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A small hand pulled at the hem of Gendry’s jacket.
“I’m ready to go,” Barra told him.
“Okay.”
He still waited a moment before turning away, because Barra usually rearranged the flowers in front of the headstone one more time. Today was no different.
Their breaths formed white clouds in the winter air as they left the quiet cemetery. Gendry rolled their carry-on behind them, its wheels rattling across the uneven sidewalk.
On the tube to the airport, he couldn’t help but feel guilty that his sister wouldn’t get to visit her mum for another year. True, he wouldn’t get to visit his mum for another year too, but he was twenty-six, and Barra was only six. Six year old girls should be able to visit their mums.
It was how it had to be, though. King’s Landing was expensive, and for the same salary he and Barra could live much more comfortably in Winter Town. They were happier, too: Gendry actually liked running Mr. Stark’s arts program, and he knew Barra loved her school.
Still, he worried about it all the way through the airport security check.
“Do you miss King’s Landing?” he asked as Barra waited for him to put on his shoes.
“Sometimes,” Barra shrugged, “but I like Winnafell more. I like playing in the snow and I like Miss Cassel and I like my friends.” Her blue eyes—identical to his—lit up as they began walking towards the gate. “I miss Neddie. Can I have a playdate with Neddie when we get back? Please please please?”
“Sure,” Gendry said.
“Yay!” she cheered. “Tomorrow?” she asked eagerly.
“Erm… maybe next week.” He was rather worn out (read: bloody exhausted) from visiting Barra’s old schoolmates in the capital. Definitely would need to recover before interacting with Mr. Stark’s energetic five-year-old granddaughter.
No matter. From then on Barra was bent on returning to Winterfell as soon as possible. She practically dragged him through the terminal and onto the plane, not showing any sign of slowing until they were getting into their seats. It was rather adorable, and he couldn’t help but tease her just a bit when she wanted to check that she was in the middle and he was in the aisle.
“D’you think I’d fit in the middle?” he asked, a corner of his mouth tilting up. With his broad frame and six-foot-six height, the answer, of course, was—
“No,” Barra giggled. Then her face screwed up in thought. “I was in the window seat last time,” she wondered aloud. “And you spread out in two seats.”
“This plane is more crowded than the first one,” he explained, “so we get to share a row.”
“Sharing is good,” she said knowingly. Thank the gods, she was learning stuff from school. Maybe from him, too.
Barra pointed behind her at the window seat. “We share with her?” she asked.
Right. Gendry had been so occupied with Barra that he hadn’t had time to notice the… completely gorgeous woman sharing their row. At the moment she was tucking a strand of her brown hair behind her ear and pointedly looking forward instead of at them. Vaguely Gendry thought she looked familiar, somehow… but he was staring too much.
He shook himself out of it.
“Yeah,” he finally told Barra.
He snuck another glance and truly couldn’t figure out why he felt like he’d seen the woman before. Maybe it was the Wolves hoodie she was wearing…? But no, that didn’t make sense, lots of people had those.
A ringing was going off in his head, but Gendry couldn’t do anything about it because then the woman was looking right at him, her grey eyes hesitant (and pretty; gods, she was so pretty). Gendry’s tongue tied itself into a knot as he realized she was waiting for him to give the okay to talk to Barra.
He nodded wordlessly.
Thoughtful of her, he thought, respect for the woman rooting in him like an acorn in the earth. That was thoughtful of Arya—for that was her name, or at least the name she gave when she and Barra introduced themselves to each other. Arya’s accent was northern, which made the Wolves hoodie make more sense, but Gendry somehow knew that wasn’t all of it. If only the ringing in his head would stop.
Barra tugged on his sleeve.
“Please can I have my book too?” she whispered. It seemed she had noticed the book in Arya’s lap.
“Of course.” Gendry reached into his backpack and handed over “her book,” which was whatever story she was currently obsessed with the most. For the past few months, this had been Nymeria and the Ten Thousand Ships; it had been recommended to them by Mr. Stark, who’d said that his daughter had enjoyed it as a girl and Barra might too. (He’d been right.)
“You have to buckle your seatbelt,” Barra chided him.
Gendry lifted his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Yeah, or it’ll take longer to leave. I did mine already. See?” She tugged on that loose strap used for tightening.
“I see.” He buckled his own and tugged on the strap like she had.
Barra nodded in approval and went back to her book.
Now, finally, Gendry felt he could relax. Dull exhaustion seeped into his bones as he slumped back in his seat.
The last thing he heard before the world cut to black was that in the event of an emergency, the nearest exit might be behind him.
He might need to talk to Barra about her habit of tugging on his arm, because it was starting to present problems.
Like waking him up in a most undignified matter.
“I gotta pee,” he thought he heard Barra say as he snorted himself to consciousness, choking on his own spit.
“Did I fall asleep?” he asked, feeling rather stupid.
“Yeah, but you’re awake now. I gotta pee,” Barra stressed. She really was adorable.
“My big legs blocking the way?” He was already unbuckling his seatbelt and preparing to rise.
“Gendry.”
“Right then, let’s go.” He stood in the aisle to let her out, and they strode hurriedly to the back of the plane.
To Barra’s despair, both lavatories were occupied, so Gendry tried to distract her with conversation.
“Sorry I fell asleep,” he said. It did the trick.
“Is okay.” Barra smiled. “I talked with Arya.”
His brow furrowed. That was surprising. “Did you really?”
“Mm-hm, we talked about everything,” and her mouth began moving a mile a minute. “She likes coffee with sugar but I like water. Juice too but I didn’t feel like it. And she said ‘Meria was her favorite her—hero—”
“Heroine,” Gendry supplied the pronunciation.
“—heroine when she was a girl like me and—”
A person came out of the lavatory, and Barra went in. Still she talked through the door.
“—and I told her about my favorite parts in the book and then we read it together—”
Gendry’s brow furrowed even more at that, but he kept silent. Mostly to not interrupt her, but also to listen for the sound of her washing her hands.
There was none, even after several minutes. She did say pee, right? He listened closer. She was still going on about scenes in the book; it sounded like she was just standing in the stall and talking.
When a sudden silence told him Barra had stopped to breathe at last, he took his chance.
“Hey Barra, you’ll want to wash your hands.”
“Okay.” There was the whoosh of the faucet. And then—a laugh. “She thought you were my dad!”
Gendry frowned. “Who, Arya?”
“So silly!” Barra giggled through the faint sound of wiping her hands on paper towels. “I told her about you and Mya and Bella and Eddie and Alys and Alyn.”
Oh no, Gendry thought. He loved his sister, truly he did, but he didn’t quite love how she tended to air their half-sibling drama out to everyone. At least it didn’t sound like she had mentioned their pathetic-excuse-for-a-dad by name.
“And then I told her how we used to live in King’s ‘anding,” Barra went on (Gendry had no idea what she was doing in the stall anymore), “but now we live in Winnafell and then she asked me about school and I told her about Miss Cassel and my friends.” As she finished speaking she stepped out at last, and they began making their way up the aisle.
“Sounds like you and Arya really did talk about… everything.”
“Yeah, everything!” Barra gushed quietly, mindful of the other passengers as they reached their row. “We talked about ‘Meria… oh I already told you about ‘Meria but did you know Arya has five brothers and only one sister?”
“Wow, that’s a lot of siblings,” he replied mildly as she clambered back in her seat.
He met Arya’s eyes as he sat down and couldn’t help but feel a certain sort of fondness for her, even if they were, technically, complete strangers.
It didn’t feel like Arya was just putting on a show for his sister, the way adults treated kids sometimes in that sweetly condescending way. From what Barra had told him, Arya seemed to treat her like she was a real person. Which Barra was, obviously, but it still wasn’t something you saw every day. It was nice.
That little acorn of respect sprouted like it was springtime, and Gendry felt almost as if… as if he sort of liked Arya, and he hardly liked anyone, especially before having an actual conversation with them. It was an odd sensation—slightly uncomfortable, but not altogether unpleasant.
“I’m tired,” Barra announced all of a sudden. She promptly curled along Gendry’s arm, fast asleep.
Alright then. He was to be her pillow.
Now would be a good time to fall asleep too, but he’d just been asleep, and was thinking too hard about certain people in window seats for another nap to do any good anyway. But he didn’t feel like watching a movie or anything, so he started flipping through Barra’s Nymeria. See what all the fuss was about.
(Just kidding. He had read the book quite literally a million times by now.)
“Did Barra tell you that was my favorite book as a girl, too?”
It was Arya, whispering to him across the row.
Gendry frowned. Barra had told him, but the detail sounded different coming from Arya. Sounded familiar. The bloody ringing in his head started again.
He must have been thinking to himself for too long, because a glance at Arya—gods, she’s lovely —told him she was biting her lip, looking embarrassed. No no no.
“She did,” he told her. He screwed up his face in thought. Just say it. “She also said you thought I was her father.”
“I’m sorry,” Arya said at once, her expression open and sincere. “I just assumed…”
“And she said she told you everything,” he copied Barra’s intonation, and couldn’t help but wince at the word, even if he knew it probably wasn’t literally true.
“Not everything,” Arya reassured him. “Not even much. Just that you’re her brother, and you… you take care of her, and last year you moved to Winterfell for work.”
Gendry sighed, then shook his head at Barra, who was still asleep on his arm.
“That is everything,” he said, with fondness in his voice despite his exasperation.
It really did stun him, how quickly, and how deeply, Arya and his sister had bonded with each other. Because it wasn’t just that Barra told Arya about “everything”—she did that with loads of people—it was that Arya had been willing to listen. Barra would have picked up on that, Gendry knew.
“She must like you,” he murmured, more to himself than to Arya. After all, it didn’t really need to be said; it was obvious.
“I like her too,” Arya said. “She’s a sweet kid.”
One of Barra’s black curls had fallen across her face, lightly fluttering in and out with each of her breaths. Gendry carefully tucked it back behind her ear.
“She’s the only one of my siblings who is. The rest of us are terrible.” He and Mya had the worst tempers of them lot, but Edric and Bella could be counted on to rage at Robert with them too in certain circumstances, like when the care of Barra or Alys and Alyn was concerned.
All of a sudden Arya chuckled.
Gendry frowned. “What?”
“Hmm? Oh.” She bit her lip. “I was just thinking, you don’t seem terrible,” she said, a smile playing at her lips.
He blinked. For as rough a time Gendry usually had in social situations, he could tell Arya’s teasing reply was an invitation to flirt—no, you idiot, not flirt, just talk. All the same… She wants to keep talking to me? he wondered.
Typically, Gendry didn’t like talking on planes. He thought it disruptive at best and downright inconsiderate at worst.
But he really would like to know more about Arya, lovely Arya who made a connection with his baby sister over half a plane flight, and she seemed to be taking a step in that direction.
So he took a step too.
“Not around Barra, but I can be a bit of a grouch.”
Immediately he regretted it. Stellar recommendation, you idiot. Now she knows that about you, in addition to all the other things Barra told her. All the other things…
“You know too much about me,” he muttered, more to himself than Arya.
But he could tell she heard anyway, because she smiled.
“Want to even the score?”
It turned out Arya was moving back home to Winterfell for graduate school next term. She was a botanist, joining the lab of a professor who, “for years, decades really, had been studying how climate change is affecting important, sensitive species in the Wolfswood.” From the descriptions Arya gave him about her work, it was clear she was smart—brilliant, really—and extremely dedicated.
Gendry was touched that she was sharing so much about herself, and in turn was comfortable enough to tell her about running the arts program for Mr. Stark’s children foundation (though he didn’t mention his boss by name, of course).
And when Barra suddenly shifted in her sleep from Gendry’s arm to Arya’s, it felt like a sign. A sign that the little seedling of respect, and trust, and a million other things Gendry couldn’t define right now—that that little seedling had now grown further into a young but sturdy sapling. One that would grow if he just let it.
He found himself telling Arya things he still hadn’t told his half-siblings, things like escaping to the park when the group home got bad, and drawing the trees and swings and ducks with stubby colored pencils until the only red he saw was on his paper.
Gendry didn’t know what it was like to catch up with old friends—never really had any to catch up with, except for maybe Hot Pie—but he thought that talking with Arya might be what it was like.
She listened earnestly, and he felt heard. But she also teased him for things that, admittedly, he probably ought to be teased for anyway. Like his choice of hockey teams.
“You like the Crowns?” Arya asked, aghast.
“What? I grew up on them.” He scowled, though he was smiling on the inside. “I bet you think I should be a Wolves fan,” he said, gesturing to her hoodie.
“Obviously.”
“So I always have to be a fan of the team where I live?”
Arya rolled her eyes. “No, of course not. But in this case it just makes sense.”
Obviously he had to ask her why, and the delightful back-and-forth banter that followed made Gendry wonder if talking on planes wasn’t so bad after all.
Eventually the drink cart came around—for the second time, apparently, since according to Arya, he’d been asleep during the first.
“Aww, the little one is resting now,” the flight attendant cooed at Barra, who was still asleep against Arya. “You know,” she told Gendry, “I was telling your wife earlier that your daughter got all of your looks, and none of hers.”
Ugh. Most people assumed that he and Barra were father and daughter because of their looks (black hair, blue eyes) and their age difference (twenty years), but most people didn’t feel the need to bloody comment on it. Gendry had found that the least painful course of action was to just play along and get it over with.
“Yeah, she did,” he said bluntly. “Could I have a glass of water?”
“Right, o’course,” the flight attendant chirped. She handed the cup over and looked at Arya expectantly.
“Nothing for me, thanks,” she said quickly, obviously distracted, her brow furrowed in confusion.
As the flight attendant passed on, Gendry thought over the brief exchange he’d just had… and nearly spit out his water .
He’d been so focused on the “daughter” bit that he forgot about “wife.”
“Sorry about that,” he whispered to Arya, thankful that the dim cabin lights hid his rapidly reddening cheeks. “I… I never correct anybody, it’s too complicated and none of their business anyway, but I didn’t think this time and now I’ve gone and dragged you into it.”
“It’s all right.” Arya had a thoughtful expression on her face. “I understand. They got the important bit right anyway—that you’re family. Not that I’m part of it,” she added hastily, “but you and Barra, that you two are family.”
You could be part of it. The thought popped unbidden into his mind. Its boldness and, frankly, its absurdity, shocked him. After all, they’d really only just met, and who said things like that to people they just met? Not Gendry, certainly.
At least… not directly.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, “you’re rather good with Barra.”
Arya brushed him off. “She’s so sweet, and it’s easy to be someone’s cool aunt. Much harder to be their guardian.”
“No, still,” he insisted, surprising himself with the force of his earnestness. “She was all energetic when we sat down but you didn’t even wince, and she told me in the loo, what you talked about...” He cut himself off; he was saying too much. “I don’t think she would mind,” he finished quietly, “if you were part of our—part of it, a little.”
“Oh, Barra wouldn’t mind, would she?” Arya asked lightly. She knew what he meant. Hells, this was embarrassing.
“No, she wouldn’t,” he said stubbornly, embarrassment be damned.
Arya stuck out her hand. “Give me your phone, then, so I can put in my number.”
Gendry was flying. Literally, of course, being in a plane and all, but also figuratively. Flying! He could see Arya’s grin shining in the dark as he passed his phone over and now he wasn’t just flying.
He was soaring.
Arya’s smile lit up her whole face in such a lovely way that Gendry missed when she spoke.
“What?”
“I’ve got to use the loo,” she repeated.
Ah. Unfortunately, that meant waking Barra so Arya could step up and out of their row. Gendry stood in the aisle to let her pass and was surprised by how small Arya actually was once standing; she only reached his shoulder, and absently he wondered how easy it would be to lift her in his arms, have her strong-looking legs wrap around him, and—
“Oof!”
Gendry caught Arya’s arm just before she felt head-first into the aisle. She caught herself on the armrest, too.
“You all right?” he asked quietly, trying to ignore the heart-thumping fact that he was basically almost holding her hand.
Arya nodded quickly, avoiding his eyes and murmuring, “Just tripped, thanks,” before heading towards the back of the plane.
When she came back, she had a different air about her. Gendry couldn’t put his finger on it, but when he stood up to let her back into the row, she didn’t get in right away, and instead rose on her toes to reach his ear.
“Would it be okay if I offered Barra the window seat? I think she’d like it.”
“I think she would too.” Gendry bent down to Barra’s eye level. “Would you like to sit at the window?”
“Really?” Barra gasped, looking back and forth between him and Arya. When they nodded, she let out a little squeal and scrambled in. “Thank you!” she said in her happy little voice.
Suddenly Gendry realized what the seating switch meant.
He’d be sitting next to Arya.
And Arya must have known that, and wanted it, since she was the one who offered.
That little sapling in his mind, the silly metaphor that had started as an acorn just hours ago, had grown into something more without him realizing it. He wasn’t its only caretaker anymore.
“How’d you get into botany?” he asked curiously.
Arya’s face lit up with a smile. “Well, I’d always liked nature, as a girl. Exploring the hills and trails and forests, all that.”
“Would you go with your brothers?”
“Mm-hm, my older brother went with me a lot, but after he went away for school, it was mostly me and my younger brothers running wild,” she laughed quietly. “Mum hated it.”
She told a few stories of playing in the Winterfell godswood with them, and how after a few long games of hide-and-seek (in which she had hidden perhaps a bit too well), she went from staring at the nature around her, to wondering how everything fit together. To having questions and wanting answers.
“We still played in the godswood all the time, but once one of my younger brothers and I got more interested in studying plants, there was less playing games and more… playing scientist,” Arya chuckled. “And sometimes instead of the godswood, we’d go to the Wolfswood and hardly hike at all, just squat and look at—” she blinked and looked around in confusion. “Why are the lights on?”
“We’ve landed,” Gendry said, amused.
Maybe he should’ve said something when the plane started its descent into Winterfell. But Arya had been so endearingly animated that it would have been a right shame to interrupt her.
“Oh,” Arya said.
“We’re home we’re home we’re home!” Barra chanted, vibrating with excitement as they waited for the people before them to leave.
“That’s right,” Gendry said. “We’re home.”
As they got off the plane and walked through the terminal towards arrival, his sister chattered on about playing in the snow and drinking hot chocolate and all the other things she was going to do back at the flat.
Arya, however, was quiet. She seemed like she was thinking.
I could ask to see her again, Gendry told himself. People do it all the time. He pulled Barra over to the side to give him time to think. He could call her, tomorrow maybe, or the day after. She did give him his number, only… what if she regretted it now? That was always a possibility.
It took him a moment to realize that Arya had pulled over too.
Well then. He might as well take the chance. Gendry cleared his throat, ignoring Barra’s gleefully curious stare.
“I’ve never talked with anyone on a plane before,” he began.
“Oh,” was all Arya said. Her grey eyes seemed distant all of a sudden.
Right, nevermind, he thought. Nevermind about all of it. He took a deep breath and nodded towards the hallway to the arrivals gate.
“You got anyone waiting for you?” he asked, forcing his voice to stay casual.
“My parents.”
“Right,” he said, stomach wrenching in… he didn’t know what. Disappointment, maybe, that everything would end now, in this moment. “Might be best to say goodbye here,” he said, half to Barra, half to himself.
Then Arya did the most wonderful thing.
She smiled, her grey eyes twinkling like she knew something he didn’t.
“Call me,” she said firmly.
So he did.
“You okay with having your playdate with Neddie today, instead of next week like I said before?” Gendry asked, already knowing the answer.
Barra squealed in response as she bounced around in excitement.
“Alright,” Gendry chuckled, and rang the doorbell.
“Let me get this straight,” Arya said, grinning. “You work for my dad, your sister has playdates with my niece, you know some of my brothers… but you didn’t recognize me?”
Gendry tried to scowl, but a smile came out instead.
“Your hair’s longer than it is in the pictures,” he protested. “And you technically have three brothers, not five. My head was ringing during the whole flight, though,” he admitted.
“Ringing?”
“You seemed so familiar and I couldn’t figure out why.”
Arya’s laugh was interrupted by the high-pitched yells of two little girls.
“Gendry!”
“Auntie Arya! Auntie Arya come here we’re done!”
Gendry followed Arya through the Stark family’s greenhouse to where Barra and Neddie were hovering by the entrance. The girls had wanted to collect herbs to dry for their “magic potion.” What the potion was supposed to do, Gendry didn’t know, but he supposed he would be surprised later.
The whole day, in fact, was turning out to be quite the surprise. He and Arya had planned to go on a winter hike in the Wolfswood but ended up chaperoning the girls instead. Despite the change in plans, it was all going rather well: he still got to talk to Arya, and this arrangement gave Robb and Jeyne a well-deserved afternoon off anyway.
From the kiss Arya snuck him in the pantry, it seemed like she felt the same.
All in all it was astonishing, how seamlessly Arya became part of their lives—and even more astonishing, how they became part of hers. Seeing each other in the evenings on weekdays, and for whole days on the weekend, shopping for groceries, skating on the rink, baking cookies and brownies and you name it at the Stark’s house.
Gendry never used to stay at the house during Barra’s playdates with Neddie, but now leaving was the last thing he wanted to do—that is, unless Robb and Jeyne took over the chaperoning, in which case he and Arya were out of there in a blink of an eye.
He especially never used to stay long enough for dinner, but found he didn’t mind one bit if it meant playing sous-chef to Arya’s chef in the kitchen. He especially loved it when they cooked at his flat, away from the eyes of her family, and how she’d order him with a kiss to dice this, stir that, no not like that, stupid, like this.
(The skills Gendry lacked in the kitchen, he made up for in other areas.)
Eventually, they did make it to that hike in the Wolfswood.
Sort of.
“If I’d known you were going to jump me halfway up the trail, I would’ve worn thicker trousers,” Gendry grumbled from the ground.
“Your arse all wet and cold now?” Arya laughed, stepping off him and reaching out a hand to help him up.
He meant to be offended by her laughter but found himself grinning instead.
“‘S alright,” he said, leaning down for a kiss. “Rest of me is warm.”
Arya smiled coyly as she wrapped her arms around him and brushed snow from his bum. She took a while.
A long while.
“You know…” he began in a low voice. “We could always—wait, where are you going?”
For Arya had spun away and begun walking down the trail, back the way they came.
“I was thinking we could get you out of those wet clothes,” she called out, turning and walking backwards. “Unless you want to keep hik—ah, slow down!”
Gendry hurried them home, holding hands the whole way.
“Arya, Arya did you know tomorrow is gonna be three month ann’versary since I met you?”
“Since we met you,” Gendry pointed out.
The three of them were in Barra’s room, tucking Barra in for the night. Gendry never fit on the tiny bed, so he always relegated himself to a chair, but Arya fit comfortably on the edge.
“I actually did know that,” Arya replied. “It’s strange, it feels like so much longer. In a good way,” she reassured them.
Gendry shook his head, smiling; he knew what she meant. It felt like they had known each other for much longer than only a few months.
(What was that quote, about friendship being like sitting under the shade of a great oak tree?
Well, he and Arya, they grew the tree, too.)
“We read ‘Meria now,” Barra announced.
“Right then,” Gendry said, passing the book over. “Who’s it tonight?”
“Me and Arya,” Barra decided.
“Do you want to read the first page?” Arya asked.
Barra shook her head. “I do second page, and we switch like always.”
“Okay,” Arya said, and began reading. “Once upon a time, there was a princess named Nymeria. She was everything a princess of the Rhoynar ought to be: smart, fierce, and loyal…”