A/N: Just a small thing. Jon x Ygritte and Arya x Gendry parallels abound.
Summary: "You know nothing, Gendry Waters." She was always his wilding queen.
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me. All characters are created by GRRM and taken from HBO, Game of Thrones, and A Song of Ice and Fire.
"You know nothing, Gendry Waters."
His surname is from the Crownlands. If his father had come to claim him before he died. Jon knows his histories. Even being beyond the wall couldn't make him forget. But being beyond the Wall has frightened him.
The words come out of Little Sister's mouth easily. When Jon looks up, he sees the Crownland bastard with a tender look on his face. Not amusement and nothing like vulnerability. Little Sister hasn't been Arya Stark for a long while but Jon knows that look on Gendry Waters' face. He's had that look.
He's been that bastard.
Little Sister is sometimes called a wildling queen and that frightens Jon. Wilding queens are touched by fire and die with an arrow in her belly. Little Sister can't be loved by a bastard and she can't be a little wildling queen. But Jon knows that Starks were an endangered species the moment the patriarch's head was taken. They get picked off one by one.
Jon isn't a Stark. He's a Snow. He's a Lord Commander. Little Sister isn't a Stark anymore either. Sometimes she says that she's no one.
The Crownlands bastard doesn't believe her.
"You know nothing, Gendry Waters."
Jon wants to shelter them both. Still a crow, covered in black furs, all he can think of protecting them. Gendry should be sent to the Wall where honor is held above a woman's love. Gendry could help protect the realm and not be pulled into the trap he's already ensnared himself in.
Jon knows it's too late. And even though Little Sister is cold, distant, and sometimes cruel, wilding queens can love too. Jon knows first hand. They hold spears – she holds swords and sometimes a bow – and they see giants and White Walkers.
But sometimes they find themselves in a cave and never want to leave. Gendry is already trapped in a cave and as much as she would like to deny it, Little Sister comes around now and again.
Jon wishes he could protect her. Jon wishes she could still be a little she-wolf who hadn't seen their father decapitated. She scolds her bastard – not Jon – but when the boy isn't looking, she lets the mask fall.
Little Sister gazes at him when he isn't looking. She lost honor a long time ago. Jon should recruit Gendry for the Wall. From what he hears, that's where he was heading in the first place.
But they're already trapped in the cave.
"No one."
"Don't say that."
"No one."
"You're Arya."
"You know nothing, Gendry Waters."
The bastard blacksmith goes back to hammering breastplates. Castle Black could do with a new armorer.
Jon couldn't bear to see Little Sister with an arrow buried in her belly. Gendry Waters may know nothing, but he's the only one she allows to call her Arya. She spent too much time across the Narrow Sea to even be grazed by an arrow.
Gendry allows her to knock him to the ground and hit him in the face until he bleeds. He smiles up at her. Tender. No amusement. No vulnerability. But in that small spark, she could smile. Little Sister could be Arya Stark again.
Jon should send Gendry up to the Wall.
Little Sister would still probably return from the forge in the dead of night smelling strongly of sweat and the Crownlands bastard.
She's a wildling queen and she lays with who she likes. She's a free woman. But she couldn't be stolen. It's the other way around. She could never be stolen. She stole Gendry instead.
Gendry Waters may know nothing, but he knows somewhere inside his wildling queen, Arya Stark still laughs.