Boy meets girl. Boy asks girl out. Or girl asks boy out. It's the twenty first century, you know. Boy and girl go on date. Maybe they were previously friends. Maybe they've just met. They get to know each other better. Once their feelings are obvious, boy kisses girl. Or vice versa. Maybe they go back to his place. Maybe they're taking it slow. The main point being: boy meets girl.
Boy meets girl (on the run from the Lannister mafia). Boy asks girl (to run away with him, like she has a choice). Or girl asks boy (to show her the ways of the South, for she isn't used to the heat down here). It's the twenty first century, you know. Boy and girl (are on the run, surviving off of nothing, fueled by adrenaline, can barely remember the other's name). Maybe they were previously (hurt by the Lions; they killed the family she'd always depended on, they withheld the family he'd always so desperately needed). They get to know each other better (from Fresno to Phoenix to Las Vegas to Sacramento to Los Angeles to Albuquerque and finally Santa Fe). Once their feelings are obvious (just kidding, they never are). The main point being: it's a hard knock life.
Wasn't it you who said life was like a plastic cup? To be used and then disposed of,
"We have enough money for a bed tonight.
"No, we don't, Gendry."
"We have the money."
"I'll believe it when I see it, kid."
"Pamela, he's kidding - he doesn't have the money. Not if we want to eat tomorrow, idiot."
"Arya, I'm not letting you go without a bed for one more -"
"Take it."
"What?"
"Take the room. You kids need it, what's the use of keeping it empty? Go on, end of the hall on the right."
"Thanks!" His hand encases hers as he tugs her backwards down the dank hallway.
"Thank you, Pamela!"
Oh but that's now way to live a life like yours.
"Time," she demanded with a finality in her voice, signaling that whatever time it happened to be, it was the end of the day.
"One," her stag replied, obedient as ever, as he shrugged off his worn jacket and flung it onto the peeling leather chair. The aura of the motel was that of mildew. He figured it would mesh well with the odor of rotting flesh that would be circulating in the morning if the Lions found them tonight. The lights flickered. He held back a shudder every time they did, and eventually Arya got up from her original spot on the bed to turn them off. Se knew he had too much pride to do so himself.
"Sleep," she dictated, more to herself than to her comrade, as she climbed under the single sheet, pressing her nose to the flaking, damp wall. She felt him climb in next to her. She never thought she would miss the cold of the North, but here, in a city that pretends like it isn't in the middle of a desert, with Gendry's back pressed against hers, she can barely recall the feeling of chilliness. She wishes she had a choice, and if she had such thing, she wishes she would chose to go back home. But she knows she wouldn't. When she was young, she was able to find solace in the arms of her father, or her brothers, or even her sister or her mother. Even Theon would have been a consolation in a time of need. She can no longer recall their faces to her mind with such ease. She is nineteen now - or twenty, maybe; she'd know if she kept track of the date. Down here it's the hot season and the slightly less hot season, and with no middle ground, and it was hard to remember to take a look at a calendar once in a while. But however old she was, it had been five years since she'd been in the North. Five years since she'd seen her brothers, her sister, her mother, or Theon Greyjoy. Five years since her father had been killed. Four years, three hundred and sixty four days since she'd been traveling with the man who was her only confidant now.
He was twenty five, but probably twenty six, and it had been five years for him, too. Five years since he had discovered who he truly was. Five years since that discovery, as well as his life, had been ripped away from him. Four years, three hundred and sixty four days since he'd been evading their grasp.
It had been two years, one hundred and twelve days, minus three hours, since Hot Pie had died, but they didn't like to talk about that.
"Promise me they're alright."
She thinks he's talking about his parents. She thinks his father was the Baratheon, the poor guy who was sucked into all of this, and brought his best friends down with him. Jon Arryn had been killed. Then he had been killed. And Ned Stark had been killed. She knew him, Robert Baratheon. Her brother had been named after him, and the man had always told her that he looked like the love of his life. That had been her aunt. She knew all the trivial things about Robert Baratheon; she knew he drank Merlot, she knew he was allergic to beets, she knew he had had a tattoo on the back of his leg removed in his thirties. Gendry didn't even know what he looked like in person. It seemed unjust, yet strangely fair, as if it didn't really make sense any other way.
She doesn't know, though, who he's really talking about. He doesn't have siblings - none that he's ever met, anyway. He could be talking about his friends, or maybe kids he grew up with at the orphanage. She wouldn't have known them; he grew up in Nashville, and she in Boston. He never knew his mother, he'd told her once on a cloudy night in San Jose. At least not that he remembers, because she was dead before he was five. An orphan. Arya wondered if she was one of those, now, or if her mother was maybe still alive. No way to tell. They avoided looking at papers from the East Coast, lest they catch any bad news. Sometimes she thinks that bad news is better than no news at all, but quickly remembers that bad news isn't better than anything.
"They're alright," she promises, but no matter who it is, she knows it's a lie. "Promise me I'm alright." She almost thinks a stranger shares her bed, as she's never heard that tone of desperation in his voice before. The forlorn plea is so foreign from his usual confidence that she simply can't deliver to him any more deceitful lies.
"No," she tells him cautiously, but he doesn't seem to have a problem with that, and as he drifts off he turns over and lets his hand fall in her hair.
"You don't miss them," he declares the next morning while they watch the sun rise in the dirty parking lot, and she's shocked by the truth in his words.
"Don't say that," she retaliates, because denial is what comes naturally to her. He takes his eyes away from the orange sky just as the sun surfaces to see the glow of fascination in her eyes masking the omnipresent fear. He wishes she would kiss him, right then and there, but men like him never have their wishes come true. So he stalks off, sitting angrily to the side of Pamela's car so she can't see him, but he can still watch the sky yellow, because His is the Fury and he doesn't really know much else.
He waited for her temper to die down, knowing his would too, eventually. It happens that night. She's spent the day outside doing who knows what, and he's spent the day inside brooding, all the while checking down the hall with Pamela. Pamela rang the cheap phone in his room every time Arya's small frame passed the clear glass door, and that way Gendry didn't have to resort to following her around. In the back of his mind lived the thought that wondered why she kept passing by, but it was overwhelmed by thoughts of her safety. She returns at nine that night with a full haul from the grocery store down the street, and he's too elated to be scared of how she obtained such a thing. But they don't speak. The eat a small meal, rationing their rare supplies, in silence, filled with furtive glances cast at the ceiling. As he licks his fingers, she speaks first.
"You're right." The apology in her voice is obvious, as is the sincere hopelessness. He looks sideways at her eyes, which look past him and at something beyond their existence.
"I know."
"I would be a whore by now, if it weren't for my pride, and we'd be rolling in money."
They lie side by side, staring at the ceiling, legs overlapping. There's something bigger there, but neither can quite decipher what it is. He doesn't reply to her. "And if it weren't for you, I guess."
"For me?"
"You'd never let it happen." The eerie silence forced her to doubt herself. "Right?"
"Course not," he answers, fighting the impulse to stretch his neck and kiss her temple right then and there. "You'd make an awful whore, anyway. Doubt we'd be rolling in money."
She gives a small laugh that's actually half real this time before rolling over towards the wall. As he drops into nothingness he feels her boney hand grab his, and his last coherent thought is recognizing the awkward and visibly uncomfortable angle at which her elbow is in order to obtain that small symbol of security.
She leans over the countertop, arms crosses, grimy breath in my face.
"What's the date, Pamela?"
"It's the twenty first."
"Of?"
"Of September."
"Two thousand three?"
"Yes."
"Thank you, Pamela."
I watch her go.
"What's a Storm's End, Gendry?" He had found a pen that morning before she woke up and had scribbled it on the wooden bedside table.
His sigh is not only audible but sentimental, and she can tell she's asked the wrong question. It doesn't matter. He'll answer her anyway. He always does.
"It's the name of the orphanage I grew up at." It's where I met Hot Pie. But he knows that and she knows that and there's no point in voicing it.
She gives him a quizzical look, burying her compassion for a happier time. "I didn't know orphanages had names."
There's nothing left to say on the topic so she sits on the floor next to him and watches his arm move to and fro as he scribbles the word some more on paper provided by Pamela herself.
"A man came to see me once, there," he says after twenty minutes, though to her it felt like hours, and although she instantly straightens, he continues his scribbles as if he'd never even spoken. The unasked question of Who? hung in the air for an eternity of a moment before he continued. "He came to see me once. Just to check up on me, and I think it was because my dad didn't want to fly all the way down to Tennessee. I didn't know who he was. Didn't know who my dad to the orphanage. Storm's End. I think I was eight." He paused before stating more. "He told me he had a son I was just like. His name was Jon." He heard a sharp, yet subtle, intake of breath from beneath him, but averted his eyes back to his paper. "He was your father, wasn't he?"
Where Gendry was free with conversing about his family (or lack thereof), she was distant. He knew what he did about the Starks from research done as boy on the Baratheons. But there were things he knew about the Starks that couldn't be put into words, and those he had learned from Arya as she spoke and whimpered in her sleep.
"Yes, he was."
Arya had never felt so isolated in her years, and yet she had never felt so appreciated, either.
Don't you see now how I pay?
A/N this was for phoebe (hiphoebe) and also for sarah and it's a companion piece to STOLEN GLANCES by HIPHOEBE. review because you love me, ~bills