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She found her sister in the large tent they had set up as the infirmary, passing from bed to bed.
Small fires were banked in braziers set at every other bed but the cold had reached even into here, but both Arya and Sansa remained uncloaked. They were Starks; they belonged in the cold. Soon they would belong to it, as well.
“A raven got through,” she said quietly as Sansa finished a row, wiping her knife along the side of a once-pretty dress. It used to cheer Jon and Arya, in a strange way, Sansa’s persistence at finery even at the end of the world. It would have annoyed her once, but Arya had grown up. Now, she stared at the dark smears of blood along her sister’s hips and torsos where she has already wiped the knife clean several times. They were so many wounded, so many to save from the cold grip of undying.
“Bran.” Sansa said, a question and an answer.
“He burned it,” Arya answered. “Sent one last message through the trees then…nobody will get to Winterfell.”
Sansa nodded, staring down at the knife. She was very pale. Arya took out her own knife, began along the line of men at the other side of the tent, slitting their throats or easing a knife between their ribs if that was easier. Some saw her coming. Some whispered thanks.
She remembered - no. It was too late for that.
She reached the end, stood beside her sister as they observed the tent full of blood and death. “You made the right decision, Arya,” Sansa said finally. “I always thought Winterfell could never be destroyed, that there was magic to keep it safe, but. Well. You never did believe in fairy tales.”
Arya did, though. Not her sister’s, and maybe not the happy ones, but she’d believed in heroes and bravery. Now she knew better, just like Sansa did. There were no heroes, only monsters with better disguises than the rest.
She had learned that the first time she slid on another person’s face.
“You’re going out?” Sansa asked, very quiet. Arya nodded and Sansa’s face twisted up as she turned to her. “One more thing,” she said, grabbing up the hand Arya had wrapped around her dagger and bringing it to her ribs.
Arya wrenched away. “Sansa!” But even as that wild moment of panic flared, it faded.
“I used to believe that I would be brave enough to do this on my own,” Sansa said softly, her gaze going far away, and Arya knew her sister was back in the capitol, under Joffrey’s boot. “That all I needed was one good push and I would jump or I would starve myself or. Or. I was very imaginative back then. Now I’ve seen it all, and I’m still afraid.”
After their father’s death, after the wedding at the twins that took Robb and her mother, Arya had wanted - hoped - to believe that she had gone cold and dead inside. All the Faceless Men ever taught her was how wrong she was, how much she felt.
Then she came back home, to her sister and brothers, and the world froze over, and Arya finally figured out through endless marches and battles, how to bring the cold into her bones, how to freeze and settle into one single state of existence. A man would be proud. Arya was No One was Mercy was Arya was Death.
“Remember to burn the tent,” Sansa breathed. Her voice came out in a gale of mist. The temperature was dropping, the sounds of the battle dying. Someone out there, Jon was losing. They were close.
Arya pulled back the dagger, put it away, and drew Needle from it’s scabbard, stepping away from Sansa so she could hold it at the right angle. For a minute, her sister looked just like their mother, and Arya remembered sliding a knife into the shell of Catelyn Stark she had found in the Riverlands. Maybe that was when she learned.
“Look at me,” Arya said, and Sansa did. Blue, blue eyes, the color of death, nothing like Arya’s. Sansa never had been anything like her. “Don’t look away.”
“I won’t. Thank you.”
Sansa had lied. Wasn’t afraid at all. Here at the end of all things, they’d finally found common ground. Better to die your way, better to burn it all down, then let the ice creep in and take control.
“Go find Jon. Tell him I’m fine. Don’t die alone.” Sansa was ready; Arya adjusted her grip. “Don’t die alone, Arya. We must all-”
Arya pushed forward. Sansa inhaled sharply. "...go home now.”
She laid her sister down, arranged her hair, smoothed out her dress. Wiped away Stark blood on her jerkin. She went to one of the braziers and with a learned economy of motion, kicked it over, igniting the tent.
She walked outside and waited until the flames began to blend in with her sister’s hair before heading to the battlefield, snow crunching under her boots. The fire caught to other tents behind her. Up above Viserion and Drogo tangled with their undead brother, lighting the sky in flames.
The world burned as Arya surged onto the battlefield, burning with it.