Chapter Text
When they told Catelyn that her daughter was outside, she feared that she had finally lost her mind to grief. Surely she must be dreaming, or else had misunderstood the steward’s words. But Utherydes Wayn, old as he was, gave her a nod and repeated what Catelyn had just heard, so she found herself leaving her father’s bedside, racing down the spiral staircase into the yard as fast as her feet would carry her.
Outside, with the sun just past midday casting sharp shadows on the ground, it seemed that nothing at all had changed; it was the same yard, the same walls, the same heads being displayed above them, and yet everything was different.
There was her daughter standing right in its middle.
Arya!
For a moment she couldn’t believe; how was it possible for Arya to stand just past the main gate of her grandfather’s castle, when by all accounts she was Joffrey’s hostage, or dead? But those thoughts were pushed away as Arya broke into a run, a run towards her.
“Mother”, was all she said, and then she’d already launched herself into Catelyn’s arms.
And Catelyn hugged daughter fiercely, held her closer than she ever had before.
She’s here, was all she could think, She’s really here.
They must have stood like this for a long time, but it felt like no time at all. Certainly much too short to make up for all the time of uncertainty, for all the fear, for all the loss.
Only then did she let her daughter go, to get a more proper look at her.
She was thin. Shockingly so.
If she was as skinny as a stick before, then what is she now? A needle?
And covered with bruises, in an alarming variety of sizes and colors.
With all that, Catelyn nearly did not notice her short, butchered hair, the rags that had presumably once been here clothes, her missing shoes or the sword fastened to her waist.
That doesn’t matter. Not now. Not when I just got her back.
And after seeing her face, thin and weak and starved, she could not help but press Arya to her again, and stay like this some more, wishing it could last forever, the happiness she felt with her daughter pressed to her chest for the first time in months.
It was only later when should looked up again, to see a giant wolf, larger even Grey Wind had been the last time she’d seen him, the surprisingly expensive-looking horse beside it and the boy, his every movement screaming discomfort and uncertainty. He turned away quickly once he noticed her gaze, but she’d already seen his face, if only for half a heartbeat. And suddenly she was in that lavish tent again with a shadow creeping on the floor, a murderous knife in its hand.
No, she thought, That can’t be, I’ve seen him stabbed just a few days ago …
And yet here he stood.
Arya must have noticed that she looked somewhere else, for she drew out of the hug and looked up to her.
“Mother?”, she asked her, following Catelyn’s eyes, and when she saw them glued to the boy she added: “Why are you staring at him? That’s just Gendry. I’ve met him on the road. He’s my – ” she stopped there for just a moment, as if considering her choice of words, “He’s a friend of mine.”
Gendry, she thought, Yes, right. I just mistook him. He obviously was to young to be Renly, and whatever else she’d thought of Renly and his arrogance, he’d have never let himself be caught in clothes such as the ones this boy wore. Still … the similarities could not be denied. His hair might be messy, but it was of the same ink-black, and should he ever comb it out she doubted that there would be a visible difference. His cheekbones and the shape of his face might be slightly different, but eyes with the same piercing blue colour stared out of it. Some part of her wondered how Brienne might react once she saw him. The girl might have pledged her sword to Catelyn, but it was obvious to anyone who looked at her – not that many did – that she would never forget Renly.
For a moment she thought of her wedding, then, where she’d married a stranger she’d never seen before in her life, who’d borne such a resemblance to his brother …
Arya still stared at her, and by now the boy – Gendry – had noticed as well and looked right back at Catelyn, it seemed.
No, she observed, He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at Arya.
It took her a moment to return to the present, to get the thoughts of shadows and strange powers out of her mind.
“Pardon my confusion”, she said, turning to her daughter again, “You really should eat something, Arya, you look thinner than I have ever seen you.”
Catelyn had always hoped that maybe one day they could’ve visited Riverrun, all of them, and she’d have shown her children where she had grown up. But that was not meant to be, so instead, Arya got her first glimpse of Riverrun’s great hall starved from her flight, while her mother quickly instructed Utherydes Wayn – who had followed her down into the yard – to get as to eat for Arya as the kitchens were able to provide on such a short notice.
Upon entering Arya seemed unsure, just for a moment, then she turned round, gestured to the boy – Gendry, Catelyn reminded herself – to follow her inside. If he’d been unsure of himself before, than she truly did not know how to describe his stance now. In a way, she supposed he resembled a man waiting to attend his own trial for murder, knowing he will probably either go to the Wall or die.
For once disregarding every rule of court her Septa had once taught her she placed them both at the high table, and then hoped that food would arrive rich and plentiful, and, above all, quickly.
None of them spoke a word while waiting; it would have been polite, but this time she really couldn’t fault Arya for ignoring it, and she doubted the boy knew what was considered polite at a high table. What an odd sight we must make, a young lady without shoes, dressed as a peasant’s boy together with her lowborn friend sitting at the high table of mighty Lord Tully’s castle.
Especially the boy. I wonder if Maester Vyman will put down a record of this day, saying it was the first for a commoner to ever sit on Riverrun’s dais. Though with his look, she didn’t doubt he was the bastard of one Baratheon or other, and given Renly’s age and Stannis’s sternness it was clear he must be Robert’s. She wondered how he had found his way here. Men acted strange about their bastards, she had found; her own Ned would never tell her who this woman was, this shadow that lay between them, not even if she was even still alive. And only a few days ago one of Lord Bolton’s ravens had arrived, carrying a letter saying that he was sure Harrenhal would be Robb’s within the week, and that he hoped it would serve as proof of his loyalty after what his own bastard had done in the North, where Ser Rodrick Cassel had put him to death. A fate he no doubt deserved, had said the letter.
With Gendry here, and apparently on his way to join the Night’s Watch, she supposed King Robert hadn’t been as generous to his bastards as some other men were. She wondered what he might have done to warrant a trip to the Wall, and whether or not Arya knew. Right now, he looked more shy than anything, not only not having spoken a single word since he stepped inside the courtyard, but also desperately trying not to stand out, which achieved the exact opposite result – if anything, his squirming served to make him noticeable. The bull’s head helmet that he’d carried with him before now lay on the floor next to him, while he himself did not look too different from Arya, being garbed in similarly ruined clothes, carrying a sword – she’d need to do something about that, later, both with him and Arya. Openly carrying a sword inside the walls of Riverrun would not do either of them any good, if for different reasons – although he, at least, still wore shoes.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long until the food was brought; bread with cheese and bacon, some boiled eggs. Overall, nothing complicated, or warm, just what could be brought at a moment’s notice, though Arya didn’t seem to mind. After shoving half a loaf of bread into her mouth – if anything, her regards for table manners had evidently worsened, not that Catelyn was surprised or minded it right now – she stopped just long enough to jokingly tell her friend that yes, he could eat the food, it wasn’t poisoned, but then continued as if she was a hungry direwolf in winter.
Not that wrong a description, I suppose.
And while Gendry still looked doubtful, eventually he grabbed a bit of it, too, and to Catelyn’s amazement he ate it more politely than her own daughter did. But then again, in all likelihood he feared to be thrown out of the castle should he do anything wrong, and Catelyn wasn’t even sure if that was untrue. It was her brother’s decision, after all, though she thought the boy hardly had anything to fear. Already, there were all kinds of people in this castle; half the commoners of the Riverlands seemed to have poured through those fish-adorned gates, and though the boy probably was from Kng’s Landing and not her brother’s own lands, it would be very unlike him to throw someone out, especially if his niece requested otherwise.
To tell the truth, he probably had nothing at all to fear.
If only the same could be said of me.
Edmure had shown her his plans for battle almost the moment she had returned with Brienne, and while he and his bannermen all agreed on their own ingenuity, Catelyn herself could not help but fear for her sweet little brother who’d let the smallfolk in his castle, the way she already had to fear for Sansa and her sons.
Foolish woman, she told herself, you should be praising the Seven for returning your daughter, not sitting here, thinking of battles yet to be fought.
She dearly hoped her fears did not show on her face, so Arya might not be scared more than she already was. No matter how exactly she had made her way to Riverrun, Catelyn doubted it had been a happy voyage. While returning after Renly had been murdered by that abomination she herself had been forced to travel closer to the fighting that she would have wished, but she’d had Hallis Mollen and his guards around her. To be there without them, virtually unprotected …
No, she wouldn’t share her fears with Arya. She deserved comfort now, not more worries.
When her worst hunger was stilled, her daughter looked up for a moment, asked “Where’s Robb?”, before immediately returned to her food.
“He’s in the west, raiding Lord Tywin’s lands. The Greatjon has plundered the mines at Castamere, and Robb himself has taken Ashemark and is marching on to the Craig, after winning a great victory at Oxcross, defeating an entire host.”
She continued to tell all the lovely little stories Martyn Rivers and his scouts had told her, hoping her daughter would find them more comforting than she herself had.
But “Well, that’s good, I suppose” was all she said, and Catelyn feared that her daughter had seen right through her feeble attempts to put her at ease.
She won’t calm until Robb has returned, victorious, from the battlefield.
Again, Catelyn wondered what had happened to her daughter. Not even a year ago, Robb, and Jon Snow, as well, had been Arya’s heroes and she would’ve never believed that anyone could harm them – and yet now the look on her face together with the low, depressing voice told her an entirely different story.
Oh Ned, why did I persuade you to go with your King?
If only they had all remained at Winterfell, none of this would have ever happened; or if, at the very least, her Ned would have gone to King’s Landing alone, so her daughters would be safe at home. What was it that Arya had experienced out there, that had changed her so?
She almost feared to ask. Yet what kind of mother would she be, when she could not bear to hear what her daughter had been forced to live?
“So”, she finally started, after seemingly endless moments spent with searching for the right words, “How did you get out of King’s Landing? I don’t suppose it was the Imp who let you go, or Petyr?” She might not be sure anymore on whose side he was on, but Catelyn allowed herself the spot of hope.
“No they didn’t”, Arya exclaimed, as if her mother had just insulted her.
“Then who?” Surely not Cersei. For a moment she entertained the thought of Lord Varys; he was just as plausible as any other, she supposed, and with him no one ever knew what his true ends were.
“Out the Red Keep, I myself. Then, out of King’s Landing, Yoren.”
Yoren? She vaguely remembered having heard that name before, somewhere, though she couldn’t quite place it.
“He chopped my hair of, told the guards I was a boy on the way to the Night’s watch and got me out with the other recruits. We went north. He wanted to bring me back to Winterfell.”
Her voice had assumed a wistful tone now, as if she fondly remembered being safe, though Catelyn shuddered to think of what else she might have encountered that she thought of travelling with criminals as safe. She hid her troubles, much as she could. But at least she could place Yoren, now, he’d been one of the black brothers who’d come down south with the Imp.
“I met Gendry there. He was the only one who’d help me, and I helped him, a bit. I caught a rabbit once, I shared it with him … Anyways, Yoren was killed by Ser Amory Lorch, near the Gods Eye. He burned the holdfast we’d slept in and killed most of the others, too. A few escaped with us, though. One of them died a short time after, and the rest abandoned us, sooner or later.”
Catelyn wondered what was worse, the terrors she was describing or the sound of the voice she was using; a voice one might use to tell of a dream, of something that had not been real at all.
It’s something she doesn’t want to be real, Catelyn sensed.
“After that we just walked through the woods. Since Winterfell was to far and we’d heard that Robb had come south, I figured he might be here. Nymeria kept us save, after she found me again. And provided us with bits of meat to eat, from whatever her pack had left. She scared the horse a bit, though.” There was a half-smile on her face, the wistful smile of someone who didn’t smile at all, in truth. In a way, it would’ve been more bearable if she’d shouted, or even cried. But then Arya had always tried not to cry when she could avoid it.
With all that on her mind, it took her half a moment to truly understand what she had heard, that Arya had escaped with the Night’s watch, only to then see the man who had promised to protect her slaughtered, forcing her to walk almost all the way to Riverrun – which was a long way, even with a horse. All the same, she sent a silent thank to the Seven for this Yoren and cursed Lord Tywin’s mad dogs for killing him. But there were more questions, of course. There always were, with Arya.
Who is this boy there, and why was he there? And -
“Did you say you escaped the Red Keep yourself ?”
“Yes. Well, Syrio - Syrio helped me. When they came to take me he noticed that Father would never have sent Lannister men to fetch me. He held them back, too, killed three guardsmen and fought Ser Meryn with only a wooden sword. He told me to run. I didn’t want to leave him, but he told me to. He must be dead now, I think. Father hired him for me, after he’d found Needle – my sword. After that I ran down into the dungeons, through the room with the dragon skulls and outside. I’d been there, before, so I knew there was a way out. After that I lived on the streets – Syrio had taught me how to hunt cats, and pigeons are easy once you know cats. Anyways, I found the boat that Father had arranged for, but I didn’t know the men there, so I stayed away. Still, I looked every day if maybe there was something to get me out, the gates were closed, but then … ”
“Then?”, Catelyn asked, while she suspected she already knew – and dreaded – the answer.
“Then they killed him. One day, the bells were ringing, and someone told me what it meant. I was there.”, she said, her voice impossibly low before it faded out altogether. Then she spoke up again, calmer than she’d ever heard her: “Yoren found me there.”
By all Seven, why did she have to see it? It had been bad enough for Robb and her, just reading that letter carrying dreadful news, knowing Ned was gone. Catelyn could not begin to imagine how it might have been to see the blade cutting her husband’s head from his shoulders. And Arya was so young. She tried to remember what she had done at that age, and all that came back was playing with Lysa and Petyr, covered in mud. If she had lost her own father at that age … She did not know what she would have done. Now I’m sitting here, more than thrice her age, and complain how hard it is to loose a father while I sit by his bedside all the time, while my daughter has gone through all this already, and in a much more brutal fashion than I will.
Catelyn placed her arm around her, and drew her as close as was possible could on the high, carved chairs of the high table. The boy, sitting across the table, reached across it, to place his hand on Arya’s shoulder, and to her surprise Arya didn’t push him away.
“Arya?” both the boy and Catelyn asked her.
“It’s all right.” she insisted, no matter how obvious the lie was, and neither of them drew away, though Gendry looked more than a bit uncomfortable about it.
“No, really, it’s all right”, she repeated, pushing them away, “It’s just - I don’t know. I didn’t even see it, Yoren made me look away before - before Ser Ilyn - ” she stopped, just for a moment, and a single tear could be seen leaving her eyes, “But I saw the sword. Ice, it was Ice they used, I saw it, saw it when Ser Ilyn held it high, before Yoren grabbed me. I tried to get through, through the crowd, to get to him. I had my sword, I wanted to help him, but I just … I just couldn’t even come close to him. I couldn’t help him, all I could do was let him die there.” Catelyn drew her close again, this time lifting her from her own chair, placing her on her lap. Arya let her mother embrace her, comfort her, while all the time she wept on her shoulder.
After a moment, she noticed the boy across the table staring at them, and had half a mind to send him away, but stopped herself short. Arya asked for him to be in this hall, and maybe he’s the only one she ever truly spoke to since Ned died.
For a fleeting second she thought of Brienne, and of how she would only confide in her. Maybe they were similar, after a fashion.
“I couldn’t save him”, her daughter told her, as if apologizing for it, while she wept and wept, tears running down on her mother’s shoulder.
“There was nothing you could do”, Catelyn told her, making her voice as firm as she could so she wouldn’t break in tears as well, “Nothing. You should not blame yourself.”
If there’s anyone to blame, then it’s me, she thought, I was the one who convinced him of accepting the position as Hand, and to go to King’s Landing. I thought I was doing my duty at the time, but now I’m not so sure.
Family, Duty, Honour. The words of her house. But what was she supposed to do when her family was scattered, and didn’t know what her duty might be?
After a sob, Arya replied: “Not blame myself. Yes”, she sobbed, “Father said that, too, when the Hound killed Mycah.”
Slowly, her weeping ebbed, the sobs softening away, while she wiped the tears from her face. And only a moment later, there was no hint she had been crying left at all, and her daughter looked as strong as she had before.
It’s like a mask now, Catelyn realized, she puts it on, so no one can see her pain.
But before she could think on what to do about that, Arya was already speaking again.
“Is Sansa still – ”
“Yes”, Catelyn answered, before she could say the name of that, of that place, before she could make her think of that monster that had Sansa in its grasp. She did enough of that already, and there truly was no need to talk of it, too.
“Bran and Rickon?”
“They’re safe at Winterfell.”
Arya gave a sigh of relief.
There was another question there, which she had left unspoken, she sensed. That of her bastard brother. Catelyn knew her daughter, and knew that she seldom spoke of him in her mother’s presence, only to then run off outside with him all day whenever she wasn’t looking.
“Jon Snow is still at the Wall, safe”, she said, and mentioning that name was more than worth the smile it put on Arya’s lips.
Let her smile again, Catelyn prayed, truly smile, not with the mask. Let her forget all this ever happened, let it seem like a bad dream that means nothing ones the sun rises in the morning. Yet in her heart she knew that would never happen. In her heart, she knew her daughter had seen the horrors of this world, and would never become that careless, easy-laughing girl again.
For a long time they just stayed there in front of the high table, and hoped that time itself would bend around them to make this moment last forever, but of course that would not happen. Someone had to tell her brother, someone had to send a raven to Ashemark, already the second today, though bearing much happier words than the first. Someone had to find her a room, and maybe even find a septa to continue her lessons. Yet for now, she wanted to do nothing else than embrace her daughter, and never let her go again.
But of course, the world would not stay outside but came into the hall in the shape of Utherydes Wayn, her father’s steward, and reluctantly she sent him to the maester first and her brother second, so the two of them might have some more time together.
Yet with the steward’s arrival, Arya, too, had come back from their sweet little dream, and after a while she began to ask whose heads were mounted at the gates, how many men were in the camps outside and who commanded them. Gently, Catelyn told her, trying and failing not to mention a word of the war, or of Robb in the field, risking his life again and again.
Then Arya fell back into silence for a while, bit her lip, and finally asked, “Why are all these men here? They should be somewhere else, fighting Lannisters, or protecting the land. Half of it is already burning, but there are still people out there. We’ve met one, an innkeep. He was nice. He gave us the horse you’ve seen outside, in exchange for Nymeria’s meat.”
Catelyn wondered how often she could feel grateful to whatever god, whether old or new, had sent these wolves to her children. How often had they already saved their lives, and how many times were yet to come?
But Arya’s question had pierced a wall inside her, and at last she told her bluntly what was happening.
“Lord Tywin is moving west, towards Robb, Arya. Edmure wants to offer him battle at the Red Fork and through him back to Harrenhal, where Roose Bolton will be waiting.” So he might gain some glory for himself, and his men forget the disaster of his last battle, and the siege of this very castle. “They’re here to protect Robb. I spoke with him about his plans just an hour before you arrived.” All I can do now is to pray, to all the Seven for his plans to work. Maybe she would pay the godswood a visit, too.
Arya bit her lip again. “Could I see these plans?”
Those of the battles? Her first thought was No, she just came back from war, she shouldn’t think about it, not now. Give her a little rest, at least. Yet on the other hand, Catelyn knew her daughter would think of it even more if she forbade it. Arya had always done what she wanted; Catelyn had no doubt she would search for even the tiniest hint to find out what was really going on. And that most likely she’d find some unsettling rumour or other that would only serve to worry her more, to make her more afraid than she already was.
I don’t have to point out how insecure I’m myself. All the bannermen think these plans to be wonderful, so why shouldn’t she as well? Give her some hope.
Hope. Yes, Catelyn wished she could have more hope as well, with the host of fears in her mind.
“I’ll show you. Later, first, we’ll have to find you some proper clothes.”
Noticing her daughters look, she quickly added: “Or at least some without holes in them.”