A/N: So A&G have been apart for quite some while now. Time to remedy that...
"Come out from your tents!" A harsh call echoed in the not-too-far distance, startling Arya from her semi-slumber. For a moment she lay still, her fingers curling around Needle's hilt in involuntary readiness. The wisest thing to do would be to stay, wait for one or more to try to enter. Dispatch them one at a time, or, at least, as many as she could.
Yet she was compelled. Holding her sword aloft, she flipped back the tent flap covering the entrance.
Though it was dark, they had torches. Five riders were grouped in a semi-circle around the perimeter. She thought she glimpsed their own horses, already captured behind them. She squinted boldly into the firelight.
"Who are you?" she demanded. Bearing no visible banners nor with decorated mounts, they were not immediately identifiable, but they looked too well outfitted to be commonplace brigands, either.
Off to her left she heard a muffled oath and Waldron appeared in his own tent doorway, sword at the ready.
She could take two. She didn't know if he could take three. Possibly they were going to have to find out.
"It's that group," Waldron said, across to Arya. "They call themselves 'the brotherhood without banners'. A fancy name for outlaw scum, if you ask my opinion."
"But no one did ask your opinion," one of them said, genially, nudging his horse closer than the rest. "You two were seen at the Crossroads unloading considerable coin. We were hoping you'd care to make a contribution towards the welfare of the people."
"Thieves," Waldron said contemptuously.
The word gave Arya a guilty thrill. She was a thief. Had been a thief.
"Call us what you will," the man in front said. "But if you prefer to avoid trouble you'll comply, and we'll be on our way. No one needs to have any harm come to them." He nodded in Arya's direction. "Especially this young lady."
"I'll fight you for the coin," Arya said impetuously.
"I beg your pardon?" He leaned forward on the horse.
She took a few paces forward, then executed a brief but elegant sword-dance in the air, making Needle sing. "If I win, you go on your way. Without any contribution."
"Spirited," he remarked. "And you know what to do with the toothpick, that's clear. Have you ever thought about being a freedom fighter, lass?"
"She is noble-born," Waldron put in, his voice unsteadily haughty, although Arya couldn't help feeling it was more out of a general sense of outrage than ire over any perceived slight directly to herself. "Hardly the kind to consort with riff-raff like yourselves."
"There are many kinds of people within the brotherhood," the other man replied. His voice was calm, and she heard the last word, suddenly, as if for the first time. But now, it was in Rona's voice she heard it.
...some sort of brotherhood.
Gone south to the Riverlands...
Gods be good.
The voices were all spinning in her ears.
She heard herself saying, "If I lose, I join you myself."
He gave his head an admiring tilt. "Agreed."
"No!" Waldron protested. "Have you gone mad?"
She glanced back at him. She felt suddenly saturated with power. The men were relaxed on their mounts, looking entertained.
"I don't believe so," she said, "but thank you for the concern."
It made someone snicker.
The leader, or at least the one who had consented to fight—she had heard one of the men call him Beric a moment ago—dismounted. He drew his sword, slowly. Unhurried.
They circled each other.
"I must speak with you," Arya said.
"Right now?" He looked both baffled and amused.
"Afterwards."
"As you wish, my lady." He gave a courtly bow, and though she knew Waldron was fuming in the background, seeing it as a calculated insult, for some reason she found it charming. She was unable to help a small smile.
They engaged.
And she realized she couldn't wait.
"I'm looking for someone," she said, side-stepping. "I don't know if he is with your group or not."
"What do you want with this person? A fight, I'm guessing?" He lazily slashed again. He wasn't really trying.
"No, I have something for him, something he will want. If he is with you—will you bring me to him, so I can give it to him directly?" Arya had no desire to hurt her opponent, either. He'd not offended her, and he might know something of Gendry.
"Describe him."
"Black-haired, strong. He is—was—a smith." There were so many words to describe Gendry. She couldn't say them all to this man. Some of them weren't even words, they were just feelings. Just pictures. "He has blue eyes. Blue like a summer with no end." Her sword faltered. They were just standing now. Beric was looking at her curiously. She wasn't sure why they weren't still battling, but it didn't matter. She searched his face, praying she saw recognition there, admission that he knew of whom she spoke.
After another few moments he nodded. "Very well, lass. You win."
"You'll take me to him?" she said in a whisper, feeling very young again suddenly, not so powerful.
"Aye. I'll bring you to Ser Gendry myself. What's to be done with this one?" He jerked his head in Waldron's direction.
Her fiancé, whose existence she had momentarily forgotten about. "Leave him be," she said. "I will myself contribute generously to your cause if you do, though you will have to wait for it. I have no gold with me, and I am already indebted to him."
Beric let out a whistle that rose and fell. "A fine promise. But you're an intriguing creature, I find I almost want to believe you. My lord!" he called to Waldron. "We are going to borrow this lass for a short while. We'll return her unharmed. You're welcome to come along, if you can behave yourself."
"Of course I will come," Waldron said. "I'll not let you take her alone."
"If you wait here for me, I will come back," Arya declared. "You know I can look after myself."
"I know that you tend to do very much as you wish!"
A chuckle ran round the men.
"Then indulge me one last time," she said, though she was very close to forgetting how to wheedle.
"Know that it will be the last time."
The men let out hearty roars in masculine appreciation for the ultimatum. Arya felt a a touch of nausea stir in her stomach. But she looked steadily at Beric, telling him she only needed a few moments to grab her things.
Inside her tent she collected her bag of personal supplies, the bull's head helmet among them. She held the bag to her chest for an instant and was ready. Outside, they had her horse; they truly had been meaning to steal it, if no other payment had been forthcoming, but she didn't care, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, but where they were going. Who she was going to see.
Unless Beric was lying and she was heading to her death.
Or toward other unpleasantries.
But she knew it wasn't that.
Riding swiftly through the night with the torches bobbing and sputtering was more dream-like than real. The men clearly knew well where they were going, and she kept close to their leader, but it was still a difficult ride, over unfamiliar ground in the dark, with her head and stomach both spinning, begging for everything that had escalated so precipitately to slow down.
Without the sun, tracking the passage of time was impossible, but she estimated they had covered several leagues by the time the horses slowed and she saw the light of campfires.
Arya looked around, trying to get a sense of the size of the group, but it was hard to determine. There were many horses tied up, watched by an alert guard who took their mounts as they arrived. An aggregation of tents were scattered around the wooded clearing, with a rocky cliff at their back. Nothing had the semblance of permanency—whether they had been here for two days or twenty, she couldn't tell in the dark.
Beric elbowed her gently, startling her out of her scrutiny. "Your man's over there."
His tone was mild so she didn't know if his choice of words was innocent or implicatory. She followed his outstretched arm indicating a tent towards the outskirts of the gathering.
She saw him, crouched by the small cookfire next to it. She started forward at once.
Beric caught her arm. "Go easy on him, now. He's one of our best smiths. Can't afford to lose such a man."
She stared up at him resentfully. "I have not come here to harm anyone."
"I don't believe you have," he said with a cryptic smile, "but sometimes it's what happens, despite efforts to the contrary." He let go of her.
Halfway to Gendry, Arya stopped, uncertainty turning her stomach even further. He saw her coming—she knew he saw her coming—and yet he turned away, busying himself with something.
You've left him twice now, a sneering voice said to her, did you think he was going to come running?
Arya cradled the helmet in the sack tight against her chest like a baby, so tight she could hardly breathe. Even if he refused to acknowledge her presence she had come all this way to bring him something, she would do that at least. She would not run now.
She moved closer, aware of a few other men watching. Probably it had been ridiculous to hope for some kind of privacy, though she realized now she had been.
"Gendry," she said, appealing to him to look at her, to recognize her.
"That's Ser Gendry to you, miss," said one of the men. "Knighted by Dondarrion himself."
Arya didn't know or much care who Dondarrion was. "I have known this man longer than you have," she said, tilting her head coolly, though she knew there was a tremor in her voice.
"A little respect," he said, taking a step in her direction, "in a new place, might be in order, don't you think, girl?"
"Leave her alone," Gendry muttered over his shoulder. He was crouched by the fire, tending something in a pot, his back partly to them.
The men obliged, moving out of earshot and talking to each other as they went, but Arya scarcely noticed. Each moment seemed agonizingly long as the silence between them stretched. The crackle of the fire seemed to mock her with its contrasting friendliness.
"Sit down," Gendry said, "since you're here."
She slowly circled the fire in order to be directly across from him, but instead of sitting, which seemed somehow inappropriate, too informal now, she knelt. Like a supplicant.
More moments passed. She couldn't take her eyes off him, and she hadn't seen him look directly at her yet. He was stirring whatever was cooking. She had not eaten in hours but her stomach still felt sick.
"I came to...I wanted to bring you something."
"I don't need anything from you."
Arya didn't often cry, she had not cried even back in Braavos the day (that day), but now she felt tears threatening, her throat swelling betrayingly. It was too much like her dreams, it couldn't be like this. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
He glanced—almost—at her. Then hooked the pot away from the flames and used a dipper to pour some in a bowl. He handed it to her. Thrust it in her general direction, more properly. "Eat," he said brusquely, and then as if to himself: "you look like a ghost."
She reached out for it. He was careful not to let their hands touch, and moved away again. She sucked back a breath very fast so that the tears wouldn't build any more, and then inhaled the steam. Soup, it was, though far too hot to taste yet.
"Will you get off your knees?" he suddenly demanded, looking around.
"Not until you take this." She set the bowl aside and held out the sack containing his helmet.
He came back to her. Slowly. She had to tip her head back to look up at him. His expression was almost one of distaste. Was it for her? Did he hate her so much? Find her so...unforgivable?
He took the sack, opened it. Turned the helmet out in his hands.
At last he said—"You didn't have to."
"I said I would get it back for you," she said, eagerly.
"And you always do what you say you're going to do, is that right?"
"I try to," Arya said, subdued by his tone, sitting back on her heels.
"No matter what it does to anybody else?"
He was angry. But he was talking to her. Still wasn't looking at her—but at least she was hearing his voice. Real. Right there. Not a dream.
"I—" She wanted to say the right things, at least for now; later—if he let there be a later—she could ask her own questions. "I'm sor—"
"Don't—" He rounded on her, and she almost dropped the bowl she had picked up again. "Don't say that to me."
She swallowed. Not frightened of him, she could never be frightened of him, no matter how much time and space had interrupted them, but frightened that she couldn't do this. Couldn't make it right. For if sorry wasn't the right thing to say, what was?
There was a long, painful silence, punctuated by the other sounds of the camp; the horses stamping and shifting, the thud of logs added to fires for the night burn (it was very late), the lowering rumble of men's voices discussing plans, disseminating information. She drank the soup, now that it was cool enough. Gendry stood by the fire and poked it into an unreasonably furious pyramid. He still held the helmet in one hand. It somehow looked natural, like an extension of himself. She loved the shape he made, all dark and tall and...him.
"Why'd you come here?"
She said nothing, sensing that confirming in his mind that she more or less followed her desires to wherever they brought her would not be a point in her favor. Besides, she had already answered it, really, with the gift of the helmet.
"What did you expect to happen?"
"I tried not to have expectations," she said softly.
"Wise of you," he said. "Better get one of them to escort you back to wherever you came from."
This dismissal hurt. She pretended he didn't mean it.
"I do have to go back. Perhaps tomorrow...but first I would like to see what it is you, all of you, do here." She felt a touch foolish when she said this, because she was being honest, but he gave her a rather scathing look.
"The men here are men like any other, no better or worse, but this is no place for my lady."
Don't say it like that, like you hate me. Say it with a tease, if you must say it at all, if you must draw that line even deeper...
She was so tired. Her legs ached from a day's worth of riding, the additional travel on top of that and from kneeling on this hard ground. She climbed to her feet, trying not to let her fatigue show on her face. She wasn't looking for pity. "I have a bedroll in my supplies," she said. "Will anyone care if I sleep under the trees, over there?"
He tossed the stick he'd been using on the fire into the flames. "In the tent."
"What?"
"In the tent. Go."
She wavered. Her legs were shaking and she didn't feel up to any more of this tonight. But he took a couple of steps toward her and, by all the gods, she wasn't going to be brought anywhere. She scurried with dignity towards the shelter.
There was very little space. It accommodated his own bedroll and would fit hers as well, though she would have to be right alongside him.
She didn't care.
She unrolled her mat and blankets and stowed the rest of her things at the foot. He appeared in the doorway, blocking out the light from the fire, and nearly stepped on her.
His silence spoke far more than a curse, as he climbed past her to crawl into his own space.
Arya lay down. Gendry reached across her, sending fire-smoke and iron into her nostrils, which she inhaled with a little sigh of contentment for the familiarity of it, to draw the animal-hide flap over the entrance. For a second he hesitated, still on his elbow, turned towards her.
She couldn't help herself. She put her hand up to touch the side of his face, dimly sketched by the remaining light seeping through the walls.
"Seven hells, Arya—" he said through jaw muscles jumping against her hand.
"I'm not..." She didn't know how to say it. Not trying to seduce you. And yet she was cherishing the fact that he'd said her name. That he hadn't moved, hadn't slapped her hand away, which he had had plenty of time to do by now. She was unable to keep from smiling, knowing her own face was in shadow.
After another instant his own hand came up, his fingers closing over hers, bringing her hand forcibly—though gently—away.
But it was enough, it had to be enough for tonight.