"There is pleasure in the pathless woods"
- Lord Byron
DISCLAIMER: I do not own anything from Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire.
The mud sticking to Arya's fringe scratches at her nose, and she wishes for a stream, a spring, anything to get rid of the dirt that seems like a second skin.
She feels comfortable out in the elements, all grassy and green, smelling of pine, and she could care less about her appearance, but the discomfort of dry mud and sweat and rain and piss is something she would like to remedy. If only her mother could see her now.
In order to distract her wandering mind from thoughts of her mother and Robb and everything that makes her heart ache, she makes a game of stepping in Gendry's footsteps, pretending that everywhere else is wildfire.
Since he is a head taller, his strides are a bit longer, so she has to hop a little, which makes her feel silly. She hasn't felt so silly since King's Landing, and she welcomes it. It helps her practice her agility some, so she hops along, one hand on the hilt of the sword Gendry snatched from Harrenhal's forge and the other held out for balance.
"What in seven hells 're you doing?"
Hot Pie's voice behind her makes her jump and falter in her dance, and she crashes into Gendry's back.
A small oof escapes her mouth, and she raises her eyes to him and snatches her hand back from where it presses in between his shoulder blades, clutching the jerkin. He turns and raises a brow, clearly amused.
"Yes, what are you doing?" The small laugh at the end of his sentence burns at Arya's cheeks, and she whips her head back and forth from his and Hot Pie's twitching smiles.
"Nothing!"
Gendry gives her stern frown, but there is a teasing gleam in his eyes. "A lady shouldn't be prancing around."
Arya's already flushed cheeks flare at his words, once again wishing for a stream, this time to cool her off. Also, to dunk Gendry's head for his m'lady comments. A nice dip will wash his brain right out, stupid bull.
Probably not, but it would be funny.
"I am not a lady! And I wasn't prancing!"
He only raises his brow.
"Um, you kind of were..."
She rounds on Hot Pie with a fierce growl that could rival Nymeria's and throws a nearby stick at him, barely restraining a smirk as he lets out squeak before trying to deflect it with his own sword.
He ends up losing his grip, and the sword goes flying into the brush - but not before catching on Arya's arm, slicing the thin cloth of her tunic and nicking her arm. She lets out a small hiss and grabs at her arm.
"Sorry!" Hot Pie makes to take a step closer, but thinks better of it and stops. Guilt is written all over his small face.
"Idiot," she mutters at him, peeking through the fresh hole in her shirt to see a small strip of blood where the nick weeps. It only stings a bit, nothing she can't handle; she's received far worse injuries running around with Bran and Rickon.
She suddenly feels a warm presence at her back, and she tilts her chin up to see the very close face of a very close Gendry peering over shoulder. Her face heats, once again, and she stills when his chin brushes her shoulder as he leans forward, smoke and sweat filling her senses. He gently parts the torn fabric to look at her arm, his brow furrowing.
"You alright?" He is looking at her now, blue eyes narrowing with doubt as if sensing her approaching denial.
His breath tickles her cheeks. Why is he so close? She squeezes her toes in her boots, and blinks once, twice, before murmuring, "I'm fine."
Gendry finally leans back, and Arya feels her cheeks cool down, the barely-there breeze fresh on her skin.
"You need to learn how to hold a sword," Gendry muses, raising his brow at the other boy. "She just disarmed you without touching you."
Hot Pie fixes him with a look of irritation and embarrassment, but he doesn't seem to disagree.
"I'll teach you," Arya speaks up quickly, very glad that the conversation has flipped to someone else.
Hot Pie's squishy face softens a little, and he bends to pick up his sword.
"Sorry, again, Arry," he says as he stands, his knuckles a bright yellow where he grips the sword tight.
"It's fine," Arya waves him off before smirking. "Maybe when I'm done teaching you, you'll be able to strike me - on purpose."
Hot Pie smiles, his eyes lighting up at the prospect of being that good.
"You should probably wash that out," Gendry says beside her, nodding his head at her arm.
Arya shrugs and wipes the cut, smearing the blood as if it is nothing but mud. The grass-long cut keeps bleeding, but it doesn't hurt any. "You see water anywhere? Besides, it's just a scratch."
He frowns, his blue eyes narrowing. "No, it's not. It could get infected. Is that how you want to go out? An infection from Hot Pie's rusty blade after you threw a stick at him?"
"Gods, you sound like my septa," she mutters.
Gendry's face twists, clearly confused. Arya thinks it almost adorable if not for the fact that she doesn't - no, shouldn't - find Gendry adorable. "What th' hell is that?"
He seems offended - and a little scared. It almost makes her laugh. She finds that irritating; him being able to almost do things to her. Almost finding him adorable. Almost laughing. It definitely makes her want to shove him into a stream. That is, if they could bloody well find one.
"Never mind," she says.
The confused expression stays there for a few more moments before he shakes his head and settles his gaze once again onto her still bleeding arm. He sighs and reaches out to open the slashed fabric wider before meeting her eyes. "Let's at least wrap it."
His concern warms her, but she frowns, too stubborn to let a stupid scratch take her down. "Gendry, it's not that great a deal, really."
He rolls his eyes and grabs the end of his tunic, tearing the fabric and holding the strip up in front of her face for her to see.
"What am I going to do with this, then?
She flicks his nose. "Stupid bull."
He huffs and hands his sword to a smiling Hot Pie. Gendry motions for her to sit down on a nearby rock. She hesitates, and then sits with sigh, glad that she could rest her legs, but slightly irritated that a little scratch on her arm is halting their journey to her family.
A feeling settles over her irritation, though. It's warm and seems to have been hovering about her ever since King's Landing, a warmth that reminds her of Winterfell, of home. She realizes that she has never been alone, always surrounded by a warm shadow, tall and dusted in soot from the forge: rusted metal, hard work, and fire.
He can be her family now - he is. He can join Robb, and they can fight side by side.
Looking over at her other companion, she smiles inwardly. Hot Pie is her friend, no matter how stupid he can be, and he can come, too.
(Yet, Gendry's different, somehow. He's always been different, for some reason she refuses to explore.)
Kneeling, Gendry takes her arm and rolls the sleeve up to her elbow. He brings her arm closer to his face, the dirt on the skin of his fingers a curious contrast against her paler skin. The dirt wedged underneath his nails matches her own, crescent reminders of their travels.
When her mother would find her at the end of a long day in the Godswood, sticks and leaves nestled in her snarled hair and grass stained along her skirt, she would take Arya's hands and scrub them clean, leaving them red and raw; she'd sometimes put the lavender oil she herself uses all over Arya's body, and Robb would tease her about smelling like a giant flower.
She would stick her tongue out and shove him, telling it was better than smelling all sweaty and gross. But it wasn't. She liked smelling like sweat and dirt and pine and outside. It was comforting.
She remembers the dark cedarwood scent surrounding her father, the bark and sap Bran forever smelled of, the sharp tang of mint leaves Rickon liked to rip from the garden, the lemony fragrance of her sister, and the same pine scent of Jon.
She was a Stark, a wolf, and she had to use her senses to find her way through the world, had to sharpen them like her lost Needle.
Her new pack had their own smells. Hot Pie smelt faintly of dough from working in the kitchens and fixing meals at Harrenhal. Back at the castle, when Arya would roam around when she wasn't tending to Lord Tywin, she'd hang around the kitchens where the smell of fresh bread and mead could sometimes cover the rank odor of death that sank into the castle's walls. Only slightly - death was strong and would not be ignored.
The forge was secretly her favorite place in Harrenhal. The heady smell of smoke and sharp tang of steel took her back to Mikken's forge in Winterfell, where the overwhelming heat sank beneath her skin and into her bones to thaw the biting sting of the North's weather. She loved watching the tools and weapons being made, simmering metal that grew long and sharp.
Sometimes, when Mikken was turned, she'd pick up his heavy hammer (almost drop it) and bang the anvil. She'd quickly drop the hammer and run out of the forge laughing, Mikken's yells following her out. She didn't have to turn around to see him smiling at her.
Harrenhal's forge was just the same, all heat and noise, yet just as grey and bleak as the rest of the castle. Gendry would work there all day, but he never seemed to grow tired of it. The furrow of his brow as he hammered burning steel, shaping and reshaping the element, the way it seemed to beckon and echo like a howl. It's all Gendry.
He carries the forge with him, in his strength and movement, quick and heavy like a hammer, as she carries Winterfell with her, in her eyes, grey as a wintry sky, and in her bite, sharp and dangerous as a direwolf's, quick and unforgiving as the cold.
Even now, sitting before him, still as a rock, tense, yet calm from his presence, she can smell the burning hearth that clings to his skin.
She watches Gendry's eyes search the wound, a thin cut that now accompanies a few insect bites and her myriad of freckles.
"I'm not one of your precious swords," she jests, making to pull away just to annoy him.
Hot Pie softly snorts beside them, and leans their swords against his hip.
She reaches over and scratches some of the drying blood from her arm, and then she blows it on Gendry.
He glares at her. "Again, pain in my arse," he mutters, dusting the specks from his face. He holds the strip under her arm and begins wrapping it around and around. He then ties it gently, though tight enough for the fabric not to slip.
"Good?"
"You know, it'll probably be gone in a few days," she says, raising her eyebrows trying to make him see reason. She pulls down her sleeve and stands, grabbing her sword from Hot Pie, watching as it flashes orange from the setting sun.
"Well, now m'lady won't have to worry about it for the next few days," Gendry quips, taking his own sword back with a flourish.
Her eyes narrow. "You call me a lady one more time, and you'll get your own mark."
"Well, I suppose we'll match, then, won't we?" Gendry's eyes brighten with mirth, and she knows from the way his lip starts to curl that he's about to laugh.
She whacks his arm with the flat of her blade and smirks in satisfaction when he reaches up to nurse his new bruise.
"Soon, I'll be calling you Arry the Arse," he grunts, squinting against the setting sun while wiping his brow, smearing some of the grime on his face. She briefly wonders if he has freckles underneath the dirt and smoke from the forge. She's never seen his face clean, nor Hot Pie's. She can see faint remnants of flour on the front of Hot Pie's shirt. Maybe she'll never see them clean.
Shaking off that dark thought, Arya shrugs and says, "I've been called worse. And, I suppose it's better than m'lady."
He lips quirk into a smile, and the blue of eyes, the black his hair, and the sun's orange cast on his face all burn in contrasting colors, and that warmth inside her brightens a little.
He has a nice smile, she thinks. I want to keep him smiling, always.
"You'd rather be called an arse than a lady," he says, shaking his head. "Gods, only you would."
Arya feels the corners of her mouth twitch, and soon enough, her smile matches his.
Hot Pie shifts next to her, leaning from one foot to the other. He tilts his head to the side and says, "Actually, you're not the only one. I'd take 'arse' over 'lady' any day."
As soon as the words leave his mouth, his eyes go wide, but words seem to have escaped along with the color in his face.
Both Gendry and Arya look to each other, then at Hot Pie, then back to one another, again. Giggles sputter from Arya's lips, and she quickly slaps her free hand over her mouth, but she still shakes with mirth.
Gendry's laughter betrays his amusement, and he doesn't bother to silence it. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the delight spread across his face, all red-cheeked and shining eyes.
Hot Pie looks mortified, opening and closing his mouth like a trout, but his lips twitch, and when he catches both their eyes, he joins their laughter.
As they quiet down slowly, Arya addresses both boys. "We should keep moving while we have the light."
Gendry looks to the setting sun, squinting against the fiery light that paints his face. The bulbous star hangs just above the horizon; the full view of it is cut through with the forest's trees, barring the bright light from the trio.
He turns against the light, and the orange glow disappears from his face, casting his face in shadow. His dark-haired head, like Hot Pie's, who also faces away from the sunset, adopts a golden halo about it as the rays fall upon his back. The sun blazes behind their heads.
Two golden crowns, Arya muses. Two more kings in Westeros.
For one fleeting moment, an image flashes in front of her eyes, like light skipping across a tree's canopy when she would tilt her head up when she walked: an image of the three of them, two kings and queen, ruling the their kingdom of sticks and leaves with crowns from the sun.
She purses her lips. A child's dream, one she would have insisted Rickon and Bran be a part of, had she been back in Winterfell.
But, she isn't in Winterfell, under the endless grey skies and within the strong walls of the castle. She isn't sneaking away from lessons, from Sansa, isn't riding around on Robb's back as Theon and Jon race behind them, isn't jumping up to ruffle Jon's curly hair after he does the same to her, isn't there as her mother runs her fingers through her hair, humming a quiet tune.
She isn't home. Not yet.
Home won't be the same, however. Not without Sansa, she admits reluctantly.
Not without Father.
She'll never see the lines of laughter on her father's face or hear his words, never lean into his hug. She'll never be with him again.
The pain is still fresh, still burns in her eyes and and her nose and her throat and her heart. Losing him has been the hardest thing she's faced, but she finds that it would be so easy to fall into that hurt, to stop everything and just feel.
But, she can't. She won't.
She has a new family now, one she has to watch over and protect. The two boys before her are her pack. They must get to her mother and Robb, and from there, she'll get home.
Gendry catches her eye and looks as if he wants to say something, but after another moment, he seems to sense a heaviness in her eyes and decides against it.
He nods once, offers her not quite a smile, but something a little more than his usual stoicism. She nods back and watches him turn back towards the way they were heading and walk forward. Hot Pie follows after that, and she takes up end, privately glad that he nor Gendry will be able to catch her 'prancing' or doing something stupid again.
(At least, not until they stop to rest for the night.)
Happy New Year! I hope you enjoyed this little fic; I certainly enjoyed writing it. I really miss this dynamic, three friends bantering and roaming the woods. I'll just sit here and wait patiently (or, not so patiently) for season 8 where I know we'll get a Gendrya reunion. For now, I have fanfics to keep me company. Please leave a comment!