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Link is the stong, silent type (heroingreen) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-06-27 08:35:00

Who: Link and Arya
When: A few weeks back
Where: Link’s Farm/Woods
What: New sparring partners
Rating/Warning: Low, Minor violence
Status: Complete



Something about Link had changed ever since Navi’s return. If it was possible, he had grown quieter, more serious, and the light in his eyes was more intense. There was a sadness around him, too. It seemed he thought about what had happened to Navi all the time, and how he hadn’t been there to help. He’d neglected his swordwork since she left, he’d gotten caught up in life. Falling in love with Zelda, although he didn’t regret it, had overtaken everything. Link didn’t feel like the hero in his dreams anymore.

Link and Arya had planned to get together to spar, which Arya had been looking forward to. There were only so many people in Orange County who owned swords and actually knew how to use them, so when Link had inquired if anyone knew how to use one, of course she’d had to respond. Now, she was pulling into the farm’s driveway and after parking her car, she took needle from the passenger seat and headed up to the door to meet Link.

As he opened the door, Link’s heart sank down into his stomach. He hadn’t expected Arya to look like this, but in reality he hadn’t put much thought into it. He was only eager to train again. Now he wondered if he was overeager, because Arya looked like she might break if he came at her too hard.

In typical fashion for him, some time passed while Link blinked and stared. “...Hi,” he finally said slowly. “Arya?”

As Link stared at her, Arya quirked a brow, wondering if he had been expecting someone a little bigger, but that didn’t really phase Arya too much cause as far as she was concerned, looks could be deceiving, “Hey. Yeah. You’re Link, right?” She sized him up as she stood there on the porch, deciding that she could probably take him.

“Yes,” Link replied. He continued to stare and blink for a few more seconds, until it was slightly awkward. He shifted his weight and scratched the back of his neck. “Sorry. I guess I was expecting...you to look different. How old are you?”

“Nineteen.” Arya said, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched Link, “Let me guess, you weren’t expecting me to be so skinny? Short?” Anyone else might have been offended, but not Arya. She was used to it.

“I mean…” Link frowned. He knew he should have given more thought to all of this. He’d been impulsive when he started looking for a sparring partner. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Don’t worry, I’m tougher than I look. I’ve played sports all my life and can kick both of my older brothers’ butts easily.” So maybe that was a bit of an understatement, but she had kicked Jon and Robb’s butts in the past, “So you really don’t have to worry about hurting me. I mean, I could say the same thing about you.” She smirked as she looked up at him, waiting for his response.

A smile would have been appropriate. Link sort of gave her one. “Well… let me see your sword.” There was still that part to sort out. If their weapons could hold up to one another. His was just inside. Link reached for it.

Arya’s hand curled around Needle’s hilt and she pulled it from her sword belt and held it up for Link to see, “This is Needle.” She said, turning the sword one way then the other, her dark eyes moving up and down its length. She kept her sword in top condition despite the fact that she didn’t use it quite the way she’d used it in her dreams.

Needle, Link had to admit, was a pretty cool name. And a very nice sword. Though it was a little on the slender side. Arya had mentioned that. He scrunched his face a bit as he presented his broadsword. “This is The Master Sword. Do you think it could stand up to this?”

“That’s pretty impressive.” Arya said as Link brought out his own sword. She knew that Needle was smaller than Link’s sword and she’d even seen swords bigger than his in her dreams, such as Ice, her father’s Valeryian Steel sword and the swords that the King’s Guard carried in King’s Landing and to be honest, she was glad that Link’s wasn’t as big as those ones. “Only one way to find out.” She smirked, sure that Needle would stand up to Link’s, “So where are we doing this?”

Link finally took a step out of the front door, onto the porch, a sign that he was going to give in and spar. He pointed to the left, were his land ended and the woods began. It was a dense forest where the light was thin, but not overgrown or ugly. “Not many people we can hurt in there.” Just themselves.

Arya smirked and followed Link to the spot he had indicated. Once they reached it, she immediately fell into a sword stance, watching him intently, “So, how long have you been swordfighting in your dreams?” She asked, waiting for him to make a move.

"About two years," he said. He didn't get as much real life practice as he wanted. Most of the people who got weapons from their dreams seemed to get what he would call "futuristic" items, like plasma guns. Things that seemed to be straight out of a movie.

He still hadn't made a move. He appeared to be waiting.

“I only took lessons, in my dreams, for a short time, but I learned a lot from them.” Arya said, watching Link carefully as she began moving to the side, sword still at the ready, “Then I took some lessons from a guy here not long after my sword showed up. I kind of hoped that one or both of my older brothers would start dreaming, because they were trained to use swords in the dreams and it would have been kind of cool to be taught by them in real life.” As much as she wished that Jon and Robb would dream, they still hadn’t.

“In my dreams, I learn through magic.” At least, he guessed so. His training sequences never seemed to last very long. Performing a move once seemed to be all he needed to effectively use it a million times afterward. “Are you ready? I’m going to come at you now.”

He tightened his grip on the hilt and brought his sword down from overhead. He didn’t put all his weight behind it, but it was an easy move to counter anyway. If she could match anything, she could match this.

“Magic, huh?” There were various myths and legends in Westeros about magic, but Arya didn’t know if any of that was real or not. In a lot of other peoples’ dreams it was real though, so it wasn’t that difficult to believe really.

“Come at me then,” Arya brought her sword up to block his easily. She had learned a lot from her dreams and real life and despite the fact that she and her sword were smaller than Link and his, she blocked like someone who was equal to him.

Link was impressed and reassured. To test the waters again, he repeated the attack, followed by a jab to the right, just beside Arya’s shoulder. He pressed his full weight into it to make sure she could match his strength. Properly using a sword had more to do with finding a weakness than brute force, but first things first.

Arya kept up easily, blocking Link’s attacks, using her size and agility to her advantage to spin away from the jab then brought her own sword in for an attack. Needle might have been smaller and thinner than Link’s sword, but she knew how to use it to her advantage. “You’re good.”

Link bobbed out of the way and met her sword. “Really?” he asked earnestly. He sounded like a little boy all of a sudden. When you lacked a sparring partner, affirmation didn’t come often. “You, too.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.” Arya didn’t bullshit people and had very little to no tact, so if she said something, she meant it. “And thanks. I practice daily.” Even if she didn’t use Needle the same way in real life as in the dreams, she couldn’t let the training she’d gotten go to waste.

Link met and gave a few more attacks. They weren’t meleeing, but they were finding a good rhythm. Soon, it was clear that he was the one who needed more practice. If this had been an actual battle, Arya would likely be the victor. “I… really should…”

“I can help you, if you want.” Arya was lucky, if Link had been like the Knights or other men in her dreams, chances were she’d lose. In a real fight with someone who had trained all their lives, Arya wouldn’t have been a match. She had killed only two people in her dreams; one had been the boy who had tried to steal Needle from her when all hell broke lose in King’s Landing and the other had been the man she’d stabbed in order to escape Harrenhal, but she’d taken them both by surprise. A duel would have been a different story. Then again, she was only eleven in her dreams, so eight years could make a hell of a difference.

“Do you… want to come by regularly?” he asked between breaths. Really, he was working an under-utilized group of muscles, now. Pulling up weeds and milking cows weren’t training for this. Neither was sparring with the trees in the forest around them, which still bore old wounds. Navi had guilt tripped him out of continuing with that long ago.

“Sure. If you want me to.” Arya had played sports for years, so there hadn’t been many underused muscles when she’d started sword training; not that she probably wouldn’t be sore later on. She hadn’t really gone up against anyone lately, because even though Damian had a sword of his own, they weren’t really home around the same time. Besides, Damian was kind of like a ninja now and she wasn’t sure she’d stand a chance no matter what.

Link brightened up, which wasn’t good because he stumbled and nearly missed Arya’s next attack. It seemed that in his dreams he did a lot of random hacking and slashing. That probably wouldn’t be effective here. He needed this, he needed a sparring partner. He hoped Zelda wouldn’t mind that it was a girl.

“Yes. I think this is a good idea.”