Gendry awoke first.

He was used to waking in the pre-dawn, in the grayness of not-yet-light, but he was not used to having her next to him. This person, this girl—no, this woman—he'd tried to forget and couldn't, not even for a day.

He wasn't about to indulge in touching her, that would be particularly the action of a fool.

She's not mine, she's never been mine, she isn't ever going to be mine. Stubbornly he thought it.

But Arya was lying there, only inches away, and he couldn't close his eyes again.

Long hair had escaped her braid and was tangled around her neck. She'd lost the look of smooth-cheeked innocence in her face that made it possible for a child of either sex to pass for the other. Her brows were startlingly dark against the pallor of her skin, with smudges under her closed lids as though someone had rubbed charcoal on fingers and pressed them to her face. Even draped by a blanket, her body seemed to him painfully thin, though the dip of her waist and curve of her hip were further silent proclamations of femininity.

He wanted not even to look at her, but she would be gone again, in a matter of hours, days—who could know when the wolf would decide to flee.

He would not chase.

Noiselessly, he climbed over her, pulling his own blanket on top of her still form as he went.

Outside, the fire was still smoldering. He laid another chunk of wood on it, chafing his hands against the coolness of the morning air, and then went down to the stream to get fresh water.

Lord Beric was walking by when he came back up. They exchanged brief greetings. Beric nodded towards his tent. "She slept with you?"

"Next to me," Gendry said, with a touch of truculence.

"That's what I meant." Brushing off the moment of awkwardness, Beric said, "I knew her father. One of the few truly good men. I think she is very like him."

"I couldn't say." He had of course met the late Lord Stark in the forge back at King's Landing, four years ago. It hadn't been long after that when this girl had come into his life with her poorly-imitated boy's swagger and her gritty, bossy defiance.

"Don't send her away too quickly," Beric said.

Gendry eyed him, a little more sharply than was polite. "It's not up to me whether she stays or not. She does as she likes."

"She won't stay where she's not wanted," was the older man's mild response.

She won't stay where she is wanted, either, he thought.

Beric moved on and Gendry tended to the fire. Breakfast needed making. Rituals were important, certainly out here, but even more for him personally. It was a good way to stay focused. Wake, eat, craft, sleep. Day after day, honest hard work. He was given the chance at leadership, too, within the brotherhood; he was a fair hand with a sword now, he could grasp and appreciate the subtle ways in which revolutions were sometimes fought. There was always something to learn, someone's experience to draw on. But still, breakfast always needed making. For today, breakfast was last night's stew, made so late that it was still warm. He heated it again until it was slowly bubbling in the pot; heat was a purifier.

He was finished eating when Arya finally looked out of the tent door, and, pulling on her boots, came out. Her skin was paler than ever, or perhaps it was just the morning light. She disappeared in the bushes briefly and then rejoined him, hesitating as if she needed to be invited to sit.

"Eat," he told her.

"I'm not—" she began.

Do it anyway, he wanted to yell at her. Do it because people should when they look like they're going to fade away. Because people do it even if they feel like they can never taste anything again, like every bit of food they put in their mouth is just a piece of coal going into the fire to keep them moving. Because you can hurt and cry and moan all you want but you are still going to have to eat if you want to be alive.

And even if you don't.

It's just what people do.

Maybe she saw some of that on his face.

He dug around in the pot with the dipper, searching for the bits of vegetable, the choicest morsels of meat to give her.

"Thank you," she said softly.

If I had a dog that looked as bad as you I would feed it so.

Arya ate.

She looked up eventually. "Can't things be like they were? Just...today?"

"No," he said. He wasn't trying to be cruel. He just didn't think they could. He knew he couldn't.

"I went to the winter town," she said. "The day after I got back home. Almost three months ago."

"You met her, then."

Arya was silent until Gendry looked at her and then she nodded.

"The child's not mine."

"So she told me."

"You didn't believe her?"

Arya tugged at the hair escaping her braid. "I don't know."

"You believe me?"

"Yes."

"Why?" he fired at her.

"I don't think you'd lie to me. You might hate me but—" her voice cracked a little.

"She was already carrying when I met her," Gendry said. He didn't feel like elaborating on how he and Rona had come to be. It wasn't anything particularly complicated, but what was the point in being forthcoming just because Arya felt entitled to the information. When she'd volunteered nothing about herself into the bargain.

When he knew nothing about what the last two years had been like for her.

And, in a way, he didn't want to know, either.

Not unless they had been complete perfection, the happiest two years of her life so far. And the wary look in her eyes, the translucency of her skin, her rangy bones, those all told him that hadn't been the case.

He didn't want to know what had made that look come to her eye. And when he did know, when he found out, he would hate himself for not having been able to keep it from her.

Which didn't make sense at all.

Arya cleared her throat. "This doesn't look like a permanent camp. Will all of you be here much longer?"

He shrugged. "It's up to Dondarrion. A week, maybe a fortnight."

She was quiet.

He looked away, up at the sullen clouds threatening rain. "What about you?" he asked, still not looking at her.

"I am on my way to Riverrun. My grandfather wished to see me."

"Long way from Winterfell just for a visit."

"I came from the Twins, more recently." Her voice was hesitant, indefinable.

"And what were you doing there?" He cursed himself for asking. Wasn't he playing her game? But better to get it out. It was some kind of extended torture; might as well ask for the dagger as endure it.

"Meeting the man I was promised to." She spoke so rapidly her words fell over each other. "Waldron Frey. I would have gone unescorted to Riverrun, if I could; they wouldn't countenance it."

"Fine sort of family if they did. Where is your intended now?"

Dead, he rather hoped she would say. The gods weren't that kind, of course.

"I made him wait," she said, "back there. We were camped and...Lord?..Beric sought us out. He said we were seen at the Crossroads, so we were followed. I assume."

"You made him wait? What kind of man is he?"

Though the question was rhetorical he saw her stiffen. "I don't know myself, exactly, but he has been very accommodating thus far. And has behaved well."

"Sounds like a camp dog," Gendry remarked, not caring if she was offended.

She was, a little. "He's of noble blood."

"Right, well, I know how much that means to you." It wasn't his nature to be sardonic but the situation was drawing it from him nevertheless.

"You know it doesn't," she said. "I only meant he's been courteous—I don't want to talk about him."

Gendry was in full accord there. He hooked the pot off the heat and put it on the ground, where one of Beric's hounds who had been lurking began to clean up the leavings.

"I made something for you," he told her abruptly. "You might as well have it."

Arya waited with some apprehension while he rummaged to the bottom of a sack in his tent. Retrieving the bracelet, he opened his palm and held it forth, without much flourish; though to look at it now, he remembered just how much work had gone into its making.

Arya hesitated, her eyes going from the adornment to his face and back again. He'd begun the piece while still up at Winterfell, a month or so after her disappearance. He hadn't been sure, at the time, what it was he was making, what meaning it even had. He only knew that he worked on it when he was thinking of her, and so he had often been angry, yet still taking infinite care over its details. It had taken him a long time to finish completely and when he had, somehow, he didn't want to look at the thing. He had wrapped it up and kept it out of sight.

"It's beautiful," she said uncertainly.

"Take it." He moved his hand closer. "Take it for the trouble you went to in getting my helmet back."

Her eyes widened and glistened. "No...! That was yours, I only returned it to you."

"As this is yours."

"Not if it's...some kind of payment." She said the word like it tasted bad, like spoiled fruit.

"Take it."

Arya shook her head fractionally. "I don't know what it means," she said, low, almost pleading.

"It doesn't mean anything," he said, and suddenly his own throat hurt, as if some kind of divine punishment for a not-truth.

The look on her face was like he had slapped her. He nearly took it back, but couldn't—some things, once spoken, had to be lived with, no matter the misunderstanding they caused. He had to get the bracelet away from him, it wasn't his, it was almost burning his fire-hardened skin, and so he turned it over into her hand and pressed her fingers around the cool circles of metal.

She stared down at her hand and he wondered if it could somehow be burning her, too.

Then the exchange was done, and someone was calling him, anyway, and he strode away gladly to answer, leaving her standing there in front of his tent.

Arya had an early sense that the brotherhood was a group in which she could feel at home, if they would give her a chance. It appealed to her, the concept of men from different walks of life, with differing skills and pasts, yet all committed to ensuring that people could live their lives free of tyranny if they chose, no need to swear allegiance to a particular house or king. She sensed it could provide the freedom of her nameless life in Braavos yet also the security of her existence as a daughter of Winterfell.

But when Gendry had given her the bracelet and walked off, she felt completely deserted. Lord Beric had spotted her in those aimless moments, and beckoned her over. There was something about him that she recognized as familiar, worthy of listening to and learning from. When he confirmed he had known her father it was like an echo from the past, however faint. She clung to that link and shadowed him on that first day. He didn't seem to mind. He wasn't suspicious of her connection with the Freys (although it was apparent that house had no friends among the brotherhood) and talked at length with Arya, answering many of her questions. She was grateful because he was clearly trying to distract her from the incident with Gendry although he never touched directly on the subject of why she was still here.

She broached it herself, eventually, by early evening. Waldron couldn't be left to wait forever and she needed some form of guidance now.

They were sitting in his tent which, while considerably larger than the others, was by no means ostentatious. His furniture was simple and practical: a desk with maps, several chairs scattered about. His hounds, one of which Arya had noticed eating the last of the breakfast stew, were curled up on rugs at their feet. Beric's squire had brought them dinner, and afterward, cups of tea. Arya sipped at hers, hoping it would help her to relax. She was not especially tired, but her nerves were on edge. The bracelet, at which she hadn't looked closely yet, sat heavily in one of her pockets. It doesn't mean anything. She knew she wouldn't be able to bring herself to throw it away and yet she wanted to. Tears pricked at her eyes. She stared upwards for a moment, blinking.

Beric had been pointing something out on one of his maps to her, but he paused.

"Tea was too hot," she managed.

"That is nothing to do with tea."

"I don't know what to do. Everything is so—"

There was no one word for what everything was, really. Wrong. Perhaps. That came close.

"Tell me," he said, "we'll see if we can't untangle it."

The kindness in his voice wreaked further havoc on her emotions; if he'd dismissed her as a silly girl, it might have strengthened her, but the fatherly indulgence was devastating.

"I have to go back, only I can't leave him like this again, he hasn't forgiven me for the last time. He will hardly look at me, and when he talks—" She broke off. "You must find this completely trivial."

"Nothing is trivial where it concerns one of my men, and the daughter of an old friend." He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "Know that you are welcome within the brotherhood, but if there are things you must attend to, then hiding here won't help."

"I know," Arya said, swallowing.

"I'll ask him to go back with you. Him, and one of the men who knows the way."

"He'll refuse."

"He may," Beric agreed. "I'll see if he can be convinced or not." He called for his squire and bade him send for Gendry. Arya straightened in her chair and scrubbed her face with the heel of her hand.

Gendry appeared shortly thereafter. At least he didn't register downright disapproval upon seeing her; that would have been even more humiliating.

"I want you and Elgar to escort her back to where she was found," Beric was saying. "It's a half-day's ride. You can leave tomorrow."

"I'm needed here."

"We can manage without you for a time."

"I don't see why it should be me."

"You know her," Beric said. "I charge you with her care and keeping until you deliver her into the hands of one you trust."

Arya blinked at him, surprised by the casually uttered yet solemn request. Gendry looked equally taken aback. "I'm a free man. M'lord."

"It's a favor I ask," Beric said with a smile. "Do you accept?"

Gendry inclined his head. Somewhat stiffly.

"Good. Tomorrow, then." Beric pretended to be interested in his maps, or maybe he really was and had grown tired of them. Arya stood up self-consciously. The hounds followed them out.

Out of earshot, trotting to keep up with Gendry, she said, "That wasn't my idea."

He sighed through his nose. "It's fine."

"No, it's not, not if you don't want to, and I can see you don't."

"I said it's all right. I'll take you back to your—" (she wondered if he was trying to torture her by thinking of new words for fiancé) "commitment."

"You know you can just say his name," she said, feeling less emotional now and more mildly irritated.

"I don't want to say his name." He ducked under ropes strung between trees and circled piles of firewood, taking the shortcut towards his tent. Once there he looked at the fire—which was burning, but had nothing cooking over it—and demanded, "Did you eat?"

"You know," Arya said, and she didn't care now, she was just going to say it and have it said. "I did live across the sea for two years on my own and most of the time I managed to feed myself every day, so your asking me every other moment if I've eaten or not is becoming a little tiresome. But yes. I did. Thank you for your concern."

She matched his stare aggressively. He looked away first.

"I'm going to bed," he said, even though the sun had not yet sunk beneath the cover of trees.

After he'd gone within the tent, she sat in front of the fire and found a stick to nudge the embers back into flame. The evening light changed to twilight and then to deeper dusk. Recalling the bracelet, Arya took it out to look at. She held it between her fingers for a while; six metal discs, which gleamed and shone from polishing, each bearing a pattern of tiny circles on the outside, with loops on the indented inner side connected by butter-soft leather cord. It was intricate work, performed in miniature, not something she'd known he was capable of. She slipped the bracelet on over her left arm, where it fit just beneath her hand, against her wristbone.

She didn't accept that it didn't mean anything. Or, at least, that it hadn't meant something, once.

Now it might be too late.

But she didn't accept that, either. She could be every bit as stubborn as a stupid, bull-headed man.

Her thoughts turned to Waldron. Truly, she didn't know what to do with that complication. That commitment, as Gendry had most lately referred to him. Though Waldron had been accommodating, she had not missed the warning he'd given her that from now on things would be different. If she were to marry him he would expect full compliance at all times, in all ways.

Her father's prediction came to her mind again. You will marry a high lord and rule his castle, and your sons shall be knights and princes and lords.

She traced the pattern on the discs of the bracelet for a moment and then pulled the long sleeve of her tunic down, covering it. She entered the tent and lay down on her pallet. Gendry's back was to her and if he wasn't sleeping, she couldn't tell.

The bracelet felt cool pressed against her skin.