Okay so that was going to be a one shot, but I thought I'd tag this on there as well because some of you were slightly confused as to the nature of Arya's relationship with Gendry. Hope this helps.

The forge was dark, covered in shadows. The only light came from the last embers of the fire that Gendry kept picking at, stoking, even though the time for work was over a long time ago. He was never much for waiting, though, and even though he was exhausting his body in this way, pounding on the hot metal until his muscles turned to tar, he did not think he could stop. His mind was burning along with the coals, and it had been ever since he had seen Arya.

A few paces away, barely visible in the flickering light, was Lawna, curled into a ball on her cot, fast asleep, cradling her sword in her arms. She had been so excited to show Arya the sword, that she had insisted on staying up, far past her bed time. But soon, as the darkness bled into the light of day, and grew thick in the shadows, her eyes began to droop closed, her head falling to the cot, and her breathing turning deep and long, drifting off to sleep.

Gendry sighed, throwing another look at her. He had wrapped a blanket around her shoulders hours ago, but he still worried that she was cold. They usually slept next to each other, to keep out the cold, and usually, he would tell her a story before she fell asleep. He wasn't much for stories, and she often made fun of him for his poor delivery, but she liked the same ones, told again and again, and he found himself making the same mistakes just so she could correct them, giggling when she did.

"I knew you'd be better at it than I would," Arya had said one night, a year or so back, as they watched Lawna sleep after Arya had escaped Sansa's angry eyes.

"She loves you though," Gendry had said with a frown. "You're all she ever talks about. Lady Stark this, Lady Stark that. She loves your stories too, makes me tell them to her every night exactly how you tell them."

Arya looked away, having the good grace to look slightly ashamed. Gendry didn't ask, he never asked, but the question was still there. When are you going to come back and stay? When are you going to stop leaving?

She had left the next day, and had been gone for what seemed like years, but, in reality, hadn't been her longest time away. And when she had come back, it was like it always was, like she never left.

And that night, when Lawna was tucked away, fast asleep and snoring, they had escaped to the loft and made love like they had their first time. Desperately, as if to imprint every touch, every caress, deep into each others skin, a mark that would never leave. And afterwards, when they had laid together, cradling each other, Gendry had been sure that this time she would not leave.

And, for a short two months, it seemed like she wouldn't. She did not make preparations for a journey, and Jon had confessed to Gendry that she had told Sansa that her visit would be a long one. In fact, she spent a ridiculous amount of time with Gendry and their daughter, listening to the stories and history that Lawna could recite better than any song.

"Jon teaches her," Gendry explained when Arya had given him a questioning look. "He has a soft spot for bastards."

At first, Sansa had been annoyed, and more than once Gendry had caught her arguing with Arya about the propriety of such behavior, but then, it would seem that her elder sisters heart melted slightly towards Arya's two bastards, and she let her younger sister spend most of her time with Gendry.

"She doesn't want me to be like I was, when I returned," Arya confessed one night as they laid together, Lawna sleeping down in the forge below them. "She's afraid of my unhappiness."

"So am I," Gendry confessed stupidly, and Arya gave him a half smile.

"Then you have nothing to fear," she said, but the statement seemed stale, and the smile didn't reach her eyes, and Gendry felt, for a moment, a stab of fear. He brushed it off as she brought her lips to his, kissing him deeply. But he should have heeded the fear.

A few days later, Arya had not visited the forge, and then three more days passed, and Lawna was asking after her, constantly. Gendry was worried too, Arya was usually not so seclusive. He had thought that perhaps it was Sansa, who had had a change of heart and kept her locked up, but even then Arya never listened to her sister.

"She's unwell," Jon said with a frown when Gendry inquired after her. "I saw her yesterday, and she thinks she might have caught a chill."

"A chill?" Gendry repeated dubiously. "She is of the North. She thrives in the cold."

But Jon had no answer for him, and he had been left questioning. And his questions were never answered, because the next day she was gone, gone without so much as a goodbye.

Lawna had wept bitterly, and Gendry had been nothing short of furious, but what was he to do? He was just a bastard blacksmith, the Brotherhood knighting him or not, and he had no control over a lady.

Now, of course, he knew why she had left. And it wasn't because of a chill, either. She hadn't been ill, she had been pregnant, and she must have known, and she had not told him. She had not told him and she had left, for five months, and now she was back, all swollen and smiling, and he wasn't sure he could smile back.

At first he had been overwhelmed with joy, and so had Lawna.

"I will have a brother," she had chirped with certainty. "And he will be so beautiful and sweet that Lady Stark will have to stay."

It had been those words that had turned his joy sour. Lawna was too young, and far too innocent to know the effect her words and certainty hurt him, for they echoed his own thoughts when Arya had been with child the first time.

She won't leave now, he had thought with such foolish stupidity. Now she'll stay forever.

But he was older now, and wiser, and he knew that as soon as the babe was born and she was healthy enough to travel, she would be gone, leaving him with two bastards and only the promise of a nurse to help him raise them.

"Gendry."

He turned around to see her, dusked in moonlight, standing at the entrance of the forge, giving him a soft look. Every time she had returned in the past, she had stood there and said his name, and every time he had dropped what he was doing and had taken her in his arms and kissed her, his anger and hurt and demanding questions forgotten. But this time was different.

"You knew, didn't you?" He said, setting down his hammer. "You knew you were with child. That's why you left."

She looked taken aback, startled, but then she sighed, as though she had been expecting this.

"I needed some time to think," she said. "I wasn't sure, you see..."

"You weren't sure?" Gendry demanded, feeling anger flare up inside him. "About what?"

"About whether I wanted another child," she said in a low voice, not looking at him, but instead at Lawna.

"Well it won't be your child, will it?" Gendry snarled, feeling hateful. "Not really."

At once he could see that he had gone too far. There was a flash of deadness across her face, an emptiness that he hadn't seen in a long time, and fear pierced his heart.

"Don't act like you're the innocent here," she snapped, her expression composed and poised, but in her voice there was a hint of her true feelings. "I didn't force myself upon you. I didn't rape you. You fucked me just as much as I fucked you."

Gendry cringed at her harsh words and threw a look over at Lawna, who was, thankfully, still fast asleep.

"I never asked you to leave," he said in a low voice. "And if it was just me, I wouldn't care, but you're hurting our daughter."

The deadness that was across her face vanished, replaced with a bitter regret as she stole another look at the sleeping child.

"She doesn't even call you mother," Gendry said. "No, it's Lady Stark. Do you know why? It's because she's afraid. She's afraid if she calls you anything else, you'll leave."

"That's silly," Arya said.

"Is it?" Gendry demanded. "I don't think so. The first time I told you I loved you, you were gone."

"That was because we had a wildling problem-"

"No," Gendry cut across her angrily. "That was because you didn't love me back."

Hurt pooled in Arya's eyes, but he knew that he was right. That she hadn't loved him back, probably because she was so lost then, almost a wild thing herself.

"I didn't want to love you," she said. "You know that. I was afraid."

"And you're afraid now," he said gruffly. "Or else you would have stayed, with me and with her."

Arya looked at Lawna again.

"Jon was telling me how good you are with her," she said softly. "He says that there isn't a moment where you two aren't together."

"She still needs her mother, Arya," Gendry said, and though he tone was firm, his voice was soft.

Arya looked up at him, straight into his eyes, for a long time.

"I know," she said. "That's why I came back.