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.

31. Chapter 29

29

"She's broken, all right, sure as shit," Hullen growled happily, slapping the x-rays up onto the lit board.

It was five in the morning, in a Winterfell hospital, and Arya couldn't find it in herself to let go of Gendry's hand from where she stood beside his bedside table. It had been hours before Hullen and she had finally convinced Gendry that he'd had enough clubhouse celebration, that it was time to deal with his leg, and after finally carting him to the hospital in an escorted car Hullen had vehemently insisted on doing the tests himself. Arya, meanwhile, had refused to be parted from Gendry in any manner, a fact which had the reliever seemed to have no qualms over.

He squeezed her hand now, wincing as he glanced up at the x-rays. She could only just barely restrain her giggle as she looked at his face, and only then by reminding herself that he was in pain. Though he'd been given something strong almost as soon as they'd arrived, the massive adrenaline rush that had somehow propelled him through the mess of his injury had worn off almost as soon as Luwin had seen them off in the car. His leg was apparently none the worse for wear other than the fracture the line drive had initially caused, by she was still awestruck that he had been able to stick through the pain and remain in the game. And win the game.

There was sweat on his face as he laid on the hospital bed, still wearing his baseball pants and undershirt. One leg of his pants was rolled up over the knee and ice applied anew over the frightful swelling, Arya acknowledged his squeeze of her own and used the opportunity of his need for her contact to inch closer and wrap her other hand light around his forearm with a supportive smile. His eyes turned away from the x-rays and his grimace turned into a quiet grin to match her own as Hullen crossed his arms and whistled.

"Boy, I don't know how you threw on that," the trainer said, shaking his head. "I mean, I've heard of people doing it before, but I've never seen it done, and what a time to do, too..." The gruff man shook his head and glared at Gendry as if he were both stupid and brilliant. "You got balls, boy, but I'm half surprised your leg didn't snap in two."

Gendry flinched, no-doubt grimacing at the visual of such an injury. "Thanks for that, Hullen. I assume I'll live?"

"'Course," Hullen said, stepping over and clapping Gendry on the arm that Arya wasn't clinging to. The old man glanced over at her and her hands around Gendry as he sidled up, and grunted to cover a surprising smirk that floated over his expression. "Not too bad a fracture, all things considered. I'll just go see if I can find some beautiful young nurse who can cast you up, and it should be right as rain in three or four weeks."

Arya watched Gendry rested his head back against the pillows, and squeezed his hand again as he sighed. "Thanks, Hullen."

"And your arm, too," Hullen added after a moment of hesitation, rather sheepishly. As flustered as the man had ever looked, he scratched his face and glanced at Gendry out of the corner of his eye, nervous actions that would have made Arya laugh if she hadn't just stood up straight and acquired a glare as soon as his words left his mouth, as soon as she discovered that someone else had known about Gendry's elbow and not said a word. "I think maybe you might want another MRI on that soon enough. Pretty soon, honestly. There could be some nice built-up scar tissue in there, by now."

She expected Gendry's eyes to snap open and his frame to sit up, his face to go red and his mouth to burst wide in anger, just as she wanted to do. Her fingers tightened around his in her disturbance, but to her great surprise his eyes only blazed with weariness and gratitude as he nodded to the trainer. Hullen cast one more glance between them, losing his sheepishness, and darted another knowing, clandestine smirk in her direction before he patted Gendry lightly on the thigh and rounded the bed to sneak from the room, leaving the two of them alone. At last.

The two of them watched each other for a second before smiles split across both of their faces. His blue eyes were so intent that she felt as though he were staring into her soul, and, despite herself, she felt herself blushing and tried to bite her lip to prevent it. The insufferable grin that molded onto his face told her she hadn't succeeded, but she found that she didn't mind, as he laid his bed against the pillow and she yawned.

"Are you tired?" he asked her, on intense blue waves of concentration.

Arya shrugged. "It's been a wild night. I'm sure you're much more tired than me."

"I'm not tired at all," Gendry replied, glancing towards the ceiling. He didn't look it, true enough; he looked as though he could have popped out of his bed and charged back onto the mound and thrown a whole other game, broken leg and bum elbow and all. She remembered the emotional stare they had shared when he was on the platform and grinned wider, turning her eyes towards the bedside table. Somehow, his MVP trophy had followed them to the hospital, and there it sat, gleaming in the soft lamp of the light of the room.

Beneath the memory of the night, the struggles of the past few months, Arya shivered, closing her eyes, trying to comprehend the finality of the moment. The World Series was over. The Direwolves were World Series champions. She was almost daring to believe that everything would come out as a happy ending, but there was no wood around to knock, so she kept the thought carefully to herself. Aegon still might be lurking around some corner somewhere with the intent to give a vulnerable Gendry a piece of his mind, which was a battle they would only be able to fight when they got to it. For now, she could hold his hand with the knowledge that their worst days were behind them, and now that the World Series was over whatever came next, even if they didn't win every battle, would be a step they took together, for better or worse.

"What are you thinking about?"

She opened her eyes to find Gendry watching her, a mix of a smirk and his thinking face covering his expression. It made her smile as she reached out to stroke the side of his temple, rejoicing in the unrestrained feeling of his skin beneath her hand. She'd forgotten how much she treasured it. "I was thinking that you're stubborn and stupid."

He groaned good-naturedly. "What for this time?"

"Nothing for. You just are." His smile slipped and she laughed at him, scratching his cheek before lifting his arm off of the head and nudging his arm forcefully.

With a glare of annoyance she knew was faked, he pursed his lips against their twitching and scooted himself over on the bed, gritting his jaw against the groan of his leg as he made room for her sit. She hopped up onto the bedside with her legs dangling off the side and pulled his arm back into her lap, tapping his forearm with her fingertips while she watched him.

"No one else would have gone out and pitched, you know, in that last inning. You're the only one." He shrugged, but she didn't. "They'll remember that. Five years, ten years down the road." She huffed softly in emphasis. "This whole season, your whole rise... it's going to become a symbol in baseball. It'll be legendary in a few years." He shrugged again, and a bit of real frustration crept into her voice. "Aren't you even a bit proud of that? I am."

He smiled at the last, but what he said was, "Honestly, I'm happier that we won more than anything else. You say legendary, but I think they always make too big of a deal about this sort of stuff. Some people are just that good, some people are just that lucky, but sometimes people just put the right things in at the right time to perform. You know baseball, you know that. It doesn't mean their hall of famers, it just means they had a good run. I had a good run, and right now I'm just glad it paid off in the end."

"Not just one good run," Arya chastised sternly, raking his arm lightly with her fingernails. "Unless you plan on announcing your retirement, which would be legendary itself."

"Aside from the fact that you'd kill me if I did that, I certainly don't want to do anything for a job except play baseball," Gendry told her joyfully. With a nod, he added, "Surgery, though... nobody's going to sign me without it, and, to be honest, it's starting to be too much to bear, anyway. So I'll have to go through that, and deal with whatever complications arise from that... I don't really know, Arya. It's an uncertain future."

"But at least you have a future, now," she reminded him, smiling, running her palm over his and meshing their fingers. "You didn't have that before."

"A future," he repeated mystically, leaning to glance at their clasped hands cradled in her lap. He squeezed her fingers as he looked, smiling without meeting her gaze. "I do have that, at least."

The moment Arya had been waiting for anxiously was now upon them. Picking their hands apart so she could stretched and play with his fingers, taking care to choose the words she'd been waiting a long time for them to face. He seemed to sense her hesitance and care, his eyes opening seriously and watching her, but he didn't say anything, waiting for when she herself was ready to speak. Finally, she glanced at him, resisted the temptation to bite her lip, and murmured, "The World Series is over."

"Yes, it is." His eyes gave nothing away.

She bristled, but could see the way his mouth was turning up, his amusement at her impatience, and gritted her teeth against the snap she knew would only bring him more satisfaction. Instead, she punched his bicep, which likewise only made him laugh, but at least it hurt a little, too. She hoped. "You said we would talk after the World Series."

"I did," he agreed, nodding gravely. "And we are. And I'm ready, now."

Arya took a deep breath. "Ready for what?"

"To talk about... our future," he said uncertainly, brow creasing in confusion at her inquiry. "What did you... think I was..."

He trailed off as she giggled, scowling at her and making as if to retract his hand, but she held fast, gripping it to her chest and clenching every muscle she could against the greater strength of his retraction until he finally desisted and let her twine their fingers once again. "Okay, then. Let's talk about our future."

Gendry looked her in the eye and released a quiet breath, not of nerves but of thought. "So, I obviously want you. I want to be with you. I don't know many other ways I can say it except for that."

She was grinning widely now, wider than before, but she didn't try very hard to hold it back. "Good. Because I really want to be with you, too. Really bad."

"But your father obviously won't like it..." Gendry pointed out wryly, with a sizable sprinkling of distaste in his voice. "And, honestly, the idea of trying to sneak around like we did last time really isn't appealing to me. If that's what you absolutely have to have us do, so be it, but I'm sick of hiding what's between us from everyone." He grunted, shaking his head. "It seems like everyone knew anyway, last time, except for the people who didn't want us to be together. Our track record at hiding isn't great. I'd much rather just let it fly and deal with everyone's reactions. But then, your father just might explode..."

"I don't particularly care about my father's reactions right now," she told him, dropping his hand only to cross her arms and glare at him meaningfully. "If he's got a problem with you, then he can go rot himself in all seven hells."

Gendry watched her, not reproachfully but not far off. "You don't mean that. You love your father. You really don't want to be at odds with him, and if it's going to hurt you I don't want that, either. I don't want to be on bad terms with your father, that's what I'm saying."

"We're not keeping it a secret," Arya stated firmly, and that matter was closed. "If my father has an issue, then he'll be about the only one." She lifted her palm and began ticking off fingers as she named names. "Robb, Sansa, Edric, maybe even my mother. If my dad's the only one who's making a stink, then it won't take long for him to alienate the rest of the family, too. Even if that doesn't happen, I'm not hiding you anymore."

"Good," Gendry murmured. He grasped her upper arm and, before she could do anything to stop it—not that she would have even if she had been able—he pulled her down to his chest, wrapping his strong, warm arms around her. As soon as she realized what he was doing she rolled half onto the hospital bed, so that her back was pressed into his side and she could grasp his arms holding her. Gendry pressed his lips into her hair, his breath tickling her ear as he muttered, "Because I'm not going to go around hiding the fact that you're mine."

She bit her lip to keep herself from giggling again, and leaned her head back until she could stare backwards into his eyes. "Why would you do that?"

"To make sure another Aegon Targaryen doesn't come along," he growled back. The playful glint in his eyes was gone. His tone was serious. His arms tightened around her and the determined mask of his face and eyes looked away from her. "Doesn't come along and steal you away."

Yet another attempt to bite back a chuckle failed her. "You're stupid. Who could possibly come along and steal me away from you? You'd steal me right back."

"Damn fucking straight," he spat, and she grinned as she burrowed her back deeper into his warm side. "You're right, I was dumb to surrender the first time. It won't happen again. Unless you ask me to, I'm not going to let you go ever again."

"Don't hold your breath waiting for that," she warned happily, snuggling as close as was possible. Fat chance of that happening.

They laid there for several moments. She could have laid there for much longer, relishing human contact, relishing Gendry contact, something that only a year before she might have sworn she would ever desire so much as she did now. Sansa had always been the romantic in the family, but Arya could—grudgingly, mind—finally admit the emotional appeal Sansa had always found in movies and stories and beliefs that all things had a happy ending. Having gone through a very dark period where she was woefully convinced that happy endings didn't exist, Arya was not taking hers for granted; it was all she could do not to staple it to her body to make sure it didn't disappear. Lying there with Gendry, though, she began to breathe slower, her heart beating softer, the slow realization sinking in that she could let him out of her sight without having to worry, that their worst days were most likely behind them, and that any backlash them being together would generate could be dealt with between them. Holding his hands in hers, she was confident that their love was strong enough to endure it.

"So... what are we going to do?" she asked him. "I assume that when you say we're together now, you mean that we're in a very serious relationship, because if we're not—" She craned her neck so she could glare at him. "—we are."

He chuckled, his chest rumbling heavily beneath her, and tucked her back down with a placating face. "We are, believe me."

"So how does this go, then?" Arya asked. "What happens now? Where are we going to go from here? What are you going to do about your arm? Where do you want to be now that the season's over?"

"Do we have to decide all that now?" he murmured lightly.

"No, but I wouldn't mind knowing," she admitted quietly, drawing patterns on the back of his forearm with her fingers. "I'm really serious about this, Gendry, about us." She swallowed, and continued in an unhappy mumble, "I'll probably be on a plane back to King's Landing tomorrow. Or the next day. I'm missed a lot of class, and it's not easy to make up. Worth it, but not easy, and I can't really spare any more time up here. So..." She left it hanging open, but a moment later blushed as she added, "If I have to spend a long time away from you, I want a little idea of when I'll be able to see you next."

She listened to his breathing as he pondered her words for several moments, continuing to trace her patterns, waiting patiently for his reply. He cleared his throat a couple times before he moved his hand to tickle her stomach, forcing her to clamp it before he could do his damage. With another chuckle, he said, "If your question is first where I'm going from here, I honestly don't know. My future in Winterfell is obviously in question, but I'd like to keep throwing, if somebody else could sign me. It wouldn't be the same, of course, but it would still be playing baseball. Of course, I'd need to undergo surgery, and I'd have to finance that, myself... which wouldn't leave me much of my salary left over once it's all done... if I lose velocity or recover wrong..."

"Then you would cross that bridge when you came to it," Arya told him firmly.

His body rustled slightly as he shook his head against the pillow. "Not entirely what I meant. I just meant if I fall out I'm right back to where I started, like I was concerned about when your father blew his gasket. If that happens, then I have no base to support you on." She sat up to snap that they'd been down that road already, but he shook her off before she could say so. "I'm not going to give up on us because of that, but I am saying that it wouldn't make a very good foundation for a life with me. I could barely feed myself, I wouldn't be able to contribute to you at all, and if we—"

He stopped abruptly and stared down at her, as if he'd been about to say something that might have made her uneasy. Certainly contrary to what he expected her reaction to be, though, a new smile spread across Arya's features. It came unbidden, the unspoken end of his halted sentence surprising her with the burst of desire she felt soar through her chest. She really was turning into Sansa, images of small eyes and high-pitched squeals and late-night smiles running through her mind, but, to her horror, she wasn't sure if she didn't mind. It was Gendry.

"Like I said," she told him, running a finger over his jaw line, "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We'll be together, and that's all that matters. All you can do in the mean time is get the surgery and your rehab and start taking offers."

His expression cracked, his eyes sliding over her face, the corners of his lips slowly twitching and then turning upwards. With a steady hand, he reached up and cupped her cheek. She leaned in his touch, pressing deeper into his palm, closing her eyes against the feeling. When she opened them again, she removed his hand from her face so that she could lean over and caress his lips with her own. It was not nearly as deep and meaningful as the one they had shared on the field after the game, nor as intense or needy as those that marked their first heated night together, a night that whispered on the edge of her mind like cruel temptation. Contrary to those, however, this was merely a chaste kiss, a promise of hundreds and thousands more, simply something to remind them that they had each other once again.

When she pulled back, she placed her hand on the upper hem of his shirt and stretched it meaningfully, eyeing him sharply. "With that said, I would like it a whole lot more if you didn't hole yourself up in a cave during that time. I do want to see you as much as possible. But I also get that you probably hate King's Landing now and probably don't want to go back for your rehab and what not."

"If it's the only way I can be close to you," Gendry said, "then it's the only place I want to go through rehab."

"It doesn't have to be there, you know," she replied right back, turning her fingers from his shirt to brush the small hairs of his neck. She hesitated, tentative of saying something pushed too much of their future at him too soon. "We don't... I don't want to make you settle..." She sighed in frustration. "I'm just going to say it, and you can take it how you will. We don't have to settle in King's Landing permanently, or anything. Or anywhere even close to there. You came to my home, I live in yours, we've both seen each other's worlds. If you want to go somewhere else, I'll follow you. You deserve that. I hate King's Landing, honestly." She threw a hand over her shoulder dramatically, scoffing. "Hell, I'll be happy never seeing it again. Wherever you want to go, if it has a university that offers my majors, I'll transfer there with you. And we can be together. For a very long time. That's the only thing I care about, Gendry."

He glanced at her with a chortle behind his eyes. "So if I'm to understand you correctly, you're basically demanding that I devote myself to you forever."

"No, that's not what I was saying," she replied snappishly. "But now that you mention it, you might as well do that, too."

His laugh was aloud this time, the happiness on his face suggesting that the alternative had never occurred to him. This time, he wrapped his arms around the small of her back and pulled him down to his chest, her bracing hands against his firm muscles the only thing keeping their noses a precarious inch apart.

"Fine by me," he murmured. She could have gotten lost in the swirling blue depths she couldn't look away from—she supposed that meant she was already lost. "I'm not that concerned with where I'll be. Where I'll be is wherever you are, no matter how difficult it is to be there. We can figure out specifics later, but I promise you that wherever we have to go, we'll be together."

She opened her smile wide, surrendering to the unconscious lean of her body summoning her once again to her lips. The contact was sweet and surreal, one of the two best feelings he had ever given to her, one of the two best feelings she'd ever felt in her life. Her hands came up to brush over his cheeks and then curl into his hair as their mouths moved over one another, as their breath became desperate and their touch more heated.

It had been months since they'd had the freedom they were enjoying, and Arya didn't relinquish that freedom for a second. She opened her mouth against him, preparing to attack, but his tongue was already against hers, yearning for more, and she was on the defensive almost instantaneously. To counter his advantage, she pulled herself higher into a sitting position, swinging a leg over his waist carefully, conscious of avoiding his broken leg at all costs, and planting herself firmly straddling his lap. He gasped against her mouth as she did so, and she smirked despite herself, despite the heat that was pooling around her own midriff.

Her hands found their way from his hair to his shirt, pulling at it with a half intent to pull it off of his body. All she wanted was to feel his hot skin beneath her fingers, more in that moment than anything else in the world. It was an opportune place, at five in the morning when their bodies, at least, were both exhausted, but her searing nerves weren't acknowledging that as his hands slid down her back and cupped her by the upper thighs, pulling her hips into his and forcing her to hiss a delighted moan that was swallowed by their passion. The hospital be damned, the absurd hour be damned, it felt impossibly good to sense him shuddering beneath her as they fought for the upper tongue—

The fortunately loud turning of the doorknob only gave her a split second of warning.

Both of them jumping in surprise and cursing, she vaulted off of him and the bed, landing on her feet on the opposite side than she had started on with disheveled hair and swollen lips just as the door swung open enough to admit Ned Stark, who paused a half step into the room with a very grave and demanding stare. For a tensely long moment, with Arya standing wide-eyed, red-handed, her father surveyed the scene silently, judgingly, every second adding a tiny crease to corner of his eyes as they narrowed in suspicion.

Arya opened her mouth to say something hopefully snappish and unpleasant, but her surprise and sudden dread at the outcome of the ensuing conversation jammed the words in her throat. Slowly, as she kept stumbling over her own thoughts, trying to make herself do something, Ned Stark's eyes touched her for a cold moment before sliding to Gendry. For her own part, despite her hammering heart at nearly being caught in the act and an inner shrinking, she stood tall and proud, trying to look defiant where her words were tripping. Gendry did one better; he actually sat up straighter, his arms tensing and his body hardening as the two men faced off over the small space separating the door and the hospital bed. As her father's gaze was drawn back to her, she reached out blindly and scooped up Gendry's rigid arm from the bed sheet, wrapping both of hers around it pointedly without ever breaking eye contact.

Ned Stark's jaw visibly clenched before he looked down at the door handle as he closed it, privatizing the moment between the three of them. "So... I came in here to say congratulations, Gendry, but I can't say I'm surprised to find you how I do. You fought exceptionally hard in the back half of this series." His facial expression could have frozen fire as his eyes swept back over the both of them in gritted turn. "And now it seems I know why."

"Look," Gendry began, groping for her fingers until Arya slid her small hand into his supportively. "Before you say anything, I swear to you that whatever you think I'm going to do to her, you're completely damned wrong. I could never hurt her."

Ned Stark crossed his arms over his chest and glanced at the floor tiles. When he spoke, Gendry might as well not have. "For a while, after I saw Arya in pain after it happened, I thought that perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I was being scared of ghosts. Maybe you really weren't like your father, wild and reckless and arrogant and determined." He glanced up at Gendry. "Then I saw you on the mound tonight, and I knew that you were exactly like Robert. Robert before he fell apart, before the alcohol and the fame and the acclaim. That gleam of victory in your eye... I've only ever seen that uniqueness once before. A long time ago."

Arya watched Gendry's face, trying and failing to will herself to say something back to her father. Gendry's cheeks paled and then darkened in anger, the muscles of his face straining in his rising temper. "I'm nothing like him. I swear to you—"

"You're exactly like him, Gendry," Ned Stark muttered, soft but sharp, cutting into Gendry's reply like falling ice. "With a baseball in your hands, you look exactly like he did with a bat. Your poise. Your competitiveness. Your drive. Your anger. Every little bit of you put together. I may not know you terrifically well anymore, or ever at all, but I knew Robert, and I tell you truthfully that had you been stood up next to each other at a like age, I might not have been able to tell you apart. Tonight I saw a lot of him in you. And, believe it or not, I don't mind that that's such a bad thing."

Gendry blinked and so did Arya. They exchanged a very confused glance, a suspicious glance, and their fingers both subtly tightened around the others as they both turned to look back at Ned Stark. "How is that a good thing? My father was an awful man. His wife hated him. His family despised him. He never made the time to be there for his son, he gave me away."

"Robert wasn't a good father, I'll give you that," Ned Stark replied, his arms remaining crossed, "but he wasn't awful. You only know his bad years, but there times before that when he was a fire and an inspiration, a charging stag at the head of his team. There was no better teammate in the world than he. What you know of him is a completely different man, born of a tragic event that he took horribly, and so paid the consequences." He glanced at Arya as he spoke, and she wasn't able to prevent herself from dropping her eyes to the bed sheets and squeezing Gendry's hand.

Gendry, meanwhile, sat with his mouth half-open, as if there were words on the tip of his tongue that he just couldn't let go of. Finally, after an intermittent swallow and cough, he said, "I didn't choose to be like him, I hope you know. If what you say is true, I would give a lot to change it."

"I don't think you should think that," Ned Stark responded after a pause that lasted more than a moment. "We had obvious disagreements, but Robert was still my friend, in the end. If your attitude and self-control are any indication, you are already better able to contain yourself than he was. And you're not as brash or impatient. With those qualities added to the best of what he was, you embody the son that I know he wanted to have. And I promise you, if Robert had been there tonight watching the game, even if it was against his team, he would have been proud of the way you played."

The words were possibly some of the least likely to come out of Ned Stark's mouth, but Gendry's stunned reaction was the only indication Arya needed to know she'd heard right. The two men watched each other, the younger of them sitting hunched and wide-eyed as if he wanted to say something but didn't know what, until finally Gendry simply laid back against his pillows with a newly strained face. She wasn't sure what was running through his mind at that moment, following their surprise and stumbling save following Ned Stark's unwelcome intrusion, but she knew that she herself had not been expecting her father to walk through the door and claim to Gendry, in a way, that his father really did love him, despite all that he had gone through as a child. It seemed slightly unfair to her for Ned Stark to have laid such a thing on Gendry's shoulders, but, slowly, Gendry's face softened from its strain into almost a peaceful, accepting state, and Arya grudgingly admitted that the joy she felt in seeing him relax in his own thoughts was greater than her conflict with her father.

Instead of snapping at him, therefore, Arya moved so that she was standing farther behind Gendry's shoulder and closer to his bedside, so that there could be made no mistake about what she was implying. Ned Stark's jaw tightened even further as he watched her go, his stance making it look as if he was about to charge into battle. Arya and Gendry watched him together, both of them tense, both of them feeling the implications of the moment, both of them holding onto the other for the reassurance that they weren't alone.

It would have been better if Ned Stark growled, screamed, whispered, anything rather than this silence. Finally, Arya could stand it no longer. "So what are you going to do about it? You can't do anything. I don't care what you say to me. You can't take him from me again. You're not nearly strong enough for that."

Ned Stark raised an eyebrow at her, but that was the only alteration to his appearance. It was unnerving, and it almost served to make her scream something else, but Gendry's tight hand reminded her that he was there with her and she held her tongue from saying something she'd regret.

"So exactly how long has this been going on again?" her father inquired softly, dangerously, staring directly at their clasped hands. "I was angry at having it go on behind my back the first time, but now that's it's happening a second... exactly how long have you been lying to me, Arya?"

"We haven't been going around behind your back." He surveyed her skeptically, and she didn't restrain the venom from her voice as she snapped, "It's the fucking truth! We knew you would piss and moan again and we decided that we didn't care, but we also knew that it would be better if we waited until the series was over to work things out. So we're here, and we worked things out, and now you know, so all fucking bets are off. Take a good hard look, Dad, because this is how it's going to be."

Her father took a deep breath, regarding them stoically, straight-faced and icily. "I see. And this stands even if it means that you won't receive a contract extension, Gendry? You'll be on the streets again. Once again, I regret what I did regarding your elbow, but the injury still stands, and while you might be able to entertain offers including surgery fees now, it's still a gamble. And travel is expensive. The lifestyle can be expensive... Are you willing to risk that?"

Arya realized that she was holding her breath, gripping Gendry's fingers with a vice, frozen on the spot and waiting desperately to hear his answer as much as her father was. She needn't have worried herself; without hesitation, Gendry snapped, "I'll put myself through surgery if I have to. I'll find a way. Look, sir, whatever I did to make you think that I'm not good enough for your daughter, I'm sorry for it but I promise you that I can be."

"You're not the judge of that," Ned Stark replied quietly.

"Yeah, I fucking am!" Arya blurted, glaring at her father. All of her rage, all of her pain, all of the last few months that had been pent up, waiting to be released, waiting to be unleashed on some unsuspecting soul... she let it go, throwing it all at her father at that instant. "All right, look here! This is not about you and me. This is about me and him." She jabbed Gendry hard in the arm with a finger, adding a few more taps that actually made him grimace for emphasis. "You have to understand that, Dad! Okay? I don't care what you think will happen. I don't care what you're afraid might happen. I want to be with him so bad that it hurts when I'm not, Dad, okay? If you cared about me at all, you should be happy for me, but you know what? Even if you're not, I don't care! Just go and walk out of the door right now and don't talk to me again, and I won't shed a tear. If you ask me to choose, I'll choose him. Over anyone else, over you. Over baseball. I'll choose him."

Ned Stark's other eyebrow rose. Gendry was looking up at her incredulously, in amazement, in love, in so intimate a way that it made her face burn and her blood boil, and she wrapped his arm up tightly against her chest in both of her own without breaking eye contact with her father. He didn't look as though he had been fazed, didn't look as though her words had done anything but bounce off of his surface, but, finally, Arya didn't care. What she said, she meant. If he was determined, then so was she, and if they went their separate ways and she took Gendry with her, she could deal with the consequences. It was worth it.

Contrary to the humbled look or stumbled apology she was improbably hoping for, Ned Stark turned to Gendry. "And you, Gendry? You understand what you are entering onto a very difficult path, one that may not have a road back to the field you just walked off of? You understand that you are possibly sacrificing everything you've worked for for this?"

Gendry, slowly but steadily, nodded his affirmation. As if her innermost thoughts were his, he quietly answered, "It's worth it."

Ned Stark took a heavy breath, his shoulders rising and falling back into place with the force of it. His nod was a slow, dangerous gesture. "So be it." His closed his mouth and worked his jaw for a moment, bobbing a miniscule nod the entire time, before eventually clearing his throat and raising his eyes back to Gendry once again. "The Direwolves will finance your surgery in its entirety. That includes the rehabilitation treatment you'll have to go through. Wherever and whenever you want the procedure done, bill it to my checkbook. You've served your team well, and I look after their own."

Arya's jaw dropped open. She felt Gendry's arm utterly die beneath her arms in equal surprise, as Ned Stark took another heaving breath. Both of them spent a long moment blinking at each other, and then turned back to her father, their gazes questioning, their mouths unable to form the questions and statements their minds were trying to shout. Their aghast state lasted until Ned Stark broke into an amused grin, which would have infuriated her had her socks not been so shockingly knocked off.

It was Gendry who recovered first, though it took several moments and more than one hesitant glance towards Arya for him to summon himself, and even then he could only manage one word. "Why?"

She almost slapped him for being so stupid, asking such a question when he should have been clamping his mouth shut and acquiescing without thought to Ned Stark's surprising announcement. Ned Stark raised another antagonizing eyebrow, which also contributed to her annoyance, but what he said was yet another thing she had not been expecting.

"I was wrong about you, Gendry," her father said, appearing open and honest as he did so. His face suggested regret; his tone bespoke repentance. It was so unexpected that Arya pinched herself to make sure she wasn't hallucinating or dreaming. "Or at least so it seems now. Don't get me wrong—" He looked straight at Arya as the sentence fell off, a knowing look passing between father and daughter. "—I still have misgivings, but it's obvious to me that you care a lot for my daughter and are willing to do a lot to keep her safe and make her happy. Which is why, tentatively, I'm allowing this to happen..."

"You don't allow anything, Dad," Arya snapped, reiterating the point by holding up their clasped hands. "It's our decision."

Her father closed his eyes and uncrossed his arms to raise them in surrender. "I didn't mean it that way. I'll try again. That's why I'm not completely disapproving, shall I say. You don't seem to believe it, but I like you a lot, Gendry. And I have more respect for someone who can go out and pitch the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 with a broken leg than I have for virtually anybody else."

Gendry blinked at him, and if they had been alone she quite probably would have wrung his neck. If not for the fact that she loved his blunt force so much, as he asked a question that begged trouble. "What exactly made you change your mind?"

"My entire family rebelling against me," Ned Stark answered with a smirk, before shaking his head to denote the joke. "Really, at first I thought Arya's reaction was a sign of how unhealthy your relationship was, but when Robb and my wife began to step in on her behalf, I realized that you calm a part of her that's usually angry." He glanced at his daughter, and she felt the weight of his gaze as it landed on her, his love and care directed into her soul. "I've never really thought her happy. I always thought it would take time. Then she was, and it worried me a little, and then I overreacted. And I realized that you made her happy for the first time. I'm sorry I put you both through so much unhappiness. Perhaps it's not very easy for you to forgive me, but I'd like to make reparations. So for now I'll keep my reservations to myself and fix up your elbow, and just maybe we can call it square there."

That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what you owe us, Arya thought, and imagined that she saw the same statement echoed in Gendry's eyes, but her father making his apology so openly was a return to the honorable man she knew him to be normally, and in its unexpectedness she was on the verge of leaping to accept it.

Gendry's nod, furthermore, made it seem as though all was forgiven absolutely, the echo in his eyes notwithstanding. "That means a lot to me. The surgery, too. For that, I can't thank you enough."

"I'm not sure I deserve that thanks," Ned Stark replied, a statement he beat Arya to in saying. With a shrug, he added, "If you feel like you need to make it up to me, then don't make me regret that I'm letting this happen without a frenzy." His face became grave and his eyes warning as they rested solidly on Gendry. "And if she is hurt in any way..."

"She won't be," Gendry told her father in a voice that was unmistakably a promise. She could feel herself smiling crookedly, which annoyed her, but he turned to look at her with his blue eyes and she decided it didn't matter. He cocked his own grin and added, "Besides, if that ever did happen, she'd kill me herself before you or Robb got a crack at it."

That made her smile grow wider, and her father even barked a soft chuckle once. "I suppose she would. But all the same... just so we understand one another, Gendry." His glare was its own promise.

Gendry merely nodded back, appearing impervious to Ned Stark's threat. With a face Arya was unused to seeing, a face filled with hope and joy, he turned to her and offered her his smile, the smile which ranked just above his thinking face on things that she loved to see. She didn't need to try to smile back; it was effortless, sliding onto her lips as soon as their eyes made contact. His other hand, the one attached to the arm she wasn't holding, found hers, and they just held each other for one long moment on and next to the hospital bed, nearly forgetting that Ned Stark was there at all.

Not for the first time but certainly for the best time, their future looked, together, as if it would actually work out, after all. All of their worries, all of their struggle... it seemed so trivial, now. Mind, it was still a giant unpleasant memory in the back of Arya's head, yet still, it was only a memory. Looking into Gendry's eyes and feeling her heart warm with the knowledge that she would do so again a lot in the near and far future, memories couldn't hurt her. Not when she had indefinite amounts of time with him in store.

Their eye contact was broken by a polite knock on the door, which was proceeded by Hullen pushing a cart overlaid with bandages and wraps into the room while humming. The gruff trainer glanced up at Arya and Gendry again and gave a strangely knowing smirk at their proximity to each other before he glanced nonchalantly to his right and jumped at the sight of Ned Stark.

"Ah, my lord," he greeted, clearing his voice. After a cursory glance at Arya and Gendry, he stammered, "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware you were down at the hospital. I was going to call you as soon as I had him casted up—"

"No worries, Hullen," Ned Stark replied, patting the man on his shoulder. "Carry on. I was just about to go anyway. Although... Arya, could I speak with you for a just a moment?"

He nodded towards the door as Hullen bustled to Gendry's bedside with the supplies. Hesitating, Arya's hands tightened around Gendry's—the last thing she wanted to do was leave his side—but Gendry smiled up at her and nodded after Ned Stark encouragingly, and so after another comforting squeeze she released his hands and warily stepped around the bed towards the door, which her father held open for her.

They two passed into the hospital hallway, empty except for a nurse carrying a clipboard in the opposite direction, and Arya rounded on her father with crossed arms, uneasily anticipating some further warning that was absolutely unnecessary. Ned Stark quietly closed the door while she impatiently tapped her foot, taking his time about rubbing his hands together and following her a few paces away from the door to where Arya waited.

"What's up?" she prompted when he said nothing after a moment. She tried to sound amiable, as he had just made an appreciated effort at an apology, but her suspicion hadn't completely left her in the short time and the private discussion wasn't helping her on that front.

Ned Stark drew himself up to a height and regarded her sternly. His smile was gone. "So, imagine my surprise when, shortly after you go sprinting out of my private box, your sister reveals to me that you've been seeing Aegon Targaryen."

Arya opened her mouth to defend herself and stopped as soon as she reminded herself that there was nothing to defend. She cursed mentally, but told herself that Sansa was not at fault; her sister knew nothing of the tale Ned Stark had shared with her on a stormy night, and as far as the two of them were concerned her relationship with Aegon was clearly the past. On the Ned Stark front, on the other hand, there was an obvious reason he hadn't been informed, but Arya did not cower beneath his revelation. She did not answer to him; he had just stated as much inside with Gendry.

With a crisp effort, she rolled her eyes and shrugged. "It was hardly 'seeing'. I was bored and lonely so I let him take me out a couple times. What about it?"

"And, if I reacted to Gendry that way when I found out about you two," Ned Stark told her, shaking his head lightly, "can you image how I reacted to learning that you were trying to recover from him by dating a Targaryen?"

Arya sighed loudly, closing her eyes against her bubbling anger. "Look, Dad, okay, I don't know what kind of superstitious repetition you think is going on, but I didn't really like him. I love Gendry. The only reason I went out with him was because I was trying to forget, and even then I couldn't. And then the two of us decided that we didn't care what you thought if we wanted to be together. And, in case you haven't noticed, Gendry is fine, Aegon is fine, and I'm fine. We're all fine. Gendry won. It's over. Most of the people go home happy, and at least the others are alive. End of story."

He watched her at her rant thoughtfully, and crossed his arms just as thoughtfully when she was finished. After a short pause, he tilted his head from side to side just as thoughtfully and cleared his throat. "I realized mostly as much when I saw Gendry on the mound tonight. When he faced down Targaryen, when he faced down Clegane... by the way, I might be getting a call and possibly a fine from the league office for your stunt—"

"Well, it worked, didn't it?"

Ned Stark actually smiled, slightly. "I'm not complaining. Anyways, what he showed me tonight erased my previous doubts about him. And you're right. You were right about everything, I wasn't, and for that I am sincerely sorry. You're not Lyanna. She chose Targaryen, and you didn't."

Irritation compiling again, she sighed. "Dad, it's not about choosing. It's not about the past at all."

"I know," her father told her. Tentatively, he reached for her elbow and pulled at it, and after only the briefest of hesitations she let herself be pulled into an embrace. The feeling of his warm, protective arms around her reminded her of being smaller, younger, when it seemed as though her father was the only thing standing between her and falling apart, and the memory made her realize how much she had missed him during their estrangement. She wrapped her own arms around his waist and hugged him as he kissed her hair and held her like she had when she was little. "I'm just closing off my own thoughts, finishing off convincing myself. You're my daughter, my little girl, and though I was wrong to do what I did I'll always worry about you. But you're grown up and capable of making your own decisions and I need to accept that and let you do as you want. And I promise that whatever becomes of you and Gendry, you and he will make that, yourselves."

She hugged him tighter, nodding her appreciation into his chest before pulling back to smile beneath his gaze. "Thanks, Dad."

He nodded, still hints of guilt and unease in his eyes but hints that were dwarfed by trust and love. He released her and straightened his suit jacket, clearing his throat and scratching at his beard while he checked his watch. "Now, I've got to go home and convince your mother to let Bran and Rickon to stay home from school today. Which means that we'll already probably crash into bed around noon or so and sleep for the next few months."

He smiled at her once again, and then rubbed at his eyes, exhaustion and happiness mingling as one on his features. The same exhaustion was hovering somewhere beneath her surface, waiting to be acknowledged. She could feel it waiting, but for now it was eclipsed by her raw happiness. Shaking her head, she murmured, "What a night."

Ned Stark scoffed good-naturedly. "What a year. Robb's debacle with Jeyne, Sansa's problems with Joffrey, acquiring Gendry, going on a hot streak, making it to the playoffs, winning the World Series..." He laughed happily, shaking his own head. "I feel like I could fall asleep and never wake up, and be perfectly happy."

"I understand," Arya replied softly, and she did. But she wouldn't have wished that for herself. She would have wanted to fall asleep, but waking up would have been the best part. Because waking up meant that Gendry would be there beside her when she did.

Her father grinned down at her for a moment longer and then nodded, squeezing her arm one last time as he stepped past her. "All right, then. I'll be at the Manor." He advanced a few steps before pausing and glancing back. A firm and strong emotion passed over his face as he glanced back at her. A sadness she could only identify as nostalgia but also a love as powerful as the winter and infinitely warmer passed through his eyes as he smiled once more back at her. "You can find your own way home?"

Arya blinked, and then glanced back at the door to the hospital room, where Hullen was fixing Gendry's leg, where her love waited for her, patient and stubborn and stupid. All hers. Turning back to Ned Stark, she smiled and nodded, truth and love and acceptance finishing the moment perfectly. "I don't think that will ever be a problem again."