Chapter Text
They’ve been calling him Bran the Rebuilder, and Arya can’t help but smile every time she hears it.
Bran brushes the words off. “I didn’t lift a single stone,” he complains. “I didn’t even draw the plans.” But slowly over the course of ten years, Winterfell has risen again.
It is high summer, and Arya closes her eyes for a moment. It is hot, and dry today, though she is sure that thunderstorms will sweep across the moors later in the afternoon if the clouds overhead are anything to judge by. “Best finish up before they do,” she murmurs.
“What’s that, m’lady?” Stevron asks, and Arya smiles at him.
“Storms later,” she says and nods her head towards the east.
“Aye. The storm queen brings them north, I’ll warrant. Like her uncle before her.”
Arya shakes her head. “It wasn’t storming when King Robert came to Winterfell.” There’d been summer snows on some days while he’d been there, but for the most part, the skies had been clear.
“Of course, m’lady,” Stevron says. “You’d know better than I.”
She gives him a smile. “There are still no delays?” she asked.
“No m’lady.”
“Good.” She nudges Black Aly with her foot and the horse whickers as she begins to walk.
Arya rounds the castle walls. They are high—so very high, and as she looks up, it’s as though she can imagine Bran running along them the way he had when they’d been children. The stone is newer—a darker grey, fresh from the earth, and there are stonemasons working at the parapets. She reaches a hand out and brushes it against the castle.
The lichyard is full of people when she rides into it. There are men taking down scaffolds, women weaving hay dolls to decorate the hall indoors, and in the center of it all, Rickon, who is sparring with Bryan Lake.
Gone are the days when Rickon looks like anything close to the little boy who’d been frightened of Shaggydog when father had first brought the wolf pups home. He is tall—taller than she is, or than Bran is. He may be as tall as Brienne, or the Hound, Arya thinks, then bites her lip. No, he is not so tall as either of them, but he may be as tall as Gendry.
Rickon catches her eye and smiles, his grin lighting up his long face, and Bryan, seeing his foe distracted, takes the opportunity to thwack Rickon across the leg with the flat of his blade.
“Ow!” Rickon yells, stumbling, and he reminds Arya of a puppy—long limbs but not quite the coordination he needs. Smooth as silk, Arya hears in the back of her mind. Quick as a cat. Rickon had never trained to be a water dancer, though.
“Could you see them?” Rickon asks as she passes him.
“Not yet,” Arya says. “Their outriders said afternoon.”
Rickon makes a face before turning back to Bryan and raising his sword again. “I want them to come sooner than that,” he says.
“Impatient?” teases Arya.
“Aren’t you? Don’t you want to see Sansa?”
“Of course I do,” Arya says automatically. She’s not seen Sansa in years, not since she went south to marry Ned. “I just learned to balance my impatience a long time ago.” She reaches up and rubs Rickon’s hair the way Jon used to rub hers. Rickon’s face scrunches and he dodges away from her touch and Arya rolls her eyes. Rickon rolls his right back.
“Come on,” Bryan Lake calls, and Arya laughs.
“Wear yourselves out,” she tells him, and continues across the lichyard.
She goes into the keep to look for Bran, her feet taking her into the main hall with the great seat her father had once sat on. Bran’s not there—he’s probably resting upstairs. It will be a long afternoon for him. Bran sleeps very little and can grow restive in the afternoon, which won’t serve if he must also play a royal host to Shireen. She crosses through the great hall and up a back set of stairs up two floors until she reaches the rooms that Bran and Meera share. The door to their bedchamber is closed and Arya raises a hand to knock before she hears a sigh from the other side and knows she’ll be intruding. Her lips twitch, half in sadness, half in loneliness.
She shakes herself, trying to rid herself of the thought, but it doesn’t quite work. Stop it, she commands herself. Stop it, you know you’re better off. She’d learned her lesson about longing for someone to hold in her arms.
She hears Meera sighing again on the other side of the door and remembers that she is still standing there, and hurries away. She pushes open her own bedroom door, and goes to the window. There is no sign of them in the distance—not yet.
The outriders said they’re nearly here, she thinks. Sansa, and Queen Shireen and her court. Queen Shireen and her kingsguard.
She must not expect that he’ll be there. She must not. She’ll only be disappointed if he remained behind in King’s Landing with Ser Davos.
But he will have come. He will have. Because it’s me and…
She hadn’t been enough to make him stay North at the war’s end when Queen Shireen had wanted him to come south with her. She hadn’t been enough when he’d sworn his sword to the Brotherhood in the first place. But this is different.
Isn’t it?
She stares out over the moors, and closes her eyes and tries not to hope.
“Is it as you remember, my love?”
Lady Stark nods, and a smile spreads across her face, lighting her blue eyes. She reaches out a hand and Lord Dayne takes it in his, bringing it to his lips. “Peace suits the North,” he says and Gendry pulls his reins up, slowing Water’s pace just a hair so that he is riding along side Steffon Seaworth instead.
“Do you know how much longer until we reach Winterfell?” Steffon asks. He is a clever man. His eyes are the sort of sharp eyes that have been on the horizon all morning, as much as Gendry’s have been, looking for a glimpse of the great castle. Steffon hasn’t seen it before, though. He’d only been a boy when the war was fought, safe in his mother’s arms far to the south.
“Not long,” Gendry shrugs.
“Helpful,” Steffon says. He kicks his horse up so that he nears Lady Sansa. “My Lady, do you know how much longer it will be?”
“Not long now,” Sansa says, turning to him with a smile. “Not too long.”
The North goes on forever and ever, and if Gendry had his way, he’d ride ahead like one of the outriders just to get through it faster. But his white cloak keeps him close to Shireen, and her babe Robert, all of two, so he does not. I could, he thinks. If Aelgenth were here, she’d tell him to. He is not, after all, the Lord Commander. That honor falls on his brother Edric, who was at least acknowledged by Robert before he’d died. Edric rides to the left of the queen, and Gendry sighs and pulls his reins again so that Water falls into pace beside the king consort.
“One would almost think you didn’t wish to reach Winterfell,” teases King Devan. “Surely you’re not afraid of the castle.”
It won’t be covered in corpses come to life now, nor will it be almost in ruins. It’s strong now, the heart of the North, and Gendry rolls his eyes. “I’m not afraid,” he says, but even as he does his stomach lurches, and for the second time, he wishes Aelgenth were there. If she were, he’d surely not be half so nervous.
She’s there. And he’s not heard from her in near enough five years—not since Lady Sansa had come south with the gift of a white velvet doublet that Arya had had made for him in honor of his being named one of Shireen’s seven. “To match your cloak,” had been Lady Sansa’s comment. Gendry had worn it only once in summer and had been so hot that his skin had near enough melted off, so he saved it for winter. Winter always made him think of Arya anyway. Winter is coming, he’d heard one too many times during the war, as if winter hadn’t bloody well been there already, so how could he not.
His stomach twists again. He’s wearing the doublet now. It’s the right weather for it now, the air cool, but the sun warm. He hopes she’ll remember. Surely she will.
If she’d written him letters, he’d have learned to read. But she’d known he could not read, so she’d never written him. Sometimes Lady Sansa would convey a greeting, and he’d ask her to convey one back, but he was never sure if she did. Lady Sansa was gracious enough, but to Gendry her courtesies were a mask, and Gendry had never known how to read what lay behind them. He’d never felt the need to, either. Arya had worn masks too, and plenty of them. Gendry had seen every one of them, but unlike her sister, he had been well practiced in Arya’s masks and could read them perfectly. It hadn’t been hard. Her heart had always been in each one. But it is not the same with Lady Sansa. At least not to Gendry. Perhaps Lord Dayne finds it different. He hopes so. Lord Dayne is her husband, after all. Even if he doesn’t know them very well, they seem too happy to be the type of husband and wife to keep things from one another.
“Of course you’re not afraid.” King Devan is smiling, half-kindly, half-teasingly. Gendry glares at him, which only makes King Devan laugh even more.
“It’s different without the snows, isn’t it?” Queen Shireen asks, leaning forward slightly atop Thunder, her blue eyes locking with Gendry.
“Aye,” he agrees.
“I wonder that it took them so long to complete rebuilding the castle,” King Devan adds. “It was not so destroyed as the Red Keep, yet our repairs were finished long ago.”
“We’ve more in taxes,” Shireen responds immediately, her queenly voice returning to her. “Westerland gold, and the wealth of the Reach. The North has pinecones.”
That makes Gendry snort. Arya had thrown pinecones at him as they’d waded through snow near as high as his waist. His stomach twists again, and he curses himself. I am a knight of the kingsguard, he berates himself. I have nothing to fear in Arya Stark.
Except the fear that she doesn’t care—not truly. Except that she’s forgotten about me. He hates that little voice inside his head. If there’s one thing he can be confident of, it is that Arya Stark has not forgotten him.
She is not forgetful, he thinks. She never forgets anything. The look in her eyes when she remembered some things…
“There!” he hears Steffon cry, and true enough, there.
It rises out of the green hill like a great stone crown. There is no bloodstained snow around its curtain walls, there is no wall of corpses, no scent of dead flesh. There is green and flowers, and fields full of summer hay.
Wintefell. And then, in the voice of a ten-year-old girl, shouting as she charged into battle, Winterfell.
Arya stares out the window. She can’t look away, not until she sees the glint of the sunlight off of helmets and armor, or the fluttering of Shireen’s banners in the wind.
If the morning had been full of activity, and the evening would be as well with the feast prepared, then Arya should be glad of this quiet moment in the day to gather her thoughts and to rest herself. But she’s staring at the window, her hands resting on the sill and the thoughts she’d not let herself think for ages now bubble forward.
Is he there?
She doesn’t know. She hadn’t known how to ask, and no one had been subtle enough to convey which of Shireen’s seven would be coming north with her. Not all of Robert’s seven came when I was a girl, she had told herself as soon as she knew that Shireen was coming north. She’d done it so as not to get her hopes up. She’d been sure—well, fairly sure—that it would be far worse assuming Gendry would be riding north with his queen only to be devastated in finding he’d stayed to guard her Hand in King’s Landing than it would be to assume he may not be there and see him when he arrived.
And she so wants him to come. She closes her eyes for just a moment.
She loves her brothers—she truly does. Rickon is full of energy, and has a loud laugh, and Bran understands her quite as well as he understands anything. Neither of them is Jon, of course, but Jon’s been dead for years now, and it doesn’t serve to compare them to him. I must not dwell on ghosts. Hard as it was, when the ghosts sometimes wore her mother’s rent face. “If I look back, I am lost,” Daenerys had once told her and Arya sometimes tried it, when she was at her saddest and loneliest.
I’m not lonely, she told herself firmly. She has her brothers.
But it will be—would be sweet to see Gendry again.
Gendry had always been different, someone quite unlike anyone else who mattered. He’d trusted her from the beginning, and…and…
And he’d left her. He’d left her twice.
First with the brotherhood, when he took his vows, and then again when he went south with Shireen.
If Arya hadn’t been mourning Jon so deeply, she’d have wondered which had hurt more, Gendry’s departure or Olyvar’s. Another pair I shouldn’t compare, she thinks.
Olyvar had been her first love, and when he’d sailed across the Narrow Sea and left her behind she’d felt as small as a mouse in Harrenhal again. And when Gendry had left... We’d just won the war, but Jon was dead. Nothing mattered because Jon was dead.
She chewed her lip. Gendry had understood that, hadn’t he? That she’d miss him, of course she’d miss him, how could she not, but her brother was dead for good, and there was only so much heartbreak a girl could take.
I want to see him again, she thinks. She’d tried not to dwell on it—how much she missed him, how much she longed to see him again. She had known deep down in her soul that once she was back in Winterfell, she’d never leave it, not ever. She’d have Bran’s sons bury her like Aunt Lyanna in the crypts, right beside Jon. And if she was never to leave Winterfell, and Gendry was to remain in the south at Shireen’s side, well…
Please have come, she thinks. Please.
She…she…
She’s not sure what she wants. Part of her thinks it’s that she never had a proper chance to say goodbye. Part of her thinks it’s that she wants to see one of her dearest friends again, plain and simple. And part of her…she doesn’t know. Neither of those seems to fit half so well as remembering how much it had hurt when Olyvar had left, but still thinking “It’s better than when Gendry did.”
As they approach the castle, Sansa and Ned pick up speed, and Shireen pulls on Thunder’s reins again. “Let her have her reunion,” she says when Ser Edric looks at her confused. “She’s not seen her brothers and sister in five years. Let them greet one another before they must play host to me.”
“Thoughtful of you,” Edric says, and Shireen smiles at him.
“I am the thoughtful queen,” Shireen says and she looks over her shoulder at the wheelhouse. Her ladies are within, and little Robert who prefers the wheelhouse to hours on horseback. Gendry knows that the queen would prefer to ride in it as well, but she knows she must ride at the head of her host. Lady Sansa had been in the wheelhouse until they reached the wide moors, and then she’d taken to horseback as well.
Gendry shifts in his saddle, and Shireen looks at him. “Ride with them,” she tells him.
“I don’t have to,” he says gruffly.
“Yes, but you want to. Ride with them.”
“I don’t want to,” he says.
“Perhaps not for their company, but go. Your queen commands it.”
She likes doing that, Shireen. He knows she does not mean it, or at least, she’s not offended when he does not take well to the command, for Gendry has never taken well to command. But Gendry sighs. Lady Sansa and Lord Ned are already much farther ahead, as is Steffon Seaworth. Go on, he tells himself. You’ve nothing to be frightened of.
It’s only Arya.
As if he hadn’t spent nigh on a year in that dratted inn hoping she’d prance back in. As if he’d not forged Needle back together when it had snapped, even though it was too small for her hand, but her heart had been as broken as the pieces, as though…
Go on, Ser Gendry, he imagines Aelgenth telling him, and that settles him.
He kicks Water and the horse lurches forward, and Gendry rides along the side of the column until he reaches Lady Sansa again.
“Does the queen want something?” Ned Dayne asks, and Gendry shakes his head.
“No, she bade me ride ahead,” Gendry says. It’s not a lie, and Lady Sansa glances at him, and smiles gently.
“She’ll be glad to see you, I’m sure of it. She’s never one to forget her friends.”
Gendry remembers her shouting about a butcher’s boy and screaming for the Hound to die. He remembers nights pulling a too-thin cloak around him. He remembers her smile, and insistence about the side of the trees that moss grows on.
He wants to believe Lady Sansa. He wants to believe his own head. If Aelgenth were here, I’d have more faith. He felt groundless without the priestess, just as once he’d felt groundless without Arya.
He imagines Arya not recognizing him, or not greeting him, and he feels like a moody boy again.
She hears Rickon on the stairs. He has a distinctive step, even if you’re not Arya who learns the sound of someone’s stride. She hears him pound on Bran’s door. “They’re nearly here,” he calls through the wood paneling, and then moves down the hallway. Arya opens her door before he has the chance to knock, and finds him looking quite surprised.
“Oh,” he says, blinking. He looks down at her, then smiles. “I always forget you look pretty in dresses.”
“Thanks,” Arya says dryly, and he flushes.
“That’s not what I meant,” he adds, but Arya rolls her eyes.
“Don’t dig the grave any deeper, Rickon.” She does her best not to sound too bitter about it. His ears are turning pink the way they do when he’s truly embarrassed. “But I take it I look nice? Not too wild? As befits a princess of Winterfell.”
“Yes,” he says, sounding relieved that she’s not pressing him too hard. “I like the grey,” he adds. Arya gives him a once-over. “It matches your eyes.”
“You need to change,” she says. “You’re sweaty.”
“I know, I’m going,” he says.
“And brush your hair!” Arya calls after him. Only Rickon would make her sound like her mother. She shakes her head as the door to Bran and Meera’s bedchamber swings open, and Meera steps out in a long gown of forest green. She looks nice, Arya thinks, though like Arya, it’s odd to see her in skirts. Her hair is braided simply, and there’s a nice flush to her cheeks.
“Did Rickon send them up?” Meera asks.
“I don’t think so,” Arya responds, and Rickon calls, “Sorry!” from down the hall. Arya snorts, and calls, “Tom!”
“Coming m’lady!” and Tom and Marvyn lumber up the steps. Meera steps aside and they go into the bedchamber and moments later, Bran appears carried between them on his chair.
“You look nice,” he says, smiling. His beard is newly trimmed, and his hair sits neatly beneath the crown on his head.
“We must put our best foot forward,” Arya says, shrugging. “I’ll save the trousers for tomorrow.”
“I doubt Shireen would mind.” It’s not Shireen I’m worried about. Sansa wouldn’t say anything, but her hands would twitch.
Arya loops her arms through Meera’s and they follow Tom and Marvyn and Bran down the stairs. It’s slow going, and Rickon catches them up by the time they’ve reached the bottom, eyes still bright from his exercise. His hair has not been combed, and Arya can’t quite bring herself to shake her head.
She stands next to Bran in the lichyard, and it’s like she’s nine again. Nine, except it’s Sansa coming, not Cersei, and Jon’s dead, and mother and father.
Arya feels Bran reach for her hand, and she squeezes it gently as the first of the horses come through the castle gates, and Sansa and Ned ride forward. Ned dismounts with a flourish of his purple cloak, and Dickon takes the reins of his horse from him as he goes and helps Sansa dismount. Her eyes are bright and…
There is a slight bulge to her belly. Not large, but enough to make her skirts protrude a little more than they usually would.
“You didn’t tell us!” Arya blurts out before Sansa even has the chance to open her mouth.
Sansa’s eyes don’t match the smile on her face. “Well, I wanted it to be a surprise.” There’s something odd to her voice, too, and now that Arya looks more closely, she sees the smile on her sister’s face is tight. Sansa bends down and kisses Bran’s cheek.
“I’ve missed you,” he whispers to her, and she crouches down so they are eye to eye. “I don’t like you being so far away.”
“I know,” she responds gently, and it’s as if the rest of them aren’t there. Bran always was her favorite brother, Arya thinks. She looks at Ned, who is hovering behind Sansa.
“Welcome to Winterfell again, my lord,” she says.
“Thank you, my lady,” he says, and he gives her a faint, if slightly somber, smile.
“And congratulations, I may add,” she says, and he flushes.
“Thank you,” he says. “We’re very pleased.” Sansa steps aside, and Ned bows to Bran. “Your Grace.” He straightens and takes Meera’s proffered hand and presses his lips to it. “As fair as ever, Your Grace.” The comment catches Meera off-guard, and Bran begins to say, “I trust the journey was not too—” when Arya sees, out of the corner of her eye, a flurry of white, and she turns her head away from her sister and goodbrother.
There is a knight of the kingsguard there—a tall one too, with dark hair. He’s on the far side of his horse, not looking at her. It could be Edric Storm, she thinks, but her heart is pounding with excitement.
A young man—about Rickon’s age, or maybe a bit older, with dark hair and soft brown eyes is walking forward nervously. He looks as though he hadn’t quite thought through his arrival, as though he’d ridden ahead and is realizing only now why Sansa had done so. Edric Storm wouldn’t ride ahead just like that—it has to be…
“Your Grace,” Ned says, “This is Steffon Seaworth, Lord Davos’ youngest son. I don’t believe you will have met him.”
“I have not. Any son of Lord Davos is welcome in Winterfell,” Bran says, and somewhere in the distance, Arya hears Rickon ask excitedly, “Your father is well, I trust?”
She hears a rumble of thunder in the distance as the horse is led away, and Gendry turns around and there’s hardly any air in the courtyard, he’s truly there. Arya feels her eyes prickle, feels her face soften in a smile, her lips parting as if to speak, but she’s not sure what to say. He’s here, he came.
She can imagine what she must look like. A Kindly Man had once told her to command her face for it was her servant, but either she was a poor master, or the servant was uppity because every muscle seems to be moving of its own accord and Gendry—
His face looks rather like what she must imagine hers does.
When he’d been a boy, barely a man grown, every night before he’d gone to bed, he’d prayed before his nightfires, prayed to the Red God, because the Red God was real, and worked his magic in a way Gendry had never seen the Seven do. He’d prayed every night, silently staring into the flames, willing them to show her to him, to know she was safe.
He’d forgotten that. He doesn’t know how he’d forgotten that, but he had.
She doesn’t greet him, but her eyes are so bright that for a moment he’s a boy again. This was what he’d prayed for all those nights, this right here. Arya standing in front of him, her eyes glistening with joy at the very sight of him. Instead, he’d gotten her covered in dirt, and blood, her eyes dull because she’d seen her mother before he could warn her. But now—
His heart is pounding in his chest, pounding as if he’d run the whole way to Winterfell instead of ridden to the castle on horseback. He can’t look away from her, not even when she looks away from him to say something to Lady Sansa, or to her brother. He can’t.
The clatter of hooves and the rattle of the wheelhouse pulling through the castle’s gates are what shake him. He’s not Gendry the bastard blacksmith of Flea Bottom anymore, he’s Ser Gendry of Queen Shireen’s kingsguard, and he rests his hand on the sword at his hip and stands aside, looking around the castle, doing his best to put Arya from his mind.
You’re not a boy anymore, he reminds himself. And then, unhelpfully, he thinks, And she’s not a girl.
He glances back at her as Shireen dismounts from her horse, and she and King Devan approach Bran Stark in his chair. She’s definitely not a little girl any longer. She’s long of leg, and her dress is belted around her middle in just a way that makes him notice the curve of her waist. You are a knight of the kingsguard, he chides himself, his eyes snapping back to Shireen. Remember that. All of that is done. That was precisely why things had ended with Aelgenth.
But Arya is not Aelgenth.
“It warms my heart to see Winterfell whole again, Bran,” Shireen is saying, and Gendry focuses on every word coming from her mouth. It’s either that, or look at Arya. How could he have been worried she would forget him when it’s clear that he’s forgotten what it’s like to be near her?
Except it’s not the same now. It’s different, it’s—
“I am glad you see it as it should have been,” Bran says. “Welcome, Shireen. Welcome, Devan.” He kisses Shireen’s hand, and Devan bows and kisses Meera’s hand. “And is that…” his voice trails away and he smiles at the prince in his nursemaid’s arms.
“Robert,” Shireen says. “He is quite as fierce as his namesake.”
“I should hope so,” Bran smiles, and reaches out a hand to caress the boy’s face. “He has your look.”
“A true Baratheon,” Arya agrees, and she casts a glance at Gendry. I’m not, he thinks automatically. But that never mattered to her. And he can see it doesn’t now. It makes his chest swell with pride, even as guilt floods him. It is not Arya I must impress, it is Shireen. She is my cousin, she is my queen.
And yet in ten years, he’d never felt so alert.
Arya had always had a way of doing that, though. Because for all Shireen was his queen, and his cousin, and for all that Aelgenth was his dearest friend, Arya was Arya.
And she is standing there, smiling at him, sharing a look that says, I know who your father is, and that is so much less important than you are.
He doubted anyone had ever given Edric Storm that look.
“But you’ll be exhausted from your ride,” Queen Meera was saying. “Come inside and we’ll show you where you’ll be staying and you can freshen up, and rest before the feast tonight.”
The party moves inside, and Arya and Meera take the head of it, leading Shireen, Devan, and Edric inside. Sansa and Ned stay behind with Bran, whose chair is being lifted by two burly northmen.
I should go with my queen, he thinks. He looks after them, but they’ve already gone into the castle. Then he shakes himself. She is well enough in Ser Edric’s hands, and besides…he’d be lying to himself if he didn’t wish to go because Arya was there.
“Welcome back to Winterfell, Ser Gendry,” Bran says, smiling down at him from his chair.
“Thank you, your grace,” Gendry says. The two northmen begin to walk, and Gendry falls into step beside them. “It’s been too long.”
“Aye, it has been. But you’ve had your duties,” Bran says. He has. God only knows he has. He shivers, suddenly, and looks at Bran. Is he still a god? Gendry wonders.
Aelgenth doesn’t believe that he is. “There is only one god, the lord of light,” he could hear her say. And yet he of all people knew what it was that Bran Stark was capable of.
“You’ve been well, I hope?” Bran asks him.
“Very well, your grace,” he responds quickly. “And you?”
“Quite. We’re glad you came. Arya was afraid you would remain in King’s Landing, though she didn’t say as much.”
How could I when she is here, part of him wants to say. Another part of him hates the thought. It is not for her I came, it is Shireen, who I am sworn to serve and protect.
But he knows that’s a lie.
A chill rushes over him. If he had done this just for Arya, not for Shireen, what else had he lied to himself about? Lord have mercy, everything he’d lived for these past ten years—did none of it matter?
“Ser Gendry.”
“How’d you know it was me?” he asked. His voice is a rumble in his chest. Arya wonders if it’s the same voice he’d had when he was sixteen. She can’t remember. It sounds the same, but then again, Bran is a man grown now and she still hears his boy’s voice when he speaks. Gendry’s voice had certainly never made her breath catch quite like that before.
“I just did.” I knew you’d come find me.
It’s raining now, the clouds that had threatened in the morning had rolled in across the plains only an hour after Shireen’s party had arrived. She’d only barely seen Gendry, barely spoken to him since he had arrived, but she’d known he’d come find her. She’d known it from the way he had looked at her, from the fact that they’d spoken no words to one another at all.
There’s thunder rumbling in the distance, but Arya’s too agitated to be inside right now. She is sitting under the weirwood her father had once prayed at, that she and Bran had once climbed together, as if hoping the old tree and the Old Gods will calm her heart, which has not slowed since she first saw Gendry in the lichyard.
Gendry has rain in his hair.
“Never thought I’d see you in your white cloak,” she comments, looking at it, seeing it truly now. She’d forgotten about it so quickly in the yard. She’d hardly noticed anything but his face, and had had to force herself to pay attention to their guests. She’d not been able to say a word to him. There had been too many people around, and her heart had been so full in her chest.
He looks down too, a chagrinned expression on his face. “Well, here it is,” he says. “Does it suit me?”
Arya opens her mouth to reply. She should say yes, it’s what he wants to hear, and what he deserves to hear, but she hears herself say, “Do they let you wear the bull helm with it?”
Gendry blinks at her. “I don’t still have it,” he says.
“You don’t?” The thought of that made her sad.
He shakes his head. “It wasn’t fitting for a knight of the kingsguard. So I gave it away.”
“To someone deserving, I hope.”
“Aye. To someone deserving.”
“A fitting exchange, then, for your cloak and vows, and white sword tower.”
Gendry nods, his face is serious, and there’s something in his eyes.
“What is it?” she asks him, and he swallows.
“It’s…it’s just,” his voice trails away and the corner of his lip twitches in a half-grimace. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What doesn’t matter?” she asks. He’s standing over her now–so tall. He’d always been tall, even when she’d been a stupid little girl. Had his shoulders always been so broad? She can’t remember. Or maybe she can, but she sees them with a woman’s eyes now, not a child’s.
He doesn’t say a word. He’s watching her. She’s good at reading faces–always has been, but Gendry’s face is in shadow right now and she can’t quite make out his eyes. “Eyes tell you all you need to know about a man,” she remembers a waif telling her. He’s got this odd look in his eyes, like he’s far away, and yet not far away. Not far away at all…
He looks like when Olyvar said goodbye, she thinks suddenly, and vividly she remembers Olyvar sitting up and shrugging into his shirt again, the taste of him still on her lips. “Gendry,” she whispers, and his eyes flicker. “It’s a great honor, to wear the white cloak,” she prompts, hoping. But he still doesn’t reply. “Or have you forgotten? Are you too bullheaded to remember?”
“Might have,” he mumbles, and Arya feels her mouth open in surprise. She’d been teasing, but he looks so serious.
“What does that mean?” He just shakes his head, and Arya rolls her eyes. “Really? We were more to each other than that.”
“More than you know,” he whispers, and it might be the wind, and the humid coolness of the air, but goosebumps break out over Arya’s skin. There’s something in his voice she’d not thought to hear. Hadn’t hoped to? “But it’s no matter. I can’t have it, can I?”
“Can’t have what?”
“Anything,” he says, tugging at the cloak as if he’s a child.
“You’re one of the greatest knights in the land, wearing that.”
“Funny…I don’t feel it.”
“What would you feel instead?”
“I don’t know.”
His words hang in the air, and he takes a shaky breath, looking at her, his blue eyes so very intense. What does he want of me? Arya wonders. He’d always wanted her attention, and her care, and she’d given it readily. But now it seems like… I can’t have it, can I? Anything.
Does he want her?
But he can’t—he’s Gendry, and he swore his vows, and besides, Arya had promised herself after Larence that there’d be no more of this, especially not with a friend.
But her mouth is so very dry when she looks at him. And she can’t look away, and gods she doesn’t understand what’s in his mind the way she might once have. Ten years hangs heavy between them. But she can’t look away, and can’t ignore the way her heart is beating so hard in her chest, so hard because he’s here, beating like a drum in her chest.
The rain patters on the ground of the godswood, on the surface of the hotsprings, the wind that blows and their breath. But the loudest sound by far is Gendry unclasping the white cloak and letting it fall to the ground as he sits down at her side, and leans against the tree.
Arya reaches a hand out to pat his arm, and her hand finds velvet. White velvet.
She can’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. “You wore it.” She’d not been able to see it properly from under his cloak in the lichyard.
“Aye. I did.”
“I’m glad,” she says, and she wants to smile, but she can’t. There are times for smiles, but now isn’t one of them, not when he’s looking at her like this. “I’m…I’m glad you remembered.”
“Wasn’t like to forget,” he says, and his voice is rough. “Did you think I’d forget you?”
“No,” she says quickly. “But, well…” she looks down at her hands, then casts a sideways glance at him. What am I afraid of? Because she is, well, not afraid, but nervous. What is there to be nervous about? It’s Gendry after all. “I didn’t know if it would fit you,” she finishes lamely. That’s not it at all, but it makes Gendry half-smile.
“It fits me well enough. I had to had it taken in a bit. I think you thought I was broader of shoulder than I am.”
“Well, I couldn’t very well ask,” she says.
“No,” he agrees. “You couldn’t. You remembered my height well enough, though, so that’s what matters. It might have caused some trouble if it hadn’t been long enough.”
“Your height is easy enough to remember,” Arya says, snorting.
“Oh?”
“Yes,” she says. She points to a tree across the hot spring from them. “You’re just taller than that branch. I remember you hitting your head.”
Gendry blinks. “There was a foot of snow on the ground.”
“I accounted for it.”
“And you didn’t know how long my legs were compared to my torso.”
“I just knew, all right?”
“Lucky guess,” he snorts.
Arya elbows him and he lets out a huff, and Arya grins up at him, but even as she does, the grin on his own face fades. His eyes are so serious—serious enough to be jarring, and in a way that Arya knows too well. Eyes tell you all you need to know about a man.
I should go, she thinks. I swore I wasn’t doing this again. And he’s my friend, and he has vows that he’s sworn, and I can’t ruin it like that.
He’s her friend, her friend, but Arya finds herself moving more closely to him. It’s just the two of them in the godswood. Just us, she thinks, The way it should have been. But that was a stupid thought to have. Gendry had gone south, had gone and joined the Kingsguard, and…
But words are failing her. Her thoughts are failing her.
It’s the smell of him, so familiar, and everything smells stronger in the rain. Arya breathes him in, a smell of sweat and safety, breathes in the taste of his breath coming in shallow waves, his lips only inches from hers.
And when he kisses her, she forgets to breathe, because breathing doesn’t matter when his lips are on hers, chapped and insistent, his tongue probing into her mouth, his fingers weaving in her hair. What does air matter when she grips his doublet and pulls him closer to her, when she can feel the way his heart is beating in his chest, the way his pulse throbs in his neck under her fingers.
She moans into his mouth. It’s been so long since she’s been kissed, since she’s wanted to kiss anyone, and here he is, as like some ghost from her past come to life again. He’s real, and he’s here, and his breath tastes like safety. His hands are in her hair, rubbing her scalp, pulling her hair from its simple braid, and her hands rub along his jawline. The short beard on his face is soft, and she sucks on his lower lip between her teeth as she strokes her fingers over it gently, gently, as she would a cat.
His lips leave hers to trace a line along her jaw and she lets her hands drop down to his chest. He’s still wearing his velvet doublet—the doublet she’d given him and it’s so soft under her fingers and his chest…his chest is muscled underneath it—she can feel it. He’s always been strong, broad chested and powerful. He strikes an impressive figure in all of his whites, and for a moment, Arya pauses. I shouldn’t do this—he’s sworn to Shireen. But he doesn’t stop kissing her, his tongue twined with hers and his hands gripping her so tightly and Arya sinks into his kiss. Arya’s not afraid of him, not afraid of this. She can’t be. She should be—because it’s only ever ended in disaster, but she knows somehow it won’t. Not this time. Not when he’s Gendry. Gendry whose lips are now at her earlobe and whose got one hand clasping the back of her head through her hair and another that’s at the small of her back, pulling her as close to him as he can.
The wind blows. The leaves rustle, shedding droplets of water down on them, and Arya pauses and looks up. They are sitting beneath the weirwood, its red leaves trembling overhead. The gods will know he breaks his vows, she thinks. Bran will know.
But Bran won’t care. Gendry didn’t swear his vows to Bran, after all. Her eyes drift to the carved face on the tree trunk. It’s not quite in front of them. Surely they’re out of its line of sight. It’s not like the gods have eyeballs that can twist and turn in any direction.
“Arya,” Gendry breathes, and she turns to look back at him. His eyes are lidded, his cheeks beneath his beard are flushed and his chapped lips are wet. He looks at her in wonder. He looks at her afraid, as if she’s going to run off, as if he’s unsure whether he should be running off.
She kisses him hard, and pulls him close, so close. They’d been sitting side by side before, but Arya climbs on top of him now, feeling his bulge right where she wants to as she settles over him. She’d not realized how ripe she’d become, but sitting astride his cock now, all she can think is that she wants him. She wants him, she wants them, and not even the chill of the afternoon rain feels cold as she finds the buttons of his doublet and begins to undo them and Gendry—Gendry finds the ties of her bodice and pulls them loose as well with hands that are clearly less accustomed to taking off bodices than Arya’s are at taking off doublets. His velvet falls to the ground, and she pulls the white shirt he’s wearing underneath it up over his head, revealing thick dark hair on his chest and muscles unlike what she remembered as a girl. More of them, and larger, she thinks idly as she lets his shirt fall between them for just a moment. White and grey, she thinks, staring at the shirt that rests between them on her skirts. Stark colors. This isn’t wrong.
He’s still fumbling with her laces and part of her wants to help him, but a completely different part of her is in control. Her head falls forward and she kisses the crook of his neck, and he lets out a groan. She smiles into his skin, and her hands run through the dark hair on his chest.
His hands at her laces still for a moment, and Arya feels her hips move, rocking back and forth over his, each movement sending a sweetness up through her, making her heart beat a little faster, a little hotter. Gendry lets out another groan, and then a frustrated whimper as his hands go to her laces again. He tugs at them, but they won’t seem to come loose at the bottom of her bodice, and Arya pulls away from him and leans back enough so that he can watch as she undoes them herself.
She doesn’t get very far. Her bodice isn’t even half-way off when Gendry tugs at her undershirt and to reveal one of her breasts. The damp air sends a chill across her skin and if her nipples weren’t already puckered from the two of them together, they’d pucker against the cold. But she doesn’t have time to think on that, though. Gendry doesn’t care that her bodice isn’t even off, he leans his head forward, sucking a kiss to the skin between her breasts before kissing his way to a nipple and it’s Arya’s turn to moan this time, truly moan because between her rocking hips and Gendry’s tongue against the soft skin and his hand against her other breast, kneading and caressing, her whole body is light.
She runs her hands up and down his chest, up and down his back, through his hair. She holds his head between her hands as he sucks at her breasts and her head falls back, her body arching towards him as he kisses and nips ever so gently. She rocks her hips back and forth, back and forth, focusing on just how sturdy his cock is between her legs, and as if of its own will, her hand drops down between them. She shifts her hips away from him, ignoring her own frustration for just a moment as she finds the laces to his breeches, and he’s moaning into her skin now, not really kissing her anymore, just leaving his face where it is as her hand pulls his cock out of his trousers.
It’s hard, and thick, but the skin is softer than the velvet of his doublet, softer than any fur she’s ever touched, and he goes very still as her hand pumps up and down his length for a moment, as the tips of her fingers circle the tip of his member. He trembles slightly, his breath uneven, and he tilts his head, his forehead resting between her breasts now, looking down at her hand pumping up and down along his shaft.
“God,” he whispers, then takes a deep breath. “God, Arya.” And he fumbles at her skirt, pushing it aside, and his shirt with it. If he’d tried to keep her laces in tact as he’d fumbled at her bodice, he makes no similar effort with her smallclothes, which he shoves aside unceremoniously and rubs thick, calloused fingers against her soaking slit. His touch is gentle, slow, fervent even, and Arya shifts her weight, canting her hips so that he can perhaps see a little more. The pace at which she was rubbing his cock slows to match the pace of his fingers running along her and he looks up at her, eyes looking at her in wonder, in curiosity. She kisses him, and she feels one of his fingers slide inside her and she sighs and pushes herself against his hand so that it goes into her as far as he can reach. His finger strokes the inside of her, and she squeezes his cock and, for good measure, brings her other hand down to cup at his balls. He is breathing hard now, and he slides another finger inside her. She hisses happily, feeling herself stretch as he begins to pump his hand in and out of her, in and out. His hand is bigger than her own, his fingers longer and thicker and so much better inside her than her own fingers on nights when she is hot. So much better as he picks up speed and so does she. So much better as he shifts the angle of his hand and the heel of his palm finds the little nub at the top of her slit which makes her mewl. So much better as he gasps while she pumps at his cock, as he dribbles seed from the tip, and she feels his blood racing through the veins of that thick, throbbing—
He groans, and his fingers are gone, and his cock is gone as well, and so is everything. He shifts beneath her, tumbling her down onto his white cloak, and his eyes are almost wild as he locks his gaze to hers as he spreads her legs wide and she feels his tip at her entrance. She rocks her hips, taking the tip of him inside her and he grunts as he pushes the rest of the way in and she wraps her legs around his waist, wraps her arms around his neck, clings to him with every part of her and squeezes her cunt around his cock as he starts to thrust into her, their breath mingling with the sound of the rain.
Arya is full of him, so full she can barely breathe. Her body stretches around him, her heart swells at the feel of him, growing bigger and stronger with every thrust he makes. She kisses the base of his neck, his chest hair tickling her chin, and shifts her hips even more so that his thrusts go deeper and deeper. His cock strikes something deep inside her that sends a pain shooting up her, but even as he pulls away to thrust again she finds she likes the feel of it. And when he hits it again, she lets out a moan. And when it hits a third time it doesn’t hurt her at all. She shifts her hips again, and moves her legs this time so that her ankles are resting on Gendry’s shoulders as he pushes into her again, and again and again and again, and it washes over her like a wave, like the sea rolling and rolling for the first few hours you’re on a ship. Her whole body is light, except that part between her legs that is throbbing and her heart which must also be beating. She is hot and cold both at once and as if from far away she hears Gendry make a choking sound and his cock is gone from within her, and she feels wetness spurting onto the back of her thigh, trickling down towards her ass. She feels Gendry press a kiss to each of her ankles as he brings them both back down to the godswood, and spreads her skirt to cover her back up again, but she’s still floating. She reaches up a hand to find him and caresses his face.
“I missed you,” she whispers, and pulls his head down so that it rests between her breasts again, and she hears him mumble, “I missed you too.”