4
The taxi was more or less silent as they were driven to the mall Arya had chosen. Without consenting him, no less. He hadn't forgotten his bike, most likely chained illegally, outside of the Dragonpit. Then again, fuck it. They can ticket me if they want, I'll be able to fucking pay for it now.
A professional ball player. He still couldn't believe it. Despite Arya's assurance back at the diner, he still pinched himself several times a minute to be sure he wouldn't wake up anytime soon. More than once he stole a glance at her, but her face was turned out the window with her jaw firmly set, mind clearly elsewhere. He wanted to ask her what she was thinking about, but decided that would be too strange, settling instead for wondering independently.
After a while, she turned her head and they found themselves staring at each other, each with a slightly raised eyebrow, as if neither of them quite knew how they had arrived at the situation. After a while, the grey storm overwhelmed Gendry and he glanced down, smiling slightly. "Your father's a very kind man."
"Yes, he is." He watched her bite her lip in clear hesitation. "You recognized him, that first day, but you didn't freak out or beg him for an autograph. It was nice, for a change. I think he enjoyed it, too. Being treated... normal."
"Is he not normal?" Gendry asked with a laugh.
Arya shrugged at him, her eyes downcast across the taxi seat that separated them. "He's not treated like it, ever. Except by you. It was weird. You're different." She scrutinized him for a moment. "You're the strangest person I've ever met from King's Landing. My classmates aren't anything like you."
"Your classmates," he repeated. "At the university. Are you really comparing me to them?"
"Why not?" she said. "You're not all that different from them, you now. You seem to be at least as smart as most of them. I mean, you're not a total loss."
"Thanks," he said wryly, grimacing and turning to stare out of his own window. "This coming from the little girl who insists on calling me stupid every few minutes."
"Well, you sure act like it, sometimes."
There was no arguing with the infuriating girl, and Gendry wasn't in the mood to prolong uselessness, so he gave up. Vying for a change in subject, he struck up with what else they'd brought up. "I never saw your father play, but I know he was one of the best. I've seen some footage later, but I doubt that compares to what it was like to see him play live."
"I never saw him, either," Arya replied. "He retired when I was little, before I can remember. I only have one memory of him at the ballpark. He..." She glanced at him, and he thought her cheeks might have coloring. He realized she had been about to share a treasured memory, and found himself wishing that she hadn't stopped before doing so. He had wanted her to share that part of herself with him.
Why? He blinked, having absolutely no idea, and looked away before she could make fun of him for his crinkling brow.
"You said you had no family."
He turned back to her, raising an eyebrow. "I didn't say that."
"You implied it," she replied, and he raised the other eyebrow. "I asked you that day in the shop if baseball was big in your family, and you avoided the question. The way you scrunched up your face wasn't like when you usually think. It was sadder than that."
Gendry fought hard to make his face blank, to give no outward sign that she was right. He crossed his arms before realizing it was making him look defensive, and then uncrossed them quickly. Arya clearly noticed, and he tried glaring at her to scare her off. He should have known better than to think it would work, and turned to look back out the window. "No. I don't have any family."
She was silent for a moment. "What happened to them?"
"Who the fuck knows?" Gendry growled, leaning his head against the cold window. He could feel his previously high mood collapsing. His tongue was working, even if his brain wasn't telling it to keep going. "She died before I can remember. I never knew my father. Nothing."
"Where did you go?"
"They left me on the steps of an orphanage with only my name," he replied. Glancing over at her, he wondered why he was telling her this. Her window was cracked, a sifting spring breeze ruffling her hair, sending a few strands spinning before her eyes. She made no move to brush them out of the way; she was staring at him, her brow crinkled and her face set in... sympathy. "No one ever came to find me. No one wrote. No one looked for me."
"Did you look for them?"
He scoffed. "How would I? They left me with nothing, no indication where they went. Maybe it was just my father and my mother, and they both died at the same time. Or maybe my father just couldn't stand me and left me there. I have no way of knowing."
"Your name. You could track them by your name."
"My name?" he repeated blandly. "I gave myself my name when I was five. I didn't have a name before that. They left me nothing."
Arya did not reply to that, and he turned away again. There were not many things that truly made him angry, and she had no way of knowing it, but the futility of him and his family was one of them. Some days it didn't bother him that he didn't know where he'd come from, but most of the time it was a knot biting into his side that he preferred to run away from rather than confront. He certainly wasn't used to having to explain it to strangers, and his usual tactic of throwing an annoyed punch whenever the asshole on the other end didn't know how to shut up didn't exactly seem practical or plausible in the situation. Besides, Arya wasn't making him angry, per se... she was actually making him think about his feelings of loss and abandonment, which translated more to a twinge of loneliness and grief.
"Sorry," Arya mumbled after several moments of silence. He glanced at her in surprise, but she was looking out her window, as well, and he almost didn't believe she'd spoken.
"Why?"
She turned her face back to him and he caught a glint of a glare. "Just because. Because you needed someone to tell you they were sorry. Just accept it."
"Don't apologize for something that's not your fault," he said.
"I will if I want to."
He shook his head at her, bewildered and tired. "You're impossible."
"You're stupid. Why Waters?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"You said you chose your own name when you were five," Arya recalled, watching him again from the other side of the taxi. "If you could have chosen anything for your name, why did you choose Waters?"
Gendry considered it for a moment. It was a question—surprisingly enough—that he had never been forced to answer before. "I think, when I was that age, I was still dealing with being alone and on my own. Maybe I still had a dream where my parents would show up one day and tell me it was all a big mistake and then they'd whisk me off to a big house with a dog and everything. And when I thought about love, I thought about all the waterways in the city running to a single source, and all the rivers in the world running to bigger rivers, which led to lakes and on until they reached the ocean. So all the water in the world was really one big source, one big family." He glanced at her and scowled as she ineffectively hid a smirk behind her hand. "I was five, okay? It's not funny. Stop laughing at me."
"I'm not laughing 'cause it's funny," Arya replied, still hiding. "I'm laughing because that's cute. You know, for a five-year-old."
He grunted. "Great. 'Cute'. Just what I need to be considered as. Don't tell anyone that story, okay? That was kind of personal."
"I won't tell your secret." Her voice seemed to sober slightly, but her grin remained. "I have secrets, too, that I wouldn't want you to share."
Gendry clucked his tongue and glanced over at her. She was still watching him, her lips pressed together in a way that he would almost could have considered attractive. It struck him how much she looked like her father, if not in outward features then in the hard line of her jaw and the cool gaze of her eyes. But there were differences, too; her cheeks were softer, smoother, and her hair had a supple, less steely, more threadlike tilt to it. She was young; he'd noticed it before, of course, but there was also an attitude that made her seem older even while she was acting younger. He remembered the way her eyes would light with fury and her expression would bunch with distaste whenever he said something antagonizing and grinned.
She noticed his attention, and frowned at him. "What are you smiling at?"
"Nothing," he replied, covering himself. "I was just thinking that you should tell me a secret, too, since I told you one of mine."
"What are we, twelve?" she retorted. "Like hell."
"You owe it to me."
"I'm taking you to buy a cell phone," Arya snapped. "Debt paid. Plus, you're welcome for this whole thing in the first place. I could as easily have decided you were worthless and left you to rot in your auto shop for a while."
"But you didn't," he said, and all of a sudden he was curious. She had no reason to help him. If he could help her father's team, of course, he knew she loved baseball enough that she would do it upon that basis alone, but that didn't quite fit it. What else did she get out of it? "Why?"
"I don't know." She seemed to think for a moment, biting her lip again. She glanced at him, and seemed to be weighing something in her mind.
"You don't have to tell me. I guess."
She hesitated again, and then sighed. "It was half because I thought what I saw—what you threw in that construction site—was really good. The other half was me scouting a prospect. If my dad gives me credit for it officially when—if—you make a name for yourself, I can list it on a résumé. I intend to badger him until he acknowledges that I got you to sign."
On a résumé. "You want to be a scout?"
Arya nodded expressionlessly.
"You really like baseball, don't you?"
She glared at him. "Don't you?"
"It's my life," he replied honestly, looking across at her. "It's all I think about. It's in the air I breathe. I don't know if I could get through a day of my life if there wasn't a promise of baseball somewhere in my future."
Her eyes seemed to stare through him for a moment, and when she blinked and shifted again she still seemed not be entirely sure what she was looking at. Her voice was barely above a whisper as she murmured, "That's how I feel about it, too."
The look she gave him thereafter startled him, but he couldn't look away. He felt as though something passed between them in that moment, something deep and emotional and frightening, but there were no words he could have assigned the moment to make it express what he was really feeling. Even if there were words to describe it, he had no idea what they would have been. His mouth was suddenly dry, his tongue suddenly tied. Anything to say fled his mind, and he wanted more than anything to look away but was held captive by her stare, a thoughtless prisoner of the grey storm behind her eyes.
The taxi pulled into a parking lot, and the bump gave him the jolt he needed to tear himself away as Arya started and did the same thing.
They pulled up to the curb before an entrance to the mall. Gendry reached into his pocket from habit before realizing he was broke and then scurried out of the taxi quickly while Arya paid so he could have a moment of fresh air to himself. When the other door slammed and the taxi wheels screeched as the pulled away, he turned around to find her looking at him with a toned-down version of the same intense look as before.
She cleared her throat. "Um... shall we?"
Gendry nodded, and they stepped into the mall together. It was a bustling Saturday, starting to get busy as the day progressed. He was content to let Arya rush ahead and take the lead as she bee-lined for a cell phone kiosk. Her back wasn't so nearly as interesting to study as her front, but he still found himself taking unusual notice of her as they weaved their way through the crowds silently, almost tensely.
The next half hour was spent—on his part, at least—in considerable mental pain, as the technical wizard in charge of the kiosk blasted his mind with a billion pieces of useless information about phones that he'd never needed or cared about before. Arya thwacked him more than once on the arm, as well, for his "idiotic inadequacy", and by the time she had sighed half a million times and shoved him out of the way to choose a selection for him he was one part amused, two parts irritated and three parts exhausted. He tried to pay for that, too, as he hadn't signed the contract Ned Stark had insisted the cell phone be a part of, but Arya only insulted him again and handed over her credit card for the transaction, promising her father would reimburse her.
"I don't like this," he confessed to her only five minutes later, as he sent his first ever text message to her as a test. "It's like a fake conversation. I never understand people and their connections to these things."
"You'd best get used to it," she retorted, flashing him a return message quicker than a major league fastball. "The most important calls of your life are about to come through that thing."
"Yeah, calls," he said. "Not text messages. I can do calls. I've used my boss's cell to make calls before, but I hate this text message thing."
She shook her head at him as though addressing a child. "You're so... different." He opened his mouth to make a harsh retort, hopefully improvising enough to make it marginally insulting, but she held up a hand before he could. "For once, that wasn't supposed to hurt. That was just an observation."
Gendry glared at her and grunted. "Where I come from, everyone is different, except when we're the same." She glanced at him confusedly, and he just shook his head. "You'd have to come from where I come from to understand."
"Try me."
"I don't think you'd get it," he said, and she looked at him as if he'd just called her a very bad thing. He held up his hands, fist closing around the cell phone, and relented grudgingly. "Fine. In the orphanage, we were tall, short, fat, skinny, all those things, and we all basically didn't want to be there for some reason or another. That was sort of the thing that held us all together, though, because even though there were reasons for us to hate each other we were sort of stuck, and we relied on each other to keep sane and survive. I don't know if that makes sense."
"It does to me," she answered after a moment, glancing at him thoughtfully.
"I was still kind of a misfit," he added, not quite knowing why. "I was big for my age, but I was always trying to pick fights with the older kids, and a lot of the time they beat my ass. I never learned, though, and that might have got me killed one day, being an orphan on the streets of King's Landing who didn't have many friends. Then I found baseball, and everything kind of just slid into place in my life after that. Everything started to be calmer."
He remembered those days, right after he found his first mitt, when he began to strike up some of his first friendships with the other kids in the orphanage who liked to play baseball. They had mostly taught each other how to play, he remembered, and so they were all pretty bad in the beginning. Over time, though, they actually started to figure it out. Their throws started to go where they were supposed to, their makeshift bats started hitting their baseballs farther, and their pitching started to be half-decent. As he began to enter his adolescent years, Gendry had noticed that he could throw harder than most of the others his age—considerably harder. It had never amounted to much, of course, except for an added advantage on the playground...
Until now.
He blinked and returned to the present, and realized when he glanced at Arya's smirk that his face had been scrunched up in memory. "Yeah, yeah, laugh it up."
The smirk remained, but he thought it lost just a touch of its mockery in favor of indifferent amusement. He watched her glance about the crowded mall for a moment as the busy day mulled around them. She turned back to him gingerly. "Do you wanna get an ice cream?"
"Ice cream?" he repeated. He glanced down at his brand new cell phone for the purpose of checking the time. "We just ate a hour and a half ago. How can you be hungry?"
"I'm not hungry. I just want an ice cream. Do you want to get one with me?"
He looked her up and down surreptitiously. It was a remarkable feeling that he wasn't sure how to address, but he found that he was enjoying the simple act of spending time away from his work, his apartment, and baseball. If that wasn't enough in itself, he had a sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't have been enjoying it if he was with someone else.
"Sure, I guess I'll get one with you," he heard himself saying, and even after he'd recovered and she'd beamed at him he found that he would have said the same thing anyway.
As she switched direction and led him toward the food court, Gendry tried to examine the strange realization he'd made a moment before. This feisty little—rich—college girl was badgering him constantly about almost everything he did, bantering when he returned it, hitting him when he scored points, and he found that it was this unique stubbornness that was captivating his attention in a way usually only baseball could. The strange feeling of comfort and fun he was having in her presence made him suddenly glad he didn't have to find some excuse to spend more time with her; it was happening naturally as it was, which he was grateful for.
They ordered some cheap cones from a random stand and then sat down at a small two-person table in food court, normal people mingling with a normal crowd on a normal day. She'd paid without comment, which had relieved and surprised him, but she hadn't even seemed to notice as she handed over her credit card to purchase both of their cones. He reasoned that it didn't matter to her spending that little money when she was used to a lot more, but he kept that point to himself, considering that he could count the previous times he'd been inside a mall on one hand and he didn't want to spoil this trip.
"You grew up in Winterfell?" he prompted after a few moments, watching the crowd around him as he spoke.
"Yeah," she answered. "In Stark Manor. My dad never really flaunted his money the way some athletes do, but with such a big family he decided to buy a larger house."
"Your family is big?"
Her eyes narrowed at him as she licked at the crest of her chocolate ice cream. Nevertheless, she answered him. "Yeah. There are six of us children. I'm the third youngest. Sansa and I are the only daughters."
"Your parents have six children?" he verified amazedly, shaking his head. "That's a lot. Four sons."
She bit her lower lip; her upper one was covered in a shallow coat of chocolate, and he had to bite his own lip not to laugh as he watched it. "Actually... well, it's a little complicated." She took another bite of ice cream, and only continued at his question look. "My father has four sons, but only three of them are my mother's."
"So you have one half-brother."
Arya glanced at him almost diffidently from the corner of her eye. "It's a sensitive family topic."
Gendry spread his arms across the table, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand as he did so. "I won't tell anyone. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, of course."
"I know," she replied, and then shrugged herself, looking at her ice cream. "Robb and Jon were born at pretty much the same times. My dad... had an affair when his marriage was young, and Jon is a result of that affair."
He felt his eyebrows go up. "You have a brother from an affair of your father's? And he's one of the oldest of your siblings?"
"Yeah," Arya said sheepishly. "This is why it's a sensitive family topic. Everyone thinks that my mom should have left my dad when it happened, but she didn't. She loved him, and she trusted him, and she stayed with him. And I don't know what he did then, but I know that right now, today, my father would never, ever do anything like that to my mom. They love each other."
Gendry looked at his own cone. "Just because you love someone doesn't mean they don't leave," he whispered before he could stop himself. Quickly, before she could address what he had said, he continued, "Well, that isn't something everyone would do, but if your parents are happy I guess it worked for them. Does he get along with your other siblings?"
She smiled at him, and he was very glad he had said whatever he had to make her do so. "We all love Jon... except maybe Mom, but I guess that's understandable. He understands me more than any of my other siblings. Robb was practically his best friend when they were growing up. You can tell he's not Mother'sbecause all the rest of us look more like Mom... except for me. I look like my father. But Jon has what Dad says is the real look of a Stark, dark and cold and wintry. All the others have reddish-brown hair and really smooth features. Everyone says Sansa is the most beautiful girl in Westeros, and even Rickon's got the mature Tully look to him, and he's only twelve."
He watched her lips as she spoke of her family, and caught an uncouth aroma of jealousy in his thoughts. "You love your family. I think that's really special. Even your brother who's not really part of the family like he could be."
"Of course I love them," she told Gendry, looking at him as though he were stupid. "We're all Starks, and we're all part of the same pack."
A moment late, Arya's face contorted as she realized why he had been commenting about their familial affection. He didn't want her to dwell on it, however; it would spark a conversation meant to make him feel better about not having a family, and that was the last thing he wanted: pity and sympathy.
Quickly, he changed the subject, trying to twitch his mouth into a playful tease. "Do all the members of your family like baseball as much as you?"
Arya grinned back at him. "Yeah. You met Robb, he's a really cool big brother to have. Jon's the starting shortstop for the Night Watch—"
"Hold on," Gendry interrupted in disbelief, staring at her critically. He was sure he'd heard her correctly, but this was something he had not expected to hear. "You mean you have two brothers who play professional baseball?"
"Yeah." She nodded. "I understand if you didn't know... Jon carries the last name Snow. Please don't ask, it's a long story, but the two brothers I have in the majors are Robb Stark and Jon Snow, yeah."
"Wow," he said, his voice nearly as amazed as he felt. "Your father must be very proud. Two sons in the major leagues, and his own career to boot. Must make things awkward in the house when they play each other, though, with everyone now knowing who to root for"
"My father and his two brothers all played in the majors," Arya replied, shrugging. "I guess it kind of runs in the family. And Sansa's engaged to one of the Monarchs, actually, even though he's a little shit who no one in my family likes, and my other brothers—"
She stopped so abruptly Gendry thought she might have simply vanished into thin air. Half-preoccupied with biting through his cone, he glanced up through his chews to make sure she was still there. He was relieved to find that she was, but she was staring off into space with a pale face, as if she'd just realized she was telling him something that she shouldn't have been. It worried him; his first impulse told him it was his fault. He'd said something he shouldn't have, forced something out of her he shouldn't have, asked for the answer to a question he didn't need to know and she didn't want to tell him. Unfortunately, he had absolutely no clue what that might have been.
Before he could ask what was wrong or think of anything to say, she began to vigorously eat her ice cream again as if nothing was wrong. "Actually, baseball's not as big in my family as you'd think. But me and my dad and my older brothers love it."
The absence of the mention of her sister and younger brothers was not lost on Gendry, but she had switched gears so quickly he felt as though he shouldn't push it. The curiosity spike inside of him was barely repressible, but his interest in prolonging their... interaction... kept him silent. "Oh, well, that's too bad. I think I like your brother. I'd probably like Jon, too."
She looked up at him, froze for another instant, and then stood without further warning. "Are you ready to go?"
Way to go, Gendry. He sighed silently, hoping she didn't notice his discomfort. Whatever he'd done to make her uncomfortable, he wished more than anything that he could know what it was so he could, if not take it back, at least apologize for it.
He rose with her, finishing his cone at that precise moment. After swallowing, he merely nodded. "Sure."
Whatever had happened, she seemed in quite the hurry to suddenly be gone from the mall. She led him wordlessly throughout the crowds until they emerged from the mall onto another curb. Without speaking to him, she quickly summoned another taxi and climbed in, making it clear he was to do so, as well. He cursed himself again, but also began to grow a little irritated with her. If she was going to up and sprint away from him, the least she could do was tell him why she was doing it, or why she suddenly found him hideous.
He stared out of the window with crossed arms as they rolled once more through the streets of King's Landing. Arya had told the driver their destination before he'd had a chance to climb into the taxi, but from the buildings they passed he could tell they were driving back to his run-down apartment. She didn't speak to him, and so he didn't feel the sudden need to speak to her, not while she seemed to want nothing more than to get away from him. There were a few times where he thought her very dim reflection in his window may have turned to look at him, but he refused to return the interest. He wondered if she'd changed her mind about him, and decided she shouldn't have given him the connection she had. The thought made his mood darken, and before they were even halfway back to his apartment he'd put himself into a very disheartening, angry mood.
The taxi pulled up some time later to his apartment, and Gendry finally glanced over at Arya to say goodbye. She wasn't even looking at him. He seethed, but reminded himself that him going ballistic in any form was not going to help. "Thanks, then. For the ice cream and… yeah. I'll see you around, I guess."
"I'll give your number to my father," she said, still not looking at him, "and he'll contact you about that contract, probably within the next couple of days, arrange to meet you and everything."
He nodded, opening his door. "Sounds good."
Stepping onto the curb, he shoved his door closed and stuck his hands in his pockets as he began to strut towards his front door. The rest of his day looked bleak, but for once his life was looking up, and he was suddenly determined not to let even his sour mood ruin it.
"Gendry!"
Gendry paused with his foot on the first step up to the apartment complex and turned back. Arya had emerged on her side of the taxi, looking over the top of the yellow vehicle at him in slight trepidation. "Yeah?"
She said nothing for a long moment, and did a very good job of once more appearing as though she didn't know what she was trying to say. He dug his hands deeper into his pocket in annoyance, until she finally seemed to shrug to herself. A genuine, kind smile blossomed on her face, albeit small, and it was meant only for him. "Good luck."
At a loss for anything else to do, he nodded. She paused a moment longer before climbing back into the taxi, and the vehicle pulled away from his curb and rolled out down the street of Flea Bottom. Gendry watched it go, his sourness dissipating in wake of the last moment between the two of them, he and Arya. He wasn't sure what to think about her; the annoyance he had felt in the taxi only barely overcame the pleasure he had found in her company. Only just.
He stood on the top doorstep, again, for the second time in as many days as the taxi drove out of sight in the distance. Less than a second after he lost sight of it, he realized his bike was still chained to a post outside of the Dragonpit.
—-
Ned Stark called Gendry the very next day to tell him his contract had been drawn up. They made arrangements to meet again on Monday for him to sign it, after which Gendry would immediately be flown to Blackhaven for his first professional assignment. Only moments after hanging up, the first waves of excitement and anxiety rushed through him, as he realized what his future held for him. He almost called the number Arya had given him—almost—to tell her how ecstatic he was, but the confusion he still had over the latter part of her interaction with him the previous day held him back.
Instead, he called Mott and informed the old mechanic that he was quitting. Mott didn't seem too put out, which surprised him, only asking him the reason why he was doing it. Gendry didn't see what purpose a lie could serve, and so he told Mott the truth, expecting the mechanic not to believe him. He was right; Mott had a good three-minute laugh before telling him he was a fool and hanging up promptly.
His only other business was informing his landlord he was moving out. He paid March's rent in-full, considering that he would have a very large amount of cash available in the next day anyway, and let the older man know he would be moving out the next day. His possessions took only an hour and only his lone suitcase and a cardboard box to fill. He slept Sunday night on a bare mattress, excited enough only to catch a few hours, yet rising in the morning with a strange and rare sense of energy.
Gendry had declined the taxi Ned Stark had offered to send for him, instead riding the bike he'd been forced to retrieve by foot on Saturday to Ned's chosen meeting ground, a downtown office building where he'd been told the Direwolves' owner would meet him.
Ned, to his credit, did not comment as Gendry rolled up on the bicycle, wearing the best clothes he owned—which weren't that good at all—and having scrubbed as much grease and dirt from his body as possible. They shook hands and then Ned led him into the office building, down a number of hallways, up an elevator and into what appeared to be a conference room, where a man who had the pristine appearance of a lawyer was waiting with a large piece of paper on the table. Arya was not there; he hadn't really expected her to be, but he found that he had been hoping she would be.
He didn't know what he'd been expecting the contract to look like, but the arrangement that was laid out before him seemed much more formal and stuffy than he'd ever imagined it to be. Ned and the lawyer waited patiently while he sat down before it and read every word of it, as he figured would be wise to do. He couldn't help but smile when he reached the inclusion of a cell phone in the contract, just as Ned had promised, and again when his eyes slid over the monetary amounts due to him within the terms of the contract. Only the signing bonus was guaranteed money, but even if he was released the moment after he finished his signature that would still be enough to get him through years of the existence he was currently living.
Once finished reading, he nodded to the lawyer, who produced a pen, and then he signed his name where he was prompted to, the large, blocky letters he'd always used filling out a crudely cursive "Gendry Waters" legibly.
"There," Ned Stark said happily and a little proudly as Gendry stood to shake his hand. "Welcome to the Direwolves franchise, Gendry. We're very happy and lucky to have you."
"Thank you," Gendry replied, not being able to keep from grinning giddily himself.
The next morning, after selling his bike for a hundred dollars to a metal dealer, he checked his suitcase into baggage claim at the Conqueror Aegon International Airport in King's Landing, the contents of the cardboard box now stuffed into his newly-purchased carry-on duffel bag. The flight to Blackhaven left at approximately eleven o'clock, a small commercial jet on which Gendry was given an aisle seat next to an elderly gentlemen who promptly fell asleep as soon as he boarded.
Gendry was grateful for the old man's slumber, for, although he hid it, he suffered from a minor panic attack as the plane lifted off the ground. He would have denied it had anyone accused him of being afraid of flying, but in truth it was his first time flying ever, and so even the smooth takeoff the plane experienced made him uncomfortable. Once they were climbing high over the buildings of King's Landing, however, he was able to lean back in his seat and pretend for a while that he was simply on a bus, and after only a few minutes he was able to sit back and breathe normally and even enjoy a little bit of the view he got by looking across the sleeping man.
It was a short hour. The plane didn't spend very long at its peak altitude before beginning a descent, and then the short, squat buildings of Blackhaven were rushing by beyond the windows as the jet carefully set down in Blackhaven's much smaller airport. He disembarked and followed signs to the baggage claim, picking up his suitcase and then heading outside of the terminal. He climbed into a taxi as Ned Stark instructed him and then asked the driver to take him directly to the stadium of the Blackhaven Thunder.
The drive was very short; Blackhaven was tiny compared with King's Landing, and the stadium was nothing special, little more than a low-budget college field surrounded by a fence. Gendry paid the taxi driver with what little cash he still had on his person and then convinced a field worker passing by to let him through a gate.
It wasn't his destination, but Gendry couldn't help but walk up the brief ramp from the open-air concourse to the field. It panned out before him as he emerged from the tunnel, and he smiled again. The grass was freshly-cut, the dirt dragged but not yet lined, the warning track wide and loose. It didn't compare to the Dragonpit in quality, but he was still overjoyed that he was there.
This is my field, he realized as his eyes swept over it. I'm playing on this field. I'm going to be a member of this team.
It was almost comical enough to make him laugh. He had to spend the entire time he walked away from the field and searched for the team complex convincing him he wasn't being lured into some complex trick.
The average-sized building that held the team facilities stood a little ways off from the field, behind the stands, and Gendry entered the unlocked front door easily. He followed signs and noises down the hall, past the fitness room where only a few people were lazily lifting weights and the showers, until he finally came to the office he'd been looking for. Poking his head through the door, he rapped a knuckle against the wood to announce his presence.
The office was small, holding just enough room for a desk, two chairs, a laptop, and a wide variety of charts and stat sheets posted over practically every inch of wall; even some of the dim window was covered. The gruff man behind the desk looked up at the knock from where he'd been hunched over another spreadsheet scribbling with a pencil. Gendry was surprised; the man didn't look as he'd expected a manager to. He was young, perhaps only about forty, wearing sweatpants and a junky t-shirt. His hands and arms were heavily scarred where Gendry could see, and he wore an eyepatch over his right eye.
"Hi," the man said gruffly, neither friendly nor unfriendly. He stood and rounded his desk as Gendry took a tentative step into the room. "You must be my new reliever. Luwin called down a few days ago and said I'd be getting you right after you signed a contract. That right?"
"Yes, sir," Gendry said, shaking hands with the man. "Gendry Waters."
"Nice to meet you, Gendry." The man gestured towards one of the chairs opposite the desk as he slid back into his own seat. "Beric Dondarrion. Welcome to the Thunder. Not much of a team, but maybe one day we'll produce at least one good player for the majors."
"I'm happy to be here, happy to be a member of the team."
Dondarrion looked at him appraisingly for a moment, and then crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair. "I'm going to try and be straight here, Gendry. You've never played before, have you?"
Gendry sat up straight in his chair. "I've played, sir, just not in an official situation. I've played baseball since I was a little kid, though."
"But not in an official situation." Gendry nodded, and Beric returned it. "I was, honestly, shocked to hear that Ned Stark was signing a kid who'd never played before, I won't lie to you. I hope you understand that I've got a lot of people on this team that are vying for their chance, and, quite frankly, as of this moment they deserve it a lot more than you."
He could feel his eyebrows crinkling, and fought to keep the rush of anger from Dondarrion's comment off of his face. "I'm here to play ball, sir. I'm not here to take anybody's spot, but I think I have as much of a right to get my shot as they do."
"I'm not saying you don't," Dondarrion said. "I'm saying that I've got a lot of young bucks who the owner has big hopes for that need to get their playing time, and I've got a lot of old timers who have struggled down here for five, six, seven years who are still giving it everything they've got—guys I can't forget about. Then I've got you, a fresh face off of the streets who's never played before. How is that going to look to the other guys?"
Gendry bristled again, but managed to keep his emotions in check. "If it's politics you're interested in playing, sir, I can just show you what I can do and settle the matter."
Dondarrion rubbed a hand at his face. "I think you're misunderstanding me, Gendry. What I'm trying to say is, you're young, you must have an amazing arm to have attracted Ned Stark's attention, and if he went out of his way to sign you himself then, realistically, you may very well have a very good shot at this. I'm going to try and get you your innings, I'm going to let you show me what you can do. But I've also got a dozen other relievers who have been here longer than you and may have more at stake than you. They need their innings, too. I need you to understand that just because you've walked in here without any prior experience or spring training or anything, it doesn't mean I'm going to drop everything with this team to trampoline you to the major leagues. What I will do is give you the chance when I can that you can take and use to succeed. Is that fair enough?"
Others having more at stake than me. I don't think I can believe that. But for the rest of what Dondarrion said, Gendry could see the logic behind it, thankfully. He wasn't going to be treated as a special case, but that was perfectly fine with him; he didn't want to be singled out, favored, or babied. He was there to pitch, and he didn't want to make his name in baseball, whatever it would turn out to be, by playing favorites.
"Yes, sir," he replied. "What can I do? How can I prepare?"
Dondarrion watched him for a moment. "The season starts tomorrow. Summerhall will be in for a three-game series. I don't think I'll be pitching you at all in that series. I want you to work with the pitching coach, listen to him, show him what you've got, learn from him. Also, it'll give you a chance to meet the team. After you've gotten a chance to acclimate to your environment, then we'll see what you've got. Is that acceptable?"
"Yes, sir." He hated waiting, and it sounded like these three games were going to be him waiting, watching others play baseball, itching to get out there and throw. Then again, if it was what it took to do this, then he would toughen his hide and weather it. Arya had called him a stubborn bull, and he was damned if he'd let a simple thing like watching and learning for a few days ruin him.
"All right, then," Dondarrion said, slapping his thighs. He swung his arms around his head, gesturing around his office. Gendry realized he was encompassing the team facilities and stadium, as well. "It's not much, lad, but every great starts somewhere."
That they do, Gendry thought, ignoring the ache in his elbow. And I start now.