Arya didn't know what she was supposed to say to that. It wasn't possible that Gendry could be alive, and there wasn't anything she could do about it. The only option was going out to find him, but that meant explaining to her family what was going on. Davos seemed to be reading her mind as he sighed and went over to the wall where a large map resided. He gestured for her to join him, and he pointed to Essos.

"Arya, he could be anywhere east of Meereen, and we don't know where. There isn't any way to find him until they resurface on their own. Maybe they find someone willing to help them, but until we hear something going over and running around Essos isn't going to solve anything," he explained. "You need to tell your siblings about your findings."

"Why would I do that?" Arya asked, immediately defensive.

"Because you're thinking of running across Essos trying to find four people. That isn't something that you can do in a fortnight," Davos replied. "I've been keeping these correspondences from the king that is keeping me safe, and I won't do that anymore, lass. I need you to tell them, or I will." That made Arya angry, but she didn't have much of a choice. She turned her back on Davos and called everyone into the Great Hall. Arya went on to explain what she'd been doing for the last few months but left out the part about how she was the one who killed the maester in Storm's End. That kind of information hadn't made its way North, and she wasn't going to be the one to tell them that she killed an old man in cold blood.

"It sounds like it's impossible," Sansa said carefully as she too looked over a map of Essos. "They could be anywhere at any given time. You don't have any way of really tracking them unless you start tracking the people trying to kill them, and even then, they wouldn't tell you where you need to go. They're running east, and I don't know how you could even begin to catch up to them."

"There might be a way," Asha said carefully, and everyone turned to look at her. "Eventually, they're going to make it to the east coast of Essos, and there won't be anywhere for them to go. That's just the way it is, and if we try to sail to the coast, it could take even longer. I think there might be a way to meet them there." Asha walked over to the map and pointed to the west coast of Westeros. "If the world is round, then if you sail west, you'll eventually find the east coast of Essos."

"You think the world is round?" Davos asked. "I'm an accomplished sailor, Lady Asha, but nothing like that has ever been confirmed."

"I think it's true," Asha said. "I think that if you go sail west, you'll find the east coast of Essos, and that limits our search radius by a lot. It's just the towns on the coast because that is as far as they could run."

"How sure are you of this?" Meera asked.

"Pretty sure," Asha said with a shrug. "It's something I've always wanted to prove, and now I have the perfect excuse to do so."

"But you don't know it's true," Jon said. "The sea could go on forever, or the world could just end. This could be a suicide mission."

"I'm going," Arya said, and everyone turned to look at her. "Asha is right. If Gendry and his siblings are anywhere, it would be in one of these coastal towns. I know Gendry; once he found somewhere safe, he would stay there. They are tired and hurt, and they need time to recover. He would pick the safest of these towns, and he would lie in wait. I need to go after him."

"Arya, you don't even know if he's alive," Sansa said. "Look at how far they would have ridden or possibly walked. We don't know if they made it."

"I know he made it," Arya said, and she didn't know how many times she needed to repeat herself before someone listened to her.

"Everyone except my sisters and my brother, please leave," Jon said. Everyone turned and looked at him, but he was using his King voice, so they all walked out of the Great Hall and left them alone. "We might not ever see you again; you could die on this trip. Arya, you need to think about this. "

"I really don't need to think about this," Arya snapped.

"No, you don't," Bran said. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to look at their little brother. Bran might be a father now, but he was a man of few words still. Arya felt a lump in her throat as Bran looked her in the eye. It was like when he was the Three-Eyed Raven and could see into her soul, and it was a profoundly uncomfortable moment. "You have made your decision regardless of what any of us have to say. No one here is going to make you choose, Arya, because we all know which one you would pick."

The words hurt more than a knife to the gut and Arya didn't know what she was supposed to say to that. Jon and Sansa both looked resigned and didn't say anything to her. Instead, Jon pushed Bran's chair out of the Great Hall, and the three of them left her alone. Arya closed her eyes and tried to ignore the mournful howl that rang through Winterfell.

Her family wasn't quite avoiding her, but Arya felt like they were keeping their distance. On some level, she understood. She was leaving again, and Arya knew that they were taking it personally. On another level, she couldn't just leave Gendry and his siblings to their fate. She had to save them, or it would be the thing that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Arya walked out of the Great Hall alone and told Asha to start gathering all of the supplies they would need for the trip. Asha thought it would take at least three moons to reach the coast, but it could take longer. There was a chance they could run out of food or water if the worst should happen. Arya couldn't think about the worst right now.

Arya spent the next three days gathering supplies and talking to anyone but her blood relatives. Val nodded but didn't look particularly happy about the entire thing, but she helped Arya get the supplies she needed. Theon looked resigned but helped Asha with anything they might need for the ship that was waiting on the west coast for them. Meera handed her a spear attached to a long line of thick rope and told her that they could use it to catch fish if they ran out of food. Brienne and Davos both promised to look after the family that currently wasn't really speaking to her, which was enough.

After a sennight of planning, she walked out into the godswood and was greeted with a sight that she hadn't seen in a long time. It was Bran sitting in front of the heart tree. Jojana was in his arms and very much asleep, looking incredibly peaceful in the furs that Bran still wore. He was looking at her fondly but looked up at her when she walked up to him.

"It's not a choice," Arya said carefully, and he blinked at her in the way that reminded her of the Three-Eyed Raven, and she hated it. "I'm not picking him over family. He's my family just as much as you are, as Jojana is, as Jon is, as everyone is. I need to go and save him because everyone else has given up on him."

"I know, Arya," he said.

"Then why did you say what you said?" she asked.

"Because my sister seems extremely keen to throw her own life away, and I don't want to see that. No one wants to see that, but Jon and Sansa are just more vocal about it," Bran explained, and he sighed as he looked down at Jojana. "You didn't hesitate for even a moment. You didn't even stop to think about what it would be like for us if you didn't come back. What it would be like if you just perished at sea, and we never knew what happened to you. We've been through not knowing what happened to each other before, Arya, and none of us want to do it again. I know why you're going after Gendry, we all do, and we all love and miss him too. It's the fact that you didn't even consider how you possibly dying at sea would affect the rest of us; that hurts."

"The last thing I want to do is hurt the only family I have left," Arya whispered. She sat down next to him, and they didn't say a word to each other until an hour later that Meera came with a guard to help Bran push his chair back to the castle. Arya offered to do it instead.

It took another sennight for the supplies to be ready, and that included the supplies that Asha was sending directly to the ship or having another ship meet them while they were on the way. The plan was to stop by the Iron Isles for the last of the supplies and then go west. When Davos asked Asha if Yara would be mad that she decided to go on this trip without asking, Asha shrugged and didn't seem to care.

Arya thought they would be alone on the trip to the coast, but Jon, Sansa, Theon, Val, and Davos all insisted on making the trip with them. Bran and Meera stayed behind, and Arya held Jojana for a long time. She was going to be a different person by the time she returned, and no one said a word at the tears she shed at how much of her niece's young life she was going to be missing on this trip. This time was precious, but Arya knew what she was giving up. Sansa and Jon both spoke to her, and she felt a little lighter by the time they finally got to the coast. Asha and Theon hugged, and Asha walked onto the ship to give Arya some privacy.

She hugged all of them, and Arya tried not to think about the way that Sansa whispered that she needed to come home. She tried not to think about the fact that Jon was holding her so tight that she thought he might break a rib. She tried not to think about Nymeria following her to the coast but knowing that she was leaving a piece of her heart in the North. Arya didn't promise to come home, and no one asked her to make that promise because it wasn't one that she could keep.

"I will never stop fighting to come back to you," Arya said because that was a promise she could keep. Asha called out that they needed to go, and there wasn't ever going to be a good time to say goodbye. Arya nodded to her family, pretended there weren't tears in her eyes, turned her back to them, and walked onto the ship. She watched them as the ship sailed away until they were nothing but specks on the horizon. When they vanished from sight, Arya went down to her cabin, crawled into her tiny bed, and cried until there was nothing left.

Yara wasn't exactly thrilled that they were sailing west, but this also wasn't the first time that Asha had attempted this before, so she wasn't against it either. They took two ships between them and made sure that they were both split evenly with supplies. It made sense; if the ship with the supplies went down, they would be in serious trouble. Yara didn't ask why she wanted to go west and Arya wasn't ready to tell someone other than family what was going on. There were spies in Westeros, and she didn't know who was listening in the walls in Pyke. They finally set off, and Arya found that she quite liked sailing. Asha taught her everything that she knew about sailing, and for the first moon or so, it was nice. The sun was bright and hot, the men and women that Asha had sailing with her were good people that took her under their wing, and Arya thought again how much she would have liked to be an explorer in another life.

It wasn't long after the first moon that the seas started to get rough, and Asha started to look a little nervous for the first time. They looked west, and Arya could see that the clouds were starting to get darker; there was a storm, and it looked massive.

"Could we go around it, captain?" one of the men asked as Asha looked over her map. "Sail south until we pass the storm and then keep going west?"

"That could add weeks or even months onto our journey. We could run out of supplies," Asha replied. "That storm is massive, and the winds and the seas are pushing us right toward it. The only way that I can see is through." Asha looked up at Arya with a serious expression. "On my second attempt west, I had to turn around because my crew voted not to go through the storm, Princess, and we'll be doing the same voting today. If they decide not to go through, we turn around, and we go home."

"I understand," Arya said, but she didn't mean the words. At the same time, she hadn't been through a storm at sea, and whatever was going on out there was making an experienced sailor like Asha nervous, and that was enough to make Arya nervous. She spent the rest of her day in her room, trying not to think about what she would do if they had to turn around. They would have to restock and try again, but that could take several moons to half a year at most. That wasn't time that Gendry and his siblings had, at least Arya didn't think they did. Asha knocked on the door and told her that the crew decided to risk going through the storm. Arya was on her feet in a second. "Tell me what I can do to help."

"Follow me," Asha said, and they both went on deck. The wind was blowing harder, and the ship was already starting to rock. A crew member helped Arya tie a long rope around her waist, and she realized that this was supposed to keep her from being lost at sea if she fell overboard. She helped Asha and the crew prep as they sailed into the storm.

The waves got bigger and bigger, and Arya felt like she couldn't keep her balance. She kept almost falling, and so many people kept grabbing her arm to keep her from falling. The rain was pouring, and the wind was unlike anything she had ever felt before. She was cold and shivering even though she was sweating as she and Asha tried to keep steering straight. Arya could see their second ship was also struggling, but everyone seemed to be hanging on for now. Arya looked up and saw a massive wave approaching them. It seemed to keep getting bigger and bigger as it got closer, and Arya felt her heart stop. If that wave fell on them, they would be done for.

"What is dead may never die!" Asha yelled as the ships approached the wave. They were climbing up and up, trying to reach the crest, and Arya closed her eyes as she held on for dear life. They were almost to the top, the wind was howling, Asha seemed to be screaming at the drowned god himself, and Arya opened her eyes as the ship broke over the top of the massive wave. The speed as they fell down the other side of the wave was unlike anything she had ever felt before. The shift was so sudden that Arya lost her balance again. She was airborne for half a moment before crashing back down to the hard wood of the ship. Arya tasted salt on her tongue, and could hear the crew yelling some more, as the world around her went dark.

Gendry couldn't remember the last time he wasn't in pain, that his muscles didn't ache, that his stomach didn't ache with hunger or his tongue wasn't so dry with thirst that he could barely speak. They were all getting thinner as the food got harder and harder to find. They had run out of things to trade, and now all they had were their weapons. Edric was getting lighter as Gendry got weaker, which didn't make carrying him any easier. Mya and Bella weren't fairing much better as their boots were beginning to wear through the same way that Gendry's were. He didn't know how much longer they could go on like this. He wasn't even sure how many moons it had been since he'd last seen Storm's End, six maybe, it felt like a lifetime ago. He remembered Arya's face, her eyes, but her presence in his mind felt like it was being sucked away by the Essos sun and the endless walking.

He didn't know what the thing he tripped on was or if he even tripped on anything. One moment Gendry was walking, and the next, he was stumbling to the ground. Edric grunted as he hit the ground, but he was yelling for Mya and Bella. His voice sounded far away, which was probably a bad sign. They hadn't seen any of the Second Sons in awhile, but that didn't mean they weren't right behind them. The sun was burning Gendry's palms, but he couldn't force himself to move. He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Mya looking back at him.

"Little brother, I think you've worked hard enough," she said.

"No, I'm the only one strong enough to carry him, and he can't walk. We don't have any way for him to walk," Gendry replied, but his words sounded slurred even to him.

"Bella and I can take turns carrying him. I'll take the first shift, and you lean on Bella to get some rest," Mya insisted. Gendry knew that his sisters were strong, and Edric was so much lighter now that Mya was able to haul him onto her back. It didn't look very comfortable to either of them, but there wasn't anything they could do about it. Bella pulled Gendry up by the arm, put said arm over his shoulder, and took some of his weight. They continued on.

Gendry didn't know how much longer they walked, but they crested a large hill, and something in the air seemed to change. There was moisture for the first time in a long time, and after they could see over the hill, Gendry froze. He didn't think he would ever see an ocean again, but there it was. He wondered if they had gotten turned around, and this was the south coast of Essos, but the sun's placement said this was east. They had reached the end of Essos, and there was nowhere else to go. On the edge of the water, Gendry could see a small fishing village, and they had no supplies and nowhere else to go. They had to try and see if this was a place that could take them in.

They were all stumbling as they tried to make it to the village, but it seemed that the distance was too much. Gendry watched as Mya fell to the ground, and when he fell, he took Bella down with him. Edric started crawling in the dirt toward the village, yelling as loud as he could, but Gendry felt like he was underwater. He could hear voices and people asking what was going on. Edric was begging, his proud little brother was begging for any assistance they could offer. Gendry closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.

Gendry wasn't expecting to wake up again, but when he did, he was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling. There was movement next to him, and he turned his head to see a little girl with black hair and dark eyes staring at him. He was about to ask what was going on when she turned and ran. Gendry managed to sit himself up and realized he was in a room with four beds, and he could thankfully see all of his siblings. They all looked to be alive and much healthier than they had been in many moons. An older woman walked in, and she narrowed her eyes as she looked him over.

"How are you feeling?" she asked as she handed Gendry a glass of water. He drank the entire thing as fast as he could and then two more before she told him he had to stop or he'd make himself sick.

"Much better, thank you," Gendry whispered. "My brother and sisters, I suppose we owe you all our lives."

"Your brother, he said you're running from men who would put you in chains or kill you," she said, and Gendry nodded.

"The killing would likely be a mercy," he whispered as he glanced at his sister's. She followed his line of sight and nodded.

"My name is Weneya, and you aren't here as far as everyone here is concerned," Weneya said, and Gendry nodded slowly. He tried to stop the tears from forming in his eyes, but he couldn't remember the last time someone was kind to him. The woman at the village who gave him the tonic that saved Edric's life was the one and only time. Now this woman, Weneya, this village, was going to try and protect him. She reached forward and cradled Gendry's face in her hands. Weneya brushed the tears away with her thumbs and looked at him carefully.

"We can work, we can do whatever you need to help repay this incredible gift you're giving us. I swear it," Gendry whispered, but Weneya smiled softly.

"Right now, you all need rest for you're no use to anyone half dead," she said. "Rest, and once you're well, you can work on repaying us for kindness." Weneya stood up and walked out of the small room without another word. Gendry fell back on the pillows and was asleep within seconds.