Chapter Text
Ned sends men after her immediately. It comes as no surprise - she was prepared for that, and dressed accordingly. She rubbed mud on her horse to make him less recognizable and wore a heavy, hooded cloak to hide her hair and face.
And so she travels, with one duty in mind.
It’s a month later that Ned gets a missive alerting him to the murder of Roose Bolton’s bastard heir.
It hadn’t been an easy task. Ramsay kept his girls close - two of them - and Lyarra had never practiced archery to make isolating him easier. She kills the dark haired female archer first. She lies in wait, lunges from the bushes, and the girl is dead before anyone can react. Only when her body hits the ground does Ramsay and the remaining girl whip around.
Ramsay fights. The girl fights, too, and it’s problematic - because she remembers this girl, and the way she’d died after helping him torment Theon. She wasn’t innocent, but Lyarra remembers her pleas for mercy, and the horrible way she’d died.
It makes her hesitate, which makes it easier for Ramsay to fight back.
She kills them both, in the end. A sword through the girl’s gut, and after a fierce fight, a sharp rock to Ramsay’s head.
The man had not gone down easy. She was bloody and battered by the end of it, a vicious slice through her palm to stop his knife from cutting her throat, and countless bruises from his punches and kicks.
She’s never felt so terrible in her life, cherished as she’d been in both her lives.
She slits his throat, just to be sure, and then slits the girl’s, too.
This, she knows, will haunt her forever.
Because the girl looks at her with crying eyes, every breath strangled and harsh, hands desperately trying to stifle the bleeding from her gut. The smell is horrible, but the girl’s fear…
Lyarra cuts the girl’s throat and turns away, climbing painfully onto her horse and riding away.
She washes away as much of the blood as she can, then burns whatever she can’t get it out of. She tries to remember the names of the girls she’d just slaughtered. The brunette, Ramsay in female form, had a name that she’s fairly sure started with an ‘m’. But the blonde’s name, she has no recollection of.
That night, she sits and looks at her hands, one carefully wrapped to keep the blood away from her clothes, and wonders at what she had just done.
She’d murdered.
With her own two hands. She had just murdered three people.
They might have deserved it. They might not. Ramsay and the girls were terrible people, but for all she knows, they haven’t done anything to deserve death yet.
And she’d killed them anyways.
Lyarra stares at her hands, blinks painfully dry eyes, and doesn’t sleep a wink.
He’ll never touch you now, Sansa.
He’ll never touch any of us.
She returns to Winterfell two weeks after.
Robb is the first to see her, scooping her up and swinging her around in a wild hug. “You mad girl! What were you thinking, taking off like that? We thought you were dead! Mother cried for weeks. Even father was distraught.”
He lectures her all the way to the dining hall, where she finds the rest of her family waiting.
Catelyn drops her fork, lurching to her feet with a cry.
Sansa and Bran stare at her in stunned shock.
Arya grins at her, wild and wicked, with the promise of demands for stories in her eyes.
And Ned glares at her with more anger than she’s ever seen on his face.
“You will never do that again.” Ned tells her, pacing furiously in her bedchambers. “You will not leave this room until the King arrives. Two weeks, Lyanna, or I’ll-” He trails off, pausing for a second, and looks pained at his slip up.
Lyarra stares at him and he glares at the floor before turning it to her. He folds his arms across his chest and glares at her. “Do you understand why I’m so angry with you, Lyarra?”
“Because you were afraid for me.” She says slowly and uncertainly.
“Yes. And no.” Ned reaches up, pinching the bridge of his nose, and takes several deep breaths before folding his arms and glaring at her again. “Your aunt Lyanna would take off for weeks at a time on a regular basis. Do you know what was different about that and this?” He demands sharply.
“No.” Lyarra says meekly.
“She told us she was going. She told us where she was going. And most importantly,” He adds, voice rising. “She did not go alone! She always, always took one of us with her. Her siblings, which you have no shortage of. If you ever do this again,” his voice becomes dangerously soft, “you will take Robb or Jon, or you will never leave Winterfell or King’s Landing again.”
Lyarra nods quickly and Ned stares down at her for a long minute.
“No. Leaving. This. Room.” He instructs very, very firmly.
“Yes, father.” She says quietly.
The door slams shut behind him.
She leans back and splays out on her bed, kicking her legs out where they dangle over the edge.
All in all, she muses, two weeks in my room is a pretty good deal for triple homicide.
“I’m sorry you won’t be there.” Lyarra tells Jon on the first day of her freedom. The King is set to arrive at any moment, and Lyarra’s had two weeks to stew over how to react.
In the end, she settled for the same emotion that had driven her to murder.
“You’re a mother bear sometimes,” her brother - her real brother - had told her once. “Ridiculously protective over your people.”
“My people?” She had asked, amused by the term.
“Your family, and the people you adopt into it.” Her brother had explained.
And he was right.
She was protective of her people, and over the last eleven years, the Starks had become her people. Hers to protect and defend. Her baby sisters, her baby brothers, her big brothers who could protect themselves for the most part.
She’d had two weeks to sit on it, and in the end, it was easy to slip into the cold guise she’d adorned when she murdered Ramsay and his girls.
“It’ll probably be tediously boring anyways.” Jon says idly, drawing her from her thoughts.
She blinks for a moment, having completely lost track of the conversation, and tries to recall exactly what they were talking about. “...Huh?” She asks intelligently.
Jon looks at her in amusement. “You said you were sorry I can’t be with the greeting party.”
“Oh.” Lyarra says, brow furrowing. “Did I really? You’re right, it’s you that should be sorry for me. I have to stand there and bleat to my betrothed about how happy my life will be.” She rolls her eyes and Jon laughs.
“You never know, you might like him.” He points out and her smile never wavers, even as her insides freeze over.
I could never like him, she thinks, followed swiftly by, I’ve already flowered.
She looks to the side, eyes narrowing dangerously.
He’s going to be wed to me immediately.
...And then he’s going to rape me.
Her fate, Lyarra reflects as they sit around the feast, was sealed the moment she was born. Even before she became Lyarra Stark, the babe had been doomed.
“That’s lovely, your grace,” She says with a warm smile to whatever Joffrey had been nattering on about. He looks smug by her response, so she supposes she got it right.
Ned and Catelyn are across the table from her, Ned next to the King and Catelyn beside him. The rest of the children - sans Theon and Jon - are beside them in a line.
Lyarra sits apart from them, trapped between the woman destined to murder her father, and the boy destined to torture and rape her.
The King’s eyes dart to her almost constantly, a strange expression on his face. She can imagine what he’s thinking. She’s seen Lyanna’s statue in the crypts, and the resemblance is undeniable.
“Gods, Ned, she looks just like her.” She can hear him say to her father.
“And acts just like her too.” Ned says fondly.
“Surely this talk can be saved for later? At a more appropriate time?” Cersei suggests in a gentle tone.
The King snorts, shooting her a glare. “Quiet, woman, the men are speaking.”
Charming. She thinks, then pauses for a second. “Charming.” She murmurs under her breath.
Cersei glances at her. Joffrey frowns. “Careful who you’re speaking about. That’s my father.”
“Of course, your grace.” Lyarra smiles warmly at him. “I can only hope I never make you speak to me that same way.” She says genially, soothing Joffrey’s ruffled feathers. She glances at Cersei to find the woman’s eyes narrowed, a wine glass raised to hide the rest of her face.
Lyarra looks away, down at her plate, and considers that a success.
Her life might be slightly better if Cersei didn’t loathe her.
Then again, that was highly unlikely.
Lyarra sips from her own wine, musing.