Untouchable

by Collier World

Modern AU. Off the streets of King's Landing, Arya Stark plucks an undiscovered talent. Charging headlong into the world of professional baseball, Gendry Waters must navigate more than the pressure to compete and the need to survive. His fastball puts him on the mound. She makes him untouchable.

27. Chapter 25

25

He looked troubled when he slept.

Arya hadn't noticed before. The one time she had shared his bed, she had been fast asleep long before him and had been woken at the same time. Never before had there been a man she thought she could ever stare at without ever wanting to look away, but this one was different. It had been hours since her brother and her had lugged his unconscious body to the bed, hours since his early morning return. The sun would be up before much longer, and neither she nor Robb had been to bed; Robb simply because he was too worked up over ill-advisedly sending out his closer and two best outfielders to a club, losing his star rookie, and then having said man show up drunk in the middle of the night; her because it was Gendry, and from the moment she opened the door to find him starting and falling to ground, she knew that she couldn't let him out of her sights again. Not until they reached some understanding.

Lying over the bed, his mouth agape and drooling, Gendry stirred minutely, and she almost jumped with excitement where she sat at the base of the bed. He settled, mumbled something weakly in his sleep, and then resumed his general state of non-responsiveness. With a muffled curse, Arya tried to calm herself down, berating herself for overreacting for perhaps the fourth or fifth time. However she had imagined this reunion when she had arranged it, she hadn't planned on being so nervous for it. Just trying to fathom what she would say when his eyes finally opened made her bite her lip nearly open. How would he react when he saw her? Would he be angry? Would he tell her to get out?

As she was hugging herself in anxiety, the light turned off in the hotel room's bathroom and her exhausted older brother appeared in the doorway, scratching his auburn beard. She lifted her eyes to his, and weakly tried to return his smile as he leaned against the frame, watching her appraisingly. "He still hasn't woken up, at all?"

She shook her head.

Robb sighed and glanced down at his socks grimly. "Fucking must've drank out the whole club, or wherever the hell he went."

"He really didn't tell you what happened?" she asked worriedly.

For perhaps the third or fourth time, Robb shook his head at her question. "He just said he was sorry and that he wanted to sleep it off."

The left side of Gendry's face was obscured in his pillow in his facedown state, but Arya remembered the bruise that it had borne when they had hauled him inside the room. "What could he have possibly done? He looks like he got into a fight." Arya scooted a face forward on the bed and reached a hand towards Gendry's face before she realized what she was doing. She froze and snatched it back as soon as she could, but Robb still raised an eyebrow.

"He very well might've," he said, stepping farther into the room and sitting down on his own bed with another sigh. "If what Edric and Mikken said was true..." Robb rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced. "Well, with the way he's been the past couple of months, the past week or two, especially, I wouldn't have put it past him to do something a little reckless."

"Stupid," she hissed, shaking her head at Gendry's slumbering form. She wanted him to wake up and laugh at her, so bad. "During the World Series. Even he should know better than that."

"Normally, I'm sure he would. Lately, though, I think he's begun to lose some of the resolve he's shown the rest of the way. I can't even blame him any. Even for the strongest people, you can only fight for so long."

That hit her close to home, too. Gendry wasn't the only one who'd faltered.

She remembered following Aegon into the club. She hadn't wanted to go in the first place, but he had been courteous on their dinner date—a perfect gentlemen couldn't have been more polite, and he had even managed to make her smile genuinely once or twice. Also considering he left her chivalrously at her doorstep without even attempting a good night kiss, she had puzzled over it for a good day before she decided that he had managed to make her forget long enough to earn himself a second date, even thought his shortcomings were still many. She didn't mind polite, often enough, and it was rather nice, actually, for a change, but she preferred rogue and rough, and doubted Aegon could ever be that.

Nevertheless, when he had proposed celebrating the victory of the first two World Series games by a trip to a club, she had come up short of excuses to refuse in favor of a quieter venue, and so had allowed herself to be dragged there without letting on too much that it wasn't something she wanted to do. Aegon was sweet, complementing her appearance despite her drab dress, even though she felt it was something he was just saying rather than something that he felt. She had bitten her lip and taken his proffered arm and held her objections, although silently she took note that he seemed not to realize she was rooting against him in the World Series, that both of those victories had profoundly frustrated her.

The club was loud, bright, and not particularly her choice environment, but she stomached the sight of the gelatinous mass of bodies and had followed Aegon when he suggested they start themselves out at a table with some of his friends. She wasn't sure she liked his friends. She wasn't sure she liked him, though she could admit to herself easily enough that she could do far worse for a date. He didn't look as handsome in the flashing lights as he did in a baseball uniform, but not many people could, to her. Although, at the same time, she could significantly remember thinking to herself that if his choice environment turned out to be the club, and the ballpark the job, as opposed to the vice versa for her, she wasn't sure how far politeness would be able to carry their coupling.

But then, by chance, she had glanced out over the dance floor, without being sure why she was doing it, and her eyes had fallen on Mikken and Edric Dayne. She was so surprised that she stopped, and Aegon actually lugged her on a few steps by himself without seeming to notice, and afterwards strode along at his side with her eyes locked over her shoulder, running into more than one person because she didn't see them.

Edric had been staring at her, too, Mikken leaning towards him to say something, and as soon as Arya saw him Edric snapped to full attention, his eyes widening hopefully. He raised a hand over his head to wave, glancing to his side as he did so. Whatever he was looking for apparently was not where he expected it to be, for no sooner had he glanced than had he started. Arya, still watching, saw Mikken look as well and blanch, and then they both apparently forgot Arya, frantically moving into the crowd in the direction of the door, clearly searching. Curiously, perplexed on what they would be doing in a club the night before a World Series game—Aegon's questionable presence notwithstanding—Arya glanced after them, swinging her head around towards the door, to try and catch whatever it was the two Direwolves had lost.

That's when she saw him.

Only his back, but that was plenty enough. It was retreating, slicing its way through the crowd with an urgency of escape. She had recognized it instantly, would have known the curve of his shoulders, the depression of muscle over his spine if he been standing amid a population of thousands. Her grip had seized on Aegon's arm instantly, to the point where she remembered him asking her if she was okay. She hadn't responded; she hadn't been looking at him. Instead, it was as if she was back in the batting cage, after she had screamed at him to get away from her, and he was still running. Running out of the club.

Then he was gone, slipping out of the door. She didn't know if he had seen her, but, glancing back at Edric and Mikken's guilty faces, she admitted to herself that it was a safe bet. Looking up uneasily at Aegon, she had released his arm, and mumbled some feeble excuse when he watched her with concern.

Before he could stop her, she sank into the crowd where his tall form couldn't follow her, weaving between bodies beneath the flashing lights until she reached Edric and Mikken, who had stood stock still as she approached, like deer in the headlights, as if they knew the predator was coming to skewer them and were helpless to stop it. Skewer them she had; she didn't know where the conviction or sudden determination came from, but she found herself more alive and belligerent in demanding what they were doing there with Gendry than she had in months, and it felt refreshing in a painful way.

When she had finally rung out of them that they had been at the club for Gendry's wellbeing, which took her a moment to try to fathom before reminding herself that Gendry was simply stupid, Arya had slowly squeezed out their observance of his reaction to seeing her. During their culpable confession, she experienced a great many emotions, most of them bordering on desperation, opportunity, and resolve. They weren't even halfway through their apologies—at least on Edric's behalf, as far as Arya could tell—when she had cut them off and demanded that they take her back to the Direwolves' hotel. Mikken, to his credit, had protested, knowing too well the team's fragile emotional state, not to mention Robb's and Gendry's, but Edric, bless him, had caved on the spot, and it wasn't long before the grumpy older outfielder and the apologetic younger one had a frustrated Arya crammed between them in a taxi back to the hotel.

Robb had been livid when they told him what had happened, with both her for very being at a club with Aegon Targaryen, a fact the outfielders had also let slip, and with them for losing Gendry. He had spent a full two or three minutes nearly chewing their heads off before sending them off to bed—without supper, or so Arya got the impression—and turning on Arya alone. His anger had largely dissipated, then, in conversation with their sister. He had warned her of the consequences of her being there, how things beyond just her and Gendry could still be affected by whatever came of that night, positive or negative. She had replied by telling him that she was there with a purpose, and she would not be deterred; it had taken months of miserable grumbling to build her up to this point of direction, and she was going to stay in that room until she had seen Gendry, until they had sat down, until they had spoken, until she had some "beyond" that wasn't a flickering loop of him walking away from her. If he never came back, she told Robb, she would stay in that room, waiting for him, until the ends of time, if she had to. Because she had to. She had to see him. Only after a long, prolonged silence, during which Arya was sure Robb's thoughts revolved around Jeyne, had he sighed, shrugged, and asked her if she wanted something to eat.

So they had sat down, brother and sister, and eaten room service, sipping on decidedly non-alcoholic beverages. Arya hadn't really been paying attention to what they were talking about, but she was aware gradually that a lot of it was about Gendry, things she wouldn't have shared with Robb before. And it hurt, saying those things and remembering them and all of the other memories she had made with her brother's best friend. But sitting in that room, knowing that Gendry would be back soon, that she was on a crash course with him that couldn't be diverted... even with her obvious anxiety about what their meeting would mean, how he would feel, what he would say, what she could possibly say to make him know that she loved him... even with it all, knowing that he would be there with her once again took away a little of the pain.

When Robb had been gone for ice, she had simply thought the knock at the door was him, instead of the silent, horrifying key-card unlocking that signified Gendry's arrival that she had been envisioning. Opening the door, seeing her love standing drunkenly before her, was as much of a surprise to her as it was to him, if not more, but the alcohol factor clearly offered him a poorer prospect. Both her and Robb had lunged to catch him on the way down, but his bulk proved that neither of them did a very good job.

Now, barely able to believe that Gendry was lying inches away from her, Arya could very much appreciate the pain they had both obviously gone through since their goodbyes. Watching his chest rise and fall slowly, she knew that she couldn't let it all go for nothing. Her pain had been for a purpose; it hadn't been pain brought on by a relationship mistake, it had been pain brought on by a third party of cruel intent, a party she was not likely to forgive, regardless of what she came up with to tell Gendry when she woke up. That came later, though. Nothing mattered right now except for Gendry and his face, his hair, his tantalizing skin she wanted so badly to touch and the blue eyes she was forcing herself to wait impatiently for to open. All that mattered was that he was here, and she was there, and she would not let this opportunity slip through her fingers. It would never come again, but all she needed was one chance, and she had it now.

As if the thoughts had somehow sparked him to life, Gendry groaned, and Arya's heart cycled instantly into overdrive. His arm twitched and then slid up the bed to caress his head as he moaned. There was a long moment where he clutched himself in obvious discomfort, which Arya couldn't bring herself to begrudge him. When he lowered his hand he finally opened his eyes, and Arya's breath caught. Their fantastic blue rose off of the side table to Robb, still poised on his bed with a raised eyebrow. He gulped visibly, anticipating the wrath of his captain, but then his gaze slid down to Arya where she sat rigidly at the end of the bed, and Arya would have bet that the hitch in his breath wasn't just alcohol after-effects.

They stared at each other. She wanted to say something, wanted desperately to scream everything at him that she had come up with over the months, but found no determination to open her mouth in her moment of need. He, on the other hand, exhaled quietly and, after a lengthy pause, muttered, "It wasn't a dream."

She didn't trust her voice. She hoped that she didn't look as nervous as she felt while she carefully shook her head.

Slowly, with a great deal of effort, Gendry pulled his legs past her and tried to sit up on the edge of the bed. He wavered when he did, so much so that instinctually Arya reached out and steadied him with an arm. As soon as she did so, he sobered, freezing, and she did as well. Her mind told her to snatch her hand back as quickly as she could, but her body would not let her. Instead, she kept it on Gendry's arm where it was and stared at it, as if trying to comprehend if it was really there. When she looked up at him, she found that he was staring at it, too, in awe. After a minute, his eyes came back to hers and they spent a long time like that. She might not have moved ever again; she certainly didn't want to. Seeing him, touching him, breathing him... by the gods, she was more alive than she had been in months, and the continued look of intrigue on his face suggested he wanted her to let go just as little as she did.

Robb, of course, broke the moment by clearing his throat. "How do you feel?"

Gendry didn't glance away from Arya. "Gods awful. This was all your idea. It's all your fault. What the hell kind of idea was that? Send your closer out clubbing before the freaking World Series?"

"Yes, poor judgment," Robb agreed, grimacing. He stood off the bed, and, with a cursory glance at Arya, went back in the direction of the bathroom. "I'll see if I can get something to help you with that."

Which left the two of them sitting on his bed, her gripping his arm. It had begun as a vice, but steadily her body had relaxed. If left to her own devices, Arya would have called the way she held him now more of a caress; when she tried to notice, she realized that, contrary to the anxiety of the previous moments, she was suddenly calmer than she had been in months, with her fingers wrapped around the flesh and muscle of his forearm.

She shivered, but it wasn't bad. After a gulp, she told herself that she had to start talking. It was her only way. "Hi."

"Hi," he whispered back. He looked like hell. There were circles under his bloodshot eyes, wrinkles in the corners of his face that hadn't been there the last time she had seen him. Even in her grip, his body felt exhausted, like he had pushed himself to the brink. He was beautiful, and as though her shudder had triggered it, she felt one run through his body, as well. She watched him close his eyes, shaking his head. "Is this a dream? I'm terrified. I've longed for this moment so much... I'm scared that I'm going to wake up."

"You're not going to wake up," she said. "You're awake already. I'm really here."

He reopened his eyes and a hint of warmth seemed to enter his expression. There was no change; his neutrality stayed neutral. The wrinkles abruptly smoothed, though, and the minuscule crevices between his eyes and nose seemed to brighten, as if his entire face actually had turned upward. Very slowly, as if he was carrying a platter of china, he raised the hand of the arm she wasn't holding and placed it over hers. It felt warm; even a touch made her feel safe.

"You are," he murmured. His brow creased in confusion. His hand tightened over hers. "Why are you here?"

Her heart half-fell. "What?"

"I saw you..." he said slowly. Blue slid away from grey, as he glanced away, at the floor. The confusion disappeared, suddenly replaced by tension again. The moment of warmth was gone. She could feel precariousness reasserting itself with a vengeance. "At the club. With Targaryen."

A hush fell open them, then, solid with strain, the sound of running water filtering in from the bathroom. Swallowing heavily, Arya told herself that every word could break her and spoke with painful precision. "Yes, I was there. I saw you, too, when you were leaving."

His hand slid off of hers. His head turned away towards the lamp. "Oh. I'm sorry."

"Why?" She couldn't help the tone of indignation that fluttered into her voice.

She remembered his voice being angry the last time they had carried a conversation along these lines, hot with jealousy and brimming with hatred. This time, his voice wasn't mad; it was sad, tinged with regret and loathing. "For distracting you. I didn't mean to."

He held her heart in his hands, but she felt it still melt sympathetically. She had no way to put it all, because it was too much, but she poured as much endearment into her voice as she could. "You don't have to be sorry, stupid. I'm glad I looked up. If I hadn't have seen you..."

She truthfully didn't know. She would have been forced to muscle her way through the club night with Aegon, maybe toss back one or two cold ones, maybe finally tip past the point where she told herself his attractiveness wasn't enough. Arya didn't want to think anymore about what that would have been like, and she didn't have to; she breathed a sigh of relief. She had looked up, and she was here with him, and there was no more time for what if's.

"Why are you here?" Gendry said, still not looking at her. "Where's Targaryen?"

"I don't know," Arya told him. "I walked away from him in the club, as soon as I saw you. I haven't talked to him. He probably went home. I don't know. Maybe he's dumb enough to still be there."

Gendry's jaw set, and she cursed, not knowing what she had set to put it in that condition but knowing her word choice had been poor. He braced his arms against the bed and she had just enough time to realize he was going to stand before he tried. Grudgingly, she released his arm as he took a teetering step forward. As soon as she had let go, he slipped, and her trying to catch him this time missed. With a quiet curse, he fell onto one knee unstably, and had to take hold of Robb's bed with both hands to prevent himself from toppling completely to the floor. Hissing in obvious discomfort, he settled back on his behind, falling against his own bed. Arya froze with both of her arms outstretched in his direction, afraid to touch him, afraid not to, until he spoke again.

"How long has... have you..."

His words faltered. He wasn't looking at her, so it was difficult to glean his meaning. His hands moved, trying to insinuate some motion, but she didn't follow. Only after a moment, with his evident frustration and unease written on his face, did she realize what she was asking. "Gendry..."

"How long?" he repeated. She could sliced skin open on his jaw line.

She was saved from trying to figure out how to answer by Robb. He bustled back into the room, moving around the beds and clanging uneasily down at Gendry with a raised eyebrow before he plopped a bucket full of icy water right in front of closer where he sat. Gendry looked at it for a long slow moment, until Robb plopped down beside him and happily proclaimed, "Deep breath now!"

Before Gendry had a chance to comprehend what had been said, as far as Arya could see, Robb reached over and seized his teammate by the back of the head. With no further warning, her brother plunged Gendry's head straight down into the icy bucket, giving the man no time to come up with coherent thought or resistance. Gendry went in with a splash, his arms flailing about and batting at Robb's. Normally, Robb would never have been able to hold a grip on the larger and stronger man, but in Gendry's inebriated state he probably more than likely didn't know which way was up.

"Robb!" Arya said sharply, as her brother held his friend's head under the water. She didn't know whether or not to laugh, with the shock of the unexpected action in such a tense moment. A good blast of ice could surely do him could, but she didn't want him to drown.

"What?" Her brother's face was completely innocent.

Her dry mood turned frantic in a blink. "Let him up!"

"Certainly."

He released Gendry, and the larger man burst out of the bucket gasping, water flying everywhere. The droplets spattered across the carpet, beds, and both Starks as Arya's ears caught the backend of Gendry's tirade. "—fucking bastard, douching, squabbling son of a—"

"Another one!" Robb cried cheerily, and stuffed Gendry back into the water nonchalantly.

There wasn't enough time for Arya to protest a second time, caught suddenly in an incredulous guffaw of hiccups, before her brother finally released his roommate. The closer lashed out wildly as he surfaced. Robb quickly leaped out of the way of the hurled fist and Gendry fell backwards against the bed once again with water cascading off of his face, his curses starting up as if they'd never been interrupted.

"There, that should do nicely," Robb said, standing and smacking his hands together like he'd just been baking bread.

"I'm going to kill you," Gendry groaned from the ground, shaking his body and holding his head. Despite herself, Arya couldn't restrain a giggle. She couldn't. "I'm going to take your face and stuff it full of ice and then throw a baseball at you—"

"Yes, I'm sure." Robb patted Gendry on the shoulder, which the closer shrugged out of with a growl, and then picked up the icy bucket, nearly a third of its contents now sloshed into the carpet or over the floor. "That wasn't Aspirin, but it should clear you up a little bit. At least enough to talk."

"What the hell do you want to talk about?"

"Not me," Robb replied bluntly, scrunching up his eyes. Arya stopped giggling. Gendry stopped groaning and thrashing. He pulled his hands away from his face and they both exchanged a nervous glance before they looked up at Robb, who shrugged. "I'm going to go dispose of this bucket, then I'm going to go wake up freaking Edric and sleep in his room." He raised a finger in Gendry's direction with a thoughtful look on his face. "I'd like for you to know that I'm okay with pretty much anything but intercourse in one of these beds, if it raises either of you out of the perpetual stage of sulk."

Arya felt her jaw drop as she watched her brother. Gendry struggled to a sitting position, tiny bits of ice sticking to his face, and stared at Robb with an open mouth. "Robb, I'm not..." He glanced warily at Arya. "If I'm not... I can't..."

"You can't what?" Robb demanded, training a fierce Stark eye on his friend. "You can't sit here and talk about this? You can't fucking do that? 'Cause I'll tell you what, Gendry, this is the only chance you've got to fix this shit, and you're going to do it, because I'm not going to sit around and watch either of you be sulky anymore. I've had it!"

Thoroughly perplexed by her brother, thoroughly unnerved by Gendry's reaction to their privacy, Arya mumbled, "Robb, I—"

"No, I've had it!" Robb cut her off theatrically. "Seriously! Look..." He turned his body so that he was completely facing Arya, looking her right in the eye. "I love you." He swung around so that he was facing Gendry, and stared at the reliever until they, too, made eye contact. "I love you. I love you both, and gods damn it, I am tired of everybody being so stupid. Dad, you, him, all of this stupid crap that's getting in the way... Screw it all, okay? Screw Dad. I'm sick of seeing two people I love being miserable and hopeless when they could be happy. You're going to freaking work this out, right now, tonight, or today, or this morning, or whatever the fuck it is."

In annoyance, Robb squinted at the window, where the earliest signs of light were beginning to filter between the curtains, before he shrugged carelessly. Turning back to the other two, he continued, "I have had one shitty night. I made a shit decision because I cared, had it backfire completely, then had to stay up the whole goddamn time with my sister, then had to sober up my best friend—both of whom are dumber than the other!—and I have to get up in five damn hours to play a freaking baseball game I've been waiting all my life to play. So I'm going to go and get some freaking sleep, and the both of you are going to sit here and talk this out. And, damn it, if this isn't resolved, for better or for worse, by the time I wake up I'm going to come back in here and bash some skulls together! All right?"

Gendry nodded with wide eyes. Arya approximated the same gesture.

"All right!" Robb growled, waving his hands around in exhaustion. Muttering to himself, swinging the sloshing bucket in one hand, he turned away from them. They both watched him walk to the door, heave it open bitterly, and slam it closed behind him. It reverberated for a long time in its early morning lucidity.

After a long time, she pulled her shocked head away from the door to find Gendry doing the same thing at the same moment. They stared at each other, both trying to find the words, both searching for something that wasn't necessarily there. As Arya watched him, trying to voice all of the conflicting thoughts in her mind, she was hit anew with what she had to do, what she had to do; Gendry was in her clutches, and she had to save them. She wasn't sure she could go on living if she didn't. He was hers, her other half, her everything, the soul that filled the void her life had been for months. She'd tried to replace him, with mindless scouting missions, with frustration and determination in school, with Aegon Targaryen, and it hadn't worked. None of it. She needed him.

"I've missed you."

She spoke without realizing it, but didn't try to bite back the words. She was aware that she had sounded close to tears when they had slipped out, but the fear she had once held of crying had evaporated long before, replaced by new ones. It didn't matter if she cried now, as he lifted his head and truly saw her, truly saw how tried she knew she looked, how emotional the months had been, how lost she had become. Crying was a part of her feeling, and she wanted to show him all of her feeling. She could be tough, she could be rough, she could be angry, but right now she needed to show him only what was inside of her, and she needed all of it to be truth.

It seemed like an eternity passed before his dry lips opened and he licked them, forcing speech forth. "I've missed you. So..." His voice cracked. "...much."

"I didn't... I didn't realize that you meant so much to me," she told him. "I knew you were important, I knew that I felt a lot for you, but it was only after you were gone that I realized that you really were everything. I had... a lot of trouble of functioning. I tried to be strong, I didn't give up, but it was so hard."

"For me, too." He sat up straighter, so he could press his back up against the bed facing her, his long, muscular legs drawn up to his chest. With a sigh, he continued, "Every time I picked up a baseball, after... I couldn't do it without thinking about you, and it hurt every time. And I kept doing it anyway, because I told myself that if I didn't then every reason I had given you why it had to happen would be shit, and I wouldn't be doing what was best for you, anymore."

She tried not to, but her scoff got away from her. "Does it really look like it was the best for me?"

He closed his eyes. "Arya... I'm so sorry. You have no idea how hard this has been weighing on me, no idea how hard it was to just get out of bed in the morning..."

"Oh, yeah?" She sniffled, wrapping her arms around her chest. "It didn't look like it. I would turn on the TV, you know, and there you were, marching onto the field, mowing batters down. And it hurt me so much, that you were so close but I couldn't touch you or be with you."

"It hurt me not being able to see you," Gendry said. His face was open, honest like it had been when he told her about his name, like it had been when he told her why they couldn't me together. "It was so difficult, I swear to you. If it didn't look like it, then I don't know how it didn't show, because to me it was pretty freaking obvious that I was lost over you." He threw a hand out towards the door to the hotel room. "Ask Robb. Ask Edric. They'll tell you. I was moving around like a ghost. Going through the motions. I spent almost every waking hour of my life at the Great Keep, trying to make something out of this game that would take my mind off of you. It never worked. And tonight, when I saw you with Targaryen..."

He trailed off and looked away from her. His lips pursed and a fist came up to half-heartedly smack his own thigh, and then winced. The motion reminded Arya of his black eye, which she turned now to with perplexity, shaking her head. "What even happened to you? How'd you get like this?"

"That," he said bitterly, chuckling dryly without meeting her eyes, "is kind of a long story."

"Well, the sooner you start telling me, the sooner I can be finished beating you up for being an idiot." She crossed her arms over her chest and wiped away a distraught expression to replace it with a stern one, as he finally looked at her. "If you think you're getting out of her without telling me, I'm just going to hit you more."

Gendry cracked a smile, a small one. Sighing, he reached up to touch his eye and winced. Arya, almost without thinking, slipped off of the bed and fell to her knees, picking up a more sizable chunk of ice that sat melting slowly on top of the carpet. Crawling the pace or two that separated them, she reached up impatiently and slapped his own hand away. She took his jaw in her left hand to steady his head; he froze at her touch, but she barely noticed. She'd forgotten how much she liked the way his stubble scraped lightly against her palm as she turned his face to her convenience.

Forcing herself to ignore the warm feelings returning to her and the chill in her hand, she gingerly pressed the ice to the blackening bruise on his face, shaking her head at him as he hissed at the cold. "Start talking."

He was watching her, she realized, but she gritted her jaw and made herself focus on the ice as he obeyed her. "When I saw you in the club, it... well, it starts a little before that, actually." He chewed on his cheek a moment before continuing, "Back in our Casterly Rock series, after we won, that night Targaryen met me outside of the stadium. Jumped me, more like."

"What?" she blurted. "Aegon?"

Gendry flinched. Heat flashed over his features before he composed himself quickly. "Yes, Aegon just stepped out of the shadows and just started talking to me like we were old friends. Except he said that we had some feud between us, because our fathers had fought." He shrugged, heavily. "I don't know anything about that."

"Your father hit the line drive that killed Rhaegar," Arya said quietly. Her hand had stilled on his face and her breath had shortened. Like we had some feud between us. No. They didn't. But her father's story was suddenly there, along with a thousand other worries in her head.

Meanwhile, Gendry stared at her incredulously. "I... never knew that." His face screwed up as he entering his thinking phase; she almost kissed him, having to stiffen her arms and press the ice harder into his face to avoid doing it. Although he winced again at the increased pressure, he added, "I guess... I can get, then, why he's a little bitter, but... I didn't do that. And Robert was never even a father to me. Why doesn't he go fuck with Joffrey, he's the asshole's trueborn son. And on the same freaking team!"

"Joffrey doesn't look like Robert," Arya murmured, hardly believing the words were coming out of her mouth. Everything her father had told her rushed back to her, everything from Rhaegar to Robert to Lyanna. No... he couldn't have been right. No, that's not what's happening. Even still, she heard herself go on, "You do. You're his spitting image, and you're the rival. It makes perfect sense that he would take up his vengeance on you."

"But he's playing for fucking Robert's team!" Gendry retorted angrily, though it wasn't directed at her. "He has no reason for vengeance. My father couldn't have controlled how the ball was hit, he didn't mean to kill Rhaegar!"

There is almost no way Robert could have meant to hit that ball as he did, could have meant to hurt Rhaegar as he did… but...Arya shuddered, but thankfully Gendry didn't notice. "It's not about vengeance. I'm sure it's not. It's just a rivalry. He's not going to kill you."

"No," Gendry agreed, looking not quite as if he believed himself, "but it was still a little creepy. And some of the things he said just made me... made me feel like he had everything that I didn't, like he was everything that I wasn't. He said he would win."

"Would win what?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. He just said he would win." His curiosity and wonder dropped away, replaced once again by imprisoned fury. Gendry's fists curled again at his sides. "And that was all he said. We came to the World Series, and he hit the home run in Game 1. I caught that ball, did you know that?"

"I saw," she said. She had. It had been doubly painful to watch, seeing both the Direwolves' demise and his face on the television, grim and cold.

"So he was the hero," Gendry commented. "And then Game 2 came around. It was my chance, Arya. The chance I've been waiting for for so long." He bunched up his face and shook his head. "Targaryen took that from me. He did win. He beat me. Everything he said was true." He glanced at her with sad eyes. "And then, tonight, Robb knew I was off, and he was just trying to help, but he sent me off to the club with Edric and Mikken, which was obviously a bad idea in the first place. And when we were there, I wasn't in the mood, and then I saw you, on his arm. And it just felt like I... had lost everything. Like Targaryen had taken everything from me. Down to you."

She didn't even have enough irritation inside of her to be angry at him for assuming she could be "taken" by a man. "He hasn't taken me away."

Gendry scoffed, grimacing. "You were with him in a fucking club." As though he were afraid to know, he gulped and then asked her, "Seriously, Arya... It sucks, really bad, but I can take it. Just tell me how long you and him have been... together." It sounded vile off of his tongue.

"We're not together," she insisted immediately, shaking her head, trying to make him see that she was telling the truth. "That was the second time we had been out, and I didn't want to be there."

His eyebrows rose, as if it wasn't the answer he had expected. Almost as quickly, his expression darkened again, as if he stubbornly refused to let himself hope. Then again, if Arya could correctly predict his thoughts, knowing how she herself felt, she couldn't blame him. "But you... like him."

She hesitated, and his face fell to his lap. Frantically, desperately, she shook his head. "I don't know, Gendry, okay? I don't know. He caught me when I was really down and vulnerable. I was really low and I thought that if I went out with him..." She closed her eyes in frustration and irritation. "I don't know, maybe I could forget about you for a while, just go back to being a little normal. I just wanted to stop hurting."

A stretch of silence fell between them. When she opened her eyes, he wasn't looking at her anymore, staring instead at the opposite bed, looking conflicted and menacing with his black eye and his thinking face. His lips parted and then resealed as he reconsidered whatever was on his mind. Arya sat, afraid to move away or closer to him, afraid she'd said the wrong thing, something that hadn't been the truth, something that had been too much of the truth.

Eventually, Gendry took a deep breath, still staring intently away from her. "Did you? Did you forget?"

"Not for a second," she insisted, before any more pause could leave any room for doubt.

He grunted softly. "Maybe you should have."

"Gendry," she grumbled, feeling annoyance bubble within her.

"You don't know whether or not you like him," he continued, distantly. She wished that he would look at her. "Maybe he could make you forget. Maybe that would be a good thing."

"Why are you doing this?" she asked him, pulling the ice away from his face. It worked; he turned to stare at her with grim, stormy blue eyes. She shook her head at him. "What do you want me to say?"

He pondered that for a moment. "I guess that I just hate seeing you with him so much that I'm trying to convince myself that it's better, anyway."

"Is that what this is about?" Arya asked skeptically. "You think that he's better for me than you."

"I don't know, Arya. I hurt you really bad. If he doesn't do that... I'm only trying to think of what's best for—"

"Gods!" Arya exclaimed, and lurched to her feet instantly. She turned her back on Gendry and strode out from between the beds, forcefully glaring at the opposite wall. "I have had it up to here with people who think they're doing what's best for me! Damn it!" She rounded on him again, finding him slack-jawed on the floor. "I know what's best for me, nobody else! And you never hurt me, stupid. My father hurt me. Not you."

He blinked, once she was done talking, clearly unprepared for her reaction. After a moment, his eyes slid down and away once again and murmured something she couldn't catch. Glancing up at her, at her oblivious face, he cleared his throat again and, louder, said, "Well, seeing you with him just... I kind of went off. I had to get out of there. I felt completely empty. So I basically took off. I got away from Edric and Mikken, got out of the club, and just started walking. Eventually I ended up in front of a bar and just didn't care anymore."

"Stupid," she growled. "There's a World Series game today that you could pitch in, in a pivotal moment. Only you would be dumb enough to go out drinking."

"I was in a bad place, okay?" he said, but his light tone conveyed that he knew she was joking. Mostly joking. "And I was inside, and the bartender brought over a bottle for me and I was just drinking and trying to put my mind away for a while, and then Sandor Clegane comes and sits down next to me at the bar and asks for a drink."

It was Arya's turn to have her jaw drop. "What?"

Gendry nodded, an almost-grin, mostly-grimace on his face. "Yeah. Just wait, there's more. I said something, and he said something..." Gendry stopped, and shook his head. "Actually, it's all kind of a bit fuzzy right now, but I know that we kind of got to talking about some shit, and..." He gulped, shrugged, and glanced at her strangely. "It turns out that we both tried to do what was best for Stark girls by leaving them. And ended up completely miserable over it."

Standing there watching him, listening to the tale that sounded more like a drunk concoction than the truth, Arya nevertheless found herself believing him to the fullest, not only because what Gendry said about Sandor sounded very similar to what Sansa had said about the brutish slugger, as well. Arya remembered the first night that Aegon had asked her out, only a few nights before. When she had returned home from her dinner date, she had found her older sister on their couch, staring at the TV with a quizzical face that was not quite happy nor unhappy. A brief series of questions later, which also served to distract Sansa from inquiring about unwanted details from her date, Arya learned that Sandor had spelled out a tale that was distressingly close to that concerning her and Gendry. As Sansa put it, Sandor had, finally, grown up the anger to confront Joffrey regarding Sansa, and to reveal what they had to the asshole. When he had, though, Joffrey hadn't curled up as Sandor had predicted; he'd lashed out, at the both of them, and threatened Sandor with a cut from the team—which, as the entire unofficial baseball world knew, the little git could actually get accomplished—and a promise to make his and Sansa's lives hell if Sandor didn't break it off.

What had surprised Arya most about that situation, though, was Sansa's reaction; her sister had been... insulted. Instead of trying to convince Clegane that he had been wrong and that they could somehow find a way out of it together, Sansa had rather courageously spat it back in the man's face, expressing her disgust at his little faith in her, her strength, and her character. As far as she told Arya, Sansa had shouted at the man for a good twenty minutes, spelling out how the way he treated her could have been considered as bad as Joffrey's, if he only expected her to be some prize to be protected at all costs. Once she had finished her tirade, there, as she told it, she had spun on her heel and walked away from him, still fuming, and had refused to speak with him thereafter.

Set aside Arya's impressed new view of her sister, she still couldn't believe what Sansa had done. From what Gendry spelled out about Clegane's state after their confrontation, though, it seemed that he had turned out the worst of the two. While Sansa seemed still upset over the entire affair, broken despair and anguish had turned to hot rage, something Arya wasn't sure she had ever seen from her sister before. All of it had left Arya so surprised that now, even post-fact, her eyes on Gendry had turned wide and shocked, so that he screwed up his face in confusion before she shook her head.

"I know that he and Sansa fell out," Arya muttered. "She's really mad at him. I guess... I guess I didn't know he would be that upset about it."

"Well, he was upset," Gendry grumbled, shifting uncomfortably on the floor. "As far as I can remember. I think he really loved her."

"He didn't treat her like it." He protected her when she needed protecting, Arya thought to herself. But he didn't let her stand when she thought she had gotten her two feet back under herself. in fact, he might have knocked her back down.

"Still," Gendry said. "I don't think he would make the same mistake twice. And he seemed really torn up about it." He hesitated, poised on the brink of saying something. "I don't suppose that your sister cares about him enough to give him another chance at explaining himself."

"Why do you even care?"

He bristled, sighed, and then shook his head. "I don't know. I guess I don't."

Both of them looked away from the other and Arya realized that their conversation had turned undesirably tangential. Sighing herself, she moved towards the bed and sat down on its edge, looking down on Gendry curiously, wincing in sympathy with his bruises. Throwing a hand gesture at his face, she muttered, "You still haven't told me how you got those."

"Oh, yeah. Well..." He knocked his head from side to side thoughtfully, considering, and then shrugged. "Clegane might've finally said some things, in our mutual drunken state, that pissed me off a little too much. So I challenged him to a fight, and he accepted."

"You what?" She pounced off of the bed and had his shirt in her hand, him cringing away before the fist that was about to fall, when she realized that he was hungover, in pain, and most likely already paying enough for his mistakes. "Stupid! Why would you do such a thing?"

Gendry shrugged again, and glanced up at her with innocent eyes, as if to suggest that he was helpless for it. "I was really messed up, Arya, and really drunk. There are places in there I don't think I remember everything. Like, right before we fought, I think Tyrion Lannister showed up and started drinking with us—" She barked exclamatorily again, but he kept talking over her. "—but some of the other things he said make me not entirely sure I didn't imagine him." He motioned nonchalantly. "Either way, me and Clegane went out into an alley by ourselves and..." Once again, shifting, he grimaced. "I kind of remember doing a lot better in that fight than I feel like I did right now. I guess he kind of roughed me up."

Shaking her head, partly in horror, partly in disbelief and irony that almost bordered on humor, Arya reluctantly released his shirt and mumbled, "You kind of deserved it. He's got inches on you and probably fifty pounds. All muscle."

"Trust me. I know now." He closed his eyes and rested his head against the bed, shaking it in place. "So I had a pretty rough night, Arya. And then, and this is the part that's a little more foggy, I just kind of stumbled back here and hoped that Robb wouldn't be too angry, and then I remember the door opening and you standing there and I kind of thought I was dead."

"You certainly fell like you were."

Gendry flinched, then chuckled to himself and returned to his state of quiet. He rested in silence for a moment, with Arya watching him, before his facial expression gradually began to return to a state of anxiety. Several seconds passed thereafter where he seemed to struggle with himself over whether or not to say something, but finally his braver side seemed to win out. "Why are you here, Arya?"

Arya gulped. Come on. That's the question you've been waiting for. Suck it up. After a deep breath, she answered, "We're not finished, you and I. Not even close. Pretending like we are has torn both of us up."

They stared at each other for a long time. Gendry sniffed once, and looked just a shade away from her. "I wasn't really pretending. But I didn't have a choice in the matter. I still don't, Arya."

"Oh, please, Gendry," she growled. "Fuck that. Please. Look at me!" He did. "Do you seriously think I give any fucks about what my father thinks right now? I have been depressed, lethargic, exhausted, and useless since that day in the Great Keep. I don't know how you held it together like you did, if you feel anything for me like I feel for you. You must just be so... so strong..."

"I'm not."

His voice was a murmur, but his face implied that he meant it. She bit her lip, feeling tears of frustration well in her eyes. She loved him so much. He infuriated her so much. Why was he opposing her, when it had to be the last thing either of them wanted? Did he just enjoy being so bull-headed? "Gods... what do you want?"

"What I can't have," he replied. He spoke quietly, as if he was weak, but she could still feel the power reverberating behind his voice, the power he probably didn't think he had. "It's what I've always wanted. And when I actually get one thing I want, I start wanting another, which I can't get."

"What do you want?"

"I want you!" Abruptly, his voice broke out like a snap, nearly jerking her a step back. His eyes had been dim a moment before; now they were bright, full of life and emotion. "I always have! And the world just keeps ripping you away. I'm afraid, afraid that if I let myself anywhere near you again something else will just swoop down from nowhere and tear you off again. Almost as afraid as I am to stay away from you." He raised his hands to his head and threaded his fingers in his own hair, gripping it as if to tear it away. His face was contorted in pain, breaking her heart. "What do I do? What can I possibly do, if I can't stay away and things won't let me be near you?"

"Nothing's stopping you now," she whispered. He looked up at her in doubt, but she didn't let him stop her. "I'm serious. I don't care what my dad says. I don't care about your fucking elbow. I don't care if you can't provide for me or whatever the hell that shit you threw at me back at the Great Keep is. If you try to tell me that again, I just might kill you. I am that desperate, Gendry. Every one of my siblings has made it clear that they would rather us be together than be apart. Edric and Mikken seemed to feel that way, as well. The only person that doesn't want it is my dad, and I would be perfectly happy, in all honesty, if I never spoke to him again."

"And what about dear Aegon?"

She scoffed. "What about him?"

Gendry released a trembling growl deep in his throat that she was certain was not directed at her. "Do you not have a thing with him? Is there not something between you?"

In way of answer, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, staring straight at Gendry as she did so. She raised it to eye level so that she could see her contacts list, and called the number she wanted. It didn't matter that it was the early hours of the morning, that the other person might not even be up, that she may have been acting rude by placing the call at an inopportune time. Placing the receiver up to her ear and waiting for someone to pick up, she said to Gendry, "Do you know what I want? To not lie awake at night wishing you were there with me. To not go through the day wondering if some other girl had taken my place."

With a shocked expression, he opened his mouth to reply, but before he could the noise of a phone being answered on the other end of her line cut him off. "Hello?"

"Aegon." Gendry froze, his face paling and his fists clenching. Jealousy, Arya thought to herself, but she found herself enjoying it, actually, when she knew that he had absolutely no cause to be jealous, when he didn't realize who he was, that nobody in the world could compare to him.

"Arya?" Aegon said, through the phoneline. He didn't sound like he had just woken up. Then again, in her limited interactions with him, Aegon had seemed relatively unshakable. "Are you all right? Why did you run off like that in the club? Are you safe?"

Making sure that she was staring right into Gendry's eyes, she lifted the phone back to her mouth and said, "I can't see you again."

As she had anticipated, her words drew pause. A moment passed, and then two, but the only thing that changed on her end or his was Gendry's face. Her love's eyebrows rose, his head cocking to the side, his mouth half-opened in surprise. Arya struggled to hold back her smile, but half of it bled through. Luckily, before Gendry could find it himself to change beyond his shock, Aegon cleared his throat. "Why is that?"

She swallowed, her face completely sobered once again. "Because there is someone else." She sighed. "And I love him." Gendry's mouth slammed shut as if he'd been slapped, and he slumped back against the bed, still watching her. Now his eyes were free of grief; on the contrary, their swirl of emotional color made it difficult for Arya to keep saying all that she meant to say. "And I barely know you. And I don't think I could ever feel for you the same that I do for him."

"Wait... Arya," Aegon uttered, clearly caught off-guard. "Wait... can we talk about this for a minute, please?"

"There's nothing to talk about," she replied. "Thanks for your interest, but it's going to stop." She almost added "Have a good day" before she decided that would have been just too snobbish.

"Wait, Arya—"

She lowered the phone and ended the call without once looking away from Gendry. Lobbing the device onto one of the beds, she crossed her arms over her chest and let him watch her, watched him watch her. Ending whatever her relationship was with Aegon, if it had even advanced far enough to be called that, was more than worth it on several fronts having to do with Gendry, but seeing him surprised and delighted, as a result of her, was an added bonus on top of those fronts.

"Now," she began, with a sigh, once it was clear he wasn't going to be the first one to speak after her move, "where are we going from here, Gendry?"

Her phone, lying on the bed, began to ring. Gendry glared at it as if he wanted to smash it, but she completely ignored it. She knew who it was, knew that she didn't want to talk to him, and knew that all she wanted was for Gendry to answer her. When the man in question turned his head back from the bed and found her still waiting patiently, he said, "There was never another girl. There never could be. I'm pretty certain I'd never find anyone to replace you."

She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat, and looked away from him to blink back the sprinkling of tears that dotted into her eyes. "My question stands."

For a while, she didn't look at him. She could hear his breathing, its confident inhalation and exhalation mingled with a quiet rasp. It soothed her, even as her heart raced, waiting uneasily for his answer. Just when she was sure he had decided not to answer, he rustled his position, which drew her eye. She found him climbing to his feet, straightening from a crouch, rising to a height so that he once more towered over her.

"Arya," he mumbled, but it was like he had splashed the bucket of ice water over her face. She shivered fantastically at just the sound of his name slipping off of his lips, much less the step forward that he took, bringing their bodies to within a foot of space, closer than they'd been in months, closer than she'd ever wanted to be to any other man.

"I love you," he said, as if he were saying that the sun rose in the east. She felt a tear slip out of her eye. "I would do anything for you, you don't even understand what I mean by that. I'm pretty sure I fell in love with you from that first time I met you, in the freaking mechanic's shop. I didn't even think I liked you, at first... you just annoyed the crap out of me. But you wedged in my mind like a song and I couldn't get you out of my head, not then, not now, not ever.

"I can't tell you how many times I've thought about that day. How many times I've wished I could go back, how many times I wish I could take the other route." He reached a hand out and slid his fingertips over the edge of her temple, brushing a strand of brown hair that she hated out of the way. "I don't know what we would do. I don't know how we would make it. If I could do it over, I know that I would take it, and take what I had. Be selfish. Force you into that life. Whether it be wrong or right, I would do it, and I would do the best that I possibly could to make you the happiest woman on the face of the earth."

"Then do it," she begged. She reached up and touched his hand, held it against her face with one of her own. "Let's do it. I'm ready. It's not too late."

She watched as Gendry swallowed, felt his thumb move across her face. "I don't know if I can. I can't forget what I did, or pretend like I didn't hurt you. I don't know if I can ever forgive myself for that."

"I told you," she hissed. "You didn't hurt me, my—"

"But I did," Gendry said weakly, and pulled his hand from beneath hers. "I did, even if I didn't mean to. I can't live with myself knowing that."

"Why does it matter?" Arya groaned. "You did or you didn't—and you didn't—but, either way, we're here and it doesn't matter. We have the chance, Gendry. We can just put it behind us. We can start over, we can take things from square one again."

"But I don't want to start over, Arya! I don't want to pretend like I just met you! How can I, when I'm held you in my arms as you slept? I don't want to trudge back through walls, tear back into secrets." He seethed in frustration, shaking his head for several seconds. "I just... I just want you to be mine, more than anything else in the world."

"I am yours, stupid," she murmured.

He kept on shaking, pursing his lips. "But I hurt you. Your father was right. Everything he said was right. I hurt you, I hurt you once, I could do it again." He held up a hand to stymie her insistences. "Two days, three years, fifty, it doesn't matter. You deserve better than me. I've always known it and I'll always know it, and someday I could hurt you again and then I might not be able to repair it."

"So what?" It was her turn to grip her hair and try to rip it from her scalp. You don't deserve me. You deserve better than me. Better than this puddle of insecurity and pain and hate. "So what?" she repeated. "You can't base what you do now based on what might happen. You can't live your life in fear of possibilities! You can't walk away from me now because you're afraid of hurting me fifty years from now, you have to stay with me now because we love each other and I can't stand to live my life without you in it. I don't care what might happen later. I don't care what could fall apart years in the future. I care about you, here and now and that's the only thing that matters to me."

She ended clutching his shirt, pulling him so their faces were inches apart, so that she could feel his breath on her lips and knew that he could feel her pants on his nose. Their eyes were even closer, his blue nearly mixing and clashing with her grey. His were wide, as if she'd declared her intent to run around the sun, wonder edging on disbelief and conflict associated with indecision clouding the brims of his irises. As close as she was, they looked like a hurricane, a raging mass of emotion and thought pounding away at his already pounding head.

A while later, without moving any farther or closer to her, he cleared his throat. "And where will we go? What will we do?"

"Anywhere. King's Landing. Dorne. Braavos. Do anything. So long as we're together."

"Where do you want this to go?" he murmured. He wasn't speaking of futilities now; his questions were genuine. He wanted serious answers. That knowledge inspired her, inserted hope where for so long there had been only darkness. "I mean..." He made a face of uncertainty. "Realistically, ten years down the road, twenty."

"I don't know," she said honestly, struggling to make sure she knew what she meant. Hesitantly, she ventured forth her mind, making a solid effort to try and envision herself down that road. With Gendry. "Marriage? A family?"

He blinked, clearly surprised. "Is that really what you want?"

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Just that I didn't really expect that out of you," he said quickly, raising his hands in innocence, eyes wide. "Seriously. Every vibe I've gotten off of you in all the time I've known you is that you would definitely prefer free and wild to penned down by love and responsibility."

Arya stared at him, completely frozen by his words. On first impulse, she would tend to agree with him without a word against it. She had never given honest thought to marriage in her life, had never pondered whether or not she wanted children at some point later on in her life. The entire subject had been far too close to one of Sansa's ridiculous fantasies for her to get anywhere near it. If she had thought about it at all, considering back, Arya couldn't truthfully say that she would have decided that she wanted to find someone to settle down with for life; what Gendry said was true, she had preferred freedom and loose commitment.

But this was Gendry. And, damn him, he made her completely reshuffle her priorities, completely reshuffle her life to try and encompass him into it. "I... guess I didn't, before. But with you... I don't know," she muttered, sheepishly. She didn't let go of his shirt, but she dropped her eyes to her hands. "You make me rethink things. You make me want things I've never wanted before. I can't explain it. I don't really want to. Right now, I just want you to not walk away. Not like you did before. Not like... I told you to. I don't want to ever be apart from you again. I want to be around you every day, to punch you when you need punching and laugh at you when you need laughing and call you stupid when you are and aren't being an idiot."

"Logically, that's all the time," he commented, slipping her a tiny grin. She punched him. Grunting, chuckling slightly, he picked her hands off of his chest and squeezed them once before he dropped them. The humor disappeared, replaced by the unmistakable concentration of thought that screwed up his features and made her want to seize him. He stepped back and began to pace, in the little gap between the hotel room beds. "I need to think. I need to think."

"About what?"

"Everything," he told her, even though it seemed more that he was speaking to himself. He didn't glance at her, but his words still filled her with a warmth that had been vacant for so many months. "I'm not going to walk away again, but if we're not hiding then your father won't stand for it. I won't have a team. No other team would sign me without surgery, which I'd have to pay for myself. If I recover from that and go through the proper physical therapy, then I can probably get signed by somebody, but in the meantime I'll be living—we might be living—completely off the pay I already have." He glanced only barely in her direction, speaking skeptically. "I don't know if that's enough. Any unexpected expense..."

"You don't need to figure all of this out right now," Arya said quietly.

"If I don't figure it out, I won't be prepared later. If I make a mistake, if I don't know the steps I have to take to get ready for what the future holds—"

"You're doing it again," she chastised him. At his questioning glance, she clarified, "Worrying about what's going to happen rather than focusing on what is happening."

Gendry threaded his fingers behind his head and sighed, stalking a few steps one way and then turning the other, with screw up intensity on his expression. She wished that he could talk to her, that he would just stop thinking for the moment, not worry and instead appreciate the fact that they were together. But she kept her silence and only watched him, and the more he paced, the worse his thoughts seemed to become, the more intense his face. His eyes steadily dropped to the ground, his grip on himself becoming tighter and tighter.

"What are you thinking about?"

When he didn't answer, all of her fears returned abruptly, on the spot. Her heart plummeted; her face probably paled. She hated herself for losing faith so quickly, but she couldn't help it. Gritting her teeth and clenching her fists managed to ward off the sag her body wanted to take, but she still almost swayed over her locked knees and fell onto the bed before he sighed in frustration, halting mid-pace to turn to her.

Either he was unaware of her reaction or he chose to look past it, because he plowed straight into his explanation without pausing to note her complexion or facial expression. "I want to be with you, and I'm going to find a way for it to be so."

She released her pent-up breath, relatively surprised relief didn't sing on the air with a melodious note. A smile fell onto her face naturally; it felt like the first time she had smiled in years. Eagerly, she stepped forward, intending to thoroughly wrap him up in her arms and do her very best not to let go without an extensive fight. Before she had taken a full step, though, he raised both hands with hesitance.

"But," he continued, looking unhappy as he did so, "I've got so much on my plate right now that I can't handle it all at once. I can't even think about dealing with whatever backlash might come from your father or the team for this. Not now. Not while we're in the middle of World Series. Not when I have to have my head in this game. You, of all people, can understand that."

She could. It was her life. Nevertheless, she looked up at him in confusion and asked, "So, what is it you're saying, exactly?"

Gendry took a deep breath. "Can we, please, wait until after the World Series is over until we decide how we're going to advance with... this? I just need to have my mind completely on baseball right now, not because you're not important... but this could mean a lot for my future, for our future. And I need to finish this. I started it, I have to end it. I have to do everything I can for my team. I can't abandon them now. Just until the World Series is over, I promise. Then, we can sit down together and figure out what we want. Or run away. Or whatever you want. I'm willing to do whatever you want."

Listening to him, she couldn't help but release a little laugh of her own. His face bunched up once again, but she quickly waved her hands to show that she wasn't laughing at him. What he had said had been so completely like something Arya would have said, had their positions been reversed, that she couldn't help but find the irony in it. It didn't take her a moment, between her relief upon finding that her worry had been unnecessary and her review of his reasoning, for her to admit to herself that it was a request she couldn't refuse him. He was who he was—a baseball player and a loyal friend—whether his heart was broken or he was the happiest man around. She wouldn't have loved him if he were anything else. He did have his responsibility to his team, to compete for the Series. And a responsibility to himself, not to shirk the opportunity he had. And who would she be, if she dragged him away from it now, the thing that he wanted more than anything else in the world. Except for me, she realized, and could feel herself blushing, in a way she didn't mind. He was correct. His focus had to be the World Series, not her and the demons they would face together. But that could wait; she could wait. She had waited two months in the dark with the desolate. She could easily wait a few more days knowing what a brighter future her patience would earn her.

"Okay," she breathed, nodding and offering him an encouraging smile, and his beam amplified her own to no finite extent.

"Thank you," he replied with a sigh of relief that deflated nearly all of the tension in his body. "You don't know how much better I feel now compared with how empty I felt just a few hours ago."

"Yes, I do," she said knowingly, and then shrugged. "Except for the hangover, of course." He grunted and rubbed his head again, and she suddenly realized just how exhausted he looked. How exhausted she herself felt. It had been a long night for them all. "You should get some sleep."

"No," Gendry replied, turning to glance out of the hotel room window. While they had been talking, the earliest rays of sunlight had crept between the shadows, illuminating the warm south with a far more timid winter morning. "I would have to be up in only a few hours anyway. I'm going to have enough to explain, what with..." He gestured to his face and his black eye. "...that I don't need oversleeping to be added to it. I'll just have to fight through it, give it what I have and worry about what comes next when he comes."

"That sounds better," she said, nodding, though she thought that she herself could and might sleep for a few days. Who are you kidding? It's the World Series. And now you have every excuse to watch it. You won't be able to sleep, you're too excited.

His eyes perked up suddenly. "Besides, you've reminded me of something."

"What's that?" she asked, while he stepped forward to pass her.

As he drew even with her body, though, he stopped. She froze, as well, basking in his proximity, as he turned so that their clothes brushed against one another and their faces were once again inches apart. She tipped her head up slightly as his nose slid against her hair. She sighed as he inhaled, sucking in a deep whiff of whatever smell drifted around her. Her eyes slid closed, and her forehead tipped forward, resting against his shoulder, as if weeks of exhaustion were washing away in their closeness.

Against her hair, he murmured, "I'll call you later."

He slipped away, past her, pulling a jacket off the top of his baggage in the corner while he went. She remained there, standing, still feeling the warmth of him so close to her, wanting to hug it to herself and never let go. Unable to keep from smiling, she called after him, "Where are you going?"

"I just remembered," he called back over his shoulder, shrugging it into the jacket as he pulled the room door open. "I have to go pay for a loaf of bread."