The Bastards: Volume One

Along the Road

The cuts and bruises on Gendry's face were finally starting to heal, though now a few had been reopened. A small streak of blood had coated his temple and some of his overgrown black hair. And there was a red scar permnantly etched about his eyebrow. His ribs hurt. He drank water from the stream while next to him, Arya knelt down to wipe the blood from her hands.

"Does this mean you're talking now?" He asked hopelessly. wiping blood from his lip. He'd asked her that everyday for the last month.

Arya said nothing.

"Thanks for that." He said, pointing to the dead body behind them. Arya plunged Needle into the river and let the current wash the blood away. "Though don't ever do it again."

"Why not?" Arya growled. "I can fight. Clearly I can fight. I'm just as capable as you are."

"Maybe so, but I don't want you to." Gendry replied with just as much anger. He stood up and walked from the water.

"Why not?"

"Because you're four and ten, Arry!" He cried out, trying to keep his voice down, that's what had gotten them in trouble in the first place. "You're just a girl. I don't want to change that."

"Just a girl?!" Arya yelled, she did not care if they were found again, she'd rather be mad.

"That's not what I meant." Gendry said quietly. And she knew that, but she was looking for another fight. "You're just a kid. I don't want that to change."

"This is what I've always wanted." She said, lifting up the tail of her shirt to wipe her sword dry.

"None of this is what you've always wanted." Gendry replied. "Your father is dead, Arya, He's gone. Your sister is probably stuck in the Capital, we don't know where your mother is, or if she even made it safely out of the city. You expect me to believe that you're happy because you finally got to swing your stupid little sword at a goldcloak? Because you're wearing breeches and pretending to be a boy? Don't insult me, Arry, I'm not that stupid."

He turned and walked away, heading back to the stream. He'd spent all their time along the road in silence. He was giving her space, letting her cope, atoning for his sins. But she wasn't coping, she was tuning him, and everybody else, out. She was becoming hard and coarse and he could see it.

So he shouldn't have been surprised when her foot landed on his back and he flew forward into the stream. He felt his hand cut open on a sharp, slippery stone. He flipped himself around, choking up water, when it cleared from his eyes he was staring down the edge of her sword.

"He wouldn't be dead if you had gone back for him. Or if you had let me go back for him. If you hadn't knocked me out and carried me away. And Sansa wouldn't be missing, or being tortured in King's Landing, she would be here with me if you had let me go or gone back for her right away." Gendry stared at her. She thrust her sword at him. "Why did you do it?"

"He knew what he was doing." Gendry said. "He knew the moment he sent that letter to Stannis. He knew since he and my father began looking for Cersei's motives, since he opened the book that proved Joffrey was not my brother. He knew what he was doing, and he was going to do it, because Lord Eddard Stark was a just man. And he knew that that would be his last act, he knew, on one level or another, that he wouldn't make it out of King's Landing after the news go out. And he had no escape plan. He knew, and he made it my job to get you out when the time was right. I'm sorry it came sooner than either he or I thought, but I was just doing what I was told."

She gritted her teeth and eventually sheathed her sword. She made no move to help him up, only to stand over him as he lay in the stream.

"Everything alright, children?" Lem called out.

"Fine." Arya said, turning on her heels and stomping passed the Brotherhood.

"We dug a grave." Tom said. "Normally, we'd let 'em float down the river, but we can't have them being found. Can't have you being found."

Gendry stood up and shook some of the water from his clothes. "Let's start burying him then" Gendry moved to pick up the gold cloak's feet.

"This is better than he ever got." Arya grumbled.

Lem said nothing, just picked up the dead man's arms and nodded sadly.

As they dragged the man's body through the trees to the makeshift grave, a trail of blood dripped from his throat where Arya had skewered him.

"Bit hard to cover that up." Anguy said, trailing behind them, watching for eyes in the forest.

Gendry nodded, the trail of blood might give them away, but Arya would give them away first. You couldn't contain a wolf, especially not one who was looking for a fight.

Their first day out on the road, Arya had only said three words to Gendry.

"Where's my sword?" She'd only asked at the end of the third day, after Gendry had asked her countless times if she was okay, after offering her food only to have her eat nothing, after bringing her water to share only have her drink it all. After finding her a blanket to sleep on as opposed to just the muddy earth. Every time he tried to sleep next to her she would get up and move, eventually he relented and opted for sleeping across the clearing from her, so he could watch her from afar throughout the night and keep her safe.

He turned towards her, never more glad for the fact that his body burned like a Forge, and asked.

"Arya, please. Please, say something."

And it was a question he couldn't answer. When he said nothing, she turned around and went to sleep.

She knew she had her sword with her in the Keep, which means that Gendry had lost it as he carried her out of the city.

Those were the only words she would say to him for quite some time.

He understood. After all, he'd made her lose everything.

They'd been fighting when two goldcloaks had found them. Arya had been yelling too loudly, her mind full of anger and her voice unused for the last month. And Gendry had never known the meaning of the word quiet.

She'd began shouting at him by the stream, she wasn't sure what finally made her burst, but it had something to do with how he'd caught her from almost falling into stream. As if a bit of water on the fabric of her breeches would make any difference. As if she couldn't keep her own balance. As if she was the only one he was able to help, like she didn't have family members lying dead back within the walls of their old home. And why couldn't he have helped them?

It was mostly because of that that she hit him. But also the idea that after a month of not speaking, of hating him, of cursing his existence, of praying foolishly to be back in King's, of wishing she could've known what could've been, she was mad that he felt he had any right to touch her. After all he'd done to her, in her name, for her, he couldn't give her and inch of space. That's why she'd punched him, hard, in the ribs, multiple times.

Then the yelling had started. Cursing, mostly. Then the goldcloaks had shown up. Then she saw Needle, her Needle, hanging from one of their belts. Then one attacked Gendry, recognizing him immediately, while the other fell to the ground with an arrow to the thigh, courtesy of Anguy, who'd been nearby.

The goldcloak had ran off to the woods and Anguy had to chase him down. The remaining one attacked Gendry, forcing him under the water, bypassing Arya entirely, though she had to admit, she was better hidden than Gendry was. He'd hacked off her hair, dirtied her clothes, gotten rid of any trace of the Capital. And though he been hidden inside the Red Keep's walls most of his life, the goldcloaks knew him all too well.

Arya walked to the guard, who was completely distracted with trying to drown the Prince that he didn't hear her unsheathing her tiny Needle from his own belt.

She stood over him, and thought of the Queen, the woman who had ordered her father's death, and watched it happen. And then as easily as practicing her water dancing, she slid the sword through the back of his neck. The blood gurgled and she could hear the sound of him struggling for last breaths, she could hear the blood spitting from his mouth and covering Gendry's shirt and face.

The Prince, no longer held down, resurfaced from the water and pushed the guard from him. When he turned and landed with a thud on the wet stone Arya was surprised to see his face, and not Cersei's.

She stared down at the scene in complete confusion, while Gendry sputtered for breath. He looked pale and shaken as he coughed for air.

Arya's eyes trailed from the dead body up the grass to the sword in her hand, "Huh," She said. "I got my sword back."

Gendry continued to stare at her like she was a monster. Then turned around and threw up in the stream. Arya just flipped her sword back and forth in her hand. "Your hands are covered in blood." She said, all calm and blasé.

And so he began wash them.