Todays prompt is Haven, and I hope you like it :) there's a bit more going on in this one, you'll be glad to know.

I'm afraid that this is probably going to be my last entry for AxG Week, as I am meant to be getting ready to move out and get a job. Summer is over and winter is coming for realsies. BUT that doesn't mean I've abandoned this! I've got the last three chapters planned out and ready to be written, and this fic will be updated and finished eventually, it just won't be as timely as these other chapters have been. I'll do my best to keep you all posted, and there should only be a week between updates, gods be good (I might even give in and do them all tomorrow! (I probably won't, though)).

So thank you to everyone that's been reading, and everyone that's said nice things about this, and thank you especially to the person that came up with this idea in the first place!

~Haven~

Sometimes Arya dreams of once more being a little girl back at home in Winterfell, arguing with Sansa and chasing Brom around the castle. She dreams of her mother scolding her and her father trying and failing to comfort her, of Robb dragging her down from the scaffolding and Jon telling her stories of dragons and adventure beyond the Narrow Sea, and then the dream shifts and changes and she's back in King's Landing again, the crowd baying for blood, her sister screaming for mercy. The smell of sweat and smoke from Yoren's jerkin is overpowering, and she is drowning in her father's blood-

A pair of blue eyes in the darkness, fingertips grazing her outstretched hand.

Gendry.

It takes a few moments for the scream clawing its way up her lungs to calm and settle, and a few more still before she can smell the fresh nighttime air again. She grips his fingers like a lifeline, and he says her name softly until the screaming of the crowd passes too. This is not the first time it has happened, and it will never be the last, but he is always there without fail and she can't understand why. He'll leave her one day, she's sure of it, sick and tired of her endless nightmares. She will wake up one night, the smell of blood thick in her throat, and there will be no blue eyes to bring her back, no low, steadying voice to remind her who she is, where she is. This is something she has come to know from living in a world where death is not fair with the lives it takes.

She knows this, yet as she listens to his murmuring and feels him rubbing the back of her hand soothingly, she allows herself to forget the truth and thinks instead that it would not be so terrible to wake every day to sky blue eyes.

She squeezes his hand, and reassured, Gendry nods and within moments has fallen back asleep. He trusts her to know her own mind. If the nightmares come for her again, he will be there. Usually Arya would fall back to sleep, lulled by the sound of his steady breaths, but this time there is a restlessness in her mind. Something had come to her in that dream, something important. The sheer weight of it is heavy on her mind.

She tilts her head back and stares at the sky. The sun has just begun to rise, gold and pink edged clouds drifting lazily against an inky black background. Her mind starts to wander, and she fancies herself one of them, high above everything. The winds would blow her towards Winterfell, and though the distance is still impossibly huge - it feels like they've been walking for years already, and Rickon will be old and grey with a beard ten feet long by the time they reach the castle - for a cloud, it would take but a moment.

She'd float across the fields and forests, past the weirwood and beyond the hill she had rolled down with Nymeria and Lady (Sansa had been furious to find her precious wolf covered in grass and mud), and onwards until at last she saw the tall grey walls of her home. Robb would be up there with Jory, checking up on the guards that manned the castle walls. In the courtyard Jon would be helping Bran with his bowmanship, Rickon chasing chickens nearby, and she'd have to scoot out of the way to avoid the stray arrows. She'd see Sansa strolling through the keep, cooing non-stop over any handsome man that catches her eye. And there, just over there, heads bent together as shamelessly as love-struck children, would be her parents. Her mother would be giggling behind her hand, and her father would smile and brush the hair from her face like he has done so many times before.

And it's then that Arya remembers what has been bothering her.

There is no end to this nightmare she is living.

There is no rest.

There will never be a day when her father is still alive.

It will never go back to the way it was. Even if every name she whispers night after night lay dead before her feet, it will not bring him back. She is stuck forever with a broken family and Jon half a world away and Sansa trapped and Bran crippled and there is nothing she can do-

A pair of blue eyes watch her in the darkness, fingers light against her cheek.

Gendry pulls her close and whispers her name in her ear until it fills up the spaces in her head and pushes everything else out. She thinks she might be crying - is mortified to think of how much snot she must be smearing onto his collar - but he does not let her go. He rocks her and strokes her back, and eventually the sobbing ceases and the night closes in.

In the morning she awakes in his arms with the smell of frying fish on the air. Hot Pie is preparing the morning meal, and immediately her mouth starts to water in anticipation. There is no lingering sadness, she is surprised to find, no dampening of her mood. Instead there is only the rumble of her belly and the uncomfortable feeling of dried mucous smeared across her cheek. Her fears had come true, then. Burning with embarrassment, she scrubs violently at her face and prays the boys did not see her. In her haste to clean away the evidence, she accidentally drives her elbow into Gendry's chest, who jolts up with a wheeze of agony.

Once they've eaten, he chucks the bones at her in retribution and dashes behind Hot Pie, using him as a shield. Though the boy's bulk is impressive in size it's not enough to stop her, and she grins her wolfish grin. With every shout and squeal of terror, she can hear their unspoken words thrumming through her veins.

You are not alone.

The nightmares will return, the heartbreak and awful bleakness close behind. There will be a night sometime in the future where Gendry will not be there to chase away the darkness, a morning where Hot Pie's cooking will be little more than a memory. This she understands. But not today. Today she has a stupid blue eyed bull and his flabby sidekick to fight.