If the gods are real, then Gendry thinks they must be laughing at him. Fool, they mock from the trees, the sea, the air. Fool.
If the gods are real, then they would be right; he is a fool, and Gendry knows this now. A fool to think that she would marry him, to think that she loved him in the same way that he loved her.
No. He is being unfair. Perhaps she does love him, in her own way. Perhaps not; Gendry doesn't know. He had thought, naively, that he did know her, that he had finally been able to see past her carefully controlled masks and disguises, through the shadows that she wraps so tightly around herself. But no, he realises, he had failed in that regard, and now he is paying the price for it.
He cannot bear to look at her any longer. Not through her fault - she has not wronged him, she could never wrong him - but through his own, for coming to her tonight and asking something of her that she can never give. He does not blame her for that; he at least knows that Arya is not someone to be contained. He wonders if she came to him because he is the only one who did not try to; everyone else around here calls her Lady Arya, but he never did. And then.
And then, 'Be the Lady of Storm's End,' he had asked, and he could curse himself now for it. Arya is a lady in nothing but name; she has reminded him of that fact often enough that it should have stuck by now.
It is cruel, he thinks. When he was just a bastard, she had begged to be his family, and he had turned her down because she was high-born, unreachable. He is Lord Baratheon now, her equal, yet she is no less unreachable, no less unknowable.
"Any Lady would be lucky to have you," she told him, but he is not so sure. These Ladies she speaks of, they were all born into this life of privilege and wealth, of good manners and etiquette. They would not want a husband such as him, who grew up under a roof that always leaked and knows nothing of politics or ruling.
More to the point, he does not want a wife such as them. He realises, all too abruptly, that he does not want a Lady who would manage his household and mend his clothes and birth his children. He does not want a Lady to address him as 'my Lord' and stand meekly by his side. He wants a sharp tongue and a steely glare; he wants skilled hands and deadly precision; he wants wildness and freedom and bravery. He wants Arya.
But he cannot have her, and he must learn a life without her in it. He'd managed it once, but that had been before. Before the dead and before whatever this is - before her, really. He doesn't think he'll be able to ever forget her, never again.
That night, he sleeps fitfully, startling awake after dreams of her mouth and her hands and her body on his. Eventually, he gives up and walks out into the deserted courtyard, shivering in the early Northern air. Dawn is barely upon them, but soon everyone else will be waking and preparing to leave, Gendry amongst them. He will travel to Storm's End, to take what was once his father's seat and begin his life as Lord Baratheon. Arya is travelling South too, to King's Landing, to war and death and bloodshed. Gendry wants to believe that this is not the last he will see of her, but there's a heaviness in his heart that tells him this is the end.
Gendry thinks, as he rides away from Winterfell and from Arya, that if the gods are real, then they are cruel indeed.