a/n - Written for Day 2 of the tumblr "Gameofships Golden Ships" challenge, which invited authors to write a pairing from ASoIaF/GoT into another universe. This will most likely become a WIP. I hope you enjoy.
When the alarm next to seventeen-year-old Arya Stark's bed begins buzzing shortly after six in the morning, she slams her hand down on top of it without fully waking.
Dawn breaks clear and very cold up here in the North, especially now that winter has finally arrived. After shutting off her alarm, Arya burrows under the covers and pulls them over her head, willing this horrible day to be behind them.
"We need to get up," Sansa says from the other side of the room. Even without seeing her, Arya can tell by the tone in Sansa's voice that her older sister is very anxious. Not that she can blame her. Arya peers out from underneath her blankets at Sansa and sees that she's fully dressed already, from head to foot, in her finest clothes.
"How early did you wake today?" Arya asks her incredulously, leaning back a little on her elbows. Between the two of them, Sansa is normally the one who can be counted on to sleep late. She cannot remember the last time Sansa woke before her.
"I didn't sleep last night," Sansa replies brusquely. "But it doesn't matter. Hurry, Arya - you need to get dressed." She begins pacing back and forth in their small room, worrying the small handkerchief she's holding. "We cannot be late."
Arya sits up in her bed and stretches, shivering as the frigid morning air hits her bare arms.
"I know we cannot be late," she tells Sansa, trying, and mostly failing, to keep the petulant edge out of her voice. She climbs out of her bed reluctantly while Sansa rushes out of the room – most likely to wake Rickon, Arya guesses – and begins to dress.
As much as she hates to admit it to herself, Arya knows that Sansa's right. One of them may be sentenced to death today. But if the surviving members of House Stark are late for Queen Danaerys' Reaping ceremony, they will all be killed.
The thought motivates Arya to dress as quickly as she can.
She takes a quick glance at her short, messy hair in the small mirror that hangs on their wall. She frowns at her reflection, then sticks her tongue out at it. She knows they're supposed to look their best today, but she can't for the life of her understand why it matters.
But she decides to play along as best she can. The time for small acts of rebellion is long gone.
Arya turns to the small desk in the corner and picks up her silver letter opener that her half-brother Jon nicknamed Needle ages ago. It's nothing special, this letter opener. But it's all she has left of Jon, and she's vowed to herself that she will do everything in her power to keep it forever.
With a frown, she uses Needle's pointy end to break through the thin layer of ice that formed in the wash basin overnight. The ice broken, Arya reaches into the basin and cups the ice-cold water in her hands. She grimaces as she splashes it over her face.
"Come, Rickon," she can hear Sansa cajole from the adjoining room. "It'll be all right. I'll be with you. Arya and Hodor will be with you too. You're the Stark in Winterfell! You can do this."
Arya rolls her eyes as she runs her comb through her hair. Because there's no Winterfell anymore. Not really. When Queen Danaerys came, out of the ashes of Winterfell rose nearly-forgotten, half-starved, permanently-frozen District Twelve.
For all intents and purposes, Winterfell and House Stark are gone. No use lying to Rickon about it. Not even if it gets him to dress more quickly this morning.
Queen Danaerys Targaryen, the first of her name, arrived on the eastern shores of Panem exactly one year ago today, in the middle of the third full year of winter, in an utterly unexpected blaze of glory. Long believed by everyone to be dead – to have been murdered by the same people who killed her parents and brother – she instead appeared in command of savage armies and an armada of hovercraft specially designed to shoot fire.
The people of Panem, decimated and utterly demoralized by years of civil war and the harshest winter anyone could remember, simply couldn't withstand her.
The wealthy Lannisters, from the land to the west now known only as District Two, held out against Danaerys longer than any of the other Houses. After all, the Lannisters were the best equipped of them all. And with their own King Tommen on the Capitol's Iron Throne, they had the most to lose.
But even the Lannisters were no match for a vengeful Danaerys Targaryen and her thousands of fire-breathing "dragons." By the fourth moon's turn following Danaerys' fiery return to Panem, the last of the Lannister bannermen had surrendered and bent the knee to Panem's new queen.
Queen Danaerys took up residence in the Capitol not a fortnight later.
"My birthright," she declared in her televised speech the night the war was declared over and the former boy king Tommen was decapitated on live television. The beheading, and the queen's speech, had been required viewing for everyone in Panem. And so Arya sat huddled with Rickon, Sansa, and Hodor – all that remained of her once-large family – to watch the speech in the main room of their partially-rebuilt family home.
"My birthright," the Queen repeated, slamming her fist on the podium for extra emphasis. "Stolen from me by The Usurper." Her name for the late King Robert Baratheon.
The Queen smiled then, right at the camera. But the smile didn't reach her violet eyes, and the look on her face turned the hot blood pumping through Arya's veins to ice.
The rest of Queen Danaerys' speech described the retribution she had in store for everyone who she believed played a role in deposing her father nearly twenty years ago.
As the Queen continued speaking, Arya pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs tightly. She was listening attentively but unable to believe what she was hearing.
Queen Danaerys described, in great detail, a new Tournament that would be held in the Capitol every year. The participants would be a pair of "tributes" – one male, one female – from each of the traitor Houses, selected by a public lottery held near each traitor House's ancestral home. The Tournament would be televised and made required viewing for everyone in Panem.
Tournaments were nothing new in Panem. If asked how many tournaments she'd attended in her youth, Arya would not be able to guess.
But Queen Danaerys made clear that this tournament would be unlike any other.
This tournament would not be for fame or fortune or honor from the Queen. Rather, it would be an annual, televised fight to the death, with only one victor. The winner's only prize would be another year to live.
"Should any eligible participant fail to appear at his or her assigned Reaping," Queen Danaerys continued, her words clipped and precise, "or refuse to participate in the Tournament if selected, all members of the objector's House will be summarily executed."
The Queen paused dramatically after that statement, as though to allow the weight of her words to fully sink in.
"Through 'The Tournament,'" Queen Danaerys concluded, "the people of Panem will never again forget what happens to those who rise up against House Targaryen." She smiled once more, then, and left the podium to the sound of thunderous applause.
When the broadcast was finally over, Arya wished, as she often did, that her father were still here to help her make sense of things. But a moment later she laughed out loud, realizing that even though Ned Stark had been a blameless, honorable man, he was also part of the reason they were in this situation now.
For when King Robert deposed Queen Danaerys' father, her father – Eddard Stark of House Stark, the first of his name, and Lord of Winterfell – had been at his right hand.
The Usurper could never have taken the Targaryen throne without him.
Even though more than a foot of heavy snow fell last night, it still takes Arya, Sansa, Rickon, and Hodor less than ten minutes to trudge from their home to the Reaping ceremony.
The Queen's men assigned to District Twelve have been working day and night over the past month to prepare the field just outside the former Winterfell's gates for today. Arya and her siblings have seen some of the preparations from their kitchen window, and together they've been able to cobble together some idea of what to expect.
They're still completely taken aback by what they find.
The stories of Queen Danaerys' wealth, amassed during her many years in exile, must not have been exaggerations, Arya realizes. The enormous tele-screen alone, suspended in midair by nearly invisible wires in the middle of the field, must have cost the Capitol more money than the three surviving Starks have seen in total since the war ended.
To say nothing of the large stage erected just for today, bedecked with jewels and velvet and furs. How very fortunate the District Twelve tributes will feel, Arya muses sardonically, to be able to stand upon such splendor before being led to their deaths.
Arya looks around her at the people milling about. Aside from the Queen's Capitol men, there aren't many here. Just the three she came here with, and a dozen or so emaciated former Stark bannermen who managed to survive the Red Wedding, the subsequent Lannister onslaught, and the cruel winter, just to arrive at this place.
Arya frowns. She knows that the survivors of the other Great Houses in the other, southron Districts are better fed and far more numerous than they are. Even the spindliest Lannister weakling would undoubtedly be able to make quick work of the strongest surviving Stark bannerman.
If Arya were still capable of feeling terror, she's certain she'd be feeling it now.
As their party of four approaches the opulent stage, a team of men from the Capitol separate Sansa and Arya from Rickon and Hodor. Sansa and Arya are escorted to one side of the field, and Rickon and Hodor are brought the other.
Sansa struggles against the guards a little and calls out for their brother.
"Hush, Sansa," Arya says, but not unkindly. "They pick one woman, and one man, from each House. We already knew we were going to be separated for this." She swallows before continuing. "We can't help Rickon anymore."
Sansa holds her tongue after that. She nods her assent and follows behind Arya mutely to where the women from District Twelve are supposed to stand.
Given how remote District Twelve is, and how far away it is from the Capitol, it only made logistical sense for the Capitol to conduct this particular Reaping last.
Once the men and women of District Twelve have been corralled into separate spaces, the men from the Capitol show them a video reel highlighting the other Reapings that were held across Panem earlier this week.
These are the first images Arya has seen of lands outside District Twelve since she first returned to the ruins of Winterfell, starving and half-dead, fifteen months ago. These glimpses of what used to be Riverrun; the Eyrie; and even Casterly Rock; cause her eyes to well with unbidden tears.
She wipes them away with the back of her hand, furious with herself for showing emotion now, when she needs to be stronger and braver than ever. She forces herself to think of Syrio. If he were here with her now, he would thumb his nose and laugh at the prospect of death facing them all.
Her dancing lessons with Syrio feel like they must have happened in a different lifetime. And, of course, they did. But the memories are fond, and help Arya to stand a little straighter and square her shoulders.
The video plays for quite a long time, showing the surviving members of House Stark and their former bannermen who they'll be up against in The Tournament. A Lannisterish-looking blonde man from District Two walks up to the stage near the former Casterly Rock, appearing positively stricken. A brown-haired man from District Eleven (formerly Highgarden) cries and hugs his wife before he's dragged towards the stage. A ginger-haired woman from The Fingers (now called District Five) bravely takes the stairs of the stage two at a time when her name is called.
But it isn't until the screen shows highlights from the District Eight Reaping – held at the former Storm's End, home to the once great House Baratheon – that Arya sees a face she recognizes.
She gasps out loud, hands flying up to her face.
Not him, she thinks, reeling. Anyone but him, please, Gods...
Apparently Queen Danaerys is including bastards of the great Houses in this mockery of justice. Because on the screen right now, struggling against the Queen's men who are dragging him forcibly onto the District Eight stage, is Gendry.
Gendry. The boy who escaped the Capitol with her when they were children. The man she thought she'd never see again.
He looks much the same as Arya remembers him. He still has the muscular arms and that broad chest that set him apart even as a fifteen-year-old boy. And of course, there's the raven-black hair that helped Queen Danaerys realize who Gendry's father must have been right away.
He's changed a little in the fifteen months since Arya last saw him. His hair has gotten a bit longer since he saved her life near the end of the war by escorting her safely back to Winterfell. His arms have grown a bit larger, even more muscled, since the night they'd shared that one feverish, endless kiss, him pressing her body up against the old heart tree in the woods near her home. That wonderful, horrible night when he'd said goodbye to her forever.
But most of the physical features of the boy she met years ago still remain in the grown man Gendry has become. In his powerful frame, yes, but also in the slope of his forehead and in the black of his hair. In the piercing blue of his eyes.
His temperament also appears entirely unchanged. When Queen Danaerys' men finally succeed in dragging him onto the stage, he swings his right fist in a powerful arc, connecting with Ser Jorah's Mormont's jaw with a loud crunch.
The sight of old traitorous Ser Jorah splayed out on the ground in front of Gendry is comical enough to make Arya laugh out loud in spite of the circumstances. But the laughter quickly dies in her throat when, in the next moment, three of Queen Danaerys' men begin beating Gendry with clubs. They don't stop beating him until Gendry lies prone on the stage, unmoving.
Ser Jorah, apparently recovered enough from his blow to do the Queen's bidding once again, unceremoniously drags Gendry's unconscious body off the stage and off camera.
Arya is so distraught by what they've just seen that when the video ends – when Missandei plucks a slip of paper from the Reaping bowl here in District Twelve and calls out "Arya Stark" in her heavily accented speech – Arya doesn't even realize it's happened until she's dragged onto the stage herself.
She stands up there a long moment, blinking, looking out at Sansa, Hodor, and Rickon, and her father's former bannermen standing before her. She turns her head to the left and sees an elderly man, a Karstark whose first name she never knew, crying soundlessly. She doesn't remember him being called.
Arya thinks of Syrio. She thinks of her father. And she thinks of Gendry who, apparently, she will soon be seeing once again.
Then Arya closes her eyes and wills herself to think of nothing at all.