Summary: Tense reunions. Arya comes clean about some things.

Of course, it had to be them, didn't it? That was just Gendry's luck, he mused bitterly as he looked in on Beric Dondarrion and Thoros of Myr, two of several prisoners who had been captured trying to head north of the Wall and two of the people he hated most in the world. While there was something satisfying about seeing them locked in a cage—a cage not unlike the one he'd been shipped off to at their bidding—he was fairly certain they wouldn't be staying in there if the group's lackluster response to his warnings were anything to go by. Thoros was just as much of a drunken twat as he'd been before and Beric was just as holier-than-thou as he remembered, seeming to have yet to find any fault in his actions for selling Gendry away on the order of his God of Light.

As the smith felt a presence move along behind him, however, there was a very noticeable shift inside the cell. More than anything else, it was watching the light of humor leave Thoros's eyes that made the smith turn, his curiosity outweighing his disdain, to find Arya had cross behind him and was now standing beside him in front of the cell. And while her posture remained calm, hands clasped loosely behind her back, there was a definite weight in the air as she stared down at the cell's occupants.

In that moment, Gendry was almost afraid for these men he despised.

While none of them were aware of the circumstances which lead to it, everyone else present seemed to have sensed the same tension he did, for they all fell silent and remained that way, the silence dragging and hanging thick in the frigid air. Arya said nothing. It didn't seem she intended to and Gendry felt that was somehow more terrifying than if she'd yelled and cursed, professing her hatred for these men loudly and with as much malice a person could muster. She no longer needed to threaten with harsh and angry words, barking loudly just to be heard for her small size. Now her eyes did most of her talking for her.

Nothing they said in that moment was kind.

"The Seven fucking Hells are you doin' here?"

This gruff and angry voice cut right through the tension and everyone, including Arya, turned to look at the man down at the far end of the cell. For his stature and the large burns on his face, Gendry recognized the man in an instant: the Hound. He could still remember the impressive and rather terrifying display when the man had nearly cut Beric clean in two with a single swing of his sword and, as Arya made her way down along the bars, he also remembered how much she had hated him, going so far at her then young age as to pick up a knife to try and gut him herself when he had claimed victory in his Trial by Combat.

As she made her way over, the Hound stood from the bench he had been laying on, and then they stood on opposite sides of the bars. She was barely even half his height, but Arya's eyes didn't waver in the slightest as she stared into the eyes of a man who was probably strong enough to break her in half. Honestly, he wasn't sure what a fight between them would look like and he wondered for the tension in the air if they would all find out.

"I thought you were dead," his sister said, her tone even and flat as she spoke to a dangerous man so much larger than herself, and Jon felt his entire frame go tense.

He had never met the Hound himself, although he remembered seeing him once or twice during King Robert's visit to Winterfell all those years ago. Arya, of course, actually knew the man and Jon would wager based on her tone that there would've been no love lost if the man had died as she'd apparently believed he had—possibly after that fight against Lady Brienne Sansa had told him about.

"No thanks to you."

The Hound all but snarled this and Jon felt himself scowl, a protective anger boiling up in his chest as the man glared down his crooked nose at his little sister. Yet, despite the man's tone, Arya remained calm and Jon marveled again at how different she was now.

"It looks like you should be thanking me," she said, and Jon thought there was almost a bit of humor to the words, a humor which only seemed to rile the Hound up further.

"For leaving me to die?"

"But, you didn't," Arya corrected him ever so simply. "If I'd killed you, you would be dead."

The Hound wasn't amused, the lines of his scarred face drawing harsh and jagged as he frowned.

"Perhaps I would've been better off if you had. Now look at me, stuck with a bunch of fire-worshipers. Just my luck."

How long, he wondered then, had the two known each other before the Lady of Tarth had found them? Of course, when Arya set her hand on the intricate dagger at her hip, Jon's curiosity over the past left him as he found his own hand settling on Longclaw's hilt, a mere instinct.

"If you're that miserable, I could always remedy my mistake."

The tension which had pervaded the space before as Arya had stared at two of the cell's other occupants had reached full force once again as Sandor glanced down at the dagger at her hip and then back up at her.

"I'll give you one try. If you miss, I'll gut you with that little dagger of yours."

Jon eased his way between the people crowding the space outside the cell, stepping through to stand near Arya and her adversary. With Longclaw drawn a couple inches, he was tense, poised to attack at the slightest move from the large man. He was anticipating a number of things, many of which included an assault, but if the Hound so much as reached through the bars for Arya, he would quickly find himself without a hand and, shortly thereafter, his life.

But, Jon's sister kept on surprising him. Of all the things he expected her to do, she did the one thing he hadn't.

Arya smiled.

The tension in the air slipped away as she dropped her hand from the knife at her hip and returned it behind her back.

"You wouldn't get the chance, I'm afraid," she said and there was a baffling simplicity to the words, spoken as fact rather than theory.

Possibly more surprising than anything his sister had just done or said was when the Hound actually snorted in amusement.

"No, I probably wouldn't."

There was almost a sort of kinship to the words, like it was a joke between long lost friends, and Jon simply couldn't fathom it. His eyes were wide for his surprise as his sister stepped casually away from the bars.

As she passed him, she asked, "Shouldn't we be going?" in that same simple manner.

And while Jon was at a loss, finding that he'd surely missed something. Still, he tucked Longclaw away with one final glance at the Hound before turning as well because Arya was right. They had a mission to see to and none of this was important at the moment. If these men were willing to join them north of the Wall and none would pose them any threat, then Jon couldn't really refuse their offer to help.

They would need all the hands they could get.

Not feeling terribly amicable towards those who had once sold him off despite his desire to join them, Gendry had made sure to sit away from the rest of them as they all prepared for the journey north in a hall presumably designated for eating. Thoros, however, had claimed the seat beside him not long after he'd sat down, settling down casually as though it had been left open for him. The drunkard was rambling on now about the will of his Lord of Light, something about Gendry ending up where he'd needed to be, but the smith had stopped listening almost the instant the man had sat down. He focussed instead on finishing his preparations, starting to fasten the thick boots he'd been provided, more fit for walking in the deep snow north of the Wall than those he'd been wearing previously. Thoros had no idea how just lucky he was because it was the Smith's forced concentration on this task which kept him from picking up his hammer to bash the man's face in.

It was only when Thoros finally shut up that Gendry looked up from his boots, finding the man had apparently done so only because Arya was now standing in front of them—he hadn't even noticed her approach, but that was hardly something which surprised him anymore. Her eyes were fixed on Thoros and Gendry thought it fortunate for the man's sake that a look couldn't actually kill.

Still, he seemed to believe himself in some rather immediate danger because Thoros rose and said, "I'll take my leave, then, shall I?" before he scurried quickly past as though he feared his furs would catch fire if he didn't move fast enough.

Gendry quirked his brow, amused as he watched the man retreat, and then he turned his eyes to Arya whose expression was now calm and passive and un-murderer-y once again.

"Do you enjoy scaring people?"

"Maybe a little," she said, but the little smirk she wore said she enjoyed it more than just 'a little'.

Gendry grinned with a little laugh as he got back to fastening his boots, and he glimpsed Arya smile before she stepped forward to set a small bundle of extra furs next to him on the bench.

"More padding?" he asked.

When she sat down on the bench across from him, he glanced quickly around but found no one seemed to be taking any interest in the bastard blacksmith talking with the Lady assassin, and was relieved.

"Use it for your chest," Arya said. "You southern boys don't do so well north of the Wall, I hear."

Gendry found himself grinning again, despite the fact that the joke had been made entirely at his own expense, before he turned back to his work on his boots.

"I should probably be offended by that, but thanks. For the advice, I mean, not the insult."

A long pause followed, during which time he finished with his boots and started to add the extra padding she'd procured for him beneath the furs of his tunic. He'd thought she was just biding her time before they left, pleased that she'd chosen to do so in his company but also wondering if it was just because her brother was busy, until she spoke again.

"I need to apologize."

Gendry glanced up at her but couldn't come up with a reason for why Arya would need to apologize, alternatively finding nothing in her expression that was of any use in sussing the information out.

"Why?" With nothing else to pin it on, he offered a well-humored, "I've heard a lot worse before, believe me," thinking she somehow felt contrite about her previous jab at his inability to handle any sort of cold—to which, in his defense, he did spend an awful lot of time around heat.

Although, she really had never seemed to find issue with such things before, speaking her mind with ease no matter the blow to anyone's pride, so he couldn't imagine this was what she was getting at.

"I…"

Then she hesitated and this more than anything else took his full attention. Gendry abandoned his task to look at her and Arya seemed to be struggling with her words, so he sat quietly while she sorted them. She didn't turn her eyes away while she pieced it all together and he could see something swirling around in there. It wasn't the first time he likened her grey eyes to the gathering of storm clouds, but the expression seemed particularly fitting in that moment and he wondered what sort of things were running around in her head. He also wondered if he would get to know or if this would be another thing she left unsaid.

He was surprised when she voiced those thoughts he could see roiling under the surface, but Gendry was more thrown by what exactly she had chosen to speak on.

"When I joined the Faceless Men," Arya began, "I had to set it all aside, everything that made me… me."

Mostly, he was surprised because, after so long with little more than two words said on the matter of her time in Braavos, the smith hadn't expected she would talk about any of it.

"They say only No One can wear the faces," Arya continued. "It wasn't easy. I didn't want to let it all go. That would mean letting everyone go, all of the people I needed to kill but also the people I missed, the people I wanted to see again… and those I never would."

Her father was the first person that came to Gendry's mind here, but he knew her mother and two of her brothers were also gone. Arya, he realized then, had lost more people than he'd ever had the privilege to care for.

He wasn't sure which was worse.

"But, I wanted to learn, so I did. I let the Faceless Men tear me down and I set Arya Stark aside and I learned how to be No One. I didn't expect it, but it made it all... easier. None of it… hurt anymore. I wasn't Arya Stark, so I didn't need her pain. I didn't need to miss the people she missed. I didn't need to lie awake at night hating the people she hated."

It was a painful notion that Arya, who had always been so very much her own person that not even the rules of the world had been able to hold her down—certainly not something he himself could boast to—had been swallowed up by so much grief and hat that she'd been willing to lose herself. But, it was something Gendry couldn't refute, that this training had helped her. He more than most knew how tormented she'd been, and that had been when her father had been the only one taken from her. He'd heard her whisper her list of names every night, heard them so often that he would probably know them to his dying day. She'd been through so much more since then and he imagined that list had grown, but he didn't ask on it, feeling like that would be an intrusion into something much too personal to her.

He wondered if she'd had trouble sleeping during her time in Braavos or if this training had managed to push all of that pain of hers aside enough for her to finally get some rest.

"But, I had to come back. I could never stay No One," Arya continued and that fact, he felt, was a given because he couldn't imagine her ever just letting herself disappear, not for good, "and when I packed it all away I didn't realize just how difficult it would be to let it all in again."

She glanced down then, suddenly even more unsure and that put Gendry right on edge, wondering if he would have the strength to hear what might come next.

Then she said, "When I'm with certain people now… Jon, Sansa, Bran… you…" admitting that last part just a little more softly it almost sounded like, for the weight in that one word, she was admitting something to him.

It wasn't something she said outright and it was something Gendry wasn't yet able to allow himself to believe, in part because he hadn't even allowed himself to realize it in himself yet. But, one thing he knew was that his place in her life was more significant than he'd realized, not least of all because she'd listed him alongside her brothers and her sister.

Alongside her family.

Would she still let him be a part of it if he asked? This wasn't so much a thought he had as it was a feeling. It filled him up in an instant so quickly that he couldn't stop it, a feeling of hope and appreciation and- and he was quick to push it aside.

Gendry knew he couldn't ask.

"In those moments," Arya continued, allowing him the chance to silence the words before they reached his lips against his bidding, "all of those little pieces of me are pulled back into place and it… it hurts, so much sometimes that it's… easier if I just let myself slip into the emptiness of being No One."

There was a shift in her grey eyes then, those storms churning with something he would almost dare to call vulnerable, and he knew that what followed was her entire purpose for coming to him, for saying all of this.

"The first time I saw you in King's Landing, I was so relieved. I'd been sure you were dead, that the Red Woman would have seen you burned for Stannis and his war. But, when I saw you again, alive and well… I couldn't bring myself to approach you. Not as me."

Those last three words were said in a particularly loaded fashion, laden with implication, and only in that moment did Gendry finally remember.

He knew he'd seen that man somewhere before.

"That man from the village…" he said with a bit of wonder in his voice, thinking of the man whose scarred face Arya had worn to kill the raiders in that village just south of her home.

He could read it in her eyes that he was right. That man, as he recalled, had come into his shop not once but twice.

"That first day I came to you," Arya elaborated, her tone laden with that same vulnerability from the onset of this admission. "I'd been working up to that for three days."

Gendry could only share her stare for a moment following, not sure himself what to do with this knowledge.

"Working up to it?"

Because, he'd never known her to hesitate much at all. What did it say that she'd hesitated to visit him? He couldn't even fathom a guess.

She told him.

"That first time I saw you, that time I was so relieved you were alive… I had a fleeting thought that maybe I could just… stay disappeared. You'd hidden yourself right under their noses and I thought… perhaps I could do the same. And when I came to see you wearing the face of a stranger, I thought that maybe I could join on. You could teach me how to work a forge and I could help out and then… I don't know. I didn't let the thought go any farther than that. But, I shouldn't have even considered it."

Those storms in her eyes surged again and Gendry knew just how profoundly she meant it when she said, "It terrified me that I did."

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to take from that either.

"But, I still wanted to see you, so… In the end, I bought two daggers. You told me it wasn't your trade, but I was insistent. I've been told I can be quite stubborn."

Gendry found himself smile here, perhaps just for his own familiarity here because if it was one thing he knew about Arya Stark, it was that one of her primary descriptors was 'stubborn'. And when he smiled she actually laughed, a little breath of a thing that seemed mostly to be an expelling of nervous energy as she looked down at her hands, running a thumb along one of the scars on the back of her other hand, scars she didn't used to have.

"I told myself I needed them, but I've made due with less. I could've even stolen a couple of daggers if I really needed them. It was just an excuse for me to come see you again. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I let you believe that I don't care, that I wasn't happy to see you, because I do and I was. I wanted to come to you as me, but I knew that if you recognized me I might… reconsider what I had to do."

She'd said something similar before, when she'd left Winterfell to return to King's Landing. Even Gendry, with all of his many doubts birthed from a lifetime of being looked down on as 'less than', knew it was no small thing that she believed he could have such sway over her decisions, this decision in particular. Quite honestly, he still at a bit of a loss for it.

"Why are you telling me all this?" he asked, unsure for a moment about whether or not he could trust his voice, but it held steady. "Why now?"

There had been literal days filled with silence between them since they'd set out from her home, hardly ever an unpleasant or awkward silence but a pervading one which could have been filled all the same, so he couldn't help but wonder at the timing.

The 'something' which took hold in her eyes as Arya stared at him didn't make him wonder any less.

Then she said, "Don't die out here," and the words were loaded with a meaning he couldn't define and an order he couldn't refuse.

Gendry pushed swiftly aside a fleeting curiosity about whether or not she would gut him if he tried to kiss her.

After a beat, during which time he tried and failed to identify that 'something' still swimming around in her gray eyes, he dipped his head and said, "As Milady commands."

The words weren't filled with the same humor they had once been, now the words of an earnest vow. He thought that something in her eyes may have shifted a bit, but then it was gone before he could read anything from it, gone so fast in fact that he wasn't sure it had ever been there to begin with. Arya stood after that and then he watched her walk away, left alone to silently ponder over everything she had said—and everything she hadn't.

He found he couldn't recall at which specific point his heart had begun to pound so heavily.