Chapter Text
“Arya?”
She opened the fridge, glancing inside to see what there was. Not finding anything, she picked up her phone. “What do you want for dinner? I’m thinking Chinese.”
“Arya,” he said again, voice serious and she turned to him. “We need to talk.”
“You’re breaking up with me?” she asked quietly, feeling her knees go weak and she dropped into her seat with a huff.
Ned ran his fingers through his hair in frustration, something Arya would have normally laughed at. Ned Dayne didn’t like looking imperfect or out of sorts, even after a game he somehow looked more put together than everyone else. And here he was now, looking just as stressed and worn out as she felt. “I think we’ve been going too fast too soon.”
And she knew exactly why he was acting like this. He had been antsy since they arrived in Winterfell last week for New Years with her family. “We’ve been dating for nine months and you just met my family. Dany and Daario had moved in together at this point.”
They had broken up a month later but that really defeated her point. She and Ned had been standing still since they started dating. Nine months in and she didn’t have a drawer in his dresser, no hairpins on his counter or a toothbrush in the bathroom. No steps forward and at first Arya had liked that, the standing still. She couldn’t be afraid of commitment if she still had a completely separate life with an occasional boyfriend.
But her siblings had started asking about Ned when they called, the tabloids had been printing them together for weeks so she wasn’t surprised. And she liked Ned and they had been together for months so why not bring him home to meet her family?
“It’s too much, Arya!” he threw his hands up and Arya wanted to sink into her couch. “I don’t think we should be moving so quickly. First it’s meeting your family and the next thing I know I’m standing at the end of the altar with a woman I don’t want to marry.”
“Woah, woah,” she shot up, waving her arms in front of him to shut him up. “Who said anything about marriage? We’ve been together for almost a full year and I wanted you to meet my family. What is so wrong about that?”
Ned frowned, “Nothing, but I liked the way things were.”
“Staying in one place our whole relationship?” she snapped, her voice harsher than she meant to. “Having dinner twice a week between my filming schedule and your baseball practice? Posing together on the red carpet? Having sex every Sunday like clockwork because you don’t have a spontaneous bone in your body?”
His face flared red and he gaped at her like a fish, “My body is a machine ! I can’t be treating it like just anything, it needs a schedule! I won the William Harridge Trophy!”
Arya stomped her foot and her fingers tightened into fists, feeling miraculously like a small child. “Yes, I know! You never shut up about it, it’s all ‘me, me, me’ and ‘I, I, I’. No wonder it couldn’t work between us, you’re too in love with yourself to notice anyone else!”
“Like you’re one to talk!” he accused her back. “All you ever do is talk about your upcoming events! Press tours and red carpets and awards. I didn’t even know how many siblings you had until I met them in your house. If your family wasn’t in the media so much, I wouldn’t know anything about them at all!” he spit.
“I don’t like it when you get like this.” Arya’s voice had gone cold and she felt her heart hammering in her chest as she tried to calm herself. They didn’t need the neighbours getting worried and phoning the police again.
“When I get like this? You asked for this! You started yelling at me! Insulting me!” Ned raged and Arya glanced out her livingroom window towards the house next door. She hoped they weren’t home to hear this.
“Alright, okay,” she felt drained. She just wanted it to be over so he could leave and she could head to bed. “I get it. We’re breaking up. Can the yelling stop now? I have a headache.”
“We need to talk about this.” Ned pointed between them. “We were together for nine months, you can’t just expect it to end in ten minutes. We made a commitment.”
“Oh, please! Just make up your mind.” she walked to the little liquor cabinet and poured herself a drink. “You’re breaking up with me because you don’t want to make a commitment and thought we were moving too fast.”
She threw her head back, drinking it all before going in for a refill. Arya wasn’t a big drinker, normally the crystal bottles were there more for decoration than use. But tonight, feeling the burn of whiskey sliding down her throat and settling in her stomach, she was happy she had let her interior designer talk her into keeping them.
“Can you not drink while I’m trying to talk this out?”
“Talk what out?” she turned the glass in her hand, watching the amber liquid swish around. “You broke up with me and I don’t feel like there’s anything worth salvaging, so why keep talking circles around each other?”
“Fine, if that’s what you want then we’re done talking about it.” Ned said lowly. “How do you want to spin this to the media?”
She couldn’t help it, she laughed. “Well, I’m planning on telling the truth. What are you going to spin our break up as?”
Spinning a story was a pretty way for Ned to say lie and make himself look better.
“The usual story when people in our position break up and don’t want a scandal,” he shrugged. “We drifted apart, we wanted different things, we decided we weren’t working out.”
“However you say it, it’s still bullshit.” she dropped the glass back on the tray. “Can you get out? My publicist will call yours and they’ll come up with a story that works for both of us.”
A part of Arya wanted him to fight for her but she knew better, Ned wasn’t a fighter. He was a baseball player, his life was a game and she was just another round for him. “Perfect!”
He left just as quickly as he got there and Arya locked the door behind him with an irritated flick of her fingers. Sighing heavily, Arya shut the lights off and shrugged her jacket and shoes off. She passed by the suitcase next to the door and angrily rolled it out of the way.
She hadn’t even gotten a chance to unpack before he had sprung it on her. The scent of the airport still clung onto her clothes and skin. Aray stripped quickly on her way to the bathroom, stepping inside and blasting hot water over her strained muscles. Letting herself relax against the water, Arya ran her fingers through her knotted hair.
It was still hard for her to wrap her head around what had just happened.
Arya loved spending time with her family- her brothers and her parents and their dogs all together in one place again? Absolute heaven for her. And she had thought adding Ned into the mix would only make it better, make their relationship stronger. Instead it had torn them apart.
She wasn’t in love with Ned, she had never gotten past that hurdle with anyone before. Arya hadn’t said ‘I love you’ to anyone outside her family and her best friends either. A little part of her thought that Ned would be the first to hear it.
He had had fun in Winterfell, at least she thought he had.
Rickon had begged him to play a friendly baseball game with him and his friends and Ned had beaten them quite soundly but she thought they were having fun. Arya could tell that Bran hadn’t liked him much, he thought Ned was too loud, but he had smiled politely. Robb and Jon had played nice but Arya wondered how much of it was just for her benefit. Her mother liked him, she’d made that clear when she pulled Arya aside after dinner every night to tell her so. Her father was harder to read but he hadn’t outright disapproved.
“What were you thinking?” she mumbled to herself as she stepped out of the shower.
Wrapping herself in her fluffy bathrobe, Arya quickly made her way into her bedroom. The floor was cold and she regretted not grabbing her slippers. Uncaringly, Arya pulled out the first set of pajamas in her dresser and got dressed. She fell into bed with a huff, her hair soaking through her pillowcase and she tucked the blanket up to her chin. Her ringtone went off on the nightstand and she reached over to her buzzing phone.
She had texted her family as soon as the plane had landed so they wouldn’t worry but she wasn’t surprised to see her phone flooded with notifications from the group chat she had with her brothers and a few from Dany. Arya debated with herself for a minute before sending her brothers and Dany the same message, not really interested in listening to them threaten Ned while she convinces them murdering him in the middle of the night isn’t the right thing to do.
Arya: hey, yeah, so Ned and I broke up
I don’t really want to talk about it right now
I’m drained and really don’t have the energy for it
I’ll call tomorrow, I promise
Love you <3
Stark and Dayne : Hope or Game Over?
Opinion by Val Wild
It’s safe to say that bringing your boyfriend home for the holidays is serious. Nobody brings home a fling or casual boyfriend to meet the parents. When A-List actress, Arya Stark (25) was spotted getting off a plane in her hometown, Winterfell, with baseball superstar boyfriend, Ned Dayne (27), we thought the stars had aligned for the two of them.
We caught our first glimpse of the couple almost ten months ago at the premiere of Stark’s Oscar nominated movie, No One . A movie starring Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen about the legendary House of Black and White assassins. Stark had been through the ringer preparing for the role of Mercy, between filming, MMA and weapons training, Stark hadn’t been out in public for weeks. But she made quite an entrance in a royal purple Tyrell original and Dayne on her arm for the premiere.
Personally, I can’t decide which looked better on her.
Over the months the two have been spotted in high end restaurants and coffee shops, whispering sweet nothings to each other and holding hands down broadway. Stark has attended every game Dayne has played, in his words she is ‘his lucky little charm’. And Dayne has escorted Stark to every carpet event - from the VMAs to the Emmys. All together, a nice couple.
When they returned from their trip North, instead of hearing wedding bells for the couple, they came back broken up. A joint press release by their publicist cites ‘growing apart’ and ‘no harsh feelings between the two’. But as we all know, a publicist's job is to cover up the ugly truth between celebrities. It does bring up the issue of what really happened between Stark and Dayne. Rumours of infidelity have spread and it makes us wonder who cheated and why. And most importantly, who broke up with who.
While we waited for a public appearance from either of them, hopefully with a reconciliation in the cards for them, we received bad news in the form of Dayne barhopping with his teammates every night this week. Dayne was spotted being carried into his car by teammate Jaime Lannister. No sigh of Arya Stark in sight.
Stark, for her part, has only made one appearance since their break up. With her best friend and co-star, Dany Targaryen, and Dornish heiress, Arianne Martell. The three were spotted in the shopping district of King’s Landing, no doubt going through some retail therapy. And pictures of the three sharing desserts at a local bakery, Hot Pie’s, were posted on Twitter.
With their night and day different reactions to the break up, it’s not hard to see that Stark is handling it much better than Dayne. I don’t know about you but I don’t get drunk every night unless I’m trying to forget getting brutally dumped. But I also don’t spend over two thousand golden dragons on clothes if I’m not heartbroken.
Can we hope to see a reunion between the two, now, ex lovers in the coming months?
Or is it more likely that their dirty laundry is going to be aired out for all to see and pass judgement over?
Twitter Feed tracking the tags #AryaStark and #NedDayne
1:02 @bethycass
y'all ever see such obvious bs? no shit someone was playin’ dirty in this
1:03 @queendany
arya is my best friend and the rumour mill you guys are starting is disgusting, leave my girl alone
2:12 PM @jeyneheddle:
my money is on Arya dumping Ned
i mean come on look at them
she’s having girl days and he’s getting drunk
2:32 PM @elmfrey
ned deserves so much better than a one shot wonder
2:35 PM @serlemoncloak
who the hell is #aryastark?? and why did she apparently cheat on ned dayne
3:15 PM @wildwolfling
can everyone leave my sister alone?
she’s just trying to live her fcking life
3:22 PM @rambolt
good on dayne for dumping her
she’s like a 4/10 lmao
how does she even work in tv??
4:41 PM @ccerwyn
honestly i think arya cheated on dayne
he is wayyy too dumb to notice if she did
4:52 PM @jofflannis
with how fucking weak dayne’s game has been, i don’t blame stark for dumping him
not that stark is worth dating in the first place but whtver
5:16 PM @aryastark
it was a month ago. stop messaging me about the break up. thx