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She dreamed of him for the first time on the eve of spring.
In the long years she had spent in the city by the sea, the night wolf she kept hidden carefully away had shown her many things. Dark nights and dark blood, endless chases and wild hunts through forests she would call her own if there were anyone with whom to speak of them. Prey, and men, and men that were prey, and always around her the pack. Pack most of all. The girl that she once had been had two little brothers – but no, that was another life, another time, another girl who had a name of her own. But the night wolf had many little brothers, and little sisters too; with her at their head, they ran and they ran and they ran, tireless amidst the snowy trees, surviving together where the lone creatures fell one by one to their hunt and hungry jaws. They crowded together for warmth when they slept, her little wolf siblings, but the night wolf needed no heat that her fur could not provide. The snow and the ice were her comfort, not her bane, for the wild North ran quick in her wild blood, even here so far from her home.
Since the girl's crossing, since the donning of her first mask of lies (long before she wore her first mask of skin), the dreams of her wolf heart had been white and black and red, but now, with the brittle grip of winter slowly receding, they had turned blue—turned to him, to the deep cold blue that seemed to cling to his skin like a promise, vestiges of the North sharpening the edges of him, and the faintest scent of brother and home lingering on his hands. The night wolf followed the scent through her forest, stalking closer night by night until she captured him, and then chased it with her tongue to be certain, scraping over calluses and tugging a startled laugh from deep in his throat. When the blue of his eyes caught in the early morning light, the night wolf settled her head in his hand, and the girl jerked awake, breath coming quick and straining her tightened lungs.
--
She dreamed of him again when the sea winds shifted, and brisk easterly gusts brought with them memories of warmth and sunlight.
The long years she had spent in the city by the sea taught her to measure her words as carefully as she might measure the purest of poisons, to count her steps like a beggar counted his coppers, to make no movement without calculating every possible outcome. Arya Stark would not recognize her, this girl with no face and no name. But Arya Stark was dead (she reminded herself, more times than had been necessary for years) and all of her life was dead with her, so what she might recognize mattered little and less.
For a dozen nights and a dozen more she saw him through the eyes of the night wolf, but not from as distance as before, but near and within easy reach. He was a solid hand on her shoulder, a steady gait at her side. The pack roved behind them and before, and for the first time it had a purpose, a direction.
The night wolf had the scent of home, and she would not rest until she had reached it.
The girl had many reasons to resist, but remembering them became harder and harder.
Sometimes in her dreams, she thought he saw her as well, and that he knew when she watched him. Under the cover of darkness with the music of her little siblings' howls filling the air, he stared at the night wolf with a crease in his brow and a faraway look in his eyes, bright and dangerous in the firelight. He stared at the wolf and the wolf and girl stared back. And when he spoke, his voice was perhaps not exactly the same as she remembered, but it was near enough to spark memories, memories she should not have but seemed unable to deny. She wished she could understand the words, but filtered as they were through the cloud of distance and interpreted only through soft faded impressions tucked deep down in the night wolf's memories, they became only untranslatable sound, subtle and comforting as the soft brush of the waves against the stone of the city.
And so, as she had been taught, the girl measured her words and counted her steps and calculated each move with an untold care. One night she did not dream, for there was no sleep to be had. She stole into her cubby hole as the stars faded from the sky with a glint of familiar silver not quite hidden in her hand, and her heart was at once resolute and a wild thing, beating out of control but with perfect conviction. After that, she was a fortnight in preparing, but soon enough came the long vigil, another sleepless night to pass in the counting of her crimes for one last time. In the stillness and quiet of the temple, she lay the old man's head down in her lap, her fingers leaving bright smudges of red on his pale, pale skin, and there they remained together for many hours. When the morning came and the tapers were lit, the marks had darkened to rust and the girl was gone.
A life for a life. For Arya Stark was dead, yes, but not, perhaps, forever. And the God of Many Faces would have his due.
--
She dreamed of him for the last time on the shifting sea, as salt-roughened timbers hummed their own discordant song in her ears.
The long years she had spent in the city by the sea had girded her stomach in iron and her feet in lead, and even the moody, tumultuous end-of-winter waters of the Shivering Sea could do little to upset her balance or hardiness. The night wolf waited alone, but not abandoned. She knew that her man-companion was within the city walls where her paws could not tread, speaking in man-noises to those too fettered in steel and stone to be trusted with even the sight of her. And so she waited, and soon enough the harbor bells rang distant but bright in the early morning air, heralding a ship's homecoming. The girl saw the walls of the city rise before her from either side, through two sets of eyes, and knew that her choice had been good. She had not returned to where she had left, to the harbor at Saltpans, but instead to White Harbor. All the girls she had ever been had spent too much time in the South, and it was the North that called her home. It was the North that kept her name, like a waiting promise, and the North that held all she had once considered dear.
She passed through the docks of the Outer Harbor easily, and picked her way through the narrow, stony streets until the sun had fully cleared the horizon and the wood thickened around the grey-blue shale of the narrow track to the Kingsroad. Past the last bedraggled shanty, where the drifts of snow lay largely unsullied by feet and filth and hopeful new green growth sprouted from the trees of the tree line, there was a subtle gleam of steel and just enough movement in the brush to warrant two figures. Arya set her steps toward them, and her feet soon sped to match the erratic rhythm of her heart.
--
Gendry did not dream.
The long years he had spent in pitiless war amidst unfathomable human cruelty had taught him that dreams were for children and fools. On a colder day, he might have argued that hope, too, was little better than a dream, fodder for disappointment and despair, but on this day the salt wind on his face did not bite, and a Braavosi ship had taken to dock at dawn, just as he had known it would. He put the harbor to his back and returned to the wolf, and together they waited.
He took a felled tree for his seat and held his helm in his lap as the wolf paced at his side. Gendry had never been a man of great faith, but all he had seen had made him a man of great belief. Never once did he consider this a fool's errand. Never once did he consider he might be wrong, and the fast-approaching footsteps proved that for once he had believed aright. He looked up from his rough hands to see her standing not five paces away, and for a moment, the shock of it was almost as bad as being wrong. In her absence, at least, there had been a cruel sort of certainty. Now his path blurred, and he did not know what next to do. Her expression was carefully schooled and guarded as she took them in, and he felt a cold knot of apprehension and fear tangle in his belly.
But it took only a soft chuff from the wolf, and her expression transformed into a heartrending juxtaposition of joyousness and mourning, and her face took on a beauty he could never describe if he had every word in the maester's library. They tumbled together in a flurry of movement and fur and aborted sounds that might have been called sobs by someone less charitable, someone who knew less of loss. Gendry looked away from them, eyes seeking the rising sun through the thicket of branches surrounding them, and counted his breaths until they calmed.
When Arya turned to him at last, he stood awkwardly before her, turning his helm over and over in his hands, but his gaze never faltered from hers, steady and solid. Her limbs had lengthened and she stood taller than he would have ever expected, but she was still as narrow as a whip, and the sharp lines of her face told the tale of a hundred Starks that came before her. She smiled, slow and a little tearful still, and with that smile he felt the knot untangle, frayed edges falling away and leaving him raw, exposed, like flesh newly knit after a wound.
"Thought you might be ready to come home," he said at last, when the wolf had strayed the few paces from her side to butt at his leg impatiently.
"Yes," Arya told him. "Yes, I am."
The sunlight and her loose hair whipped across her face as she nodded. It was longer than he had ever seen it before, but he did not reach out to touch it, not yet. There was time enough before them for all things, and spring held promises for which he had never before dared hope.
He gave himself another long moment to simply look at her, and then they turned their faces North.