A/N: This is the last of my backlog of chapters! Hopefully I'll get the chance to continue this, school permitting, but updates will be more irregular from now on.
He's in the bathroom when he hears the front door slam open.
"Gendry! Gendry!" Heavy footsteps thud towards the bedroom. "Get out of there! We need to-" The bathroom door rattles alarmingly.
"Seven hells!" he roars. "Let me piss in peace, will you?" He hears her splutter and stomp out to the living room.
When he returns, business done, she's pacing nervously. "This is big, really big."
"What?" He peers at her as she worries her short hair, now shaved into an undercut, with the top tied back into a stubby tail. She must have half a tube of gel on it.
Her transformation from boy to girl is complete, and he occasionally has trouble remembering that, yes, this kid is Arya Stark, and no, she doesn't have a dick. She stands like she does, though, legs splayed, shoulders thrown back and chin jutting up Her jeans are ripped and her hoodie barely conceals the lump of gun at her hip. When she shrugs the hoodie off, her chest is completely flat. He wonders vaguely if the binder is uncomfortable, but if it pains her, she doesn't complain. She does, however, complain about the contacts colouring her eyes a muddy hazel and the men's deodorant she has to wear; he doesn't blame her. Whoever thought that that stuff would ever attract women was severely mistaken.
"There's gonna be a demonstration," she tells him after a few mutters. "Out by the Mud Gate. The Bright Banners were dealing on their turf, and Hoat's not happy. Gendry, this is my chance! I could get in so easily!"
"Have you got a plan?"
"...No?"
He sighs. "Start with that. I'll go find out what I can." He shoves an old newspaper and a marker at her as she sits down with a crash and goes to grab his laptop.
She scribbles beside him as he accesses the police database, quickly navigating to the Bright Banners. An old gang of ill repute, dumb enough and desperate enough to anger the Brave Companions.
"Will you pretend to be a Bannerman?"
"That's a good idea," she murmurs, still writing. "But will they believe me?"
He turns the computer screen towards her. "With this, they will."
She studies the screen and lifts an eyebrow. "A... a tattoo?"
"Gang mark. I should be able to draw it on." He tugs the marker out of her grasp and pauses, hand outstretched.
"What?" she asks peevishly.
"Do you want me to draw it on your forehead, or will you give me your arm already?"
She huffs and lets him take her wrist to press it against the back of the couch. He twists around to get a better angle and secures her elbow with his other hand.
It's easy to replicate the banner on the screen; it twists around her wrist, black ink marring the blue veins that peek through her translucent skin. The ink bleeds slightly, but he thickens the lines to hide it. He hopes that the Black Goat will be badly lit.
Finally, he caps the marker and looks up at her. She's biting her lip, brows drawn together.
"Arya?" He waves his hand in her face.
"Hmm?" She responds sluggishly, but when she notices his confused gaze her cheeks colour momentarily. His thoughts stick to it, but he drags them away.
Arya is his partner. If they don't come up with a plan, she might as well give Vargo Hoat a gun and tell him to shoot her.
"Any ideas?"
She thinks for a few seconds. "I'll go to the Black Goat; the Brave Companions always go there before a brawl. I'll tell them I'm a Bannerman. I'll complain a lot, talk about their failings. I'll suck up to Hoat and ask him if I can come along and shoot a few Bannermen in the balls. Hopefully he'll agree. I'll prove myself against the Bright Banners, and he'll accept me." She pauses for breath. "There. Happy?"
He ponders the plan. "Contact me every hour on the hour. If I could..." He stands up suddenly to search around in his bedroom; he emerges triumphant and hands her his loot.
She examines it curiously, fidgeting with it. "What's this? A fake piercing?"
"A tracker." He plucks it from her fingers and affixes it to her eyebrow. "There. Now I'll know where you are."
Her fingers brush against the jewellery. "Clever." She sounds proud, in an odd way.
"I know." A smug note leaks into his voice.
"Idiot." She says it too fondly for him to take umbrage, so he lets it pass as she rises. "I should get going."
"Good luck." He can feel the nerves beginning to eat away at his stomach.
The smile fades from her face as she strides out the door. He watches out the window as she roars off on her bike, registration plate hidden. He repainted it a few days ago, lightening the shiny black to gunmetal grey, for fear that she would be recognised, either by an acquaintance of the Stark family or by a Bloody Mummer.
He feels, in a rather perverse way, like a proud mother watching their child attend their first day at school.
He relocates to his bedroom and plonks his laptop on the bed, With a glance at his watch, he begins his vigil.
It's past three in the morning, and she still isn't back.
Gendry's fingers clench and unclench, laptop long abandoned. Where is she? What is she doing? She said she would contact him every hour and she did exactly that, up to three a.m. Her text is 19 minutes late.
He rather hopes that she didn't have to use the gun.
His laptop shows him the mostly vacant interior of the Bloody Goat. The image is grainy; the place is too cheap to buy proper beer, let alone a decent security camera. Arya was on it initially, swaggering in and ingratiating herself smoothly into the gang; no-one gave her as much as a look when she departed with them. There were no security cameras to keep an eye on her destination, some derelict old block of flats; thank the gods for that tracker. He'll have to work on figuring out a way to add a camera to it, and a bug.
Her hastily scrawled plan lies abandoned next to him. He picks it up for a second to read her hurried letters, and crumples the page in his fist. Newsprint stains his hands. What if she left too much up to chance? What if they played along with her charade only to shoot her at the flats?
He's almost decided to go after her when the door bangs open. Gendry shocks back and grabs his trusty hammer before he realises that it's Arya invading his bedroom.
"I'm in!" She's smiling, if you could call it that; there is a dangerous edge to it, like a bare blade or a broken bone.
"Congratulations, you're a gangster. I'm sure your mother's proud." He drops the hammer and reclines back onto the bed.
She shakes her head. "I'm one step closer to Jon." He opens one eye to see her clambering up beside him, knees tucked up to her chin, grey eyes filled with strange fervour. She must have discarded her contacts somewhere. She hasn't bothered to do the same with her boots. "It was strange... I just showed off in the pub and they let me come along."
"You blood in?" When she looks at him in confusion, he clarifies, or at least he tries to. "Did you...?" When she doesn't reply, he feels his heart drop. "You didn't..."
"He attacked me first." Her voice is strangely hollow, as if the words are coming from far way, and not from within her. "It... It was so easy to pull the trigger. He just... fell. He would have looked like he was sleeping, but his eyes were open. Hoat congratulated me after."
Silence seethes between them, viscous and ugly. He knew what he was getting in for... but he never thought too hard about her part. A week ago, they were laughing in the garage, but here she is now with blood on her hands and a strangely needy look in her eyes.
"You really can't go back, now, huh?" Her brother, Robb, is a cop; what would he think? Could he even imagine Arya pulling a trigger and watching someone die by her own hand?
Gendry can.
"In this game, you win or you die. I knew that from the start." She pauses, sucking in air. "I plan to win."
He has no doubt she will.
The clock ticks on; eventually, she breaks the silence. "They'll contact me, they said. To initiate me. A fight, three against one."
"Child's play for you." The hint of a smile plays around the corners of her lips; it is gone almost as quickly as it came.
"I could probably beat those poor arseholes one-handed." The hollow tone in her voice has vanished to be replaced by bullheaded determination.
He opens his mouth to agree, to tease her about her fighting skill, but he's interrupted by a yawn. The adrenaline of worrying after Arya has vanished, and his lack of sleep this past week has caught up with him.
"You know what, I'm going to hit the sack. You can go home or whatever, or you can sleep on the couch. Up to you." He stands up to change, but she grabs his arm.
"I... I don't want to sleep alone tonight."
Never before has he seen Arya Stark vulnerable; he didn't think she was capable of it. The look in her eyes right now an only be described as such; open, unguarded. For once, she looks all of her eighteen years.
Words are failing him right now; all he can think of are sappy things straight from a rom-com and bad innuendoes from the same. He nods, and she lets go of his arm to lie back down. He hears her boots thud to the floor as he enters the bathroom, clothes in hand.
When he slides into bed, she has shed her hoodie and jeans. She's all curled up, and her sticky hair is loose around her face.
He closes his eyes, and is lulled gradually to sleep by her even breaths.