Hello, y'all. Long time, no see. I woke up with an inspiration of how to braid the three strands of where my brain was taking these characters, where the books seemed to be taking the characters, and where the show has taken the characters. I want to write it now, before the series finale. It will be what it will be, but so will this.

The day had come for the travelers to depart. The night before, Arya had dreamt of Hound, lying where she had left him to die.

In the dream, she had crept up to his large, still body and leaned in to see if he was breathing. His eyes had opened, and he gritted out, "Off to kill the Queen, Stark Bitch? Leaving the Little Bird under Little Finger's thumb? Aye, that seems about right. Charging off like a slavering wolf."

Arya had jumped a bit—startled—when he'd first spoken, but now she drew back. "I'm not going to kill Cersea! I'm going with my husband and my brother to meet the Mother of Dragons."

"Why? Is she on your list, now?"

"What? No! I need to be with my husband, to…"

"Protect him?" the Hound chortled, his laugh stoking Arya's temper until he fell into choking coughs. "Have you married some soft pretty boy that he needs a half-pint like you to defend him?"

"No, but…"

"But what? You're a killer, girlie, I'll give you that, but you think you can protect your husband from a queen with three dragons? You'd be better off clearing the fox from your hen house! I just understand the way things are. How many Starks they gotta behead before you figure it out?"

Arya heard a rasping sound. The hound was looking at something over her shoulder, just as it was tapped by a cold, grey hand. Arya whirled to see a face she knew, and yet did not: gray, claw-marked and oozing black. She sat up in bed, gasping.

Gendry snapped awake, concerned. He wanted to hold his wife, but knew better than to touch her in this state. "Arya? 'Arry? You alright?"

She looked through him at first, looking almost as frightened as that day in the inn when the huntsman had held a knife to Gendry's throat. Then, suddenly, his Arya was back with him. "Gendry, I need to stay here."

Gendry sighed with relief. He had been turning the matter over in his mind since he was summoned to the Dragon Queen, and Gendry hadn't figured out how to convince his wife to stay at Winterfell. He'd known better than to try to tell Arya what to do, but if she'd come with him, she would be in danger from any remaining Freys, anyone loyal to Queen Cersea, and anyone who wanted to use her as a pawn to control her brother.

Jon had never admitted it, but in the days since they arrived in Winterfell, Gendry had lost count of the times he'd heard people refer to Arya as Jon's favorite sibling, or comment on how much happier the king was since her return. He'd overheard The Onion Knight admonishing Jon that he was too vulnerable where his siblings we're concerned.

From the gossip Gendry had heard while working in the armory, when Bolton killed his youngest half-brother, Jon had lost his temper. Every ounce of planning had gone out the window, and he'd almost gotten himself and all his men killed. That was for the death of a boy who, Arya said, Jon had barely known. Rickon had been so young before Jon went north to the wall that he'd spent most of his time following Lady Stark around. Jon and Katelyn Stark had avoided each other as much as possible. If the loss of Rickon has shaken Jon so deeply, Ser Davos asked, what would he do at the loss of someone he held dear? Jon replied that he'd learned his lesson.

Good," Seaworthy had said, "As you only survived by the intervention of Littlefinger's troops—an intervention I'd not count on receiving again."

Gendry was out of his depths in so many ways, feeling about as lost as he had ever felt, out to sea in that tiny, cursed rowboat. He knew his marriage wouldn't be like the ones he'd seen in Fleabottom, and it didn't seem like the ones he'd seen of the high and mighty—albeit from a distance. But he knew he had to go, and he also knew that his wife needed to stay, and he thanked the gods, old and new, that she had come to that conclusion herself.

He nodded and chose his words carefully. "Your sister will be glad to have you at her side. I'll be glad to know you're safe here."

She smirked. "There's no such thing as a safe place. But yes, I have to stay here…and you and my brother have to go bend the knee."

"You think he will?" Gendry asked. "To protect the North, I think he'd do anything."

"They say he's in love with her," Gendry said.

"Maybe," Arya said. "I know you met my father, but I'm sorry you never really got to know him. Knowing Jon is as close as one can come, though. That's why people love Jon—why they follow him. It's why they try to kill him!

"My father was too honorable for his own good. When he learned that Robert was not Joffrey's father, he couldn't stay silent, and the truth he told put his head on the block. Sansa begged him to recant…to spare us from seeing him killed. They told Sansa if he did, he could go to the wall. I couldn't believe it, when I heard my father call out in that square that he was a traitor who had schemed to take the Iron Throne.

"He was willing to sacrifice his honor to spare us. I used to think that he put love ahead of the good of the kingdom, but I see it differently, now. Dead, he could do no more to help the seven kingdoms. By confessing, he thought to protect us from the wrath of Joffrey and Cersea while buying himself more time. Even casting off his honor, he had honorable motives. I don't know why, but I think of that, now."