Missing Perspective from Phase 2 – Abandon: Gendry's Side

In which Gendry reveals his part in Sansa's dating life.

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Gendry chose this moment to glace up and caught her eye. "Hi pipsqueak!" he called, raising his hand and grinning. Arya rolled her eyes and slammed the window closed in retaliation.

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Gendry paused for a moment as the window above his head abruptly closed, and the stoic girl who had closed it turned away. Confused, he paused for a moment, waiting for her to perhaps come back to the window to wave to him, but there wasn't any movement from inside.

After a moment, he rang the doorbell, and made a note to go say 'hi' later that evening as Robb opened the door and ushered him in the entryway.

"Hey," Robb said, nodding at him and raising an eyebrow. "You talked to him?"

"Yup, it's all set."

After taking a moment to glance behind his shoulder, Robb turned and raised his voice, yelling up the stairs. "Sansa! If you don't get down here in thirty seconds, we're leaving without you!"

"That's quite a time limit," Gendry commented drolly.

"Hey, we're the ones helping her, she shouldn't make us wait."

He heard the noise of things being tossed around from the floor above, and Robb sighed in annoyance.

"Sansa!" he called again, patting his pocket to make sure he had his house keys.

Then he heard the padding of feet coming down the stairs, the owner of said feet giggling as she made her way to the ground floor, a pair of tall shiny shoes dangling from her fingers. As the redhead reached the entryway, she bent down and slipped one shoe on.

"Let's go," Robb said, reaching his hand out for the door.

"Robb!" Sansa complained, stumbling as she put her shoe-clad foot to the ground. "Give me a minute to put my shoes on!" The effect was lessened by the grin on her face.

Without another word, Robb opened the door. Not wanting to get in the middle of a sibling argument, Gendry followed suit and stepped onto the porch, twirling his keyring around his finger.

"Just give me a second!" Sansa said, grabbing Gendry's arm as she tottered on one foot, pulling the second shoe on. She grinned at him in thanks and sashayed to the car, heading immediately to the passenger door.

"I told you, I get shotgun this time!" Robb called to his sister, warming up now that they were actually out of the house.

"Girls always get the front seat. It's a rule!" she said gleefully, looking to Gendry for approval.

Gendry grinned at Robb and stepped to the car door and jiggled the handle. He was the only one that could open the door, and Sansa would soon enough be off on her own, so Robb could have all the time in the front seat he wanted after that point. With a small flourish, he muttered "mi'lady" and gestured for the eldest Stark sister to get in the car.

With a sigh, Robb slid into the back seat, and Sansa pulled down the sun visor to check her appearance in the mirror. Knowing Robb wouldn't be comfortable otherwise, Gendry quickly walked around the car before he got behind the wheel and made a point to check the mirrors. He could feel his friend relax behind him as he went through the precautions.

"Since it's a school night, Mom's going to get all worried if we're not back by nine," Robb said pointedly to Sansa.

"I'll be on time," said, glancing at her brothers' reflection in the small mirror.

"Like you were on time just now?"

"That was Arya's fault!" she explained, slipping her tube of lip gloss back into her purse.

Judging that he could now safely enter the conversation, Gendry interjected. "And how's that?"

The redhead rolled her eyes in exasperation. "She's stealing my clothes! All of a sudden, things are going missing, and she's been acting so weird lately!"

"That doesn't sound like her."

"Um...Sans?" Robb said quietly from the backseat.

"What now?"

"It's not Arya."

With a frown on her face, Sansa turned to the backseat. "Who else could it be? I don't think my new miniskirt would fit you, and I really don't see Bran being into wearing my clothes."

"And you're saying I would be?"

"Well, the only reasonable explanation is Arya," she said with an air of finality, deciding to ignore Robb's previous statement.

Gendry laughed quietly to himself as he turned to a new radio station.

"It's Mom," Robb continued, deciding to ignore his sisters' statement that he wore women's clothing.

"Mom doesn't wear things like that, she wears mom jeans and fuzzy sweaters."

Robb let a beat of conversation pass, waiting for his sister to catch on. "And you think she approves of you wearing that miniskirt?"

"But..."

"I saw her walking out of your room with a basket of clothes and an angry expression on her face last week."

"Oh," she responded in a small voice.

A moment later, Gendry pulled to a stop. "See you at quarter to nine?" he said to Sansa, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah..." she said quietly, reaching for the door handle.

"Leave the door open for me!" Robb asked as he scooted out of his own door. Sansa complied, and smoothed down her shirt as she stood, looking around the people milling around the building.

"Joffrey!" she called happily, waving to a blond figure in the distance.

Robb slid into the now-vacant passenger seat and turned to Gendry. "He's here tonight, right?"

"Right there," Gendry replied, pointing to a figure in a security uniform. "Same as always, and he'll keep an eye on them."

Robb frowned slightly.

"But there won't be an reason to," Gendry continued reassuringly.

Relaxing slightly, Robb leaned back and groaned. "Having sisters is exhausting."

Gendry nodded in agreement, and decided that being friends with a guy with sisters was even more exhausting.

Somehow, he had ended up being approached by Robb and Sansa, independent of each other, asking for his assistance with the other. Robb, of course, didn't want his sister to date someone he didn't approve over (which was basically everyone) and Sansa wanted his help in convincing Robb that he could stop being so overprotective and let her date. It took several weeks, and a bargain with his cousin, who was a security guard at the local skate park, to come to an agreement, one that Sansa knew little about.

"She really thought Arya was stealing her clothes?" Gendry scoffed as he pulled away.

"Ugh, no more sister talk, please," Robb responded, adjusting the seat back so he would have more legroom.

With a grin, Gendry pushed thoughts of the Stark sisters from his mind and headed off to the game shop where they were meeting the rest of their friends. However, even as they debated as a group what they were going to purchase, he still found himself thinking back to Sansa's mini rant about Arya, and how she had been acting strangely lately.

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"Big brother?" Sansa said sweetly from the backseat of Gendry's car several hours later.

They had thought it odd when Sansa was on time to be picked out, and even more odd when she didn't protest sitting anywhere other than the passenger seat.

Heaving an exaggerated sigh, Robb turned to face his sister. She began to burble on about some sort of plan where he got their mother out of the house so she could have Joffrey come over.

"No," he said simply, then turned to face the front and pointedly ignored her wheedling from the back seat.

For a short time, she turned towards the driver's seat and contemplated Gendry, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but clamped her lips shut a moment later. Gendry was pleased, but curious to see what her plan had been for him to spend time with her mother.

When he pulled into the driveway of the Stark house, Robb invited him in, since his mom had made cookies, and Sansa ran up the stairs with a glimmer of determination in her eyes.

As he munched on a chocolate chip cookie, he heard the sound of quiet knocking from upstairs, and skipping a few minutes later. As Robb was called away to bring out the garbage and recycling, Gendry made his way upstairs and saw the room he had stopped by so many times was slightly ajar. With a light rap on the door frame he poked his head in the room.

"How's it going, pipsqueak?"

Then, in a blur, the occupant of the room rushed at him and threw her arms around him.

He froze for a minute, unsure of how to handle this new contact with Arya. Yes, she punched him a lot, but she had never hugged him before. Carefully, gently, he patted her on the back, vaguely feeling as if Robb somehow wouldn't approve of anything else.

"What's up with you?" he asked, glancing down at the top of her head.

"I'm just glad you haven't abandoned me," she whispered into his chest.

Gendry felt a surge of emotion run unexpectedly though him.

"Of course not, Arya," he said immediately. "I wouldn't do that."

Even though it would be a difficult promise to keep, he knew he would. He knew her to well for her to just be the little sister of his friend, and even though she wasn't a friend in the same way as everyone else, there was no denying she was a part of his life that he couldn't imagine not being there.