She came to her senses on the drive to the airport. She started thinking more. She called Sansa. And her sister picked up on the third ring.

"Hello, darling sister," Sansa trilled musically over the bluetooth speaker in her car. And for a second she thought she might ask her sister for advice. Perhaps even to talk her out of the decision she'd just made. But… Arya Stark wasn't known for being talked out of her choices.

"Hey Sans. Favor to ask you," she said without preamble. She was sitting straight-backed in the driver's seat, tense in her trajectory as she angled onto the highway.

"Shoot." But Sansa wasn't listening closely, she could hear some soft music in the background, and it sounded like a few friends were over.

"Can you grab Nymeria from my apartment and watch her for a week or so?"

Sansa seemed to be cooking, she could hear her tasting something and gently smacking her lips. "Sure, want me to pick her up from you in the morning? Where are you going?"

"Umm…" She held tightly to the steering wheel, and chose her words carefully. "Could you actually pick her up tonight? You still have your spare key, right?"

"Yeah… Are you ok? You sound strange. Where are you going?" She asked again.

"Yeah, yeah everything's fine. Just a last minute thing." She tried to make her voice sound more confident and less like she had been taken hostage and was calling for the ransom.

"Oh my gosh, is Edric whisking you away somewhere glorious?" She winced as she swerved around a slow moving truck. She hadn't thought about Edric. Well, she hadn't thought about Edric in awhile, actually.

"Ha, no no, nothing like that." Because it definitely was not like that.

"Well you gotta give me something here. I'm your bored, pregnant sister."

"I'm taking a trip. I found a great deal." And it didn't sound that strange. Arya was known to take last minute trips when she saw fit. She got antsy often, and her siblings knew her propensity for last minute adventures. Sometimes for work, sometimes on a whim. Sometimes just because she had a few days to spare and wanted out of her apartment. Just a few months before she'd backpacked in Lys alone for two weeks with only a few days notice.

"Ha, ok. Where are you headed this time?"

"Dorne, to start." She said truthfully as she swerved across two lanes to take the exit for the airport.

The ticket to Dorne was not a deal, she lamented as she swiped her credit card at the kiosk in the departure terminal. It cost her most of the air miles she's racked up over the past year. Tickets to tropical destinations didn't tend to come on the cheap at the last minute. Especially at the start of Spring Break in King's Landing. If she'd had more time she probably could have found something cheaper, but all of this hedged on a swift departure.

She walked into the hotel at the Water Gardens with uncertainty and tightness in her shoulders. This was where they had agreed to meet, but it had been so long, how could she be sure he'd remember?

The whole thing felt like a lifetime ago. And in a way, it had been. Like she'd dreamt the whole thing. Like she'd been a different person, and someone had just told her this story once. And as a result, she'd felt in a trance since boarding the plane.

So without even looking toward the check-in desk, or checking her watch, she walked to the hotel bar. It was too early to check-in. And honestly, a drink offered much more comfort than a bed at this point.

She didn't know if he'd arrived yet. She didn't know where he was. She didn't know much of anything about him anymore. They hadn't exchanged another text after her acceptance of his challenge. But all the details were in the original deal. They were the only details, really. Meet at the Water Gardens within 24 hours. Twenty-four hours became when they were young, it would have taken them that long to drive to Dorne.

The hotel bar was wide and open, the setting seeming to transition from indoors to outdoors without so much as a glass door.

And he sat with his back to her, looking out at the Water Gardens from the bar. It was early in the day, and the sun was shining brightly from the east, casting a bright, almost otherworldly glow on the marble and terracotta.

His shoulders were wide, but slumped. Turned in on himself in a way that felt as familiar as her own reflection.

She took the stool beside him.

The well-dressed bartender was attentive, and quickly approached with a napkin and a kind smile.

"Vodka soda, please. Extra lime."

And even though she had her attention on the bartender, she saw his head quirk in her direction. She couldn't see it, but she knew he was smiling. And she could practically feel the sigh he released.

He didn't speak until she had a drink in front of her, though.

"I'd already bought the ticket when I texted you," he said into his glass of amber alcohol. Whiskey, a single melting ice cube, she knew.

"Just fancy a holiday, then?" And this time she could see his smirk in her periphery while she wrapped her lips around the cocktail straw.

"No."

He pushed a folded booklet toward her on the bar, and for a second she thought about how they must look. Not looking at each other, but talking in low whispers, exchanging strange looking packages. She'd seen more inconspicuous drug deals in her years on a university campus.

"Knew I'd say yes, then?"

He shrugged. "Hoped so."

She smirked, but finished her drink in a single, long sip. Maybe she needed a holiday. It was Spring Break, after all.

The attentive bartender inclined his head and brought her another cocktail beside a glass of ice water when she nodded her head.

When she had her fresh drink in front of her, she inclined her head toward the folded bundle he'd pushed toward her. "That what I think it is?"

The map was worn and frayed around the edges. It had been weathered even 10 years ago, when it had been tacked up in his studio apartment above the utilitarian table he used as a desk and a place to eat meals. Back then it had little pushpins in the places he'd always wanted to visit.

He'd grown up poor. It had made him frugal and exceedingly cautious. He didn't spend money on himself or things he wanted. Only things he needed. So it surprised her when she saw the map in his apartment for the first time. She knew what the pushpins meant, because it was something so many teenage girls did growing up. Herself included. She'd tacked a map of the world above her bed when she was thirteen, plotting out where she'd been so far (very few places), and where she'd one day venture (everywhere).

Sometime around the time that he was moving out of his apartment, while they were packing his meager belongings into boxes and crates and smiling even though it felt like the end - they had started scribbling on the map. She started with a green marker, making sure to circle all of the places he wanted to go as she removed the pins.

He caught her as she did it, coming up behind her.

"It's fine, don't worry about that. I'll remember." He sighed, pulling her away from the wall and letting the map sag at one corner. "Or I'll never leave the Storm Lands. Just like I've never left King's Landing."

It wasn't completely true. He'd left the Crownlands a few times, but not many. And not to any of the places plotted out on his map, as far as she could tell. He'd spent the past three summers in Storms End, interning at the company he'd taken the job at. He wasn't moving there completely blind. And he'd come with her and Jon and Sansa to Winterfell during the holidays that year, but that hadn't been pinned on his map before they went.

When they got back, he'd added a red circle over the City of Winterfell, but she hadn't realized until then that none of the other places on the map had been circled. There were only clear pins, no pins or marks to indicate where he'd been already. Just dreams.

"We can go together," she shrugged against him, leaning back into his chest as his arms circled around her waist. And her offer was genuine, because at nineteen she made promises offhandedly the way only young people could. Without knowing if they could be fulfilled, but believing sheer force of will could materialize the reality. "We could pick a place every summer, or over breaks or something."

"I'd like that. I just don't know what my schedule will look like." He used reason, because he never had and he never would make a promise to her he didn't know if he could keep.

But noncommittal bullshit was a pet peeve of hers, and he knew it. He knew she wouldn't accept that answer. He knew it would rile her up. She extracated herself from his arms and looked him dead in the eye while she brandished the uncapped green marker at him, pushing it into his neck in a threatening gesture.

"What do we say to the God of Death, Gendry?" She challenged with a secretive smile, arching a lethal eyebrow. Because if growing up and getting a real job, starting his real life meant losing sight of his dreams, what would you call it but death?

He smiled, and pulled the marker away from his neck, leaving a long green streak across his pulse point. "Not Today."

That night they'd sat on the floor, surrounded by boxes and beer, the map on the wobbly coffee table he planned to throw in the trash at the end of the week, and they recreated his pins in green ink. She added some of her own in blue, and at some point late in the night, when they'd had too many beers and were sprawled on the floor after removing only a few layers of clothing, they'd started scribbling on eachothers' skin in their respective colors.

He'd written NOT TODAY beneath her left breast in messy green scrawl, and she'd doodled puffy lettered blue promises on his back that she wouldn't let him read before they battled for dominance toward the shower, where they'd soaked their remaining clothing before throwing matted jeans around the shower curtain in to a sopping mess on the floor.

Several years later, she'd gotten a tattoo under her left breast, in neat gray calligraphy, that spelled out Not Today, and pretended that she didn't remember when he'd scrubbed the green letters from her skin before ghosting his teeth across the same spot.

But they'd never plotted out places over breaks. Hadn't even made the plans, really. She'd driven down to Storm's End with him and Jon at the end of the week to move into his new place, a one bedroom flat that his company had offered to him at a discounted rate as a part of his contract. It was nice, and new, with giant windows looking out over Shipbreaker Bay.

While they set up his new furniture and unpacked his books, she pulled out the folded map. It felt so foreign in this new flat. It felt out of place next to his sleek new furniture and the big windows and the smell of fresh paint. She thought it might have been the first time in his entire life he had anything brand new and shiny.

This place was his new life, and just as she'd never pressured him to label their relationship, she felt like tacking up that map again would be trapping him. Trapping him back in his old life, and trapping him to their promises. So she'd stuffed it between two thick leather books, checking to make sure it wasn't too visible. There was only a small noticeable crevice between the two large books, and continued filling the bookshelves with textbooks she didn't think he'd need anymore. Right beside the map.

They talked almost every day after that, but at some point it became every other day, and then only one a week. Eventually they only spoke on important days, when big life events popped up, or birthdays came around. It had been a slow transition, but even when the big moments rolled around, or he asked her how she was going to spend her summer or spring breaks, they never discussed the map. They never tried to make a plan to travel together like she'd promised.

They'd never checked off any of his adventures together. She'd been on plenty alone, some with boyfriends, a few girlfriends or just friends, even a few with Sansa or Jon, but never with him.

"How many places have you already been to?" She asked without touching the map between them.

He still hadn't looked directly at her, but he was swirling his glass as the ice disappeared into the amber liquid, and he quickly swallowed what was remaining in his glass. "Not many."

She nodded, and she saw the bartender approach again with a refill, but this time he lingered.

"Not that I'm complaining about the company this early in the day, but what brings you to the Water Gardens?"

She had been a bartender for a while, and she felt for the guy. He was probably a few years younger than her, with wide purple eyes and copper skin that was obviously happiest in the sun. And he looked happy, if a little bored.

"Vacation. Spring Break," she said

"Oh, you're a student?" He asked, eying her jeans and t-shirt. Her usual uniform.

"Professor. PhD candidate, actually."

"What in?" He looked like he could be a student, too. Maybe at the university in Sunspear.

"International policy. Economic development in the Free Cities."

"You're young to be a professor, aren't you?"

She laughed. "I'm older than I look. But you served me without asking for ID, so I guess that proves something."

He gave a smile that was universal bartender etiquette when someone questioned an ID misstep. Hotel bars were always a little more lax with patrons, but she'd worked at a dingy dive bar near campus when she was in undergrad and grad school, so she hadn't had the luxury of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

"What about you?" He asked Gendry, who had been taking small sips from his glass, and staying out of the polite conversation. "You a professor too?"

He finished his drink faster than he should have, and the bartender set to grabbing the bottle behind the bar before he answered or asked. "Nope. Just passing through."

"Oh, you don't know each other?" He eyed the folded map between them, still untouched. Bartenders, always observant.

"Nope."

"Old friends." They said at the same time. And it stung. For him to say he didn't know her. Because there was once a time when he knew her better than anyone in the world. And if he didn't know her, then who did?

The kid smiled, and nodded. "Well, I'll leave you to it," gesturing to a small group of incoming patrons, twenty-somethings obviously taking advantage of their Spring Break. "I'll grab you another vodka soda in a sec."

She nodded her thanks and waited for him to move away before saying anything. But when she did, it felt like she was vomiting. The way the words escaped her felt like her stomach was forcing them up her throat, and she had no control of how quickly or forcefully they escaped. But they had to.

"This was a mistake."

And she wished she had a new drink now, something to do with her hands while she thought about how easy it would be to get the next flight back to King's Landing. Or maybe to Braavos. She could spend a few days in Braavos without anyone questioning it.

But she didn't move to leave. She felt rooted to this place. Something she hadn't felt in a long time. Something she hadn't let herself feel in a long time. Rooted.

"No it wasn't." He said resolutely, finally looking at her. Because he knew. If there was ever a thing that wasn't a mistake, it was them. Whatever they were. Whenever they were.