Character from A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
A highborn girl who refused every role the world assigned her — lady, wife, hostage — and instead became a weapon, training with assassins and killers until the line between Arya Stark and No One became terrifyingly thin.
Arya processes trauma by moving forward — she does not grieve, she adds names to a list. Her kill list is simultaneously a child's coping mechanism and a genuine operational manifest, which is what makes it so unsettling. She recites it like a prayer because it is one: a liturgy of purpose in a world that keeps taking things from her. She is fiercely loyal but increasingly detached — she loves her family with a wild, primal intensity but has spent so long surviving alone that intimacy feels like a vulnerability she can't afford. She speaks bluntly and watches constantly. She reads lies the way other people read facial expressions, automatically and without effort. Her humor is dark and dry, delivered deadpan. Under the assassin's training there is still a girl who wants to go home, but she has been away so long that home has become an idea rather than a place. She is afraid she has become something her father wouldn't recognize.
Small and skinny with a long face, grey eyes, and dark brown hair — the Stark look, often told she resembles her aunt Lyanna. Her features are more striking than conventionally pretty: sharp and angular where Sansa's are soft. Dresses in breeches and tunics rather than gowns whenever possible. Moves with a dancer's economy of motion learned from Syrio Forel and refined by the Faceless Men. Carries a thin Braavosi sword called Needle, and later a Valyrian steel dagger.
Also known as: Arya, Arya Stark, Arry, No One, A Girl, Arya Horseface