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Being a lord meant reading and writing. Gendry never learned properly.

He loses his temper more than Gendry cares to admit, but his maester at Storm's End admits to a similiar childhood before coming into his profession.

Everything else isn't difficult: listening to the smallfolk and protecting them from raiders and deserters. Giving orders. Most of the time, Gendry spends in his own smithy deep, deep within his ancestral castle, creating new weapons and repairing the old for his guards and soldiers or riding through the dense, green stormland forests, his mind wandering elsewhere. His heart, too.

If he's here…

Then it's a promise to return to you… …

Gendry lifts his head from his chamber-table, once dozing against the fold of his arms, rubbing his eyes. The long-ago, familiar tolling of the bells. He glimpses Robb lowering his training sword and looking out the window in childish alarm. Black hair and dark Stark eyes.

"… What's that, Father?"

"Your mother," Gendry whispers, like a sigh of relief, picking up his son and carrying him out.

There's no port in Storm's End, but merchants and sailors dock nearest Estermont or The Weeping Village. He sets Robb down, instructing the guards to leave and entering the Round Hall. A petite, lean woman stands in the centre. She lowers her hood, staring Gendry in the eye. Being on the open sea and gods-know-where-else blotched her skin a hot, rosy colour.

He rushes forward without thinking, taking a wide-eyed, laughing Arya into his embrace and pressing his lips and nose into her throat. "I waited…" Gendry mumbles, almost tearfully. "Didn't know if you would ever come back…"

Arya pulls away, ignoring her own quiet sniffling, wiping her face. "No-one to keep you warm at night?" she drawls, grinning brazenly.

"You're terrible."

Gendry breathes her in, the cinders and salt and sweat, kissing Arya's mouth. Over and over, and he grips his fingers to Arya's hips, to her back and waist, longing for her heat beneath cracked, dirtied leather. "I've missed you too, Gendry…" she confesses, wistfully gazing into Gendry's storm-blue eyes and features, cupping her gloved hands to his face.

Robb wanders to them, tugging on Gendry's breeches, peering up with her grey eyes. Arya peers back, speechless.

Of course. He had only been a newborn swaddled in clean woolen blankets and left in Gendry's arms before she disappeared. Robb Baratheon had been conceived and born in Winterfell, named after his mother's oldest brother — all without Gendry's knowledge. Legitimatized out of a bastard's status by King Bran Stark of King's Landing. Because Gendry loved him.

He hoped Arya would love him too. One day.

The four-year-old shyly clutches tighter to Gendry, as Arya's hand musses through his hair, before hugging her fiercely and crying. Somehow it makes Arya seem more lost. "I don't know how to do this," she mouths silently, looking pleadingly at Gendry.

"It gets easier," Gendry tells her, smiling and hushed. "I'm just glad you're here, Arya."

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GoT isn't mine. I know we are all like "oh Gendry is sleeping in the cabin of Arya's ship" and "oh Arya is going to Storm's End to go get Gendry for their adventure" and "oh Arya is not gonna be vanishing long with that baby bump" and honestly? That's all valid. I love all of it. I wanted to do my own idea though. ARYA AND GENDRY ARE STILL ALIVE AND ON GOOD TERMS AT THE END OF S8. THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS TO ME AT THIS POINT. Hope you like this!