Chapter Six

GENDRY

Gendry leaned back in his chair, taking in his surroundings with a satisfied smile as he took a long draught from his tankard of ale. The tavern that the company had called into for supper was full and raucous, and Gendry couldn't help but be reminded of his earliest memories. Life had been easier back then. Less dangerous.

The men sharing his table were excellent companions, something of a rarity when surrounded by the king's men. A couple of sellswords who had joined the travellers down the Kingsroad sat opposite him, and had spent much of the evening regaling the table with stories of grisly fights and sordid affairs. To his left sat his natural uncle, Renly Baratheon. He was resplendent as always in his dark green and gold doublet, and Gendry had actually felt flattered when one of the sellswords, Royce, had pointed out that the two of them looked very alike.

On Renly's other side, closest to the wall, was Ser Loras Tyrell. He was near as pretty as a maiden, with his golden curls and long-lashed eyes. Still, he was a respected fighter, and good conversation besides. Gendry, like almost everyone else, pretended not to see the secret smiles and lingering looks that passed between Ser Loras and his uncle.

To Gendry's right sat Tommen. It was one of the rare times that his eleven year old brother had been allowed out from under Cersei's skirts for a meal, and it had taken a great deal of cajoling on Renly's part for the queen to have agreed. He seemed inordinately pleased at being allowed to sup with the adults for once, and got so overexcited when Gendry had snuck him a taste of ale that he'd near sloshed the whole tankard down his front. Renly had laughed heartily at that, ruffling his flaxen curls with one large hand.

"What do you say, nephew?" Renly asked, bumping his shoulder against Gendry's genially. Gendry hadn't been listening, in truth, but was struck with a swell of affection for his uncle all the same. Renly was perhaps the only member of his father's family who treated him no differently than his half-siblings.

"What do I say to what?"

"When you get home, we take you on a visit to one of Littlefinger's..." He caught sight of Tommen, and quickly edited what he had been about to say. "Establishments."

Gendry, to his own chagrin, blushed. "Uh... that's not necessary."

"It's an experience every young man should have," Flynn, the other sellsword at their table, interjected. "How old are you? Eighteen?"

"I was nineteen a moon past," Gendry admitted. "But I..."

"High time you turned over some coin to an establishment, I would say," Flynn declared. "You're a man grown."

"I know," Gendry replied slowly. "But I, that is, I've already..."

"Visited?" Renly smirked. "You never told me about that."

"I didn't pay. It wasn't like that."

Loras leaned around Renly, interested now. "Oh? Tell us about her, then. The girl who won your heart."

"It wasn't like that, either," Gendry mumbled, eyes fixed on the table. "She was just... it was..." Not what it should have been, he thought privately. He had bedded a serving wench named Farra in one of the taverns in Flea Bottom when he was six-and-ten. It had gone on for a few weeks, before Gendry realised that she had expectations of him he could not deliver on. She thought that he was going to ask her to marry him, but the truth was that, pretty as she was, there was something missing. He had broken it off shortly thereafter, and hadn't seen her since. Still, he felt horribly guilty whenever he thought about it. "I did not care for her like I should have."

"See? This is why you make use of Littlefinger when you're in the capital," Renly advised in a low voice. "His girls don't expect anything but a few coins from you."

Gendry turned to his uncle with a rueful smile and answered, equally quietly, "Am I supposed to believe that you've visited his girls?"

Renly's lips twitched. "If you like."

"Well, thank you, but I..."

Suddenly, the sound of raised voices met Gendry's ears. He stopped mid-sentence, frowning in confusion in the direction of the noise. It was coming from outside the tavern, and it grew increasingly louder. The patrons paused in their conversations to listen, intrigued, until the door burst open.

In walked Eddard Stark, flanked by Jory Cassel and a few more of his men whose names Gendry did not know. There was a fevered, frantic look in Lord Stark's eyes that made Gendry's blood run cold. He glanced around for a few moments, his gaze seeming to touch every face in the tavern before it eventually settled on Gendry. Without another word, Lord Stark strode towards him.

"Have you seen her?" he demanded.

"Seen who?" Gendry was so surprised that he forgot his courtesies, but Ned Stark looked as though he hadn't even noticed. His grey gaze was piercing, like the sharp points of the icicles that hung from the battlements of Winterfell's keep.

"Arya. She's missing."

Thud. Gendry's sharp jerk of shock knocked his tankard over. It rolled along the table top, spilling its contents as it went. "Missing? How? When?"

"I do not know." Stark ran one hand through his tangled, shaggy hair. "There was an incident earlier, with the crown prince. Joffrey was hurt, and Arya disappeared somewhere into the woods along the Kingsroad."

"Where was she last seen?" Gendry pressed, as Tommen piped up, "Joff got hurt?"

He should have felt guilty that he did not pause to spare a thought for his injured brother, but he didn't. Joffrey deserved to be hurt, and the worse the better, in Gendry's opinion. His main concern was Arya, out there in the woods alone.

Gods only knew what was out there. Thieves and bandits and rapers. Maybe worse. The next thing he knew, he was on his feet, fists clenched at his sides. "I'll come and help you look for her, my lord."

"Thank you," Lord Stark inclined his head. Loras rose from his seat shortly afterwards, and volunteered to join the search party. In the last moment, they remembered Tommen, and Renly towed him out of his chair by the elbow.

"I shall go and take Tommen back to his mother," he offered. "And then I will join you in your search as well."

Gendry felt as though he had been walking in the woods for hours. His voice was going hoarse from the amount of times he had yelled Arya's name. Earlier, he'd had a partner to assist him, some young knight in sworn service to his royal father, but he shook him off at the first opportunity he had. He didn't know why, but Gendry thought it much more likely that Arya would come out of hiding if she heard his voice calling her alone.

"Arya!" he bellowed again. The sound bounced off the surrounding trees, echoing in shadowy places. The light had long since died, and the flame from the torch he held aloft cast barely enough of a glow for him to see ten paces ahead of his own feet. "Arya, are you there?"

Fear gnawed at his gut. Whatever had transpired between Arya and his brother, Gendry thought that it must've been awful if she still hadn't come back. The wild little wolf was not afraid of much, but being alone in the darkened woods must have been getting to her by now.

Please let her be alright. Gendry sent up a silent prayer to the gods. It was one of a countless number he had uttered in the last few days – in the month since he'd met Arya Stark, he had made more prayers than he'd ever made in the rest of his nineteen years.

"Arya! It's Gendry! Where are you?"

Distantly, he could hear other people's shouts, blending into each other in the night. The searcher nearest him was not close enough for Gendry to see in the night time – he could just barely make out the flicker of his torch.

"Arya?" he called, desperation leaking into his voice now. "Gods, please be alive. Arya!"

Then, it came. A faint whisper, but unmistakeable. He knew the voice, had heard it over and over in his head until it was as familiar to him as his own. "Gendry?"

He whipped around, and there she stood. She was trembling against the chill without a cloak, and Gendry fumbled one-handedly with the clasps of his own in order to hand it over to her. She took it with shaking fingers, wrapping it tightly around her small form. It was comically large for her.

A relief so acute that it was almost painful swelled inside Gendry as he drank her in with his eyes. She looked wretched and dirty – with a scrape on her cheek and twigs in her unruly hair – but she was real, and she was standing in front of him. Mostly in one piece.

"You scared me," he admitted. "I thought that the rapers had got you."

Arya stared at him for a moment, her expression hard and inscrutable. Gendry wondered briefly if she might hit him again, or scold him for having such little faith in her, or deny that she was afraid. Instead, she did something that surprised the breath right out of him.

She launched herself into his arms.

He caught her deftly with his free arm – she weighed practically as little as one of the twigs in her hair – but his heart thudded too quickly against his ribs as she fastened her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. Their height difference meant that Gendry held her a foot off the ground, but if Arya was uncomfortable, she did not complain.

"She didn't mean to," she mumbled into his shirt. "She didn't mean to hurt him badly. She was just protecting me."

"Nymeria?" Gendry checked, though he had gotten the story from Eddard Stark earlier. Well, some warped version of it, he suspected, considering it was Joffrey who had told him. "She bit him, didn't she?"

"Yes, but only because he was attacking Mycah!"

Gendry went suddenly still, ice flooding through his veins again for no reason he could explain. In a voice too eerily calm to pass for nonchalant, he asked, "Who's Mycah?"

"The butcher's boy. He was helping me practice swordplay, and then Joffrey and Sansa showed up, and Joffrey drew his stupid sword and cut Mycah's cheek, so I hit him and took Lion's Tooth and threw it in the river."

Gendry almost laughed at that image. His brother was a vicious beast, and it would've been amusing to watch him being bested by a girl half his size and three years his junior. "And then what happened?" he prompted.

"Then Joffrey hit me, and he was about to strike me again when Nymeria jumped in and bit his arm."

The arm Gendry had looped around Arya's waist tightened protectively. "He hit you?"

"I suppose I did hit him first."

"That's not the point." Anger was making the hand holding the torch tremble. "He had no right to... how badly did Nymeria hurt him?"

"Not that badly. Just his arm."

"That's a shame," Gendry said savagely. "She could have at least bitten his hand off."

He had meant it in truth, but Arya found it funny. She let out a soft giggle, pulling her face back from his shoulder in order to better look him in the eye. "I didn't want to come out at first," she whispered. "I thought that Father would be furious, and that the king would haul me in for questioning or something. But when I heard your voice, I knew I could hardly stay hidden like a craven when you were out here looking for me."

Gendry felt a swooping sensation in the pit of his stomach, like he had missed a step going down stairs. He was suddenly acutely aware of how close Arya's face was to his, how there was barely more than two inches of air between their lips. Remembering his place, he banished the thoughts that were stirring to life in his brain before they could fully form. Slowly, carefully, he set her down and took a step back.

"Your lord father is out of his mind with worry, Arya. We should go back to the tavern so that they can call off their search."

"He'll be furious," she whispered, biting down on her lower lip.

"He won't. He'll just be glad that you are safe."

She peered up at him with a shrewd look in her stormy eyes. "What about your father?"

"I can't promise that he won't be angry. But I won't let him yell at you for something that is obviously Joff's doing. I can promise that."

Without thinking, Gendry reached over and tucked a lock of her dark hair behind one of her ears. It was a casual gesture, not born of any hidden agendas or desires, but it made the both of them catch their breath all the same. Arya averted her eyes swiftly, and, if Gendry didn't know better, he would have sworn that she was blushing.

But that was ludicrous. Arya Stark did not blush.

Did she?

A/N - I know it's been a while. RL had me rushed off my feet! Hoping to pick this up more regularly again though.

~OVR