Chapter 1
"No more tears now; I will think upon revenge." - Mary Stuart
Arya and Gendry left Storm's End the next day. She knew that they weren't overstaying their welcome, but she also knew it was time to go Mya, Edric, and Bella to run their keep alone. While no one had said anything, Arya knew that they were judging Gendry's siblings because the two of them were around, and she didn't want that. She liked Gendry's siblings, and they had worked very hard to make sure that they had good lives going forward. It wasn't their intention when they collected them, but when Arya saw how natural they were with people and what a difference they could make, she floated the idea to Sansa, Gendry, and Jon.
"So few nobles actually understand what the small folk are going through," Arya had said in Jon's solar one night a mere month after they had marched into Winterfell with Edric. "Edric would be a good lord, and he would take care of his people. You've seen how protective he already is of us, and he hasn't been here very long."
"Westeros has a long memory," Sansa said. "And while Robert wasn't exactly a good King, people do remember a time of peace. Daenerys is a good person, but I don't see how we can ask her to legitimize three Baratheon's so early in her rule."
"We gave Gendry the name Stark to protect him from issues like that," Jon said. "Or at least it's one of the reasons." Arya looked at her husband, who was frowning deeply.
"I love having them here," Gendry whispered. "I've never had siblings or a family before, and I just found them. My first instinct is to keep them close and never let anyone touch them." He sighed and leaned back in his chair. "But Arya's right. They could do good in the Stormlands, and those people need help. We saw it during the war." Arya wanted to tell him that she understood his instinct for keeping his siblings safe, but she held her tongue. Their circumstances were not the same, and Jon and Sansa seemed to realize this too.
"Let them find their place here," Jon said. "And in five moons, we'll all talk again, and if we think they're ready, then we'll work on figuring it out." Then five moons went by quickly, and Arya was glad that Davos was going to be there to keep Mya, Bella, and Edric safe. None of them remembered much about their parents, and Marya and Davos seem keen to keep the now-adult Baratheon's safe. It made Arya feel better about leaving even though she knew that they were going to pitch a fit about it.
"It hasn't been that long," Edric said. His blue eyes were wide, and, for once, he looked as young as he actually was. Bella and Mya were standing on either side of him in the round hall, and they didn't seem impressed that they were leaving. "What if I need you?"
"Then we'll come," Gendry said. "We will always come to help you if you need it. We are family, and House Stark will come should you need help." Arya had felt her heart warm a little as Gendry spoke about House Stark as if he finally believed that he was part of her house. She knew her husband was stubborn, but she didn't think it would take this long.
"What if we want to see our brother and our amazing good sister?" Bella asked with a raised eyebrow, and that look she would give people like she could read your thoughts and divine your intentions.
"We'd come for that too," Gendry assured, and Arya nodded. "I know you three can do this, and you have the support of one of the best men I know and his amazing lady wife. None of us would have asked you to do this if we didn't think you were right for the position." Arya didn't think the Baratheon siblings looked entirely convinced that they were telling the truth, but they also didn't throw Arya and Gendry in a room and lock the door so they couldn't leave. They gathered their horses, their weapons, and after promises to write and visit soon, they left Storm's End.
Arya knew that Edric was going to watch for them as long as he could, so they started North as if they were planning on going back to Winterfell. That was what Arya and Gendry had told them they were doing. Instead, they only went as far north as they needed to be out of sight and then turned west. Daenerys had sent a raven saying former Lannister soldiers were terrorizing the small folk in the Westerlands. Daenerys had said she didn't currently have the men to deal with it. Arya knew that she and Gendry were the best suited for taking out those bandits. It was what they did during the wars, and it was very much what they were planning to do now.
The first group of bandits was not exactly hard to find because they weren't making any attempt to conceal themselves. They were running around the Westerlands like they had a right to it and the people. Arya didn't know the names of the minor lords that weren't doing anything to help, and it wasn't like she had any more respect for the Lannisport Lannister's who now held Casterly Rock than she did for any other Lannister not named Jaime. She was still annoyed when she realized how brazen these men were and how they didn't seem to care that they were slaughtering innocent people.
Arya stayed in the shadows as she watched the men. Gendry was back with their things and their horses to make sure that none of these bandits managed to rob them blind while they were separated. She counted a half of a dozen men all armed to the teeth with lots of armor that they must have stolen from the crown when they fled. She could even see the tattered remains of their gold cloaks, and she knew what these men were. Arya crept back into the darkness and found Gendry waiting for her several paces away.
"How many?" he asked without even looking up to see if it was her approaching or someone else which annoyed her.
"How did you know it wasn't someone coming to cut your throat?" Arya asked, and Gendry looked up from where he was tending to the horses, and he smiled.
"They wouldn't have walked up to me," he replied and laughed softly when Arya made a face at him. She wanted to scold him for being too trusting, but they could only count on those men being in their cup for so long.
"Six, they appear to be former gold cloaks," Arya said. "And they are bragging about the last village that they attacked. They even bragged about what they did to some of the women." Arya didn't bother to hide her contempt for men that took advantage of women like that.
"It sounds like quiet and painless is not the way we should handle this then," Gendry said. He pulled out a crossbow that Edric had given him for protection as Arya found the bow that Meera had gifted her before they went south. Arya checked Needle and Thread at her hip as Gendry secured his hammer to his back and his sword at his hip. He nodded, and the two of them began to make their way into the night and to the bandit camp.
The men were even drunker now than they were when Arya first studied them, and she had to hold back a laugh at Gendry rolling his eyes. They were both still under the cover of darkness as Arya aimed the bow at a man who looked the least drunk and hoped that Gendry would do the same with his crossbow. She glanced at her husband, and he nodded; they fired.
The bandits reacted like a group of soldiers would which meant they had their weapons in hand and ready to fight the second the two bodies hit the ground. They were all yelling at each other, trying to figure out which direction the arrow and bolt came from, which was good for her. She glanced at Gendry and gestured to him. He nodded, and they both began to move in opposite directions around the camp.
Arya mentally counted down from sixty, the same way that she knew Gendry was, and they emerged from the darkness with their weapons in hand. Arya hadn't fought anyone since the Battle of King's Landing, and she found that she missed it. Nothing made her blood sing the way a good fight did, and she bared her teeth at the bandit as they tried to get the best of her. She could hear Gendry fighting from not far away, and she trusted that her incredibly talented husband could handle two drunk bandits.
She slit the throat of one of the former gold cloaks and turned to the one who was bragging about raping the women. He looked like the sort that would enjoy that sort of torture, and Arya decided that a quick death was too much for him. She sliced his knee, his shoulder, his side until he was screaming and bleeding on the forest floor. Arya heard two bodies hit the ground, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gendry walking across the camp to join her. There was blood on his hammer, his sword, and splattered on his face, and Arya thought he never looked more beautiful.
"This the last one?" Gendry asked.
"This is the one who thought that women were things that he could take," Arya spat out, and the gold cloak looked between the two of them.
"I know you two," he said. "You're that Northern princess, and you're the bastard knight of the fucking king." Arya blinked and realized for the first time that this was going to be very different from the last time they dealt with bandits. Now people knew who they were; they knew their exploits, which meant it was going to be a lot harder to hide.
"You should have stayed and answered for your crimes to Queen Daenerys," Arya said, ignoring the fact that he knew who they were.
"And why would I let a dragon bitch sit in judgment of me?" the man spat out.
"Because," Arya said with a smirk, "execution by a dragon is quick." She drove both Needle and Thread into this man's gut and ripped them out. She knew the wounds would take some time to bleed, but she didn't care. He deserved to die slow. Gendry smirked as he put his hammer back on his back and his sword on his hip. The man cried out, called her every name possible, called Gendry every name he could think of, as they stripped his friends of their coin and valuables.
Arya walked over to him after he stopped yelling and watched the light go out in his eyes. Now it was time to find the village this man had tarnished and try to help restore it even a little. She couldn't give those girls their innocence back, but maybe she could make the days seem a little less dark.
Gendry put out the fire at the center of the camp, and they walked away, leaving the bodies to the wolves.
It didn't take that long for them to find the village that the former gold cloaks had attacked. They didn't have a ton of coin on them, but there was enough that Arya felt like she was making a difference when she handed it over. The people knew who they were, but it was more than that. They knew that she was Princess Arya Stark, and he was Ser Gendry Stark and the way the people were so surprised when they turned up to help broke her heart a little. These people didn't think anyone of their standing would ever turn up to help, and here they were.
It was a little like the old times except for the parts where it was so different. This time people kept trying to give them things instead of the two them of them working for their meal and a place to sleep. Gendry looked so uncomfortable and almost a little angry when one family insisted that nothing they owned was worthy of being fixed by one of the best smith's in Westeros. Gendry didn't like sounding like a noble very often, but he came close to ordering these people to let him help.
Arya had her own problems. She was not as small and light on her feet as she used to be when she was younger, but she was still able to do more than most adults. They all tried to tell her that she didn't need to climb on the roof to do repairs or try to help sort out the situation in a nearby field and help pull the vegetables from the ground. Her hands were bruised, bloodied, and dirty just the way she wanted them, but the people were horrified by them like they couldn't believe a princess would dirty herself like this.
"We didn't think this through," she said to Gendry as they laid together in the nicest room in the inn. Arya had wanted to argue against it the first day but decided it was probably best if she left this was alone for now.
"It was much easier when no one knew who we were," Gendry agreed. "But we can't undo what we did, and I still want to help people, so what are we going to do?"
"We'll have to hide our faces," Arya said as she turned and looked at Gendry. They were nearly nose to nose, and even though she was tired, she could barely stand, she wanted to kiss him so badly. There was something about doing this that was getting to her in a way that Arya couldn't put into words. Gendry was watching her like he knew something was wrong but was patiently waiting for her to decide to talk to him. Arya shifted, so she was straddling his waist and looking down at the man who was her whole world. "It's not just that people know who we are now."
"What is it?" Gendry asked quietly. His hands were on her waist, and he was rubbing circling into her hipbones.
"It's taking me back to when I felt alone in the world. When we thought I was the only one left and I didn't have any family in the world. When you were all I had," Arya explained. "And you were, are, enough, but I don't like being reminded of that feeling. I thought it would feel the same to get out and help people, but it feels different like we're-" Arya cut herself off as she lost the words and sighed.
"Like we're wasting time," Gendry finished for her, and Arya nodded as she looked down at him. "I feel guilty that we're not back at Winterfell helping there or back at Storm's End with my siblings. I'm not sure I remember how to do something just for myself."
"I guess we were still kids back then," Arya whispered as she settles down next to Gendry wrapped up in his arms. "We have responsibilities and duties now."
"I'm thinking about the fact that I still need to finish Yara's crown and that I probably have more commissions coming in that could help strengthen ties to the North," Gendry said, and he huffed a laugh to himself. "I guess this is growing up."
"I still want to help people," Arya said. "We can hide our faces and just help anyone who is on the way North. We're on our way home; we're just taking some extra time to help the people who need it."
"Sounds like an excellent plan," Gendry said, and Arya wasn't sure who they were trying to convince.
It was hard to enjoy working in the village after that, but Arya wasn't about to leave just because these people were uncomfortable that she and Gendry wanted to help. So she stayed and got her hands dirty. Gendry worked and continued to tell the people that he didn't want their coin in exchange for the work. They still had the best room in the inn, but there wasn't much she could do about that.
They stayed a few more days, and during that time, Arya did a little sewing. She didn't like sewing that much, and she didn't think she was very good at it, but she was good enough to make some masks that could go across her mouth and cover most of her face. It would be hard to work with their faces covered, but she couldn't think of any other way. If they were going to help people, then they needed to go back to being anonymous again.
The day they left, the village thanked them and tried to throw them some sort of feast that Arya did not want to deal with. She didn't like feasts with her family, let alone a bunch of strangers that were treating her like someone special. They rode north until the sun was nearly down and set up camp for the night. It was cool out, and Arya was content to curl around her husband and steal all of his body heat.
"We should travel someday," Arya said after they ate some dinner, and the fire was starting to burn down. "We got to travel when we were younger, but there was so much stress involved with that. I want to travel and see Westeros and not have to worry about an army coming to chop my head off."
"Yeah, we just have to worry about the remains of the previous army chopping our heads off,"
Gendry said, and he yelped when she poked him in the side. "No I agree, I'd like to see some more of Westeros someday. I'm sure I could learn a lot from blacksmiths in Dorne or Essos." Arya tried not to laugh because, of course, Gendry would think about what kind of blacksmithing techniques he could learn if he traveled. "Arya Stark, I can hear you laughing down there."
"I'm not doing a thing," she lied, but Gendry rolled them over, so he was pinning her down to the ground with his weight. He was smiling softly as he looked down at her.
"You're laughing at me for wanting to learn all sorts of new blacksmith techniques like you wouldn't ask me to make you new weapons," Gendry said, which was true. Arya couldn't deny that she did want to see all the new weapons that other warriors around Westeros would use, but that didn't mean she was going to admit it Gendry. So she smirked and pulled him down for a kiss to distract him. Gendry laughed against her lips like he knew what she was doing and didn't mind. She wanted him under the stars and on the grass like they were still just Wolf and Bull, but Gendry was still a gentleman above all else. She knew that she wouldn't get him to do anything else out here in the darkness.
Arya had just opened her mouth to deepen their kiss when she heard something moving in the woods. She froze and glanced at Gendry. He nodded slowly, and they began to move away from each other to go for their weapons. A large group of men, some of them wearing the tattered remains of their gold cloaks, jumped out of the darkness.
"These are the two that attacked our friends," one of the men said with a smirk. There were over a dozen of them, and while she had her sword in hand and Gendry had his hammer, they weren't that skilled. They couldn't take a dozen men in a battle like this.
"If you're smart, you'll walk away," Arya said, and the men surrounding them laughed like she made a joke.
"Oh no, girl, we aren't going anywhere. You killed our friends, and with that comes justice," the apparent leader said.
"Pillaging, robbing, and raping are what you call justice?" Gendry snapped, and several of the men snickered.
"If they are enemies of the true queen of Westeros, then yes," he said.
"Your queen is dead. We were there when she died," Arya snapped, and the man smirked as they closed in.
"We know who you are," the man said. Arya tried to fight, they both did, but it took almost no time for the bandits to overwhelm them. They laughed as they tied her hands tightly in front of her and laughed as they pulled a dark bag over her head. Arya was in darkness, and she couldn't do anything about it.
