Arya stood at the entrance of the forge and watched. Just watched. It had been years since the sound of hammer striking metal didn't feel like being struck herself. Before, it had been nothing, just part of the everyday noises of Winterfell, and later of the Red Keep. And then… then.

Then it had become the sound of home.

Even in the midst of the drudgery at Harrenhal, sitting next to the anvil had made her feel alive. And with the Brotherhood, it had felt like a comfort. Until it had been ripped away from her and every smithy she passed had her searching the faces of the masters and apprentices alike for one face.

She watched Gendry make a few adjustments to the dragonglass sword he worked, and then, much as he had years before with steel, he hefted it to feel the balance of the blade.

"You still need to stand side face," she said, leaning against the doorframe.

"And you need to remember you're smaller than me," he answered, glancing up briefly.

"Quicker, too." She smirked at his dull-eyed stare, so like the ones she remembered.

"What are you doing up so late?" he asked, then, seeming to remember himself, added, "Milady."

She resisted the urge to snort and roll her eyes and instead moved to lean against his bench. "You mean early." At his blank expression, she nodded to the eastern sky through the forge door. "It's nearly first light. Have you not slept?"

"No, I guess not." He said that flatly, looking around him as if looking for something he'd misplaced. "What are you doing up so early, then?"

"I'm normally up by now. This is the hour I woke in Braavos."

He grunted, then laid the sword next to her on the bench. "Rough work, that. It's all I have time for. Nothing polished about these weapons."

"Have you no one to help you?"

"Very few," he said, then picked up a discarded shard of dragonglass, tested the point against the wood of the tabletop. "They're all asleep, I expect."

"Most people would be."

He grunted again, then braced his hands against the bench and hung his head. He was the picture of exhaustion. She had the urge to reach out, touch his shoulder. She swallowed it, stayed stoic, silent.

"Did you need me for something, milady?" He asked it as if she were someone he could bat away, someone intruding. It stung, but she only smirked again and swallowed that as well.

"Only for company. I heard you when I was practicing," she said, trying not to look at him, and sneaking glances out of the corner of her eye. After the initial whirlwind joy of seeing him again, things had felt uncomfortable between them, as if something fundamental had changed. It had been a long time, she knew, but she hadn't thought time could change so much. What had once been an easy friendship was now an uneasy acquaintanceship. She hated it.

"I did not mean to disturb you, milady," he said on a sigh.

"Gendry," she chided, unable to prevent it from slipping.

"My lady?"

She bit off the retort, only set her jaw and looked more firmly away, squinting at the lightening sky as if it held some secret. He said nothing either, but Arya could feel the rhythm of his breathing in her own lungs, having unknowingly matched her breaths to his. It was a relaxation technique she'd been taught in Braavos. It did little to relax her now; in fact, it set her more on edge that she could fall so easily into a rhythm with him despite the silent tension.

"Can I see the dagger I've been hearing about?" he asked when it seemed the tension was going to snap. She nodded, silently sulking, but slipped the weapon off her hip and set it between his hands on the worktop. He hardly moved, but she didn't prompt him. Instead, she moved away herself, needing to work off the restless energy coursing through her blood, and finding an outlet in inspecting his tools and the growing pile of completed weapons.

When she circled back to the bench, Gendry was oiling the Valyrian steel, turning it in the light from the forge fire, his eyes lighting up as he watched the bands of metal reveal themselves. "I've only handled Valyrian steel twice. This is one of those."

"And the other?"

"Jon's Longclaw."

"Would you like to see a third?" Arya spun at the words to find Sam, hulking and sheepish in the doorway, with a sheathed great sword in his grasp.

"Is that one there?" Gendry asked, nodding at the sword.

"Yes, I—I thought you might be able to tell me how to care for it."

"How does someone come by a Valyrian steel sword and not know how to care for it?" Gendry asked, and Arya wondered whether it was the lack of sleep that made him seem snappish.

"I stole it," Sam said plainly, then grinned. "From my father." The grin faded.

"What's it called?" she asked, as Gendry held out a hand for the scabbard.

"Heartsbane," Sam said as the metal rang out. Gendry held the sword in one hand as easily as Sam had cradled it in two. It made her heart do a slow turn to watch him run his eyes over the metal.

"You can see the folds better in this one than in the dagger," the blacksmith said. "It's been well looked after."

"Is this the dagger?" Sam asked, nodding at the weapon on the bench. Arya snatched it up and flipped it between her hands, then offered it out to him, delighted by the startled sheen in his gaze. Sam took it gently, and she watched his brow go from quizzical to deeply furrowed again.

"What is it?" she asked.

"What?" Sam asked back, shaking himself out of his inspection. "Oh, it's nothing, it's just…"

"Just what?" Gendry asked, his hand stilling as he ran an oilcloth down the center of Sam's stolen sword.

"I think I've seen this before, somewhere. I just can't remember…"

"Likely not," Arya said. "It's only just come to Winterfell again. Littlefinger gave it to Bran. It's the knife that was meant to kill him after he fell."

"No," Sam said, "you're probably right." But his brow remained furrowed until Gendry returned Heartsbane to its sheath.

"It's held its edge, so it won't need sharpening for a time. Mind that you oil it every so often, and clean it if it's dirty," Gendry said. "Just as you'd care for any sword."

"I've never been good at swordplay," the large man admitted with a shrug, but he smiled. "Thank you both."

"Any time, mate," Gendry said with a nod, and Sam left, his brow furrowing in thought again as he walked out the open door and across the bailey.

Arya lifted herself onto the bench, sitting with her feet dangling, leaning against the support for the overhead rack. Gendry had resumed his exhausted stance, bowed, bent. The urge to soothe returned and Arya had to clench her fists against her thighs to prevent herself from reaching to hold him.

And why should I help him? she asked herself. He didn't want me.

But some part of her still wondered why she hadn't been good enough, why such a small thing as titles had kept them apart. How could he think that she'd treat him any different, after all of their days on the road, laughing, surviving, despite it all? She still did not know, though she wondered over it every day. And when she'd seen him again, road-weary and scruffy and miraculously alive when he'd held her, whirled her about, she'd known he was her family, no matter what he said. Even if he didn't want it; even if he could hardly look at her now.

Why? She wondered over that, too.

The brave part of her damned all the questions and unclenched a fist to lay her palm over the back of one of his scarred hands. He jumped in his own skin but he didn't pull away from the contact.

"Arya," he sighed, sounding resigned. "My lady—"

"I'm not a lady," she barked, as she had countless times on the road. The memory of him laughing as she shoved him over tickled her heart, but just now she was annoyed that he persisted, and she couldn't swallow that anymore.

"You are, whether you like it or not," he said to the worktop.

"I don't care."

"You should," he said, finally looking up, temper snapping. "Do you think anything else in this damn world matters?"

"Yes—"

"What, then?"

You, she almost yelled back, but she clenched her jaw. Calm as still water.

"See, even you cannot deny it for long," he said, his words defeated, miserable.

"I can, and will," she said when her temper was firmly chained. "Forever, if I have to." He'd stopped meeting her eyes, and the anger growled and snapped, ready to break the hold she kept on it. "You were my best friend, and now you can't even look at me. Why?"

He lifted his chin slightly, petulant, and looked at her, but his gaze was leagues off as he spoke through tight jaws. "My apologies, my lady."

"Gendry. Why?"

His free hand slammed into the table, shaking the tools atop it, and sending a jarring sensation crawling up her spine. She didn't let his violence phase her. She knew worse.

"Because—" He cut himself off with a huff and pushed himself away, wrenching his fingers out from under hers to pace.

"Why?" she asked again, her voice hoarse with the strain of keeping calm. Gendry lifted both hands to scrub over his face and hair, then dropped them, looking emotionally thrashed, and lifted his eyes to look at her, to see her. She wanted to ask him again, to make him speak, but then she started to see him, the glimmer in his eyes, the tenseness of his shoulders. The grief, the heat.

Why? her eyes must have screamed.

"Because the last time I looked at you, you were only a girl. You were only Arya."

"And now?"

"Now, you're Arya Stark of Winterfell, the She-Wolf, and my lady."

"I have always been that. You knew that," she said, and Gendry dropped his gaze, scuffed the earthen floor with his toe, then peered up at her through his lashes, frowning. She frowned right back. "Have I changed so much that we can't be friends?" She nearly choked on the last word. Friends. That's not what she wanted, not what she needed, but it was what she would take if nothing else. He hadn't wanted to be my family.

"No," Gendry muttered, but he didn't seem happy about it.

"Then what?" she said harshly, near spitting with frustration, no longer caring to be calm as still water. She wanted to shove him—hard. He said nothing, just clenched and unclenched his fists. "What is it?" Gendry just shook his head, slowly at first, and then as if he were shaking a thought loose. "Gendry, please."

"I—" He shut his mouth tight. Then, quieter, "I can't."

"Why?" She felt like screaming the word; she nearly did. But he came toward her slowly, his blue eyes reminiscent of the Narrow Sea—stormy, deep. She dreamed of those eyes, and now they held her captive as he came forward.

"You want to know why?" he asked quietly when he was mere steps away and still coming on. She couldn't even nod she was so transfixed. "Because the last time I saw you, you were a twiggy little girl, a child. And now—" He shook his head again, breaking eye contact and making her blink. He'd come so close his hands were braced on the table on either side of her hips, his body was between her knees, his shaky breaths were warming her cheeks. "And now, my lady, you're not that. You're more than that. And I can't bear it. And gods help you if you ask 'why' again."

Arya shut her lips because she had been about to do just that. He seemed to pulse with heat and strength and light at that moment, and she'd rather not interrupt the wash of those feelings over her.

"I can't bear to look at you, because all it does is remind me that you were born just inside these walls, with a mother and a father and a name, and I've got none of that to give you. Not truly."

"I don't need any of that."

His face was so close, but he wasn't meeting her gaze. She felt her own flicking all over his features, trying to memorize the new set in his jaw, the fresh scars, the old, the tales written in the lines about his eyes.

"I didn't ask what you needed. I was telling you I have nothing to give."

"That's not true," she whispered.

"What can I give you that you do not already have?"

"You." She said it aloud this time, though it was barely more than a croaking whisper. He'd flustered her, coming close enough that their noses could brush.

"You were just a little girl," he said again, bitter. "You should be still."

She reached out to give into the urge to shove him. That's what she told herself, but the truth was, her fingers tangled in the front of his tunic and held him closer. She pulled at him, holding him there instead of shoving him away. She could push him back, she thought. End the madness, let him avoid her eyes for the rest of their days, as he was doing now with them shut tight against the sight of her. Or, a little voice, her voice, whispered, you could pull him closer, hold him.

That's all she wanted. To hold him.

"I'm here," he said, "making your lord brother and the queen their swords and armor, shoeing the horses the knight's ride. I'm here, m'lady, as you wanted."

"Stop that," she whispered, feeling the anger and tears in her throat. It had been so long since she'd felt them there; she could usually hide behind another name, another face. Not here, not with Gendry, who knew her before she was No One, who used to share her words. It had been so long since she'd shared words with him or even Jon. Have I changed so much?

"Then what do you want? I'm here. You wanted me. For what, my lady of Winterfell?"

"Just for you. You were my best friend. I wanted to be your family." He said nothing to that, only stood there, squarely between her knees, his hands fisted on the table, his eyes full of heat and sorrow, and her hands on his chest.

"Do you remember the circle of weirwood stumps on High Heart?" she asked. "Thirty-one of them, remember? We counted the first time. And then the smithy at Acorn Hall. You called your father a glutton and a sot. Only you didn't know he was your father then. And you ruined that stupid dress—"

"The one with the acorns," he said. "You said you looked like an oak tree."

"And Lady Smallwood made me take another bath because of you, and gave me a worse dress, that one—"

"Purple," Gendry said, "I remember."

"Lilac," she corrected him, though her heart leaped that he was finishing her sentences again. "But I couldn't wear it riding, so the next morning she gave me her son's clothes."

"You remember the men at the Stoney Sept?" he asked her, the sadness in his eyes as well as his voice. She nodded, remembering Harwin lifting her onto Gendry's shoulders so she could give a drink to the men in the crow cages, sentenced to die of thirst for the crimes they'd committed. Robb's men, who'd died not of thirst, but by the mercy of Anguy's arrows.

They'd gone to the Pearl, then. You're not my brother, she remembered saying when he used that excuse to send an old man walking when she'd been approached in the brothel's main room. Even then, she'd known she didn't want him to be her brother; she'd known what she wanted. His bitter response—That's right, I'm too bloody lowborn to be kin to m'lady high—had confused her, made her wonder what flea bit him. But that hadn't stopped him from sleeping beside her, between her and the other men, and so close he might have held her if he'd only reached out. Next to her, instead of next to Bella, who was named for the bells and claimed to be King Robert's daughter.

A most unladylike guffaw tore through her as she realized what it meant.

"What?" Gendry asked her, thrown off by her change of mood, clearly startled.

"Bella—" she managed to gasp before the laughter took her by force. "At the Peach. She—she wanted to ring your bell—remember?—and, and—" The laughs came so hard now, she struggled to breathe. "And she was probably your sister!"

His eyes were wide in shock, and then a blush crept up his cheeks. "Don't be stupid—"

"She was, too; I remember thinking she looked like the old king, but then so did you, so I thought she was only fooling—"

"Stop—"

"And you sent me off, all mad, saying maybe you'd call her back and ring her bell—"

"I didn't—"

"Your sister—" she gasped.

"Arya, stop," he said firmly, the heat in his eyes, his cheeks, his voice. She couldn't stop the chuckles shaking her, but she shut her mouth, smirked at him. "I never—gods—I never 'rang her bell,' damn you. But gods be good, I'll have to go back, find her, make sure she's still alive," he said, almost to himself, the thought leaving his expression muddled for a moment before he turned the heat back on her. "I never rang her bell."

That made her chuckles die, pulled her lips into a frown. "What?"

"Why in seven hells—" he said, again to himself, shaking his head. "You heard me."

"Why not?" she asked, and that too put him off balance.

"'Why not,' she asks," he muttered, lifting his hands to scrub his face again in weary frustration. Blacksmith's hands, like the septa used to call hers, only when she'd told Gendry that, he'd laughed. Those soft little things? And then he'd begged to be one of Beric's men, begged to join the Brotherhood, to abandon her like all the others. Begged to leave her broken.

Why not, she asks, he said, and she remembered his blushes, his playful moments—like when he tore Lady Smallwood's dress trying to tickle her in the forge, his scorn at her semi-friendship with the little lord Edric Dayne who'd been Jon's milk-brother, his protectiveness of her. He'd never done anything but look at her before the Red Woman had taken him, but she'd only been a little girl then. Only twelve, not a woman by any means, and yet a lady, and he only a baseborn bastard who hadn't known who his father was.

"Answer me, Gendry," she said, but not as a command, since it came out soft and wistful. "Why not?"

She knew why she hadn't rung anyone's bells, but he didn't need to know that, not when the thought of being left by him again frightened her. Fear cuts deeper than swords. She'd keep that fear, though, since she'd only just got him back. He'd been part of her pack and she was keeping him this time. Syrio would have told her she needed to see with her eyes, hear with her ears. She thought she could, but she needed the truth plain from him.

"Because—gods, you're stupid," he said, but before she could call him stupid right back, his blacksmith's hands were in her hair, his lips were on hers, his stubble was scraping her cheeks raw, and she could feel the heat of a thousand forges in her belly. Her fingers tightened around the loose tunic he wore, his only shirt given the heat of the fires, and she pulled him in, wrapped her legs around his hips and took all he gave and more.

If she fumbled, as inexperienced as she was, she didn't notice. All she could focus on was the heat behind the kiss at first, before Gendry slowed, seeming to savor her. She'd seen enough kisses in her time to know some of what to do, and it seemed he knew some, too. Her breaths and his came heavy, mingling in what little space remained between them.

His chest was unyielding, but gods did it feel amazing when he wrenched her against it, when his teeth nipped at her bottom lip, when his tongue tasted hers. He tasted like sweat, ale, and fire and she wanted more. More.

He heard the unspoken wish, somehow, and yielded to it, his hands sliding down her back to cradle her, and she moved her hands to his shoulders to pull him tighter. Her fingers slid under the collar of his tunic, where his skin burned. She wanted to burn with him. She felt him fumble with the hem of her jerkin, wiggled closer to help him loosen it. His hands seared on her skin, and he pulled away, just slightly, his lips only a hair's breadth from hers, dipping back in, once, twice.

"Stay," he rasped between touches, "right there." He let her go and went to close the forge door and lower the bar across it. And then he was back, his hands on her hips, his lips on hers. He lifted her off the bench as if she were only ten pounds. She felt lighter, weightless, as he carried her with long strides to the pallet in the corner, the one he'd taken to using for short fits of sleep since he'd arrived.

He laid her down gently, just watching her face. All she could manage to do was watch him back, studying his eyes in the flickering light of the forge, wanting to reach up to run her fingers over every inch of him. He held himself propped above her on one arm, hand in her hair, his thumb tracing her jawline. The other was ever so slowly pulling at the lacing on the front of her jerkin.

"You'd tell me if this wasn't what you wanted?" he asked.

"You stupid," she answered, reaching up to lift his tunic so she could trail her fingers over the skin of his waist. He left off on her clothes to pull the shirt entirely over his head. She traced each muscle in wonder, reveling in the trembling she could feel beneath his skin. He lowered himself to capture her lips again, then to kiss the side of her throat, the hollow at the base, wrenching a hitching gasp from her.

When the laces he'd been working were finally loose, he helped her to sit, kneeling over her as he helped her lift the heavy wool jerkin away, and then—hesitating only a moment—the tunic beneath as well.

"Mother's mercy," he breathed on the sight of her, and Arya felt suddenly conscious of how bare she was to him; he could see all the scars she'd received from the Waif. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, uncaring that her breasts were visible as well, though bound in her breast-band. It was the scars she wished he couldn't see.

He sat back on his heels a moment, then reached for her hands, tugging them insistently away. When he could see the wounds he dropped her fingers and traced the scars with his thumb, ever so slowly, lingering on the one she'd taken to the belly, pressing his lips together as he studied it. Then he lifted his gaze to hers, his eyes asking.

"Braavos," she said.

"Was he bigger than you?"

"She was. And quicker, too. But she didn't know how to fight blind."

Gendry nodded slowly, returning his gaze to the tears in her skin. He laid her back again, still not meeting her eyes, and she quailed a moment, until his lips pressed to the tip of the worst scar and he traced the line of it just the same, all the way to the base.

"I'm glad she didn't," he murmured against her skin, and Arya shuddered in relief and joy, then again when he took her lips, pressing tightly up against her. The feel of his skin on hers set her entire body to tingling. His rough hands gripped her like she might fall, and though they were calloused and scarred, they were gentle.

More, she thought again, and her hands tightened on his back. More, as he lifted her hips against his, as she struggled with the laces of his breeches, as he cursed and let her go to pull off his boots, as he did the same for her, but slower, torturing her. More, and more, and more, her thoughts screamed when their smallclothes littered the rushes, when his stubble scratched at her breasts, at the inside of her leg. He may not have rung Bella's bells, but he knew how to ring hers, and she gasped his name.

He moved to kiss her again, softly, then leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes wide open, staring into her. She was drowning, she thought, as his knuckles brushed a tear—a joyful tear—from her cheek. She was flying, she thought, when he murmured her name.

"I think," he whispered, "that I may hurt you."

"Never," she breathed, and his eyes twinkled, but he shook his head ever so slowly against hers.

"Not on purpose, stupid, but you might bleed."

"You're stupid," she told him, smiling. "And I'll tell you if it hurts."

He kissed her long and hard, desperate, clutching at her hair again before he guided himself into her center, and it did hurt, enough to make her gasp, but not enough to ever stop. He kissed her until she forgot her name, moved with her until she forgot his. But she couldn't forget his eyes, his ocean eyes that bored into her, nor his hands, nor his scent, nor his taste, not when they became her entire world. But when that world shattered, she forgot it all.

"Arya," he murmured against her neck, bringing her back to herself. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"I thought the same," she said, turning to press her lips to his temple. "But I looked for you."

He rolled, holding her on top of him, his arms wrapped tight around her waist, their legs tangled. "Where?"

"Every smithy I passed," she admitted, nuzzling her head under his chin as they adjusted to each other.

"I take it you were never in King's Landing," he said, the laugh in his voice, alongside exhaustion.

"No. Almost, but Hot Pie made me turn around."

"How?"

"He told me Jon was here," she said, and then, "He's gotten even better at shaping bread."

"I would kill for one of his pies," Gendry said, brushing a hand down her back and making her shiver.

"When did you eat last?"

"When was there ham?"

Arya pulled her face away from his chest, glared at him. "Yesterday's breakfast? You idiot, that was the last thing you ate?"

"Is that when it was? I'm in here all day, I don't always remember to go eat."

"Well, I'll make you remember," she said. "Come on, let me up, there will be something for the early risers by now."

"Can't you just stop moving for once?" he asked, tightening his grip around her, smirking up at her.

"No," she said, laughing at him.

"Mm, good thing I'm bigger than you," he said, grinning now, before reaching to lift her chin, then leaning up to kiss her.

"Not for long if you don't eat," she retorted. "And you'll be as pale as the Others without some sun."

He sighed in mock-resignation and grinned when she rolled her eyes, but he let her up, and when he'd risen to sit, reached to rub the gooseflesh from her arms. That made her shiver, but not from the chill, and she looked up into his eyes, trying to see again. His smile softened and he pressed his lips to her forehead. I could be your family, her memory whispered.

They dressed in a companionable quiet, pausing every so often to reach for one another, to laugh. It was a deep kiss that had them standing beside the door, lingering. Arya felt as if leaving the warmth of the forge might put their fragile new balance at risk, so she pushed herself closer, up onto her toes, wanting to stay. He yielded to that, holding her against him, but he seemed at peace with their new dynamic. Smiles and touches and keeping her close. How long had he known this was their trajectory? She wondered.

"Am I still your friend?" she asked, and her voice was soft.

"You always were," he promised. "You always will be."

She nodded, stepping back so he could remove the bar and open the door. She followed him into the bright morning that bathed the yard in light, wanting to reach for him, but scared to. Fear cuts deeper than swords. They were halfway across the snow-covered bailey when he said, "But, if we're being truthful, you're not my best friend anymore."

"What?" her voice snapped as she glared at him, but he only smirked.

"Your brother's taken that seat, my lady, I'm sorry to say," he said, and she knew he was kidding, knew he was only trying to provoke, but she wanted her revenge.

"Oh, you stupid," she said darkly, then ducked and tossed a fistful of snow in his face.

"That was not smart," he said, wiping the remains from his cheeks, a fierce grin on his lips. "You know this—I'm bigger."

"Quicker," she said back, smirking, but then she shrieked as he grabbed her about the waist and dumped her in a snow bank.

"Are you?" he asked, but then she threw more snow and dove out of the way. She managed to dump some snow down the back of his collar and whirled, dancing out of reach as he laughed, scooping up his own fistfuls of powder to toss at her. She dodged the first and the second, but when twirling to avoid the third, she bumped into Jon, who was coming from the direction of the First Keep, a distant look in his eye.

He took one look at the snow falling from her cloak and broke into a smile. "What are you doing, little sister?"

"This," she said, and threw some snow into his chest, laughing as she ran a few paces. Gendry was bent double, laughing as well, when Jon lobbed a pack of snow at his head.

"Is that how it is then, Snow?" Gendry asked. "Arya, I've changed my mind; you can be my best friend again."

"Oh, can I?" she called, then ran to stuff more snow down his collar. He grabbed her again, hoisting her over his shoulder with ease.

"If you keep doing that, I'm using you as a shield," he warned, dodging a throw from Jon. He did just as he'd threatened on the next and she shrieked again before he dropped her in the same snow pile. Jon was laughing, too, and ducked as she tossed a snowball at his head. The packed snow broke against the woolen cloak of the person standing behind him.

"Arya!" Sansa's voice snapped, so like how their mother's used to. She almost felt sorry for a moment, until she heard the Hound's gravelly chuckle.

"I'd be careful, my lord," Sansa said, stoic in response.

"Of a little snow?" he asked. Arya met the twinkle in Sansa's eye and grinned, gathering snow in deliberate movements. She stood, and raced around the bailey, throwing a cloud of snow over the back of the Hound's head.

"Run," she called to Sansa, grabbing her sister by the hand and tugging her along. Sansa actually laughed and raced with her to the sound of the Hound's curses. It had been far too long since her sister had found any joy, since they'd run together. Before Sansa knew what it was to be a lady, they had explored and played and laughed, all six of the Stark children. It felt like soaring.

"Here," Gendry called, having ducked behind a practice dummy, and Sansa tugged her that way. Then Jon appeared from behind Gendry and scooped Sansa into a twirl, falling backward with their sister into the snow, drenching them both in the cold as Gendry reached for Arya.

She whirled away again and looked for an escape, breathless, when she saw Daenerys looking down from the bailey wall, a sad smile on her face. It gave Arya pause, long enough for Gendry to catch her and drop snow over her head, and the Hound to catch them both, cursing under his breath about children and bloody snow. The Dragon Queen had never seen snow, she'd said, and had never had the time to be a child.

"Come join us, Your Grace," she called, before she scrambled away from the Hound. She saw Jon move to the bottom of the stairs and hold out a hand for the queen, saying something soft. The snow-haired queen smiled as Jon handed her a ball of snow, and then, in an instant, she broke it against his chest. The bailey erupted into madness again as Arya leaped on Gendry's back to throw a snowball at the Hound, who was helping Sansa rise from the pile where Jon had left her.

One of the horselords called from the ramparts and Daenerys responded, then threw a snowball after her words. The dark man seemed startled as the snow exploded at his feet. Arya couldn't watch anymore, as the Hound was coming for revenge, so she ran, and Gendry, too. As they flew by Jon and Daenerys, Arya blew snow in their faces and laughed at Jon's threats. By then, the curious eyes of the thousands who'd heard the commotion were on them, smallfolk and highborn alike, watching them make a mess of the yard, and eventually calling warnings, cheering. Lady Mormont dropped snow on them as they ran under her section of the ramparts, smirking at them. Ned Umber hooted until Alys Karstark tossed some in his face.

Summer's children, their parents had called them, and Arya smiled at the thought. Some of the true children she'd been training called to her and she waved, then let them catch her, tackle her, and start throwing snow at one another. They were summer children, she thought, as Gendry lifted two at a time and used them as shields, but they'd needed winter's joy.