Hello! First of all, thank all of you for your great reviews! :D Now, I've noticed that there are both Gendrya shippers and Jaqen/Arya shippers here... Things might get complicated, but I hope that in the end we'll all have our fair share of drama and romance and sexy times for our favorite couple of choice!
And now, let's go on with our daily dosis of stupid Gendry! Because no matter how much time passes, he'll always be a stupid bull-headed fool! (L)
He stormed out of the castle and ran to his smithy, which was at a side of the courtyard. He felt ad if his entire body was on fire, burning with the immense rage that he felt. He couldn't understand why he wanted to break through the skin in his chest with his hand and tear his heart out. Maybe it was to stop the pain.
He couldn't get the image out of his head. Arya, naked in all of her glory, on top of Jaqen H'ghar in her bed. It was something that he should not have seen, something that he did not want to see. If what Arya had wanted was to punish him, she had suceeded. She had, at last and for all, destroyed him.
Gendry grabbed the hammer and started hitting a sword that he was making and that rested in the anvil with all the strenght of his arm. It was the only way that he could think of to liberate his fury without harming anybody. If any man got in his way at that moment, he would hit the poor fool.
The hammer kept beating the sword until the steel was all ruined. Even when the sword broke, Gendry kept bringing the hammer down, and he screamed. He didn't know why he screamed, he just needed to. His face was covered in sweat, and the muscles in his armed hurt.
He threw the hammer away against a barrel with such force that the wood of the barrel broke, spilling water all over the place, but he didn't care. He buried his hands in his hair, pulling at it, and he closed his eyes. His mind was immediatly filled with the torturous image that he was so desperatedly trying to forget.
Just in how many ways was that girl going to tear his heart out?
He wanted to go back, interrupt them again dying whatever the fuck they were doing at that moment, and just start hitting Jaqen H'ghar face the same way that his hammer hit the swords that he forged.
"Gendry?"
He opened his eyes and turned around. Aeya wad in the entrance of the smithy, looking at him with a worried expression on her face. She was wearing the men's clothes that she liked to wear when she disn't have to dress like a girl, and her hair was all wet and tangled, falling around her face.
The instant that he saw her, Gendry knew that he wasn't angry at her. He was furious, yes, but he could never be furious with her. How could he hate such a small, beautiful and precious thig ad she was to him? No, he was furious with Jaqen H'ghar, not with Arya. Not with Arya...
But he couldn't let her see that. He couldn't let her see that all that would take would be a single word from her, a single movement of her fingers, and se would crush him.
So he stared at her with eyes as cold as ice, and an expression as hard as stone.
"I'm sorry, m'lady" he said bitterly. "I did not mean to interrupt your... activities."
"You didn't interrupt anything" Arya said, and she sounded confused. Gendry scoffed.
"I'm sure that Jaqen H'ghar would disagree with that."
"Gendry-"
"Why did you come, m'lady? Surely you have more important things to do."
"Gendry, listen to me! What you think you saw, it was nothing! He tripped and I fell over him, nothing else!"
Gendry was shocked. Did she really expect him to believe that?! Did she really think he was that stupid! He was many things, he was a fool, but he wasn't an idiot. They hadn't 'tripped'. But what shocked even more was that Arya had actually chased after him to try to explain to him (by lying) what had happened. Arya hadn't spoken to him in a week, she had said that she hated him and didn't want to be near him ever again, and yet there she was. The lady was breaking her promise and she was trying to explain herself to the worthless bastard.
"Even if that was true, what was that man doing in your chambers while you were naked, m'lady?" he asked, clenching his jaw. He didn't realize that the water that had fallen off the barrel that he broke had already reached him and was soaking his boots.
Arya opened her mouth, but no words came off it. Instead, her face turned a deep shade of red, either because it had just sinked in to her that Gendry had seen her naked and she was extremely embarrassed, or because she wasn't telling all the truth, just as he believed.
"It is... not your bussines what he was doing there" she finally said, looking away from him, feeling uncomfortable, and she swallowed hard.
Gendry narrowed his eyes. "So I thought" he turned around and looked at the broken sword that rested on the anvil, and cursed under his breath. He would have to melt the steel again and make a new sword, giving him even more work than he already had. "If that isn't my bussines, then none of it is. You don't have to follow me here to lie and make up fake excuses. I won't say a word to your family or anyone else about your lover."
"Seven hells, stop it, Gendry!" Arya yelled, frustrated. He turned around to face her again, surprised by her sudden fit of anger and frustration. Arya was shooting daggers at him through her grey eyes. "Jaqen is not my lover! It was an accident! And yes, none of it is your bussines, but I wanted you to know anyways!"
"Well, I already know" he muttered. "Now you can go back to ignoring me and hating me."
She seemed indignant with the comment.
"I'm mad at you because you lied to me and said that you would go anywhere with me!"
"Yes, but not to see you killed! I couldn't bear that, Arya, don't you understand?!" he exclaimed, just as frustrated as she was, or even more.
"If I had been in danger of death, you could have protected me if you had been there, with me!" Arya shot back at him. "But you weren't there. You are a coward."
She turned around to leave, and Gendry watched her back as she moved towards the door of the smithy. He bit down on his lip so hard that he could taste blood, while he tried to decide... After all, he went to her room to tell her the truth, and in the end he didn't because of that twice-damned scene that he had seen. So now that he had the chance, he might as well just get it over with. He needed the truth to get out of his body and stop blackening his heart.
"Yes, I am a coward" he admitted. His voice didn't sound as strong as he had expected, but Arya heard the words anyways and stopped walking to look at him again. "And you are right, I could have protected you if I had been there with you. In fact, I didn't really lie, Arya, I would follow you anywhere. To the end of the world and to the Seventh Hell if necessary. I travelled all the way from Dorne to this place to be with you... But the Twins... The Twins appear in my nightmares every night, Arya... Every night since the Red Wedding..."
"That's stupid" Arya muttered. "Why would you have nightmares about the Red Wedding? You weren't there, you didn't know anyone who was there! You have never even been at the Twins!"
Gendry didn't respond right away. He needed to tell her the truth, and he would tell it to her from the beginning, so that she could understand.
"Remember the day that the Red Priestess came and took me away?" he asked softly.
There was a moment of silence. Then, slowly, Arya nodded her head.
"I tried to stop them..." she whispered. Her voice shook a little.
"I know you did" he said. He had seen Arya trying to pull the guards away from him, but they were too many, too big and too strong for the little girl that she had been at that moment. And no one could fight against Melissandre of Asshai. "She needed me, you know? Not any other person or bastard boy, she needed me."
Arya actually looked skeptic after he said that. No wonder, even Gendry himself knew that what he said sounded ridiculous! However, that didn't stop it from being the truth. Arya crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow while she looked at him.
"Oh, really? She needed you?" she asked mockingly, though there was also a trace of bitterness in her face and voice. "For what, keeping her bed warm at night?"
Gendry felt like a hand had smacked him full in the face. He thought that his ears were trying to fool him, but no! Arya had actually said that! Recalling that... -well, that event- filled his mind with unpleasant memories, and he felt disgusted. He quickly shook his head, and Arya's eyebrow raised even higher than before.
"Oh, come on, Gendry, you couldn't really believe that I wouldn't guess at some point, right? I'm not a child anymore, in case you haven't noticed. I'm not a fool. I know how men are, I've seen it enough. I even have my brother Robb, and Jon and Sandor Clegane as perfect examples that men can't keep their pants on even if their lives depend on it."
Gendry couldn't deny it, but he had never been more embarrassed in his entire life. Arya was right. It hadn't exactly been as she thought, but he couldn't just start spitting out excuses when he knew that in the end, it didn't matter. He passed his hand over his face, not knowing what to say, and ignoring the intense jealousy that was burning in Arya's grey eyes.
"You don't deny it then?"
He shook his head. "No, Arya, I don't..."
"Then with what right do you dare to reproach me about Jaqen, regardless of the fact that I wasn't doing anything with him?!"
"Because now I know that it's a mistake!" he exclaimed, taking his hand away from his face. "Because I know how much you regret it later! Because I don't want that for you, Arya! I don't want you to make the same mistake!" that was a poor excuse for a reason. The real one was that he was jealous like a mad dog. But he wasn't about to say that out loud.
"You still haven't told me why in Seven Hells that witch needed you" she interrupted him, guiding the conversation away to another subject. Gendry breathed hard. He felt that what was coming was going to be much more difficult to say. He clenched his teeth and closed his hands into fists.
"Because she needed... She needed king's blood" he said. That wasn't the difficult part. It was still a part that he hated, but it wasn't what was giving him nightmares at night. He did not know how to prepare himself for that. While he dreaded that moment, Arya frowned.
"Oh, I remember you saying something like that, the night that you arrived..." she murmured, recalling those moments. "Yeah, but we were interrupted... well, you know why we were interrupted!" she blushed for a second, but she immediately went back to her serious expression. "King's blood? What do you mean by that? The blood of someone born in King's Landing?"
It would be easy to just nod his head and made her believe that. So simple... but it would be a lie. Gendry shook his head.
"No... The blood of the son of a king" he was looking at the floor while he said that, he was too embarrassed and ashamed. Sure, most would think that being the son of a king was much better than being the bastard of some bloody nameless bugger, but he did not share that opinion. He had never respected king Robert, he had thought him a drunk that was doing nothing for his kingdom. Not only that, but he also left Gendry's mother pregnant and then left her alone to care for a bastard child that he never even met. Gendry was disgusted.
Slowly, he raised his eyes to stare back into Arya's... The was even more confused than before, if that was possible.
"The blood of my father" Gendry finished saying.
Arya's expression changed. It went from confusion to recognition to astonishment and finally to disbelief. She backed away one step.
"Seven hells..." she whispered, her eyes wide with incredulity. Very slowly, she started shaking her head from side to side. "No, it can't be... But it can! How did I not see it before! You are exactly like him!"
Gendry snorted and he felt his blood stir when he heard that. "Like the king? I'm nothing like him. He was a drunkard."
"You are both equally stupid" Arya sneered.
There was a long moment of awkward silence in which they both just stared at each other. Slowly, Arya's amazement disappeared from her face. She had heard so many incredulous things in the past years that it was now very easy for her to accept the fact that Gendry was the former King's bastard son. She shrugged.
"So" she said, breaking the silence "why did that woman need your... king's blood?"
"To do magic" Gendry muttered. That caught Arya's attention, but she don't say anything; she was waiting for him to tell the whole story. Gendry felt that he was starting to get sick. He knew that once he said everything, there was no going back. Once he got the truth out of him, Arya might hate him forever.
I can't lie to her forever a voice inside his head said. For once in your life, you idiot, grow some balls. Tell her.
I can't.
Tell her!
He took a big, long breath...
"To kill my uncle's enemies. The other kings."
Arya's head made a quick movement, backing away from him. From her expression, he could tell that she was understood what he had just said, but at the same time she didn't understand the whole meaning of what he wanted to say. He had hoped that she would figure out everything without the need of making him tell her, because it would be easier. Saying the exact words out loud would be extra pain inflicted in both of them.
"She took some of my blood out with leeches. With three leeches" he said, recalling the painful and shameful event. "Then she threw them to the fire one by one. As she cashed the leeches into the fire, she said three names for each one. Robb Stark. Joffrey Baratheon. Balon Greyjoy." He made a very quit pause to organize his thoughts. He felt his heart beating furiously inside his throat. "I have no idea how Balon Greyjoy died, but I know he did. And Joffrey... well, we all know what happened to him. And... the Red Wedding..."
He heard Arya gasp. He wasn't entirely sure that it was a gasp. It sounded more like a cry... or like a silent scream. When he looked at her, he saw that she had covered her mouth with her hands, silencing herself. Still, her breath was fast and forced, and for a second Gendry was afraid that something bad was happening to her. He tried to take a step towards her, but Arya immediately backed away from him.
"Stay away from me!" she hissed, and he froze still. Arya wasn't looking at him anymore. She was keeping her eyes away from him, and she raised her hands in front of her to keep him away.
"Arya... Please..."
"No!" she was screaming now. "Stay away from me! I don't want you to come near me!"
"Arya, I swear I didn't..."
"Do you know what they did to my brother, Gendry?!" she yelled at him. She was mad with grief. Her face was red, and tears were running downher cheeks and soaking them. "I was there, I saw it! You you want to know?! They cut his head off and they sewed his wolf's head in place, and paraded him around to celebrate! And I saw it, Gendry! And- and now you come here... saying that it was because they made magic with your blood?!"
He had no idea what to say. I'm sorry, they tied me to a bed and some leeches sucked my blood and that got your family killed and I had no idea that would happen? It sounded pathetic. He wanted the earth to swallow him and make him disappear so that he could stop feeling that shame and guilt. But, more than anything, so that he could stop seeing Arya crying. Few things were so horrible in life, and her sobs were killing him.
And it's my fault.
Would he ever stop feeling miserable?
"The moment I found out what had happened to your brother... Few times have I felt worse in my life, Arya" he confessed. There was nothing that he could do in that moment, he could only talk. "I didn't care about the other two kings. I wouldn't have given it a second thought if it had been anyone else, either. But it was Robb Stark, your brother... And his wife, and your mother... It was your family, Arya" his voice was barely audible anymore, no more than a whisper. Still,he kept talking. He felt tears stinging in his eyes. "Your family... And it could have been you too, if you hadn't run away! And every time that I close my eyes, I see the leech falling into the fire and Melisandre saying the names. And I see the Twins, and... and I see the massacre in my head! I can see all of them, your brother, your mother... They haunt me, Arya..." he paused, taking a big breath to calm down. He felt like something was stuck inside his chest, and it felt like he was asphyxiating. "I didn't go to the Twins because... Because I was afraid... I was afraid to face their ghosts, my demons. I couldn't, Arya, I just couldn't."
He knew as soon as he said it that there wasn't anyone that was such a coward as he was. He had allowed the girl that meant more than anything else in the world to him to venture on a suicide mission without his support because he hadn't been able to face his fears... Mere ghosts of the past that existed only in his head.
Arya was weeping almost in silence now, and she had slowly backed against a corner of the smithy. Her back hit the wall, and she slid down to the floor. Once her body hit the floor and she was sitting cuddling in the corner, she started sobbing loudly again with her eyes closed and her face twisted with pain.. Gendry could swear that he heard his heart shatter in a thousand pieces. He hurried to kneel by her side, and he took her in his arms. As soon as he did that, Arya tried to pull away from him and she punched him in the chest repeatedly, trying to make him let go of her. But he didn't. Neither did he fight back. He just stood there as Arya punched him with less and less strength as seconds passed by, and he never stopped holding her because he knew that she needed it. She needed to be held and loved, and she needed to get all her pain out of her, because she hadn't done it before. So he allowed her to punch him until she finally stopped and had only the strength left to cry her eyes out. Even then, Gendry did not let go of her, and Arya wasn't trying to get away from him anymore. It was the other way around, actually. Arya threw herself against him and she clung to him as if her life depended on it, and she cried, and cried, and cried... the whole time with Gendry's arms around her, comforting her.
Suddenly she pushed him away, this time using all of her strength, and she finally made him let go of her. Arya stood up on her feet again, and took several quick steps to get away from him.
"You should have been dead" she hissed, and the sound made the hairs of the back of Gendry's neck stand on end. He had never heard such hate in anyone's voice ever before. And all of Arya's loathing was directed towards him at that moment. "You should have been dead, I should have let you die before. I should have left you behind in Harrenhal, and none of this would have happened..."
She couldn't be talking seriously... She couldn't, she wasn't. It was just grief speaking through her mouth, she wasn't herself... Arya wouldn't want him to die, would she? No matter how mad she was, she couldn't care that little about him!
"Arya, I never wanted any of this to happen" he swore, not knowing what else to say, but it wasn't enough. "I would have never done anything to hurt you..."
"BUT YOU DID!" she screamed. "You did, you always do something! First it was other things, and now this!"
"I know how you feel..."
"NO, YOU DON'T! You can't know how I feel! You never had a family! You never met your father, you don't remember your mother, you never had any siblings!"
"I had siblings..."
"It's not the same! You never knew they were your half brothers and sisters, none of you did! Blood doesn't make you family, Gendry, loyalty does!"
Then she turned around ran away, leaving the smithy in less time that it took him to realize that she was gone. He tried to go after her, and when he got out of the smithy he shouted her name.
"Arya! ARYA!"
She didn't listen to him, didn't look back. She was already too far away and disappeared from his sight, so he didn't follow her. He didn't think it was a good idea, Arya needed to be alone, she needed to put her thoughts in order, and let what he had told her sink in...
She will never forgive me... Damn it, she will never forgive me!
Gendry started cursing and went back inside into the smithy, where he punched a wall. He felt a throbbing pain in his hand after he did that, and bit his tongue when he refrained himself from screaming.
You did the right thing, the voice in his head said. You did the right thing. Secrets are no good for anyone.
Maybe he was right, but it didn't console him. There was only one thing of which he was almost completely sure, and it was that he had lost Arya forever.
She cried. She ran. She didn't even know where she was going. All she knew was that she wanted to get as far away from Gendry as possible.
She hated him. No, she didn't hate him. She hated that they had used him to do do such a horrible thing, to perform magic to... to kill her family. Robb and her mother were dead because the Red Woman had taken Gendry away, and later she had taken his blood.
It couldn't be possible. It couldn't be true. She didn't want it to be true. If they had used anyone else, maybe it wouldn't have hurt so much, but Gendry... Why Gendry?!
Because he isn't lowborn. Because he is the son of a king.
In another occasion, she might have been happy for him, because at least now he knew where he came from. But she couldn't focus on anything else that wasn't the pain in her heart.
Yes, she didn't hate Gendry... But at that moment, she was furious with him. And the truth was she didn't want to ever see him again. Never. She just couldn't. Everytime that she did she would remember the horrible truth behind his abducting.
I could ask Bran to kick him out...
No, she couldn't. She wouldn't kick him out.
She was having trouble breathing, and her legs ached from running away from the smithy. She looked being her and was relieved to see that Gendry was nowhere to be found. She pressed her bak against the granite wall and started sobbing harder than she had done in the presence of the boy. Now that she was alone, there was nothing stopping her from letting her express her real feelings.
She slides down the wall until she was sitting on the cold hard floor, and she hugged her legs against her. She buried her face in her knees, which muffled the sound of her cries and sobs. She wanted to scream. And most of all, she wanted to kill the Red Woman just as much as she had wanted to kill Walder Frey and succeeded. Who was going to stop her from getting a full revenge?
She heard steps near where she was, and as the steps got closer, they also got quicker. Whoever those steps belonged to, he had for sure seen Arya and was hurrying to check on her. She was ready to dismiss whoever it was, she didn't want to be with anyone...
"Lovely girl?"
She raised her head from her knees and saw Jaqen kneeling in front of her. He looked worried. Arya thought that she probably looked hideous, with her red swollen and wet face covered in tears, and unable to stop sobbing...
Jaqen out a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"Lovely girl, are you alright?"
She wanted to say yes, but she ended up telling the truth and shaking her head from side to side. Jaqen's expression darkened.
"Did the stupid fool mistreat you? Did the imbecile harm you?" he asked with an ice-cold voice. Again, Arya shook her head. "Is a girl hurt?"
"No..."
"Then why is a lovely girl crying?" he asked, more softly now. He wiped some tears away from her face with his finger.
"Ja-Jaqen... Do-does dark ma-magic e-exist...?" she asked between sobs. She was unable to properly pronunciation anything.
Jaqen frowned, confused by her question, but he answered. "Of course it does... A man has seen it many times. Why is a girl asking?"
Arya didn't respond, she couldn't. Her lips were trembling, and her shoulders were shaking too much. She tried to stop herself from moaning, but she couldn't. She had never felt more defenseless in her life.
Surprisingly, Jaqen leaned forward and took her in his arms, embracing and comforting her. Arya felt a bit safer... Just like she had when Gendry had pressed her against his chest. Despite of everything, for a moment the bull had made her feel warm, and safe, and loved.
Now it was Jaqen pulling her in his embrace, and she didn't push him away.
"Tell a man what he can do to make a lovely girl feel better, and a man will do it."
She had an answer for that request. It was the most difficult and perhaps stupid decision of her life, but she had to do it.
"Take me away" she sobbed, her voice half muffled against his chest. "Take me away from Winterfell. Take me away from here, far, very far away... I don't want to be here anymore."
At first here was silence, except from the noise that he cries made. She thought that Jaqen was going to tell her that she was crazy and what she was asking for was stupid, when sudden,y and without previous notice, Jaqen sneaked one arm behind her back and the other one behind her knees, and he stood up. Arya put her arms around his neck, and Jaqen started walking away while carrying her towards the castle's gates.
I hate myself right now...
Also, I have to put this as a response to a guest review. I know perfectly fine the reason of the Red Wedding, but Gendry feels guilty. That's the thing in this fic, because I want it to be that way. And I have read the books! I just feel like following the show and Melissandre's logic. Period. So I hope that's clear, I know that the Red Wedding happened because Robb was an idiot and the Freys were little shits! Not because of the leeches... BUT GENDRY DOESN'T KNOW THAT! And now Arya is very mad, because he reminded her of the murder of her family, which is not cool!
:D