1

Arya Stark had never been so exhausted in her life, and it was still two months before finals even began. If she had been someone else, she would have broken down and complained. Loudly, too, as everything she tended to do was either loud or completely inconspicuous. That came partially from being a Stark, but it also came from her endless frustration with how the world treated her, as though she were a separate entity or shameless celebrity just because of what her name was.

Well, that's also from being a Stark, isn't it? she dryly informed herself, pressing her forehead against the glass of the city bus as it rolled through the furious streets of King's Landing. It was a busy day, but then again they were all busy. The biggest city in Westeros never had any shortage of people with places to be or things to do, and it was all beginning to make her head hurt.

"This is exactly what you get for listening to Sansa," she berated herself, resisting the temptation to begin slamming her head against the window instead. "You hate the South, why would you ever fucking agree to go to university down here? And in the capital, too?"

It was a scolding conversation she had had with herself probably a million times since the beginning of fall, and every time her excuse was exactly the same, and enough to shut her other half up. Because Spring Training is down here, and at least down here I can get away from Mother screeching at Father to sell the team and forget about baseball.

Ah, yes. That was the reason. She closed her eyes against the glass and reminded herself of it, while still wishing she was dead. Her laptop had yet to stop crooning after her from the dorm room she'd left half an hour earlier, reminding her that the research paper due in a week still needed to be started. Add to that the midterm on Tuesday she had yet to study for and the speech for Friday that had half of an introduction written, and she was quite readyto hang up her cleats for the school year, drop out of college, and live in her parents' garage for the rest of her life. As long as her father still let her go to baseball games, that is.

Speaking of her father, she checked her watch to make sure she hadn't left too late, and was relieved to find that she was still on-time for the lunch date Ned Stark had set with his daughters. She glanced out of the window at the busy street to verify that the next stop was hers, and then waited for the bus to patiently grind itself to a halt along the sidewalk before shimmying her way down the aisle and out into the busy King's Landing day.

Arya was not too fond of the big city. At almost six million people, it was almost twenty times the size of Winterfell and well over a thousand times as loud. She certainly acknowledged that it was good to be around people, sometimes, but she sorely missed the half hour drive she could always take in Winterfell out into the woods. She would walk for hours after school some days with Nymeria tagging along at her heels, comforted by the silent peace of the trees, before shooting home in time to catch the Direwolves' first pitch on the television with her father or driving to his private box at the stadium for the same purpose.

That was where she belonged. Not "testing her horizons" in bloody King's Landing. What a mistake. If the start of the regular season wasn't only a few days away in the first week of April she very well might have considered hopping a plane ride home and forfeiting her higher education.

Arya took a moment to get her bearings and then strode off, merging with the bustling crowd of the sidewalk in the direction of her father's favorite King's Landing sports bar. It took her only a few minutes to traverse the two-block journey and enter the familiar Lannister's Lion Club at precisely twelve o'clock.

The lunch rush was on in heavy stead, but Arya knew her father had made a three-person reservation weeks in advance, in preparation for following his team south as the Direwolves played their final exhibition game against the King's Landing Monarchs. Knowing such, she pressed herself between the impatient bystanders waiting for reservation and eagerly scanned the tables arranged about the bar for her father. She hadn't seen Ned Stark since Christmas and had horribly missed their conversations about curve balls and clean-up spots that often stretched into a.m. hours.

It took only a few moments. First, she caught a glimpse of beautifully red hair and was unable to stop herself from comparing it gloomily to her own mud brown hair before she looked past her sister and saw the grinning, weathered but jovial face of Ned Stark. She pushed between tables as he caught sight of her and stood, his grin widening into a toothy smile. He opened his arms and she rushed into them without hesitation, letting him pick her small frame off the ground as they both laughed.

"It's good to see you, Underfoot," her father whispered in her ear as he set her down, his graying shoulder-length hair tickling her face.

She wrinkled her nose at the nickname, though reasoned it was infinitely preferable to "Horseface", as Sansa had used rudely when they were younger. Her father's endearment came from her quick feet and soft step, which had allowed her to break her high school's stolen base record in softball by only her sophomore year of school. Still, the way her father's players had taken it up when she'd visited the ballpark made it seem mocking rather than complimentary.

"I missed you, Dad," she told him warmly, as they both joined Sansa at the table. She felt underdressed, in shorts and a t-shirt to complement King's Landing's warm spring weather, while her father was in a sports jacket and Sansa sat pristinely in a business suit and skirt.

"As I did you," her father replied, clearly unconcerned with her state of dress. "I was just telling your sister how I tried to convince your mother to let me come down here a week early. She wouldn't have it, of course... couldn't even make her fly down with me for two stinking days to see you girls."

"I'm sure Mother wanted to come," Sansa said sweetly from across the table, and Arya glanced away as she rolled her eyes. Sansa always played Catelyn Stark's advocate, and most of the time it got on Arya's nerves. In her books, only the love every daughter held for her mother kept her from distancing herself completely from her.

"She certainly misses you girls," Ned told them. "She wanted me to try convincing you to come home when the term ends, Sansa, instead of staying here. It would be quite nice to have the both of you home again, for the summer."

Arya snorted. "And have Sansa leave her precious fiancé for an entire summer? Unlikely."

Sansa glared daggers at her and Arya sighed. Usually the over-under on the two of them being able to civilly remain in a room with each other was around three minutes, but even that figure was being demolished by their quick turn towards argument. Arya had been trying to tell herself all week to enjoy the short amount of time with her father and not provoke her sister into ruining that, but it appeared as though she were already failing herself.

"Joffrey and I are already living together," Sansa retorted testily, her furious eyes unrelenting. "It would be awkward if I just up and moved out for the summer. Besides, Father, I don't want to be a burden on you and Mother any longer. I'm twenty-one, I should be able to spend a summer on my own without completely collapsing."

"Yes, you should," Ned agreed, with the familiar tactic of splitting his daughters apart before more than a few words could be exchanged, "and yes, you may. And I told as much to your mother. She just misses you both a lot and is conscious of the little time we have left with you before you're out and about in the world on your own."

"I'll be on my own a lot, anyway," Sansa said. "Joffrey will be on the road half the time. Maybe when the Monarchs travel to Winterfell I'll fly up for the weekend or something—"

"Careful," Arya spat, "or you might fuck up his concentration. Then he'll hit bad that series and blame you again."

"Arya!" her father and sister exclaimed at the same time.

"Language!" her father reprimanded.

"My presence is not the reason for Joff's slump!" Sansa proclaimed indignantly.

"His two-year slump?" Arya replied. "I think it's beyond the point of slump. Your handsome, muscular betrothed is just bad, and we both know why he's still on the team."

"That's not true!"

But Sansa's voice quivered, betraying her inner admission. Everyone marginally intelligent who watched major league baseball knew why Joffrey Baratheon was still on the roster and still in the starting lineup of the King's Landing Monarchs: his father, Robert Baratheon, one-time teammate of Arya and Sansa's father and a longtime Stark family friend, was the Monarchs' owner, and the Monarchs' other seven starters and starting rotation managed to claw out at least ninety wins a season despite their horribly-hitting second baseman. Joffrey had no arm in the field and a weak bat at best at the plate, but the Monarchs' manager would rather play the politics with Robert than risk his job by benching the young Baratheon.

Their dispute was broken up this time by a waitress bringing water and presenting them with menus. Sansa immediately hid her infuriatingly perfect face behind one, and Arya set hers aside without glancing at it, cooling down by glaring at one of the muted TV screens hanging about the bar's walls, this one tuned into a talk show that was apparently debating whether or not the Highgarden Flowers—how a major league baseball team could ever come up with such a humiliating and hilarious name was beyond Arya—would ever be able to compete for a pennant.

Everyone already knows the answer to that, Arya thought to herself. No.

The choosing of their lunch selections and the wait before the ordering of said items was perfectly silent. Sansa glared at Arya and Arya avoided catching her sister's eye, while their father stared at the tablecloth with a set expression, as though disappointed or tired.

Finally, after the waitress had returned for their orders, gotten them, and departed, Ned sat up again and said sarcastically, "Good to see college hasn't shaken your sibling affection for one another. On the subject of Joffrey, though, your mother asked me to inquire about an actual wedding date."

"We... still haven't set one," Sansa replied weakly.

Arya couldn't hold her anger back. "You've been engaged for almost a year, Sansa. Are you ever going to marry that piece of snot or not?"

"Arya," her father warned, but he was too late to stop her.

"Why do you put up with him?" Arya demanded of her sister, actually leaning across the table to go face-to-face with Sansa. "I don't understand it. I know we get in each other's hair all the time and never see eye-to-eye, but I don't like to see the way he treats you. It's not right, Sansa. It's not."

"What do you mean, 'the way he treats you'?" Ned repeated in a voice as cold as Winterfell, suddenly much more invested in the conversation.

"She doesn't mean anything," Sansa answered quickly.

"The hell I don't! Every time I see you with him he's yelling at you for some reason or another. I doubt that whatever gets him mad so often is always your fault. I haven't seen you smile when you're with him since before he proposed to you. Every since he's started with the Monarchs he's been nothing but an abusive shit to you, and I don't know why you take it!"

Arya's exclamation left the table silent, Sansa staring at her in horror and Ned looking on in furious quiet. After a long moment, he threaded his fingers together and leaned against the table with a heavy weight as he turned towards his eldest daughter. "Is this true?"

"Yes. No! I—" Sansa looked about ready to burst into tears, though her face was contorted more in anger than in distress. Arya could always tell when her sister was about to cry, even before the signs starting appearing. Sansa's usually smooth skin would wrinkle ever so slightly as she prepared to hold back the ensuing tears. Arya watched as her sister turned to their father and cried, "It's mostly my fault, it is, and when it's not he's just frustrated because he's having a hard time seeing the ball and he's not getting any good pitches to hit."

"If down-the-middle fastballs are good enough to hit," Arya commented dryly, "maybe he should ask if they can cart a tee out to the plate for him."

Ned shot her a look that told her she was not helping the situation in the slightest before turning his attention back to Sansa. "What exactly is happening that is your fault?"

"Forgetting to clean up our room in the apartment or remind him about things or just other stupid stuff that I should remember," Sansa mumbled. "It's my fault, he's really busy and hard-working and sometimes I just get in the way."

She buried her head in her hands for a moment, during which Ned shot Arya an incredulous look. Arya shrugged and gestured violently in her sister's direction, indicating her flabbergasted and limited understanding of her sister's destined-to-be matrimonial relationship.

"Sansa," her father began carefully, "he has no right to yell at you in any case. Why haven't you told me about—"

"Because it's not important," Sansa cut him off, emerging from her hideout and visibly swallowing her silent sobs. When he made to press his point, she quickly added, "It's really not. We're just having a rough go of it at the moment. When things get better with his play he'll change. Once we're married, it will all be better."

Arya made a rather rude noise to show her sister that she didn't believe that in the slightest, and their father was clearly just as unconvinced. This was the Sansa he had wound up raising, though, the Sansa Arya had infuriatingly grown up with. Once she gets an image in her mind, you could tear it in two, flip it upside-down and duct-tape in back together and she'd still think nothing was wrong.

The waiter returned at that precise moment and asked them for their orders, which offered a brief lull. When he was gone, Sansa was back to sitting pristinely and the moment had passed. Arya was in no mood to restart it, and evidently nor was Ned, so they both let the matter drop.

"How's school going?" their father asked her, and she groaned involuntarily.

"Excruciating," she said. "I haven't even been procrastinating like usual. It's just horrendous how much is piling up around me. I can't wait for term to end."

"You going to make it?" her father jested with a grin and she groaned again, only half-jokingly. "Everything else okay? Job? Boyfriend?"

"Job's fine," Arya replied, picturing her perpetually-rewarding career of stacking shelves twelve hours a week in the local grocery store. She had no need for the money, of course, being a Stark and everything, but it was another one of her attempts to escape her family's influence and she endured the grueling hours of boredom with pride. "Boyfriend's nonexistent."

Ned grunted. Or chuckled. Perhaps halfway in between the two. "Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand, if you're too busy with school and work and are approaching it wisely... on the other, if it's because you just prefer, what is it called, 'hooking up'?"

"I haven't hooked up with anyone since New Year's," Arya deadpanned, earning the glare of death she had desired. As she bit her lip to prevent herself from smiling, she held up crossed fingers. "Scout's honor. How about the Spears, Dad? They going to challenge this year?"

Clearly caught between deciding whether or not her hooking up comment was serious and a complex discussion about baseball, her father was helpless but to choose baseball, as he always did, and launched gleefully into a tirade about how the team from Dorne still had to prove themselves over their youth before he would put much stock in their chances. One thing led to another and by the time their food arrived they were having a clandestine discussion about the finer points of the Direwolves' lineup that Ned, as both the team's owner and general manager, had tried to fine tune the past offseason. Sansa nibbled at her salad rather reclusively, although even she couldn't resist offering a few pointers here and there—although much more a girl than Arya, even she had inherited the Stark gene for the love of baseball.

"How's my favorite catcher in the league?" Arya eventually asked, referring to the Direwolves' young all-star.

Instead of bristling with pride, as Ned Stark always did, the smile suddenly fell from his face, although he tried to hide by taking a heavy bite from his club sandwich. When he had chewed and swallowed, his face was blank, and even Sansa's raised eyebrows showed that she had noticed his stalling.

"Robb's fine," Ned replied. "He sends his love. Wanted to come, of course, but Luwen wanted them to get some rest after this morning's flight."

Never one to beat around the bush, Arya pushed what she wanted to know. "What's up with Robb?"

"Nothing."

If Arya didn't possess a death glare equally as fearsome as her father's, the conversation may have ended there. Sansa certainly never liked to push the discussion in untoward directions. Nevertheless, the ferocity in Arya's eyes made Ned Stark sigh, wipe his mouth with his napkin, and fold his hands in his lap before beginning again.

"He broke everything off with Roslin Frey," Ned said. Across the table, Sansa's jaw dropped. Arya felt her eyes widen. Ned noticed them both and shook his head. "There's more. He thinks he got a girl named Westerling pregnant, and he's all over her. Your mother is furious."

"What happened?" Sansa cried quietly, one hand covering her mouth. Arya rolled her eyes at the dramatized action.

Their father shrugged. "He was drunk one night. Got into bed with a girl. It's just how it goes. I think he's handling the part with the girl quite well, actually, myself, but even I'm a little upset he just dropped things with Roslin so quickly. Especially when old Walder's been a friend of your grandfather for so long. I think she deserved more than to just be pitched out in a day or two like it happened."

Arya sighed and grunted in the same space of a moment. "What's Robb going to do?"

Ned scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Marry her, he says. The Westerling girl, I mean. Her name's Jeyne, and apparently he's smitten. Her family's not too happy, either, they're from the west, out by Lannisport."

"Lion fans," Arya said in disgust, and her father shrugged, unable to hold back a grin.

"Will you shut up about baseball for a moment?" Sansa abruptly spat across the table at her sister. "We're talking about our brother and the rest of his life here! Just forget about that stupid game long enough to realize that."

"You know what?" Arya retorted, the venom she'd conjured during their previous discussion returning instantly. "Baseball's my life, and it's our family's legacy! Sorry you could never appreciate that right like me, but you've always been too obsessed with boys and money and shit. You're just like Mother, talking all this shit about it and going around and cheering along with the rest of us and marrying a player!"

"And what's wrong about being like Mother?" Sansa growled in an undertone that was more like the wolf all Starks had inside of them. "Tell me what's wrong with that! Why do you hate her so much? All your life she's tried to fix your shit when you fuck up! She just loves you! Appreciate that!"

"All right, that's enough," their father barked, and both daughters immediately fell silent. "You two really have to grow up around each other. I can't believe—"

"E-excuse me?"

Ned stopped midsentence, and all three of them turned to the young boy who had sidled up to their table, nervously clutching a small square of cardboard in his trembling hands and looking up at their father with big eyes. Arya watched as Ned's demeanor changed in the space of a second, from stern and commanding father to kind-hearted gentleman.

"Hey there," he said kindly to the boy. "What can I do for you?"

"S-sir, a-are you Ned S-Stark?" the child replied meekly. He was wearing a blank baseball cap, a shirt that displayed a dog running with a baseball in its mouth, and little athletic shorts. Arya usually detested children, but even she couldn't help but smile at the courage the kid was summoning to walk up to her father. When Ned nodded, he held out the piece of cardboard. "C-could you autograph this for me? I've watched all your games. You're the best pitcher ever. You're my favorite player ever."

Ned grinned at the child and gently took the square, which Arya finally recognized as a weathered baseball card of her father. Her father fished a pen from his pocket as he asked the boy what his name was and then wrote a short note on the card before signing with a flourish. He handed the card back to the boy with a grin and ruffled the boy's hair. The kid thanked him enthusiastically and then turned and rushed back to his parents, who watched amusedly from a nearby booth. The two fathers made eye contact and seemed to have a silent conversation before they both returned to their respected conversations.

Sansa eyed the crowd around them, but thankfully no one else had noticed that a baseball great was eating among them. "That was cute. I just wish that didn't happen so often."

"It doesn't happen that often," Arya replied, mostly for the sake of disagreeing with Sansa. Honestly, it happened a decent amount; at least when it was children that came up, they were sometimes fun to watch and meet. When they were chubby, middle-aged men near tears as they met the great Ned Stark, it got very awkward very fast.

"Bran and Rickon send their love," Ned commented quickly, to change the subject away from another argument.

It worked; Arya turned towards her father. "How is Bran?"

"The same. Brave on the outside, coping on the inside, taking it better than anyone else would. Your mother still fusses over him relentlessly, and he gets angry at her sometimes. Rickon wants to play, and she's mad about that, too."

Arya sighed. "Dad, it was a freak accident. Mom knows that, and Robb still plays and everything. We're Starks. It's in our blood to play baseball."

"Your mother wasn't always a Stark," her father said wryly, "and every time she sees Bran in his wheelchair she hates it a little bit more."

"It's not fair. She knows how much you and Robb love the game. She knows how much I love the game. Even Bran still goes to every game he can. It's what brings out family together, and she can't keep Rickon away from that if he wants to be a part of it."

Ned paused a long moment and when he finally opened his mouth to reply, a chiming suddenly sounded from his pocket. Grimacing in disgust, he fished for a moment before pulling out his cell phone and glancing at the screen. With a deep sigh and another grimace, he looked apologetically at Arya and Sansa. "Sorry, girls, I have to take this. I'll be right back."

Her father stood and began to weave his way through the crowd, answering the call as he went. Arya stared after him to avoid the icy awkwardness that descended around the table as it was only her and Sansa who remained.

She let the moment drag itself out for a few long moments and then cleared her throat, convinced she would regret speaking later. "I'm sorry about what I said about Joffrey. I just get really upset because you're my sister and he treats you like shit. I didn't mean to call you weak or anything."

"But you did." Sansa's voice wasn't accusing, anymore. Simply factual.

"I—" Her anger was quickly rising back to the surface, and she breathed deeply in order to speak civilly. "Sansa, he's bad for you. Please, please just take a step back and see that."

"What do you know about him? You've never even tried to know him better."

"I know enough about him." Arya crossed her arms and faced down her sister. "I've seen him hit, I've seen him sweet-talk Mom, and I've seen him yell at you. That's all I need to know."

"That's all you need to know," Sansa repeated sarcastically. "You're just like Jon, thinking you know everything about everything, too damn stubborn to listen to anyone trying to help you."

Arya felt a pang in her chest as Sansa mentioned their half-brother. It had been almost a year since she had last seen Jon, and she missed him terribly. He understood her better than any of her other siblings, even more than Robb.

She shook her head to shake off her reverie and replied, "I am trying to help you. Maybe you can't see it, but if you go through this marriage you're resigning yourself to a life of getting yelled at, a life of abuse."

"And what do you know?" Sansa said. "What do you know really know about relationships? You've never even had a real one."

"Because I've never wanted one."

Perhaps that wasn't the most honest thing Arya had never said; true, she had never been in a true relationship with a boy. Though her earlier jibe had been just that—a jibe—most of her boy experience came from making out in the back corners of parties with lesser-known jocks. It wasn't the fact that she didn't like someone enough to pursue a relationship, or that she wasn't willing to commit; more like, she found that men much preferred the blind beauty someone like Sansa represented rather than the spunky, feisty little thing she was. She'd spent her entire high school life being compared to her sister, in looks and grades alike, and where every boy in their school had been just a little in love with Sansa during her time there almost nobody noticed Arya that way.

Sansa now rubbed her eyes with her hands. "Look, I love Joffrey, okay? For his faults, too. Don't worry about my life, worry about your own. You were just complaining about how much schoolwork was piling up. You worry about your studies and your own love life and I'll focus on mine."

Arya heard the word "nonexistent" silently inserted somewhere in her sister's latter sentence, but decided to let the matter drop.

At that precise moment, Ned Stark came bustling back through the tables. His face was pale and his expression shocked; something was clearly wrong. When he reached them he rested his hands on the back of his chair and hung his head. "I'm very sorry, girls. Something serious has come up. I have to go."

"Is everything all right?" Sansa asked.

The two daughters rose and Ned hugged them each in-turn without answering the question. "I'll call you both soon. Stay safe. Do well in school. Be careful about boys. Sansa—" He eyed his eldest daughter carefully as he dropped a trio of twenty-dollar bills on the table. "—we may be having a discussion about that."

"Bye, Dad," Arya called as their father disappeared into the throng of people and vanished from the sports bar.

"Great," Sansa said as she plopped back into her chair. "Thanks a lot for that toss under the bus. Him and Mom will probably grill me about Joffrey, now."

"Sorry," Arya said, and it wasn't even genuine to her own ears. "It's just for your own good, though. They would be worried, too, if they saw what I saw."

"Whatever."

Arya let the matter drop, and pulled her cell phone from her pocket to check the time. All the things she had to do beckoned to her, and she groaned with the reminder. A few bites of her burger were left, but she found that her appetite had completely abandoned her. The prospect of a long and meaningful conversation with her sister did not attract her, and despite her misgivings about homework she cleared her throat and announced that it was probably time for her to be going, too.

Sansa glanced at her with weary eyes. "Do you need anything? Anything I can do?"

"Sansa Stark offering me help? What's happened to the world?"

"We're sisters," Sansa stated blankly. "And I'm trying to salvage something from this disaster of a lunch. So if you need anything from me in the next few weeks, before term ends and you go back to Winterfell, just let me know."

Arya, despite herself, was oddly touched by this offer from Sansa. "Thanks. Is there anything I can do for you?" Sansa opened her mouth, then hesitated, and Arya bit her lip to hold back a sigh. Never return the offer, damn it, you never return the offer. What the hell were you thinking? "What is it?"

"Nothing serious," Sansa replied meekly. "Just, my car is in the shop until tomorrow. My suspension busted and it's getting replaced, and I have an engagement tomorrow so that I can't pick it up on time. Could you... maybe..."

"Pick it up for you?" Arya finished exasperatedly. "What engagement do you have?"

Sansa dropped her eyes and shrugged. "Just some stuff that's been in the calendar for a while. Everything boring but necessary. Could you do it? I would really appreciate it, Arya."

More stuff to do. She rubbed at her temples and shrugged, herself. Holding out her hand for the keys, she groaned, "Yeah, I guess I can do that."

"Thank you so much!" Sansa said, spending a long moment removing the key from a rather jingly and dense keychain. "It's in Tobho Mott's car shop. Do you know it?"

Arya shook her head. "I'll just... I'll find it. Should I just take it back to your place and take your parking spot?"

"Yes, that would be great! And I'll pay for your bus fare to get back to the dorms. Thanks, Arya, this really means a lot to me."

"Well..." She didn't know what else to say, so she finally just settled on the obvious. "We're sisters, aren't we?"

She endured an awkward hug before Sansa left, weaving her own way through the crowd. After paying the bill with the money their father had left behind, she walked back out into the busy King's Landing street, already dreading the paper, speech, and exam practice that were crying her name.

It took only a moment of waiting at the bus stop for her resolve to completely crumble. Okay, fuck that.

Before her more rational sense of mind could change her decision again, she took off, away from the bus stop and the confinement of homework and annoying roommates and off into the streets, where, mingling with the crowd, she could be more free as another day of tiring life passed her by. She knew she would regret it later, when she was forced to return and complete the work she was shirking, but for now nothing sounded better than losing herself for a few hours in the daily bustle.

She walked for over an hour, mingling amongst the folk and walking a great number of blocks, further into industrial King's Landing, where the buildings became less sturdy and clean. In the background, as she glanced over her shoulder, she could see the Red Keep rising high above its surrounding buildings, the giant capitol overlooking its meager understudies. She'd always thought it ugly, but had always liked the fact that the Monarchs' stadium was immediately next to it in the very middle of downtown and one could watch a full game unhindered from a fourth floor window.

As she walked, she slowly became aware of the calls of a small crowd and the occasional slap of wood on leather. A most familiar sound; a sound she'd lived her entire life loving. Glancing up at a number of cranes sticking up from behind a few apartment buildings, she followed the sounds around the complexes to a chain link fence twice as tall as she was.

On the other side of it, near the bases of the cranes and next to a few tall piles of dirt, about ten men were fanned out about a wide flat area between buildings. Around ten others were leaning against the edge of another building, while the ten that were fanned out all wore the familiar, grimy work gear of a construction crew. On the fanned out ones were baseball mitts, and at the front of them a man stood with a bat, waiting for the pitch.

Arya grinned in appreciation and leaned against the fence as it was delivered, and she watched the stout man at the plate made solid contact with a resounding crack. The men in the field cried out and two of the outfielders tore after it as the ball soared a hundred feet in the air and landed somewhere amid the piles of dirt. A runner who had been on first, seemingly a ratty shirt or some other dirty piece of clothing, took off around the bases, rounding second even as the fielders hastened to retrieve the ball.

This was the feeling Arya enjoyed most in life: the split-second decisions that decided the game. From the outfield, one of the men seized the ball from the pile of dirt and heaved it back to the infield, just as the runner was rounding third. The second baseman caught the throw and gunned it to the plate, which appeared to be the lid of a trash can. The catcher, having thrown away the welding mask that apparently approximated a catcher's mask, caught the ball when the runner was still three strides away. Undaunted, the runner lowered his shoulder and railroaded the catcher, and both men went flying at least ten feet from their starting position.

The players all watched as the dust settled, and, swearing loud enough so Arya could hear him from where she stood a few hundred feet away, pulled the ball from inside of his mitt and held it up for the teams to see. The fielders cheered, the hitting team groaned, and one team rushed in to hit while the other team rushed out to pitch.

A much more productive way to spend my afternoon rather than studying, Arya decided as she leaned herself against the fence. She'd never been down to this part of the city before, but she found it incredible that these workers were apparently spending what remained of their lunch break playing ball with a makeshift field.

The runner who had been gunned down to the plate jogged out to the area that functioned as a mound after a minute, rubbing his shoulder where he'd lowered it on the catcher. He swung his arm around in a windmill to loosen it for a moment and then immediately leaned over to get the sign from his catcher, neglecting to throw a warm-up pitch. He was a tall man, broad-shouldered but slender through what considerable muscle Arya could see. He came set with a poise she wouldn't have expected from someone so large.

His leg came up, he strode forward. Arya blinked, and suddenly the ball was in the catcher's glove.

It took her a moment to realize that the pitch had already been thrown, and by that time that catcher had already thrown the ball back to the pitcher. Holy crap.

Half-convinced she had been dreaming the first pitch, she gripped the fence so hard her fingers hurt as she leaned closer, trying to take in every detail of the pitcher and his motion. The batter hadn't moved on the first pitch, which the catcher had apparently caught directly down the middle of the plate. Arya steeled herself as the pitcher's leg came up a second time, forcing every muscle in her face to keep her eyes open so she could confirm what she thought she had seen.

The ball left the pitcher's hand, and it flew straight and true. It was in the catcher's mitt before the batter even started to swing.

Her jaw dropped. Who is that?

She tried to look at the man's face as he caught the return throw and paced himself back to the rubber, wiping sweat from his brow as he went. Shaggy black hair got in the way of her gaze so that she couldn't make out his features, his head down as he turned back to the plate. If he was any kind of prospect in the city, she would know him; she had the top 100 names in the country memorized, and someone packing this kind of heat would definitely be in the top 100. Nevertheless, his body was unfamiliar, his throwing motion even more so. She continued to try and place him unsuccessfully as he reeled back and delivered strike three.

The fielders reacted as if the strikeout was nothing new, and not even the batter seemed that put out as he walked back to where his team leaned against the buildings. The pitcher watched quietly as the infield threw it around the horn and then retrieved it without comment.

Arya watched in disbelief, wishing to the gods she had her speed gun on her, as he mowed down the next hitter in the same fashion, three fastballs down the pipe. With two outs, strike one was delivered looking to the third hitter, and then a blind swing at nothing was rewarded with a foul tip into the catcher's mitt that actually earned cheers from the batting team's lounging area. She leaned into the fence, tensely anticipating the fireball that had disposed of the previous two hitters.

The pitcher reeled back and released. Halfway to the plate, the bottom of the pitch dropped out. The catcher caught it at the batter's knees as he swung near his face.

Arya's jaw tried very hard to dig itself into the pavement below her.

What the... She stared at the pitcher's back as he calmly walked back towards the designated dugout area nonchalantly. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen as good of a slider as he had just thrown, on top of the fastball that only one man had been able to touch by sheer luck. Who is this guy?

Abruptly, in the distance, a high whistle sounded, and all of the players groaned. As a group, they began to pick up the equipment that had been serving as their gears and bases and then began to migrate back towards the cranes; all except for her mystery pitcher, who hung back and accepted a few claps on the back and handshakes. Now that she was looking, she could see that he was dressed differently, though no less dirty. His clothes were covered in what looked like oil, his sleeveless arms corded with muscle and smeared with dirt. She was absolutely convinced that she had never seen him before, but there was no way someone with as nasty pitches as his could have skirted her radar in a city bursting with major league scouts.

Maybe he's not that good, she told herself, trying to rationalize it. Maybe he's really not throwing that fast, it just looks like it because it's out here in the streets.

As if summoned to her thoughts, the pitcher's head suddenly swung in her direction as his teammates and opponents went back to their apparatuses. She jumped in surprise as his eyes locked onto her where she was skulking behind the fence. Over two hundred feet of distance, she was seized with the inexplicable notion that his eyes were as blue as the ocean.

She turned away, horribly embarrassed, and began to walk away quickly, imagining what he must be thinking upon finding a nineteen-year-old girl spying upon him from behind a fence. She strode fast, eager to be out of his line of sight before her internal humiliation could get worse. As she was about to round the corner, however, and vanish back around the block, her curiosity returned, and she stopped to look back after him one last time.

Too late; he had disappeared, leaving the lot vacant as the cranes slowly began to whine back into motion. All that remained of him was the imprint on her memory of the crack of the ball slamming into the catcher's mitt, the batter's resigned sigh as he realized he was out, the arc of the breaking ball as it vanished into thin air.

Later that night, as her roommate snored interminably across from her, she found that she couldn't sleep. She pulled her laptop up in the dark and scanned through the top 100 prospects of the country, both college and high school, and then stalked through city rosters when he didn't turn up. She never found him, not a description or a picture or a statistic that matched what she had seen that day. The moon was bright and as mysterious as she stared out up at it and contemplated.

Who are you?