Disclaimer - I do not own A song of ice and fire but I do love the characters. Sorry George, we all know how you feel about fanfiction.
"You know what I learned?" Her long, thin face tilted to him and there's nothing in her expression that's cold but her eyes are as fierce and focused as the ice in the North must be. Gendry heard the echoing of steel.
"No."
This woman, this stranger who had taken his friends face and changed it in ways that somehow makes him uncomfortable for an entire host of reasons. When she moved she made no sound. The skinny sword Needle still sits on her hip, he wondered how she got it back. He can remember the gruesome gold cloak sliding it into his belt loop still red with the blood of their dead friend.
This is the closest she's been to him since she was a ten-year old girl, calling his name as he was thrown aside by the Brotherhood and sold for two bags of coin. Arya had panicked, he remembered, as she'd shouted after him.
He couldn't remember anyone else in his life crying for him.
He thought again of that small, fiery child with teasing expressions, yet who held more courage then grown men. He thought of how she laughed, and pushed against him with her tiny hands, demanding things like a little Lady despite claiming she wasn't. He thought of her lying with her head in the mud, whispering names of monsters, her wrists clamped in heavy chains. He thought of a million images, all centered around Arya.
'Lommy and Hot Pie can't know. No one can know.'
'You want Gendry. You got him. He loved that helmet.'
'You stupid, bull head.'
'I can be your family.'
Then he had turned his back on her. He was a six and ten, a baseborn bastard of King's Landing running from Gold Cloaks. He couldn't fight worth shit, the only thing he had ever been good at was being strong and being in the smithy. He had no lands, no titles. He was nothing and had nothing, and for all those years he had nothing to lose.
Until her.
He hadn't wanted to lose her. He hadn't thought deciding to forge for the Brotherhood would turn out so horribly. He'd been taken away. She'd been kidnapped by the Hound and vanished from the world for over five years.
"Justice. Duty. Honour. They are all idols for fools. People do nothing but lie, and a great name only makes you a pawn in others games."
He had wanted to rise so he could be by her side. Now it seemed, instead of him rising she had fallen down from her highborn principles and met in the cruel, unpleasant world of baseborns. She'd seen more death. More betrayal, more horrors and bloodshed then most in life.
The look of her made him ache. He never wanted this, not this way.
"Will you do the honorable thing, now Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill?" she taunted, but he could see an ancient expression. Those eyes, bright and hurting as she tried to convince him to stay. Her voice was armor but he could see beyond that. He could finally see her.
"That's not me." he said, and the words were easy where they had once been painful. If he could scourge the blood from his veins he'd do it. She leaned closer, listening. "I'm a baseborn bastard of King's Landing, no knight. I work in a smithy when I can find one. My name is just Gendry."
She's smiling at him, it's a tiny smile, but it's real because it's reached her eyes and she takes one of his large, caullsed hands in hers. They're almost as rough as his own. He wonders how many hours of sword fighting she's seen in these last five years.
"I'm only Arya." she told him, taking his hand as she lead him away from the inn. He followed willingly enough. "I don't need a knight, don't want one but I will take a bastard for company."
"As mi'lady commands." He squeezed her small hand tightly. He'd never focus on the wrong thing again. The world was too filled with shit to ignore gentle summer snows.
