When Gendry was a young boy, he saw his friend die.
He and Tomlin must have been only four or five years old, tossing a ball back and forth by his mother's shop. It had been a bright day with the sun bearing down on the two children and nearly blinding them as they tried to follow the arch of the ball with their eyes. Tomlin's bouncy blonde curls caught the light with each dramatic jump he took to catch the ball. Gendry remembered laughing.
Tomlin threw the ball back to him, and as Gendry reached up, the sun got in his eyes. The ball soared past his waiting fingers and into the street behind him. Tomlin trotted after it, his little legs picking up speed as the ball continued to roll across the cobblestones. He remembers the funny bounce of the ball as it rolled. Everything happened so quickly.
The ball came to a stop in the middle of the street, and Tomlin bent forward to pick it up. As he bent over, Gendry saw a large black shape in the corner of his eye. Before he could recognize what was hurtling towards his friend, part of the thing took the back of Tomlins head and slammed it into the ground. Bright yellow curls erupted with a brilliant red. His skull has cracked open like an egg, pink yolk running down the stones as Gendry stood on the side, frozen, watching the ball roll from Tomlin's limp hand and towards his feet.
Gendry can only faintly remember what came next: the two other horsemen and their mounts whizzing by, trying to capture the man who had just ran down a child. The cries of Tomlin's mother as she ran out into the street and fell on her knees, trying to scoop her son's head back together, willing her cure to bring him back. The street had dissolved into chaos around him, but Gendry stood there. All he could see was the red.
That day he learned that nothing slows down for you. Happiness can turn to tragedy in a violent, sudden twist. Gendry never thought he'd have his heart broken like that again, until the morning he woke up with one arm around Sansa's shoulder, and another being yanked above his head.
Gendry shook his head as someone pulled his other wrist behind him. His eyes snapped open when he heard Sansa shriek somewhere below him.
Petyr had a grasp on her wrist, and had pulled her up just as forcefully, if not more so, than Gendry's captor. Petyr's knuckles turned white as he gripped her.
"Stop," Gendry managed before something hit him across the jaw. Before he could open his eyes, another blow landed from the other side. Behind him, someone quickly tied his wrists.
"Stop it!" Sansa screamed. Gendry managed to open an eye and see her head bobbing over the shoulder of the stern looking guard who had knocked him across the face.
What's going on. Where am I. What-
Gendry looked up and saw the foggy morning sky. He looked around the room, and remembered the night before. Rings. Kisses. Babies.
Oh.
"Let him go!" Sansa screamed again. Her voice brought him back to reality, and he jerked against the man behind him who was holding his wrists back. His assailant turned back to Petyr, who nodded. Another blow caught Gendry across his left eye. Another on his chin.
"Enough," Petyr's clipped tone rang through. The man in front of Gendry moved out the way, allowing the much smaller Lord to come forward. Behind him, the man caught Sansa's arm, holding her in place as she looked over at her betrother in horror. Gendry spat blood on the floor.
"You disrespectful little cretin," Petyr seethed, taking Gendry's chin in his hand and yanking his head up. Gendry groaned, but kept his jaw clenched. Vision out of his left eye was blurry, but he tried to keep eye contact.
"You think because the King fucked your whore mother that you can treat her like some common slut?"
"I wanted to come here," Sansa yelled back. Petyr ignored her.
"How foolish I was, with my grand vision of reuniting the stag and the wolf, a promise made so many years ago. Bastard or no, I thought blood would account for something," he hissed. "But I suppose not. You can take a dog from the city streets but they still carry the same disease." He dropped his hands from Gendry's chin.
"Take him to the gates and leave him there," Petyr said to the man behind him.
"Don't you dare!" Sansa shrieked. Both men turned their heads back to her. Through the blood filling his mouth slowly, Gendry couldn't help but smile.
"Don't I dare?" Petyr asked.
"Yes." Sansa spat back. She jerked her arm away from the guard, who held fast. Determined, Sansa pressed on, holding Petyr in a lethal gaze. "I am Sansa Stark, heir to Winterfell, daughter of Eddard and Catelyn Stark and the rightful Queen of the North. And you will not take him away."
A beat passed, and for one, naïve moment, Gendry thought Sansa's outburst had shocked Petyr into submission. However, the mood broke when Petyr let out a small laugh.
"You stupid girl," he said, walking towards her. "You can spew titles prettily but forget one thing: you're no one here, unless I allow you to be." He turned back to the man behind Gendry and jerked his head. Immediately, Gendry felt himself being pulled.
"Gendry!" Sansa cried out. She wretched away from the guard and made for him, catching him in a hug. Gendry let his head fall to her shoulder, catching her scent. Gods, at least let me remember this…
The man pulled Sansa back. Her hand flew up, and she tried kicking him in defiance. He brought a hand down against her cheek, and audible smack echoing across the walls.
"Sansa!" he and Petyr cried out in unison. Cradling her cheek, Sansa looked at Gendry from where she had fallen on the floor. Before she could move to him, Petyr grabbed her arm and jerked his head to the guard that had just hit her.
"Get him out of here!" he snapped. The man stalked over to Gendry and began helping his fellow muscle push the heir to Storm's End through the small, stone tunnel.
They didn't get Gendry out of the castle without a fight. At the end of it, three men were needed to pull him from the hiding spot he and Sansa had found, all while she screamed for him in the back. When he was finally over the fence and badly bruised, the man who had been punching him earlier drew a long sword from his side, and tapped the tip of the blade under Gendry's chin.
"Recognize it?" the guard smirked down at the bloodied man at his feet and smiled. "You should, you made it." he chuckled before something darker fell over his eyes. "Now get up."
With the blade under his jaw, Gendry stood up, holding the man's gaze. With a flick of the man's wrist, he motioned for Gendry to turn around. He obeyed, and felt the metal press into his back as he began walking down the stairs.
The man motioned for Gendry to open one of the doors at the very beginning of the stone stairs. Grasping the ring, he pulled back and looked down another flight of stairs, suddenly aware of where he was going.
"Well, go on." The man said.
Steeling himself, Gendry began to walk. When they reached the bottom, Gendry felt a heavy push on his shoulder, indicating he needed to turn right. A few more paces down, the guard pulled a door open, and shoved Gendry inside. Careful not to lose his footing, Gendry bent his knees and kept his feet parallel. When the door slammed closed behind him and the heavy clunky lock had been turned, Gendry dropped his shoulders and looked out at the expanse before him.
So these are the skycells.
Two days passed without food or water. Gendry had positioned himself with his back against the farthest corner, feet braced against the slight incline. His wrists had chaffed raw from his ties, and his mouth was dry from the thin air. He fell in and out of sleep as the hours ticked by. He dreamed of red.
On the morning of the third day, he awoke to the sound of the lock turning. The door pushed open, and Gendry saw the same man who had imprisoned him enter his room.
"You look like shit," he said.
Gendry said nothing.
"Well, get up, time to leave." The guard turned to walk out of the cell door, obviously as uncomfortable in the skycells as he was. Gendry pushed himself up against his corner, giving his legs some time to stretch out. Carefully, he walked towards the open door, only to be jostled down the hall and up the same stairs he had descended only days earlier.
It was obvious that they weren't going to leave with anything besides the clothes on his back. He was marched straight past the forge and his room, past the library, down through the main hall and out onto the large, winding stairs that led out of the Vale. With an aggressive jab in his back, Gendry began walking down the flights. Their footsteps, falling in and out of sync, echoed in the silence of the foggy morning. Gendry ignored the ache in his bones, the headache splitting his skull, and the blood filling his mouth. All he could think of was how he was going to get his captor's sword and run it through him.
Once they exited the main gates, the man told Gendry to turn around.
"You're not going to let me go, are you?" he said nonchalantly.
"And they say bastards are stupid," the man smiled at him. "Right, I'm not completely without honor. How do you want to do this?" He held his sword up to the light. "I can gut you right through, or- "
The man's sentence was interrupted by the large object that collided with his head. Immediately, he fell before Gendry, falling face down into the grass, a small trickle of blood pumping steadily from his wound. Gendry turned to look for the murder weapon, finding a misshapen sharp stone at his feet.
"I always hated him," a voice called from his left. Swiveling, Gendry took in the sight of the climbing girl who had helped him find the gems for Sansa's ring. Mya smiled at him before dropping down to pluck the stone from the grass. "Right bastard, this one. Always grabbed my arse during climbs." She tossed the stone in her hand, smiling to herself. Gendry felt his mouth fall open.
"Want me to get that?" she pointed around him. Remembering he was still tied, Gendry turned his back to his savior and felt as she made quick work cutting his ties. Freed, he rubbed the welts on his wrist.
"Where's Sansa?" he asked, his voice croaking.
"Baelish left with her, said he was going to take her somewhere else," Mya shrugged. "You should have some water,"
"I have to go find her," Gendry bent down and plucked the sword from the dead mans side. When he stood and turned to walk, Mya caught him with a hand.
"No," she said. "You look like you're about to fall over. Petyr already went into town and told them he'd pay 500 gold crowns if they returned you to him, dead or alive."
"I thought I was already dead," he kicked the guard beside them. Mya shrugged.
"He didn't get to be the Lord of the Vale by leaving loose ends, did he?"
Gendry sighed and looked toward the main road.
"If the reward is 500 crowns, then why are you helping me?"
Mya smiled. She stood a few good inches below him, but Gendry had no doubt she could hold her own against any man. She was muscular and broad, and her laughter, while light, carried something deadly in it. He could hear it as she laughed now, her guttural, strong cackle sounding so much like his own.
"Oh, dear little brother," she said, running her hands up to ruffle his hair. "Baratheon bastards have to stick together. Haven't you noticed how many people want us dead?"
...
Mya took him to her modest shack and propped him on the straw mattress in the corner. Over the next few days, he would try to ask her as many questions as he could about where Sansa had gone, and, when she reiterated, again and again, she didn't know, he began to brood.
"Oh stop sulking," she said one evening as she was fixing stew. From his sick bed, Gendry sneered at her. "We'll find her. Nobles always keep track of their high-priced cunts," she smiled. Gendry sat up immediately.
"Don't say that about her," he snapped so ferociously that Mya physically took a step back from him.
"I was kidding. Bloody hell, guess that temper is pretty strong in the blood, eh?" she held out the bowl of soup as if it were a peace offering. "We'll find her, Gendry. Gossip spreads faster than fire. 'Alayne Stone' has been officially unmasked as the King of North's little sister. Whole bloody kingdom's probably out looking for her." Gendry took a spoonful into his mouth as he considered his options.
"Where should we go first?"
Mya plopped down on one of the wooden chairs and turned to face her brother.
"Well," she said. "If you were trying to hide something valuable, where's the last place everyone would look?"
...
Ah shit sibling team up? Going after your true love? Horses running kids down? I watched Quest for Camelot too many times as a kid.
Thanks for any kudos and comments! I love them. Feed me and tell me I'm pretty.
as always, thanks for reading.