TITLE: Dawn
AUTHOR: 372259
FULL SUMMARY: [post 8x03] When she sees the hammer, Arya is not surprised. Because she cared for Gendry, and things she cared for had a tendency to die.
PAIRINGS & CHARACTERS: Arya and Gendry. Lots of Stark family feels with Arya & Jon, Sansa, Bran. Potentially some hints of Jon and Dany, as well as Jaime and Brienne, but will be minor.
DISCLAIMER: Recognizable characters, plots, and settings are all property of George R. R. Martin. I, unfortunately for my crescive student load debts, make no profit off of this.
Dawn
Chapter 1 - a careful heart and a castaway hammer
Jon engulfs her in a hug, laughing and crying. "How?"
Arya smiles into his neck. "Stuck 'em with the pointy end."
Jon laughs harder, so clearly relieved and smiling so widely that Arya almost cannot recognize him.
But she does, always will; there is forever an echo of Ned Stark in Jon Snow.
-x-
Sansa embraces her no less tightly.
"You survived. You saved us." Sansa holds Arya's face in her elegant hands, blue eyes misting and voice thick. "Oh, Arya. You saved us all."
If Arya squints, Sansa becomes Catelyn Stark; Arya's mother smiling down in pride despite her wayward daughter's matted hair, bloodied tunic, bruised knees, and blacksmith's hands.
-x-
Bran. Jon. Sansa. Just one more. One more person and she can breathe.
-x-
When her search yields a familiar hammer discarded next to a pile of corpses, Arya is not surprised.
(Horrified, enraged, and grief-stricken, but not surprised.)
Because she cared for Gendry, and things she cared for had a tendency to die.
So she isn't surprised. Truly, she isn't.
("As you wish, milady.")
And yet her heart still wrenches, her gut twists, and she cannot breathe.
Sansa is saying something, but Arya cannot hear her sister's words of concern. In truth, she isn't sure she cares. Which is a terrible thing to think, because she should care, because Sansa is her family, and—
("I've never had a family.")
She approaches the hammer slowly, dazed. Perhaps if she stares at it hard enough, it will disappear and bring her friend back. She stands before it, unmoving. Her sister trails behind her. Sansa is still saying muffled words. It's an external buzzing that Arya can do without when her own thoughts are spinning so loudly. Then Sansa tries to pull at Arya's arms.
(Gendry pulled her towards him, when the sick bastards at Harrenhall wanted a break from maiming the prisoners… when they started picking out girls from the pen to rape instead.)
Arya is kneeling now, legs sinking into the damp carnage of the battle and the mucked, scattered ruins of her home. Her calloused fingers listlessly run along the dried carmine that lines the hammer and its handle. The dead didn't bleed. So this blood is his.
'Cold.' She thinks numbly. 'It's cold.'
(But that doesn't make sense, because Gendry is always warm. Nights spent hiding and lost in the dark forests of the Riverlands were stickily wet and bone-chilling. So they'd slept together. Back to back, sharing heat, and trying to survive.)
'Would he have lived if I had stayed beside him? If I had watched his back - the way we did for each other all those years ago - would he be here with me?'
("Last time you saw me, you wanted me to come to Winterfell.")
No. No person was ever better off by her side. After all, he came here for her and he died.
Arya's eyes burn and blur.
'Stupid bull.'
Sansa is shaking her shoulders now, and Arya can't handle it. She can't handle any of them and their relieved smiles because Gendry is dead and Arya is not brave enough to look for his corpse.
("You're the strongest person I know.")
Her sister's past words cruelly mock her now.
She does not mean to shove Sansa so viciously. But she does anyways. Lady Brienne is there, stalwart as always in catching her sister. The Kingslayer – Brienne's newest adjunct – seems shocked at Arya's behaviour. Arya wants to spit at him and then stab him - Lannister scum, the man who sired Joffrey, the reason the Goldcloaks chased Gendry into war. The lady knight says something with a worried voice but Arya doesn't care, she doesn't care, she doesn't care. She is sick of last words and false vows and he lied.
(A careful heart and tentative gaze: "Don't die."
A warm smile and soft blue eyes: "As you command, milady.")
He knows her. And as much as she loves her siblings, they don't know her. Not the her that she started to become the moment Joffrey called for her father's head. But, Gendry knows ('knew', she amends bitterly). Not everything, but he knew that she had killed. Knew about her list. He knew her pain when Yoren and Lommy were killed. He knew Harrenhall: the smell of dead people and blood, the pig pens with rats and mud and shit to sleep on, the fear of being chosen, the lullaby of girls being assaulted and prisoners being tortured to death, the ringing of the Tickler's unnerving laughter, Chiswyck's suety spittle, and the Mountain's looming shadow.
Gendry knew those ugly parts of her, yet he still made her smile and he even smiled back. He didn't look at her with poorly-concealed fear nor apprehension. Like the way Sansa sometimes still did, like how Jon is starting to now. And then there's Bran, at least what's left of Bran, who doesn't look at her with anything at all.
Gendry looked in awe of her, actually, when her aim with his knives struck true. He looked at her with that same nerve-igniting awe when she crawled atop him and bit her lip, a half-hearted attempt to stem her burgeoning smile. Their embrace and what followed had been a voluntary lapse from her guise... a vulnerable moment she allowed because she was naive enough to think she could have a face again.
Last night ('last by every meaning now'), a dangerously hopeful part of her had budded. It had been nurtured by his warm, thick cloak sheathing her pleasantly damp skin, as well as the sound of his content breathing as they lay side by side on the coarse sacks that had carved their actions into his back. And then it grew rapidly, and whispered recklessly to her heart that someday in the future, he would accept what she had become in Braavos. That foolish part of her chest had believed he would help her learn her own face again.
But of course, there is no future for him now. And perhaps she should never try to bring her face out again, if all it does is get cracked and ripped and torn apart. (It's already such a shattered thing, the mask of Arya Stark. She is trying, she is, and has been since she left the House; but it's getting too painful to keep holding the jagged pieces together.)
She makes her way through the courtyard, unconsciously maneuvering around the survivors that continue to search for their loved ones. She sees more than one person break down into wails by a fallen body. She meanders around those crumbling people too.
Gendry is gone.
Arya isn't surprised.
'He left me before. This is no different.'
(Only it is. This time it hurts even worse.)
'Everyone leaves.'
Next is Jon, trying to shake her and "do not touch me" is hissed out with such vitriol that Arya does not recognize her own voice. She needs to get to the forge. She needs time with his ghost. She needs to be without the presence of Jon and Sansa and Bran - those who make her happy but guilty. Because how dare she be happy, Gendry is dead.
Her stupid, bull-headed boy.
("This is different…this is death.")
He had been right.
Sansa and Jon share a troubled gaze, concerned at the sight of their - suddenly mercurial - sister's back.
"I don't understand," mutters Jon.
"She needs a Maester." Sansa says sternly, for the second time.
"Aye." Jon agrees, his eyes still locked onto the retreating form of his youngest sister. He sighs deeply, remembering the shear frantic hate in her Stark-grey eyes. His little sister - who was once always underfoot. His dearest sibling, whose carefree laughter once rang out in the courtyard of Winterfell while she chased Bran or ran away from her fuming Septa. His mischievous sister, who was always plotting and sneaking sheep dung into some unsuspecting fool's shoes. His baby sister - who somehow killed the Night King. "She's changed."
It's something Jon did not want to admit, but a thought that had been building since he saw her battle-battered form clutching onto a dagger at the base of a heart tree.
Sansa straightens her back. "We all did. We all had to. And right now, the North needs us. The survivors are floundering, searching and grieving. We need order. There are likely injured still out in the courtyard and beyond. You need to announce that all capable men and women must scout for the injured and bring them to the Great Hall to be treated."
Jon nods. "I will do that, as well as assign a team to line up all the dead outside the trenches. Others may identify their lost, and then Dany can burn them." His face turns grimmer. "What do we tell everyone about…" Jon nudges his head in the direction their sister went. She is gone now.
Sansa sighs. "They will laud her as a hero. And rightly so. But people want to see heroes, want to hear them speak and smile. They will want to hear her voice reassure them all that they will be okay. For reasons I cannot discern, Arya is currently incapable of doing that." Sansa looks firmly to her guard. "Brienne, you will follow her and convince her to see a Maester. Then you will take her to her chambers, where I will prepare her for an appearance in front of the others. We'll need to have a feast of some sort tonight, which I can arrange once I've seen to getting all capable healers into the Great Hall. And then—"
"She will not listen to your words until she fixes her face." Bran's aloof voice interrupts, as clear and direct as always.
Sansa stills, her voice quiet. "Her face?"
Sansa's final word is imbued with a palpable horror, which confuses Jon. "Sansa, what's—"
Bran's eyes are blank. "She was always meant to settle our House's debt. And then the Guild will come for her to settle theirs."
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Side note: WHO IS SO BEYOND AMPED FOR 8x04 BECAUSE OF THE GENDRYA KISS IN THE PROMO?! I AM, I AM, I AM! ME, ME, ME!
Side note #2: if you like how I write Gendry and Arya, please give my other GOT/ ASOIAF fics a try :) I have two others that have gendrya as the main pairring
Chapter 2 Preview
"Does a girl think she can take the skills without a cost?"
Jaqen's smile is cold.
"Does a girl forget what happened to her brother, another Stark who failed to pay their toll?"