A/N: And so we continue. Major revisions.

Chapter 3

Dinner was a calm affair. Five of the men sat at one table, they were the ones she'd seen at the camp before she was come upon by Ser Alyn (Haigh she learned was his surname, and Gendry said the boy was Frey on his mothers side. Gendry confessed to holding it against him even though he'd been but a squire when the Red Wedding took place and not with the Freys). The table held two knights she did not know, two squires, one being the older squire Pod who seemed a bit taken with Lady Brienne, and Ser Alyn himself. Jaime, Arya noticed, found Pod's deference very funny and tended to make japes at Pod's expense much to the squire's and Brienne's annoyance. Arya sat with Gendry on her right and the Kingslayer on her left. She was happy for this at least because she was able to focus her attention on Lady Brienne, who sat opposite her and whom held much of Arya's interest.

The woman wore breeches and a tunic as Arya did and when riding wore boiled leather under thick, well polished armour. Her armour, Arya noted, was made to fit a Lady as the breast plate was clearly formed for womanly endowments. Arya wondered if Gendry had formed that particular chest piece and if he blushed the whole of the time he hammered it. Arya also noticed the heavily rippled Valyrian steel blade that Brienne kept with her at all times. It was a beautiful sword, wide and long with black and red ripples throughout the steel. As far as Arya could recall the House of Tarth did not possess a Valyrian steel blade but she knew necessity made robbers of many.

"Your blade, is that Valyrian steel? I was not aware Tarth had such a blade." Arya said while peering at Brienne's hip where the sword was currently sheathed. Arya wouldn't even had seen it if Brienne had not been polishing it at their last water break. "My father had one like it called Ice. It was a greatsword as wide as two of those and taller than I was when Ilyn Payne used it at the Sept of Baelor."

Arya watched as the color drained from Jaime's face. She didn't know why he seemed so upset but is she had to guess it was because his beast of an inbred son had ordered the murder of her father. Brienne nodded gravely. "Yes, Oathkeeper is the blades name. It was giving to me when I was charged with finding yourself and your sister. I intend to give it to Sandor Clegane at the wedding, although Jaime believes I should not."

"Because it is yours." The Kingslayer's green eyes searched the Lady's blue ones before turning back to Arya. "She is an honorable wench though and you're keep at Winterfell has not been without a Valyrian steel blade since its erection. She'll not see the new King and Queen in the North without one." That was that, his tone said. It was as if they had the argument already and he had lost, bitterly.

As it turned out the Biting Boar actually did serve boar as well as mashed parsnips and sweet mead. As they began dinner she saw that the Kingslayer only ate with one hand, the other sat gloved and still in his lap. Gendry also only ate with one hand but it was because the other was busy kneading the flesh of her leg that was closest to him. His palm was so large and his fingers so long that they covered the top of her thigh and his fingertips were tucked between her legs. She wiggled in her seat as she ate, feeling warm and anxious. That would not do, but it seemed no matter how she shifted he would not let go. It was as though he was afraid she would run off and disappear. Arya was happy to be reunited with her friend but was finding it hard to concentrate on her dinner with his hand, hot and heavy, on her leg.

Brienne began conversation, surprising since the large woman had not spoken up much, aside from her declaration about Oathkeeper before. All the same, her face and features seemed intensely curious about Arya. "Lady Arya, I must know, where have you been these three years? I was charged to look for you and no one in Westeros I spoke to had seen hide nor hair of you. There was a pretender married to the Bastard of Bolton before he was killed who turned out to be a steward's whelp and Ser Gendry, it seems, did not tell me all he knew." She then looked pointedly at the knight beside Arya, who kept his eyes on his plate and food in his mouth.

"It is because I have been in Braavos." Gendry's grip on her thigh tightened a moment but he released it so quickly she almost didn't feel the sting. "I've spent the last three years there, studying. Gendry did not know, not until just now."

"Ser Gendry, m'lady. I thought I detected a bit of the Braavosi tilt to your speech where there was once only the dulcet tones of the North." Jaime casually reached across her to the flagon of mead in the center of the table and refilled everyone's glasses. "So you've learned to speak Braavosi then. How in seven hells did you get there and what did you do for money?"

"I did learn to speak Braavosi," she also spoke High Valyrian and Lyseni but they never asked, "Mostly I sold cockles at Ragman's Harbor and fought with Bravos at the docks." It wasn't a lie. She could have lied, she had complete rule of her face and knew how to lie well. As the Waif had once told her though, what is the point of lying when you may speak truth?

"Cockles?" Brienne queried, "How did you come to that? How did you even get there?" The large maiden seemed genuinely interested in the tale as was the Kingslayer. Gendry was steadfastly eating and the only indication he had been listening was the twitch of his fingers on her leg. She would attempt to leave him out of the story as much as she could because she didn't exactly know what they knew. She never did find out why Queen Cersei had wanted him. She was dead but the threat could still be linger Arya knew.

"After I left the Hound on the banks of the Trident, I bought passage out of the Saltpans to Braavos. There, to pay my way, I worked for a Braavosi man named Brusco. I sold cockles and oysters with his daughters at the ports. Since I was Westerosi I had to work Ragman's Harbor where foreign traders and sailors come in to Bravos and outside the Happy Port, which is a brothel."

"You traveled with Sandor Clegane?" Jaime said this at the same time Gendry sputtered out the word, "Brothel?" It was Jaime she listened to This time it was Jaime as he lifted his odd hand to the table and laid it beside his empty plate.

"He kidnapped me. I had been traveling with the Brotherhood without Banners,"

"Ahh, at last, how you met our indomitable Armourer." Jaime leaned back and she saw his other hand slip towards Brienne. "That is where Brienne picked him up, at the inn watching over those lost children."

"No. We traveled together before that. When I left Kings Landing, the day my father died, I met Gendry. The Hound kidnapped me when I was with the Brotherhood to try and ransom me off to my brother. By the time we reached Riverrun, Robb and Mother were already dead."

Jaime nodded, "The Red Wedding they call it. They violated guest right, with the help of my father no less. Be assured Lady, they were all punished for it. My Lord Father died of a crossbow arrow to the groin thanks to my younger brother and the Late Lord Frey and the rest of his cantankerous brood were slain at the Battle of Whet Willow. The last living Freys are, I'm happy to say, well in hand. One, the son of Edmure Tully and thus well watched at Riverrun. Denys Tully is his name, a boy of three years and your cousin. He's not got much of the Frey about him at all. The other, Ser Alyn Haigh, whom you've met, sits at the next table under mine own eye and our lady's."

Arya was shocked by the sudden input of information. "Gendry spoke of Haigh but, Uncle Edmure had a son?"

Jaime shrugged, "He got one by that Frey he married the night your brother died. Out of all death there is life, I suppose."

"Where is he?" Arya realized her demand sounded somewhat frenzied but it was as though every conversation yielded more life back into her body.

"Don't worry," Brienne interjected, "he's lord of Riverrun, as he should be and if I'm not mistaken Lady Sansa insisted both he and Denys be at the wedding."

"Also," said Jaime, "I'd prefer it and so would my younger brother, if at the wedding you didn't go on sharing that business about our Lord Father. If Tywin Lannister were alive he would be the first to tell you Tyrion was no son of his. All dwarfs are bastards in the eyes of their fathers as Tyrion so often likes to say. Still, men call him Kinslayer and he is not so gracious as I when it comes to name-calling." He shrugged and downed his cup. As he refilled his own mead he refilled hers as well. "The people who matter in the company, which are only the people at this table, already know and don't care, so I speak freely. The nuptials will be quite different. "

Brienne smiled and ran her hand gently over his knuckles before pulling it quickly back into her lap and catching Arya's eye. "You never said how you and Ser Gendry know each other, only that you met-in Kings Landing."

By then Gendry's hand had relaxed and he was finished with his supper so Arya turned to him and gestured toward him the way mummers do when it's someone's turn to speak. She didn't know why the smith hadn't told them why he wanted to go to Winterfell. Moreover why had he never told anyone that they were known to each other? She thought it best if he told it to avoid her misspeaking and he could leave out what he would at his leisure.

Gendry did not get the hint. "Go on," She said when he didn't respond. He looked up at the table and Arya watched as the slight flush of mead became a more pronounced shade of crimson. His fingers twitched on her thigh and he set down his fork.

"I met her on the Kingsroad in Kings Landing, both heading toward the Wall. She threatened to skewer a boy like a pig and I thought she was going to do it so I stepped in. Noticed she was carrying castle forged steel and decided to look after her since she was the smallest. Turned out she didn't need me much."

Fine, if he was going to be stubborn about it she would tell it her way.

"We were going to the Wall with Yoren of the Nights' Watch."

"To take the Black?" That was Brienne, all confusion and curiosity. "Girls aren't allowed to take the Black."

"No, so I was a boy. I called myself Arry and cut my hair. No one even asked."

"Not no one," said Gendry finally, "I knew." He was drinking so his face was half hidden but she could see his smirk around the rim of the tankard.

"He did figure it out eventually," She admitted, "So I told it true after he asked me to pull out my cock and take a piss if I could." Arya watched, satisfied, as an arc of mead shot across the table from Gendry's mouth.

Jaime laughed so hard he bumped his hand on the table and Brienne blushed crimson from the top of her broad forehead to the edge of her tunic. Gendry only squeezed her thigh tighter and for longer than before as he swiped a sleeve across his wet lips.

"He was very upset when I told him I was a highborn lady. He started apologizing and calling me m'lady straight away, didn't you?" He blushed and scowled.

"A bastard boy still knows his courtesies m'lady." He said irritably. He didn't sound like he was in the mood for using them much, she thought. Well good, for some reason she didn't like to be referred to as m'lady. It felt wrong, for Arya Stark of Winterfell was no lady.

She only laughed as Jaime commended Gendry on his courtesies and for dealing with her being that she was, in his words, an "obstinate, headstrong child with more dirt about her than sense."

After they had a few more drinks and everyone had shared a few more stories, Jaime and Brienne having just finished one about Jaime rescuing her from a Bear pit, Arya finally decided to ask about his hand. It had bothered her for the entire meal and she remembered it not moving while they talked in the wood beside the Kingsroad either. He didn't use it to hold his reigns even. She thought, as he'd reached across her, she saw a sliver of gold beneath his glove.

"Not to be improper but, what is wrong with your hand, Ser?" He turned and held up his good hand, wiggling his fingers.

"Why, nothing at all little wolfling, why do you ask?"

She furrowed her brow and pointed, "No, the other hand."

With that he lifted his other arm up and removed his glove. Beneath it was a solid gold hand, stiff and glittering in the lamplight. "I have no other hand. Just this bit of ridiculousness. Not a hand at all."

Arya was drawn in and carefully examined the golden hand before Jaime replaced the glove. Gendry's knuckles, she knew, would be white with their grip if she looked down but she didn't. She was not afraid of a one-handed Lannister.

"How?" Was all she said, she tried to sound as clear and calm as possible. Jaime, for his part didn't seem upset but Brienne's eyes blazed, though the women said nothing.

"Many a captive of Vargo Hoat's Bloody Mummers lost limbs. I was not the first nor was I the last, I imagine."

Arya cringed at the thought, she'd met Vargo Hoat and she knew how deep the filth of his sell swords ran. She remembered as if she were at Harrenhal only yesterday, the stink and blood. They had called him the goat because it rhymed with his last name-being noble doesn't always mean you're clever. In fact, she had used his enjoyment for limb removal as a way to get Gendry to come with her when she left. Vargo Hoat had been good for something. He must have seen her sour look because he leaned over and patted her shoulder gingerly with his remaining hand.

"It's nothing to me now-I've become rather used to it. Besides which it keeps me in the company of sweet Lady Brienne since she is so fond of broken things." Brienne blushed prettily, in fact, Arya thought she looked better when she flushed because it softened the hard planes of her face and made her startling blue eyes all the brighter. Gendry gulped down his mead in one fell swoop and loudly ordered for more.

From there the conversation turned to other things. Politics, it seemed, had not become any less complicated in the time she was away. She knew that Dorne was now allied and living under the rule of Dragon Queen Daenarys. Her dragons enjoyed the heat and the Dornish enjoyed the Dragons. The only one to remain in Kings Landing, according to Jaime, was the fierce Drogon. He said after the burning, which was what they were calling the war with the Others, the dragons were loath to go to the North. That was why wights and wolves were still roaming about. The word from Winterfell, and the Wall, was that without their masters the wights wandered and killed without purpose. The first deep snows at the start of winter had given them a cruel advantage but with Sansa and Rickon back in Winterfell and Bran with the Crannogmen they seemed to dwindle and shrink back.

"You Starks have a way with the wolves. In exchange for bannermen, keeping the North free of wights, managing the new wildling inhabitants, and for controlling the wolves her grace decided your sister, and indeed your family, should again be kings, or in this case, Queen in the North."

Arya thought about this. It seemed an even trade, but odd. The Dragon Queen had, well, dragons. "But why? Sansa bent the knee I'm sure. She didn't need to be a queen."

Gendry snickered, "of course she bent the knee, we all did. There was no food, no more glass gardens, and bloody Others at the back door. Her grace had dragons." Jaime nodded, as did Brienne.

"Exactly," said Arya, "if she had Dragons why give up half of Westeros, the better half?"

Jaime laughed and for a moment Arya was reminded of Cersei and how different her cold, dead laugh sounded so unlike Jaime's warm one. "The Dragon Queen, though young, is not stupid. Her dragons are not beasts of the cold, they did not fare well in the winter winds. It weakened them. They grew sluggish and sickly." He shook his head solemnly. "Brienne and I were there and I will say it is a good thing those Others were not strategists and we took them when we did, or we would have been on the losing side."

Brienne agreed, as did Gendry to Arya's surprise. "I had sworn my sword to Tarth by then," he said, "and when we got word from Winterfell that the Wall was falling we were ordered to them directly. When I arrived we were separated into new ranks. I was commanded, with the rest of my Lady's forces, by your brother, Lord Commander Snow."

Jaime smiled wide, "Yes that could not be helped. The Northmen love their Starks, even the bastard ones." When Arya started he continued quickly. "On the whole though that love has been earned and is not without reason. The Direwolves, those great beasts, were a great help in the fight. I'd say that was why the Dragon Queen has offered your sister the title of Queen in the North. She understands a thing of beasts."

Arya thought of Nymeria and wished, for a moment, that she had been at the battle. She remembered the rush and heat of a good fight, the warmth of blood on her skin. Sure, she could have died, but it never stopped her before and she would gladly have risked it to be reunited with her family, her direwolf, and the north again. Maybe one of the wolves around Winterfell would prove to be her own. The wolf dreams had never stopped completely, no matter where she'd been. Arya didn't know if that meant anything but she decided she would take it for hope.

Once they'd finished the flagon of sweet mead Gendry had ordered, Brienne's squire Pod inquired about sleeping arrangements for his Lady and they decided to retire for the evening. Brienne and Jaime, she noted, were not sharing the same room but were in rooms that adjoined. She wasn't sure what to make of that since they had put her and Gendry in adjoining rooms as well. Gendry explained the sleeping arrangements rather red-faced which told her at least he had not expected them to be sharing such familiar quarters but he didn't seem to find it odd that Jaime and Brienne were. She learned Pod and Aemon, the squires, then shared a room as did the Knights Alyn and Wyl. The other knight, a Ser Balman, seemed pleased that he would no longer have to share his room with Gendry. The three knights, she suspected as she watched them adjourn upstairs, would be returning to the still busy common room before too long.

She did not feel in the least bit tired either, although she knew they had a long day ahead of them. Jaime decided if they made a great push tomorrow they would make it to Moat Cailin by evenfall. In the summer Moat Cailin was a two to three day ride from Winterfell. In winter, if the winds and the sky allowed, it could be done in four by the Kingsroad.

Arya slipped into her room and began making preparations. She repacked her bag, slipped off her tunic and breeches, exchanging them for a long soak in a large tub full of scolding water and her favorite night shirt. Although they were impractical in a Westerosi winter, she had gotten used to wearing them in Braavos and was rather fond. She'd picked this particular one up, a long black one with thick white embroidery on the cuffs and hems not long after she had become an apprentice. Izembaro lived near the Purple Harbor, where the air was always warm and heavy even at night and night shirts or gowns were often worn to prevent the sleeping-heat sickness.

In her room above the Biting Boar she shivered as she adjusted the blankets of her bed. She had enjoyed the warmth of Braavos and had been born in the years of the Long Summer but Arya was a child of the North and refused to give in to the chill. Before long though, she was shivering in her nightclothes and chattering her teeth together. Arya had slept in her breeches and tunic since her return, not wanting to waste her time with too much bathing and luxury. It felt unfair that now when giving the opportunity to relax some she could not sleep for the cold. With a huff she sat up in bed and mustering all her will she wrapped whatever dignity she could manage and her heavy quilt about her and stalked towards the door that led to the bathroom and beyond that, Gendry.

Arya hesitated at the door. She lifted her hand to knock before bringing it back down to her side. Not that it had much of a bearing on Arya but Gendry had always been more delicate with her than she with him. Perhaps he would not want her with him this night. Arya had curled up in Gendry's strong arms more times than she could count when they had traveled together. She'd slept with him for protection when they were with Yoren, for comfort when they were with the brotherhood, and for company at Harrenhal. Even so, the first time she had been crying and he had hesitated and dared not touch her. He had merely encircled her within his arms like a cloak of flesh to keep her safe. Now though, it had been three years and she was flowered and grown. Gendry was a man of eight and ten at least, twenty most like. Would he turn her away? They had hardly seen each other for 10 hours. Arya imagined he had his own needs and wants for privacy and perhaps a bed warmer other than her. She would be loath to interrupt. Frustrated she growled at the closed door. What right had he to a bed warmer while she froze, a maiden, in the other room? She imagined the warm pressure of his hand on her thigh all through dinner. The comforting weight of it making him seem more real than all her time spent across the Narrow Sea. Bed warmer be damned she would not freeze in an inn on her way to her sisters wedding after no more than eight days back in Westeros without even reaching the Barrowlands.

Arya didn't bother knocking. Instead she opted, as she had done before, to sneak in and check to make sure he was alone before attempting to climb into bed. The door eased open softly. She had a steady hand and a foot softer than a cats paw. The room was dark, no candles lit, but her eyes adjusted quickly and she padded towards the bed. He was sleeping soundly, alone, beneath his own heavy quilt. His brow was smooth and his lips parted just so. Arya marveled at how much and how little difference three years can make. He had seemed so much older out in the forest but now, in the dim light of the moon, with his face relaxed in slumber he looked no more than the six and ten or seven and ten he was when she met him. Just a soft, sweet, stupid bastard boy.

Arya wrapped her hand around the corner of his quilt and began to raise it only to stop dead when his fingers wrapped around her wrist.

"M'lady." He said. His voice was gruff with sleep but his grip was firm. "Was there something wrong?" Arya huffed.

"I'm cold." The bastard knight opened his eyes and she saw them visibly soften as they scanned her quilt cocooned self. "Please, we used to always share-"

"Shh, m'lady, you don't want them to think, don't," he sighed, "don't say we shared a bed. You were a girl, no more then one and ten-"

"Arya, and I was two and ten." She corrected. At least, that's what she thought. Things were a bit hazy in her mind as to the dates.

"Two and ten then. You're a woman now, so you can't share a bed with a bastard armourer just because you're cold. People will think, they'll think I, we…"

"Stupid, I don't care what they think. I'm cold and I've missed you. Are you going to let me in or not?"

He growled in response and she thought for a split second that he would refuse her but instead he lifted up his covers and she quickly removed the quilt from her shoulders and then threw it on top of the bed once she was inside. She could already feel some of the chill leave her body as Gendry's warmth surrounded her. She had always found it funny how hot the boy was considering he spent most of his time standing next to a blazing smithy. She thought it amazing he didn't pass out from the heat. In fact when she lay beside him at Harrenhal she thought maybe he was so hot because he absorbed all the heat from the fire during the day and released it at night. She felt him relax gradually as his body melded around hers like iron wrapping around itself to melt into steel.

Soon he was breathing deeply across the back of her neck, his face buried in her hair. She tucked her chin into her chest and fell asleep not long after him.

A knock on the door that adjoined her room to Gendry's did not surprise her. She had been awake and listening as they knocked on her own door and then after they went in she heard them check for her. Arya knew it was only a matter of time before they asked her "protector" where she'd run off to. She had tried to get up only Gendry had wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and she didn't want to wake him. Now, she figured, that would be inevitable.

"Gendry, Gendry you stupid, wake up and let go." She whispered harshly and struggled a bit more vigorously in his arms. He tightened his arms and hauled her full against him. Arya flushed as she felt his manhood pressed into her back and stopped moving. She hadn't thought of this. Panic rushed though her but she didn't have to worry about how to wake him up because not a moment later the knocking on the door increased and a harsh cry came from the other side.

"Waters! Get up, the Stark girl is missing!" And that's when Ser Alyn opened the door. Gendry sat up at the exact same time, exposing Arya who had buried herself in the quilt and his chest hoping he would stay still. Ser Alyn looked from Gendry to Arya and back again several times before apologizing and backing out of the room.

Arya turned just in time to see why. The armourer's face was full of fury.

He made a low, strangled noise before flopping back into his pillows and throwing his arms over his eyes. Arya groaned at his long suffering sigh before pushing his elbow.

"Stupid, I tried to hide and you wouldn't let me up." She smirked as his chest flushed red in the predawn light.