She was alive. What surprised her the most was the silence – the all-encompassing, all-pervasive silence. It was the sound she expected to hear when the Many-Faced God welcomed her. But she was alive. The pain confirmed it.
The piercing shrieks of battle she was accustomed to by now, but not the cacophony of human terror and pain, mingled with the deafening roar of a dragon rampant and the never-ending cascade of rocks and rubble. She had thought she would be buried alive. Her skin was caked in ash and dust, her lungs filled with it so that she could barely breathe.
Fear took the place of valour, and the venom of hatred and revenge began to leach from her blood. She looked around and saw swathes of smallfolk – ordinary men, women and children, screeching in agony and abject terror.
And in the aftermath, she was left alive. The ringing in her ears took hours to dissipate, but when she finally found herself on familiar ground that marked the high road to Winterfell, she revelled in the silence.
The fate of the Seven Kingdoms meant nothing to her. Daenerys Targaryen could roast the whole of Westeros and she did not care. All that mattered to her lay ahead. She had already bid farewell to Jon. In his eyes lay emptiness beyond imagining and in his arms was a ghost of the warmth that she had once sought from his embrace. Her favourite. Her forever brother – their paths were divided now, once again.
The familiar gates to Winterfell seemed to welcome her back, and the guards nodded to her in fear and recognition. Nobody would stop the hero of the Long Night this time.
As she climbed from her horse, aching from the exertion of her ride, her mind buzzed with anticipation and the thoughts of what must be done. First, she must speak to Sansa and acquaint her with everything that had happened. In the days that had passed since the battle, there was time enough for many ravens to have come and gone with news of the devastation of King's Landing. Still, she needed to talk to her sister, to reassure herself that she was all right, that all lay well between them.
And then? Then another raven, but this one to Storm's End. She charged through the courtyard, heedless of anything but her intention, when the familiar noise of hammer on steel arrested her. Her heart twisted at the sound. It was almost as if she could recognise the particular rhythm as belonging to one who…
But no, that was impossible. She did not stop herself from walking towards the forge, from satisfying a curiosity that was bound to be replaced with deflation.
Instead, her heart leapt when she saw him there. It was so unexpected that she had to grab a nearby post to support herself. Gendry stood there, his face begrimed with soot and coated with a faint sheen of sweat.
She was so confounded in that moment that all she could do was watch him work, feelings of joy and mingled sadness swelling within her.
As if sensing her presence, he turned. Arya felt unexpected pleasure in the change in his expression, from realisation to shock, from shock to relief and happiness.
The hammer dropped from nerveless fingers as she ran towards him, but he had just enough presence of mind to lay the tongs and the tool he was working on back at the edge of the fire.
She threw herself on him and felt herself swallowed up by his strong embrace.
"Arya, Arya," he repeated softly, over and over, as if in a daze of joy and astonishment. Finally, he pulled away to look at her. His brow crinkled in momentary anxiety when he saw the fresh cuts and bruises on her face. "I thought you were dead."
"I was," she replied, emotion flooding her voice. "For so long, I felt nothing. I was No-one. All I cared about was my list, was avenging my family. I went to King's Landing to kill Cersei – that was why I didn't say goodbye. Why I couldn't. I didn't expect to survive."
He looked at her with such depth of concern and tenderness that her heart contracted. Yes, there were questions in his eyes, oceans of them. Now was not the time to answer them all, that would come later.
"But then the Dragon came, and I found that I didn't care anymore. The city was collapsing around me, fire was raining from the sky. All I could think was, 'I want to live.' I prayed to the Many-Faced God, but he didn't answer. Then I prayed to all the other gods, old and new. I just said, 'Let me live, if only just to see him one more time.'"
She saw the wonder and bliss in his features as she spoke. They kissed without thought or hesitation, letting all the doubt and misery that had lain before be washed away.
A thought occurring to her, she suddenly pulled away. "But why are you still here? Shouldn't you be at Storm's End?"
Gendry ran his fingers over his closely-cropped head. "I… Word came from King's Landing a few days ago. We heard about what Queen Daenerys did. I decided I didn't want her honours. A name and a title means nothing to me if it comes from the Butcher of King's Landing."
Arya felt a sharp twist inside. She sensed his disappointment and disillusionment. All of his life, he had felt his lowly rank as an eternal blight on his hopes. Since circumstance drew him into the game of thrones, he was drawn to attaining the status and glory of his father's name. Now the Queen of Dragon's had sullied everything he had striven for, burnt it to ashes along with the innocent souls of King's Landing.
"You don't need it," she said softly, stroking his brow. "You never did."
"I'd rather be a bastard smith than the lackey of the Mad Queen."
Arya smiled. It was such an unfamiliar gesture that her face ached. Such a weary time had passed since she had felt anything close to contentment. She framed his face with her hands and spoke with quiet sincerity. "I love the bastard smith."
Overjoyed but still tentative, as if the prize might yet be snatched from him, he leaned down and kissed her again. He took his time this time, as if finally understanding that they had the rest of their lives ahead of them.
"I'm still a bastard," he murmured ruefully, resting his forehead against hers. "I can't marry you, and gods know, I won't be my father. I won't bring any more bastards into the world."
"I told you." Arya's brow was set in immovable determination. "I don't want a lord. I'm not a lady."
"What do you want then?" he asked helplessly. "You didn't want to marry me when I had a name, and now that I don't you can't. So what do we do?"
She wrapped her arms around his middle and looked up into his face. "Will you take a wolf to your bed, to your heart, knowing that she'll be no common wife? Knowing that she had taken lives and done things of horror? Will you accept her even though she hates to sing and tell tales, and the only needlework she excels at is the swinging of a sword?"
Gendry seemed surprised at her candour, but his eyes were still clouded with love. "Yes," he replied. "I'm not good with words, but if I could tell you… if you knew…" He paused, desperately scrambling for the right way to express what had been unsaid. "My life's been an ugly, lonely place for the most part. But you brought light into it, and hope, and the promise of family. I wish I was more than I am, that I could give you something. I don't even have a house."
Tears gleamed in his eyes, and Arya felt she had to lighten the mood.
"Why, you soft thing, Gendry!" She laughed in gentle mockery. "And I thought you were a bull-headed brute all this time."
"Not all the time, surely?" He placed small, soft kisses over her cheeks.
Arya felt breathless with hope. "Come with me then."
"Come where?" Confusion creased his brow.
"Anywhere we want!" She laughed again with previously unknown gaiety. "We can explore the world beyond Westeros. We can go where nobody knows who we are, who out parents were. We can be No-one, we can be anyone."
For a moment, he did not respond. Internally, he seemed to struggle with the age-old dilemma of risk versus comfort, the danger of the unknown versus the possibility of glorious reward. Arya stepped back, thinking that, in her happiness, she had miscalculated.
Gendry's lips formed a smile that was too rare, that seemed to presage a different life for both of them, one where swathes of human lives were not harried and controlled by a clutch of overfed lords grasping at power. One where two lovers would never be divided by the randomness of birth, position and name. They could be free from it all, they could escape the game.
"When can we leave?"