She traced the scars across his shoulder and remembered. The smell of fire, and the sting of salt, and half-smiles he gave her when she had nothing at all in her heart but a burning flame of loneliness and flickering ember that burned for hope or vengeance. She remembered crying, almost, for the first time and the last time in a very long while. Most of all, she remembered how hard it hurt, how solidly his eventual separation sunk into her gut. How badly she felt betrayed. For a moment, she thought to stay with him. He had become her family. Her friend, her brother. She could hardly remember Robb's face, it seemed so very long ago. But he was there. Real and solid, and he accepted her when she thought Robb never could again.
She remembered how she couldn't look at him, how she stared into the fire as he sunk to the ground near her for rest. He was comforting her even then, when he meant to leave her, and it made her feel empty more than angry. She waited a long time, pushing him from her mind and ignoring the sound of his breathing while he slept. She contemplated fire gods that brought back men to life, who held a promise her own gods had never delivered on. And she wondered if that was the god she should have been praying to all along. The god that might make all the people she cared about stay.
Because they never did. Not one of them.
She curled into him, draping her arm across him and pulling closer. Her nose grazed the slick skin of his shoulder blades, and her lips contemplated ghosting across his skin. Her memory clouded her thoughts, enveloped her, and she was eleven again. Afraid, not sure of anything, and desperately afraid of more change. Her life had been so convoluted, so unhappy, and he was a constant. He tried to protect her, though he was terrible at it, and she knew he cared. He understood her, more than her mother or Robb ever had. And what if they still didn't understand? What if she disappointed them? She was not the little girl they had seen ride off to the capital, she wasn't sure what she was. She wasn't Arya Stark, not quite.
It didn't matter. It didn't matter. She breathed out a steady breath, squeezing her eyes tightly closed. Nothing turned out the way she thought it would. She only caught a glimmer of death after that night, not the mother and brother she wanted and feared. And it was Gendry she saw again, who always filled the place reserved for the family she always, always lost. So many years passed, and they changed so very little in the end, and she and he where there now and that was what mattered. Robb was long gone, and her mother had fire breathe into a decayed body, and she regretted that night and the praying she had done to that red god, who made her mother live like she had wished her father had. She was wrong, she didn't want that at all.
He was the only thing she was ever right about.
She returned to him with daggers and swords and poison, and he had been as weary as she. They fell together naturally, without them meaning to, the way they always had. His quiet assurance, his presence, and her cold fire. He a steady flame, and she a flickering blaze. And they had made the wrong choices, had learned so much since parting ways and gained so little from it. They had both burned and suffered, and headed down paths they never thought they would follow. Baratheons and Starks always did. She grew wild and quiet, and he grew reflective and tired. They both thought back many times to that night and wondered what would have happened if the words they said had been different, and if it would have made a difference at all, and if he could have been the brother she needed before she lost the one she had.
Her stomach was a hindrance, and she had yet to decide if it was a happy one. She had a tendency to like bastards, so she hoped the trend continued as it always had. She wondered if this was the family he had wanted that night, when she had offered to be his family and he had told her in so few words that he couldn't. But he still called her m'lady, and yet promised her so many times, calloused fingers sliding over the rising bump of her belly, that she had always been, and always would be his family. They had to make their own families and steal their own lives, but it would be alright in the end so long as they had this, had their now. She hoped that this was it, that this would make up for lost childhoods, absent parents, and so much wasted time.
"Gendry." She murmured, not knowing if she truly meant to wake him, or if his name had simply become her new prayer. Her list had long since died on her lips, after all, but the aching, numb, lonely hollow in her chest that was always associated with it seemed to creep back up. She couldn't escape it, the feeling, and she didn't think she ever would, not even with her blacksmith.
He rolled over, facing her, and he knew he had been awake for some time. Her eyes shot open, narrowing as she frowned at his small smile. The same smile he gave her all those years ago, the one she still hadn't deciphered the meaning of. "M'lady."
"M'lord." She retorted tonelessly.
"What is it?" he murmured, his palm coming down to stroke her face. She fought back a flinch, and hugged her own body to deny herself from touching him. She wanted to retreat, to run, to not talk about the things her heart wanted so badly to put at rest. Most of all, she wanted the ache to subside, for him to make it go away, to soothe it, to mend her with solid words and strength he hid but always had.
"Why?" she whispered out, staring at his face that glowed orange in the light of the fire. It was fitting, that light shined upon him. He always radiated the warmth that came with light, always built and made and repaired as the light seemed to. They spoke of Stannis as the lord of light, but she knew they were wrong. Stannis was stone and storm, salt but no fire, and no light ever shone off him like it had from Gendry. He was made for a forge, for fire and steel and sweat and light.
"Why what, Arya?" he wove fingers into the tangled mess of her hair, and she hoped he didn't see her as well as he seemed to. He knew her too well, while she always felt like he was partially hidden away, and it was only fair she could remain hidden by shadows while he was bathed in firelight.
"Why didn't you?"
It was all she could manage, voice tight, and long forgotten tears found her eyes just like in her memories.
And he understood. He always understood. She brought her head to his chest and clung to him. He kissed words into her hair, "Because you had an old name, and I didn't even know who my father was."
She looked back at him, lips decidedly downturned, and relived an old day bathed in an old fire, "I told you I would be your family."
"You did." He admitted, and she thought maybe he sounded like regret and a sigh.
"Was I right?"
And that was her fear. That she wasn't right. That she couldn't be the thing he needed, that she was too broken and bitter and bent and cold, when he was what she needed to bring life back to her body and make the ache for an old home burn away. That he would always turn her away, repair armor and free himself of obligations he hadn't agreed to in the first place, and leave her like she had to have left him.
He almost laughed, and traced her nose with his thumb, "You know you were."
They were quiet for a long time, and she almost hoped he remembered the way she remembered. Felt the way she felt, ached the way she ached. Wanted to rewrite the past and force out different words that wouldn't have quite fit. She let him hold her close, warming the cold from her body, and let the wetness from her eyes slip away in quiet. She thought maybe she felt a kick in her middle, or in her heart, and she pressed his hand underneath her shirt to feel it.
He closed his eyes and looked happy, like he didn't ache or feel lonely at all.
She didn't know what she felt.
"Everyone always stayed behind when I always had to leave." She admitted quietly, the winter blowing away in the wind and the summer settling over her.
"Everyone always left when I wanted them to stay." He returned, and she knew he must feel like her sometimes too. She wondered if she did the same to him as he did to her memories, which were laced with regret and sadness and fear. If she made them fade to nothing.
She didn't think of leaving, but said it anyway, and she didn't fear the way she had, "Will you let me leave, when you want me to stay?"
"No." His words halted as he found her hand in the light of the fire, "Not this time."