A/N: Sorry for the delay in posting this. I was trying to rework a few things. This is the final chapter, though there may be a short epilogue.
Rejoining the brotherhood was hard, not because anyone made it difficult for Gendry to resume life in the group after his absence of nearly two months, but because Arya was on his mind all the time.
He tried to throw himself back into his former pattern of craft, eat, and sleep, which was sufficient to keep him occupied but not sustaining. Arya's absence nagged perpetually at him. Her comment about being desperately unhappy would stick in his mind in the middle of the night and, at such a godless hour, be nearly enough to convince him to get back on his horse and ride north if only to see that she was all right. The question she'd asked, where is my place, unexpectedly haunted him.
Beric confronted him, casually, after he'd been back a few days and had enough time to settle into the routine again. "How did it go with that girl of yours?"
"She's not mine," Gendry said, reflexively.
"Could have sworn she wanted to be."
"Maybe she still does."
"So tell me the story."
Gendry made a grunt of disgust. "You know I'm not one for words."
"The short story."
He capitulated, explaining that Arya and he had a history together. They always would have it. As for any future, he couldn't see it himself, personally.
Beric was more inclined to be open-minded and said so. He felt that there was little enough happiness in this world and if they two could steal some together then who was Gendry to decide they should throw it away?
Gendry argued it wasn't that simple (though he was beginning to wonder if it was.) As he talked he was working, executing a common procedure he'd done a thousand times before, but this time the bit of iron fractured. He cast the piece aside with an uncharacteristically foul word. "Seven hells, I haven't done that since before I was an apprentice."
"Anything can break," Beric said mildly, "under the wrong combination of conditions. What do you want to do?"
"About what?" He threw an irritated look at the other man.
"About the girl."
"I don't know. What do you think I should do?"
"I don't think you need to go back. She knows how to find us, doesn't she? A word of advice. If she does come, be careful."
"How's that?"
"I told you before, she won't stay where she's not wanted. Got too much pride for it, a girl like that. The conditions have to be right. And I'll tell you something else." Beric looked him right in the eye. "Just let it be what it is. Her father's dead. Don't worry about what he would have wanted for her. What she wants has got to be good enough. What you want has got to be good enough. Do you hear me?"
He nodded, slowly. He didn't know if he believed it, yet. But he was getting closer.
The days passed. The nights passed. And then one day one of the men came to him with a cheeky grin, telling him there was a lady waiting for him outside.
Is she all right, he almost demanded, is she—
He went.
His heart settled a little when he saw her, serious as always, cloaked and atop a horse. Whole. Well, he hoped. Happy might be too much to hope for.
"I needed to talk to you," Arya said. He couldn't tell from her tone whether that was good or bad. He came to her side, reaching up for her. She shifted her leg over the horse's neck and slid down into his arms.
His thoughts ran ahead. Maybe she'd heard from Winterfell, maybe there were more entanglements with the Freys, curse every last one of them. She wants to talk, let her talk.
Trying to stay unruffled, despite his rather awakened emotions, he let go of her.
Arya looked around them, at the various sheltered cave openings, at the men who were outside, some giving them curious stares. "Could we walk a little? Away from here."
He guided her away, gesturing for someone to get the horse as they went.
She waited until they seemed well out of earshot before stopping him. "I have to tell you something. Maybe I should have before, before you left, but I couldn't."
It was hard not to feel consternation at the look on her face.
"I don't want you to be—disappointed, or happy, either. I—" Her chin was trembling a little.
"Oi." He ran his hand along her cheek to steady it, but his hand wasn't very steady either.
"I was...I was going to have a child. When you left."
He stared at her and then without conscious thought reached for her waist, pushing the cloak aside to see if her words made any sense, if there was anything to see to make them easier to understand. She pushed his hands away protectively, but he'd already ascertained she was as slender as ever.
"I am not, any longer."
"What happened?" He didn't know if that was the right thing to say. He didn't know what else to say, if it wasn't.
"Sometimes, apparently, it just—But it wasn't that simple. I didn't know if I wanted to be...I thought you would be angry because of how things are with us. And then the healer gave me herbs to get rid of it, only I never took them. But it happened anyway. And somehow I couldn't not tell you."
"Why didn't you tell me at the start?" He felt his head starting to hurt, trying to recall their exchanges.
"I didn't want you to think I was trying to keep you there," she entreated. "It didn't seem right."
He was suddenly conscious of an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. All this had gone on and he hadn't known, hadn't been able to do anything. Well that wasn't strictly true, he'd known something was going on with her, he would always be able to tell that.
"Please say something," she urged.
"I'm trying. I don't know what to say."
"Just...whatever you're thinking."
"I wouldn't have had even a name to give it," he muttered.
"A father is better than a name," she said softly. "You would have been there to help me raise it."
He looked down but acknowledged that with a nod. Yet it made him sick to think of their nameless child growing up in this world; not everyone was strong enough to withstand the hardships of birth without background. The way he had.
Even though he could keep any such offspring of theirs housed and fed, was it enough? Could it ever be enough?
Her eyes were reading his face. "The grandchild of a king and a lord is not nothing," she said, with some hesitance.
He drew her towards him and Arya came willingly into the circle of his arms. He wanted to be grateful that she was all right, that she was here with him, and he was. It was just that he still didn't know, even now, if he quite deserved to have her. Maybe he never would feel completely certain about that.
"Anything," he said, "that you and I make is good."
Later Arya approached Beric directly. He was sitting by the fire in one of the large caves, having some dinner. His dogs were settled around him, raising their heads alertly as she came close. Twisted shadows were dancing on the wall, thrown up by the firelight.
He invited her to sit down and share with him, moving over on the log that was an impromptu seat. They ate together. Afterward, he stretched out his legs and said, "Now tell me what you want."
Arya plucked at the thinly wearing fringe of her cloak. She decided it was best to be straightforward, she thought he appreciated that. "I need to know if I can be here. If there's a place for me."
"Everyone has to make their own place," he told her. "You have to carve it out with a sword...or in your smith's case, a hammer. But from what I saw of your skill with one, that won't be a problem for you. He is yours now, isn't he? Finally?"
His abrupt way of changing conversational direction had her temporarily at a loss for a reply. "I, yes, I think so."
"Good. Some men are better off without their woman around, but I don't think he's one of them. As far as it concerns me I'm willing you should stay. You may have to prove yourself to the others first. They have their own ways of testing newcomers, I don't always get involved."
Arya nodded.
"And he should stay out of it too, or there may be unrest. My men are good but they are still men, they don't like unfair treatment, nor special exceptions. If I have to send both of you away, I will."
"I understand."
Robb had written back from Winterfell, using the most general of phrases and coded terms, but essentially telling her that if she did not feel aggrieved over the dissolution of the Frey engagement, neither did he. He was content to leave the issue as it was as long as Arya felt similarly. At the end of the message he had added (though this too was vague and coded) that he and Nyssa were, at last, expecting the arrival of their first child.
She was honestly pleased for them, though the news coming so close on the heels of her own loss was somewhat unsettling and produced a little melancholy for a while. She was cherishing her restored freedom and health too much to feel actual regret, but it made her thoughtful nevertheless. She didn't tell Gendry, only because she didn't want him to draw the same comparisons; there would be time enough to bring him the news of her niece or nephew.
She passed the time by making a place for herself within the brotherhood, striving to be useful but not sycophantic, displaying toughness without aggression. Gendry had a hard time with her presence at first; he was far more protective now, and wanted initially to keep her where he could see her—in some cases, literally—but she was working on convincing him that they had to be separate entities, that though they belonged together, they had to be capable of surviving without the other, just as they had when on opposite shores. He was finally beginning to relax, even in their stolen moments together, when for a while the possibility of procreation shadowed their relations to a distracting degree.
She'd come to realize that contentment wasn't sitting in front of a warm hearth in sumptuous perfectly stitched clothing, with a library full of books and kitchens downstairs with every imaginable kind of food. Not that there was anything wrong with those things, but by themselves they didn't make her happy. Contentment meant wearing and wandering what she wished, swordplay and wordplay and scraps, fighting in the name of freedom, every day waking to something different—but mostly being with Gendry. Sleeping next to him at night and hearing his heartbeat whenever she stirred, whenever the demons threatened to make her uneasy. Whenever the dreams got too big to sleep through.
That was her place, that was her future—their future—and it would be their happiness also, whatever else came their way.