Epilogue
The early fall dawn of eastern Westeros splayed over her pillow as Arya's alarm woke her at precisely six. She slapped it irritably, trying and failing to remember whatever dream she'd been having right before its rude interruption. Whatever it had been, she was left with the suspicion that it had been pleasant and a much preferable activity opposed to rising for ridiculously early classes. Then again, glancing to her left with a grin to observe her companion, hunched on his side adorably with his mouth half agape in slumber that had somehow escaped impedance by her alarm, she decided that being awake wasn't that awful, after all.
Slipping from the covers lightly, so as not to wake him—not that she need have worried; Gendry slept like death—she padded across the expanse of their apartment's single bedroom on bare feet and slipped on a robe, glancing over her shoulder for the sheer pleasure of watching her boyfriend sleep. She turned on the shower in the adjoining bathroom and gathered her tidy clothes for the day while the water ran warm, pausing only to stoop over his form and plant a kiss on his upturned cheek, which only earned her a groggy grumble as a reply. Even that made her heart warm and her soul laugh, though, as she skipped into the shower to fully wake up.
He was being lazy that morning, but he deserved it. Most mornings he was out of bed long before six, long before she, jogging or pulling himself up on their doorframe or long gone on his bicycle to the gym where he trained every day with the hopes of squeaking even a few more miles per hour out of his surgically repaired arm. It didn't matter how many times she told him that the speed gun had him at ninety nine miles per hour consistently, and more than once breaking triple digits; he was determined to work harder, to get harder, to keep proving himself. She would have told him to take it easy once in a while if she had thought that such a statement had even a remote chance of working, but she wouldn't have loved him if he wasn't driven so hard as he was.
The bed was empty when she emerged from the bathroom, but that didn't concern her, either. Outside of their third floor window, the light of morning and the sounds of a bustling street were already permeating the air. Storm's End was awakening, preparing itself for another day of business, commerce, and everyday life, a blend of which the two of them had become an integral part. Her first class began in just a little over an hour, a final stretch of college that would hopefully expire with only a few semesters more. College was all right for her, but she found herself becoming more eager with each passing day for it to be over, mostly because of what came after. A job in baseball. A career in scouting, with any luck. And even more so than that, because of what came after with Gendry, when they were both further settled. She smiled to herself merely imagining what it would be like as she finished toweling off her hair.
Family. She considered the word happily as she moved into their living area, into the small kitchen to prepare coffee and some semblance of a healthy breakfast. It was a funny word to use to describe what they would have, because it many senses of the word he was already a part of her family. The other Starks certainly treated him as such. Catelyn loved him, which had been as much a surprise to Arya as it had been to Gendry. Bran respected a fellow underdog, and Rickon clung to him wherever he went whenever he and Arya were in Winterfell. Robb and Jon treated him as a brother in all but blood, and even Ned had lost the usual edge that had entered his expression whenever Gendry touched her in his presence. Sansa simply adored him; Sansa's boyfriend decidedly did not.
On that front resided the only remaining burr in the interactive dynamics: Clegane and Gendry couldn't stand to spend very long in the same room with each other, even if they were surrounded by loving family members and distractions. Arya half-suspected they kept it going just to celebrate that last moment on the stage, when they had both been at each other's throats, playing for the ultimate championship. It couldn't have been because Gendry had stolen what Clegane wanted, obviously, because Sansa was head over heels in love with the brute and no one had the heart to tell her that she was ludicrously unintelligent—not to mention the way that Clegane made her smile forced every Stark to glance the other way and deal with it. It couldn't have been because Gendry had taken the championship Clegane had always dreamed of from under his nose, because the Monarchs had bounced back just the very next season and won the following World Series only a few months previously while Robb and the Direwolves returned bitterly to losing form in Gendry's loss. Such a combination largely made Arya and Sansa suspect in their sisterly scheming that Gendry and Clegane went at each other's throats simply because they were both terrified of the notion that they could actually become family, which Arya found almost as stupid as she found it hilarious.
Naturally, this made the two Stark sisters desperate and determined to fling the two men into some aberrant fraternity with each other, mostly by methodology involving brute force. It had emerged, actually, quite venomously on the first Christmas Gendry and Clegane had shared with the rest of the Starks. At some point while Catelyn tried futilely to teach Arya how to cook and the men grumbled over the football game, Gendry and Clegane had very nearly actually tackled each other over the coffee table based upon some stupid argument that had nothing to do with the game they were watching. Furious beyond words, Arya and Sansa had both dragged their respective men into an adjacent room and sat them down side-by-side on the couch, forcefully informing them that if they wanted to remain where they were, if they wanted to hold onto the respective relationship each had, then they would learn to live with each other. Or else. And that was how two women half the size of the two men they were lecturing frightened the two men into shaking hands and stiffly pretending like they were best friends for the remainder of the holidays. Arya was rather looking forward to the coming Christmas.
As far as her life went, though, almost everything had wound up in her favor, surprisingly and defiantly enough. A tiny part of her had held some fear that living with him would be unbearable, but that had been almost the exact opposite of the case. Living on his own or fending for himself for so long had seemed to turn him into quite the handy person; in many ways, it was as if he was having difficulty adjusting to her, unaccustomed as he was to someone else with which to share space. Nevertheless, it had only taken a few days for them to settle into a routine around each other, and before long they habitually fell into a pattern of him returning home from the gym late in the day and pulling her textbooks out from under her exhausted eyes before she would curl up underneath his arm with a beer to watch whatever baseball game happened to be on television. Only a few weeks into their settlement, it was as if they'd been together their entire lives. She loved it; she didn't know how she had survived without him, ever.
At the finish line, they had all turned out rather spoiled; the loose mass of threads their family had become across the course of the previous years was finally beginning to untangle and settle. Jeyne was a Stark. If undying and unrelenting affection was any indication, Sansa would soon become a Clegane, and Arya was secretly counting down the indefinite number of days until she could call herself Mrs. Gendry Waters. They had discussed it—more than once and eagerly. Neither had any doubts that marrying each other was the route they wanted to go, but Gendry was extremely—and, in her opinion, irrationally—hesitant to set anything in stone when the uncertainty over his baseball future "threatened to uproot" what they had established as a home at any given time. It was almost completely the half of him that still worried about providing for her that did the talking in those cases, but Arya knew he needn't have worried about having a place to play baseball. As often as not when she answered their phone it was another scout trying to put in a good word from a different team—when the time came, he would be blessing whoever wasn't trying to sign him. She had no doubts about his future, or hers with him, but if it made him more comfortable to wait until everything was assured, then she was content to wait. They had nothing but time.
As she stood pouring out her coffee, she suddenly realized she was humming, and smiled at the tune when arms began to wrap themselves around her waist from behind. He had become exceptionally good at that—sneaking up and wrapping her up in wondrous embraces—and didn't mind bragging about it as he did. His lips pressed against her hair, and his voice picked up her song where she had left off.
"You make me happy, when skies are grey..."
Don't quit your day job, she thought, but she knew her smile betrayed how warm his voice made her feel in any situation. Besides, he wouldn't have quit his day job if she begged, and she would sooner beg him not to. Turning in his arms, she wrapped hers around his neck, trying to show him how much she meant what she sang. "You'll never know, dear, how much I love you..."
"Please take me to your bedroom."
She scoffed and dropped her arms, shoving his chest playfully. "That's not how the ending goes."
"I know," he replied, shrugging sheepishly. "But the real ending makes me sad. It talks about taking happiness away. So I changed it."
"Blah," she moaned, trying to escape his arms. It would have been easier to hit a baseball over the ocean; once Gendry was holding her, he refused to let go until he was good and ready. Nevertheless, she swatted at him as she tried to scowl. "I try to be affectionate and that's how you respond?"
"That was affectionate!"
She laughed at him. "Asking for sex is supposed to convey love?"
"Seven hells," he swore, and lifted her onto the countertop before turning around and walking away. In mock irritation, he called back over his shoulder, "See if I ever sing love songs to you ever again..." She quickly picked a grape off of the nearest sprig of their fruit bowl and tossed it at him. It soared over his shoulder, skimming his ear. He never broke stride. "Missed."
She only giggled more.
He had thrown a fastball at her heart on the very day they met, and whether consciously or not she had made no move to avoid it. It hadn't been free passage; there had been pain. A lot of pain; pain she couldn't shake off until he himself presented the cure. When all was said and done, however, they had stolen their way around the bases together. She would never need to round them again with any other, and, as far as she was concerned, Gendry was all the home she would ever need.
In the games they played, the only way to win was by going home.
THE END