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Every time she closes her eyes, she sees ice shattering before her.
She sees Theon bleeding out in the snow, sees that thing heading straight for her little brother. He can’t defend himself, but she can protect him. She can save him, this time, she knows how to save him.
But when she sees herself jumping to save Bran, she sees her father being forced to kneel and she hears Greywind’s dying cry - feels her heart shatter at that realisation, as if she's still there. She remembers Syrio’s words, and Yoren’s prayers, and Lady Crane’s touch. She feels like she’s at the Sept of Baelor and the Twins, and everywhere in between.
When the memories start coming, she can’t get them to stop, and she can’t get out of bed quick enough. She needs to forget.
So she’s just going to help him stay warm, that’s what she tells herself.
He’s just so bloody Southern. He’s freezing whenever he leaves the forge for a minute, even if he’s not admitting it. She’s not stupid and she knows him, he forgets. But she hasn’t forgotten, hasn’t forgotten the terrifying nights at Harrenhal, or the slightly less terrifying nights under the stars with Yoren and the recruits, or the more comforting nights at the Inn with the Brotherhood.
Nights where everything felt strange, and cold, and dangerous. But then there was him.
That’s the real reason she sneaks out of her chambers in the dead of night (not that it’s difficult) and creeps through the silent shadows until she finds herself stood outside Winterfell’s forge.
She knows that he’s in there, but she’s surprised when she realises he’s still awake. He doesn’t hear as she sneaks through the forge without a sound, doesn’t notice a thing until she’s standing by his small make-shift cot at the back of the room. The only light is coming from one small candle that’s barely burning, but she can make him out just fine. Even if she couldn’t see him, he breaths so stupidly loudly she’d have no issue at all in finding him.
He’s going to get himself killed is her first thought.
Her second thought is that he still sleeps naked. He’s shirtless anyway, that much she can see, but the rest of him is covered with a thin sheet.
When he eventually realises he’s not alone anymore, he’s obviously startled at the intrusion, and his body jerks up into a half-sitting position. He rubs at his eyes, as if he’s trying to work out if he’s dreaming or not.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” Arya asks, keeping her face and body neutral as she always seems to now. It’s hard to break through the stone walls she’s built around her feelings, harder than she’d like to admit, out of pure longing for the girl she was once more than anything else.
That girl is gone, long dead and buried beneath the rubble and ashes of her family name. That girl who fought her way back home. For that girl, it would hurt to acknowledge that home isn’t home anymore, not really, just a castle filled with ghosts.
But then there’s him. Familiar, and warm, and safe. Home.
She assumes the feeling must be mutual, as she watches the tension leave his body as soon as he realises it’s just her. He shrugs then, and she can just about make out the smirk pulling at his lips.
“Could ask you the same thing, milady.”
His voice is low and hoarse, yet she still recognises his teasing. There's a part of her that wants him to ask her why she was still awake, wants him to push until she spils all of her secrets all over him.
She wonders if he'll understand; if it will worry him, if he'll think her mad. He'll try to understand, for her, she knows that. But will he understand the meaning behind her words when she tells him she can't remember the last time she really, actually slept at night?
“We’re burning the bodies in the morning.”
“I know.”
Suddenly the air feels thick between them. They’re not children running into things with their eyes closed, blindly hoping for some sort of miracle anymore. They’re not getting caught in the silly, murderous games of far more powerful people anymore. Reality hit them in the face a long time ago and it soon will again when she has to set Lord Beric’s body on fire, amongst countless others.
Words seem to get stuck in her throat then. She wants to open her mouth to speak, but she keeps her mouth shut.
She longs for that little girl who didn’t know how to keep her mouth shut. But she’s learned, over the years, keep it all close to your chest. Don’t say a word, don’t tell them anything, not even your name. Especially not your name. A girl has no name.
Even with him. He’s known her name for years and it’s never come out of his mouth, not even to her brother. She trusts him. More than anyone, it’s him she trusts. She wouldn’t have spent what could have been her final night with him if she didn’t trust him.
He speaks again before she does and she doesn’t know how long they were silent for.
“You’re allowed to mourn them, you know.”
She nods.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shakes her head. She can’t. Not yet.
She can’t talk about how a man - a good man - has died for her. Died in pain, fighting for her. Protecting her so that she could live. So she could save the world, as the Gods apparently had always intended for her.
Is being the Hero of Winterfell going to make Winterfell feel like home again? Can the Bringer of the Dawn can bring her own family back?
Nobody seems to care, anyway. Everyone’s moved on now. They’ll burn the fallen tomorrow and from there, from what she’s heard from Jon, it will be a straight march to King’s Landing. To the Red Keep. To Cersei Lannister.
She’ll be the one to kill her. She doesn’t care what the rest of them do, she’ll go ahead if she has to. But Cersei has been on her list since the very beginning, since before she even had a list - since Mycah. Nobody will take that from her, not even her brother or their new Queen.
Faintly, she registers him calling her name. He’s sat up now, his legs over the side of the cot, facing her. He’s still wearing his breeches and she can only assume he must be really cold. The thought draws her back completely to why she came down here in the first place, and she lets the tiniest smile pull at her lips.
“Are you cold?” She asks, and the concern that was etched across his features doesn’t completely slip away, there’s just a look of confusion added to it. Understandable, probably, seeing how quickly she stitches her mask back on. She knows he doesn’t buy it, but she continues. “You’re still wearing your breeches.”
“Suppose so,” he shrugs, eyeing her carefully as she stands in between his legs.
Her hands move to his shoulders, and she slowly moves to place one leg each side of his body so that she’s straddling him. “I’m sure we can find a way to keep warm.”
She sneaks out when the sun rises that morning, leaving him there still fast asleep. It’s not the first time she’s ran before he could wake to stop her, and there’s a part of her still wondering how he isn’t angrier about the first time, all things considered.
She doesn’t look for him. She knows he’s there, somewhere, and it’s more comforting than she’d care to admit. But she doesn’t seek him out, doesn’t go to him for proper comfort, because she just can’t. She reminds herself over and over that she has more important things to think about. She'll find him later.
And she does. A few hours later as the sun sets, she finds him in the back of the forge.
“Thought you’d be at the feast,” he says, before smirking at her over his shoulder.
She takes the opportunity to lean up on her tiptoes and press her lips to his for a few seconds. He turns around fully and reaches his arms around her waist, deepening the kiss as he does so. Arya moves her hands to cup each side of her face and it doesn’t take long before they’re falling back onto his bed, laughing between kisses.
Afterwards, she notes that she loves how small his bed is. She doesn’t understand how he sleeps in it considering he doesn’t seem to fully fit, his feet hanging over the end of the cot, but she has to basically lay on top of him or curl right into his side to fit. It’s oddly comforting.
This time, she’s laying with her back to his chest and he has his arm wrapped around her stomach. He’s pressing lazy kisses along her shoulder, along the purple bruises on her neck, and she can’t help but sigh in content.
“Does this hurt?” He whispers and she doesn’t need to open her eyes to know he means the handprint-like bruise across her neck.
“It stung a bit at first, but it’s fine now,” she says as she gives his hand a squeeze. It’s not the total truth as the pain hasn’t completely gone away, but it’s nothing compared to other pain she’s experienced so it’s hardly worth talking about.
He sighs against her shoulder, holding her just a little bit tighter. “You’re incredible, you know.” She turns her head slightly to look at him in amusement, which appears to prompt him to carry on. “I mean it. That man - or whatever he was - wanted to take down all of humanity and failed because of you. You saved everyone.”
She smiles, proud of herself and what she did - she knows she did it because of her ability, because of her experience, but her mind keeps going back to the woman who sent her to the Night King in the first place.
“She knew I was supposed to do it.”
“Who?”
“The Red Woman,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.
“Oh.”
She feels him tense behind her at the mere mention of Melisandre, and thinks she should have killed her herself when she had the chance. Helping her save the world or not.
“She said it...as if it was my destiny. To kill him, the Night King, to end it all.”
“You start listening to the shit that came out of her mouth and I think we might have bigger problems.”
There seems to be something behind his words, something she can’t quite put her finger on straight away, but she doesn’t question him. She isn’t stupid, and even if she doesn’t know the details, she knows Melisandre must have told Gendry something to get him in a vulnerable enough position to do what she did to him. She gets the feeling he doesn’t like talking about what happened though and she can hardly judge him for that.
“But if it is true, all those times Lord Beric was brought back…” she trails off, letting out a breath before smacking her lips together. “It was for me. Because of me.”
“It’s not your fault, Arya,” he sighs. “And if you really believe it was your destiny-”
“I don’t want it to be my destiny,” she cuts across him and says the words so fast, she isn’t sure he’s caught them. “If it is, that means everything that’s happened to me, to us, to my family…”
“Don’t do that to yourself.”
“You don’t think it’s true?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose before letting out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Arya, I wish I did. But I do know that she hurt innocent people - murdered innocent children - because what she thought her Lord was telling her. I know that you took down the Night King because you’re fucking amazing with a sword,” he continues and the way he looks at her stuns her for a second. “I know that it was you because you were in the right place at the right time and you’ve spent years learning how to fight.”
A part of her doubts him, but another part of her thinks he’s right. Hopes that he’s right.
“You’re right,” she says. “I know that.”
She can feel his fingertips tracing her skin under the sheet, over her ribcage, up and down, back and forth. She’s half asleep by this point and she barely even realises how close he is to her scars, until she feels him stop.
He looks like he wants to ask her about the scars and marks scattered across her body, but he doesn’t. She’s grateful for that.
She simply turns around and kisses him instead, kisses him until she forgets all over again.
They don’t talk about the Lordship. They don’t talk about how he is now Gendry Baratheon, legitimate son and last known living relative of King Robert. They don’t talk about how, as soon as Daenerys takes the throne, he’ll be the Lord of Storm’s End. They can’t because then everything will change.
Or, at least, because she’s scared that everything will change. Again.
And they will change. She doesn’t think he’s fully aware of what Lords even do, and he definitely doesn’t seem aware of how dangerous this could be for him.
Selfishly, she wishes he’d turned it down. He was smart not to in that moment - it would have been an insult and no Queen would react well to being publicly insulted by a commoner. Arya doesn’t trust Daenerys enough to think she’s any exception to that rule.
But, now? If he’s a Lord, he’ll eventually need a Lady. There are plenty of good ladies out there who could teach him he right way of doing things, to run his castle and raise his babies and be perfectly happy doing so. Arya isn’t sure she’s one of them.
She’s leaving for King’s Landing in the morning, planning on getting ahead before the rest of the armies, and she isn’t sure if she’s even coming back.
That’s another thing she’s avoided telling him.
She’s laying on her back and he’s next to her, on his side, pressed right up against the cold stone wall. She lets her eyes flutter closed as he traces patterns over her arms with his fingers, feeling his warm breath against her cheek.
She opens her eyes, and there’s something in the way that he’s looking at her that draws the word from her lips before she even realises.
“Braavos.”
“What?”
“The scars you’ve been trying not to ask me about,” she sighs. “I got them in Braavos.”
“What were you doing in Braavos?”
She felt her body tighten involuntarily. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You wouldn’t have said it if it didn’t matter,” he frowns, but he quickly loosens up and shakes his head apologetically. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But if you do want to, you can.”
She hesitates for the briefest of moments. “I took a ship to Braavos with a coin that Jaqen H’ghar gave me,” she says and she can practically see his brain working behind his eyes. Taking pity on him, she brings him up to speed. “The guard who got us out of Harrenhal.”
He looks mildly horrified for a second as he recalls how that guard got them out of Harrenhal - and she knew he remembered the rest too. “Why did he give you a coin to Braavos?”
She shrugs. “He trained me, to be a faceless man.”
His eyes widen ever so slightly, and she can see the anger building behind his eyes as he begins to put the pieces together. “And you got those scars from the… the training?”
“No,” she says, lowering her gaze for a second. “I broke their rules.”
She meets his eyes again and the anger seems to have settled into heartbreak.
“Just tell me one thing. The person who did that to you - are they dead?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The look in his eyes is more intense than she’s ever seen him. “I killed them.”
He nods, doesn’t miss a single beat. “Good.”
She wonders how much else she should tell him. How much else is safe to tell him - she can’t have him knowing too much, just in case it ever comes back to bite her. She knows that they’ll go for those who matter to you first, and in that case, she needs to make sure he knows as little as possible.
His fingers are tracing the scar across her stomach, gently as if he thinks he’ll break her. She knows he thinks she’s beautiful, he doesn’t need to tell her, but yet he does. With every kiss, every touch, every breath, he tells her how beautiful she is.
He sighs against her chest. “You can tell me anything, you know that, don’t you?”
“You wouldn’t understand. You’d never understand the things that I’ve done.”
“We’ve all done bad things, Arya,” he lifts his head, his forehead creased into a frown. “You don’t owe me any explanation.”
“I’ve killed people. So many people.”
“This country’s been at war for years, you think you’re the only one who’s killed to survive?”
“I didn’t just kill to survive,” she says. “I killed to avenge my family and I’d do it again, ten times over because I liked it. Because that’s who I am now.”
She doesn’t know what she expects him to say to that, really. She isn’t used to saying things without thinking - she shut down that part of herself a long time ago. But there’s something about him, something that reminds her of that girl she used to be.
But which girl, really?
Arya. Arry. Weasel. Nan. Cat. Beth. Mercy.
“I know who you are,” Gendry says, his fingers wrapped tightly around her hand. “I love who you are. I love you, Arya.”
The most she can will herself to do is nod. “I know.”
And she does know. She knows he loves her. She knows she loves him.
She just doesn’t know how to love him.
Sandor is the only company she has on the route to King’s Landing, and for once, she’s grateful. She doesn’t want to talk, she just wants to get to the capital and put an end to Cersei Lannister’s reign once and for all. Before the God of Death can steal this one from her.
Days pass and days soon turn into weeks, before the two of them have any sort of substantial conversation.
“You better stop fucking moping by the time we get to King’s Landing,” Sandor tells her out of nowhere, and when she turns to glare at him, he isn’t even looking at her.
“I’m not moping.”
“I’ve spent my entire life wanting to kill my brother, I’m not missing my chance now because you’re pining over a fucking boy.”
“I’m not pining.”
“You haven’t said two words since we left Winterfell,” Sandor scoffs. “You haven’t complained once. I know you’re a heartless little bitch now but I’m not as stupid as the rest of them.”
She doesn’t answer him and he seems to take the hint. Or, more likely, he just doesn’t care enough to push her into talking to him - which is why he's good to travel with.
Or, so she thinks, until he brings it up again two days later.
“So, what did he do then?”
“Who?”
“The blacksmith.”
She has to fight the urge to roll her eyes then, because it isn’t an outright insult as she would have expected, but she knows well enough that he knows Gendry’s name.
Again, she doesn’t answer. Just signals for her horse to speed up and moves off in front of him.
The next time they talk, unbeknownst to her, will be one of the last. They’re just a mile or so from the city gates, the telltale smells and sounds of the city taking her straight back to the last time she was there. She had been just a child - a clueless little girl who had no idea how fucked up everything was about to get.
She still longs for that clueless little girl. She longs for her father, and her mother, and her brothers.
Maybe that’s why she talks then. It’s a distraction from the unwanted memories in her head.
“He told me that he loved me.”
“Fuck me, I’ll get my noose.”
“Shut up,” she fires back immediately. “You’re the one who asked.”
He laughs then. He actually has the nerve to laugh. “Thought it would be a bit more interesting than that sappy shit.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” she grumbles underneath her breath.
“You didn’t say it back,” Sandor says then, as if he’s answered a question she was unaware he had. “That’s why you’ve been sulking this entire fucking time.”
“I have not been-” she bites her lip, stopping herself mid sentence. “It’s none of your business anyway.”
He seems to agree because he shuts up.
They know they’re almost at the gates when there suddenly people everywhere, going in the direction they’re coming from, looking at them as if they’re mad. Running for their lives, some to the Riverlands and some as far as the coin in their pockets will take them she expects, and she wants to help but she knows she hasn’t got time.
So she simply gives her horse to a man and his wife, who is visibly heavily pregnant and has a skinny little girl clutching to her skirts for dear life. Tells them to just keep going until they reach the Crossroads Inn, and quietly prays they manage to make it that far.
They sneak pass the city gates with ease, none of the guards all that concerned, too preoccupied on the lookout for the Northern armies and the Dothraki horde. A couple of dragons as well, she guesses, the way one of the Lannister guards keeps looking at the sky as if something’s going to drop from it.
“If you want to say it back, fucking grow a pair and say it,” Sandor says out of nowhere, over the hustle and bustle of the desperate common folk surrounding them. “You’re a lot of things, girl, but you ain’t no fucking coward.”
Next thing she knows, they’re standing in the Red Keep as it falls apart around them. Then Sandor is gone, and she’s running, and every time she gets thrown to the ground, she thinks of everything she wishes she’d said.
The dragonpit is where she sees him again.
He looks good - he looks strong and it’s almost deceptive how he looks as if he was born to wear a Lord’s clothes.
He doesn’t look happy and she lets herself wonder for a second if that’s her fault. But he also looks the same as he always does, whenever he’s not looking at her. Broody, and miserable, and charmless.
She tries with every fibre of her being not to look at him, and she hasn’t felt his eyes on her even once. But, as always, there’s something in the way before she can worry about that.
Jon’s freedom, for one. Making sure he doesn’t die for killing the Queen.
There’s a part of her, selfishly, livid she didn’t kill a Queen. Cersei’s dead, she tells herself, dead and gone forever and we’re still here. We won, she tries to tell herself. But it doesn’t feel like a victory when she’s sitting here with people she mostly despises, debating whether or not her brother deserves to live. Whilst Tyrion Lannister, of all people, lectures them all about something or other in the hopes they’ll all die of boredom before the Unsullied can sentence him to die.
Eventually, it’s all over, and somehow it works out. Jon is exiled and she’ll probably never see him again, and that hurts more than she can possibly begin to deal with. But he’s alive and relatively safe and that’s enough for her.
Bran is voted to be King of the Seven Kingdoms, until Sansa makes it the Six Kingdoms. The North will be independent kingdom under her sister’s rule, and for once, Arya feels at peace.
She plans on heeding Sandor’s advice (which is something she never expected) and seeking him out. But when it’s all over, he’s still not even looking at her and she worries that she’s left him alone in bed one too many times.
Her new plan is to write him a letter, once they’ve set sail for the West. Perhaps it will be easier that way, maybe she’ll spill her heart out onto the parchment and he’ll finally understand.
Maybe she doesn’t give him enough credit.
They’re about to set sail, her first mate having just informed her that the crew are ready and just waiting on her word now. Captain, they call her, and she thinks it might be one of her favourite names. Better than Lady, anyway.
She heads up to the top deck and gazes out over the ocean. It seems so unending, so fearless, so full of possibility. She thinks that maybe she deserves unending possibilities for herself.
It’s not often that she’s so distracted by the beauty of something that she wouldn’t notice eyes burning into the back of her head. But when she turns, her entire body freezes.
“Room for one more, Captain?”
“Why aren’t you in Storm’s End?”
Gendry laughs, shrugging his shoulders as he approaches her. She notices he’s not wearing the fancy leathers he wore at the dragonpit council and immediately her mind goes into overdrive. Had something happened that she didn’t know about? Had somebody threatened him?
“I’m not a Lord,” he says. “I don’t want to be a Lord. All I want is you.”
“I won’t ask you give that up for me.”
“You haven’t asked,” he shrugs. “And I’ve already given it up. Well, our new King has agreed to give it to Davos.”
She can’t quite get her head around the fact he’s standing in front of her, never mind the words coming out of his mouth. It had been months since they last spoke, since she left him without so much as a goodbye, and he’s standing in front of her as if none of that matters at all.
“So can I come with you or not?” Gendry continues, and it’s only then that she realises she’s staring at him open-mouthed like an idiot.
For the first time in what feels like a lifetime, Arya laughs. A laugh out of nothing but happiness. “I’m sure we can squeeze you in somewhere.”
That night, they’re laying in bed in her cabin, and Arya can’t help but feel completely at peace.
“I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing the lump in her throat and ignoring the butterflies in her stomach. “For leaving the way I did.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I get it.” He shakes his head and pulls her closer to him, and she clutches onto his arms. “I’m sorry too.”
“For what?”
“For not following you sooner.”
You’re a lot of things, girl, but you ain’t no fucking coward.
“I love you,” she says and she can tell that it startles him. “I just - I just need you to know that.”
“I know you do,” he presses a kiss to her neck, where the bruise is barely visible now, then another to her temple where her wound is starting to heal. His hands slip under her shirt, resting on her scar. “I love you too.”
Her heart still hurts. She still grieves for people, she still longs for the girl she once was. But now, finally, she has something she hasn’t had since she realised her mother was dead. Hope. She knows now, the woman that she is. Stronger than she has ever been because of her faith in herself. A newfound state of mind that comes with peace.
There’s no easy fix, no place she can run to, but she’ll get there. With her best friend at her side, the world at her feet and an unrivalled belief in herself. She’ll love him and she’ll love herself.
She knows now that Arya Stark is more than capable of love - and she’ll always be Arya Stark.