Thank you all so much for the wonderful response to this story! I hope you continue to enjoy it! Updates will be weekly to the best of my ability, although they may increase in frequency once my exams are over.
Arya wakes later that evening. Gendry's just concluding a meeting with one of the lesser lords of the Stormlands when a clearly distressed maid rushes in, telling him that Arya's awake and demanding to see him. He jumps out of his seat immediately, ignoring the startled protest from the lord, and strides down the hall. He hates that he wasn't there when she woke, but the maester had told him very firmly that Arya needed rest, and he had to fulfil his duties to his people. He'd begrudgingly listened, but his mind had never strayed far from her the entire day.
Arya's sitting up in bed when he enters, dressed in a simple shift. Her face is covered in bruises and she has a bandage wrapped around her forehead, but her eyes are bright and she looks like herself again.
"My Lord," she greets, her mouth quirked up in a teasing smile. Gendry rolls his eyes, the formality sounding strange coming from her lips, but smiles anyway.
"M'lady," he responds, sitting in the chair at her bedside.
She raises her eyebrows disapprovingly. "My Lady," she corrects, smirking at his bewildered expression. "You're a lord now; you'll have to learn how to speak proper."
He laughs, relief bubbling up in his chest. "Aye, I suppose I will. I'll add it to the list; you should have seen the maester's face when he realised I can't read."
She smiles genuinely at that, then a comfortable silence falls between them. Gendry takes solace in the sound of her quiet breathing, in the gentle rise and fall of her chest. In the light of the room, he can see the scars littering her arms more clearly than he did before, and she'll have a rather impressive one on her head once the bandage is removed. His eyes drift unbidden down to her abdomen, to what he knows lies beneath the shift, and he sighs heavily, his good mood dissipating. More than ever, he yearns to know how she came to have these scars, but he knows her well enough by now to realise that she'll only tell him when she wants to, and not a moment before. It frustrates him, but Gendry is a patient man. He can wait.
"I thought I was going to die in that city." Arya's quiet voice shatters the silence, and Gendry's eyes snap back to her face. Her expression is impassive, but her eyes are pained, and his heart aches for her. He starts to reach out to her, but stops himself just in time, not knowing whether his touch would be welcome.
"Arya, what- What happened?" he asks. What happened to you?
She seems to hear what he left unspoken, and her gaze goes far away as she speaks. "The Dragon Queen burned the city to ashes. I'd snuck inside with Sandor - the Hound - to kill Cersei, but then the Red Keep started to collapse and he made me see sense. I got out, but the city was just as dangerous. I thought I would die - I should have died."
Gendry opens his mouth to tell her no, but she cuts him off with a stern look and his protests die on his lips.
"There was a woman and her daughter," she begins again, much quieter this time. "The woman saved me, and I tried to save her. I found them hiding and I thought I would be able to get them out, so I led them all outside. Then the dragon came, and they died anyway. I don't know why I'm not dead, too."
Her voice trails off as tears begin to track their way down her cheeks. She turns her head away, but Gendry gathers his courage and puts a hand on her cheek, causing her to look back at him. She doesn't draw away from his touch, so he reaches out with his other hand and places it on top of hers.
"It wasn't your fault," he murmurs softly. "No one could have saved them, Arya, not even you, so don't blame yourself."
Her eyes search his face and she opens her mouth as if to say something, but then there's a knock at the door and they jump apart. Arya wipes her face and, just as quickly as it had gone, her mask of carefully controlled neutrality is back. Gendry sighs in annoyance, but gets up and opens the door, revealing the maester.
"A raven, my Lord," he says, bowing his head. "From Jon Snow."
Behind him, Gendry hears Arya sitting up straighter, her attention won, but he focuses back on the maester, waiting expectantly for him to read it. The maester shifts uncomfortably, his eyes darting between Arya and Gendry.
"Perhaps it would be better to read it privately, my Lord," he suggests. Gendry just rolls his eyes.
"I'm sure whatever is contained in the letter will be of interest to her as well," he points out, and the maester has no choice but to concede the point.
Lord Baratheon,
Thank you for agreeing to help. We'll need all the men we can get if we cannot solve this situation soon. And thank you for telling me that my sister is with you at Storm's End, although I do wonder why she travelled to you rather than returning to our lines. Perhaps she can send me a raven of her own.
Be ready.
Jon Snow
When the maester finishes reading, Arya gets up from bed and snatches the paper from his hands. He turns to protest to Gendry, but he just ushers him out and closes the door, watching Arya in amusement as she reads the message, pacing around the room.
"He's right, you know," Gendry says. "You should have gone back to the camp rather than coming here."
"What does he mean?" she asks, ignoring Gendry completely. She stares up at him with a challenge in her eyes, and Gendry swallows hard under the intensity of her gaze. "What agreement?"
"I received a letter from your brother just before you arrived," he explains. "He asked that we continue the alliance of our fathers, and said he was...worried about the new Queen."
He sees the moment understanding dawns on Arya, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. "And you accepted?"
"Of course, I- Arya," he protests. "Why wouldn't I?"
She folds her arms across her chest and shrugs. "She's the reason you're a lord. Why wouldn't you be loyal to her?"
"You think I care about all this?" he demands, scowling at her. "My whole life, I've wanted a name to claim as my own, but I don't care about the rest of it. The castle, the lordship, all of it - it doesn't matter. None of it does, not unless -" He stops himself abruptly, before he can make the same mistake twice, but he knows she heard him anyway. She doesn't say anything, just continues staring at him, and so Gendry leaves the room, cursing himself and this girl who both infuriates and entrances him in equal measure.
He doesn't see her again until the next afternoon, when he is receiving his subjects in the Great Hall. There aren't many; most of the people here are still getting used to even having a lord, as Storm's End has been unoccupied since Renly rode off to war and never came back. Even so, they come, and the maester assures him that the numbers will increase with time. Gendry find himself both dreading and awaiting that time.
After the last one has been dealt with - a man whose crops have stopped growing as winter travels south - Gendry gets up to leave, only then seeing her lounging against a pillar.
"How long you been there?" he calls out, raising an eyebrow.
"Long enough," she responds, pushing away from the pillar and walking towards him, boots clicking on the stone floor. She's wearing new clothes, he notes, though he doesn't know where she's found them from. Probably one of the servants fetched them for her, as they've been doing for him.
"You're good at this, you know," she tells him, stopping a few feet away from him. He feels a sudden burst of pride at her praise, though he tries to shove it down.
"Oh yeah?" he challenges. "And you think that why?"
She rolls her eyes in exasperation, though Gendry thinks he can detect a hint of fondness underneath it all. "I used to watch my father doing this all the time," she says. "I know what a good lord looks like when I see one. Besides, your people like you. It's obvious."
"They barely know me," he counters.
"Yes they do. You're not some fancy lord who's known nothing but this. You're lowborn, just like them, which means they trust you more." The surety in her voice startles Gendry, and he can barely believe what she's saying. He doesn't think he's doing a good job - how can he be, when he can't read or write, when he relies on his maester for just about everything?
"I- You- What-" he stammers, but he's saved by one of the men coming in with a scroll. He groans internally at the sight - he's had enough ravens in the past week to last a lifetime - but Arya's striding over to grab the letter before the man can even get a word out. She breaks the seal and scans it quickly; when she looks back at him again, her face is grim but her eyes are alight with something like excitement.
She hands it over, and he recognises Snow's writing immediately, but the three words on the page mean nothing to him. He looks at her expectantly, and Gendry's heart sinks with dread as she reads the message.
Call the banners.