Gendry/Arya has always been my favourite GOT ship, with Brienne/Jaime a very very close second. This story is set in the show-verse, and it's basically what I hope will come to pass in season 8. Hope you enjoy:
Arya was sparring with the little Mormont lady, pausing every few minutes to change her stance, or the grip on her sword. A small smile graced her lips as she remembered, years ago in King's Landing, the way Syrio had corrected her form, with pointed insults and sharp raps of his wooden sword. Glancing over at the heavily furred men, squinting their eyes against the bright glow from the snow-covered courtyard as they watched their leader train, she knew she couldn't utter those same scathing remarks to the little Lady of Bear Island. She had heard of how they fought while taking back the North from the cursed Boltons. She had no desire to test Needle against their swords. Today.
The little Lady was scowling, her eyebrows crunched together and her arms drawn tight in as she tried to block Arya's next blow. Her legs were straight as arrow shafts, keeping her weight off balance, and so when Arya pressed her advantage, the little Lady nearly fell over before her knees finally bent. She looked at her sword as if she'd like nothing better than to throw it down into the snow and storm off, but instead she raised her dark eyes and looked straight into Arya's face.
"It's not working," she stated bluntly, "What am I doing wrong?"
Arya was pleased that the little Lady recognised the fault was hers. There were teenage boys and full-grown men who towered over Arya and swaggered into the training ring expecting to best her in minutes, only to be sent howling away within two breaths. They didn't want to learn though, just to best her.
"You are keeping your legs straight, my Lady. This makes your body unstable, and so when I press closer, you find it harder to move away. Keep your legs bent, it makes it easier to move out of the way." The little Lady became even smaller as she bent her knees. Arya could see the concentration in her face as she tried to hold the stance.
"We're better suited for this, actually." Arya felt the sudden need to assure the little Lady. Lady Mormont's eyebrow raised. Arya continued, "Being as small as we are," and she made sure to include the 'we', "the larger men have to almost bow over to try and hit us, which means their bodies are already falling over, whilst ours is still upright. All you would really need to do is move backwards and they'd land on their faces." Well, it wouldn't work quite like that, but it was making Lady Mormont's eyebrows unfurl. "All we have to do is evade their heavy swings and then, when they've left themselves open, we rush in and…" she mimed stabbing someone's chest, just above her head height. The little Lady was almost smiling now.
"I trained with the First Sword of Braavos," again, a small wistful smile for Syrio crossed her face, "He taught me water dancing, to be quick as a cat and light as a feather. You don't have the strength to be a knight, so don't pretend to be. But you are small and, if you bend your knees, fast. Knights learn to hack and slash in heavy armour, so you have to learn to dance until they're exhausted and then..." again she thrust at an imaginary enemy, "Stick 'em with the pointy end." The words came, unbidden from the back of her mind, and her sword arm fell to her side.
Jon. Her heart wrenched a little. Sansa had sent a raven, surely it had reached him. Surely, he knew that she and Bran were alive and home and…well, as safe as Winterfell's walls could make them, for now. Why had there been no reply?
She glanced up to the walls of Winterfell, her Lady sister watching her with approval in her eyes. They'd finally made peace after Littlefinger's blood had spilled on the floor of the hall, his last words choking in his throat. Arya still felt a small flicker of triumph for being the one to slay him. For all that her list still remained, she had never thought to put Littlefinger on it. During her time in King's Landing, any time she had thought of him sent a shiver of disgust down her spine, and knowing how he'd looked at Sansa...Yuck.
She'd never trusted him, but she'd never considered him capable of setting off the chain of events that had led to Father's death either. To hear Sansa tell it, nobody had. She'd never suspected him and so he'd never earned a place on her list. To know that the man who was truly responsible for Father's death, for Sansa's time in King's Landing, for all the pain her family had gone through, was finally dead…there was a sweet sense of satisfaction humming in her belly.
Realising her mind had wandered, she turned back to Lady Mormont. She was standing in her fighting pose, her knees bent and spread apart and she had a look on her face that wasn't seeing the castle wall in front of her. She lunged forward sharply, her sword extended, and then dropped back into her stance. The movement was fast. Arya wondered who she was fighting in her mind's eye, to have her movements be so sudden.
"Yes," she said, her lips curling up at the sides, "Just like that." Lady Mormont gave a close-mouthed smile and repeated the movement.
'Lyanna'. Arya remembered with a start that the tiny girl before her was named for her ferocious aunt, the girl with the wolf's blood. Arya had always hated being compared to Lyanna. She had been her entire life, told that she had Lyanna's colouring, her stubbornness, her wolf's blood. And a lot of good it had done her, to die in a tower somewhere in Dorne. But Father had only ever mentioned her with love in his eyes, and she could not fully hate the woman she had never known. She watched the Lady Mormont hack at the frigid air and smiled. She may yet live up to her namesake, after all.
