Thank you to everyone for reading and reviewing! :)
Robb had been quick to suggest that they all spend the afternoon together. Although, it was blatantly obvious to everyone that this was an attempt of his to keep a better eye on Sansa, they were all pleasantly surprised when she agreed to it, without question or complaint. Indeed, Sansa hadn't been raising much of an argument about anything recently. She hadn't even bothered to bicker with Arya since the night Jon had brought her home from her meeting with Willas Tyrell, and Arya found herself oddly missing their fights over such silly things as her ineptitude at stitching.
Her younger brothers, Bran and Rickon, were currently engaged in a splashing fight in the cool, blue river just a few feet away, and their shouts and laughs of delight echoed around them, filling the otherwise silent clearing. Arya resented that she could not join them. Usually, she would have no qualms about disobeying her mother about such trivial matters, especially when she knew she could get away with it. But Sansa would not hesitate to report her disobedience if it was carried out in front of her, and so Arya was stuck melting in the hot afternoon sun. Sighing, she wished she did not have a mother who placed so much importance on manners and what was right and proper for a girl of Arya's age, considering manners mattered not a whit on the streets of King's Landing anyway. If Arya did not know better, she would have given a lot more weight to the theory that she was being groomed for a life in the Red Keep.
"She won't thank me for this," Arya heard Jon mutter to Robb, his gaze trained on their sister. Sansa sat less than a stone's throw away from Jon, Robb, and Arya, her attention captured by the seemingly endless amount of daisy chains she had made that afternoon. While Arya and the boys had clashed their wooden swords against each other for sport, Sansa had busied herself with picking flowers. Arya thought it a curious thing that her sister had not mentioned Willas Tyrell since that night two weeks past, but when Bran had brought home word of his sudden departure from King's Landing, Arya had seen the sorrow in Sansa's eyes. The town was still rife with speculation about why he had left. The townspeople considered it somewhat strange for him to leave for Highgarden only a few days before the tourney to celebrate his father's appointment as Hand of the King, and rumour had it the castle was abuzz with speculation about his departure as well. Sansa had shrugged off Robb's attempts to speak to her about the matter, claiming she was fine, but Arya swore she heard the soft, muffled sounds of tears coming from her room late at night.
Her sister's quiet reverie was broken by Jon's words. Despite the fact that she did not look up from the daisy chains that were currently occupying her lap, Arya could see the slight stiffening of her back at the sound of his voice. It took a few seconds for her to speak, "If you have it your way, you won't be here for me to thank," she said, raising her blue eyes to meet Jon's grey ones. Her voice was soft, but there was a steel edge to it that Arya recognised from their numerous fights over the years.
Startled, Arya glanced at Jon, but he did not meet her eyes, and she could see from Robb's expression that he was just as confused about what Sansa had meant as she was. "What is she talking about?" Arya asked. She felt a nervous twinge in her stomach as she waited for Jon to speak, and it turned to full-on butterflies when his answer reached her ears.
"I have been giving a lot of thought to the possibility of travelling to the Wall," he said quietly. "There is a group leaving from King's Landing next week, and I've spoken to the recruiter about leaving with them."
Stunned, Arya opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to scream at him, to beg him to stay, but her words died on her tongue before they could reach the air. Instead, it was Robb who asked, "Do you intend to join the Night's Watch or is this a sight-seeing adventure?" Arya could tell from the way his jaw clenched that he was less than happy with Jon's revelation, but she also knew he probably would not interfere if he thought this was what Jon truly wanted. Mayhaps, she could convince him to stay though.
"I intend to join, yes," Jon said shortly. Giving a quick, pointed look at Sansa, who could not even bring herself to meet his gaze, he rose and moved towards the riverbank to supervise Bran and Rickon, leaving the rest of his siblings behind in his shadow. It was in that moment, as he stood with his back to her that Arya realised that Jon, her favourite brother, had become a man. He was no longer a boy, and Arya was dismayed to realise that as Jon grew up, he was leaving her behind. In her dreams for the future, they had seen the Wall and the lands beyond the Wall together, but if Jon had his way this would never come to pass.
"That was not your secret to tell," Robb said to Sansa, his voice hard. Arya had seen from her sister's face that she had immediately regretted her words after saying them- instant shame had clouded her pretty features- but it didn't feel like enough.
"Gendry, do you want to be king?"
He glanced at her, curiosity taking over his features. The question was out of the blue, she knew, but Jon's willingness to give up his freedom and dreams to devote his life to the Night's Watch had gotten her thinking about hers. Once, when Gendry was explaining to her the reasons why he had not been upfront about his identity as a Prince of the Seven Kingdoms, he had lamented his lack of freedom to do as he liked, and Arya wondered- if he were given the choice- whether he would leave it all behind. "Nobody has ever asked me that before," he said, and he almost seemed unsure of how he should answer such a question. Arya supposed many princes were born and not made, and so the concept of a choice would be foreign to them.
"It's a simple question," she prompted. She moved to sit beside him, leaning her back against the oak tree and laying the sword he had given her carefully on the ground next to her. His arm was hot against hers, and Arya felt a slight warmth flitter through her at the touch, but she ignored it and waited for him to continue.
Gendry sighed. "It's not a simple answer," he said. "If I do not take the throne, it will pass to my brother, Joffrey."
The stories Gendry had told her about Joffrey made her skin crawl, and Arya hoped she would never have the misfortune to meet him in person, but it still didn't answer her question. "That's not an answer," she said, raising her eyes to his in an effort to urge him on.
"You noticed," Gendry replied with a chuckle. He clutched strands of grass between his fingers as he continued, "There was once a prince, Aemon Targaryen, who rescinded his rights to the Iron Throne and joined the Night's Watch. Sometimes I envy him his choice, I'll admit, but the majority of time I do not. Just as your brother thinks the Night's Watch is a noble reason to give up his freedom, so too do I think the well-being of the Seven Kingdoms is worth the price of my freedom. I never had a choice, Arya, but I have seldom resented that fact."
"And if you were not a prince?"
"I just want to do something that matters," he said with a smile, "whether that be as a king, a knight, or even a blacksmith. Would you give up your freedom?" he asked, locking his blue eyes to her grey ones.
"I would never let anyone turn me into something I did not wish to be," she declared. Arya's dream was to have adventures. In the future, she would travel to each of the Seven Kingdoms, to the Wall and beyond to visit with the wildlings, and Arya especially wanted to sail across the Narrow Sea to Essos and Pentos and all the Free Cities that lay there. Jon had wanted adventures too, she thought sadly. When they were younger, they had planned to be smuggled on board a ship to Braavos to begin their adventures together, and Arya wondered when Jon had given up on those dreams.
With a start, Arya realised that this must also be how Sansa was feeling at the moment. Arya knew her sister well enough to be certain that her dreams were to be a lady of a beautiful castle and to marry a handsome, charming man. But her marriage arrangements to Willas Tyrell was now well and truly ground to dust, and Arya could not help but feel pity for her older sister.
"You're so sure of yourself, Arya," Gendry said, a glimmer of something Arya did not recognise filling his eyes. Something akin to nostalgia, she suspected, with a hint of teasing thrown in for good measure. "Sometimes I forget how young you truly are."
Arya did not know what to make of that statement, but she knew one thing: Her dreams were still alive, Sansa's were wounded, but Jon's were going to be left to die at the Wall and Gendry's dreams seemed to have never existed at all.
Arya did not know which of them she felt most sorry for.
Night had fallen by the time she arrived home. After scuttling through the window of her chamber, Arya changed out of her dirty breeches and into something her mother would find more appropriate before heading downstairs. Jon and Robb were engaged in a game of Cyvasse, with Bran watching, in one corner of the room. Good-natured teasing slipped out of their mouths as they moved their pieces around the board, and Bran's laughter filled the room. Her mother sat in another corner, telling a story to Rickon as she mended a pair of his britches, and he was listening with wide-eyed amazement. On the other side of the room, her father sat near the hearth, his attention fully captured by a book, but Sansa was notably absent.
Catelyn glanced up, giving her a smile which Arya returned instantly, breathing a sigh of relief that her mother had not noticed how late she had returned. "Could you bring some food up to Sansa?" she asked. "She hasn't been feeling well since she returned today."
Arya nodded before gathering up a tray of light food and heading back upstairs. Balancing the tray on one hand, she knocked quietly on Sansa's door before sliding it open and slipping inside. Her sister's chamber was sparsely lit with infrequent candles dotting the room, and the shadows danced across the walls in accordance to the swaying of the tiny flames. Sansa sat at a desk, seemingly writing a letter, which Arya did not doubt was written in the finest cursive known to the Seven Kingdoms. She also suspected that it was a letter to Willas Tyrell. In fact, she would bet every single piece of the meagre pile of copper coins that was currently hidden in her bottom drawer on it.
The soft scratch of quill against paper ceased as the creek of the door alerted her to Arya's presence. When Sansa glanced up at her, Arya realised that her blue eyes were shimmering with tears, and the pang of pity she had felt for her earlier that day returned in full force.
It took a few seconds for words to come. Arya did not have much practice with trying to make Sansa feel better when she was down. In fact, she was usually the last person she wanted to see, and cheering her up was a job often left to Robb, Bran, or their mother. But Mother and Bran had no clue as to Willas Tyrell's involvement in Sansa's life, and since Robb had not managed to improve her mood, it was up to Arya. "Mayhaps he will come back," she offered eventually, the words flowing out of her mouth before she realised she was saying them, but, nevertheless, it did not feel like a lie.
Although, she disliked Sansa sometimes, she did still want her sister to get the things she wanted, but she also did not want Sansa to lose hope that she would get them either. Even though Jon and Robb seemed to be certain of Willas Tyrell's less than honourable intentions, Arya still had a tiny sliver of doubt that they were wrong, and she knew Sansa was carrying a mountain of doubt around with her.
"Mayhaps," Sansa echoed, her gaze returning to her letter before she left out a sigh. "If Jon had not interfered-"
"Jon was trying to do what was best for you," Arya interrupted, laying the tray on Sansa's desk. "Jon always tries to do what is best for all of us." Her fierce loyalty to her older brother flared in her chest.
"I did not ask him to," Sansa gritted out.
Arya shrugged. "You didn't have to," she argued. "He's our brother." The only time she had seen Willas and Sansa together was at a distance in the marketplace, and, although, she had thought that they seemed to be in love then, she still believed Jon was right in what he did. If Willas really did feel strongly for her, mayhaps he would not have left so easily. But she could not tell Sansa that, for she did not think her sister would listen. Arya might have spent her entire life dreaming of adventures, but Sansa had spent her entire life listening in amazement- as closely as Rickon was listening to their mother downstairs- to tales and songs of Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and Florian the Fool. In truth, Arya was certain she would not listen, and she could not see the point in wasting her breath discussing the matter.
Dropping her quill, Sansa murmured, "He will never be my brother." Arya was surprised to detect a hint of regret in her tone, and although she hated her for saying it, Arya knew it was the truth, even if she didn't think it was right. Jon and Sansa had never been close, nowhere near as close as she and Jon were, and she could never understand why Sansa placed so much emphasis on Jon being their father's bastard son and so little emphasis on the fact that he had looked out for them their entire lives.
"Mayhaps you do not deserve a brother like him," Arya retorted before turning and leaving Sansa alone with her heartache.