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.

29. Chapter 27

This chapter was originally written in two days.

27

Ever since she had been old enough to realize what baseball was, to love it because her brothers and father loved it, and then to love it because she loved everything about it, Arya had dreamed of waking up one morning to find the Direwolves waiting to play Game 7 of a World Series. She longed for it for so long that she expected herself to feel nothing but relief, excitement, and victory that it had actually happened after an eternity of yearning.

When she did crack her eyes open, having celebrated the fact that she was missing a fair bit of university class to watch the World Series in-person by being far too nervous to sleep until the wee hours of the morning, she found that all of her expected relief was replaced instead by anxiety. Rippling, bubbling anxiety.

It was well into the morning before she was able to climb out of bed. Rickon and Bran were already off at school, her mother at work, her father most likely already off at the stadium, doing whatever it was he was going to do with himself, killing time in probably much the anxious state that she was until the game that night. She found it absurd that she felt much worse that morning, when they were a game away from victory, than she had the previous day, when they were facing elimination head-on.

She tried to eat, and couldn't. Two bites of cereal in she set down her spoon and glared harshly at the surface of milk in the bowl, as if the whole thing was the food's fault and not her own nerves. In another situation, it would have been comical, her being so nervous when she wasn't even one of the players who would be suiting up for Winterfell that night. Under the circumstances, though, where every last member of the team knew her by first name, where she had grown up her entire life as a Direwolf where some had only been members for a year or a few months, where she felt as though her lifelong happiness was riding on this game, Arya decided that she was quite justified in her anxiety. Deciding such did nothing to alleviate the worry, though. Nor did it make time travel any faster.

Why can't the game just fucking start already?!

The weather outside was blistery cold, with a biting wind that put the late autumn temperatures probably approaching the freezing mark. It would be an awful night for players, cold and dark and numb, and even worse for the fans who didn't have running about to keep them warm. It would serve as an advantage to the Direwolves, fortunately, they who had at least a little more experience playing in more temperate weather, compared to the luxurious sauna King's Landing was in the summer. Nevertheless, the conditions would be the worst of the Series, definitely the worst of the season, and it was a game that may come down to things such as how easy it was for a pitcher to grip a ball or how quick a numb fielder could fumble a ball out of his glove with freezing fingers; the weather would undoubtedly be a factor.

For her, of course, she could cozy up in the warm suite that belonged to her family, which she almost felt guilty about intending to do. She was almost brazen and brash and angry at her father enough to throw that to the wind, too, and go out and sit amid the icy stands with her fellow citizens of Winterfell, who she had no doubt would have packed the stadium had the Land of Always Winter sent a blizzard over them as long as it meant seeing their Direwolves play.

The atmosphere that night would be vibrant, electrified, furious, dazzling, dangerous, and breathtaking. She allowed herself to feel a moment of excitement just contemplating it, contemplating that she would be in the mix. And so would Gendry, more so than her. He would be at the forefront, hopefully. Selfishly, contrary to her usual merciless approach, she muttered a short prayer to the gods that the Direwolves only win by a few runs that night, so that Gendry would have the pleasure of saving Game 7 of the World Series. She wanted the game ball to be his. She wanted the game to be his.

When it became too much to handle, she dragged Nymeria into the brutal wilderness and ran for almost an hour, returning to the Manor to spend another good half hour in the shower, only to find herself still several hours short of an appropriate time to leave for the game and unable to eat. The situation fell to where she sat herself down on the couch and thrust music into her ears, wishing it would drown out the world magically and she would suddenly realize that it was exactly the right time to leave. Instead, she caught herself staring at the clock, and couldn't stop herself once she had begun.

Gendry's probably at the stadium, by now, she thought to herself, watching the hour hand tick just past three. She wondered if he was as nervous as she was. Probably not. He's probably stone-faced as a bull, ready for anything.

At four-thirty, finding her tapping both of her feet impatiently with two hands grasping handfuls of Nymeria's fur, her father returned home to gulp down a supper and collect her, and raised an eyebrow at her position and frantic expression. Pretending that she had gotten over what he had done wasn't easy—it was the hardest thing she had ever done, truthfully, considering that what he had done was the worst thing to ever happen to her—but she had pulled it out in the name of love and baseball, and forced herself to grin at him then.

"Almost ready to go, then?" he asked her, amused, returning her grin.

At first, he had seemed suspicious at her quick recovery after such a drastic fall, but her excuse of looming baseball to take her mind off of it had seemed to win him over. Which was only another sign that he didn't know his daughter, didn't know how much Gendry meant to her, but that didn't matter; after tonight, they would square off anew in a new battle, regardless of a Direwolves' win or loss. If Ned Stark reconsidered, Arya knew he would have a difficult time earning back her trust; if he didn't, then he might lose her forever.

But that was later. There was baseball to play, first.

"Yep," she replied, tenaciously quick, pushing Nymeria off of her lap as gently as she possibly could in her haste. "Can we go now? Are you ready to go?"

"Let me eat, first," Ned Stark told her, with a chuckle and a slight shake of the head. "Why leave so soon, anyway? So you can fret and tap your feet at the ballpark. There's still three hours to go. You should eat something, too."

"I can't," she uttered, crossing her arms impatiently. "Tried. And the sooner we leave, the sooner we won't miss anything."

"What could you possibly miss?"

"Well, I won't know unless I'm there to not miss it, will I?"

He didn't reply to that, perhaps sensing the tense and antagonistic air, and instead went to eat a very short meal that even he appeared to have difficulty getting down. She spent the time garbing herself for a star trek, with a Direwolves shirt underneath a Direwolves hoodie over long underwater and dark jeans. The socks she pulled up to her knees over their ankle-high compatriots showed the snarling faces of wolves on each calf, and she even dug into the very back of their closet before she could find a winter hat with an immaculately lettered "WINTERFELL" inscribed richly across the front. With a sizable black coat and gigantic mittens, she more probably resembled a wildling from Beyond the Wall than an obsessed girl going to a baseball game, but she couldn't care less. The game was what she wanted to be focused on, not her frozen fingers and toes. Feeling cold was not an option. The promise of a heated box was too fortunate to rely on.

Ned Stark dressed far more moderately than her, a black trench coat over his suit and Direwolves tie. Though he eyed her up and down when they met in the foyer, he wisely said nothing; it would have been difficult for her to continue feigning reconcilement had he questioned her devotion to her team and her own homeostasis. Instead, the two of them stuffed themselves into the car, Arya still virtually bouncing like the legal adult that she was, and Ned Stark pulled them out of the driveway to collect his sons from school before the game.

Night was already falling quickly, clouds and darkness closing over Winterfell. That being observed, the city was very much warm with life, even if the air was not. The roads were packed with cars, the sidewalks teeming with people. As they exited from the freeway to roll into the suburban area where Bran and Rickon attended adjacent schools, the car couldn't travel a hundred meters without passing a Direwolves' logo of some sort, be it flying on a flag, painted into permafrost on the front lawn, or borne proudly on the clothing of the residents out and about.

Arya watched them with pride. These were her people. As active as the city was at that moment, in a few hours time it would shut down. Completely. Stores would close, homes would lock, and every Northerner not of the forty five thousand individuals who were fortunate enough to be packed into the Great Keep at that time would cluster in front of TVs, in boisterous sports bars, in corporation conference rooms, in cozy Winterfell living rooms, to watch their hometown team, their rugged, gritty baseball boys take on the best team baseball had seen in decades in a single game that would win or lose them all.

Both Ned and Arya watched them, her using them as a convenient reason not to talk to her father. The silence stretched for a long time before Ned cleared his throat, "Watching this game... really wouldn't be the same without you."

Startled, she turned away to glance at her father in the driver's seat. His expression hadn't changed. His tender voice echoing in her mind was the only indication that he had spoken at all or spoken with such emotion. Such was as rare from her father as was honor to Theon Greyjoy.

She swallowed. "I don't think it would it would be the same for me, either."

What surprised her was that she meant it. Loathe as she was to admit it, baseball hadn't been the same without him, without her father. It wasn't, wouldn't be the same without him, after what he did, never again. That was the grudging remark she had told herself watching the Direwolves win the Championship Series, doubled over from pain at wishing she could share the game with Ned Stark and seeing Gendry. Her pain over Gendry had been far greater, of course, but now that that was resolved, a fact yet unbeknownst to Ned, she could allow herself to acknowledge that the game had always seemed more fun when she could turn to her father and share it with him, whether it be a minuscule detail or a talk of strategy.

But it hadn't been her choice, hurt her as it might. His decision, his consequences. If it weren't for the fact that she couldn't have bared to be away from Gendry and the Direwolves in their moment of destiny, she wouldn't have had to throw on this facade at all. Was it wrong of her, though, to mull over her father's words for a moment and decide that, despite all he had done to her, there was still no one she would rather watch a baseball game with?

Arya watched her father struggle with himself for several moments. It was like watching a statue try to make a decision. Every muscle in his face stood out in the clenching of his jaw, but not a single one moved. There was no perceivable change to him, whatsoever, but any member of his family could have told anyone else that there was a war on in his head.

"I'm glad... that you've come to move on," he said carefully, after what must have been a minute. Arya stiffened instantly, but she didn't say anything, keeping her sudden flare of anger to herself as her father continued, "Over the last few months... I tried to think of something to say. To you."

"What do you mean?" She cursed herself for speaking at all, but she couldn't help it.

He lifted a hand off of the steering wheel to scratch at his beard with a grimace, eyes determinedly locked on the road. With an empty wave of the hand, he said, "I've lost a lot of people in my life, but none of mine. When something happens to threaten any of you..." He closed his eyes for a moment and tapped a fist against the wheel. He shook his head. "I had no idea what Joffrey was doing to Sansa. I don't think I'll ever know why she didn't tell me sooner, but I think it was because of me, for some reason, and I can't forgive myself for that. After what happened to Bran... I just can't risk any of you, anymore. I let Sansa off on her string too far and look what's happened. One bastard broke her heart and then another. And then, with you..." He sighed. "Perhaps I was too harsh, but it's like all of you are hitting patches at the same time. Robb and his fiancé. Sansa and her relationships. You. All on the tail of Bran. I must protect my children. That's all I was trying to do, all I've been trying to do."

"Well, maybe that's your problem, Dad," she mumbled, softly but firmly. "You trying to protect us. We're not children anymore." She could feel her anger, months of it, bubble to the surface, but she forced her voice to remain neutral. "Maybe if you didn't treat us like it, like you had to control our moves and okay whoever we wanted to be with, than Sansa would have come to you. Maybe if you listened to us instead of telling us what was what once in a while we would be willing to talk to you, too."

Her father frowned. "Sansa has always gone to your mother with that sort of thing, though. You, I talk fine with. All the time."

"Yeah, about baseball," Arya countered, shaking her head. "And baseball is great and you and I both love it so much, but it's just a game, sometimes. It's not my life." His brow creased as though he found her words hard to believe. She nodded enthusiastically just to enforce the point. "Maybe it was a while ago, but it's not now. I have other things, now. I'm not a child anymore, not like I was. I think I've earned the right to make my own adult decisions."

"It wasn't about that," her father replied.

"Wasn't it?"

With a grimace that showed the reluctance of his admission, Ned Stark said, "It wasn't supposed to be about that. I love you. I love all my children. I loved my sister. It well to me to protect my family, and I couldn't do it, once. I've tried so hard to protect all of you, Robb, you, Sansa... have I tried too hard?" He shook his head. "Honestly, before I made it to the big leagues, I never envisioned this life for myself. The family life. I thought I would be young and strong forever. And then I just... fell into the role, and I loved you all so much. I just wanted to be a good father, to give you all the lives you deserve, the lives me and my brothers and sister never had when we were your age." He stilled for a long pause, staring at the windshield at cold, warm Winterfell in contemplation. "Perhaps I pressed you too hard into what I thought was the best way for you to do it."

Perhaps? she snapped at him mentally, but restrained herself audibly. It almost sounded as if he was reconsidering himself; as if there was a chance he was changing his mind. About everything. Arya bit her lip, the sudden thought urging her to ask, but that might unravel everything right when there was the first glimpse of a possibility he might come around. It was best she hold that card in check, until she could be blatant with her intent to be with Gendry whether or not anyone objected.

Instead, after careful thought, she said aloud, "You have been a good father. But nobody's perfect, and some time you just have to let your kids go, don't you? Robb and Sansa and I are all old enough that you can let go of our hands. In fact, you should. We won't drown in the world."

"It's not a nice place," her father commented dryly, sternly, but also nodded with a smooth sigh. "But you're right, I think." His eyes flashed to her and a crinkled of his expression nearly turned up a smile. "We can talk about it more later. If necessary. Right now, there's baseball to be played."

Arya agreed. Settling back into her seat feeling a little warmer, a little more comfortable than before. He was still not back in her good graces beyond watching a baseball game, no matter what she was pretending, but she was pleasantly surprised by this welcome start. As they pulled up to the crossing between Bran's and Rickon's schools and her father got out to collapse Bran's wheelchair in the trunk, Arya began to believe that there was hope for her father to come around, after all. When her brothers were snug in the back seat and her father was back in the driver's seat, an agreeable baseball conversation between all four of them composed the air of their final leg to the Great Keep.

The ballpark was vibrant when they arrived. For Arya, anytime she arrived at the Great Keep for a baseball game it might as well have been the most important game of the decade, but, even for her, this was something else entirely. The stadium stood majestically, in brilliant external and internal lights. Gigantic banners displaying the epic faces of players hung off of the side in multiple-story height; Arya's heart skipped a beat unexpectedly when she found Gendry's blue eyes staring at her out of one of them, taller than life.

The streets were shut down; it took several showings of Ned Stark's ID to multiple police officers to wade through the overflowing streets without being stopped by something other than congestion. It was a sea of black and blue and white, on winter coats, on winter hats, on baseball jerseys, on baseball caps. They couldn't turn their eyes, not down to Rickon, without seeing a Direwolves' logo on someone. It wasn't just the apparel, either; every face was bright, smiling with excitement or gruff and tenacious with eagerness. Weather couldn't dampen the mood, as thousands bunched and clotted and packed themselves in while still in the parking lot, cradling tickets in freezing hands as they desperately thrust themselves together with complete strangers and wonderful drinking companions in their efforts to make it into the stadium.

Her father had a sizable smirk on his face the entire time they were slowly inching the car through the closed streets and crowd to the parking ramp, but it actually delayed them so much that Arya began to complain that an hour and a half was simply not early enough to arrive for a playoff game. Pushing Bran through the crowd took more time than she would have liked, too, but their passage through the VIP gate behind home plate was enough to make up for it; although she did thoroughly enjoy the cheers, claps, and Monarch-directed insults that went up and were picked up at random throughout the crowds outside.

Every level of the Great Keep was as much a cacophony as outside. The quietest was the luxury level, which the four Starks took the elevator directly, too, but even after disembarking on the carpeted floor and beginning to make the way towards their box Arya could hear the remnants of the crowd's jubilance filter in between the cracks of the levels to reach them. It was unmistakable; the Great Keep was alive for the game... Winterfell was alive for the game. It was in their blood, as if they were all Starks. The thought made Arya grin as she glanced at her father, and, despite, herself, she allowed herself to share the smile with him.

The first moment of the night that took her completely by surprise came when her father slipped their key into the lock of the suite and pushed the door open ahead of them, allowing Rickon to wheel Bran in and Arya to stride in behind them, practically bouncing up and down with her carelessly immature anticipation. All of it abruptly slid to a stop when she darted into the suite, immediately past the nicer furniture and refrigerator to the two rows of seats facing the glass panels that overlooked the field.

Catelyn Stark was seated in the farthest seat with one leg crossed over the other, wearing a Direwolves jersey clearly displaying Robb's number 34, her purse and coat set neatly in the seat next to her. She glanced over her shoulder as her family entered before turning back to staring down at the field, where the grounds crew was finishing drawing the lines on the infield dirt, while running a hand through her auburn hair.

A long moment passed, Arya's unbridled surprise choking her words in her throat. Catelyn finally turned her head to observe her daughter, and screwed up her eyebrows in confusion to find a bundled wildling with a slack-jaw who looked much like her youngest daughter regarding her as if she were an alien. "What?"

"You're... here," Arya said simply, closing her mouth with a snap, unable to find another way to put it.

"Of course I am," Catelyn replied, her eyes narrowing as though Arya's confusion was insulting. "My son is playing for the World Series tonight, how could I miss it?"

Arya frowned, glancing at her father. Ned Stark peered once at his wife before acquiring another small, quiet smile and looking away, furthering adding to Arya's perplexed state. At least her brothers were staring at their mother with equal surprise to Arya's, Rickon quite dumb-founded as he leaned against Bran's wheelchair for support.

Turning back to Catelyn, Arya spent several moments trying to decide how to go about asking before finally shrugging out of her coat, plopping down beside her mother's belongings and blurting, "I'm really surprised to see you here. You haven't come to a game in years."

Silently, Catelyn watched her for several moments. "It's a special case. I can't miss the World Series."

"You missed the first six games," Arya said, before she could help herself.

Her mother made a noise that was halfway between a breathy grunt and a sigh. Catelyn's fingers twisted in her hair and stilled, her eyes turning to the field. After a long moment of consideration, she pressed her lips together and exhaled. "It's baseball. Sometimes—oftentimes—some things that have happened make me reluctant to endorse it sometimes. But it's a part of this family. I can't deny that. And I love it, too." She shrugged and glanced at Arya sheepishly, as though she didn't expect to be believed. "In my own way."

For a second or two, the two women stared at each other, Arya at least feeling that everything that had been true in previous days was beginning to reverse itself for unseen reasons. Me not having to even threaten to kill Gendry in order for him to hear reason, Dad almost apologizing, Mom showing up to a baseball game again... what's next?

She shouldn't have bothered questioning it, even to herself.

As Rickon sat down beside her and Bran finished rolling himself up to the end of the row of seats, Arya heard the door to the suite open behind them, and a soft sprinkle of female laughter follow its perpetrators into the room. Twisting in her seat, she spun to find Sansa—garbed in a coat and mittens and wearing a scarf that looked murderously and suspiciously like it wasin Monarchs colors—and a slender, brown-haired girl she had never seen before striding into the suite as if they owned it, at least on Sansa's part.

Their conversation stopped when they realized that five Starks, including both parents, were staring at them, with various wide eyes. Arya had been under the impression that Sansa was in King's Landing, having politely refused when Arya asked whether or not she wanted to tag along with her and their father on the way back to Winterfell for Game 6. The two sisters made eye contact and Sansa grinned slightly, as if it was all fun and games and a delightful surprise, instead of feeling Arya's mounting frustration that her sister was in town without sharing the knowledge.

Sansa's eyes graduated to the rest of the family after only a moment, leaving Arya to her own discomfort, and the younger sister turned her gaze instead onto the newcomer, who had lit up like a deer being stalked by a direwolf. She was older than Arya, probably older than Sansa, but came off as far more timid than either of the Stark sisters. Her stare was darting between the members of the Stark family as though she didn't know who was going to skewer her first, her head half-bowed in a way that allowed her brown hair to half-cover her pretty face. Arya had never met her before, but something about her said that she should know who this girl was.

And that was when Jon walked in the door that the two latest arrivals had left sitting open.

All of the Starks and Snows and mystery girls stared at each other for a long moment, half of them not expecting the other half to be there, a few of them total surprises, many of them feuding, before everyone began to speak at once.

"I was in town," Sansa said, "and Jeyne doesn't get to come see Robb play very often, and there's no way he could ever forgive her if she missed his World Series victory."

"I'm sorry," Jon exclaimed at the same time, glancing around at them all once before locking his eyes on Ned Stark. "Sorry, I didn't think there would be so many people here."

Arya, herself, while Bran and Rickon both called out Jon's name, herself cried, "What are you doing here?" She wasn't sure who she was talking to this time, whether it be Catelyn, Sansa, or Jon. From the mixed vehemence and surprise in her voice, she could only guess that it was a mixture of all three.

As soon as everyone spoke, they stopped, everyone realizing what each other had said, and glanced about themselves, a motley of people garbed darkly in winter clothing and Direwolves' gear—even Jon was sporting a Direwolves jacket that had probably left him quite chilly in the frosty air. Arya saw that Catelyn's eyes were on Jon, but the shrewd expression she expected was not on her mother's features, only contemplation. Sansa had turned to face Jon as he spoke, blinking as if just realizing he was there, while Arya resisted the prevailing temptation to leap out of her seat and tear her cousin limb from limb.

Only Ned Stark was watching them all with a smirk, and it was he that spoke first. Stepping towards the new girl, he reached out and actually took one of her hands in his own, offering her a kind smile. "It's wonderful to see you again, Jeyne. I'm glad you could come."

"I couldn't miss it, Mr. Stark," the girl said with a shy grin, and Arya realized that she was Robb's fiancé, probably several moments after everyone else in the room had. Jeyne glanced between her pieces of hair at Catelyn, and nodded politely. "Mrs. Stark."

"Oh, please. Catelyn," Arya's mother reprimanded lightly, with the same kind smile. "And call him Ned, too. You're making us feel old."

Ned Stark immediately took Jeyne and spun her around, casting aside Jon's apologies and offers to leave and tentative glances at Catelyn with a wave of his hand. He introduced Jon as his son, as he had all of his life, and Jeyne and Jon shook hands with more warm smiles, Jon muttering that he was overjoyed to finally meet her, after hearing so much from Jon. Ned beckoned Bran and Rickon over, as well, to meet Jeyne for the first time, leaving Sansa wandering slowly towards Arya with a sly beam which suggested her mischief was managed.

Understandably unprepared for the sights of her sister and Jon, Arya channeled her surprise into half-outrage, half-annoyance as she directed her glare on Sansa over the back of her padded seat. "I thought you didn't want to come back to Winterfell. I thought that you had more important things to do."

"Oh..." Sansa said, shaking her head with a congested smile while she shrugged profusely, her eyes passing smoothly between her sister and mother. Arya wanted to slap her and hug her at the same time. "It's Game 7 of the World Series. What can I say?"

Arya opened her mouth to yell at her sister for not letting her know she was coming, for not coming up with her for moral support in the face of their father in the first place, for not closing the door and letting Jon walk in unhindered behind her, but instead of voicing those quarrels she realized that she didn't want to waste the energy on yelling. Not now. It was a great day, and only getting greater, and it was no good to get herself pent up before the game had even started. Especially when it was becoming a day for their family, a day they hadn't had in a long time.

Instead, she introduced herself to Jeyne as the brown-haired girl meandered over, and pulled the girl down into the seat next to her when Jon made his way around the seats as if to take it himself. Arya made eye contact with him for a moment, glaring steel into his quiet sadness, but Catelyn on her other side was an impregnable wall he didn't want to mess with, and Sansa slid around to take the seat previously occupied by Catelyn's things, anyway. Fully expecting him to come out again and try some miserable attempt at redemption, Arya was relieved when instead, after a moment of regretful staring, he looked away and sat down with Ned Stark and her brothers in the second row of seats.

Doing her best to ignore his presence and telling herself that him being there and her prolonged anger at him would not discourage her from enjoying the most important game of recent history, Arya fell into a conversation with Jeyne and her sister and mother, instead, finding it surprisingly easy to do so. The girl turned out to be more than eligible for the term woman; despite her shy attitude, simple conversation showed that she possessed a clever bit of cunning on top of her pretty face, even if her knowledge of baseball was disturbingly lacking. Nevertheless, her laugh was light and her smile was friendly. Arya could very easily see why Robb loved her.

Eventually, curiosity got the best of her, and she couldn't help glancing over her shoulder at Jon and her father, who had held a hushed conversation the entire time Arya was talking with Jeyne, Sansa, and Catelyn. Both of them noticed her looking almost immediately and their voices gradually faded. Jon avoided her glance entirely, a fact which almost pleased her despite the discomfort their estrangement left behind. Her father, however, merely glanced back at her and let a wide, beaming smile grow onto his face, answering Arya's questioning glare only by spreading his arms across the backs of the seats of Jon and Rickon.

"It's a good day," Ned Stark said, his eyes falling over all of them in turn, over all of his family, even the newest member. Finally returning his gaze towards Arya, he smiled widely at her until she couldn't help but smile back. "It's a very good day. I can feel it."

In their company, the time flew by quicker than Arya had imagined it ever could. Before she even realized what was happening, an imported celebrity by the name of Mya Stone sang a very long and emotional national anthem, after which military jets thundered overhead to the great enthusiasm of the crowd. Game 7 was in the air and in the works, the teams putting themselves together in the last few moments before they would embark on the path they could not return from.

The suite grew silent, not hushed by tension but quieted by excitement. Even Catelyn, who Arya still held in suspicion about whether or not she was really comfortable with being there—especially because she hadn't spoken a word about Jon's presence, who also clearly had not expected her to be there—even Catelyn watched the field stiffly, clutching at her chin self-consciously with her other arm wrapped around her middle.

On the scoreboard, the precursor to their emergence from the dugout, a video cataloging special Direwolf moments from that season played. Arya watched it silently, her mind running through the season with each moment the video displayed. She smiled when Gendry's face appeared, bent over one knee and peering as intensely for a sign as if he was a septon reading scripture. The show progressed to exhibit several different frames of his tall, strong body finishing through on pitches, several different instances of strikeouts, and then a frame or two of Robb and Gendry smiling and shaking hands after a successful save before the video cut to images of Edric and Mikken entering dives to snag flyballs.

Even as the Direwolves' highlights continued to flash across the scoreboard, to the growing excitement of the crowd, Arya's eyes were out towards the bullpen, searching through the relievers milling about until she came upon him, sitting on the end of the bench next to his teammates, bent over his knees. It was difficult to tell at the distance, but it looked as if he were focused on the field rather than the video playing, scanning with deep concentration. She smiled at the thought, imagining the agonized look that must have been on his face, and long after the Direwolves' position players rose up out of the dugout and rushed out to take the field, beneath a standing ovation that brought every member of the crowd to his or her feet, Arya still had eyes and thoughts only for beyond left field.

The short warm-up progressed. The infielders picked balls neatly off of the ground and chucked them on to first base. The outfielders lobbed the ball lazily to each other, stretching out their arms. The starting pitcher took his cues from Robb and made his practice throws. Arya told herself that there was no way any of them could be as nervous as she was, sitting a hundred and fifty feet away and nearly unable to sit with her anxiety. For their part, however, each and every Direwolf looked as if the game was nothing they hadn't played hundreds of times before, down to Robb's lackadaisical snag of the final practice pitch before he slung a fastball that might nearly have rivaled Gendry's down to second base from his knees.

For the last time that season, the ball was caught before the game began, flipped to Hallis, then around the horn to third, before it was handed to the starter, Joseth, on the hill. Arms were raised on the infield to signify the number of outs to the outfielders, the outfielders took steps backwards to fall to level depth. Janos Slynt strode forward and tapped the dirt off of his shoes before digging into the box.

Joseth stepped onto the hill to take the first sign, and Game 7 of the World Series began.

Dad was right, Arya said, as Joseth stepped off with his left foot, planting his right against the rubber as he strode to release the ball. This is going to be a good day.

The crack of the bat filled the entire stadium, splitting the freezing air so heavily that Arya heard it through a half inch of glass separating them from the rest of the bellowing crowd. Each and every mouth in the ballpark abruptly stilled, watching the white ball hurtle upwards into the dark, dark night. By the time it had reached the peak of its flight, every mouth was silent, every Direwolves fielder had stopped moving after it. There was nothing to it but to watch the first pitch of the game sail over the right field fence, over the first deck of bleachers, and bury itself on the second seven rows in.

Arya blinked, trying to convince herself that she imagined it. When she was finished doing so, though, Slynt was rounding first base, high-fiving his coach, cockily swaggering his way towards second. She glanced around, still believing herself to have imagined what had just happened. It took seeing her two brothers' shocked faces, a raised eyebrow from the usually stoic Jon, and a grimly stolid face on her father to let her know that, indeed, Janos Slynt had in fact knocked the first pitch of Game 7 of the World Series over the outfield fence for a home run.

"Fuck," she heard herself hiss.

Catelyn's expected chastisement didn't come; a short glance told Arya that even her mother appeared taken aback by the hit. Sansa, despite her scarf, looked none the happier, and despite her lack of knowledge Jeyne appeared thoroughly upset. It didn't take a great deal of intelligence to realize that an opposing team's home run was not a good thing, but Arya wondered if Robb's fiancé knew just exactly how much the momentum had been ripped away from the home team, from the Direwolves.

"It's all right," she heard Bran say behind her. "You have to score to win anyway. It's a long game, they'll get the run back."

But even he sounded dejected, the soldier who had trucked through paralysis as if it were only an inconsiderate inconvenience. Arya glanced over her shoulder, telling herself that whether he sounded convicted or not, Bran was right. Her father glanced back after her eye's had been on him for a moment. She didn't know what she was expecting; perhaps a shrug, telling her that it didn't matter, something to comfort her with the knowledge that one batter into Game 7 the Direwolves were down by a run. Instead, Ned Stark looked away almost immediately. Which did nothing to quell Arya's growing fears.

The crowd, for once, was quiet. Joseth took a new ball from Robb as Slynt crossed the plate, seemingly unfazed but doubtlessly having the same worrying thoughts running through Arya's head. Nevertheless, he stepped onto the rubber as though the home run had never taken place, facing down Tyrell as the blond left-handed batter stepped in.

The pitch was a fastball. It was lined into the right-center gap.

Arya groaned, raising her hands to clutch her head as Edric pursued it desperately. The center fielder tried to cut it off early, to prevent Tyrell from rounding first and taking, but as he slid to mitt it the ball hit something in the frozen grass and skipped over his body, bouncing twice on the remaining outfield turf before it hopped the warning track and bounced off of the wall.

No, Arya moaned to herself. This can't be happening.

By the time Edric's backup had raced to the wall after it and thrown the ball back into the infield, Tyrell had not only taken second but also rounded it and dived into third ahead of the relay play. And just like that, while the Monarchs' dugout filled to the top step with excitement and the crowd completely deflated, King's Landing started off the game with a home run and a triple. On two fucking pitches.

She must have been rocking in her seat or something, because a nudge on her shoulder made her swing around, to find Jon leaning towards her with an outstretched arm and a sympathetic expression. Despite her murderous return, the cousin she had grown up with like a brother merely shrugged at her. "Don't worry, Arya. Bran's right. There's nine innings to play. It's a long game. They've come back from far worse this season."

Her anger at him was eclipsed by the dismay she felt; she had to admit that what he said, at least this time, was true. There was no reason to freak out before the Direwolves had even had a chance to hit yet. They were still lightning hot, having won three of the last four on a smashing of hits, and they were still at home, with a home crowd to back them, even though Aegon had stepped to the plate to dig in as if he were perfectly comfortable in the environment. What had she ever seen in him, anyway? The fact that he was a Monarch should have been enough to turn her off of him. The combination of angers made her turn away from Jon without replying, which earned her a non-judging glance from Sansa but no words.

And, as it turned out, it was a good thing no one had spoken. Arya just might have lashed out at them, instead.

Aegon took two balls before lining a fastball straight back up the middle for a base hit, nearly taking off Joseth's head in the process. Arya looked away in disgust as Tyrell trotted to the plate for a second run, instead seeing her father shift uncomfortably in his seat, as well. This can't be happening, she told herself, as Aegon rounded first and vehemently fist-bumped the first base coach before turning to glare into the outfield, somewhere near the vicinity of the Direwolves' bullpen. There was nothing that could have attracted her to him, brokenhearted or not. She must have been drugged. This isn't real.

But it was. Sandor Clegane, the only person on the planet who could have made it worse, climbed into the batter's box next. Next to Arya, Sansa adopted a strangely blank face; the eldest sister had never actually revealed what had finally gone down between the two of them, even after Arya had shared that he and Gendry had had a drunken bar fight, but the younger sister had her suspicions. She narrowed her eyes at Sansa, but her sister didn't seem to even notice.

Meanwhile, to her disbelief, on the first pitch Clegane sent a ball foul to left field that probably would have traveled four hundred and fifty feet had it been fair. While the giant, brutish man gnashed his teeth together in displeasure, Robb called time and ran to the mound to have a short discussion with Joseth, while Arya curled her legs up to her chest in the suite and bit her lip. Whatever her brother tried to tell Joseth apparently had no or negative effect on the man; the next four pitches weren't close to the strike zone, and Clegane flung his bat away in disgust as he marched down to first base, pushing Aegon to second.

Just when she thought they had come to a batter they could finally get out, Joffrey... connected on a pitch. To a roar of distress from the crowd, the fourth straight hit—excepting the walk—fell into the left-center gap, sending Mikken and Edric scrambling to catch up to it. Arya, Bran, and Jon all hissed in anguish while Targaryen rounded third and ran home, while Jeyne gasped as if someone had just been shot—it sure felt that way to Arya. Clegane, with his gigantic form, could only make it as far as third while Joffrey pulled in second clapping his hands wildly like an asshole, the timely double constituting his very first hit of the World Series. The time, nevertheless, was done.

Winterfell did not boo its own team, but even Arya felt a little as though they were beginning to deserve it. Then again, she didn't know who to blame; maybe Joseth, but from what she had seen his pitches hadn't been that awful. The fielders had done nothing wrong; the Monarchs had simply found the gaps—all of them. Perhaps it was simply a case of the Monarchs being better than the Direwolves, but Arya couldn't accept that. They had made it this far. It wasn't right; it wasn't fair. Staring out at the scoreboard, feeling unusually emotional, she blinked back tears of frustration. Down three runs in the first with runners on second and third with nobody out...

"The whole season can't come down to this," she muttered to herself.

Her father shifted behind her. She glanced peripherally to see him with his legs crossed, one hand viciously scratching at his beard. He was probably thinking, she imagined, that he was still in his playing days, that he could soar to the rescue. She was wishing much the same thing. But there was nothing either of them could do but sit and watch, unless perhaps her father wanted to call the dugout and tell Luwin to stop the self-destruction of all the team's hopes and dreams.

Someone did rise to warm up in the bullpen, but all Arya could tell through the glassy film of her eyes was that it wasn't Gendry. Joseth, on the mound, through obvious distress, was doing his best to hold it together, but it was clear he was understandably rattled. He struggled with the next hitter, working him to a full count with a pair of bad misses of the strike zone, before finally coercing a flyball to deep left field. Mikken ended up reigning it in a step shy of the warning track, but even Clegane could sprint home at that distance. The throw came in to third to keep Joffrey at second, but a fourth run had crossed the plate, and even when Joseth forced a groundball Hallis made a hell of a play on and another deep flyball to center to end the inning, the deficit gawking at them from the scoreboard before they'd ever stepped up to the plate followed the Direwolves with an encompassing shadow on their way into the dugout. Arya certainly felt it.

Their counter was nothing. After Hallis grounded out, Edric managed to leg out an infield hit on a tapper down the third base line, but Robb ill-advisedly swung at a first-pitch curveball and chopped one to third, where it was easily relayed from second to first for a double play that beat the Direwolves' catcher by several steps. Normally a very level-headed individual, Robb nearly smashed his helmet into the ground in frustration as he ran through the base, only just changing his mind before stalking back to the dugout as the Monarchs triumphantly left the field of the first inning with a four-run lead.

Arya almost felt like she was dying. Joseth managed to strike out the seventh hitter of the Monarchs' order after a tough at-bat, but Boros Blount clubbed a base hit the opposite way to right in the next at-bat. A successful sacrifice bunt put the Monarchs' catcher on second base with two outs, a situation that the Direwolves had ample ability to escape from without surrendering any more damage, but it seemed as though it was simply impossible to stop the bleeding.

Slynt let the first pitch fastball sink in for a strike the second time through, but the second one he clubbed on a line drive to center field that would have left the yard if it hadn't been so close to the ground. Edric turned tail and ran as hard as he could back to the wall, but was still only in time to corral it on a hop as it struck only a foot or two below the fence line in dead center. Blount scored. Slynt dove into second ahead of the throw for a double to complement his home run and increase the Monarchs' advantage to five runs.

Luwin left the dugout thereafter and called on the bullpen, having a short, clearly stiff discussion with Joseth before the starter handed the ball over and began to march to the dugout. Arya picked her head out of her hands as the middle reliever Skittrick made an early entrance into the last game anyone in Winterfell wanted an early bullpen entrance into. Turning to survey her family, she observed without mirth that it looked as though they were being held hostage. Rickon was simply pale, staring at the ceiling of the room. Bran had an elbow on his chair, his chin resting in it, looking as though he'd lost all will to live. Jon had his fingers meshed over his mouth, staring at the field and shaking his head slightly to the left and right. Next to her, Jeyne's hands were fiddling, her face distraught. Sansa and Catelyn were probably the least affected of the family, but even they had twists to their faces as if they were perpetually tasting bitterness. Her father was the only one no longer sitting. Having stood with Slynt's hit, he faced the wall, leaning an arm against it, with his head bowed. Their circumstances completely set aside, Arya could completely sympathize with how he was feeling. From what she could see, in the Direwolves' bullpen Gendry's head was hanging between his knees; she couldn't blame him.

Skittrick got Tyrell to ground out on a sharp hit to second base. There were no healthy shouts from the crowd as the Direwolves jogged in; it was like the faith of the insatiable, unbreakable crowd had completely failed. When the Direwolves were sat down in order in the second, the world felt grey and blank to Arya.

Aegon, leading off, lined a single to center off of Skittrick, nearly identical to his first hit. Clegane stepped back into the box and took two sliders for balls and a changeup strike before he hopped on a cutter. If the ball went as far as it went high, it would have left the ballpark and then some, but Clegane had gotten just under it. The crowd howled in dismay watching it, and even Arya thought that it was gone, but Edric, with his back pressed flat against the wall, reached up over shoulder level and pulled it in for the first out. Even still, Targaryen tagged up from first and slid into second on the flyball, Edric's throw coming in far too late to even threaten the aggressive baserunning.

Arya got to her feet, then, feeling sick to her stomach, and began to pace about the suite. As she did so, Luwin came out and pulled Skittrick after two consecutive smashes against him, calling on another reliever to take care of Joffrey and the rest of the order. Finally acting as he should have, Gendry's half-brother struck out. The next hitter blooped an in-betweener to the void between Mikken and Hallis, both of whom went charging after it despite being down five runs. Despite their best efforts and a diving attempt by Mikken, however, it fell between them and Aegon, who had been running hard from the get-go with two outs on the board, scored his second run of the game easily. Jon rose to his feet and joined Arya and her father pacing then, and she was too distraught to even try to avoid him.

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to end like this.

Telling herself that it was still early did nothing, especially when the third Direwolves' reliever entered the game in only the fourth inning with exactly zero run support and surrendered another home run, this time to the seventh hitter. Before the inning was over, the top of the Monarchs' order loaded the bases and a fourth call to the bullpen had to be made.

Quent entered the ballgame, and the first pitch he threw skipped past Robb. Blount, the runner on third, took off for home instantly, but by a sheer blast of luck unusually foreign to the Direwolves that night, the ball bounced right off of the backstop and back to Robb, and the Direwolves managed to run the Monarchs' catcher down for the third out, though there were very few cheers that went up from the crowd, and, with the team down by seven runs, Arya had actually sunk down against the wall and turned her eyes away from the field. She couldn't bear to look at the scoreboard... not after what they'd come through. So much adversity... for this?

By the end of the fifth, the Direwolves had only managed a single other hit and they were six men deep into a bullpen of nine, with only Cayn, Desmond, and Gendry remaining. Arya hadn't moved from where she was sitting against the wall, staring emptily forward, and Rickon had joined her. Bran had swiveled away from the field, and sat hunched over his crippled legs, fiddling with his thumbs almost angrily. Jon and Ned were both standing, both hunched over seats, gripping the backs of the pads as if ripping them apart would somehow put some runs in the Direwolves' pockets.

At some point either Jon or Ned—she hadn't seen which—had turned on the suite's soft radio, as if watching the game weren't enough torture to bear, and the game's commentary was filtering between the members of the Stark family, stabbing at Arya sitting in the corner of the cold suite.

"I think it's a real shame that the Direwolves season has to end like this. Barring an unbelievable comeback in the closing four innings of this game, Jorah, we're going to see the baseball season end with a runaway Monarchs win."

"Basically the story of the season. Some teams can really prove their worth, can really beat the odds and shoulder through adverse times, but in the end the Monarchs are just too powerful, Quaithe. They've been a brutal powerhouse for years, and it appears like this year will be no different. The Direwolves have had a good run, and they've brought some bright young acquisitions and stars to the forefront of league news, like Gendry Waters and Edric Dayne, but it looks like they don't have what it takes in them today to beat the better team."

Arya listened heartlessly, listening as the Monarchs chose to go quietly in the sixth to reliever Wyl in his second inning of work—chose, because that's the way it felt. The Direwolves came up, and managed to string together a couple of hits to lead off, only to falter and strike out twice with runners on first and second.

While Edric approached the plate, as told by the radio commentators, Jon raised himself off of his seat and walked over to Arya. She didn't glance up at him as he made his way, nor when he stood beside her. Whatever he was going to say, she was ninety percent sure that it couldn't make her feel better, whether it had to do with baseball or with why she refused to speak to him in the first place, but she was too upset and exhausted to even react when he hit the ground beside her. Instead of opening his mouth instantly, as she'd expected, however, he simply slid to the ground on the opposite side of her as Rickon and sat there, listening, as she, and for a while the only thing that passed between them was a mutual ache. She could almost feel close to him, again, then, ironic as it was. Member of a different team or not, that day Jon was there only as a Direwolves' fan. Perhaps he felt as much pain in that moment as her.

Edric took ball one, after which Catelyn stood with a stiff body. Turning sadly to Arya's father, she murmured, "Ned. It is a school night."

For a long moment, Ned Stark stared blankly at his wife as if he couldn't comprehend what she was telling him. As if nothing outside of the game even existed. Then, he took a breath and returned to reason. He glanced over his shoulder at the devastated assemblage of his children, once at Bran and once at Rickon. Very slowly, he nodded. "Yes. You two should head on home, I think."

Bran perked up slightly, his voice weak and dejected. "It's still the World Series, Dad, come on. There's no baseball for six months after this."

"I know," Ned replied sadly, patting his son lightly on the shoulder. "But your mother's right. And I don't think there's anything left to see here, anyway." Bran's head fell with a grim nod, and Ned repeated the pat. "There's always next year, bud."

Arya bristled. She stiffened at those words, from the arms wrapped around her legs to her toes. As Rickon rose without a protest and joined Bran and his mother, who was trying to smile at them and failing, Arya stared up at her father, angry, afraid, mournful, outraged, desolated, not at him but at the pure unfairness, the pure cruelty of life. There was too much that had happened—too much that she had suffered through personally—for baseball that year for it all to culminate in this. With the team so close, so, so close, and falling short at the last possible instant.

Sitting on the floor of the suite next to a cousin she had thought a year before was her brother, Arya didn't give a single fuck that there would be a "next year". And a year after that. And a year after that. All that mattered to her was the "right here", the "right now", the end of the road that had taken so much strenuous effort, not to mention the blood, sweat, and tears that had also literally gone into it. To put the Direwolves a step beneath the pinnacle. Arya blinked against the tears that sprang into her eyes, telling herself it was stupid to cry about a game. Nonetheless, it was wrong. Unfair. She sniffled, hating that she couldn't deal with a loss, hating that life had dealt so cruelly to a team that had been through so much.

Beside her, as the door closed quietly behind Catelyn and the two youngest Starks, Jon lifted his head at the muted sound of her sob. His eyes found hers as they darted to him, horrified at him seeing her cry, but instead of the shock and aversion she expected to find she found sympathy in his gaze.

Tentatively, as if half expecting her to lash out at him, Jon reached over and patted her knee. "I know. This sucks. I think so, too."

"I hate it," Arya growled, forcing back the tears, trying to squash them with anger. "Baseball's not a fair game, I've always known that... but they deserve better than this." She looked at Jon, forgetting her feud with him for a moment, and shook her head. "They don't deserve to fall apart at the last second."

"I know," Jon replied. "But they did have a great run. And Dad's right, there will be next year. They've put themselves on the map, they can come back to this place, again. They've got all the right tools. They can back make it back here, and they're young. They're only going to get better."

No, they won't, Arya said, only in her mind. Gendry chose me over this team. Dad won't have him back next year, or the year after that. The tool that started it all will be gone. She would have him as hers, true, which was what she wanted more than anything, and that was a warm comfort to her in the current moment, when all she could see was disappointment. Even still... she wanted it for Gendry. More than she wanted it for herself. He deserved it, after all he had been through. All of his dreams, all of his obstacles, all of his choices; it all meant something because he got to this day, but Arya would have liked to see him walk away with something better than what was down on the field today. She would have liked to watch him walk away with a win.

She wondered if he was thinking the same thing, with only two friends left to him in the bullpen, watching his team get torn to bits.

Edric, having worked himself into a 1-2 count, fouled off a ball to stay alive, and while he did so Jon took a deep breath next to her. "You're right. I promised. I shouldn't have told Dad. I was just worried. Being a big brother. You can't imagine how stressful that can be, sometimes."

"Certainly not as stressful as what you put me through, I'll wager," Arya replied tartly, glancing up to make sure they weren't being overheard by their father.

Jon grimaced, but shrugged. "Probably not. I'm really sorry. I can accept if you won't take my apology, but I have to make it. I realize that I was wrong, and if you've been as upset as I've gathered you've been, then I'm very sorry that I ever played a part in it. That was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to do."

Arya glared at him for a moment, breathing deeply, merging the pain of the last few months with what she felt for the Direwolves at that split second in time. Speaking from the heart, she told her cousin, "You really hurt me. I don't know if I can just forgive that. I don't think you can ever truly realize how much what happened affected me. It still hurts, even after the fact." She sighed and frowned at him. "I really wish we could just hug it out, really, but it's just not that simple."

"I understand," Jon said quietly, not meeting her gaze. He echoed her sigh after an uncomfortable moment. "If it's any consolation... since I did that, I've learned a lesson or two about keeping and sharing secrets." His eyes crinkled; in pain. With a considerably more reserved voice than a few sentences previously, he added, "It's been a little rough for me at times, too. Maybe not close to what you experienced, but... I can more than sympathize with what you feel. And I really mean my apology. And I understand if you don't want it."

Edric, having taken another ball in the interim, fouled off another pitch, hanging tight to an at-bat that probably meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Arya let the moment dwell on them, the radio commentators filtering over their shared pain and silence. While Blount left the catcher's box to go and talk to his pitcher, she thought about it intensely for a minute or so and then shrugged. "I want it, Jon. I want you to mean it, too. Because you broke my trust and it hurt me really bad, I don't know if I can ever trust you again." He flinched, but she continued, "With that said, I still care about you." She flinched herself, and gestured towards the glass separating them from the biting feeling of weather and defeat. "I don't know if I could suffer through shit like this with anyone else. So I'd like to forgive you, even if it doesn't solve everything."

Jon breathed deeply and then mustered a small smile. "All things considered, I think that's about the best I deserve. I'd like that." Still tentatively, he put his arm around her and gave a little squeeze. She let him, and his smiled widened a bit more. She managed to weakly return the expression. "Don't give up hope, either."

His eyes shined in such a way that she froze. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know," he said, shrugging, as if he knew something she didn't. "Some things just have ways of working themselves out for the better. And even if they don't, you can always hope for the best, even when the chips are down."

"And Dayne sends one into the gap, finally connecting on the tenth pitch of the at-bat. One run will score easily, here comes the second one around third and he will... score easily, without a throw. And the Direwolves show a little sign of life with a two-out double, two-run double here in the sixth by Edric Dayne."

As if having received a sign from the heaven, Jon smiled at her and squeezed her again. "See? It's not all bad. Some things just don't know how to die quietly. Especially Direwolves." Lifting his arm from around her, Jon climbed to his feet, offering her a hand up once he was there. "Come on. This is the last baseball game of the season, and there's still three innings to play. Let's enjoy it together."

Arya stared at the hand for a moment, contemplating returning to the hell of the game, before deciding that Jon was right, and that he really was forgiven, and that, with an unknown future that still threatened to unravel everything she knew waiting only for the end of the baseball game, she might as well do her best to enjoy what she could while she could. She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, and together they moved to where Jeyne and Sansa were conversing in subdued voices to watch the final innings of the final game of the World Series. As they went, Arya clearly noticed the large smile that flashed across Ned Stark's face for only a few seconds. She might as well have imagined it, but she knew that she didn't.

She forced herself to watch, without looking at the detrimental scoreboard, as Robb stepped up to the plate. The misery of the night seeped into her sympathetically as she watched her brother tighten his batting gloves in the frigid air and step closer to the plate. He, too, had been through a lot. He was the team captain; he was their leader. He was probably taking it harder than the rest of them, hard as they must all have been taking it, but he probably deserved it least of them all, even less than Gendry.

Come on, Robb, she begged. You deserve a hit in Game 7. Get a hit.

He swung at the first pitch, and Arya held her breath. The sound of connection was nearly as heavy as Slynt's had been in the first, if much lower. Nearly climbing to her feet as Jeyne and Sansa both exclaimed in surprise and delight, as the crowd showed its first signs of life in a while with a growing surge of enthusiasm, Arya watched the small white ball hurtle through the air in left-center, over the heads of the outfielders, with a chance to leave the park. She was just about blue in the face when it struck the wall and fell straight down to die on the cold warning track, Edric sprinting around third base on an easy track to a run.

Robb swung around first monstrously, his stocky frame lurching as fast as his legs could carry him. As Tyrell and Aegon converged on the ball in left field, Robb rumbled into second and took it at a round, and to Arya's disbelief, horror, and glee, she watched her brother dig cleats into the dirt and try to take third base. At the wall, Tyrell deferred to the better arm of Aegon, who scooped it off of the ground, took a one-step crow hop, and flung it into the infield as hard as he could. A true throw, even on the hop that it took, might have gotten Robb by a step, but the throw came in several paces away from the bag, and Robb's headfirst slide didn't even warrant a tag attempt.

Covered in dirt, with his batting helmet hanging over his eyes, Robb rose to his feet on third base with a triple, and the crowd erupted with emotion in hadn't shown in six innings. Just as quickly, as Arya's eyes traveled over the crowd of Winterfell, over the churning masses, over the exulted voices and screaming cheers, over the slightly dejected body language of Aegon as he walked back to his spot in left... just as quickly as that, the energy in the Great Keep was back. Their team was down four runs, with fewer innings to play, but Robb's relentless hustle seemed to have reminded the crowd why they there; for a win, true, but also for something even more fundamental... they were there for the love of the game. And to have one's catcher beg every last ounce of energy out of his legs for a triple...

Arya thought Gendry's hopping form in the bullpen told it best, as a smile of her own broke out across her face. Not everything was about winning: some things were just about fun.

With that being sad, her heart began to pump just a little bit faster as she glanced at the scoreboard. Four runs to overcome was a hell of a lot closer than seven runs to overcome; three runs would be better still, her brother sitting only ninety feet away from making it so.

Despite that proximity, the next batter flew out on the third pitch, a long drive to center that Tyrell pulled in with plenty of space to spare, and the Monarchs escaped, and Arya released another sigh. Nevertheless, the Great Keep echoed a cry of brilliance as its fans rose to their feet, and Arya and Sansa and Jeyne with them, letting their team know that they were still there, that they still loved their Direwolves, that the hustle and effort did not go unappreciated, no matter how many runs still stood above them. Perhaps it was only because there was a little less swagger to the Monarchs as they ran in, but Arya decided that she was very glad for Jon, that he had made her get up and see her brother bat, that she hadn't given up. Perhaps he was right about everything, after all; her team hadn't failed her yet...

Maybe she should have a little faith.

Desmond entered in relief in the top of the seventh, which left only Cayn and Gendry in reserve in the bullpen. Blount led off and popped a ball up on the infield that Hallis pulled in behind second base for the first out. The Monarchs' starter was finally lifted with a pinch hitter for the next batter, who struck out on four pitches, to the loud applause of the fans. Then the hot bat of Slynt, stepping in for the fourth time, swung wildly at two breaking balls out of the zone before letting a perfectly good fastball slide by for strike three. Four runs they may have been down, but Jon had spoken true; the Direwolves wouldn't go quietly, and Arya was just beginning to believe.

They were down, tired and short-handed. Cayn stood up in the bullpen, readying himself for the eighth, leaving only Gendry, their closer, their rock, their hero, in relief. They had gotten a division championship and then victories in two playoff series on pure effort alone. On catcher-running, left-field-tripling, bull-headed effort alone. They were in a hole. They were backed into a corner. The odds were stacked against them, from simple to complex.

But the crowd was behind them, deficit or not. A spark was in their eyes. The Direwolves were hungry.

The Monarchs' cage was rattled, that much was sure. A four pitch walk that the crowd leapt on with merriment and a ground ball in the hole that turned into a fielder's choice put a runner on second with one out when Mikken stepped to the plate. The Direwolves' veteran outfielder had had a quiet Series, not getting himself much luck with the bat, rallying on his teammates' success, contributing in the subtle way a quality veteran did. But he was a major leaguer, too, and any wolf called upon by the pack can be a deadly enemy.

Mikken took strike one, and then fouled a ball away behind the screen to put him in the deep hole 0-2. Arya groaned, despite knowing that any prayer was a long-shot. Still, a three-pitch strikeout was not what she had in mind for dying hard with a vengeance.

Apparently, neither was it in Mikken's. Blount set up high for a fastball, looking to get Mikken to chase. Chase Mikken did, but what the Monarchs' catcher and pitcher did not expect was for him to catch it.

Off the bat of the muscular outfielder, the ball skyrocketed into the night, at the same time as rose the roar of the city of Winterfell, as rose Arya out of her chair with an excited cry, as collectively the nation of Westeros held their breath. In the box, Mikken lowered his bat and tossed it away, ripping his eyes away from the baseball and tearing off for first base. Though Arya couldn't help but admire his seasoned hustle, it wasn't needed: the baseball turned from its flight and began to fall down out of the heavens to which it had risen, all the way down until it met Cayn's glove in the Direwolves' bullpen, before he and Gendry leaped together in an euphoric embrace.

Arya lifted her hands to her head, barely able to believe what was happening, barely able to glance at the scoreboard as two more runs flickered up, as the Direwolves run total ran to five, and to five in the last two innings. Only two separated them from seven. Only two runs put them behind the Monarchs, two runs away from a tie, three from a lead. Turning, as Mikken slowed up and finished rounding the bases, Arya met her father's stricken face, pale and wide-eyed and disbelieving, and she lowered her arms to point a finger at her father.

"Get Bran and Rickon back here right now!"

Her father glanced at her, blinking, as if trying to figure out exactly what she had said, before reaching into his pocket and putting his cell phone right to his ear, his face still looking as though the last thing he had ever expected to happen had happened. Arya could sympathize with the feeling.

She shared a moment of smiles and exchanged high-fives with Jeyne, Jon, and Sansa, the four of them now packed into adjacent seats and falling onto the edges of them. Mikken crossed the plate with a quiet expression, halfway between amazement and confidence, and the Direwolves' dugout met him on the top step. Once more the crowd was completely on their feet; Winterfell was on their feet, behind their team, behind their players that gave up for nothing. Not when they were down seven runs, not when they were down seventy.

Pycelle rose from the Monarchs' dugout with a stumbling gait and made a pitching change, which only added to the intensity rolling off the fans like a heat wave in the middle of winter. The crowd was loud enough to warrant a curtain call as the new reliever warmed up, but the time was inappropriate and Mikken knew it. Instead, the noise only served to rile up the Monarchs who stood uneasily on the field, and Arya saw more than one uneasy glance go up from them, into the fans, as Winterfell waited for its next victor to step into the box.

Apparently, the fury of the crowd worked; the first pitch from the new pitcher rolled out of his hand at completely the wrong angle, and hit the batter in the leg despite a wild, hopping attempt to avoid it. The stands blew up, every single member of the audience lurching upwards, leaning towards the field, brandishing fists and cries and roars of distaste towards the pitcher as if he had been trying to hit the batter on purpose. The sweat that the pitcher wiped off of his brow while he took a few stiff steps towards the plate, despite having just come into the game and the awful chill of the night, was more than enough to tell Arya it had been completely unintentional and just a case of nerves. But the uproar only seemed to get under his skin more, and while the batter jogged to first completely unharmed for the free base, Arya couldn't help but smile.

Desmond was then lifted from the game in favor of a pinch hitter, leaving no doubt that Cayn would be called into the game to handle the eighth, rain or shine or heartless winter. The pinch hitter promptly took ball one, to great cheers, before swinging at an ill-advised curveball. Even worse, his bat caught the baseball, and sent it not out, not foul, but upwards.

As one, Arya, Jon, and Sansa all swore, the latter drawing surprised glances from both of the former. Even while this was happening, even when the pinch hitter swung his bat furiously at the dirt, Blount lifted from his crouch and tore his mask off, swinging around to face the backstop. With practiced poise and desperation, the Monarchs catcher took a careful three steps behind home plate and waited several before taking a step back and bringing in the ball at his shoulder for the second out. The hit batter was forced to step back to first, while Arya was left biting her lip, disgruntled at the missed opportunity. It was Game 7, the closing innings, and the Direwolves had recovered an unrecoverable disadvantage. Every batter counted; they couldn't be wasted.

With two outs in the inning and a step back in the pitcher's stride, two runs already in on Mikken's blast and a runner waiting on first, Hallis stepped into the batter's box. The crowd's cries were behind him, backing him as he looked at his bat, looked down at the plate and then adjusted the dirt of the box with his feet before digging in his back cleat. A long moment passed where he stared down the pitcher, and then he settled into a wide stance and waited.

The pitcher stared in to Blount, shaking off three signs before he came set. Poised, checking the runner on first, letting the time of many breaths elapse, the man finally strode towards the plate and fired a missile. Hallis jerked like he wanted nothing in the world greater than to swing, but he held his bat back at the last possible instant, the baseball sinking across the plate near his kneecaps. Arya thought that it might have been low enough, but the umpire stepped away from Blount and pointed to his right with a high call, signaling the first strike.

Gritting her teeth, she dug her hands together and hunched over in her seat. Come on, Hallis. Just once. Just one more time. Get it done.

If, by some miraculous virtue as the pitcher came set for the second pitch, Hallis had heard her, she would never have any way of knowing. But when the pitch was delivered, even before it had left the pitcher's hand, not a person in the ballpark or watching TV at home or who had no idea what baseball was whatsoever could have doubted that Hallis was going to swing at it.

And he did. And he hit it. And for the second time that inning, the crowd left their seats and their arms went into the air at the same time as the ball did, and the tiny white orb took off to dead center.

Arya's eyes flashed to Tyrell as she leapt up, seeing the center fielder turn around and take one step and then another before breaking into a sprint straight backwards. She watched him, not the ball, as it came back down, as Tyrell's head followed it while his gait slowed. The center fielder slowed to a trot at the edge of the grass, still looking up, to a walk by the middle of the warning track, still looking up. By the time he got to the wall, he had stopped looking at the ball altogether, and merely pressed his face against the padded outfield fence to avoid watching the inevitable. While a deafening blitz of noise tore apart the Great Keep and every Stark, Snow, and Westerling in Ned Stark's private suite screamed so loudly their ears nearly split open, the baseball hit by Hallis Mullen smacked off of the scoreboard and dropped straight back to the field of play, a home run to vanquish all of the home runs before it.

The next few seconds were a blur for Arya. She remembered being swept up in hugs by Jon and Sansa, remembered grasping Jeyne's hand as though it were her only lifeline, remembered seeing tears stir in her father's face. Other than that, there wasn't much else, and the next thing she knew Hallis and Robb were grasping each other's arms near the on-deck circle, screaming unintelligible happiness at each other. Two runs ticked onto the two that were already up for the inning, on the scoreboard that Hallis had crushed, and Arya had to sit down before she was able to read the total score under the full impression that she was awake.

The score was seven to seven, in Game 7 of the World Series. The Direwolves had come back from down seven runs only an inning and a half previously to tie the score of the game.

Her mouth hanging open, hardly able to believe what was happening, barely daring to, she glanced up at Jon and shook her head. "I can't believe it. I can't believe they did it." She had hoped, begged, held faith... and the Direwolves had delivered a miracle.

Jon smiled down at her, wide enough to split his face. "What did I tell you? What did I freaking tell you?"

She blinked through her own tears and turned back to the baseball field, and plopped back into her seat, watching as Edric walking to the plate amid a sea of black and blue and white, amid the flashes of cameras, amid the waving arms of love and trust, amid the people of Winterfell who had found belief even when there was none to be found. Beneath that power, beneath that raw energy, Arya shuddered, feeling it cascade over her body, feeling the emotions covering the entire season wash over her, feeling the slate be swept clean, from the first inning of that season to the first inning of that game to Hallis' majestic shot over the entire field.

The crowd was in the game. The teams were in the game. And now it was a brand new game, zero to zero for all that it mattered, that began as Edric stepped into the plate with two outs in the bottom of the seventh.

On the first pitch, he swung, shattering his bat. The pitcher stabbed at the ball off of a hop and got enough glove on it to knock it straight down. Shakily, as Edric tossed away the sharded ended on his lumber and took off futilely towards first base, the pitcher reached down off of the mound and picked up the ball only on the second attempt, his cold fingers slipping the first time. Standing, taking a full a stride, he tossed the ball to first base. The entire crowd gasped in surprise and hope as the ball nearly sailed over the first baseman's head in the anxiety of the moment, but the fielder leaped up and snagged the baseball out of the air and fell back onto the base, just ahead of Edric's diving foot, finally ending the Direwolves' half of the eighth before any more damage could be dealt to the Monarchs.

The Monarchs left the field, jarred, shaken, only Clegane, Targaryen, and Tyrell looking as though they had any idea what was going on. Arya stared at the scoreboard as Cayn left the bullpen, the inconceivable ninth Direwolf pitcher of the day, jogging in to the mound with new ferocity and new vigor. The formless cheers of the crowd morphed into chants as the Direwolf fielders made it onto the field, as they could all look up at the stands and feel the control shift back in their favor. Arya's skin prickled in anticipation and excitement, even as she rocked back and forth in her seat. Gendry sat alone now in the bullpen, watching. She could only imagine what was going through his mind.

You'll get your chance, she whispered in her mind. The game is yours.

The eighth inning began with Loras Tyrell, with all the pressure on the Monarchs, with every eye in Westeros turned to them, to see if they were truly the powerhouse that the radio said they were or if they could be overcome by the ultimate underdog. Tyrell stepped into the box wringing his bat tightly, staring at the bat head. He took a practice swing and his shoulders rose and fell as if with a deep breath. Holding his hand up for time from the umpire, Tyrell dug in one last time and then lifted his bat up to prepare for the pitch, Cayn already waiting for him.

The set-up man pitching in a must-convert situation delivered the first pitch as a cutter, zinging in tight on Tyrell for an inside corner strike, getting ahead in the count early. Tyrell stepped back and surveyed his back for a moment as though he was undaunted by falling behind in the count, but the crowd made more than enough noise to suggest that he shouldn't have been.

Cayn shook off the next two signs before finally settling on one with Robb, and went through the stretch process before he tossed a second breaking ball at the batter. Tyrell watched it come calmly and let it slip by the outside corner without a consideration at a swing, Robb choosing to not even frame the pitch as he hurled it back to the mound.

With the count even at 1-1, with no outs in the eighth, with the entire world watching, Cayn took Robb's first sign and came set. After a moment's pause, his arm arced around with the speed of a fastball, and Tyrell swung at the good-looking pitch thinking it was fat. At the last moment, though, at the same split second Arya recognized a change-up, Tyrell's bat exceeded the spot where it was supposed to be on contact, and instead of a ripping hit into the gap he only got the end of the bat on the ball, and sent it rolling lazily towards first base. Cayn, his pitch having beaten Tyrell's patience, took off towards first base to cover, but he wasn't needed. The first baseman held up a placating hand as he scooped up the ball and stepped on first base several steps ahead of Tyrell, and the momentum and crowd continued to shift in the Direwolves' direction as the first out of the eighth inning was recorded.

Five outs and a single run separated the Direwolves from World Series. Six outs and a single run the other way also separated them from defeat. Arya was sure each and every player in the Great Keep was thinking along those lines as Aegon Targaryen strode back up to the plate, adjusting his gloves with his bat clamped under an arm. On his way there, he glanced back up at the press box, then at the luxury suites, and finally out towards the outfield before whipping his bat fancily into his hand and stepping properly into the batter's box. The more she watched him, the more Arya found herself finding reasons to dislike him. All of his fancy attitude wouldn't matter, though, wouldn't gain the Monarchs any runs, if Cayn could get him for the second out of the inning.

The first pitch was taken for ball one. The second, a breaking ball, was grounded through the hole on the left side, past a diving attempt by Hallis, into left field for Aegon's third freaking hit of the day. The stadium groaned as one, Arya included. She knew as well as anyone that Sandor Clegane was on deck, and a baserunner for Sandor Clegane in this situation was not what any Direwolf wanted to see.

It was not an ideal condition for the Direwolves at all. They were a battered group, almost quite literally down to their last arm on the mound, scraping away as hard as they could for one more run, for one more unlikely win, but luck only held out so long. As Arya watched Aegon taking a few steps around third before backtracking back and pounding the fist of his coach, Arya prayed for one more escape. She prayed for the luck to last just a little bit longer.

"Gendry's up."

Arya jumped, half at hearing his name, half at hearing her father's voice at all. He was standing right behind here, one hand on the back of her seat and the other on the back of Jon's, but it was neither his neutral tone nor his stony face that made her leap out of her seat and almost press herself against the glass of the suite as she glared out at the bullpen.

Sure enough. Gendry was on his feet in the bullpen. The last line of defense. Every relief arm on the Direwolves roster had been eaten through. He was the last one, the final straw before Luwin would have to get creative and start recycling arms from wherever he could. Watching him move about, watching the love of her life whirling his arm over his head, his arms ludicrously bare in the freezing weather of Winterfell, Arya felt herself shaking her head before she realized exactly what she was doing.

"No," she whispered, as her thoughts caught up to her actions. "It's too early. It's the eighth inning. There's no one left behind him. He can't come in yet. It's not time."

"We might need him," Ned Stark murmured behind her. She couldn't care less either way, but if he had any reservations about her talking about Gendry so easily, they didn't who in his voice. "He is our best arm, and if Cayn can't get us through this... if we don't put him in, we may not get to the scenario where we need him anyway."

Arya did press her hand up against the glass then, leaning forward, leaning just a little bit closer to Gendry as he began lobbing balls to the bullpen catcher, a perfect picture of focus. She imagined the crystalline calm that he was forcing around himself, the rock hard face of concentration she had seen so many times on television over the past few months. Gulping, half in anxiety and half in reservation, she sighed as she admitted to herself that her father was right. He was the best pitcher on the Direwolves roster, by stuff, at least. It wasn't ideal that he shoulder a part of the game he wasn't accustomed to shouldering, but it was Game 7 of the World Series; all the stoppers were pulled out, and if there was someone who they could depend on to perform when things didn't go as planned...

Well, Gendry had proved himself more than once in that he was adaptable.

In the meanwhile, Sandor Clegane was stepping back up to the plate with one out and a runner on first base, in a situation where his team needed runs more than anything. Arya surreptitiously glanced at Sansa in her peripheral vision as the giant man stepped up for his own fourth plate appearance that day, trying to gauge some idea of where her relationship with the ugly baseball player stood. Surprisingly, however, Sansa wore an expression that Arya couldn't read in the slightest, neither in the affirmative nor the negative. She was simply watching baseball, if that was even simple for Sansa, and it annoyed her, not only because the son of a bitch was currently poised to wreak certain havoc on the Direwolves' comeback hopes if he was given the right pitch.

Don't give him the right pitch.

Cayn didn't, in fact, give him a right pitch on any of the first three pitches to the at-bat. All three were breaking balls, and all three missed the zone. Clegane's weakness was the breaking ball, but not when they were as poorly thrown as Cayn's attempts. With each one of them, Arya pressed her hands to her mouth and hissed in frustration and annoyance into her fingers.

At that point, down three balls to none, either the call came from the dugout or Robb made the wise decision himself just to put Clegane on base for free, which Arya grudgingly approved of. It would do no good to serve a fastball on a platter on a 3-0 count, and messing around near the corners might only deliver a fat mistake, instead. To someone as dangerous as Clegane, it was best just to put him on and try to force a groundball to Joffrey, who was more than incapable of producing. Even still... Aegon trotted down to second without hindrance or apparent care, suddenly in scoring position without much of a fight whatsoever. There was still only one out.

Arya bit her lip anxiously, and glanced at Jon, who was staring intensely, and then at her father, who had a hand raised to his face with pursed lips. She was still glancing at them when an abrupt hush fell over the stadium.

She turned back to the field in time to see Luwin finish his rise out of the dugout and begin walking towards the mound. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him stride smoothly across the grass of foul territory and step over the foul line, while the infield converged on the mound with Robb.

Too early, she thought, but it didn't matter what she thought. It was happening whether she wanted it to or not.

Luwin reached the mound and only a few words were exchanged with Cayn before the baseball was proffered from the pitcher's hand. The Direwolves' manager took it gingerly and patted the eighth reliever of the day on the shoulder. Cayn stepped off in the direction of the Direwolves' dugout and Arya exhaled, as her eyes, and ninety thousand other eyes in the stadium, and who knew how many hundreds of thousands more eyes across the nation swiveled away from the pitcher's mound, out over left field, past Mikken moving towards Edric in center—both of whom were also staring in the same direction as everyone else. Hers and a thousand other gazes locked out the door to the bullpen, everyone knowing what was coming and no one able to look away.

The door cracked and slid open. And Gendry emerged.

It began low, as he took his first steps onto the warning track with his head bowed humbly. Somewhere in the outfield bleachers, in the mass of fans who had suffered through frostily searing temperatures to watch their team mount a seven run comeback, the cheer and chant rose. When Gendry hit the outfield, entering a steady jogging pace, it spread into the outer arms of the second, third, and fourth decks. By the time he passed Mikken's normal spot, the cry was loud enough and unified enough that Arya could make out exactly what the fans of Winterfell were chanting.

"...Gendry. Gendry. Gendry! Gendry!"

Ten thousand voices at once, and then twenty thousand, and then more. Amidst the chaotic camera flashes and brilliant stadium lights, Gendry crossed the infield dirt with an entire nation chanting his name. Arya stared at him, her both hanging open as she heard her sister pick up the chant beside her. And then Jeyne, too, who couldn't have known him as anyone except Robb's best friend.

From a life where no one had known or cared about him, here Gendry was, slowing to a walk as he reached the hill of the pitcher, his stomping ground. Arya couldn't even fathom what was running through his head at that moment, as people he had never met, would never speak to, called his name on the wind as if it were the caress of a lover. How he was even able to take the steps onto the mound's dirt without stumbling, without being overwhelmed by emotion, she wasn't sure she would ever know.

With Aegon watching from second with his batting helmet arrogantly in hand, with Clegane glaring from first with venom, beneath forty five thousand people swearing their eternal allegiance to him simply by calling his name in their time of need, Arya watched Gendry shake his arms once in the icy air before briefly touching the chalk pad behind the mound and then marching to scoop the ball off of the front edge of the rubber. The announcer may have declared the pitching change as he began to take his warm-up throws, but the Great Keep, at the moment, was so loud that not a single person would have been able to tell the difference.

She tried to turn away, remembered that Jon and her father were still in the room and had the impression that she was still a little bit heartbroken over Gendry, but even when she spun back around and forced herself to resume her seat, the rigidity with which she sat gave her away so quickly it was almost pointless that'd she done so.

For their parts, thankfully, the two men remaining in the suite seemed as captivated by the pitcher down on the field as she, though, at his fluid movements, at his expert precision, at his dynamite execution. Watching him warm up was like watching an opera. He didn't look like he had six months ago, when she'd first pulled him off of the streets. His form had perfected, his stride had strengthened. No one would have been able to know that he had never played an official baseball game in his life before being signed to a professional contract; he was a natural. He had been born to do it. To be here, at this moment, in Game 7 of the World Series, when his team needed him the most.

At the final pitch, Robb stood out and jogged the ball back to Gendry. The two of them came together at the base of the mound, two friends, two brothers, an epitomic picture of determination. Their meeting lasted only long enough for the ball to be handed off and a word or two to be exchanged. Then both men were returning to their domains and Joffrey was moving into the batter's box uneasily.

Winterfell rose up as their star rookie dug in against the rubber. Robb settled in, the two of them all but ignoring the hitter, as they'd done hundreds of times before. She obviously couldn't hear, but Arya saw Joffrey's body shift as if he'd shouted something. Gendry didn't react, didn't cringe or stiffen, as far as her eyes could see. He came set and stared down Aegon at second for several long moments, as if issuing a challenge, and then delivered strike one past Joffrey so hard that the slimy dick actually took a step back in surprise, as if blown away by the shockwave of the ball.

The crowd hollered in approval. Arya grinned before she could help herself, trying to force down her premature enthusiasm. One hard strike or not, it was still one strike, in a very difficult position when there was no room for error whatsoever. On the other hand, it was a strike, and the powerful stance Gendry took as he strode back up the pitcher's mound suggested it was not going to be the last.

Nor was it. Her brother and lover stayed with the fastball for the second pitch. The ball missed the strike zone, low, possibly by design, but it didn't matter, anyway: Joffrey swung through it, milliseconds behind and nowhere close to actually making contact. The stadium buzzed with energy and anticipation while Gendry moved back to the mound, Joffrey slapping his bat as if the poor wood was the reason for his incompetence.

Stay with the fastball, she pleaded, as Gendry took a deep breath, checked on Aegon, and stepped back on. No messing around. Blow him away, blow him away, blow him away. Fastball.

Gendry came set and delivered, and froze for just a moment longer than usual to throw off the baserunners. Then, with a mighty stride, that belonged in the heaviest moment of the World Series if it belonged anywhere at all, he moved to the plate and delivered a straight heater. Joffrey never stood a chance. Caught halfway between a confused swing and a terrified repose, the asshole half stumbled in the middle of the batter's box and watched strike three pass him by uncontested.

Arya couldn't help the hiss of success and approval that rippled through her as the umpire rang the batter up. She tried to restrain herself as much, but a fist pump of the air, regardless of whether her cousin and father were watching, was more than warranted. She needn't have worried about their reactions; both of them did similar things to her, while Sansa and Jeyne openly yelped and clapped.

The crowd, for its own part, cheered deafeningly as the baserunners retreated. Joffrey hung next to the plate for a moment uncertainly, emptily, as if looking for something to use to argue. Miserably, pathetically, he finally slunk out of the box as Robb rose all the way to his feet and pegged the ball back to the mound enthusiastically, while Gendry removed his hat to wipe sweat off of his brow and reset himself for the two-out situation. Only he could have found a way to be warm in such cold—only he could have brought summer to this winter, when he was called upon.

On base, Aegon stood with his hands on his hips, glaring up at the scoreboard with what might have been annoyance and a little dismay. Arya felt a surge of hope at the second out flicking up. The Direwolves were one out away from escape from the mess, and they all knew it. All eight relievers and the rest of the dugout were on the top steps, the top benches, Cayn visibly among them, rooting Gendry on as fervently as the crowd. Gendry never glanced at the dugout, never glanced at the crowd. His eyes were only for Robb's signs, even before the next batter was in the box. Nevertheless, Arya had no doubt inside of her that he could hear their praise, could hear their support, could feel their love, as surely as he was breathing.

Beneath their endless murmurs and applause, he came set almost before the next batter had completely entered the batter's box. Instead of calling time, probably like he should have, the batter merely stumbled to prepare himself, and was helpless to even try to swing at the pitch as it breezed by him for the first strike.

The Great Keep rumbled with excitement as Gendry strode back to the mound, buzzing, waiting, feeling the Direwolves circling for the kill. Aegon's lead off of second had completely lost its swagger; now it was filled with anxiety. The Monarchs' dugout was silent. The players sat, lifeless, watching. Their fans weren't present. The world wasn't behind him. Arya grinned as she looked over Winterfell, clenching her fists as Gendry took the next sign from Robb. She stopped herself from muttering encouragement under her breath, taking a deep breath, instead. She would have bet a year's tuition that they were going fastball.

Gendry watched Aegon for a moment, even though the world knew the son of Rhaegar Targaryen was staying exactly where he was, and then he took a solid step towards the plate and released the second pitch of the at-bat at nearly a hundred miles per hour.

The batter swung and the crack of the bat filled the stadium.

Everything happened in a moment. The ball hurtled low, on a line, straight back at the mound. The batters took off. The middle infielders turned and lunged towards the center of the field, after the trajectory of the ball. Gendry jumped in surprise and reflex and tried to reach down to catch the ball at the same time.

He missed, but the ball didn't miss him. It hit him in the leg and he collapsed, and Arya gasped louder than she had in her entire life. The baseball ricocheted. Hard. While Aegon tore towards third like his life depended on it and Clegane barreled into second, the ball came off of contact with the pitcher with enough momentum to roll several feet into foul territory on the third base side. Robb took three steps for it before he realized he couldn't abandon the plate, and that was the last chance the Direwolves had to record an out on the play. Too late to do any good, the third baseman rushed to pick it up in foul territory and took a few steps towards Aegon to force the Monarchs' outfielder back to third base. And suddenly, with all runners safely into their bases on the rocketing infield single, the bases were loaded.

Arya didn't care.

Gendry was down. Having fallen onto his side on the fringe of the mound, he'd made a crawling effort after the baseball for all of a pace or two before he simply crumpled on his side, his head thrown back to the sky. By the time the ball was finally contained by the third baseman, he had pushed himself onto his knees and hands, but his hat and glove were both off, lying feet away from his body, and even from the suite Arya could see that his arms were shaking as he fell over once again and clutched at his leg where he'd been struck.

"Oh, fuck..." she heard herself whisper.

Hullen was out of the dugout before time had been called, and was down on all fours next to Gendry in only moments, his head dipped closely as Gendry threw his back against the ground in pain. Luwin was close on the trainer's staff's heels as two other medical professionals rushed out to the mound, moving quicker than Arya had ever seen of him. Robb wasn't far behind, waiting only until an intermission had been secured before hurrying out as well, with the home plate umpire in a much slower but no less intent pursuit. The mass of them formed a circle around Gendry, all peering over shoulders, horrorstruck, before Hullen angrily waved a hand and made them all back up several steps.

Arya didn't realize that she was standing with her face nearly pressed up against the glass, both hands clapped over her face, until someone laid a hand on her shoulder. A moment passed before she realized it was there. Blankly turning to face its owner, she found Jon standing behind her with a wide look of concern on his face. She was past caring about what her reactions might have insinuated, but, as before, she needn't have worried on that front. Sansa, too, had both hands covering her face, while Jeyne sat palely with her mouth hanging slightly open. Ned Stark was leaning against the seats again, holding them in a white-knuckled grip.

They weren't the only ones. As Hullen leaned over Gendry on the ground and spoke, as the entire staff moved down to the pitcher's left leg as he indicated with a clear grimace where he'd been hit, the entirety of the Great Keep watched in perfect silence. Thousands of people, men, women, children, old, young, stood on their feet with their hands woven in their hair or scrunched into their caps, glaring down at the field of play in pure shock and fretfulness. Arya turned away from her half-brother and joined them, staring down apprehensively.

The World Series had disappeared, for her, at least. A pit of worm formed in her stomach and expanded rapidly. Glaring down at the field, between bodies, at Gendry's pained movements while Hullen and his staff reached for the leg, all Arya could find herself to care about was that he was all right.

She waited, her teeth sunk into her lip, her hands wound into the strands of her hair that hung past her cheeks. The world waited, gulping, with their heads down, with their eyes wide, with arms pressed disbelievingly across faces and stomachs. In the sense of the baseball, in the sense of the World Series, there was no one to relieve Gendry. The bullpen was depleted. Luwin was down on the field, glancing sickly up from the scene and glancing about, as if trying to shuffle his cards. Arya knew as well as anyone that he didn't have many options. It was either throwing a starter in and praying for a miracle or going with a position player, and neither of those arms would be as fresh as powerful as what they would be replacing. The situation was quite a bit more than grim.

In a personal sense, Arya felt more useless than an inanimate object, standing hundreds of feet away, behind glass. Gendry was down. Her Gendry. He was hurt. Leg or not, serious or not, he was in pain and she wanted to go to him. It was impossible, on any number of fronts, but she couldn't help the helplessness she felt. Please be all right. Please get up.

There was nothing she or any of them could possibly do except wait and watch. Minus the glass, she might have been able to hear a pin drop between members of the attendance. Arya swallowed nervously, seeing Gendry raised his hands and rake them through his hair while Hullen spoke to him and then nod. The ball had been hit hard. She couldn't have been exactly sure where it had hit him, but from Hullen's administrations it appeared to be his shin, which would have hurt like nobody's business if it got him as squarely as she thought he had. It was no wonder he was on the ground. Arya thought it half a miracle that he wasn't writhing in pain.

The sounds of the radio commentary, no longer obscured by the crowd, filtered in from above, and they made her feel no better. "Waters is still down. It looked like he tried to field the ball and got his leg in the way instead. I'm pretty sure they're looking at his lower leg, Jorah."

"Waters had no defense against that hit, it came in too fast. I think the ball took him right in the shin, right in the bone, and he just dropped. Whatever the nature of the injury is... he's in a lot of pain, folks."

While Arya glared frantically, Hullen looked up at Luwin and said something. The Direwolves' manager stared back for a moment before crossing his arms and replying, and then stepping forward and peering down at Gendry when the Direwolves' closer sat up and told something directly to him. Luwin shrugged, which was something Arya did not want to see, but whatever he said next made the training staff back off. While Hullen had a hand on Gendry's arm, Robb dropped his catcher's mask and stepped forward, leaning low to take a hold of Gendry's hand.

Between the catcher and trainer, they hoisted the man back to his feet.

Applause began in the crowd, and then raucous cheers at seeing their downed man on his feet, but for Arya the hot water was only beginning. While the fans only saw him up and seemingly okay, she could see that all of his weight was on his right leg and Hullen's hand was doing a fair amount of support work. He tentatively took a step with his left foot, and almost immediately stumbled off of it, hobbling back to his right at a hop. His face was clenched with pain, so much worse than the adorable look of concentration she found so endearing. It broke her heart.

Luwin said something else, but Gendry shook his head firmly and defiantly took another step, shrugging off Hullen's arm at the same time. This time, to Arya's vast sigh of relief, he didn't stumble, although he hopped quickly back to the right foot. He took another step, towards his glove, with a very significant limp, and with a shaking body he scooped the mitt off of the ground, putting his back to the trainers and his manager as he seized his hat, as well, and hobbled back towards the mound.

The assembled personnel watched him for a moment in disbelief. He was up the hill and scraping dirt off the rubber carefully with his injured leg, testing the waters, before Robb turned around and hustled back to the plate, clearly much farther ahead than the rest of them.

Arya watched Hullen glance at Luwin and give a non-too-reassuring shake of his head, but Luwin held up a stiff hand and backed off, gesturing for Hullen and his trainers to do the same. They, and the audience around them, glared down in trepidation as Gendry toed the rubber and accepted a light toss from the home plate umpire. He set his right foot against it, all of his weight shifted back, all of his weight off the bad leg, glaring down at it harshly. Arya wrapped her hands around her middle, feeling almost sick to her stomach.

With a shuddering breath, as Robb crouched behind the plate, Gendry brought his hands together and gripped the ball, and lifted his injured left leg off of the ground. The practiced motion brought it forward and put it against the dirt, all of the weight shifting from back to front in that instant.

The ball left his hand at a wild angle as he leaped off his left leg desperately, cringing and almost falling anew. It skied far past Robb, almost high enough to travel over the backstop screen, not even close to an acceptable pitch. And Gendry limped away several paces before bringing his body into control, crunching in half as his body trembled in agony.

The umpire stepped forward to say something to him as he hunched over his legs, shaking with an unsteady breath, and Luwin came forward to gently take Gendry by the arm. The manager leaned close and whispered something in Gendry's ear, patting his closer lightly on the back, and Arya groaned in her mind. No. This can't be it. This isn't fair. You couldn't have come all this way just to be pulled at the last instant. Please, Gendry...

Luwin took a step towards the dugout and cleared tried to pull softly at Gendry's arm to direct him in the same way, but Gendry wrenched his arm out of Luwin's grip. As the manager, Hullen, and the umpire all turned in surprise, Gendry straightened up and stalked towards the top of the hill, his limp ever-present but not nearly as evident as before. When he got there, he planted his foot anew against the rubber with the darkest look of intensity Arya had ever seen on his face, and held his glove out towards the umpire with a stance that told everyone who was watching that he would rather die than leave the mound.

After a sheepish glance at Luwin, the umpire obliged, and Gendry seized the ball in his fist and adopted a set stance. He glared at Robb until his team captain reluctantly sank into a second crouch, clearly having reservations about the scenario. This time, he didn't hesitate or take a breath. He pulled his leg off of the ground and lamely planted it, every ounce of his weight shifting as his arm came around and hurled the ball towards the plate.

He almost hobbled, almost jumped into the air. As it was, his right leg came down as fast as possible and took all of the weight back, leaving him limping for a moment in place.

But the ball hit Robb in the mitt, straight down the center of plate, and Arya felt tears enter her eyes.

"Gods," she heard her father whisper behind her, and couldn't deny that the same sentiment passed through her, as well.

Around the Great Keep, just for the practice throw, the stadium exploded anew, fans leaping in place and waving their arms as Gendry took the ball back from Robb and turned his back on his manager, as if to close the conversation. Luwin remained where he was, with crossed arms, for a very long moment. Then, after a short glance and Hullen and a clear sigh, he turned and gestured to the training staff, and they all began to make their way back to the dugout. Arya could have sworn that the manager of the Direwolves was actually cracking a smile.

Around the infield, Aegon and Clegane were staring at the mound in partial disbelief, as if trying to come to grips with what they were seeing. Arya was having difficulty, herself, and Jon's incredulous shake of his head while she forced her worry down and tensely returned to her seat told her that she wasn't the only one. Whatever pain Gendry was in, she couldn't imagine fighting through herself. But he was stubborn, bull-headed, incorrigible. Stupid. He wasn't going to give up, probably not if the line drive had cleanly taken his right arm off at the shoulder. Not even then would he surrender his dreams. And she loved him for it.

The atmosphere felt more like the ninth inning than the eighth as the seventh batter came to the plate for the Monarchs, Gendry sitting on the mound in obvious discomfort, mental processes far too overwhelming for Arya to contemplate somehow pushing him through whatever damage the line drive had done to his leg. The crowd was up, the lights were on, the bases were loaded, and the Direwolves had no insurance to work with and no one else to turn to.

As if he knew it, Gendry took the first sign from Robb leaning completely on his left leg, completely on his injury, purely, Arya thought, for the sake of shoving it in the Monarchs' face. He came set without flinching, paused for a long split second, and then strode with gritted teeth towards the plate. Just like the warm-up throw, he came out of the pitch at a near hobble, though not as bad as before, and had to take a moment thereafter to straighten himself.

By the time he was completely upright again, however, the bottom had dropped out of his slider, and the batter had swung through the pitch.

"Yes..." Arya hissed under her breath, wiping away the water leaking from her eyes. She meshed her fingers together and held them in front of her mouth to prevent herself from biting her lip. There was nowhere to go, nothing for it but to get outs. Strikes, Gendry. Just keep going. Strikes.

When he delivered the second pitch of the next at-bat, there was no hobble after landing. It was as fluid as if he had never been hit. The ball, arching straight and true with heat, missed low and outside by centimeters, for ball one, but the strength was behind it, the batter was not, and everyone in the ballpark knew exactly who was in control as Gendry took the ball back from Robb.

On 1-1, the battery tandem threw another fastball at the hitter, simply overpowering him, and though he managed to make contact the ball careened high and foul, far back on the first base side, the batter way behind the pitch. Arya watched Gendry watch it go, and knew he smelled blood in the water, felt it more than he was feeling his leg. The crowd got that little bit louder, fully in the know that the jam in which the Direwolves found themselves could disappear just as quickly, delivered out of the hand of their hero, their nobody.

Gendry didn't limp, rigidly locking his legs, as he stared down at the rubber and set himself into the mindset before rubbing in his foot and leaning over for the sign. He shook Robb off twice when he only had two pitches in his arsenal, to throw off the hitter, and then finally lifted himself out of the lunge to come to a standstill, totally dominant. For a brief moment, the world held its breath with the ailing, persevering Gendry Waters.

He lifted his leg, came to the plate, and fired. The batter swung at the fastball everyone had been expecting, and wound up swinging straight through the slider no one had seen coming.

Arya leaped to her feet screaming as Robb dipped his chest protector into the dirt and blocked the ball, having it come to die a foot in front of him as forty five thousand people opened their mouths and roared as loud as they could. The batter threw his bat away and took off towards first base, all of the runners tearing off at a sprint, as well, but Robb calmly picked up the baseball with his bare hand and stepped on home plate to force Aegon for the third out of the inning.

Jon turned to her with a gleeful expression and she leaped into his arms without thinking. He swung her around once in the air before releasing her, after which she and Sansa and Jeyne came together in a mass of arms and cheers. She was drunk enough on the hype of the moment that she would've hugged her father, too, but Ned Stark had his head bent over the seat in relief and exhaustion, his eyes closed and his face relaxed; it looked as if a gigantic burden had been lifted from his shoulders, and Arya let him be.

The crowd was a mass of limbs and scarves and towels being waved over heads. The Direwolves were still sprinting off of the field, flying in their intensity, a few of them hollering themselves as they drove towards the dugout for the bottom half of the eighth inning.

Gendry was the only one not running: the sight of him ground her jubilance to a standstill on the spot. With his head down, his journey to the dugout was a painful one. The limp was back; he couldn't hide it this time. Every other step was more of a shuffle than a plant, but he kept his back rigid and straight, as if standing tall in the eyes of the world. Robb slowed on approach to the dugout and almost seemed to take a step towards Gendry before deciding to let the man make his own, slow way in, and that was exactly as it should have been. Gendry, on his own, taking himself where no one else could. Gendry, powering his way through a trek of agony while forty five thousand people stood on their feet only for him, whose cheers empowered him to take each and every last step. They only intensified as he got closer, and when he finally reached the top step and finally let Robb take him by the arm and lead him down into the dugout to where his teammates waited to pound him on the back, the crowd only got louder.

Arya made her decision in that moment.

She swept past Jon, seizing her coat off of the back of the seat as she shot past Sansa and Jeyne, to their surprised exclamations. Her father turned her way as she passed him by, as well, and her cousin called out her name as she rushed for the door, but she didn't hesitate except to pull the coat on over her arms as she soared out of the suite.

At a dead run, she made her way to the stairwell of the luxury level. It wasn't difficult; the concourse was all but empty, everyone standing over their seats and still producing a roar that Arya could feel through the carpet as her feet hit the stairs. Taking the stairs three at a time, much too dangerously, she descended to the second level and didn't slow down as she went past it to the first, bursting out onto the ground level, wide-open concourse with a purpose. She sprinted around the bend behind home plate, peering over the back seats of the first sections to the brightly lit field, where the Monarchs were still jogging out for the back half of the eighth. Tearing her eyes away, she continued around the corner, until the magnificent doors she was searching for, flanked by three very large security guards, appeared.

She paused only long enough to yell her name at the guards, who glanced at her in confusion without fully comprehending who she was. Without pausing to give them time to gather their wits, she darted between them and heaved the door open, not caring whether or not they realized who she was or would try to stop her as she rushed down the descending corridor leading to the Direwolves' clubhouse. The locker room, trainer's room, and batting cages were all empty, but she ran past those without sparing them a thought. If she stopped, she would reconsider, and she did not want to reconsider, so she pressed past and headed straight up the tunnel which ended in the very loud Direwolves' dugout.

The chill of the air hit her before she was there, but she bundled herself against and kept charging. The batboy at the end of it caught sight of her first, a strange coat-bound girl hurtling into the dugout, and thoroughly blinked and stepped back in perplexity as she rushed past.

She emerged into the dugout, and had the fortune of nearly running over Robb where he was strapping his batting gloves on with a set expression. Bumping into him and nearly knocking the both of them over, she peered around desperately while Robb caught her and stared at her in confusion. The dugout was packed with bodies, with smiles, with energy, with a deafening roar that was present only considering the din of the crowd. It was also bustling with activity, whether players were still moving around after coming in from the field, throwing on hitting gear, or else simply walking about to keep warm. A number of faces glanced in her direction and surveyed her in confusion as she appeared, but she didn't care about them. All she cared about was Gendry, whom she couldn't see.

"Arya," Robb said, reminding her that they were still clutching each other's arms. "What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here, not now."

"Oh, spare me the sermon," she spat at him, breaking free of him and continuing to search through the crowd of Direwolves. "Where is he?"

"I don't know," Robb replied, still eyeing her with disapproval even as picked a bat out of his rack. "I think you should leave him be, though. He's in a lot of pain. I don't think anyone else could have stayed in the game. It was already swelling up when he was out there..."

Arya didn't want to hear anymore, nor did she need to. She spun away from Robb and plunged in between the Direwolves, confusion only growing en masse as she slipped between their larger bodies in her attempts to find Gendry. Jory, sitting on a bench near the railing, noticed her and called out, but he wasn't Gendry, so she simply nodded at him briskly, her eyes scanning down the bench.

She found him at the very end of the dugout, surrounded by the training staff, Cayn, Desmond, Edric, Rodrik Cassel, and Luwin. He was leaning back against the padding of the bench with his eyes closed, while Hullen bent over his leg. His cleat had been removed, his sock rolled down and his pant leg rolled up to reveal his shin. The shin was visibly swelled about halfway up to his knee, dark and red and prominent.

As she stumbled into the group, Hullen glanced up at Luwin, who was peering down gravely. "I'm pretty sure it's broken, Luwin. It's sure swelled up fast. We should get him back for some x-rays."

Gendry sat up and opened his eyes, and just happened to look at Arya. He opened his mouth in surprise, her presence having yet gone unnoticed, but instead of voicing his surprise he merely blinked at her and turned right to Luwin. "You're not taking me out of this game."

Luwin glanced up from Hullen with reluctance. "Gendry, your leg might be broken. I can't send you back out—"

"You already did," Gendry protested, shaking his head. "I can deal with it, Luwin. You need me. There's no one else in the bullpen."

By way of reply, with a sigh, Luwin turned to Cassel. "Get your freshest starter stretched out. We're going to have to play all the cards."

Gendry moved forward on the bench, as if to stand up, and only Hullen and Edric moving to restrain him kept him from doing it. As it was, glaring at Luwin with the utmost desperation, he growled, "You can't take me out. Not now. It's the ninth fucking inning of the World Series, Luwin. That's my inning. I can do this."

"Gendry..." Luwin muttered, shaking his head. "You can barely walk. I don't care if you can put it behind you enough to pitch. You can't go back in. I won't allow it."

"You have to, Luwin, I swear, I can get this done, and you need me. Please, let me do this, let me go back in..."

"No," Luwin stated, shaking his head. He beckoned to Rodrik, as if that settled the matter. "I'm sorry, Gendry. You did incredible. You did your job. But I can't send you out again when you might hurt yourself more." He turned his back to Gendry and leaned closer to Rodrik to begin a conversation.

Then it happened.

"He gets a little scratch on his leg and you won't send him out to pitch, but he has a tear in his elbow for the whole fucking year and you don't say a single damn word?"

Every head in the group swiveled to her, and she suddenly felt quite silly, standing in a dugout clothed in three or four layers of warmth. Luwin turned very slowly, his eyes wide and surprised, wider and more surprised than Arya had ever imagined the man's face could ever look. More than one jaw dropped as they beheld her standing there, glaring fiercely at the Direwolves' manager, but her discomfort with their unbelieving stares was dwarfed by the look of adoration that was on Gendry's face; it empowered her. She had come down to the dugout out of concern for Gendry, because the thought of him in pain made her feel helpless and desperate. Now that she was here, seeing his face, seeing his eyes ignite... all of a sudden, she couldn't let him fall short. Not when he was needed. Not when he was this close. Not when he was tough enough, strong enough, good enough to put away the King's Landing Monarchs for good.

Luwin opened his mouth but struggled to come up with a reply, and she pounced on it. "Oh, thought no one knew about that, didn't you? Well, surprise, you hypocrite. Are you really going to change your mind now?"

The manager stared at her for several long moments, obviously conscious of the confused players now looking towards him. "Whatever was true before, things are different now. I don't have to justify my decisions to you, Ms. Stark, and I don't even know why you are here."

Arya ignored the last, and scoffed. "Bull shit, it's different. What's the difference here? Gendry is the last arm you have, the last arm that's proven it can put the Monarchs away. If he puts the ball where he wants to, when he wants to, he's virtually unhittable. They can't touch him."

"It looks like they did a pretty good job touching him to me," Luwin replied, pointing grimly at Gendry's swollen leg.

"Listen," Arya growled, clenching her fists to keep herself from wringing the nearest person's neck. "Who are you going to put out there to finish the game? Who can possibly do it? It's Gendry's spot, it's Gendry's game. He finishes a game, you don't have anyone else on the team who's had the experience of doing that on a consistent basis like he has."

"I also don't have any other pitchers who have broken legs, which make them much more able right now to go out and—"

"Just forget about the leg!" Gendry himself exclaimed, cringing in probably very real pain as he sat up. He pointed a finger towards the field, shaking it furiously as he spoke. "You saw what I could do after I got hit. Plant leg and all. I can tough it out, Luwin. I can make it."

"Not if the game's not even over. The score is tied, and come the tenth I'll have to put in a starter anyway, before you kill yourself."

"Then I can just make it through the ninth!" Gendry insisted painfully. "It's Game 7 of the fucking World Series, Luwin. It's the ninth. My inning. I can make it. I can do this. I'm strong enough. I can make the pitches. There's nobody else who can make them, not starters who have already given it their all. You know that. You cannot take me out of the game right now. You can't."

Luwin continued to glare at him, perfectly straight-faced, no doubt thinking with power enough to destroy nations. Arya, in the moment of pause, snapped, "Broken leg or no, Gendry is still the best weapon you have. The only weapon you have." She locked eyes with the pitcher in question, her voice shifting softer with the emotion that passed between their gazes. "You got this far relying on him for the ninth, Luwin. Don't stop now. Don't make that mistake."

She finished with a heavy breath, on the verge of begging the Direwolves' manager, on the verge of tears, standing in the middle of the dugout in the middle of a game wearing far too much clothing to be taken practically while Gendry sat feet away with a quite probably broken leg and bare arms in the frozen autumn air. Luwin was frowning now, a sign which she couldn't take as either good or bad. Please, please, she added mentally, for she had meant every word, not only because she loved him. Gendry was the best option for the Direwolves. She couldn't imagine going out to pitch with such an injury to one's plant leg, but if he was insisting himself then he could do it. She trusted him. And it was still Game 7 of the World Series. And she was still agonizingly intent to see her team to the end.

Not a single person moved around them, not a single player spoke a word. Luwin glanced between Arya and Gendry, deliberately intensely, the tension entering his face signaling that words were only moments in coming.

The crack of a bat and the roar of a crowd broke the tense moment.

Arya turned towards the field just in time to see the ball touch the outfield grass in center, where Tyrell was rushing to pick it up and toss it into the infield, and then Robb was rounding first and scurrying back, a leadoff single and leadoff baserunner in a game where only one run was needed for the victory. The roof of the dugout thundered beneath the applause, beneath the excitement, beneath the anxiety. A baserunner, Arya repeated, which was only two hundred and seventy feet from being a run.

And they only needed one run.

With his head cocked towards the field, watching his catcher on first base, Luwin sighed, and then glanced down the dugout at his players before surveying Cassel for a moment. Then, training his eyes directly on Gendry's, he asked, "Can you get me a win?"

Gendry nodded, slowly and sharply. "I'll kill myself trying."

"Don't go nearly so far as that," Luwin murmured stonily, turning away and drawing Cassel once again by the arm. "Just get me three outs."

The manager and the pitching coach moved away in the dugout, hosting the body language of extreme investment and extreme risk, but they didn't turn back again. Arya released a long sigh of relief at the same time as Gendry took in a sharp breath, while Cayn, Desmond, and Edric all glared between the two of them like they knew they had missed something major.

"All right, back off, all of you," Hullen growled moodily, pulling out a giant bag of ice and beginning to strap it around Gendry's leg tightly, earning a wince from the man himself. "Bloody go back in the game... In my day you didn't leave the game unless you were dead..."

Gendry and Arya made eye contact again, and both couldn't suppress their grins. Obeying their trainer, Edric, Cayn, and Desmond all squeezed Gendry's shoulder or patted him on the back with murmurs of encouragement before they, too, merged back in with their teammates and the rest of the crowded dugout, along with the training staff. Arya glanced after them but remained where she was herself, and when Hullen challenged her with a glare she merely returned it furiously. The trainer bowed his head back to his job and went out muttering darkly, but said no more.

They stared at one another a moment or two longer, in a world of their own, as if each trying to contemplate their own existence. Gendry shook his head slightly, his smile crinkling just the corner of his lips. "What are you doing here?"

Arya opened her mouth to answer before she realized that she didn't really have a good one. Swallowing, she just shook her head back at him, blinking. "You're stupid."

He chuckled, and then turned it into a tightening of breath as Hullen adjusted the bag of ice slightly and stood up. "I don't know, boy," the trainer barked gruffly. "You're going to make yourself pass out. Or kill yourself. That's a might fine bruise you have there, on the off chance there's not a fracture."

"I'll live," Gendry replied in a soft voice. "All I need is a chance. Thanks, Hullen."

The trainer grunted and turned to stride back into the mass of bodies himself, though the supplies and bag he left behind suggested he would return. It left Arya and Gendry alone in the corner of the dugout, peering at one another again, straight down into each other's souls with little smiles on her faces. There were probably cameras peering into the dugout, playing this odd encounter in the middle of a World Series game all across televisions the world over. Perhaps her father and Jon were watching.

She didn't care. She was just glad that he was there, that he wasn't dying of pain, that he was determined to get back into the game, no matter how injured he was. Watching him, staring into the depth of his blue eyes, she wanted to reach out and touch him, touch his face, his arm, anything, but held herself back with the realization that they were actually in a public place and her presence there was sketchy at best, and that an intimate touch in the middle of a game on live television was probably the extent of her leeway. Assuming her father was not on his furious way down from the suite at that very moment to drag her back.

It was another crack of the bat that made her head shoot around again. She had no idea where the ball was, no idea what was happening, but what she could see was Robb rounding second with a vengeance and shooting towards third. Somewhere in the vicinity of right field, the ball appeared, flying in to third base on a hard line, even as the runner who had hit the singled made it to first base. Robb, however, dove in with his second headfirst slide in to third base that day, and the throw bounced in a second too late.

Gods, she hissed at herself, and was only aware of Gendry on his feet and hobbling towards the bench next to the railing when he passed her by. She scurried to catch up with him while the crowd boomed over their heads, the monstrous cacophony overwhelming her ears. Gendry hoisted himself over the bench, actually releasing a heavy groan of pain as he lifted the leg laden with the bag of ice over with him, and sat down with his hands gripping the railing, staring hard at the field of play. Arya would have helped him, but she was too afraid of touching him at the moment and too electrified by what was happening to do so

It had to have been an hour since anyone in the Great Keep had even gone near to actually sitting in their seat. Perhaps an obvious exaggeration, but Arya wasn't quite sure how far off it was. The entire stadium just wouldn't shut up, and she loved it. The dugout around her was just as loud, just as powerful, just as determined. She couldn't believe this was happening; she couldn't believe they were there.

A new hitter was striding to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. Her brother was standing on third base, his hands on his knees, heaving breath that appeared in a fog on the air, giving everything he had for his team, for the game. There were no outs. From seven runs behind with only four innings to play, the Direwolves had slammed together an unbelievable sprint, and now their winning run was waiting only ninety feet away. The Monarchs in the field looked slapped, like they had lost all grip on reality, like they thought they were having a nightmare. And Gendry was sitting behind her with a face just as unreal, staring up at the Great Keep, as awestruck as her.

She could have kissed him, but settled for a brief squeeze of his hand.

The Monarchs had no choice but to bring the infield in, to stop the run from scoring. Robb wasn't the fastest runner in the league, by any means, and any fairly hit groundball would get him thrown out by a mile. Nevertheless, Arya had little doubt that he would he would be off with the crack of the bat, on anything hit remotely near the ground. A high risk, to be sure...

But they had come too far to squander chances. No one knew that better than Robb. Or Gendry. Or her. Or any Direwolf.

They were there to win. Robb would be running.

The dugout quieted, overshadowed by the overpowering din from above them. Arya and Gendry sat silently side by side on the bench, watching the batter step into the box. Her heart was pumping so fast that it fell like it was going to come out of her chest—she had a fair idea that Gendry's was working just as hard.

The Monarch pitcher read his sign and came set, with far less poise beneath the pride of Winterfell than Gendry had had beneath the rage of King's Landing. A moment of pause stretched longer than it should have, and then the pitcher delivered a breaking ball outside for ball one, to a gasp of released stress from Arya that only began to build up instantly once again. She glanced at Gendry to gauge his reaction, but he was still staring at the field, his face blank, his eyes wide. Hoping, perhaps. Or praying.

The second pitch was swung on. It left the infield, over the heads of the infielders playing on the edge of the grass, to the soaring excitement of the Direwolf crowd. Arya bolted upright to her feet, watching the ball sail high over the outfield. Every eye in Westeros followed the baseball, followed Aegon Targaryen setting up beneath it, readying himself behind it, for the catch, and the throw that would be made with the World Series championship potentially on the line.

The flyball would be an out. The out didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was Robb stepping back to third base with a calm breath of determination, and bend nearly into a sprinter's pose. The only thing that mattered was Aegon's body tensing as the ball plummeted towards him. The only thing that mattered was the race.

Baseball met mitt. And it was on.

Robb shoved off of the base. Targaryen tore the ball out of his mitt. Twenty feet after third, seventy away from home, Targaryen crow hopped and threw the ball as hard as he could, from near a hundred yards away. Arya watched the orb hurtling through the air, and knew that the throw was true. Knew that it would hit Blount standing over the plate dead in the mitt, and that Robb wouldn't make it in time.

Fifty feet to go. Forty. Arya felt her heart drop in horror, felt the ball skip over the dome of the infield. Thirty. Twenty.

Blount caught the ball a foot in front of the plate and three feet to the fair territory side, and Robb launched himself from fifteen feet away at the same time. Blount dove, full extension, his glove reaching as far as was humanly possible. The two bodies arched together, one desperately trying to touch the other, one desperately trying to avoid being touched. Arya, Gendry, Luwin, Edric, Mikken, Cassel, Clegane, Aegon, Sansa, Jeyne, Tyrell, Pycelle—everyone gasped.

Robb crashed to the ground, and Blount's glove missed clipping his leg by inches. Screaming across the dirt in a giant cloud of cold filth, Robb stretched with everything his body could give him, and scraped the fingernails of two fingers across the very edge of the plate.

The umpire's arms spread wide in a safe signal, and if Arya thought that the Great Keep had exploded before... then a supernova enveloped it now.

The dugout blew up. The stands blew up. Robb leaped off of dirt and lifted his face to the air and released a howl of victory as he charged towards the dugout. Arya was so shocked and thunderstruck that she couldn't even find it in herself to climb up off of the bench as Edric soared out of nowhere and seized Gendry from behind with a bear hug, as Robb crashed into his teammates in the dugout and hugs were flashing around.

The Monarchs stood in the field, completely silent. Aegon was bent over his knees in left field. Clegane was shaking in right field; Arya could only assume it was with rage. Joffrey actually took off his glove and threw it into the ground, the idiotic prick. In the Monarchs' dugout, someone—she couldn't tell who—flipped two water jugs in one off of the bench, sending them and various paper cups spilling across the dugout floor. Pycelle, in plain view, had a piece of his beard in his hands that was no longer attached to his chin, quivering, shivering, his face so squabbled that it looked like his head was going to explode. All of them, each and every one of them, along with each and every face in the stadium, and each and every person in the country, turned to look up at the scoreboard as the run tacked up.

Eight to seven. Direwolves.

When Arya finally looked back down at Gendry, Edric had released him and he was undoing the ice pack from around his shin, his eyes grimacing but the rest of his face unflinching. She watched, completely focused, as he tore off the bag and disposed of it by tossing it into the trash receptacle beside them in the corner. Accepting the cleat, glove, and hat that Edric offered him from behind with a grin of determination, Gendry rolled his sock back up over the swelling, wincing only barely, and then rolled his pant leg down over the injury, already pulling his shoe over his foot carefully. Releasing a pent-up breath laced with agony but shielded by willpower, he began to lace up his cleats.

"I don't know how you do it," Arya whispered.

He glanced up at her, his eyebrows slowly converging in wonder. "What do you mean?"

She shuddered, from cold, from emotion, from destiny, she didn't know. "Your fucking leg is broken. A ligament in your elbow is torn. You have no playoff experience, no professional experience beyond this year. You never played official baseball until you were signed. You were mistreated in school. You never knew your parents. Everything you had, you had to fight for." She shook her head, and thought that perhaps her awe in watching him tie his shoe was greater than the awe with which she had beheld the surging Great Keep. "I don't know how you can possibly do it. How can you possibly be so strong?"

Gendry blinked at her, and his face scrunched into thought. He looked first like he didn't understand the question, and then like he didn't know the answer. And then, to her greatest surprise in a night of unbelievable happenings, he simply chuckled and shrugged, looking her straight in the eye.

"I just love to play," he told her, smiling. "Would you do any different?"

The sound of a bat hitting the baseball kept her from replying. They both turned towards the field at the same moment, to see the ball rolling on the ground. It was picked up at shortstop and shoveled to Joffrey at second for the second out, before the awful son of a bitch actually stopped back and managed to peg it to first for a double play. The eighth inning ended in a hurry, just like it had began, just like it had passed.

Beside them, all the way down the dugout, all the way into the stands, eyes turned towards Gendry. Arya included herself among them, glancing over at him with unfair expectation. He was expressionless once more, straight as an arrow, poised, unbreakable, not even reachable in the void of his concentration. He stared out at the mound as the Monarchs fled from the field, fully aware that he was three outs away from a World Series championship, as Arya was.

Gendry stood up from the end of the bench without a sign of a flinch and strode out around the steps, up onto the field of play, as showers of cheers and love fell down upon him. He didn't jog to the mound, but neither was he hobbling; he walked calmly, with purpose, with power. The Direwolves soared out around him, brushing by, as though touching tails in the back, letting their presence behind him behind him be known. They weren't marching out with Gendry to get him a save... they were marching out to get him a win.

Together, as a team, the Winterfell Direwolves rushed out into the Great Keep with a one-run lead in a game they weren't supposed to win, in a Series they weren't supposed to be in, in a season most thought had been lost in April. And each and every one of them ran out with the intent to win.

Arya hopped down from the bench as Gendry reached the mound and picked up the baseball for his warm-up pitches. She walked along the length of the dugout, back towards the tunnel, back towards the rest of team. She passed them by, feeling their eyes on her, their questions, but she only had eyes for Gendry on the mound. At the very base of the team, on the step nearest to the plate, she rose up and stood, sidling up next to where Jory sat gripping the railing expressionlessly. She glanced at the starting pitcher and he at her and they seemed to accept each other's presence blankly before turning their faces back to what really mattered.

I just love to play. Would you do any different?

She watched him make a pitch, making his powerful arm sling the pitch into home plate. His plant leg came down hard, but he didn't wince, didn't flinch, acted as though the fracture in his leg didn't exist. She recognized the flip of his thumb he directed towards second at Robb, knew what it meant, knew that he needed an early throwdown because he couldn't waste his pain endurance on any more warm-up pitches, but just the flat expression on his face—screaming at the world that he would not give up—made her know she would love him until the ends of time.

Robb didn't question his pitcher's decision, signaling instantly down to second that the ball was coming on the next throw. Gendry gritted his teeth against so many obstacles and threw it in one last time, and then the ball was sailing down to second for the last time of the season. Arya watched him stalk around the mound, on one good leg, the perfect picture of professionalism. The perfect picture of him. She never would have known that only six months previously, he had been fixing cars for a living, that the only hope for his future was that he could get off early to catch a pick-up game in the streets. She would never have known that he hadn't been born on a baseball field. She would never have known that there had once been a time when this hadn't been his destiny.

He didn't look like an orphan, but then again he wasn't one, anymore. He didn't look like he was alone in the world, but he wasn't. He didn't look like he had spent his entire life wishing for something he could never have, because he hadn't. He didn't look like he didn't belong... because he did. He was a major league pitcher, in a family of his team, with a destiny and a future and a dream come true that he never could have fathomed before. His eyes followed the ball around the horn until it came back to him, whilst every eye in the world was on him, on Gendry Waters.

And Arya couldn't think of someone who belonged in that situation more than him.

Boros Blount began to stalk towards the plate, waving his bat in an adrenaline-fueled manner that was clearly meant to intimidate but left him looking more silly than anything else. Arya closed her eyes, leaning slightly against the railing and whispering prayers she hadn't made in years. Three outs. 8 in the order, 9 in the order, and 1 more. That's all you need, Gendry. Then you can be in pain, because then we will be together. All you need is 3 outs. All you need to do is throw.

When she opened her eyes, she became aware of Luwin standing next to her, his arms crossed. She didn't acknowledge him with a look or a nod, and he didn't acknowledge her. They both silently, somberly watched Gendry climb to the top of the hill and clean it off, watched Blount step into the box for the top of the ninth, watched all of their hard work come down to mere moments.

At length, Luwin cleared his throat. "He has given everything to this team. Everything he has. Everything he is, but he still tries to give more. He's not even being a hero. He's just playing the role that he's supposed to."

Arya grinned without looking at the manager, as Gendry toed the rubber and breathed deeply. "That's just the kind of person he is."

Luwin hummed. "Everything we have, every piece of themselves that the team has put into this series comes down to now. Comes down to him." He turned to look at Arya just so, while Arya remained staring at the man on the mound. "If you hadn't have walked down that street in King's Landing that day when you did, we wouldn't be here. If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have this chance. It all comes down to chance... but I can't embrace that. I've managed this team for twenty years insisting that there is no such thing as chance, only hard work and the drive to succeed. I can't find it in myself to accept it."

With a deep breath, Arya actually laughed, and for the first time in months in was a free sound. Turning to give Luwin the same peripheral glance that he gave her, she shook her head. "That's because it's not about chance, Luwin. It's about faith."

And, on cue, Gendry's first pitch hit Robb in the catcher's mitt for strike one.

The crowd roared. Arya and Luwin's conversation was over. They both turned to face the field, to face the raw power, as Blount stepped out of the box, tried to refocus, and stepped back in. Gendry took the ball back and set himself immediately, no time wasted in-between, and stared in to Robb like his life depended on it, taking the second sign. Blount stepped back in and waited for the pitch, waited like a beast waiting for a predator to pounce.

Strike two zipped in at his knees, and he couldn't even swing at it.

The crowd was on their feet—they had been for hours. Arya was near hysterics. Gendry and Robb proceeded as calmly as they ever had, the infield clapping their hands against mitts in encouragement for their pitcher. From the on-deck circle, a pinch-hitter she didn't recognize watched nervously. From both dugouts, both teams glared fearfully, terrified to see but unable to look away.

Gendry mounted the rubber and leaned over for the sign. He shook off Robb's first offering as Blount dug in, back on his heels, defensive in all capacities. On the second sign, Gendry nodded and came set, his leg wavering by only the smallest of fractions as he balanced himself with it. The entire stadium waited, a solid wall of noise and praise rolling off of them, in the depth of winter, waiting for the pitch, waiting for the win.

Reaching out with his leg, Gendry planted with a gritted expression and twisted his elbow through the pitch.

Blount swung behind the ball. But the offspeed pitch dropped slowly, and instead of being too lethargic to catch up to the fastball an adjustment of his hands sent the ball smashing off of the bat, and Arya almost screamed as she watched it hurtle through the left field hole, yards away from any attempt by either infielder, and roll out towards Mikken without threat of an out.

The stadium groaned with her, and Gendry whirled as if he couldn't believe it, either, seeing Mikken scoop the ball off the ground and hurl it back into the infield. Blount rounded first with a clean single and retreated instantly, hopping back without any risk of anything funny catching him for an out. Arya glared at him on the base, hissing, trying not to hyperventilate. With a very great effort, as Gendry caught the ball and turned back towards the mound stiffly, Arya told herself that it didn't matter.

Because he's fine. Because he only needs three outs, and one runner doesn't matter as long as he doesn't score. Just the next three hitters. That's all we need, Gendry.

Blount was lifted in favor of a pinch runner, instantly, a stocky man by the name of Duckfield. For the pitcher's spot, Balon Swann stepped in as a pinch hitter. It was all reminiscent of that night in King's Landing, months and months before. Arya cut that line of thought off at the source, before it could become anything more. Because it's not going to happen, damn it. This is not that game. Gendry is going to win this game.

Swann stepped in, looking locked in for his life. Gendry returned the appearance, taking the sign long and hard from Robb, peering in for an extra time, seemingly, just to mess with Duckfield on first. He came set with vigilance, but hopped off of the mound and made a pickup move to first instead of coming to the plate. Duckfield dove back in, plenty ahead of the throw, suggesting that he wasn't looking to steal a base, but Arya took nothing for granted. She wasn't exactly sure how fast Swann was, but prayed for a groundball, for a double play, for an out, with as much intensity as she had ever prayed about anything.

The next sign was transmitted between Robb and Gendry, and the closer came set. He varied his timing, going from a long wait to a quick pause before lurching towards the place and once more snapping off a slider.

Swinging at the first pitch, Balon Swann connected, low in the zone. Arya swore loudly, watching it come off of the bat in the air not hard but located obviously inconveniently. Duckfield took off instantly, as if he knew without a doubt that it would drop for a base hit, but Arya had to take a few more seconds of Edric flying for the ball with every last muscle of his legs before she knew it. On the mound, as Edric began to reach the ball and Duckfield rounded second, Gendry turned and tried to take off towards third, to back up the base in the case of a throw, but he had taken only two steps before a limp slipped into his jog, and by the time he reached the line he couldn't run at all, and he was back to hobbling.

It didn't matter. Edric had no throw. Duckfield dropped into a slide but could have went in standing up, safe at third base, while Swann walked back to first base clapping his hands wildly. Behind third base, Gendry went down over his knees, in obvious pain. The crowd hushed, startled by the pair of hits, and even more so by the sight of their pitcher on the brink of exhaustion, of the end.

The tying run was only one base away. There was nobody out. Arya stared at Gendry, hunched over, and shook her head. Fuck this. Not like this, Gendry. Not like this. Don't give up. Just a little bit longer.

As if he heard her words, Gendry stood up and stared at the field for a moment. He licked his lips and wiped the sweat off of his face, and determinedly started walking back towards the mound. He was limping now, visibly, but he didn't slow didn't stop. A raised glove in Hallis' direction returned the ball to him, and he plucked it out and stared at it once it was caught, inspecting it intensely, like it was a piece of precious metal or a rock of undeniable value. The crowd was clearly shaken. The noise level began to resume, but there were two runners on, and they knew; it was as if Gendry did not. He stepped back onto the mound and kicked the dirt off the top of the rubber with his good leg angrily, his only sign of emotion. There was no sign that the tying run was on the third and the winning run on the first.

Nevertheless, beside her, Luwin muttered a muffled curse she had never before pass his lips. She watched him give the sign out to his infielders to bring them to the infield grass; if any grounder didn't hit them within a pace or two to either side, a run would score, but they had no choice. They couldn't risk a routine grounder bringing the runner home, so they had to move in. Immediately after giving the sign, Luwin turned around and addressed, "Get your freshest starter stretched out."

Arya whirled onto Luwin. "You can't—"

"I don't want to," Luwin cut her off sharply, shaking his head grimly, turning to her with a vehement expression. "But it's time. I gave him the chance. I trusted in him. I don't blame him. There's just a limit to what a person can do, and Gendry is reaching his. He came farther than anyone could have thought."

"He can go farther," Arya replied. "Believe."

"I am believing, Arya," he said. "But I can't let him suffer forever. If the run scores, I have to pull him. I just have to."

"The run won't score," she snapped, turning back to the field and leaning against the top step. Slynt was in the batter's box, a red-hot bat. Tyrell waited on deck, the clutchest hitter in the league. After that, Aegon stood in wait, looking positively hungry. The heart of their order waited to strike. "The run. Won't. Score."

I believe in you. I believe in you. Enough breaking balls. Enough offspeed junk. Don't mess around. They can't touch your heat. Just blow them away.

Duckfield took his lead from third, Swann leaning off first. Gendry leaned over for the sign, sweat or snot or something dripping from his exerted face; for all he seemed to see, he was alone in the ballpark. No runners, no potential scorers, only him and a catcher's mitt. He was the calmest one, as he nodded and came set, in a sea of worry, in a sea of people clutching their heads, in an ocean of people praying for deliverance.

The pitch he threw was a fastball, accentuated by a hard grimace as he planted his left leg into the mound. Slynt, ravenous, swung at it, and completely missed. The life burst back into the crowd as the batter swung his head around, glaring at Robb's mitt and then at Gendry as the ball was delivered to the shaking pitcher. Gendry took it and wasted no time resetting himself, taking the first sign Robb offered and coming set for almost five whole seconds, glaring down both runners in either corner of his eye, before slinging the second pitch of the at-bat towards the plate.

Slynt, for the second time, swung at it. The fastball sunk with natural tail, dipping low to the outside corner, and, also for the second time, Janos Slynt completely missed.

Yes, Arya hissed, shivering with adrenaline, wrapping her arms around herself to keep from shaking. Finish it. Finish him.

...and Gendry did. He came back to the fastball, and slugged one, leaving it in the air, hanging at as hard a velocity as the game had seen. He was inviting Slynt to hit it, inviting a blast, a base hit, a tapper, anything... but the man just couldn't deliver. The fastball wasn't hittable. It soared past the barrel of the bat as if actively avoiding it, and the crowd roared with renewed vigor as Arya exhaled in power and screeched under her breath.

Duckfield remained on third. Swann remained on first. Gendry took the ball back and wiped more cold sweat from his face, rounding the mound and stepping back up to the rubber. His stance remained all business: he knew quite well that he was still two outs into the water. But the run wasn't scored yet. A groundball could end it, even though the infield remained in. Arya glanced at Luwin, remembering his words, and Luwin glanced back, and he pointedly set his feet in the dugout and didn't move, peering back out at the game. Arya grinned and turned her attention where he did, back to the game, and took a deep breath. Tyrell was stepping up to the plate, digging in like a champion. The game wasn't over. The Series wasn't won.

As Tyrell stepped in, and Gendry bent over for the sign, and she was whispering more encouragement, more advice that wasn't heard, more prayer, she found her eyes drawn to Aegon, standing in the on-deck circle. His bat was whirling about his head, his arms hard into the motion of stretching out, but his eyes were on Gendry, and there was so much hate in his eyes that Arya almost gasped aloud. Gendry wasn't paying attention to him, Gendry was Gendry, focused on Robb and nothing else, but if she hadn't have known better she would have said that Aegon was planning to charge out to the mound and murder Gendry.

A storm was waiting on deck.

The first pitch of the at-bat to Tyrell broke, and slid right out of the strike zone for ball one. Arya was not worried about that, especially not when the second pitch of the at-bat slid through low in the zone and precisely for strike one, which Tyrell let slip by him equally without concern. Gendry had a good position in the at-bat, but he must have been as conscious of the danger of Tyrell at the plate as Arya—terrified of making a mistake that would end in a slippery grounder, a tall flyball, or worse—and Gendry tossed Tyrell another slider for the third pitch, which dropped once more out of the strike zone.

Down 2-1, Gendry's body language clearly solidified, the limp disappearing from his stance in the wake of anger, but the fastball that followed missed the zone, too. The crowd's cheers descended slightly into restlessness, though they still cried encouragingly, but Arya could feel the black pit of the at-bat before Gendry even returned to the mound for the fifth pitch of the at-bat. Duckfield waited patiently on third, but Swann on first looked poised for a new base. Tyrell dug in extra strong at the plate; anything close to a mistake would be hit as such. Any mistake would inevitably lead to a base runner.

It must have been on Gendry's mind, too, because his next slider dipped, nothing that wanted to be hit. Even still, Tyrell flinched toward the pitch, promising certain destruction, inching to make contact. At the last moment, he held back, letting Robb instead pick ball four up nearly off of the ground. And the crowd groaned once again, no one louder than Arya.

Tyrell tossed away his bat nonchalantly and jogged to first. The bases were full of Monarchs, Duckfield yet on third, Swann advancing to second, their center fielder rounding off the trio at first. Robb called time and walked out to the mound, where Gendry remained. He looked no less determined than ever, no more emotional than he had been at any point in the game, but the rattle was sunk into him. There was one out on the board, and Aegon flung away his practice swinging weight with arrogance, stalking towards the plate. His eyes glared towards Gendry as Robb approached the mound, all the dark promises following, all of the hatred of generations flowing between them. And Sandor Clegane stepped up on deck behind him, his own eyes making his own promises as he hoisted his tree trunk of a bat onto his shoulder.

Beside Arya, Luwin began to mount the steps of the dugout. Her head snapped towards him, her mouth opened in protest. The run hadn't scored, not yet; it was two batters later but the Direwolves still held to their run. There had never been more of a fight in the team, had never been more drive to win. The underdogs, the unseen competitor. There had never been another team that deserved it more than them.

But she could see Gendry's shake as visibly as Luwin could. She could see how much each pitch cost him. One only had so much in their tank...

She bit her tongue and watched mournfully as Luwin climbed out of the dugout, as he began to stride out across the grass, across the foul line, towards the pitchers' mound. The world watched him go, knowing exactly what it meant. Arya didn't glance around; she didn't want to see who Cassel had decided to bring in, who would come running out of the dugout to relieve Gendry. She should have been enthusiastic that the Direwolves had the opportunity to win at all, that even after Gendry had given it everything he had they were still in it, but all she that floated through her stomach as a wicked grin split Aegon Targaryen's face was that Gendry was their only hope of winning. If he was finished, they had nothing.

Luwin reached the mound, and walked up it slowly, with his head bowed. The infield was waiting for him, grouped around Gendry's taller form, with Robb waiting by their side. There was a rumble in the crowd as Luwin began speaking, reaching out to lay a hand on Gendry's shoulder and address his stern face. Between the fans, a low cheer began, a low chant, first a whisper, then a murmur, growing into a blur and then finally a chant, from the deep of the upper deck to the lines of seats above the dugouts.

"...gendry...Gendry...Gendry. Gendry. Gendry!"

The chant grew, and Arya looked up at the stands, hardly able to believe her ears. Winterfell was on their feet, their hands together, even while there were three Monarchs on-base, even when one base hit was all that separated Winterfell from, all of a sudden, being down one, two, three runs. Even when they were chanting the name of the pitcher who had put the runners there. They were on their feet, cheering him on, because he was theirs. He was their pitcher. There was no vivid truth behind the matter, no black and white display that said that it was Gendry's doing that put them through the playoffs, that put them into the World Series, but just as surely as Arya knew it, the crowd of Winterfell knew the truth: if it weren't for him, they wouldn't be there. He had given them everything, down to powering through a broken leg for them. For them. Going into the game, coming out of the game, winning the game or losing...

He was theirs. And hers. And they wouldn't turn their back on him.

But apparently Luwin would. Because that's exactly what the manager did. He clapped Gendry on the shoulder and turned away from him, and walked down off of the mound and back towards the dugout before Arya realized that the baseball was still firmly held in Gendry's hand. She stood bolt upright as the cheer of the crowd escalated, watching as the infielders tapped him on the back and ran back to their positions, as Robb nodded to him with a grin before swinging around and trudging back to the plate.

Luwin reached the dugout and trotted back down the steps, seemingly oblivious to Arya's gaping mouth. He turned back to the field in his usual position as though nothing unexpected had happened, and crossed his arms in his usual stance. It took several blinks for Arya to find her voice. "You just went out there to talk?"

The manager merely peered at her from the corner of his eye, without saying anything, and the ghost of a smile crossed his features.

Arya sputtered, her mouth still saying open. "You said... one hitter... I thought..."

"The run hasn't scored yet, has it?" Luwin remarked. He full on glanced at her and shrugged. "Come, Arya. You just need to have a little faith."

Her mouth snapped shut, earning him a scowl before she blurted, "What did you tell him?"

"Only what he needed to hear," he said. "I told him to throw his stuff, and to deal with what came after. It's what has gotten us this far. If we're meant to win this thing, then doing what we can trust ourselves to do is the only thing we can." He glanced up at the scoreboard. "All we need is two outs. We're one swing away."

He wasn't wrong. But Aegon Targaryen was waiting next to the box, and he was staring at Gendry. For once, instead of focusing in on Robb, Gendry was staring back. Arya's breath abruptly hitched in her throat, staring at the scoreboard, staring at the two men, dead set against each other, to the point of a deathly staredown in Game 7 of the World Series. Her father's words rushed back to her, clear as glass, heavy as stone, deadly as winter.

In the bottom of the ninth, Robert stepped up to the plate against Rhaegar...

There was no relation. None whatsoever. Robert Baratheon had been hitting against Rhaegar Targaryen, then. The son of Rhaegar Targaryen was hitting against the son of Robert Baratheon, now. It hadn't been the World Series, then. It was, now. There hadn't been runners on base, then. There were, now. Arya repeated it in her head at least five times before the staredown ended, before both of them turned away from each other, one to dig into the box, one to dig into the mound. It was completely different, there was nothing similar about it. The crowd was roaring for Gendry, not Robert. Aegon was hitting, not Rhaegar. Two outs separated the Direwoves from a World Series victory, and Arya told herself that there was nothing else that mattered.

Duckfield led off of third. Swann stepped off of second. Tyrell, a runner with little meaning while his team yet trailed by one, moved off of first lazily. Gendry was as hot as a furnace, Aegon as angry as fire, lined up on opposite sides of the equation. On the mound, the man she loved took the sign from Robb without shake-off and came set with a grim set to his expression. The man she had once grudgingly accepted as a date moved his bat over the plate before swinging it up, poised and prepared, staring down his opponent like they were dueling to the death.

A second passed in which nothing moved, in which Gendry was as still as a tomb, Aegon as silent as death, the crowd's overlaying thunder seeming almost inherent in a three-dimensional snapshot.

Gendry lifted his leg and strode, planting and firing, landing and hurling, with an audible grunt of exertion. The ball hurtled to the plate, hard and fat and ready, and Aegon's bat left his shoulder. The ball hissed by, by the barrel and all of the rest of the bat to meet Robb's mitt, and the crowd brayed ridiculously for the first strike. Arya yelped under her breath, too. Jory, next to her, gave her an odd look before smiling instead and shaking his head.

Aegon stepped back from the plate, bloody murder in his expression, fury and hate evident, determination as true as promise written in his features. He glared at Gendry as if to deliver a threat, but this time Gendry made him no mind; the pitcher swiped the ball back from Robb out of the air and turned to go back to the mound without flinch or expression, and was already leaning over in preparedness before Aegon had even found it in himself to step back into the box.

Once again Gendry accepted the first pitch that Robb wanted, and came set on the mound, all but ignoring the runners for all the glances he paid them. Aegon swung his bat head up, full of rage, full of promises, but when Gendry strode to the plate, planting on a broken leg, heaving away another fastball, the wild hack that Targaryen unleashed missed the ball by full inches, and, abruptly—as the Winterfell crowd leaped up anew and screamed to the heavens—the batter was down in the count to Gendry, 0-2.

Gendry walked back to the mound, and Arya leaned close to the ground. Her voice was a whisper, even to her, for no one to hear. "Put him down, Gendry. You're better than him." Her voice got even lower, so that even she couldn't hear it. So that she could pretend she wasn't saying it, wasn't thinking it. "Prove that this isn't the past. Finish him."

The two faced each other once again, and Robb's sign was accepted. Gendry came set, dead to the world, focused in on one thing. Aegon waited, down in the count and dangerous, hungry, one mistake from dooming the Direwolves, one miss from putting his team down to their last out. At the last split second, he sneered at the mound, and Gendry's lip curled in derision. The pitcher strode and came to the plate.

The pitch soared for the strike zone, and even Arya was fooled by it for a moment. Aegon stepped, a swing clearly on his mind, and his bat was halfway to the zone before he and everyone else who knew enough to see it watched the slider fall out, diving towards the dirt. Aegon heaved back, using all of his strength to grind his bat to a standstill, just brushing the front of the plate, while Robb ducked into the dirt and blocked the ball cold. He leaped into the air immediately and pointed down towards the first base umpire, trying to get a strike three call of Aegon, and the home plate umpire pointed down, as well, open to arbitration. The first base umpire, however, spread his arms wide and shook his head, and a racket of shocked gasps flew up around the stadium, courtesy of forty five thousand people who didn't have a doubt in the world that Aegon had swung through the plate.

Arya, herself, thought it was too close to call, but she had other things on her mind, anyway, nearly rocking back and forth in her anxiety, half courtesy of adrenaline and half courtesy of prophecies bouncing around in her head. It's not the same. It's not. Don't mess around, Gendry. Stop messing with the offspeed. Just blow him away. Use your heat.

Aegon stepped back glaring at everything, at Robb, at Gendry, at both umpires, and then turned to the mound squarely. The crowd was deafening and the air was freezing, and Arya had no idea in the world what it was, but Aegon stood up, outside of the batter's box, glaring right at Gendry, and snapped something loud enough for Gendry on the mound to hear.

Gendry bristled. He stopped. He turned towards Aegon, and his mouth was opened wide in reply, but Aegon turned away with a smirk and climbed back into the batter's box, leaving him without a chance to deliver his retort. Robb, sitting behind the plate, barked something hard up at Aegon, while Gendry gnashed his teeth together on the hill and continued to glare, but the batter's smirk merely widened, and Robb smacked his glove hard in Gendry's direction.

The crowd was oblivious to the exchange, but Arya was not. She watched Gendry backtrack, his eyes on Targaryen the whole time, until he as at the mound. In fear, in panic, she took a deep breath, watching him step back against the rubber in a short fit of rage. Aegon waited, Gendry exactly where he wanted him, hoisting his bat and preparing for the pitch.

Suddenly, as if a second thought occurred to him, Gendry stepped off of the mound. The runners went scurrying back to their bases, but his attention wasn't on them. Gendry took a step back and looked directly at the dugout. Directly at her. The anger in his gaze dissipated as their eyes met, as she pressed her lips together, as some sort of understanding more primal than any words passed between them. The world may have been oblivious to their exchange, but Arya felt a surge of pride as Gendry took a deep breath, and let his emotion fall away. They stared at each other for a moment longer, before she nodded, and then he was back where he needed to be, and he stepped back onto the rubber.

Robb, as if there had never been an interruption, gave the sign. Aegon, still smirking, hoisted his weapon, ready for the pitch. Gendry, calm in the face of danger, leaned over and took the call without shaking it off, without messing around, and came set. He waited, paused, the two sons of two greats, the world watching, the fate of the Series hinging on the moment. Then came the stride to the plate.

The pitch was a fastball, belt high. Aegon saw it, swung, and slammed it. Arya had just enough time to realize that it was hurtling straight at Gendry's face, and gasp in horror...

...before his glove arced up from his side like it was propelled by gods, and plucked the screaming line drive off of the air inches away from his skull.

Gendry stumbled backwards with the force of the blast, but his glove held onto the ball, and the crowd's startled gasps changed to screaming cheers in a split second. Aegon had not had time to leave the box and froze in disbelief, but all of the runners who had taken steps off of the bags went flying back. Gendry darted around instinctively, looking for somewhere to double off a runner, but all of them were back too fast.

When the play was ended, and the calm was only disturbed by the crowd's screams, Gendry's eyes widened and he stared into his glove, at the ball. Aegon, at the plate, dropped his bat to his side and glared with disbelief. Both of them looked like they couldn't believe what had happened, and, frankly, Arya couldn't, either. She realized, abruptly, that both of her hands were raised to cover her mouth, that her entire body had seized up in fear, and that the rest of the Direwolves' dugout was on their feet, starters and relievers and utility players all whooping and hollering.

Jory glanced down at her and gave her an odd glance, but she looked away and shoved down her relief and fear and incredulity, and watched Gendry take the ball out of his glove, glanced up at Aegon once more, and then turn his back to look up at the scoreboard in time to see the second out of the inning flash onto the table.

One out. The bases were loaded, the Direwolves were only leading by one run, but there were two outs in the inning. The Winterfell Direwolves were one out away from winning the World Series.

Aegon glared up at the scoreboard himself, as if it was the last piece of evidence he needed to finally accept that he was out before he finally turned away from the field with a broken, empty expression on his face. He began to walk back to the dugout, in startled disbelief. While the people of Winterfell launched themselves to their feet, their voices as loud as thunder, their spirit as powerful as the sun, Sandor Clegane passed Aegon Targaryen going the other direction and stepped his way up to the plate.

The giant hulk of a man, the man who had supposedly fallen in love with her sister, stepped into the batter's box without looking at anyone but Gendry—and with a harsh glare where he did look—and hoisted his bat onto his shoulder without preamble. Arya couldn't help but gulp in the dugout where she stood, watching Clegane settle in, watching him wait.

Even Gendry looked a little uneasy, but Arya could hardly blame him. In the game, the two had only faced each other once before, and the encounter had ended with a game-tying home run over the outfield fence; a similar occasion now would be instant devastation. Outside of the game, the two men had fought as viciously as though they were on the field, but Gendry had fallen short there, too. Clegane was able-bodied, taller, stronger, more experienced, and more terrifying. Gendry was throwing on a broken leg, with a torn elbow, and, even as he set his lips and ground his back foot against the mound, Arya knew he was reaching the final drops of his tank. Everyone had a limit.

But just one batter more, Gendry, she begged. Just one batter more. All you have to do is throw. One batter more, and it's all over.

A season came down to this moment. For some, a lifetime.

The Great Keep was alive. Millions, across the nation, were on their feet, no matter who they were rooting for. Arya, feet away from the action, bit her lip and held her middle, afraid that her stomach would literally explode from her anxiety as Gendry leaned over to take the sign. Duckfield watched from third, having stood there and waited since there was a single out in the inning. Swann took his lead off second with a frantic glare. Tyrell stepped off of first as Gendry nodded and came set, as Clegane waited.

A breath passed, and then Gendry was planting and throwing. The ball arced, breaking, soaring out of the strike zone, and Clegane took it angrily for ball one. The hideous man stalked away from the box, glaring at Gendry the entire time, and back again, with a fury no less intense. His eyes suggested that Gendry needed to throw a strike or die, and Arya was almost afraid that such a threat was not empty. They had more than one reason to need a strike, though, as Luwin's uneasy shift of the feet next to her suggested. The bases were loaded; they had no runs to spare; they couldn't afford to put Clegane on for free. Gendry needed to throw strikes.

Fastball, Arya thought. Clegane was a fastball hitter—everyone knew it—but Gendry was a fastball pitcher. His slider was good when he was on, but with the pain he was dealing with his accuracy with a breaking ball had clearly been marginal at best, with a little bit of luck thrown in. And Clegane may have looked horrifying enough when he was standing in with arms as thick most peoples' legs, but, had she been pressed into a corner with a gun against her head, Arya would have taken Gendry's fastball against any fastball hitter. Anyone. Any day.

"Enough wasting," she muttered, half a plead."Burn him. You can do it, Gendry."

But the second pitch that Gendry delivered was another slider, and this time Clegane swung. His weakness was breaking balls, but this one he got plenty of, to the point where Arya's heart dropped to her feet and the entire crowd chocked at the exact same moment. The ball came off the bat like a bullet, but it spun into foul territory almost immediately, Clegane, in his might, far, far ahead of it, and a massive, collective sigh of relief went up around the Great Keep.

Stupid, she hissed in her head, glaring at Gendry, begging him to look at her, to see reason. Don't make a mistake. Don't miss.

Gendry returned to the mound without looking at the dugout, though, with his head bowed in worry. The runners jogged back to their bases lazily from where they'd taken off on it, and in the meanwhile Gendry wiped more sweat off of his brow and looked at the scoreboard. He had a strike on Clegane. Two more would end it. But it was much more easily said than done, and he knew it as well as anyone. Arya bit her lip, repeating the same word in her head over and over and over again.

When he came set for the next pitch, she knew a fastball had to be coming. It was time, and she was right. The ball soared towards the plate at heavy heat, but even with Arya's poor angle she could tell, just by the hitch at the last second in Gendry's step, in the flinch of pain and worry that flickered across his face, that he missed its spot. True enough, Clegane growled at the pitch as it zipped by, harmlessly outside for ball two, and sneered towards the mound.

There was nowhere to put him. Gendry had to throw a strike; he couldn't afford to go down 3-1. Not with the World Series on the line. Not with everything he had ever dreamed of on the line. The set of his shoulders was strong, but Arya was more than nervous enough for the both of them as he returned to the mound, and she had no doubt he was just barely concealing his own nerves underneath his stony surface. His limp was pronounced; he was running on fumes. His glance up at the scoreboard told the story, told how close he was and yet so far.

The runners peered in at him, itching to advance, dying to score, when he placed his foot once again to the rubber. Luwin stepped up to her side with a hard face; faith had nothing to do with their fears. They both watched silently as the crowd continued their vibrant shouts, as the dugout placed their hands over their mouths and prayed, as Gendry took the new sign from Robb and came set. The fielders hopped, readying themselves for anything. Gendry paused, and breathed deeply, needing to throw a strike. He lunged towards the plate and fired.

A fastball left his hand, and Clegane's bat converged on it like a bomb. The contact was terrifying, but it was only partial, and Arya heaved another sigh of relief as the ball arced as high into the air as you could possibly it, but drifting far behind the rear screen, far out of play foul. A few centimeters down the bat, and Clegane would have put the Monarchs up by three runs.

Instead, there were two strikes against Clegane. There were two outs in the inning. There was one run that separated the two teams, and Gendry was one strike away from winning the World Series.

Arya stood up straight, gripping the railing, her breath coming short, watching Gendry take a new ball and limp back to the mound. His pain couldn't have been more obvious if she as standing next to him, but nobody in the dugout said anything. Luwin bowed his head but otherwise did not shift in the slightest. The crowd didn't hold silent; they screamed their love, their approval, their unconditional devotion. Through it all, Gendry made it back to the rubber without falling, without collapsing, without breaking. He turned around and glanced at all the runners, at Duckfield, at Swann, at Tyrell. As if putting them out of his mind, then, he stepped against the rubber and bent over for the sign.

Clegane, his face twisted in anger, stepped in and hit the plate hard with the head of his bat, swinging it up to his shoulder in preparation. He was down to his last strike. It must have been nearly impossible for him to concentrate beneath the endlessness of the crowd's flood. But he couldn't afford to fail; nor could Gendry. Arya watched Robb glance up at his eyes before he put his hand between his legs and signed the pitch he wanted. She lowered her face half into her eyes, barely able to watch, and prayed. Throw it. Throw your heat.

Gendry watched, and then stood up, for the thousandth time that year. In the top of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series, with Sandor Clegane facing a 2-2 count, with the bases loaded, clinging to a one-run lead, Arya watched him come set at the top of his motion, pausing. His body was completely still. His breath hissed out in a sparse fog.

Without warning, he planted his left leg, injury on injury on injury, gritted his teeth, and whirled his arm around to heave the ball at the plate.

At the last second, to her utter dismay, his wrist and elbow snapped, imparting spin onto the ball, and she wailed as it began to break halfway to the plate. Clegane wasn't fooled for a moment. Without offering the ball a care, Clegane stepped back, while the slider dipped out of the zone, and Arya slapped the steps with the palm of her hand in frustration as the umpire moved away from Robb to signify ball three.

The count was full. There was nowhere to put him. There was nowhere to go. Gendry had to deliver a strike. He knew it. Clegane knew it. The world knew it. The runners would be off with the pitch; only an out at first or a catch would win them the game. Or a strikeout; or putting a strike past Sandor Clegane.

That was what Gendry had to do. She could see the understanding pass between her brother and Robb in that moment, could see them understand what had to be done. Then Gendry's back turned and he was beginning to walk back to the mound, about to deliver the pitch on a broken leg that would decide the World Series. And, in that moment, a monumental dread filled Arya's heart, staring at the number imprinted on Gendry's back.

He's going to throw a slider, she realized. He's going to throw a slider and miss, or Clegane's going to hit it a mile. Someone has to stop him. You stupid bull!

She looked around frantically. Luwin couldn't go back out to talk to him again, by rule, not unless he was going to take Gendry out of the game. She whirled, trying to find Cassel, but, to her horror, the pitching coach was nowhere to be found. Her hands seized fistfuls of her hair, her panic rising as she swung back to the field, trying to think of something, of anything. The crowd was too loud for him to hear her if she just stood up and yelled, and that was completely impractical in the first place. Throwing something at him would merely get her, and most likely Luwin, as well, tossed out of the game.

She was out of time. Gendry was already stepping onto the mound, sweat dripping off of his face, a grimace of pain flashing across his features. In a moment, he would be bent over for the sign. In a moment, there wouldn't be another chance to bash sense into him. In another moment, she would be too late.

It occurred to her, then, and she was so desperate that she didn't stop to think about.

"Jory," she snapped, seizing him by the arm. "Take off your jersey."

The starting pitcher froze, even more than his nerves had already had him frozen, and turned to stare at her. "Excuse me?"

"I said, take off your fucking jersey!" she hollered, and the mask her face contorted into made him jump in place, in shock. "Now!"

Frantically, frightened into compliance in his moment of weakness by a nineteen-year-old, one-hundred pound girl, Jory reached and began to undo the buttons on the top of his shirt. Without pausing to wait for him, Arya leaped a hop to her left and seized Luwin by the arm. "Call time. Now." Luwin peered at her quizzically, incomprehensively, but she didn't have time for him to question her. "Luwin, I swear to the old gods and the new, if you don't call time right now I will get you fired."

Luwin only raised his eyebrows, looking thoroughly non-threatened, but without another word he hastened up the steps of the dugout and began bellowing towards the umpire, for time. Arya turned back the other way and shed her coat just as Jory was finishing pulling the hem of his jersey from his pants. She swiped it out of his hands and pulled it over her shoulders to do up at least two buttons, unable to believe what she was doing, completely willing to admit that she was crazy.

But instead of stopping, as the umpire at home plate raised his hands to signal time out, as the world turned towards the dugout to see exactly why Luwin had called timeout, Arya reached over and swiped the hat off of Jory's head, pulling it over her hair as she mounted the dugout steps.

And, stepping past the incredulous Direwolves' manager and staring straight into the eyes of a shocked Gendry, Arya began to walk towards the pitcher's mound.