Knowing it was a dream (and usually she could tell when it was) didn't make it any more palatable.

Arya needed to know how Gendry felt before she could visit Ceilis again; it didn't seem right to make the decision completely on her own. They were lying together; he was in a gentle mood. He was trailing his fingers along her shoulder. It was a good time to talk, surely.

"It may be that I am with child," she said.

His hand stopped. "Don't joke about such things."

"I do not joke. Why would you think so? It can happen when two people—"

She couldn't bring herself to use the coarse stable word, and any other euphemisms sounded silly.

She twisted her head around to look at him. His eyes were stormclouds gathering. She felt uncertain suddenly.

"Why are you angry?" she asked softly.

"I'm supposed to be happy that I might've put a bastard into your belly?"

"No—I don't know, don't say it like that." She hated this brutish dream-version of him. She wanted his eyes to be blue, why were they so dark?

"It's what it is."

"I don't want it to be like this." Had she said that aloud, or only in her mind?

"What do you want me to say? You want me to say we'll be a family?"

No, she whispered. Yes. I do want us to be a family.

I do.

She hated him for not saying the right things. Why couldn't he have? Why couldn't she make him feel what she wanted, through sheer exertion of will?

"You can get rid of it," he said, but it wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't help.

"Is that what you want?"

"Of course it's what I want."

"This could never go any other way between us," he said, when she could not say anything.

She didn't know what was real.

It's a dream, Arya. It's not real.

It's a dream Arya Stark don't be a fool.

This dream, I don't want to be in this dream.

Arya woke and the room was warm. The fire was burning comfortably in the hearth. Her boots were beside the bed, her sword and belt within grasp. She felt the sense of panic, of not being in control, slowly reduce.

But seven hells, she was so scared of having that conversation. She didn't think she could do it.

She burrowed under the furs and lay awake until the flames turned to embers.

In the morning she felt the need for some kind of purification. She ordered a bath with the hottest possible water brought to her room—this kept a handful of servants busy for some time—and soaked in it until her skin itself seemed made of water, then scrubbed herself all over until every inch tingled. She wrung out her hair, twisted it into a braid so severe her head hurt, dressed in fresh clothing and went down to the godswood to spend the afternoon there among the trees.

Later she paid her respects to her uncle and apologized for giving them cause to worry. He was bemused and eager to acquit her of any perceived misbehaviour, saying they could talk further at dinner—if she planned to attend—and she promised that she would.

It seemed important to do everything right for a little while, as if by good intentions she could somehow influence the course of events in a way more to her liking. With that having been established in her mind, it was clear she ought not to visit Gendry at night, though she didn't mean to ignore him completely. She took him aside in the hallway before dinner and they talked for a few moments. He asked if she was all right and she told him she was. He wasn't persuaded, she knew that.

Arya prepared to send news of the cancelled engagement to Winterfell, wording it in a way that she hoped revealed neither jubilance nor disappointment. It was difficult to couch it in such a manner, without being explicit, so that Robb understood she did not want him to take action on her behalf. But at last this missive too was on its way.

Though she tried to avoid thinking about it, she was becoming preoccupied with her possible gravidity. She scanned her appearance daily trying to see any differences, not only the swelling of stomach that would be obvious but any changes in her skin and hair because Ceilis had advised her, before she left, to make note of such things. She kept scrupulous track of what she ate (little enough), and her sleeping patterns. If there had been any actual employment, it might have been easier to distract herself. But she couldn't make herself read or, gods forbid, embroider. Physical exertion was the one thing she loved and there were only so many places a person could roam in a day. If there had been anyone who would have engaged her in a swordfight, she would have eagerly taken up sparring. Inactivity made her mind far too obsessive.

Gendry sought her out one afternoon when she had been resting near a flowering tree in the godswood. She had nearly fallen asleep, having been there for enough time that petals tossed by the wind had formed an outline around her body.

"Are you sleeping?"

"No." She'd heard him coming.

He sat down by her and picked up one of the coral flowers where it had landed on her shoulder. "Wish you had some of this color in your face."

She smiled idly. "Poetic thing for a blacksmith to say."

"I wasn't being poetical. Practical more like." He ran it along her cheek.

"Do you remember," she said, "back at Winterfell, when you gave my serving girl that flower for me?"

"Wasn't much of a flower."

"That's what she said."

"It reminded me of you," he said. "All spiky but—pretty just the same."

She looked away, embarrassed despite herself. "Anyway, I kept it...for the longest time. I even brought it across the Narrow Sea with me."

"Did you?" His mouth turned up a little. "Now look who's the romantic."

"Shut up." She sat up and pushed him. "No one ever gave me a flower before. So it meant something. And then when you gave me this..." She ran her fingers around the circles of the bracelet, watching his face closely.

"I know," he said.

Arya dropped her gaze again. "Did you ever make anything for her?"

"Her?" he said vaguely. "No. You're not jealous, are you?"

"No," she lied.

"Liar," he said, tolerantly, as he always did.

"Maybe a little."

"You shouldn't be. It wasn't like that with us. She needed protection. I felt—obliged."

"But you still slept with her."

"Yes I did."

She raised an eyebrow expectantly.

"She was never here—" he tapped the side of his head. "like you are."

"Hmph," Arya said, but not displeased. Feeling somewhat uncharacteristically arch, she reached out and put her hand against his chest, feeling the steady beat. "What about here?"

He stared at her for a moment, too serious, and she knew he was going to say something she didn't want to hear, whatever he had sought her out specifically to tell her today.

"You know how it is with you and me," he said finally.

"But." She said it so he couldn't. She drew back her hand, even though he grabbed for it.

He sighed a little through his nose. "I have to go. If you don't need me here...and I don't think you do. I've been here long enough. The others will have gone back south to the Hollow Hill by now."

"Let me come with you."

"It's no place for you, I already told you that."

"Then where is my place? Because I don't think you'd say it was in a filthy rat-ridden alley even though I lived in one of those for a long time, or under a rotten boat, that was good for a month too?"

"You chose those places," he said, voice taut. "You weren't born to them."

"All right. So where should I be? Locked up in some man's tower, high above all of it?"

"At least you'd be safe and warm," he muttered.

"And miserably unhappy," she countered. "I suppose that doesn't matter, does it?" She already knew that if he had to choose between her safety and her happiness he would pick the former.

"I have to go," he repeated, a stubborn set to his jaw.

"Then go. Tonight, if you want." She spoke so flatly that she was proud of herself for it.

His smile was grim, and he shook his head. "Not like that."

"You want me to stand in the window and flutter a handkerchief wet with my tears?" she gibed. "You'd have to wait a long time for that."

"I just want you to accept it." He dropped his head into his hands for a minute and then looked up, exasperated. "Why do you always have to make everything so difficult?"

Arya said nothing. She was recalling Rona's words spoken that day at her table: I told him to go.

He would have stayed if I insisted.

Would he stay if I insisted, she wondered.

She didn't want that either, not really.

"Sorry," she said, a little flippantly, a little distantly.

"Tell me," he said, "when you're ready. Soon. I need to go soon."

You're cruel. You really are going to make me stand by the window and see you off.

That was all right, she could do it. There was nothing she couldn't do. She had wolf's blood in her veins, or perhaps northern ice water. If he thought she was going to sob, he was wrong. She hadn't cried before, and she wouldn't cry now.

He got up to walk away then, to leave her there under the flower tree. She watched him go.

"Gendry," she said before he got too far.

He looked back over his shoulder.

"Are we ever going to just be together?"

"I think I want that more than you do," he said, sounding almost sorrowful.

She thought about that as he continued out of the godswood.

Arya had determined to wait until after her second visit to Ceilis before sending Gendry on his way back to the brotherhood, not that she had any intention of informing him whether she was or wasn't expecting a child; it seemed too manipulative, either way. Still, she had to know for herself. When the allotted time had passed she took a horse from the stables and set out. This time she made the journey much more quickly, in fact she drove the animal with a near frenetic speed that would have ruined a less conditioned mount. She couldn't have said what made her rush so, perhaps a sublimated urge for self-destruction. It was still well before noon of the chosen day that she arrived at the cottage.

Ceilis answered her knock and bade her come in, telling her to sit, just as before, her expressive face revealing no information though Arya knew she was being visually re-assessed. She was given another cup of the bushberry tea. Ceilis talked briefly of inconsequential things before asking, "How have you been feeling since we last met?"

"Much the same."

"And you have not bled?"

Arya shook her head.

Ceilis felt her wrist, examined her skin and hair. Made her stand, now, and put hands against her stomach, pressing gently.

"It is still early," she cautioned, "and, remember what I said about your potential difficulties, but I believe that you are carrying."

Arya sat back down. She couldn't say anything. Ceilis moved away and busied herself by the shelves, giving her a few moments to absorb the knowledge.

Arya breathed the way her dance-master had taught her. Techniques designed to calm the body, to bring life and strength to nerveless limbs, to cold extremities. Her heart slowed, her senses sharpened. All the scents from the drying herbs in the cottage were intense. Outside she could hear leaves in the trees, the blowing of the tired horse. The tea was pungent on her tongue, with rich aftertaste as she swallowed.

She'd had all this time to think about it and she couldn't, quite, reconcile the idea of life growing inside her. Not just any life; hers and Gendry's, committed to human form. It was a crushing kind of knowledge. Good, bad, both and neither. With that dichotomy, that ambivalence, how could she decide whether to nurture or to eliminate? It was no kind of choice at all.

Ceilis was selecting and combining some herbs, putting them together in a small sack, which she tied with a knot. She returned to the table and set them in front of Arya.

"If you would not carry the babe to birth," she said, "drink this tea daily. But remember, as I told you, there is no magic. Though herbs are powerful, they affect everyone differently. I can make no promises about the outcome. Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Yes, I understand." Arya realized she hadn't thought of payment until now. Ceilis hadn't asked for any, but surely something was expected.

She looked at the bracelet on her wrist and couldn't look away from it. Her eyes started to blur. She tried to pull it off but it stuck, or she wasn't trying very hard, she couldn't tell.

Ceilis placed a hand over hers. "Don't cry, child. And keep the bauble...it's pretty enough, but not meant for me, nor can it do me any good. Send a chicken home with my niece, if you like."

She found the practicality of the request poignantly funny, even through the ache in her throat, because it reminded her of someone. Better to be fed than decorated, Gendry would agree. Better to be safe than happy.

"All right," she said, when she could talk. "I will. I...I must go now."

"If you need more help, come to see me, or send a message." Ceilis watched her tuck the herbs away under her cloak. "Women must help each other in this man's world."

Arya murmured her thanks and left. She barely noticed any of the ride home, leaving much of it to her horse to find the way.

That night she went to Gendry and told him that if he wanted to leave, she was reconciled to it.

Which wasn't exactly the truth. It was better than the truth. The truth was, child or no child, she was almost mad with the desire to accompany him, to see if she couldn't find her own place among the brotherhood. Wielding a sword and living under the sky like any man had the right to do. Any man, but not a lady.

Gendry sat down beside her on the bed and looked at her for a while, after she announced her conclusion. At last he said, "You know I wouldn't go if I thought you needed me here."

"Are you trying to convince yourself?"

"No, but..."

"Tomorrow, if you want."

"It's less than a week's ride. If you need to find me—"

If I need to find you I will.

She shifted closer to him. He looked a little uncertain. All this time she had avoided contact, it had been weeks since they'd shared the bed. Now it seemed necessary. Harmless, certainly.

"I don't know what you're doing," he said.

"Don't you?"

"I'm...confused."

She climbed atop him, putting her knees on either side of his legs and took his face in her hands.

"I thought—mm—" he said around her kiss. "Thought you wanted me to go."

"No, but you're going. So I'm saying goodbye."

"Arya, this doesn't feel..."

"Good?" she taunted, moving her lips along his neck.

"...right," he finished, inhaling sharply.

"How does this feel?"

"Seven hells." He was kissing her back now, his mouth warm and hungry. This time the lovemaking was fast, both of them craving something that only the other could give, Arya with a rather reckless sense of abandon because restraint did not seem a virtue at the moment. When they finished she clung to him possessively, though in past times she had usually been the first to distance herself. He ran a hand across her head, still breathing deeply.

She breathed in his scent, fixing it in her mind for tomorrow night, and all the nights to come, when he wouldn't be there. She smoothed hands over his upper arms, feeling the tautness of the sinewy muscle under the skin. "I already miss you," she muttered into his shoulder. Why can't I come?

He turned to his side and pulled her up against him in their habitual way of snuggling. "Sleep," he said, managing to make the one syllable sound impossibly tender.

She couldn't, though, so she lay there and memorized.

Morning came, and by midday he was preparing to leave. A boy waited outside with his horse. Edmure came to wish Gendry well and then, informally, left him and Arya alone, for whatever reason; either her uncle was too busy with his own concerns or by now he sensed their relationship was more complicated than it seemed and didn't care. She suspected the latter. Regardless she was grateful, though she still considered her goodbye to him to have been said last night. Not said, really. Expressed.

She recalled that it had been here at Riverrun that she had said goodbye to him last, only she'd been the one leaving.

She wondered if he remembered.

He took a breath, held it, took hold of her hands.

Arya was glad she didn't feel like crying. Not because this didn't feel wrong, but she just felt dry. Deprived. Maybe she would cry later. More likely she would kick something.

Goodbye, stupid. I love you.

She'd never thought that before. It made the nausea in her stomach return even though that had been abating recently.

"Remember to eat," he said. He wasn't trying to be funny, his eyes were serious.

"I will," she said, automatically, still mulling over her thoughts.

He lingered a little longer, about to say something. Then he turned to go, the light from outside framing him for a moment in the entry hall. She waited until he was astride the horse and circled it around, but she was damned if she was going to watch from a window.

She went upstairs, slowly, to her room to search out Ceilis' bag of tea.