Sansa searches for the intruder in her home.
The missing man had not been found yet. With the refugees given places to rest and a vow of protection from Winterfell should they choose to remain, Sansa made her way down to the dungeons. She found the man, Gendry, sitting on the cot inside the dark and dreary cell, bent forward with his arms on his knees and a hand rubbing at the back of his neck, most likely still stiff from riding. When he at last heard the approach of Sansa and her Lady-knight, he looked up and then stood in eagerness. Sansa stopped in front of the bars of his cell, her gaze hard and daring.
"I will ask you this only once," she said. "If you do not tell me, or if you lie to me, I will have no choice but to assume you are a spy or at the very least that you brought one to my home for some action which I can only speculate about. You would do well to answer me and to do so honestly."
Gendry rubbed his fingers over the pads of his thumbs and continued to hold her eye with less timidness than a man of his station ought to, a curious thing.
"Your question, m'Lady?"
Sansa lifted her chin a bit, challenging him to defy her.
"This man who was traveling with you, who is he?"
The smith glanced away briefly and continued to fidget with his fingers.
"I'm sorry. He said I was only to speak to your brother."
"The King in the North is not here."
This news seemed to surprise Gendry who, if he was a spy, either let his emotions show very clearly or was doing an applaudable job of trying to trick her into believing he was reacting a certain way. Of course, if they were after Jon it was possible his unanticipated departure would serve to throw off the assassins sent for him.
"I suppose you'll just have to tell me, then."
The claimed smith stood there a moment, considering this, then offered a nod of agreement.
"He's… not a he," he said with such simplicity.
Sansa didn't let show that she'd already been given information of that very nature. It was best to let him flounder in trying to get her to believe the claim, set him off balance and see if he would slip up.
"It's your sister, milady. Arya."
And then her confusion faded quickly into anger.
"My sister is dead. Do not insult my intelligence with fanciful claims. You may only see me as a silly girl, as others have done, but I am no fool. Even if she were alive, my guards say that man who arrived with you was exactly that. A man."
Gendry seemed earnestly abashed and if he was acting at any of this, he was ceaselessly convincing.
"I'm sorry. I never meant to insult you, milady. I only… I don't know how she did it. One minute, I was talking to Arya and then she was… Even her voice changed. I can't explain it. I can tell you that she's very much alive."
Again, there was nothing but honesty in his words and Sansa began to consider that he at least believed he was telling the truth.
"Are you trying to claim this is some sort of magic?" Sansa continued to play herself offended by his claim of his comrade's gender to see if he would keep up a ruse or crack and reveal himself a liar. "Prey on my hope that my missing sister could still be alive after all these years, so you can get a reward for her 'miraculous' return?"
Gendry shook his head, eager to refute this.
"No, m'Lady. I… She found me in King's Landing a couple months ago and she…" His eyes went distant a moment, looking back on the past, Sansa suspected, and when he spoke, his words were a bit softer. "She wanted to come home, so here we are."
Sansa remained silent a moment, her expression still its cold mask as she pondered over all this man and the girl from the village had told her.
"She wanted me to tell your brother…"
Gendry hesitated once again and the acting Lady of Winterfell found her patience beginning to run short.
"Tell him what?"
The smith from King's Landing shifted once more and rubbed his fingers over the pads of his thumbs again as he glanced briefly away. He met her eyes again, however, still with that same surety that continued to baffle her.
"She wished they both could've been here for the burial."
"This is a bad idea, Lady Sansa," Brienne cautioned, drawing the acting Lady of Winterfell to a halt not far from the entrance to the crypts where the smith had hinted they would find their intruder. "That boy's tale was ridiculous. We shouldn't believe anything he has to say. Even if the message he conveyed is to be believed and this stranger is in your family's crypt, it is most assuredly a trap.
Sansa held the woman's troubled gaze with steady surety.
"I spoke to one of the refugees, she said. "She claimed it was a girl who saved her, not a man, but it was two men who brought these women here. No one has seen this mysterious girl since."
Brienne shifted, unsure.
"I don't understand, my Lady."
Not many people would.
"Have you heard of the Faceless Men, Lady Brienne?"
Brienne's uncertainty only increased and this was entirely understandable.
"Ghost stories, more like," she declared. "Tall tales of men and women able to steal and wear the face of another like a mask. I can't imagine it'd be very convincing"
"Until several months ago," Sansa refuted, her expression grim, "we thought the White Walkers were nothing but stories," and these loaded words landed with their intended effect. "What if there is truth to this as well?"
Brienne stared a moment, silent in earnest contemplation.
"No one has seen Arya in years," the acting Lady of Winterfell continued, "not since you found her traveling with the Hound. She could be anywhere. She could be dead. Just because this person told that smith her name is Arya Stark doesn't mean she is Arya. He said she found him in King's Landing. Arya wouldn't return there, not after everything that happened. She would only be in danger."
She trusted the smith, Gendry, wholeheartedly believed that he'd brought Arya Stark to Winterfell, but anyone who didn't know Arya personally might believe any girl of similar age who claimed to be so was the lost Stark daughter.
"Regardless, " Sansa continued, "someone dangerous has come to Winterfell. Be on your guard, Lady Brienne. If we are dealing with a Faceless Man, we probably are walking into some sort of trap. They are, after all, assassins."
"Then let me investigate for you, Lady Sansa," the self-rejected knight implored. "If this person means to do you harm, you should keep your distance."
"Except she didn't come here for me," the acting steward of Winterfell reminded her. "She came here for Jon." Her voice was firm as she declared, "I want to know who sent her."
The fire from the torch Lady Brienne held aloft revealed a figure standing in front of the statue carved for the grave of Sansa's lord-father, and the Stark daughter felt anger burn in her chest for the gall of this intruder. The hood drawn against the chill of the crypts concealed all manner of identity, but the patchwork furs similar to the those of the smith in the dungeons proved that this was their missing visitor. Poking out from beneath the stranger's thick cloak was the end of a scabbard, a strangely thin one, at that. The weapon didn't appear to be drawn, however, and Sansa took that to mean they at least wouldn't be attacked on sight.
"You're trespassing," the acting steward decreed boldly. "No one is allowed down here but the Starks of Winterfell."
The voice that spoke, though not in response to Sansa's words, was certainly female, as both the smith and the village girl had claimed, but was unfamiliar.
"It should've been carved by someone who knew his face."
The presumed assassin didn't turn as she said this, and Lady Brienne pulled Oathkeeper a couple inches from its scabbard in warning as she demanded, "State your name, stranger."
"I've had many names." The girl said as she continued to look up at the statue of Eddard Stark. "Arry. Weasel. Night Wolf. Mercy. No One." This last one seemed to be a play on Sansa's words because there was a touch of amusement in the voice, but she didn't understand the joke. "But you, sister…"
The stranger turned at last to look their way and dropped her hood to her shoulders. It took a moment, but Sansa finally began to reconcile the small girl from her memories with the young woman standing in front of her. And it took her breath away because it would seem this stranger was no stranger after all.
"You know my real name."
The smith, it seemed, had been telling more truth than she'd given him credit for, more even than she'd ever dared to hope for and Sansa was stunned speechless because this wasn't an outcome she'd even considered, that the girl who'd helped him kill over a dozen raiders was actually her younger sister, long feared dead.
She'd matured, no longer a small child, though she hadn't grown in height as much as she may have liked. Her hair was a bit shorter and she carried herself differently, with a confidence that was so different from the overbold aggression of her youth, owing somewhat to that strange sword which rested so very comfortably at her hip. Moreso, she was more stoic than Sansa ever remembered her being and something about it seemed so much more… dangerous than the little girl she'd once been, yelling her threats loud and lashing out at the littlest provocations. Now, she was still and collected, her eyes shrewd, and something about her was so much more terrifying.
But, she was Arya and she was home and Sansa felt moisture collect in her eyes as her throat closed in on itself. Gods… Five years was such a long time.
"Last I knew, you were in King's Landing," her sister said.
Sansa regained control over the swell of her emotions, relief and joy chief among them, and cleared her throat.
"I could say the same of you," she quipped. "Except, my lady Knight tells me differently." Arya glanced over Sansa's shoulder at the woman in question, recognition and a subtle curiosity in her eyes. "She's told me she found you traveling with the Hound." Sansa allowed humor into her tone as she added, "And that you were dressed as a boy. I can't say I was surprised. You always did prefer breeches to dresses."
Arya grinned in humor and Sansa caved. With a smile and near to bursting with joy, she hurried forward and pulled her long lost sister into a hug. Whatever the circumstances of their youth had been, they were past that now. They were Starks and they were family. There had been too much tragedy to breathe life back into silly childhood grudges.
Arya was rigid in her arms as though unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with human contact and something in Sansa broke for her little sister as she wondered what had happened over the years to isolate her as much as the reaction suggested. But, she returned the embrace in time, still rigid but trying not to be.
"Everyone's saying you were a man when you came here," Sansa said as she pulled back but with her hands still on her sister's arms. "As much as people struggled to tell before, you couldn't pass for one now. How did you manage that?"
Perhaps it had been so dark that everyone had simply been mistaken, had seen someone wearing breeches and carrying a sword and assumed, but they'd seemed so sure.
Arya's smile turned a touch apologetic as she offered a vague, "It's… a long story."
Of course, it had to be, didn't it?
"I can understand that." Sansa's words were loaded with the weight of so many things from her own experiences. "A lot can happen in five years."
"Yes, it can," Arya's words held a similar weight. But, then there was a subtle light in her eyes. "I think father would be proud of you. The Starks have Winterfell again."
"They do," Sansa agreed and there was pride in her voice. "I didn't do it alone, though."
Arya grinned again, although hesitantly, and her cautiously hopeful eyes flitted over Sansa's shoulder. She seemed to be expecting someone to join them and the eldest Stark sister knew without asking who that someone was. She felt a pang of sympathy for not only Arya and dropped her hands to her sides.
If she'd arrived just a few days earlier…
"I'm sorry. Jon's not here."
Arya met her gaze again and was visibly disappointed, although the expression seemed subdued, not as ostensible as Sansa had expected it would be. More than anything, it was in her eyes.
"He probably won't be for weeks."
She gave an apologetic smile, knowing how close her two siblings had been before Jon had left to join the Night's Watch.
"If he were here, there's no way I would've beaten him down here to see you. He was happy to see me again, but when he sees you, I think his heart might stop."
This seemed to help her sister's spirits but not much.
"Someone else is here, though," Sansa pushed onward and Arya became curious despite her melancholy. "Bran is home too."
Her curiosity melted into a surprise she conveyed openly, seasoned with a subtle surge of eagerness for a reunion with another lost sibling.
"He's… different," Sansa cautioned, however, knowing she had to forewarn her sister about their brother's… condition. "Knows things he shouldn't, things no one could possibly know."
Arya's brow dipped again.
"What do you mean?"
"He says he has… visions."
There wasn't really a way to describe what their brother had become, nor could Sansa explain exactly what it was that he did, not with what little cryptic information she'd managed to get from him. But, he and Arya had always gotten along. She would surely want to see him regardless of his lost sense of self and Sansa wanted to believe that, however much he'd detached himself from who he was, Bran would want to see her too.
"We could go wake him. I'm sure he wouldn't mind."
Eagerness flitted through Arya's expression again, but she seemed to decide against it in the end.
"No, I- Someone would see me," she said. "I don't… want the others to know. Not yet, anyway. There's something I still need to do, something that requires anonymity. It's best if no one knows I'm still alive yet."
This, Sansa certainly hadn't expected, although it did explain the cloak and dagger nature of their arranged reunion.
"What is it you need to do?" she asked.
Arya held her gaze for a moment and there was regret in her eyes. "I can't tell you that." Her tone carried the apology she didn't voice. "It's… best if you don't know, just in case."
Sansa felt her brows furrow as worry began to constrict around her chest for her long lost sister.
"Just in case of what?"
Arya glanced away and shifted her feet before responding with a quiet, "In case I fail," which only increased Sansa's concern tenfold.
"Arya, what are you talking about?"
"She's going to kill someone."
The ever-tranquil voice of the husk that was their brother sounded from a short ways down the corridor and a shiver ran down Sansa's spine as she turned to find him wheeling himself towards them on the mobile chair Maester Wolkan had crafted for him. His eyes remained on their returned sister in that same fixed way he looked at most people now when he knew something about them from his visions. Sansa was about to laugh off his claim that their sister was out to murder someone, but she saw when she turned back to Arya, whose stare was locked with their brother's, that there was truth in the words.
Somehow, during this reunion, she'd managed to forget that her sister had arrived at Winterfell in the wake of a raid that she'd reportedly played a key role in ending.
"Bran…"
There was relief and joy in Arya's tone and expression, but there was also a tension there as she stared Bran down, apparently finding truth in what Sansa had told her about him. He knew something about her that made her uneasy. That much was plain to see. Arya swallowed and turned her eyes away for a moment in some hesitation Sansa couldn't understand for her lack of information on her situation.
"I was an idiot," she said at last as she turned back to him, holding Bran's unnerving gaze as if in defiance to what he thought he knew. "That was the only reason I failed in the first place."
"What are you talking about?" Sansa cut in, fed up with being the only Stark present who was on the outs in this conversation. "Kill someone? Arya-"
The look in her little sister's eyes when she looked her way drew the acting steward's questioning up short because there was… a darkness there, one that certainly hadn't been there in her youth no matter how wild she'd been.
"I came back to Westeros for one reason," the youngest Stark daughter said with that same darkness in her tone, "to get justice for our family. I wasn't going to come home at all."
"You came back to see Jon," Bran declared in that same flat tone, drawing Arya's gaze again.
Her eyes softened a bit with a resurgence of somber dejection and Sansa knew the words were true. She had always been so fond of Jon…
"Yes," she said, "I did. And he's not here."
"He will be," Sansa offered softly.
It was likely their best shot to get her to stay: Jon's impending return. Arya had just come home. She couldn't do that only to leave, and not just because they hadn't seen her in five years and had feared her dead long ago. With the army of the dead marching on the Wall, they would need every able-bodied fighter on their side.
And Arya, it seemed, although Sansa had yet to see it herself, had become just that.
"You said it could be weeks before he returns," Arya countered. "It could be longer, even, and I can't wait that long."
Silence fell between the siblings after that and Sansa considered how different her sister had also become during their separation. She'd always been stubborn, but now she seemed particularly singular in her motivations. It was possible that nothing anyone said would change her mind.
"Okay, so… What about after you've done that," the eldest Stark present postulated, trying to force her sister out of the little box she seemed to have made for her life-for someone who'd always craved freedom, she didn't seem to notice how she'd trapped herself in this quest of hers. "After you've gotten vengeance for our family? What will you do then?"
The silence that followed was telling and her expression further claimed that Arya hadn't even considered anything she might do afterwards.
"I don't know…" she admitted and for a moment she looked lost and unsure, almost like she was still a small child with thrown suddenly into an unknowable future. "I was never very good at being a Lady. That life just… isn't for me."
"You can be what you want to be."
Sansa turned and felt a pang of guilt because she'd forgotten the Lady of Tarth was even there, standing ever vigil at her back. She would certainly be one to understand diverging from tradition.
"I have a feeling no one could keep you from whatever that is."
Arya's small grin seemed unbidden because she looked down and away as if to hide it.
"Regardless," she said as she turned back, her expression carefully schooled once more, "there are things I have to do first."
Sansa knew then that they wouldn't change her mind.
His hammer was sitting against the wall outside the cell, with the guard, and Gendry had to remind himself that he wouldn't need it. He wasn't terribly fond of cells, though.
After his last tenure as a prisoner, he felt his anxiety could be forgiven and entirely understood. But, as far as imprisonments went, this stay wasn't terribly terrible so far. It was cold, but he suspected that wasn't likely to change much anywhere in the north during winter. The cell could certainly have been smaller and they'd given him food. It may have just been a bit of bread, a couple days stale, but there wasn't a hint of mold to be found. He had no reason to be concerned about his situation, not really. The Lady of Winterfell would reunite with her sister and he would be set free because, no, he did not bring a spy to the north. He just wished they would hurry up because the allure of an actual bed was just about more than he could bear.
Gendry was failing to get a little bit of sleep on the gods-awful cot in his cell when he heard the approaching scrape of armor plates and he lifted his head to find that very Lady approaching with the large woman in armor still trailing behind her. He stood, hoping the situation had been cleared up and that he would be set loose.
The Lady of Winterfell turned to the guard at his cell and said, "There's been a misunderstanding. You are relieved of your watch. Go, get some rest."
Both the guard and Gendry were relieved for their own reasons.
"Aye, thank you, my Lady," the man said with a bow and he set the key to the cell in her waiting hand before heading off, likely for the barracks.
"Did you…" Gendry hesitated because mentioning Arya's… transformation had angered her before, but it was the truth, however difficult that truth was to believe. "Did you find her, milady?"
Arya's sister looked at him as she approached the door to his cell to unlock it. He wondered if stoicism was an inherited trait.
"I did," she said but offered no more.
The door clicked open and Gendry was about to inquire about the sisters' meeting when the Lady of Winterfell pulled the door open and stepped aside, looking back as though having opened it for someone. Out of the shadows behind the tall woman in knight's armor stepped Arya and Gendry was relieved to find she looked herself again. She looked to her sister as she passed her and the woman gave a nod before turning to walk off down the corridor with her guard, leaving the two of them alone.
"I'm sorry," Arya said, looking dare he say abashed. "I didn't think she would arrest you. She's… less trusting than she was before. Although, perhaps I should say 'less naive'. It did look suspicious, I admit."
Of course, he understood as well why her sister had seen fit to lock him up when an unknown man-as far as she'd known-had gone missing inside the Keep. The part that was still in question, however, was why any of it had been necessary.
A part of him already knew. He just didn't want to admit it.
"You're free to go, though," Arya continued. "I've cleared it with my sister. She'll show you around."
But, Gendry couldn't keep ignoring the facts right in front of him. Facts like the pack slung over her shoulder and the delegation of showing him around her childhood home to her sister. He'd suspected it in the village, when she'd kept her identity from the victims they'd rescued.
Arya had never actually planned on returning to Winterfell.
"You're leaving."
She didn't answer, but it wasn't actually a question. She held his stare for a long moment, her expression unreadable as it ever was.
"I don't know if I'll be back."
Gendry's chest felt tight and he wished he'd pushed the issue back in the village, tried to convince her not to do whatever it was she was planning that she knew he wouldn't like. He should have tried to stop her then because now she already had one foot out the door and getting her to reconsider at this point would be impossible.
But, he couldn't not try.
"We just got here," the smith argued. "Your family lives here. Your sister, your brother. I know she said he's not here now, but he'll be back. You looked for your family for so long and now you're just going to leave?"
He couldn't keep the hurt from his words. She was leaving him too, after all.
Arya continued to stare in silence and Gendry suspected this would be yet another question she refused to answer.
Then she confessed in a battered whisper that made his jaw clench for the ache it caused in his chest, "I can't sleep."
And he couldn't just offer a vague placation that this would get better because he'd seen first hand how she was tormented every night, even five years later.
"It's been better for a few weeks, but…"
If Gendry thought it might change her mind, he might've confessed that this was because he'd hummed to her every night. But it would only embarrass her to know he'd been witness to her weakest moments. She may even want to distance herself from it, from the reminder that she was, in fact, still human no matter how many years she'd spent fashioning herself into a weapon of vengeance.
"I remember it all," Arya continued. "I remember every word. Every expression. Every… horrible thing that's happened. All of it comes back to me when I sleep. It's been five years… I have to kill Cersei, if not for my father than to keep the rest of my family safe."
She turned to leave then and Gendry stepped forward, desperation driving him.
"I could be your family too."
Arya paused in the doorway of the cell, but she didn't turn back to him as Gendry stepped up beside her. Her eyes were fixed on where her hand rested on the iron door frame as though she were determined not to look his way, and the smith wanted to reach out, probably to turn her to him but mostly just to touch her, to remind her that there were still people alive who wanted her to stay with them.
To tell her she didn't have to live for the dead.
"Don't go."
The words came out softly and like a question and Arya turned at last. Her eyes were sad, and it was some of the only emotion she'd allowed past her mask-not the literal one she'd worn the previous night, but the figurative one she put on to close herself off from the world-since she'd found him in King's Landing. And that look ripped Gendry's guts right from him because he knew what it meant.
She wasn't going to stay.
Arya released the jail door frame to turn his way properly and Gendry found himself stilled by surprise as she drew closer, lifting herself up on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck in the first contact she'd initiated since their reunion. She held herself against him and he stood there stunned a moment before he kicked himself in his proverbial ass and told himself to return the embrace while it was still offered.
And as he held her, it felt like he was shattering and being held together all at once.
She lingered and he certainly wasn't going to be the first to pull back, so they stayed that way for longer than was surely proper.
But, she had to let go sometime and they both knew it.
"Goodbye, Gendry," Arya said softly, her breath ghosting over his ear and neck and then she released him and drew away.
As she stepped out into the corridor, he pondered aloud, "Do you really hate Cersei Lannister that much?"
Arya paused, but she didn't turn and she didn't answer. She just continued on through the dungeons and Gendry could only stand there, watching her walk off down the dungeon corridor to the exit.
She didn't look back.
A.N.: I know it may seem like it, but no, the story is not over.
