"It's alright." A small, faint smile, a sort of peace offering or apology for that avoidance in a way, or at least a start of one. "I should have been paying more mind to my surroundings as well."

She didn't think less of Arya for her actions, just as she didn't think less of any of the Stark family. It was true that Arya had done ruthless things, but it was no worse than Margaery's imagining. A young girl alone in Westeros, as wild as Arya was? It didn't seem unlikely that she would learn to kill. The blood on her hands was no thicker than the blood on Margaery's. She may have been indirect in her actions, but that didn't absolve her of the things she had done.

Gently, she placed a hand on Arya's shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze. A small sign that she wasn't affected by the things that had been revealed in her delirium. It was likely that if she had been placed in a similar state, she might have said things as well that she wanted kept to herself.

"You're not hurt?" That was obvious, but the words were another attempt to show Arya that they didn't need to discuss it. Not unless she wanted to. Her eyes cast back towards the field, picturing that barn again, but no sign of her visions returned. "I thought I would see it again if I were standing her. I thought it would have significance."

"I'm fine, rest assured." It was that easy understanding, without words but still plain that soothed Arya the most. For all their tactics differed, she and Margaery were bound in blood, even if it wasn't the traditional way one might think of when they thought family. But that didn't bother her, and it obviously didn't bother the older woman either.

She could trust her with the things said in that dreamlike state, just as everything else she'd gleaned as they'd practiced their lies and that was enough for her.

"The visions?" Arya stood next to her, considering the field she'd been staring at so intently, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Maybe it's not coming because you've already gleaned the meaning of it?"

Family was a priority to Margaery. The secrets between them, it remained buried and protected. She suffered and would have died for her brother, had he not appealed to her to give in. What Arya revealed was safer between them. It would at least make their game easier, now that she knew what Arya was capable of.

"Perhaps?" It was possible, though she hadn't thought what that meaning might be. Aside from the obvious implication she would have a barn, everything was centered around Robb, not anything else.

Though...maybe the answer wasn't so hard to understand.

"Help distract me? Tell me about Braavos."

"Forget about the bloody gods and listen to what I am telling you"

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