She'd never felt more powerful in her life than the first time Gendry handed her the sniper rifle. She'd been hunting a couple times, many years ago on her grandfather's property and a couple of times in the Wolfswood, both times with clunky old relics that were too heavy and awkward for her to ever get a real feel for it. By now she'd had months of target practice, but as she ran her fingers softly over the cold metal barrel, took her first glance through the telescopic sight, and slowly adjusted the bipod legs up and down she knew this was different. She hadn't gone too far with this plan yet, she still had time and could still go back on her pleas to him to help her.
She didn't.
He'd asked a dozen times by now if she was sure that this was what she really wanted.
"Once you start down this path, it's not something you can easily put behind you," he'd said. They'd been eating breakfast that time, sitting around the folding card table they used as a kitchen table in their sparse studio apartment. When Robert Baratheon had told them both that their lifestyles would change, he certainly wasn't kidding. "It's not a pastime or a hobby that you can put down and then return to and pick up when the moment suits you.
She still agreed. Every time he asked, she agreed. Not as if I'd have anywhere to go, she thought each time he asked. Don't you remember what happened, she'd want to ask. You were right there.
They left the Baratheon mansion that day with the goods they carried with them and another manila envelope, Arya's first. Inside was a note with the address of the apartment building they were to live in, run a landlord whose leasing standards were rather dodgy but conveniently had good ties to Robert. A four story brick building in Flea Bottom, the side of town her mother would pale to think of her daughter living in, it was run down to say the least, but when you turned the kitchen faucets or shower on the water ran clear, so it had that advantage over the Peach.
Once Gendry started her training, the pair quickly fell into a comfortable pattern. They were given enough money in the envelope to get started and he had his money from before, but it was not nearly as much as Arya had thought they would get. They couldn't just call up Robert Baratheon and ask for some more money whenever they needed it and Gendry needed to focus on training her, so he was not going to be able to take as many jobs as he usually could. All of the movies had told her that mob hit men led extravagant fast-paced lives, full of strip clubs, designer suits, intrigue, and various high-tech weaponry, but this was downright domestic.
The apartment was an unfurnished studio with a small kitchenette. He'd handed her a hundred dollars in twenties once he realized there was absolutely nothing there and sent her off with strict instructions to buy furniture and supplies, specifically only what they would absolutely need, none of that 'fancy shit' she was used to before. She'd seen a second-hand shop and dollar store on their drive back from Baratheon, walked the few blocks over, and came back later with the bare necessities: folding card table, two folding chairs, two plates, two sets of cutlery, the oldest microwave known to man, a frying pan, large stockpot, a wooden spoon, two towels, and a large blanket.
She lugged everything up the four flights of stairs, knocking on the door with her foot until he answered, and awkwardly handed him back the three dollars and a couple of coins she had as change while trying to balance everything. "Mattress'll get delivered later today. Found the cheapest one still wrapped in plastic that the store had. It's probably used too but it looked fairly clean," she explained, shrugging her shoulders and starting put away what she'd bought into their tiny kitchen. "We'll have to share."
He nodded and said nothing. Well, at least he's not making a big deal out of it like at the Peach. Shithole apartment isn't big enough for two beds anyways. She finished setting up the table and chairs and watched as he sat the houseplant down as the centerpiece as soon as she'd finished.
And so it was that they settled into their domestic lifestyle. The Spider had been perfectly clear that they were going to spend the first month or two living low, letting the Stark murders fade from the spotlight and giving the media as much of a chance as possible to forget that no one ever found Arya Stark. The first two months were brutal for Arya, monotonous, tedious, boring. Gendry had a routine and she became part of it. It was easier that way. She woke up when he did, exercised when he exercised, side by side doing push-ups on the apartment floor. Each morning she went to the little grocer at the corner to buy milk, bread, eggs, cereal, whatever they needed, and she soon became an expert at making toast overtop of the gas burner. There was no television set, Gendry deemed that even the cheapest ones she had found at the second-hand shop were too much, but they both read through the Kings Landing Times every day, keeping their own tabs on the police investigation. She found herself doing most of the chores, the grocery shopping, carting their dirty clothes down to the laundromat, but she decided that she didn't mind since it gave her a chance to get outside of the little apartment.
A week or two in, after three days of torrential downpour stopping her normal daily tasks, she paced across the small living area of the apartment, stopping every couple of laps to anxiously tap her feet in front of their one large window, chew on her bottom lip and scowl at the rain, before starting on her pacing again.
"Can you stop that?" he asked abruptly, making her stop to turn and face him. "It's driving me crazy." Gendry sat at the folding table, three old issues of the Times in front of him, biting a pencil between his teeth as he narrowed his eyes in contempt of the crossword. It was the first thing he'd said all day.
"I can't!" she said loudly, almost yelling. "And I don't give a shit that it's driving you crazy! You wanna know what's driving me crazy? Being stuck in this closet all damn day. Never thought I'd say this, but fucking hells, do I miss grocery shopping!" She let out a large groan and ran her hands through her hair, getting her fingers stuck in tangles, only to get frustrated at that as well.
"Come over here and sit down." She looked over as he picked up the three papers and casually dropped them to the floor beside the table.
She didn't want to think she'd gone soft in two weeks, but most traces of her initial hesitance or distrust of him were gone. He clearly wasn't going to hurt her and also had no intent to hand her over to the proper authorities. He hadn't complained once about sharing the bed, though he had ran down to the thrift shop the second day and bought himself his own blanket. They still didn't chit-chat idly and for the most part they didn't speak at all, but every once in a while one of them would let something slip about their past, about what things were like before. It was because of that, the little bits and pieces he let her hear, that she began to trust him, so she sat down at the table, like he'd told her to.
"What's going on?"
"We're starting your training," he replied nonchalantly when he stood up from the table, grabbing the bag she knew his handgun was in and returning to sit down again.
She could tell her excitement was showing on her face by the way he looked at her.
"Don't get too excited. We'll be staying inside."
"But how do I get training that way?"
"You really think I'm just gonna cart you down to the range and let you handle one of these just like that? Have you even held a gun before?" He set the laptop case down on the table, fingers instinctively moving the dials on the lock, and opening it. She pushed herself up in the chair, straightening her posture to try and get a good view inside, she'd never actually seen it opened before. Inside the case was a molded foam insert, holding twin handguns nested together, almost the same way that shoes sit in a shoebox.
"This," he started, carefully yet confidently picking up the one closest to Arya's side of the table, "is your new best friend. You will learn everything about her, like she's your lover. You'll learn how she works, what makes her tick, how to quickly take her apart and put all the pieces back together correctly. She'll help you through your training and if you treat her right, she won't ever let you down."
Arya watched as he held out the gun to her, cautiously placing it in her hands. She felt the weight of it tentatively, glad that it was not as heavy as she was worrying it'd be. She thought about what he'd said just a few second ago, bringing the gun up to eye level and turning it around at all angles to get a good hard look at it. I've never had a best friend, not to mention a lover, she thought, but I promise to treat you right.
Gendry picked up her gun's twin, setting it on the table in front of him. "We're going to have to start at the beginning, the mechanics, how she works. I'll take mine apart, you'll do the same, and then we'll put them back together. Over and over again until you can do it as fast as I can, got it?"
She nodded. "Got it."
"Just one more thing," he said. "She's gotta have a name."
Arya didn't need to think. The word tumbled out of her lips before she'd had the time to realize it.
"Nymeria."
She practiced non-stop for a week after that, even though the rain had long stopped. Gendry spent his afternoons at the table working the crosswords and she would sit across from him with Nymeria, taking her apart, cleaning her, putting her back together. Her new lover, her new best friend. Every night before bed they would race each other and two weeks in she matched his time, jumping up and shouting her excitement for whoever was on the other side of the apartment's paper thin walls to hear, forgetting herself for a split second and almost hugging him, before she remembered that this wasn't a video game with her siblings. He didn't seem to notice the faux pas she almost committed, but she could feel herself blushing furiously anyways and thanked the Seven for the crappy industrial lighting in the apartment. The next day after lunch he pulled another gun, larger and more complicated this time, out of one of his bags she didn't even know was a gun case and they began again.
Two and a half months had past when Gendry's weekly calls to the Spider yielded good news. The coverage of the murders had died down, no longer captivating the media as they did when they were fresh, some controversial merger between Lannister Investments and much smaller Frey Banking taking the spotlight instead. Arya started her shooting practice on the first day of spring, the same day as her eighteenth birthday. She woke up to find that Gendry had made breakfast, so she figured that the rarity of that coupled with finally going to the range was as good of a present as any. For the first time in what seemed like forever they took his car to the range, since it was out of their normal two mile or so walking radius around the apartment. The range was almost empty and she was glad of it. It was slow going. She was terrible at it, just gods awful. The worst part was his silence. Each time they practiced she could feel him standing behind her, silent and judging, speaking only when there were mistakes.
Some days he would stand close to her, hands on her elbows or hips to help position her correctly, and she'd have to remind herself when her heart would start to pound that this was Gendry. The same guy who spoke to his houseplant when he thought she couldn't hear him, who got upset when his lack of education made the crossword more difficult than it should have been, who got more upset when Arya was able to easily answer difficult clues and would tease her for her private school education, who made her go to the grocer at seven in the morning to get ketchup for his eggs, because he just had to have it. He hummed decades old top 40s boy band hits when he showered, most of which that Arya recognized from her older brothers' girlfriends, and she'd be a liar if she said she didn't sing along under her breath from the other side of the door. The same guy who would start the night off as far away on the other side of the lumpy full-size mattress as he could get, almost far enough that she could swear that he might as well have been on the floor, but each time the police sirens or elevated train rumbling would wake her up in the middle of the night, Arya would find strong arms around her and shake her head, going back to sleep. It was just instinct, she told herself. The apartment is drafty and always cold, he can't help what he does while he's sleeping. Every morning she'd wake up curled in her own blanket, Gendry as far away as he could get once more.
Eventually, one by one, she started to get little things right. Not closing her eyes when she pulled the trigger. Controlling her breathing. Getting shots to hit anywhere on the target, then closer to the chest, then the head. He wasn't one for grand displays of praise. She learned right away not to expect applause and certainly not the hug she got from her dad when she surprised him by hitting a straw target with his old bow and arrow many, many year ago. Arya knew better, but she also soon learned to revel in the half-smile, the "good job, kid", and more often than not, just the look in his eyes that told her that maybe, just maybe she was getting the hang of this.
Of course, as soon as he could tell that she was feeling comfortable he would change something on her, different gun, different style of target, maybe a moving one, farther away, obstructed view. He loved to throw in the moving ones when she got too cocky, which was more often than she'd like to admit. They'd get in his neglected car and drive out to the Kingswood, to an outdoor range to make her shoot the clays and see how bad she actually was. She watched him, jaw slack with awe as he hit each target. The overall routine was always the same though, month after month. Wake up, push-ups, sit-ups, breakfast. Shower, gun range, grocer, dinner.
It was almost six months to the day from when they first started target shooting when he announced they'd be going someplace different for their practice that day. They drove to the outskirts of Kings Landing to an old industrial complex near the shipping yards. The broken windows and rusted barbed wire told her the place hadn't been used in years, but Gendry new exactly where to park, exactly where the hole in the fence they could slip through was. She had no clue what they were doing there and he'd given no clues, but she trusted him now, almost implicitly.
She trailed behind him as he guided their way up three flights of concrete stairs which had clearly seen better days, and quite possibly an earthquake, emerging into a walkway that overlooked the entire building.
He gently took the duffle bag off his shoulder and put it down on the ground. "You probably thought that your training was almost done, and if you did, you were wrong," he announced bluntly. She said nothing, sucking in a breath and walking over to join him. For someone that was usually so quiet, only really speaking to her when he had to, save for when they felt safe enough to share various details of their past, he spoke almost eloquently when he talked about her training. Each time it surprised her and each time she wished he could be like this about something else, anything.
"Your lover Nymeria might be good for every day use if you wanted to concealed carry, but this job isn't about protecting yourself if you're at the grocer and someone tries to rob it. Doesn't matter how good of a shot you become, you'll never be good enough to hit your target from as far away as we'll need to be." She watched him as he knelt down on the concrete, unzipped the bag, and handed her a large, black sniper rifle, not even trying to conceal her surprise at the weight of it, the size of it, or of how powerful just holding it awkwardly in her hands made her feel.
"It's Pentoshi," he continued. "Military. One of the best. Can't buy this gem down at the sporting goods store. You've got your lover, now meet the mistress."
She saw his smirk as she handled it awkwardly, like someone that'd never held a newborn before. "Here," he started, taking a step forward, adjusting Arya's arms like a mannequin. "You'll always use it propped up on something or lying on the ground to keep it steady and level, but it'll work this way too of course. She'll need a name too, this little lady, just like Nymeria."
She thought about Nymeria, the gun she'd come to love so much over the past months, and it dawned on her how alike the gun and her were. Both were small, much more powerful than meets the eye, easily hidden, unexpected but dependable. Looking down at the new weapon in her hands, all she could see were the differences. It looked strong, powerful, and it was, but if you were off your aim by a millimeter you were screwed. The rifle was skillfully designed, elegant and shiny, the barrel long and almost elegant, where Nymeria was scuffed from Arya's abuse, small and compact.
It dawned on her suddenly and she wasn't sure how she hadn't thought of it right away.
"Lady," Arya answered, running her hands down the barrel again, then hefting the weapon up higher and closing one eye to look through the scope, pointing it out over the open warehouse. "For my sister," she added softly.
Gendry nodded, accepting her answer without question, and gestured towards the concrete ground before sitting down. "Well, then, guess it's time you and Lady got better acquainted," he said. He grabbed his own rifle out and began the lessons they came there for.
