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This. This is what made it easier, what made breathing feel a little less heavy, like the constant weight on her chest that it always was.
Seeing her tiny form running around in her old home that she and Ned built with their memories of their love and their family, with her head thrown back in laughter, hair flying everywhere as he chased right behind her grinning like a fool, it makes Catelyn wish, not for the first time, that she had had the chance to meet her granddaughter.
She was Gendry in looks through and through. When she was upset, her face would scrunch up and her eyes were bluer than the angriest of seas and when she was happy, she looked softer than every cloud in the atmosphere while her eyes shone lighter than the morning sky. Her hair was as black as a raven, unkempt and a tangled mess with flowers, always. She loved to run around everywhere, eat sweets before supper and laugh louder than you thought she could. Her stubbornness could be credited to either one of her parents but her wild spirit, her fierce attitude and love of even the slightest adventure was all Arya. She was the best parts of each of her parents come to life in the tiny form of the legacy made to rebuild and rebirth.
She had missed so much of what Arya had gone through and more than anything she wanted to be there for her when every single bad thing happened. She had contained all her anger and sorrows of knowing what the world had done to her deep within her heart. She didn't need to keep it there anymore though. She didn't need to hold onto the anger and sadness of being separated because she still got to see her. She still got to see them.
She loved this, getting to see the little moments throughout the day, whether they knew she was there or not. Whether they believed she was.
She liked getting to see Arya wake up with tiny hands softly pinching her cheeks and tickling her face with the feather light touch of soft black hair. She liked getting to watch Gendry's eyes light up and see him smile every time he walked through his and Arya's rooms after a long, tiring day and would be greeted with the sight of his wife and his daughter curled around one another, asleep and adorable. She liked witnessing Arya trying and failing at teaching Gendry and Cassie how to cook and how she would pretend to be mad but not for long, because she knew they would always kiss her endlessly if they had the chance. She liked watching Arya, her baby, her Arya be the best mother she could be while she held her daughter and pressed kisses into her hair and gave her promises of endless love and warmth.
It stung how she wished she could do that again, hold Arya one last time and press kisses into her hair, but seeing her crouched down at the end of the hallway with her arms wide open while Cassie ran into them, both of them wearing face splitting grins as Gendry reaches them and proceeds to scoop them both over his shoulder despite their halfhearted protests she thinks she feels it stings a little less this time.
Arya has someone else to hold her now.
Two someones.
Arya never really dreamed it was possible. She never dreamed of having Winterfell again. She never dreamed of reuniting with the only family she had left. It seemed too out of reach, too cruel to think of. Her dreams had always felt the way dreams always feel, like a fog or mist in your mind, like your heart longing for something that had never been.
She's almost relieved she didn't dream of Winterfell. Of Bran or Jon or Gendry or any of it. She didn't dream of spending years with Gendry and starting a family of their own and she thinks that maybe if she had, she probably wouldn't have it now.
She's certain whatever dream she would have dreamed of them could never feel quite like this. It could never taste this sweet.
Years on the road, on the run, tragedy grafted itself to her side, made itself one with her. She was no stranger to it, to pain.
Her heart always felt so heavy, since she was a girl and every time she thinks of all she's lost, of who she's lost the pain only thickens.
Being taken from her home, being there when her father died, when her brother and mother died, being forced into an identity she had to cling to if she had wanted to live.
It felt a little less heavy when she met Gendry. He understood the world better than anyone else she'd known. He understood her better than anyone. They built a safe haven for each other and lost it once. But they eventually got it back. They've had it back for years now, being in Winterfell together. Being the family she had so longed for them to be.
She's walking through the castle grounds as everyone around her gets their work done for the day. It had been calm there these past years and she's more than thankful to have reclaimed her family home and made it her own. Hers and Gendry's and completely, indisputably Stark.
She knows where she'd find them on a slow day like this, so she isn't surprised when she's met with the sight of her husband beating down on an anvil, playing a song of steel for their little lady, whose face had a black smudge on the right cheek and forehead and soot stains on her grey shift.
She leans against a pillar as she watches Gendry lift Cassie in his arms so she can hit the metal he was working into something for her surely, and she feels her heart swell at the look of pride that crosses over Gendry's face and the pure excitement on Cassie's from actually working in the forge with her father.
She walks forward and it's then that they both look up, their expressions near identical even more so than usual with all the soot on their face. They smile at her and she's hopeless to smiling back, so she doesn't hold it back.
"Mama, look! I made the steel sing like papa!" Gendry kisses the top of Cassie's head before setting her on the ground to let her surge forward towards Arya.
"I heard, my little wolf. It was a pretty song."
"Really?" Cassie's eyes are wide with hope and Arya, though her belief in the Old Gods had wavered over the years tragedy after tragedy, praying every so often helped her believe in them a little more each day but she thinks they might exist after all almost indefinitely with a face like Cassie's staring back at her.
She nods and holds Cassie's face in her hands before pressing her lips to her forehead and pulling away, "Really."
Quick as she always is, Cassie snatches the piece of steel that had more than cooled down by then from the anvil before she runs off with it.
"I'm going to show Uncle Jon what I made!"
Gendry comes up to stand beside Arya, pulling her to his side as she tucks herself into him and leans her head on his shoulder as they watch Cassie run off through the castle grounds, through peoples legs and then the doors and they both just shake their heads at the wild spirit that was their Cassie.
"How lucky am I to have not one, but two blacksmiths at my disposal?"
Gendry lets out a laugh and it rumbles through the both of them, "Aye, is that so? You have two blacksmiths now?"
"Yes, it is. She's quite taken with the work her father does. I'll have as many weapons as I want with the two of you around. I think I'd better keep you."
"Aye, you better."
Arya turns her head and Gendry turns his and they meet in the middle and she knows if she had dreams they wouldn't be this good, this warm, this real.
She thinks of how she's happy now, how she's happy here. Of how her mother and father used to be happy here.
She wonders if they know she's safe, that she's okay.
She hopes they know. She has Winterfell, she has Gendry and together they have Cassie.
She's never felt more okay than this.
He had made sure she hadn't seen him that day, absolutely made sure of it. What father would let their own child see them leave this world? Get taken from it?
He made sure that he'd try to keep her safe one last time.
Had the world always been so unjust? So cruel?
Did time truly wait for no one?
It was easy for Ned to forget how unkind everything around him seemingly was whenever he had been surrounded by his family, by those he loved, by Arya.
He smiles easier now, with Cat and their boys. They shouldn't have been there, none of them should have been there, but the Old Gods all had a time for something, for everything.
He wishes he could hold her now. He wishes he could hold any of them but his heart rests with knowing that she's safe, that she's happy.
That they're happy.
But they aren't always. Not on namedays where he or Cat or Robb or Rickon would've aged a year older. Not on Winter Town festivals that flow in from the village and through the castle and how she used to dance on his feet when they did.
Not when she visits the crypts with Cassie and she asks her all about him, all about her grandfather she would never know in the flesh.
He somehow sees her on most of her saddest days. He visits her, tries his very best to visit her on her happy ones too, but she seems to call for him more when her heart is hurting.
He sees her in the godswood and it's sort of strange to see her pray when they are all already there. It's strange because she had never been religious before when she was a child and would always roll her eyes at her mothers mention of the old gods, but he knows she prays now because it lets her be close to Cat, be close to them in a way she can't be anymore.
He hears her ask the old gods if they're okay, if they've found peace and she stares at the ugly, old face carved in the white bark waiting for some type of answer, some kind of sign that they can hear her. That they can see how happy she's come to be even after she had lost everything.
The red leaves on the white oak rustle above her and she watches them, wonder in her gaze and a small smile pulling at her lips.
She had always been so wild, so restless, it's almost eerie to see her so still but he knows it's the effect of being torn from the warmth she grew up with. Being torn from the winter in her home and having to always carry it in her heart.
It's then that Cassie enters the godswood, speeding towards the center where Arya was kneeling, snow crunching beneath her small leather covered feet and Gendry trailing not too far behind.
Arya sits more upright and straightens her back out, readying herself for the collision of Cassie's body with her own.
Cassie wraps her small arms around Arya's frame and buries her soft, round face in Arya's hair.
"I missed you mama." Cassie murmurs and Arya smiles before twisting around to properly hold her daughter.
"I missed you too, my little wolf."
Arya looks behind Cassie at Gendry, whose face was hard but his eyes betrayed whatever it was he was trying to hide. She saw how soft he was, how raw and so full of love he felt and she felt just as full knowing he felt that way because of her, because of them.
"M'sorry, I couldn't keep her away. She demanded to see you after she won another sword fight." Gendry moved forward and didn't stop until he was sat by her other side.
"It's alright. She's just as stubborn as you, it would've been impossible to turn her away, not that I'd ever want to." Arya tickled Cassie's side until the sound of her laughter filled the godswood.
After they settle, Cassie moves to sit between her parents and looks between the two of them before she settles on Arya.
"Can I talk to them with you too?" Her voice is small and so pure and Arya thinks she would love nothing more than that, for Cassie to speak out her love for the people she'd never met the people she'd never meet, no matter how hard it was to swallow that she'd never see any of them again.
Arya nods and feels Gendry reach behind Cassie to hold her hand and give it a squeeze.
"I'll leave you two to it then."
"No. Stay. We can all talk to them, together. As a family."
Gendry's eyes bore into hers and she felt her heart falter in her chest before they both leaned forward to melt into one another, their lips never feeling more at home than when they were kissing each other.
They pull away and Arya shows them how to speak to them, how to pray and Ned hears them.
He hears them and he hopes she knows that he knows. He knows they're okay, that they'll always be okay.
They'll be more than okay and he hopes for always that the chill of fear and tragedy would never kiss either of them again, that it'd never get the chance to know Cassie.
He'd protect them as much as he possibly could, but watching them smile with each other, watching them chase each other around the godswood after they've spoken enough and then hold onto each other as they carried Cass out for supper, he knows they're more than enough to keep their home, their Winterfell and their family safe.
She spends most of her days watching him, watching them and she weeps.
When she passed over and awoke in a new light, with the seven, she wept and she wept and she wept.
All she had ever wanted was to protect him, to love him properly.
How could she do either of those when she wasn’t there anymore?
He had been no more than four when the gods decided it was her time to leave and she felt there was nothing crueler, no pain that ran as deep as the hurt of leaving him had. She couldn't even give him a name when he was born, forcing them to only be Ella and Gendry Waters, bastards of Flea Bottom.
She couldn't protect him when he'd only been ten and kicked out of the tavern, forced to look for a home and work for himself. She felt settled when Tobho found him at the very least. He could have made a living there until he was a man grown, he could have taken over the shop for Tobho but that wouldn't come to be, and all too well her heart knew it. She felt it every time she saw him smithing.
She felt the sinking in her stomach when it happened and all over again, she couldn't protect him.
She couldn’t protect him when Tobho sold him to the Nights Watch recruiter.
But she saw her there. Arry. A fierce little thing devoted to keeping her family safe and she saw it then. How loyal she was, even if her boy seemed to drive her mad.
She saw it in the way he’d stay awake while she slept, scared somebody would try something funny on her even if they didn’t know who she really was, even if he was the only one who knew her truth.
She saw it in how she shared her food, her rabbit, with him. In how she'd bring him water whenever he spent too long at the forge in Harrenhal, when she brought him soup to break his fever and she's happy that Arya stalled her reunion with him by longer. He was too young to see his mother again.
She wept some more when they parted ways because he had what she needed him to have and then it was gone. She was gone and she hadn't known where she went, if they would ever see each other again.
But it wasn’t gone, not forever, because she sees him now, sees them.
As they walk through Winterfell, hand in hand. While they eat together as a family, when they read stories to Cassie before bed.
As he and Arya look over at one another and swiftly embrace each other whenever they hear a song that pulls out their heart strings or just because.
As they play with Cassie, who looks so much like him, and they teach her how to sword fight how to make swords.
As they spend their days being as close and content as she’d always wished he would be.
She spends most of her days watching him, watching them and she doesn’t weep as she used to.
She weeps because she’s happy. Because he’s happy. He's made his living now and he will always make it. They're protecting him now and he's protecting them.
He has his family. He has Arya and Cassie and Winterfell.
He has his family and she got to watch him build it.
He has his family and she gets to watch them keep him safe.
Of course she would always want more time with him. More time to have gotten to know him better, more time to be his mother the way he never got to have one before. But she'll rest with knowing that she knew him as long as she did and loved him as much as she could.
She'll rest with knowing that Gendry, Arya and Cassie have all the time in the world.
Gendry had wanted a simple life when he was younger. He didn't think he'd do much of anything except for some smithing in his life. He didn't think he'd end up where he was now and he's glad that he never thought much.
Life was perhaps the sweetest and most merciless thing he'd ever known. He was born a bastard, but for that he didn't care much, he was already apart of the small folk, what did adding bastard do to the already lowest of the lows?
He wasn't selfish or greedy and he always believed in what was right. He'd always protected those who couldn't protect themselves until one day, she started protecting him.
Arya was all the things Gendry never imagined a person being. She was persistent, willful and quite possibly the strongest person he'd ever met. She was stubbornness and laughter and life and love and he loved her, he did.
He had always been her friend and only ever wanted to keep her safe and after meeting and knowing her, he hadn't ever really thought of anything else except for doing whatever was best for them.
He wasn't a fool despite his lack of thinking. He knew a friendship like theirs was so tremendously special, you'd have to be stupid to let it go. But she always did call him stupid and he knew you'd also have to be pretty stupid to think that their friendship was one that could survive the reality of her world, the reality of being a lady and coming from one of, if not the oldest family in Westeros.
So he let her go.
He knew it was a mistake the instant he did it, letting go of his only family he had, the only family he would ever want.
He also knew that mistakes were made to learn from them and he did learn. He learned very quickly, too, after reuniting with her all those years ago.
He'd never let her go ever again. He'd never let Cassie go either.
Watching them across the training yard as Arya teaches her how to water dance, his heart beats steadily in his chest and a rush of warmth embraces his body. He loved them more than anything else in the world, more than anything else that has ever been, that would ever be.
He walks over to them and interrupts their training to throw Cassie up into to the air while she laughs wildly and Arya glares at him with no real heat in her gaze because she loves hearing her laugh as much as he does. He holds Cassie in his arms and they lean forward to pepper Arya's face in kisses and it's her turn to laugh and smile and kiss them back.
His heart is so full, he swears it's going to burst.
He thinks that even though he might not have that much to remember of his mother, he remembers that he loved her too. And she loved him. He hopes she's fine wherever she is. He hopes she knows he's fine too.
He'll always be fine.
He has his family.
Robb loves Arya. She was the spring time come to life when she was happy and laughing and putting flowers in their father's hair. She was summer time when all she wanted to do was disobey every last thing their mother asked of her and instead run around the castle grounds with Bran and Jon. She was autumn time whenever she schemed and played her fun little games that he and Theon loved to encourage her for. She was winter when she was serious, when she wanted her family and when she was all of those other things and more.
Arya, Robb felt, was the heart of Winterfell. She embodied everything that the North meant to him and to his family. She was the Stark name through and through and he loved that most about her.
He hated knowing how he couldn't be there for her.
Even more he hated knowing that they had almost been reunited but they weren't, although he thinks he's grateful for that one. He'd rather have never seen her again than have her meet the same fate he and their mother had.
Seeing her tuck Cassie into bed with Gendry by her side the way their mother and father used to do to them, he's very glad she didn't make it to him.
He doesn't think he'd ever seen something this true, this unblemished in all his time. The look of pure adoration on who would be his good brother's face at the sight of Arya and their child. The softness in Arya's gaze as Cassie's eyelids flutter before they close completely. The strength and warmth of love radiating between all three of them.
Robb might have missed Arya by only a short amount of time, but he gets to keep her now for always. He gets to keep Winterfell as she manages it and takes care of everybody and everything around her while Gendry and Cassie take care of her. He gets to keep her smile every time she wears it for them and for Jon every time she says something funny that makes him laugh. He gets to keep her laughter every time she sees Cassie being silly and Gendry's there only egging her on.
He gets to keep her in all her seasons that she comes in and that she becomes because she's happy and she's all the best things she always has been and more with Gendry there.
Robb loves Arya. While he sees her and Gendry, arms linked together while they laugh and speak in hushed tones, exchanging looks that only they understand in each other, he knows he'll always love Arya.
She was Winterfell. He lost Winterfell and they lost each other.
But she found her family again.
Rickon, when he would watch her cradle Cassie to sleep, it made him miss something he hadn't known he used to have.
It made him miss her and he wish he got to spend more time with her. He wish he knew her more, but he knows her now.
He knows that she tells Cassie and Gendry all about growing up in Winterfell when she was younger and how she used to play with him all the time before supper whenever she was feeling particularly nostalgic.
He knows that she only wears dresses when Cassie asks her to wear dresses because she wants them to match.
He knows that she wouldn't trade in Gendry and Cassie for anything else in the world and it makes him smile to himself a bit.
And he also knows how much of a troublemaker Cassie is and how much it seems to remind Arya of him, and that makes him smile to himself more than a bit.
"Cassandra Stark, what trouble are you up to now little lady?" Gendry's eyes were dancing with amusement and Cassie knew then that she was in no real trouble.
She had been silently observing the side of the castle walls and adjusting her dress while looking for spaces she could enter her feet through. At the sound of her fathers voice, she turns around immediately, letting the ends of her dress fall down and feigning innocence.
She looked down at her feet before looking back up and smiling at him, "Nothing! Just looking at the walls, papa."
"Looking at them awfully long now, weren't you my love?" Gendry walked over and crouched down to be at level with her.
She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, hands clasped behind her back before nodding her head.
"Why were you looking at the wall?" Gendry's voice is kind and soft and patient as he waits for his daughter to answer him.
"I wanted to climb it. Like mama and uncle Bran and uncle Rickon did."
Arya, who had been observing them on her own, walked over to them and crouched beside Gendry to smile at Cassie.
"My silly girl, Rickon didn't climb any walls."
Cassie looked up from her feet and stared at her mother with wide eyes, "He didn't?"
Arya shook her head and smiled at her more softly than before, "No, he didn't. He did other things though."
"What other things did he do?"
Arya and Gendry rose, each of them holding Cassie's hands on either side of her as they made their walk through the castle grounds and into the castle.
"He ran around everywhere, much like me and very much like you," Arya smiled down at Cassie's excitement before continuing, "He'd sneak in applecakes during his lessons, he'd hide underneath the tables of the dining hall, he laughed and it was the joyous sound you'd ever hear."
They reach the dining hall and Gendry and Arya sit across from one another while Cassie sits next to Arya, holding onto her hand still.
"What was he like?"
Arya looked around the dining hall and looked at Gendry who smiled at her, his eyes shining with the understanding that she would always be grateful for.
"He was happy and he was brave."
Rickon didn't get very much time with her, he didn't get very much time with anyone. But he gets it now, whether they know it or not.
He gets to hear of how wild he hadn't known he had truly been. He gets to learn of all the ways he hadn't known he'd been loved before.
Being loved for his untamed behavior and unapologetic smiles and laughter.
And he gets to watch Gendry and Arya love Cassie that way too.
Where he ends up most days is always a mystery to him, but it's never really a problem with him whenever he wakes up and finds it's Arya and Gendry he's watching over for the day.
He remembers how he met them and how happy he had been to have made friends, even if it was on the road to the nights watch.
He remembers passing and how unfair it was. He hadn't done anything wrong, he hadn't said anything.
He remembers that if Arry hadn't said anything either, Gendry would be there with him.
He thinks it's kind of foolish of him to have thought Arry a boy, but she did have short hair in those few short weeks they had known one another.
Was a few weeks enough to make someone your family? Did it count if you hadn't known who either of them really were? Their true identities?
He thinks it does. Arry- Arya had only been protecting herself. It made sense to him. Made even more sense that Gendry was protecting her. He's happy they've managed to stick it through to the end. The middle bit is kind of blurry to him, but the middle bit happened on the days where he would awake in Kings Landing, wandering aimlessly through the streets he had only known for such a short time, but home was home.
He likes the days where he ends up in Winterfell. He'd never been to Wintefell before. It's beautiful.
Almost as beautiful as seeing how happy they are, how happy they'll always be.
They work well together, he thinks. They make sense, they always made sense.
He'd only ever willingly speak to her when they were kids. He'd only ever smile at her when they'd camp out. He only ever cared if she ate before everyone else did.
And she was exactly the same with him.
They were a family long before they ever decided to be one. The gods decided that for them long before they were born, of that he's certain.
Lommy doesn't know where he'll end up tomorrow when he wakes, but for now, in Winterfell watching them bicker about something that could be easily resolved, he thinks he's alright.
He thinks he might stay a while.
They could have been his family, he thinks.
At the very least, they were each other's.
The world had been ruthless, of that they were all sure.
Robb hadn't been spared for his crime of passion. Catelyn had only wanted to keep her family safe. Ned kept his honor until the end, even if it cost him his life. Rickon had only been a child of war.
They were certain that the world's brutality came in spades, but that didn't stop them for checking in on them as often as they could, as often as they wanted.
Seeing Arya's smile will always be a gift, they each think. They like knowing that she'll be shielded from anything that could actually hurt her.
Even more, they like knowing that she could stop anything that threatened to hurt her or her family to begin with.
Ned had only seen him once but he knew. There was good in him, there is good in him.
Through all the trauma and hurt and knowing everything she had gone through and how Gendry fought with her, fought for her, they all think they would have liked him.
He brought the smile on Arya's face that they were always so happy to see. He helped Arya create the new life they all so happily adored. He was her family when they couldn't be and even when they could be.
The world was callous and unforgiving and ripped things apart the way it always would. But they know the way they always know that it'll be okay.
It'll be okay on the days where Cassie falls harder to the ground than most days, it'll be okay on the days when they scream at each other until they want to rip their hair out, it'll be okay on the days where she cries harder than she ever thinks she can when she misses them, it'll be okay.
Gendry and Arya had each other and they always would. To lick the wounds that stung worse than others, to offer a shoulder to cry on and to wrap each other up in the love and warmth they were deprived of at so very young.
The world hurt, but they would be there to watch them ride those waves of hurt together.
She had him and he had her, the way they were always meant to be.
The day had winded down and everyone had gone to their chambers for bed and that's where they were too.
Arya was changing into her shift when she felt his arms wrap around her from behind. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and Arya smiled before twisting in his arms.
Gendry smiled down at her before leaning forward to capture her lips in his own.
Their kiss was smooth and languid and everything she loved for it to be. Her hands rose up across his chest, feeling the smooth planes of his skin, before clasping behind his head, holding his lips to hers.
He bit down on her bottom lip and Arya let out a little gasp before giving into the delicacy that was kissing Gendry completely and honestly.
They pull away when air becomes necessary and rest their foreheads against one another, eyes closed.
"Careful there." Arya whispered to him in the little space between their mouths.
"Or what, m'lady?" Gendry teased, earning him a shove from Arya before she made herself comfortable again in his embrace.
"Or we'll end up in the same situation we were in 3 years ago." Her tone was teasing and full of nothing but mirth.
"Oh like that's stopped us before?" They pulled apart and walked towards their bed together, hand in hand.
Arya narrowed her eyes at him, "You are no fun to tease."
Gendry shot his eyebrows up, "I have to disagree, I'm very fun to tease, you are just no good at teasing."
Arya pushed him forward, his back landing on the bed while she sat above him.
"Oh I think you'll find I'm very good at teasing, m'lord."
Gendry rolled his eyes at her, "Alright, alright."
"Or would you prefer ser?"
"I would prefer neither. Gendry is fine, my love." Gendry sat up and held Arya's face in his hands and looked at her so tenderly, she felt her heart stop and start up all over again.
His eyes were so blue and she loved them so much, she loved him so much.
"How did I get here?" She spoke, her voice a little breathless.
"You pushed me back on the bed, that's how." He teased and Arya rolled her eyes at him and slapped his chest.
"You know what I mean." Her voice wavered and Gendry pulled her closer to him, willing her eyes to meet his.
"What do you mean?"
"How do I have you? How do we have Cassie? It just all seems too good to be true. I truly am lucky."
Gendry searched her grey eyes that could always make him do anything she wanted for any sign of misgivings and he found none.
"We're the lucky ones."
Arya leaned in and he met her halfway, kissing her with all the love he holds for her and with every bone in his body.
They pull away to look at each other and they see every good thing in the world, everything that's possible as long as they're together.
"Let's have another."
Gendry's eyes widen, "What?"
"Let's have another." Arya says more determined.
Gendry looks at her, wonder in his eyes and love in his heart.
He's got a small smile playing at his lips, "Are you sure?"
Arya laughs and nods, "Yes I'm sure. Let's have another. Let's keep building our family, our pack. "
Gendry lets out a laugh before he pulls her in again and showers her in kisses.
"Let's have another!" He says excitedly before kissing her again.
"I love you." He breathes out to her after a moment.
"I love you too." Her eyes are wide and he's certain the effects of those words will never fade for either of them, like they were hearing them for the first time.
She thinks of all the pain she carried, all the hurt she wore. She thinks of how her family was taken from her sooner than they were meant to be and of how she misses them always.
She thinks of how she'll never know what's waiting for her, for any of them, after they die but she hopes it's something sweet, something kind.
Something sweeter than the injustice and ridiculousness of losing her family over a metal chair.
Something sweet like her mother with open arms, or her father with that smile he always had hidden for her. Or Robb ready to indulge her in a sword fight and Rickon running around, wanting to maybe climb something for once.
She hopes the after will be as good as the now, although she doesn't know how it could be.
She actually doesn't know how anything could be as good as the now. Not as good as Gendry giving her kisses just because, or Cassie hugging onto her leg because her mama is her favorite fighter.
She'd worry about the after later. She'd worry about everything else later.
She feels safe. She feels loved.
She has her family.
She has now.