For the next while, Arya threw herself into household duties with unwonted fervor, intending to wear herself out so that there would be no room for boredom. She still escaped in the afternoons for her solitary sword practice, but otherwise stayed close to the castle. She sewed diligently while listening to Catelyn's homilies on the duties of a woman and a wife, and held her tongue except to agree with what was said to her. It galled her to behave so, but it appeared that she was making her way back in her mother's good graces.

She did not see Gendry except for once when he had been bringing some work up to the castle and she spotted him crossing the yard and speaking with one of the men. She watched from the balcony while he was there, and though he didn't stay long, Margit later came to Arya's room with a knowing smile and said, "Someone left this for you," and placed a piece of burlap in her hand.

Arya unfolded the material to reveal a small purple thorn-flower, its color as deep and lustrous as its tiny spikes were sharp.

"Those grow all along the roadsides," Margit sniffed, adding, "He might have brought you a real flower."

"Not everyone can have a glass garden," Arya said. Later she placed the flower right at her bedside with her candle so that it was the last thing she looked at before she blew out the light.

One afternoon Robb invited her to come along with him to spend a few days at nearby House Cerwyn. Catelyn gave her permission and Arya jumped at the chance to do something different. It was good to inhale the crisp snow-air and see the hills stretching out ahead of them as they rode south accompanied by a small contingent of men. As they slowed their mounts to traverse a narrow cut through the woods, Robb said, directing his horse near to hers, "Have you been getting along with Mother lately?"

"I've been trying," Arya answered, although the truth was she avoided Catelyn as much as possible.

"Having difficulties being domestic, are you?"

She threw him a grateful look. "So much. Mostly I think I'd rather live on a mountaintop."

"Is it that bad?"

"It's just—not for me. I bring trays to Sansa, and I sit with Bran, and I chase Rickon around when I can find him, but I can't wait to get away from all of them."

"Perhaps you'll feel differently when it's your own place and your own children."

"Perhaps," she said, thinking with distaste of bearing a brood of her own. At least when she'd flung that comment at Gendry about providing Frey heirs he hadn't seemed to like the idea any better than she did. But the vision, unbidden, came to her mind of Gendry cradling a baby resembling both him and her and it didn't seem quite so unpalatable.

Embarrassed, she slapped the reins against the horse's neck and moved faster ahead, putting an end to the conversation.

Gendry rolled over in bed. The winter wind was screeching through the gaps in the ill-constructed house, but it was his thoughts, not the cold, keeping him awake.

He wasn't such a fool as to believe even for a moment that someone like himself belonged with someone like Arya Stark.

Even the unlikeliest of the Frey lordlings was still a step—a big step—above him. This could not be gainsaid. And he was too naturally pragmatic to consider it unfair. It was neither fair nor unfair; it was just the way things were.

His path and Arya's had become even less likely to intersect. Even if the practicalities of fleeing Westeros could be arranged, it was madness to consider going away, pretending things were different, pretending they needed nothing but the other. For all her restlessness, family meant a great deal to Arya and he couldn't steal that from her.

Right now all she could see was the need to run—and he could see it, too, especially when the alternative was watching her swept away to some other man's fortress, but he knew that later, when she was older, she would not forgive him for having brought them into self-imposed banishment.

For himself he didn't care. What was in the seas, or across them, meant nothing to him. He would live there with her if there were a few rocks of habitable size. Hadn't he already come the length of this entire country just for her?

But he had no idea where to go from here.

None that made any sense, anyway.

It was pure folly, even considering being together. She would go off and be married, and she would never want for anything, even if she did have to bear a dozen brats to some poxy lord—he gritted his teeth—and he would do what he'd always done: work, keep his head down, stay out of trouble. That was the only reasonable answer. He just had to find a way to convince himself to accept it.

And when he had convinced himself, he would need to convince Arya as well.

He was not looking forward to that.

Arya came back from her stay at Castle Cerwyn in an improved frame of mind. Not only had the change of scenery been refreshing, she had discovered that one of their men had recently returned from White Harbor, the port from which they would have to leave if her plan was to go through. Over the course of several conversations, she had mined information from the man, whose knowledge and experience of ships and seafaring rendered him easily able to answer her casual questions.

Her good mood was short-lived, however, as the day after returning to Winterfell she fell sick and had to take to her bed. She suspected poorly-prepared food, but Catelyn pronounced the cold weather to have been the cause and chastised Robb, saying they should have remained at House Cerwyn until she was recovered. Regardless, Arya felt better after a few more days had passed, and she had grown tired of lying about.

Ostensibly taking a leisurely stroll about the grounds, she stole out instead to the winter town. Even though Gendry had told her to stay away, she felt he wouldn't be angry to see her now. And he didn't look angry, but he didn't look pleased, either, and so she started out the conversation feeling defensive.

He was hammering away at something circular. She perched on a nearby stool behind a tall wooden gate, partially sheltering her from view of anyone who might happen to walk by.

"It'd be easy. To board a ship. I got lots of details. Why aren't you saying anything?"

"I'm thinking."

"That'd be a first," she muttered. She'd thought he would have shared her enthusiasm. Evidently not. Maybe he was angry because he was stuck here waiting. She would have hated that, too. This realization made her feel a tiny bit more charitable.

She watched him a little longer. His movements were different. No one else would have noticed; he wasn't throwing things about, his face was contained, but there were subtleties in the way he turned, reached for tools, an economy of action that wasn't quite right.

"What?"

He crouched to eye the evenness of what he was working on, looked past it at her. "I don't think this is going to work."

"That?"

"This."

Warily she swung her legs down. "What are you saying exactly?"

"I don't want you to waste your life."

"I thought that's why we needed a plan."

"We need," he said, "to be sensible. You need to be sensible."

"Fine. Tell me, then."

"I know I'm not good enough for you, right? Don't need to argue...it's not an opinion...it's the way it is. I'm common...you're a lord's daughter. Getting on a ship doesn't change that—it doesn't make it right. I can't have you going on, thinking this can happen, it's making it harder than it has to be." He stopped and took a breath, holding it for a moment.

"Are you done?"

He nodded.

"Do you mind telling me why you changed your mind?"

"I didn't. Not about you, that never changed. But I can't let you think we can go off together. I want you to know that now."

She said nothing.

"You're angry." He dropped a piece of metal into the water bucket and it sizzled in counterpoint to his statement.

"No," she said, watching the steam rise in tiny curlicues upwards. The truth was, angry didn't seem to encompass the depth of her vexation. But she lacked the energy to express it. Maybe it was that the sickness still had its hold on her. She realized she felt strangely tired. She leaned back against the gate and closed her eyes for a moment. A smell of someone's noontime cooking fire was wafting down the open street. She ought to have been hungry, having skipped breakfast, but the food scent was making her nauseated instead.

"Arya." Gendry had put down his work. "You all right?"

"I think so," she said, with some vagueness, and then contradicted herself, "only I don't feel very well."

He came to her side, wiping blackened hands on his leather apron and then touching only slightly less-dirty knuckles to her cheek. He muttered a few choice words. "You're sick."

"I was," Arya agreed, "but I'm better."

"Like hell you are."

She slid off the stool to prove that she was well. Swaying, she announced, "I think I should be going."

"The only place you're going is to bed." He put an arm under her legs and swung her up against his chest.

"Whose bed," she murmured curiously.

"Mine, unless you know one nearer."

"I don't think," Arya said, as he carried her off, "my family would approve of this."

"I'll deal with them."

Moments later they were in the tiny upstairs room and he was tucking furs around her. She amused herself by imagining her mother's face upon knowing she was in Gendry's bed.

"What'd you get sick from?" he asked.

"My castle visit, I expect. Maybe that sailor gave me a foreign illness. Most probably," she said dreamily, "I will die."

He gave a grunt of disgust, but scanned her face anxiously.

"You can go back to work. I'll just lie here."

"I wouldn't put it past you to climb out the window."

"No. I'm too tired."

He went towards the door.

"Gendry."

"Mm." He waited.

"Stay with me until I fall asleep."

"All right." He came and sat on the edge of the bed, careful to remain on top of the furs. She shifted to make room for him.

"Hurry up then," he said, with brusqueness, though when he put his hand on her head again it felt gentle.

Arya closed her eyes.

Once she appeared to be sleeping more deeply, Gendry hailed a boy outside and persuaded him by means of a coin to carry a message to Winterfell.

Robb Stark rode up by midafternoon.

"She's upstairs, m'lord. I would have brought her to you myself only I didn't know how your lady mother would feel about that."

"Well," Robb said, dismounting and looping the reins of the animal about the gatepost, "she won't be delighted with this arrangement, either, but as it's done, we won't cavil. How long has Arya been here?"

"Since midday. I told her I'd work to do but she wanted to stay. Then she wasn't fit to make her own way back."

Robb followed him up the stairs and into the room, and Gendry lingered by the door as the other young man went over to the bedside.

Though the air was cool enough to see one's breath, Arya's cheeks were flushed. In sleep she had flung off some of the furs.

Robb murmured her name, touching her face. She came awake with a reluctant sigh.

"Can you ride?"

She nodded at him without apparent comprehension of the question, then her eyes sought out Gendry in the background.

He stood, feet apart, hands behind his back in an unconscious denial of obligation now that her brother had arrived.

"My head hurts," she said after a while. "It's hot in here."

"I'm taking you back home," Robb said gently. "You're not well yet." He eased her into his arms. She didn't resist, curling up against him.

"Do you want me to come with you, m'lord?" Gendry asked.

"I think I can manage."

Gendry followed him anyway, as Robb brought Arya carefully back down the stairs and outside to the waiting horse. For a moment Robb hesitated, trying to decide if he should set Arya on her feet while he mounted, but Gendry put himself in front of them, holding out his arms for the burden that was no burden. Robb silently passed her over to him, his eyes searching Gendry's, looking for some explanation that could not be given in words, how it was that he took her so comfortably, so naturally.

Robb swung up on the horse, and Gendry came close enough to lift Arya up to him, except she had already let her head fall under his chin and her arms had gone around his neck.

He felt his face heat. She was fevered and half-asleep and probably it seemed natural to her, but Robb's eyebrows were drawing together. Gendry suddenly recalled with ironic clarity how he'd stated: no one's a bad lord until someone gets too close to his sister.

He almost felt as if he ought to apologize, but that might make it worse. Nothing to be done. He untangled Arya's arms from around his neck and swung her up. Robb settled the girl's slight frame in front of him, gathering his voluminous cloak around her, and nudged the horse forwards, with only the briefest glance by way of goodbye.

Gendry stood by the gate in the blowing wind and watched until they disappeared down the muddy, half-frozen street and around the bend out of view.

Silly, but he suddenly felt unaccountably lonely.

He returned indoors and laid another chunk of wood on the hearth against the cold night to come.

Back at Winterfell, returned to her bed, Arya slept through the rest of that day until into the next morning. When she awoke, her mother was sitting at her side, with no recriminations for her disappearance, or any mention of where she had been.

"Drink this; it will take your fever down." Catelyn helped her to sip at the lukewarm tea. Her hands were tender as they smoothed damp hair away from her forehead. "How do you feel?"

"Tired." Arya sank back down. Her head felt thick and muddled, her bones old and languid. What had Gendry said to her? I don't think this is going to work. He was giving up on the idea of them. Telling her she should accept the fate that had been assigned to her by virtue of her birth and her sex—the fate that said you will marry a high lord and rule his castle.

Tears of disappointment and frustration began to brew in her eyes.

"I want to go back to sleep," she mumbled, hoping that Catelyn would take her leave.

"Shall I stay?"

"No, thank you."

"Do you want me to have Margit sit with you?"

"I want to be left alone. Please, Mother."

"Very well." Catelyn rose, and Arya could hear her standing over her for a moment, undecided, before moving towards the door. "I will check in on you later," she added.

Do, or do not, it makes little difference to me, she thought.

I can make my own plan. I don't need Gendry...or anyone. I don't need anyone.

But she felt weak and exhausted and she lacked the will to encourage herself, it was all too much to bear thinking about, as long as her body felt clutched in the grip of whatever illness had a hold upon it. Instead Arya turned over, pressed her face into the cushions and tried to return to the quiet of her dreams.

In the next few days, though she woke and slept in more normal amounts, she still pretended to be sleeping whenever Catelyn came to check on her. Maester Luwin came, too, and Arya grudgingly allowed him to examine her, ask her a few questions, and administer some tinctures. She heard him talking to Catelyn out in the hall after the visit but they were speaking too softly to hear what was said.

Robb came, sitting down at her side and smiling. "I've been by, but you were sleeping. Is that all you mean to do? How about getting better?"

She grimaced wanly but had no answer.

"Maester Luwin says your fever is gone. Don't you want to eat?"

Arya shook her head.

"All right. There is no one you want to sit with you?"

"No. I just want to be alone," she repeated.

He patted her shoulder, bracingly, and said he would come to see her again. And he did, and so did the maester, and even Catelyn with a sort of desperate intensity determined to talk to her daughter, but she could not be induced to eat anything or to bear their presence for more than a few moments at a time.

When even Sansa came, to Arya's darkened sense of humor that proved an amusing visit, because it was hard to determine which of them was more apathetic; for once she was challenging her sister in that role. Apathy was a funny thing, she thought, almost like a muscle; the more you exercised it, the easier it became to employ.

Margit came with a no-nonsense manner and insisted on helping to wash her hair and giving her a sponge bath. Arya submitted, but then dismissed her.

A few more days passed, and she had no desire to get out of bed. She drank plenty of tea and broth, yet left the rest of her food untouched.

Maester Luwin told her one afternoon that there was no reason she should not be up and about and back to all her normal doings, and that she was worrying her mother unnecessarily. Arya wanted to reply that she didn't care, but instead argued that she was not fully recovered, and since she had almost convinced herself that this was true, he left her room looking irresolute.

Catelyn tried once to speak in a stern manner about her responsibilities and duties, but gave up when she could see her daughter's eyes grow filmy with indifference.

One time Arya woke from a nap and the hour of the day was indiscernible. A few candles sputtered low nearby. She couldn't see light from the window, but they might have been shuttered (she had asked for them to be kept so). She heard her mother and brother's low tones from just beyond the door. It sounded as if they were arguing. Catelyn's voice in angry denial, Robb's in calm insistence.

"—there is no reason why she can't—"

"—might not be that simple."

"But surely—"

She put a cushion on top of her head and began to drift off, not into sleep, but into a vague state of meditation whereby she attempted to recall large passages of text from some of her favorite works. Eventually she stopped hearing anything else but her own internal voice.

The next morning, there was a tap at the door.

She didn't respond; she hadn't been bothering. Whoever it was would come in anyway; Margit with a tray of tempting delicacies that didn't tempt her, or her mother with another of Maester Luwin's foul-tasting concoctions.

Idly she angled her head around to where she could see the visitor.

It was Gendry standing there.

He stared at her for a moment, glanced back in the hallway as if for confirmation, then came in. After another instant he closed the door after him. And looked back at her.

So incongruous it was to see him in her room that she nearly laughed.

"What are you doing here?" she said finally, to break the silence.

"They asked me to come."

"What for?" She picked at the embroidery on the cushion she was clutching to her chest.

He came a few steps closer.

"You look very clean," she said. She didn't intend for it to sound hateful, although coming out it sort of did.

"I washed up. Did you think I wouldn't, when I was sent for? You look like a corpse."

"I do not," she said, provoked by his tone which was a combination of contempt and matter-of-fact observation. "Margit did my hair yesterday, and this is a new night-dress."

"Well, you're as skinny as a scare-crow. Aren't they feeding you? Or aren't you eating?"

Arya shrugged.

He crossed over to the window and began to pull the shutters open.

"Don't," she said, squinting against the unaccustomed flood of brightness.

"You need air in here. Light too." A blast of fresh winter wind skittered across the floor.

"I'll get sick again."

"Ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Arya stuck out her lip and returned her gaze to the threadwork on the cushion. "If you have only come here to say the same things as the others, you might as well spare your breath. I'm not well."

He came, grabbed a three-legged stool, shoved it next to the bed and swung a leg over it, sitting with a challenging thump. "What's wrong with you then?"

In the airily apathetic manner that had been working thus far she said, "The maester does not know for certain."

"I think I do."

"Oh yes?" She regarded him with regal indifference.

He leaned in close and said, "Nothing."

"You are offensive."

"Yeah, well, you'll have to forgive me, m'lady, because I'm thinking you've probably had all the hand-holding you're going to get."

She had missed him. So much. The awareness of it suddenly struck her powerfully. She almost threw the cushion at his head in her happiness. Though, of course, she was still irritated by his cavalier assumptions. Those weren't to be ignored.

"There's no need for you to stay," Arya said, "if you don't care to attempt to behave like a gentleman."

"I didn't come here to learn about being a gentleman, nor sit by your bed and pour drinks for you, neither. We're going out."

"Are you mad? It's cold. I am not going anywhere. I will have a relapse." She tucked the furs securely and pointedly around her legs.

He pulled them off and threw them on the floor.

Arya's mouth made an O. "You pick those up."

He folded his arms.

"I'll call someone."

"Go on then."

"Whatever I say, they will believe me over you."

He shrugged and observed—"You're getting some color in your face now, that's good."

"Seven hells! I am not leaving this bed."

"You promised me, remember?"

"What?"

"You swore you'd do what I said. So this is it. We're going out."

She stared at his uncompromising expression. "Does it have to be that?"

"Yes."

"I don't want to."

"Just the same, that's what it is. Put something on." He rose.

"Oh, now you are going to help me get dressed?"

"I'm waiting outside. But I'll come back and you better be ready when I do. Want your maid?"

"No," Arya said. "I'll do it myself."

He raised an eyebrow at her and headed for the door.

Once he was gone she slid off the bed. Her legs felt shaky, but she managed to find a dress, which she put on over top of her night-gown. Then one of her fur-lined cloaks, and her boots. She looked at Needle hanging in its scabbard on one of the hooks. She missed that, too.

She went and sat back down on the bed until Gendry poked his head around the door.

Rejoining her, he took her arm and placed it in the crook of his elbow. "Let's go."

She hesitated once they were at the threshold of the door. "Are there people about? I don't want to see anyone."

"Your brother's waiting by the stairs. I haven't seen Lady Stark."

She shuffled alongside him down the passage.

Robb met them with a look of surprise. "You're up," he exclaimed. "Good girl."

"Where are we going?" Arya said with some crossness.

"Wherever you want," Gendry answered, just as Robb said, "You shouldn't go beyond the walls..."

They exchanged glances. "The godswood then," Arya said.

Gendry looked at Robb, and after a moment her brother nodded.

It did feel better to breathe clean air again, though Arya found her legs beginning to tingle by the time they reached the godswood's main gate. She tipped her head back to look at the white sky, in which a couple of crows were dipping and swooping, but she had to look away, it was too bright.

Gendry's hand slid down to hers, squeezing it. "Coming?"

They went within, but it took a while to reach the weirwood at the heart of the godswood and Arya was tired by the time they did. She sank down on the bench with some relief.

"You can't tell me this isn't better than sitting up in your room."

"I will have to get used to it, though, won't I? Since you're set on sending me off to House Frey."

"I'm not set on anything, least of all you getting married which you're too young for—just said I couldn't offer anything better."

"Anything," she said emphatically, "would be better than being stuck at the Twins for the rest of my life."

"Says the spoiled lord's daughter."

She pushed him. "Shut up. If I'm so spoiled how is it that I don't get what I want?"

"You will always get what you want," he said without hostility.

They sat in silence for a space, soaking up the quiet. Arya stared at the snow-dappled moss on the ground. The cold from the bench was seeping through the layers of fabric around her. She shivered.

"How did you come today?"

"I told you, your brother sent for me."

"But what did he say?"

"Said they couldn't do anything with you."

Arya snuggled into her cloak, feeling a blend of sheepishness and guilty pride. "And?"

"And you and me had some kind of connection he didn't understand and wasn't sure he even wanted to, but he asked me to come up and talk to you. And I said, how did Lady Stark feel about that, and he said she was fine with it—but he was lying, then," Gendry concluded frankly. "He and you have the same face when you lie—anyway, I said I couldn't promise anything but I would see you."

"Hmph," Arya said. "And then, I expect, you'll disappear again."

"Oi." He turned his head to look at her, but she looked down and pressed her lips together because she could feel them starting to tremble. Out of a growing anger.

"This is what I'm saying, right...it's not going to work, not when you are who you are, and I am who I am."

She hated the compassion in his eyes. "Stop talking to me like I don't know who we are. You're going to be so sorry, do you know that? Because I'm—" She sprang to her feet, unsteadily. "Well, first I'm going to get strong again, and then I'm going to be on my way."

He reached out but she knocked his hand aside. "And I thought you could be part of that, but you're talking like you don't want to or you can't, I don't know which one but I don't care. I won't let you tell me that you're done with me. I am done with you."

She stormed away from the weirwood tree, her legs aching but it was a good ache because it helped to ease the anger somehow. He caught up with her easily, and would have taken her arm but she turned such a look on him that he held up his hands and simply followed behind instead.

Less than a month later, the household of Winterfell was turned on its end.

Arya Stark, having recovered from her short stay abed, was gone in the night. As were a few of her personal possessions, her sword, Needle, and one of the stable horses.

All Gendry could think when Robb came to him looking for any kind of useful knowledge he might possess, was that she had warned him.

First I'm going to get strong again, and then I'm going to be on my way.

He'd thought it was nothing more than an empty threat, the sort a thwarted child might devise.

It hadn't been. It had been her plan. And she had meant to bring him into it, but he had refused.

There were no words for that kind of knowledge, that kind of guilt. He told Robb Stark he knew nothing. And perhaps because of his genuine dismay, Robb believed him, and went away no wiser.

Clearly, they had all underestimated the depth of Arya's determination. All there was left to do was hope that her flight had been poorly enough executed that she would be returned to Winterfell both safely and in short order.

But the days passed, and no one could find her.