Chapter 2

Gendry's POV

This was a bad decision. He was accustomed to making them occasionally, all things considered. He had been doing relatively well of late, he thought. It's just that Arya had to be so difficult, all the time. She was a constant pain in his ass and the saddest part of the whole thing was that most of the time he didn't care. He wanted to be with her. He was happiest when she was beside him, pestering him and fighting him and pushing at him. Though now his feelings were somewhat different than they once were. His groin tightening at the sight of her in the morning and his heart thumping whenever her fingers grazed his skin were both new sensations and only two of many. His body had never before felt so traitorous to him.

When she'd come to find him she'd wriggled her way into his bedroll in the dead of night, nearly scaring the wits out of him when he'd tucked in. He'd been sleeping in the forge to avoid Willow and Jeyne's accusing stares. It wasn't his fault he didn't want her. Jeyne had thought to make a husband of him and he'd thought to make a knight of himself. The two didn't work together. He'd been naked as the day he was born and Arya had slid a tiny hand up his back and over his mouth before he even had a chance to squeak. Her smallish breasts, grown larger with time, pressed against his back as firmly and menacingly as the steel of her blade at his neck.

"Will you help me," she'd asked later, when he'd dressed and she had stowed her steel. She'd spun a tale of a maiden locked in a skyward tower and the justice of her family and of course he'd agreed because she'd sat there before him, all sinew and soft flesh and begged it of him. He'd never been able to say 'no' to her, not even when she was a scrawny sapling of a girl with more angles than curves and more fury than sense.

And so they had called on the Brotherhood whom had been fighting a seemingly endless battle with warrior priests and roving bands of highwaymen and they agreed. The men needed something to fight for that was tangible and Arya brought it to them, wrapped up in a package of auburn hair kissed by fire and cool blue eyes. Sansa Stark.

It didn't take long before it became obvious to everyone at camp, including himself, that the girl from the tower seemed to favor him. Sansa constantly called him from Arya's side to escort her or to assist her and although the girl was nice enough he wanted to tell her 'no' many times. Still, he had courtesies and knew that to deny her would be a slight. So he did as he was told and sat with her as she laughed and simpered with the other brothers and Harwin or Ned. Arya fumed and insisted on calling him "my Lord" disdainfully.

He'd been legitimized by Stannis Baratheon a full three moons before Arya came to him in the forge at the inn and another month passed before they managed to liberate her sister. It was the last effort of a desperate man to continue his name. The brotherhood had brought Gendry to the dying king in his tent as he burned from the inside out with fever. Stannis had beckoned him close and after only one clear look shakily signed the paper Tom handed to him.

Gendry had been furious. He was the son of a disgraced king with no family to speak of remaining and all he had of his heritage was the memory of a mother and now a stupid piece of paper that did him no good at all. It didn't hold him while he slept or tell him stories or comfort him. It didn't replace growing up without a father or a family. He was forced to watch the last feverish moments of an uncle he would never know and for what? So that the girl he'd come to know and to trust and maybe to love could shun him for solitude because her sister wouldn't leave him be?

He sulked and searched for Arya often but couldn't find her unless she wanted him to. She'd grown, he'd noticed, into a young woman while she'd been away. Although she was all swaying hips, soft breasts and lean legs she was still small and fast when she wanted to be. He'd contained himself as best he could when she'd come to him and had continued to do so as they planned to rescue her sister and it had taken all his will power as a man and all of his honor as a knight not to kiss her lips as she explained plans or to brush his thumbs over the pink tops of her breasts when she leaned over him. Now he could hardly stand the distance between them at the cookfires and she was hardly speaking with him.

Earlier he'd spotted her crossing the camp and began to make for her but heard his name called from his left. He pressed on quickly, hoping to out walk the range of the voice that called to him but Harwin stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"Lad, you're wanted." Gendry turned and to his displeasure Sansa was sat on a log beckoning him over. He walked towards Harwin with a last look in Arya's direction but by then she was already out of sight.

By the time he's managed to extract himself from the Lady Sansa's company it had become dark and he stalked off hoping to find Arya at one of the fires. He'd only made it a few steps when he heard her voice carry over from the log he'd just been on.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing."

He listened as the sisters argued fiercely and stayed silent. Arya's tone was sullen and betrayed and it hurt him to think that he had abandoned her even though she had been the one not speaking to him. As their dispute reached its peak he moved from behind the clothesline he'd been standing behind and went to extract Arya from what he considered the beginning of a terrible fight. Gendry was unused to the sister's bickering but he felt sure Arya would stab her older sibling. He didn't think it would be a mortal wound but Sansa would probably not forgive Arya either way.

After no small amount of coercion he managed to get Arya away from camp. He was immensely grateful that Sansa did not know her sister well enough not to interrupt their row and effectually push Arya into his arms. Standing there, furious, with the tears on her face glistening under the light of the full moon and her hair in a glossy tangle about her head, Gendry thought she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

She had tears on her face and a frown on her soft mouth and she was glowering at him sullenly. She told him she wasn't going anywhere but as she said it there was an edge in her force, daring him to challenge her. Gendry shook his head, of course she would make this difficult, but he wouldn't make it easy on her.

"Good," he said with a smile. He could be difficult too.

"What does that mean?"

"Only that it is good, my Lady."

"Why do you want me to stay if I'm not friendly?"

"I don't want you to be my friend."

She looked stung. He pulled his hand back from her face, covered with tears as it was and brushed it across his breaches before leaning in over her, their faces only inches apart. He felt her breath hitch in her throat as he moved closer and smiled. She was tense in his arms, ready to pounce like a cat from the back alleys of King's Landing.

"I am yours."

He tilted his head and bent slightly just so his lips hovered over hers.

"My Lady I," he began his declaration but her mouth over his cut him off. Always making things difficult, his Arya.