Chapter Text
Gendry doesn’t come back to her room, and she’s glad of that. She lies in bed for the rest of the morning, breathing shakily, and trying not to remember that only the night before, he’d held her as she’d remembered her mother. Not that any of it matters now.
She rests a hand on her stomach. It’s still flat—no sign of the life that now grows within it, though one day, she knows, she’ll be as swollen as Sansa.
The day goes by in a blur. She listens in on Bran’s and Shireen’s discussion of the White Harbor tariffs, she advises Rickon on his plans to show Steffon the North, and she refuses to look around in case she catches a glimpse of a white cloak. She eats only a little, and doesn’t join the court for dinner, dining alone in her room instead.
She wishes Nymeria were alive. What perfection it would be to close her eyes and run until she woke. She could find a cat, or a dog, or another wolf of some sort, but she wants Nymeria, that wolf that was a part of her. She wants Jon, who would ruffle her hair and call her little sister. I promise he’ll be loved, she vows to Jon’s ghost. He’ll want for nothing, and will only know love and happiness in Winterfell. He won’t feel an outsider. He won’t…he won’t…
She imagines a little boy with her long face and Gendry’s blue eyes asking her where his father is.
I killed him, she half-imagines herself saying, but instead she turns and presses her face into her pillow and screams into it until her throat is sore. He’s leaving again. He’s not pack, he wasn’t then, he isn’t now, even if his son’s inside me.
She should never have bedded him, never. This is far worse than Larence or Olyvar. She should have been like Nymeria, throwing off any lesser beast that tried to mount her.
He’s not lesser than me. He’s Gendry. She’d felt…she’d felt…
There’s a quiet knock on the door, and it swings open. In the half-light of the evening, Arya squints to see Sansa standing in the door.
“You’re already abed?” Sansa asks. She sounds disapproving, and Arya—
Arya’s tired of it. “Sansa,” she tells her sister, “If you are going to berate me, now is not the time. If there was ever a time for you to shed whatever the south did to you and be my sister again, now would be it, because I don’t need you telling me that I’m doing something wrong again, I need my sister.”
She expects Sansa to let out a huff and turn on her heel and close the door and leave her be. That’s what Sansa would have done when they were girls, and Sansa has been more like her girlhood self than anything else of late. She does not expect Sansa to step into the room, shutting the door behind her, and come and sit on Arya’s bed, running her hand along Arya’s arm.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, but Arya doesn’t answer. Arya’s staring at her.
“Where have you been?” she demands angrily.
Sansa blinks at her. “Where have I—?”
“Been. Yes. You went south and came back all…”
Sansa flushes and looks down at her hand. “I didn’t mean to,” she says quietly.
“And yet,” Arya mutters. Sansa gives her a look, and Arya half expects her to snap at her. Instead, she continues to rub her hand on Arya’s arm.
“In the five years since I’ve been married to Ned, I’ve been pregnant five times,” she tells Arya. “This is the first time that I’ve carried a babe long enough that it shows and…and…” She looks at Arya, and Arya sees fear in her sister’s eyes. “You never knew our cousin Robert. You never met him. He was sickly, and he was Aunt Lysa’s only living child and…and what if…what if I’m like Aunt Lysa? What if the gods cursed my womb for what happened to him? What if I can’t have a child? Or my children die? And Ned—he keeps telling me there will be others, but what if there aren’t?”
Arya sits up, and takes her sister’s hand, and Sansa does not pull it away. “I didn’t know,” she breathes.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you and Bran that I was pregnant when I came north. That’s why I’ve been so…I’m…I’m frightened, all right? And I’m sorry. I’m sorry—I know. I—I’m sorry.”
Arya wraps her arms around her sister. Now that she sees that Sansa won’t shove her away, it’s all she wants, to hug her sister. Sansa rests her head on Arya’s shoulder, breathing hard. Then, in that remarkably Sansa way, she takes a deep breath, and says, “I’m supposed to be comforting you. What’s wrong? Did Gendry do something foolish?”
And Arya’s crying again. She doesn’t want to be crying, not in front of Sansa, but this is the kindest that Sansa has been to her since she went south to marry Ned, and it’s what Arya wants, what she’s always wanted, her sister to love her, to want to protect her. “I’m pregnant,” she says, and Sansa stiffens next to her. “I’m pregnant, and he’s leaving anyway.”
There. She said it aloud. There was no going back. She is pregnant, and Gendry won’t be there with her. He won’t ever see his son smile, or tell him stories, or…or…
“You know,” Sansa says quietly, “I’ve never known Ser Gendry very well. I never thought he much cared for my company in truth, but I regarded him well enough since he was your friend, and one of King Robert’s sons. But I’m not sure I can regard him well anymore.”
Arya’s jaw drops. From Sansa, it is as if she were raging and cursing, as if this were some great condemnation. “I don’t know what to say,” Arya says.
“You don’t have to say anything. I’m simply stating my thoughts,” Sansa says. She takes Arya’s hand again. “Though…I’m sorry your child will be a bastard.”
Arya’s sure that Sansa means well, but the words sting. “I’ll love him regardless.”
“Of course you will,” Sansa says at once. “I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t. Merely…merely that it will be hard for him in the world. Though I suppose Bran might decide to legitimize him if…” her voice trails away.
She knows about Rickon, Arya thought at once. But Sansa was too tactful to say it, just as she was too tactful to make any comment on Bran’s childlessness. I’d not thought of that.
Her heart aches suddenly. She wants Gendry to be there with her, wants him to lie there, to hear what Sansa had just suggested, to watch as he realizes that he, the bastard son of a king may be father to a different king’s heir…
Tears leak out of Arya’s eyes again. “I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Sansa says at once.
“It’s not you,” Arya sighs. “I…I just want him gone already. I can’t think of him without feeling horrible.”
Sansa kisses her cheek. “I know,” she whispers.
They sit quietly for a time, and the room grows even darker around them. It’s the darkness that makes Arya say it. “When your son is born, and mine, you should visit again. Without the court. I want them to be friends.”
“I want that too,” Sansa says at once. “I’ll breathe more easily when he’s been born. I think…I think mother gave me false hope. She had five children, all hale and healthy, and I never dreamed I wouldn’t. But here’s my fifth,” she rests a hand on her stomach.
“He’ll be strong. He’s a fighter. I can tell,” Arya tells her sister. She catches the shade of a smile on Sansa’s face through the darkness. Then the smile grows wider.
“What?” Arya asks.
“I just…I had a stupid thought. But I think you’ll like it.”
“What is it?”
“I just…I had this vision of you, very pregnant and wielding Oathkeeper to carry out Bran’s justice.” Arya’s mind was suddenly full of Jon Wooler again, and her stomach twists. “I…I liked it as an image. There was something…powerful in it. In you, like some merciful mother.” Arya closes her eyes. They called her Mother Merciless…
“I like it,” Arya says, and she’s pleased that her voice doesn’t sound hollow. She focuses on Sansa’s words, on carrying out Bran’s justice, on making sure that Winterfell is never weak, and that House Stark lives on, and teaching her son what she learned at her father’s table. “I like it.”
She does not look at Gendry at all when they bid the queen’s party farewell. She kisses Shireen on the cheek, and kisses little Prince Robert on the forehead, and gives Devan a hug that is probably unseemly, but she doesn’t care. She hugs Sansa and Ned, and watches as her sister wipes a single tear from her eye as she leaves Winterfell again, and waves until the party has passed through the gates before turning to go back inside the keep.
“Arya,” Bran calls to her and she pauses. “I’m going to the godswood. Come with me?”
So she does. She walks alongside Tom and Marvyn as they bring Bran’s chair into the godswood and settle him in front of the great heart tree. He closes his eyes for just a moment.
“Sansa told me you’re pregnant,” he says.
And just like that, Arya feels a twinge of annoyance at her sister. “I was going to tell you,” she complains. “Sansa didn’t have to.”
“I think Sansa worried you wouldn’t tell me soon enough,” Bran says. His voice isn’t unkind. He holds out his hand, and Arya takes it. “I wanted to make sure you knew—your child will be precious, and I cannot wait to know her.”
Arya grimaces. She’d thought of her child as a boy, and Sansa had called it a he as well. But Bran called it a girl. Did he know something, somehow? “Do you know it’s a…”
Bran shakes his head. “No. I don’t have that foreknowledge. I just like the idea of a little girl like you running about this place.”
Arya swallows, her throat suddenly very thick.
Bran levels the full force of his blue gaze at her. Mother’s eyes. They always looked more like mother’s eyes in Bran than they did in Sansa or Rickon for some reason. “Are you all right?” he asks her.
“I’m fine,” she says at once. Bran sighs.
“You know,” he says, “When I said I was worried about you, it wasn’t because of Larence.”
“Gendry hasn’t broken my heart,” Arya insists, but Bran just shakes his head.
“You hate being left behind,” he tells her. “You hated when Olyvar left, and you hated when Gendry left the first time around. And now he’s gone and left you, and your child again. You hate it when they go.”
Arya chews her lip. She can’t even begin to deny it.
“Just remember,” Bran says, “We will always be here with you. Me and Meera, and even if they’re far, Rickon and Sansa as well. We love you. We’re your pack. We’re her pack,” he adds, pointing to Arya’s stomach.
“I know,” Arya whispers.
“Good,” Bran replies. He leans forward and kisses the top of her head. He looks at the tree, and cocks his head, closing his eyes for just a moment. When he opens them again, they are thoughtful and there’s a smile playing at his lips.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arya asks grumpily.
“I’ve learned my lesson about meddling in futures. I don’t want to spoil this one.”
“If you weren’t a king, I’d…” Arya begins to whine, but she lets her voice trail away. She leans against Bran, and listens to the wind rustling through the leaves. She’d told Shireen once that it is her job to question Bran, but right now…right now she wants to have faith in him. Faith in Bran is the only thing that is keeping her heart and mind from descending into chaos.
The ride from Winterfell is slow, and Gendry doesn’t look over his shoulder even once. He wants to kick his horse into a gallop and ride south as fast as possible, but that is not Shireen’s plan. She wants to ride slowly, and so slowly they shall ride.
Gendry’s always tried to be steady, and grounded. He’s always tried to be solid. It is what has made his…what made his friendship with Aelgenth as stable as it has been. He is the solid one, and she is flame, flickering and dancing. It was what had been…but no. No, he is not letting himself think of Arya, and how her soft silver eyes went to ice and she threw him from his room. He’d thought to compare the two of them once, Aelgenth and Arya. But Aelgenth is fire and Arya is water, and if Gendry had once thought that was a good thing, a safe thing, he forgot that you could drown in water quite as easily as fire could eat away your flesh.
“If you want your legacy to be that of your father’s…” Arya of all people knew how that would hurt him. Arya, of all people, would wield that like a sword against him when he hurt her. What did I expect? That she would say nothing?
He shifts in his saddle and pulls his cloak around him a little more tightly. It is a chilly day, for summer, and if he could look at that grey velvet doublet without feeling ill, he’d be wearing it now, for it is easily the warmest piece of clothing he has with him, but he only has his white cloak, and even that doesn’t seem to be warm enough to keep the chill off his back. On my back, a bitter cold wind coming from the north. Is she sending it at me?
Now he is wallowing. He knows that. He knows it because he can see Aelgenth’s face. Not her face as she is now, stately and guarded, but the face he’d known when he’d first met her, before he’d sworn his sword and life to Shireen, the face that had shared his bed, and poked him gently in the stomach whenever he whined. “Whining is unbecoming of a knight,” she’d told him. “And you, ser knight, are the only one in charge of your own destiny. Stop complaining and do something about it.” He’d kissed her, and she’d laughed and grabbed his cock, and he’d been inside her again in moments.
He tries to focus on Aelgenth, to remember how sweet her laughter is, to remember how fond he is of her, and how much he has missed her, and how glad he shall be to see her again when they are returned to court. But her face keeps fading into Arya. They look too much alike. Both dark haired, and long faced, and Arya not screaming at him, but hissing, growling like a wolf as he—
“Did you just groan?”
Gendry stiffens and looks sideways at the king. Devan’s eyes are kind, but curious, and Gendry doesn’t want to answer. “That is how a coward gets away with his actions,” he remembers Thoros telling him when he’d been a boy. A boy, and angry and missing Arya. Why must he always miss Arya?
“I did, your grace,” Gendry says through gritted teeth.
“Ah. Thought so.” Devan clearly doesn’t seem able to tell whether or not he should press the next question on his mind, and Gendry so wishes he wouldn’t that he forces himself to say, “I…I have left things poorly in Winterfell.”
“Ah,” the king replies. “Well…that happens, sometimes. Or so I’ve heard.”
“Indeed, your grace.”
Except it shouldn’t. Not now. Not ever. God, but it shouldn’t. Was that how men had spoken to his father? Was that how his father had spoken of his bastards? “I left things poorly,” and “Well…that happens, sometimes”? Gendry feels ill.
She’s carrying my child, he thinks. She’s…she’s…I’ve…
He tries to remember his mother, but he can’t. He can remember her yelling at him, and he can remember her drunkenly crying. He remembers her giving him to Tobho Mott, and remembers that he’d been relieved, because maybe if he was gone, his mother wouldn’t be so angry all the time. That thought had been the first thing that had made him angry—truly angry. That him being gone was better for his mother. Arya won’t be like her, he thinks. It was one of the things he’d loved about her since they were children. Arya was always glad of me, and she said she’d love our child.
But what if he looked as much like Gendry as Gendry had like King Robert? What then? What if he was a walking reminder of how Gendry had left, the way that Arya had once speculated that Jon’s walking around constantly reminded her father of his dead sister?
She’ll love him, Gendry thinks. She always makes good on a promise.
So you don’t have to worry. He hates his traitorous mind. It had betrayed him the moment he’d come north, the moment she’d taken him inside her, the moment they’d kissed, the moment they’d seen one another for the first time in years. His mind, which had wanted nothing more than exactly what he had achieved—respect, power, family—now wanted nothing more or less than Arya Stark, even though he’d bound himself in such a way that he could never have her.
And now, it had the gall to remind him of that pain at every passing moment, every step they took away from Winterfell.
“Time heals most ills,” Aelgenth had told him. “And, of course, new things come along and make those ills seem insignificant.”
How he misses her. How he longs to hear her council. How that would never replace seeing his and Arya’s child, and holding him in his arms.
When night falls, they stop along the road to make camp, and Gendry busies himself with making sure that the king and queen are well situated. He dines with them, but every moment that Shireen plays with little baby Robert, the more ill he feels. My cousin, he reminds himself. Not my son. But when Robert reaches for him with a hand covered in food, and grabs hold of his white cloak, Gendry stares at the tiny handprint there.
“No, Robert,” Shireen chides. “You mustn’t soil Gendry’s white cloak. He is a knight of the kingsguard, not your nursemaid.”
Robert wriggles in his seat, and giggles, and Shireen rolls her eyes and kisses his forehead.
“I have another,” Gendry says belatedly, and Shireen smiles at him. “This will wash out…” The mud from his first day in Winterfell had, after all.
He gets to his feet, removing the cloak and he leaves the tent to find his other one. The sky is a light purple and blue, and there are birds chirping their nightsongs overhead. Gendry passes some men, passes campfires and people talking about the north, and how they can’t wait to be in the south again.
“Look! A falling star,” he hears someone say, and turns around to see it.
“A good omen, I think. A falling Star of Dayne over the moors of Winterfell, don’t you, my love?” It would be Sansa Stark and Ned Dayne. They’re sitting there, Sansa leaning against her husband, his hand resting on the swell of her pregnant belly.
“It must be,” she replies, and tilts her head up. He kisses her sweetly. “A good omen for our boy.”
Dayne murmurs something in her ear that Gendry can’t hear, and Sansa takes a deep breath. “Something Arya said, is all.” Gendry’s heart quickens.
“Oh?”
“I…I want to believe it more than I actually do.”
“What did she say?”
“She said our sons would be friends, and they would play together.”
“Of course they will,” Ned says, kissing the side of her head. “I’ve been telling you that.”
“Yes, but it’s different coming from Arya. It’s always different coming from Arya. And she’ll have need of it more now, I think.”
Gendry wonders if they have noticed him. Sansa Stark is hardly an artless person, but there is a coolness to her voice he does not know how to feel about.
“She’ll have the court’s support,” Ned says gently. “You mustn’t worry for her.”
“I shall endeavor,” Sansa says. She looks up at him. “I don’t like that I pity her. I have you, and she hasn’t—”
Gendry turns away, feeling hot and cold and angry and sad. Arya doesn’t need Sansa’s pity. Arya hates Sansa’s pity—or at least she had when they’d been girls. He remembers Arya shrieking in fury at her sister, demanding to know why she should be pitied, as if her fighting for survival wasn’t the more important thing to recognize.
But that wasn’t it. Not entirely. Not entirely. It had been Ned Dayne’s hand resting lazily on Sansa’s stomach, the gentle loving tone he’d taken when he’d spoken with her, the way they looked for omens in the sky together.
Lord of Light protect me, he thinks as he turns back to the Queen’s tent.
“Your Grace, I’d have a word, if I may,” Gendry says upon entering before even noting who is in the tent with her. He curses. The king is there, but so too is Edric Storm.
Well, he’d find out at some point, I suppose.
“What is it, Ser Gendry?” Shireen asks. She is seated, and her babe is on her lap. He glances at Devan, and thinks he sees a flicker of approval in his eyes.
It is enough.
“Your Grace, I broke my vows in Winterfell.”
“Yes, I think everyone knew that,” she says dryly. “It was a hard thing to miss.”
He doesn’t let himself look at Edric. “I left Arya Stark with my child.”
That surprises Shireen. Her mouth is open, and her blue eyes are wide.
Gendry’s throat is dry, and he’s trying to think of what to say next, but Edric Storm finds words first. “Gods damn it all, Gendry. I told you to be discreet.”
Gendry does not look at him. He keeps his eyes on Shireen. Now that her surprise has faded, she is thinking, and Shireen has always been quick of wit. “Well,” she says. “I see that it wasn’t my little Robert who soiled your white cloak this evening. You did that all by yourself.”
“I did, your grace.”
“Are you begging my forgiveness, Gendry? I’m not sure I can forgive this. I demanded unwavering loyalty from you when you swore your oath, and a child makes the matter different—as if taking a lover wasn’t enough. I turned a blind eye to Aelgenth but this is another matter.” Her words sound hard, but her voice isn’t hard at all. If anything, it sounds like she’s probing him, and Gendry feels a rush, suddenly. She is not angry with me. She knows that I’ve already done it, and that ending my service to her would only be a natural thing to follow.
“Your grace, I swore my life to you, and you know I would die for you.”
“I do,” Shireen says. “But a son is a different matter.” She rubs her thumb along Robert’s hand.
“I understand, your grace.”
“I’ll have your white cloak back, I think, Ser Gendry. I shall bestow it upon a man more worthy.”
He hands it to her, and it is little Robert who grabs at it and starts chewing. Shireen rolls her eyes. “I suppose one can’t get angry with a baby for ruining the dignity of a scene,” she sighs.
“I think I did that myself, your grace,” Gendry says. He’s trying not to shake. His heart is beating so quickly.
Shireen looks at him, and she smiles. “I suppose if I had to throw you from my service, this is the best way to do it,” she sighs. “I shall miss you, Gendry.”
“And I you, your grace.” It’s like this is a dream. Some magical dream. Why didn’t I do this while we were still in Winterfell? Why did it take leaving her behind to make me see? You stupid, stupid bastard.
He’d answer that question later. Later, when he was in Arya’s arms. If she took him back. He didn’t like that thought, much as he deserved it.
“You may go.”
He bows, and turns to leave the tent, but the king says, “Wait.”
Gendry looks over his shoulder. “Take this. You’ll catch a chill riding by night, and I don’t think Lady Stark would thank us for that.” He hands Gendry a plain woolen cloak of undyed grey.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
He leaves, and goes off to find his horse. His heart is racing. He doesn’t have anything that he needs—his whites, his armor, his everything belongs to the queen. Water is his own—he’d bought him after winning a melee’s purse three years before, and his sword as well. But the rest…he’ll leave Edric Storm to deal with.
“Ser Gendry.” He turns and sees Edric standing there.
“You’re disappointed, brother?” Gendry says as he places his saddle on Water’s back.
“Not surprised. But yes, a little disappointed. I had hoped… Well it does not matter now.”
No. It didn’t. Nothing did. Nothing at all. Just him and Arya and riding north again.
“Would you believe me if I said I’d miss you as well?” Edric asks him, and Gendry looks at him.
Sometimes he forgets that Edric is younger than him, but not now. He looks…well…like Gendry’s younger brother. Gendry sighs. “Yes, I do. And I shall miss you as well,” he tells him. Edric nods, and steels himself.
“I’m sure our paths will cross again. I may be…harsh. Harsh at your departure. But I shall miss you.”
Gendry tightens the saddle and throws the plain grey cloak over his shoulders. “Be as harsh as you like. I can’t care.” Then he pauses, and his guilt comes back. “Tell…tell Aelgenth I’m sorry, but that…that it had to be this way. She should know the truth of it.”
“She wasn’t your lover, I thought.” Edric’s tone is accusatory, and Gendry mounts Water.
“She’s not. But she is my friend and she deserves to know the truth.”
“I’ll see it done.”
“Thank you.”
“Farewell, brother.”
“Farewell.”
And Gendry rides off into the night.
Arya awakens to a knock on her door. “My lady, a rider is approaching from the south, making great haste.”
“How long?” she calls through the door.
“At his current pace, he’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“I hope nothing happened to Shireen’s party,” she mumbles to herself.
Arya stretches in bed and refuses to look at the side that Gendry had slept on as she sits up and dresses herself. She puts on a dress today. She’s found that dresses are easier with her shoulder—or at least her dresses are. Her dresses are simple, hardly the elaborate garments that Sansa had worn during her stay. She shrugs into it, and quickly braids her hair.
The castle is still asleep—it’s early, and she’s visited by the memory of the day—had it only been a week before?—when she’d realized she was pregnant. At least today will be normal, she tells herself. Now that Shireen’s party is gone, things will be normal again. Rickon and Steffon will ride out at the end of the week, and she’s quite sure she heard the two of them in Rickon’s room the night before. It had been a bittersweet moment. She was glad that Rickon was happy, but dreaded the day when Steffon, like Gendry, would ride south and leave her brother in the Starkfort.
She reaches the lichyard at the same moment that the rider from the south in a plain grey cloak is dismounting from his horse, and when he turns Arya’s heart stops.
It’s Gendry, breathless, bright-eyed Gendry, and he’s not in white, and he’s here, and even as he hands the reins to his horse to a stableboy she finds herself walking towards him as though she is in a dream.
He hurries towards her, closing the distance between them, reaching out a hand as if to grab her head and kiss her, that more than anything makes her remember and she slaps him, hard, across the face. He stumbles back, hand on his cheek, but he doesn’t look surprised. He doesn’t look angry. If anything, he looks glad.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” she demands.
“I was wrong.”
“Yes—you were wrong,” she snaps. “You were going to leave me, to leave him.”
“I know,” Gendry says. Some of the guards are looking at them, curiously. Gendry casts a glance their way. “Can we talk privately?” he asks.
“No. Anything you have to say to me can be said here and now.”
“I was wrong,” Gendry repeats. Arya waits. He takes a deep breath. “From the moment I arrived in Winterfell, I should have known that I couldn’t leave you again. Within hours of being here, my vows were long forgotten and you were the only thing that mattered.” Arya crosses her arms over her chest, waiting as he keeps thinking. “I didn’t want to be the next tale of some horrible white knight who brought shame to his cloak. And yet I did. I did no matter which way I looked at it, and yet I could not stop myself. And I told myself that if I were…if I had done it, then at least I wouldn’t do it anymore and…” His words are becoming less coherent, and Arya knows they’ve hit the heart of the matter. She continues to watch him, refuses to say a word, though his face is etched with emotion. Let him say his piece. He looks down at his hands, he looks around the lichyard at the watching guards and stableboys, he looks back at her, and there’s a strength she’d not expected in his gaze. “Deeds speak louder than words. Every time. I broke my vows because my vows are not who I am, and who I am around you is more who I want to be than any vow I swore. I do not wish to be my father, I wish to be who I am when I’m at your side. I regret that it took me so long to see that. To say that.
“I…I do not need you to take me back,” he adds quickly, though his eyes are wide as he says it, and she knows the prospect terrifies him. “I just…I can’t be far from you. And I don’t want to be far from him.”
Arya stares at him, taking in the way his hands are fidgeting, the way his shoulders are hunched, the way he is looking, not directly at her, but up at her, his head tilted forward so that he’s looking through his lashes. His lips are dry, his cheeks are red from the wind, and there are dark circles under his eyes. He rode through the night.
“I will never leave you again,” he whispers. “I promise.”
“Actions speak louder than words,” she says. “I don’t want your promises. I want you here, forever. You can’t promise it. You must do it.”
“I will.”
He takes a tentative step towards her, then another. He reaches a hand out and takes one of hers, and Arya feels warmth flood through her, and she closes the distance between the two of them and wraps her arms around him, pressing her face into his neck and squeezing him as tightly as she can. Gendry rests his chin on the top of her head and holds her, the two of them swaying back and forth in the yard. She breathes in the scent of him, and with every passing moment, her body relaxes into his. He is back. He is not leaving her. He is not leaving their child.
“You rode through the night,” she whispers. “You must be tired.”
“A little. The sight of you has given me the strength to see the day through.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s stupid. You should sleep.”
He laughs, and squeezes her and, to her complete shock, he lifts her off the ground and turns the both of them around in a circle.
“Only if you come with me,” he whispers in her ear, and a shiver goes up her spine.
“Well, I shouldn’t even be awake now. I could be convinced to go back to sleep.”
He lets her go, and she takes his hand and they go back into the keep together. His hand is on the small of her back as they climb the stairs up to her bedchamber, and when they are inside it and they’ve barred the door, his lips are on hers and his hands are groping at her arse, bunching the skirt of her dress up into his fists. Arya stands on the tips of her toes, rubbing herself against his chest, against his hips, against his already stiff cock, trapping heat between them as she presses Gendry against the door of the bedchamber. She unclasps his new grey cloak, and unfastens the buttons on his doublet, and before she can shove it off his shoulders, Gendry has tugged her dress up and she steps away from him so he can pull it up over her head and throw it away.
His eyes go dark at the sight of her, and she bends down to strip off her smallclothes and boots while Gendry tears off his doublet and shirt and unlaces his breeches, shoving them down his legs. Arya helps him pull his boots and breeches off, and kisses her way up his legs to his cock, and he moans when she takes him in her mouth, her hands gripping his thighs. She almost gags on him, he pushes so deep into her throat, but she relaxes herself and a moment later he’s in even deeper. She looks up at him, and he cups her chin, and his eyes are hooded, and his mouth is open and his hands are in her hair, and she could make him come right here, right now if she wanted.
She could, if she wanted. She has him in her mouth, and he’s looking at her like she’s the only thing to exist in the world, and gods be good, she’s missed him…She’s missed him so much it’s hurt her, she hasn’t been able to look at half her bed. She pulls his cock from her mouth, and pumps it twice, slowly, her grip loose. She rises, Gendry’s hand coming to her elbow as she does and guiding her up. She kisses him as deeply as she’s ever kissed him, her tongue sliding into his mouth, and she wonders if he can taste himself there. Her arms cross behind his neck and his hands fall to her arse again, and he picks her up. She wraps her legs around his hips as he walks her over to the bed, and Arya rocks her hips against his, feeling herself dripping onto him.
He sits down on the bed, her still straddling him, and his lips leave hers, kissing their way across her cheek, and down her neck to her breasts. Her nipples are stiff, and her breasts are tender, just as the maester had told her they would be, and Gendry’s mouth and hands on them are enough to make her groan. She ruts her slit against him, needing him inside her, but not wanting it to be over, just yet, because she knows the moment he’s inside her, it will all be over.
“I’ve heard people say that fornication is bad for unborn babes,” she teases him.
“Those idiots can go to hell,” he grumbles into her breasts, and Arya laughs and kisses the top of his head as he bites lightly at one of her nipples. She gasps, and she can feel his lips quirk up against her skin.
His cock is hard between them, and Arya reaches down to stroke it. Gendry makes a noise and pauses in kissing her, looking down at her hand between them.
“What?”
“I want to feel every inch of you,” he says. “And your arm’s in the way.”
She rolls her eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Humor me,” he says.
“So you don’t even want me rubbing your cock?”
“I do, but…” he grimaces, and Arya has an idea. She lifts her hips and Gendry makes a noise of protest until he sees she’s not pushing him inside her, but rather under her, so that her slit is stretched across his shaft, and his cock slides between her legs and up the crack of her arse. She rocks her hips and he hisses. “That’s going to be unbearable fast.”
“Not my problem,” she lies, and Gendry looks at her for a moment, his eyes shining with wonder, as she rocks along his shaft. He feels perfect just there, perfect for as she rocks, there are moments where his slick shaft rubs against that nub at the top of her slit, and it goes right to her already racing heart. Gendry’s breathing hard, seeming to have quite forgotten his complaint that her arm was between them, and forgetting that he is sitting there with her breasts in his face and her hands in his hair. Or maybe he hasn’t forgotten. Maybe he hasn’t.
No, he definitely hasn’t. Quick as a cat, he drags her lips back down to his and his hand is between them now, guiding him inside her, and she stretches to fill him up. They sigh together their hips move together, her hands trailing down his back, his hands at her hips, guiding her speed. He lies down on the bed, and looks up at her, straddling him his eyes dripping from her breasts down to the moment where his black curls meet hers.
She runs her hands over his chest, through the soft dark hair that grows there, tracing lines along the muscles of his stomach until he picks up the speed underneath her and she needs to hold onto him, as he fucks up into her, harder and harder, until he’s calling out her name and she feels hot wet heat inside her, inside her, for the first real time.
His cock twitches, and he hums happily, looking up at her lazily through hooded eyes. Neither of them move. Neither of them stop looking at one another. Arya feels him start to lose his stiffness inside her, but she can’t care, not just yet. He’s inside her still, and he’s here, and back and…
“You’ll marry me, won’t you?” she asks.
He sits up, his lips only inches from hers. “If you’ll have me,” he says, and he kisses her, wrapping his arms around her as he nips at her lower lip. She sighs into his mouth, and rocks her hips against his again, but he’s soft now, completely.
He gets the gesture, though, and he pulls out of her, and his seed gushes out of her as well as he shifts her onto her back, still kissing her. He kisses her lips, her nose, her forehead, her chin. He kisses her neck, her collarbone, her sternum, each nipple. He kisses each scar on her stomach, and rubs his hand along it, looking up at her again. “We’re in here,” he whispers. “Both of us.”
Arya’s heart swells as she nods, and she feels a smile breaking across her face. We’re both here, she thinks.
He kisses her stomach, kisses along the trail of dark hair from her belly button to her mound, and then hitches her legs over his shoulder and slides his tongue along her slit, lapping up the moisture there like it’s some sort of nectar. He groans and looks up at her and his eyes are the only thing that matters, the perfect joy she sees there. “We taste good,” he whispers, and she moans as his tongue finds the nub at the top of her slit and he circles it.
Arya’s legs fall open, not needing his shoulders to keep them propped open that his tongue may find them. She stretches them as wide as they’ll go, offering herself up to him and the fingers that are sliding inside her, and the tongue that is dancing lightly over her skin, just enough, and not enough both at once. There are three fingers inside her, curling up and stroking the inside of her , and he takes the nub between his lips and sucks it, sucks it and flicks at it ever so lightly with his tongue and Arya cries out. It’s not enough, but it nearly is. “More,” she begs him, but he doesn’t give her more. He doesn’t move his fingers faster, he doesn’t press his tongue to her more firmly. His touch remains light, and gods it is too light. “Gendry,” she pleads. “Gendry, Gendry, Gendry.” With one flick of his tongue she falls apart, her back arching, her heart racing, every vein in her body pumping furiously, reminding her how alive she is, how very alive, and how she is not alone—not at all.
He presses a closed-lipped kiss to her core then climbs up the length of the bed to lie down next to her. She rubs her face into the crook of his neck, and he cups her face to kiss her gently. They lie there together, watching as the room grows slowly brighter until their eyes droop closed and the sound of their breathing fades into sleep.
A week later, they are standing before the heart tree in the godswood. Arya is garbed in white, and Gendry is garbed in grey. He cloaks her in the simple grey cloak that Devan had given him to ride north, and Arya wraps her white bride’s cloak with its grey direwolf around his shoulders. The few who are in the godswood with them applaud, and Rickon lets out a whoop when they kiss.
When they break apart, Gendry looks down into Arya’s eyes, and they are shining so brightly they look like stars.
Epilogue
“No! You can’t!”
“I can too! I’ve also got the wolf’s blood.”
“Mother!”
“Resolve it between you,” Arya calls. She, Sansa, and Bran are seated beneath the heart tree in the godswood. Sansa is sewing, her second child asleep at her side, and Arya has one of Bran’s ledgers on her lap, taking careful stock of how much is being put away for winter, as Bran reads through a letter he’d received from Lord Manderly about tariffs earlier that morning for the fifth time.
Jon is scowling, and clearly doesn’t like that his cousin is trying to climb up into the treehouse his father had built for him. But Lyanna Dayne does not take no for an answer, no more than Jon does. And the pair of them have been shouting about it for five minutes.
Lyanna Dayne has strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes and Arya’s certain she’ll be a great beauty one day. “If she ever gets it out of her head that she should be the Sword of the Morning after her father,” Sansa had complained one evening after the children had gone to bed.
“Don’t you dare try and remove the thought from her,” Arya had said fiercely and Sansa had given her a look.
“She’s the heir to Starfall, and her aunt is one of the most famous warriors in Westeros. I think that ship has sailed.”
“Good.”
But little Lyanna, used to getting her way in everything, has met her match in Jon Stark, who is furiously refusing to open the little wooden door of his playhouse to her.
“It’s not nice!” Lyanna screeches at him.
“It’s mine! You can’t come in without my permission.”
“So give me permission then! I’m your cousin.”
“You’re not a Stark!”
“I am! My mother is Sansa Stark!”
“Did we fight like that? I can’t remember,” Arya says dryly, and Sansa laughs.
“I think we may have,” Sansa says. “Might still, in some cases,” she shoots Arya a look, and Arya shrugs.
Bran looks up from the letter. “Well, I’d say you’re somewhere between the two of them and what Lord Manderly sent me.” He heaves a sigh.
“That bad?” Arya and Sansa ask at the same time.
“Look for yourself,” Bran says, and he hands the letter to Sansa, whose face crumples into a wince after reading only one line.
“Mother!” Lyanna and Jon bellow across the godswood at the same time, and Arya rolls her eyes and gets to her feet. She’ll read the letter later, she’s sure.
“Oh, you’ve done it now!” Jon says gleefully. Her boy is five years old now, and whipsmart. He has Gendry’s face and Arya’s eyes, and he is already a handful since he has both of their stubbornness.
“Jon,” she says, putting on her mother voice. “Why won’t you let your cousin into your fort?”
“It’s my fort,” he says. Arya crosses her arms, waiting. “I don’t want her!”
“Why not? She’s your blood.”
“She’s a girl.”
Arya’s eyebrows fly up and Jon looks embarrassed. “There’s nothing wrong with girls,” he says quickly. “But it’s a boy’s fort. It’s for…” he bites his lip, thinking hard. Arya reaches up and unlaches the door and Lyanna scrambles up. Jon pouts at her.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she tells him. “If you’d had a good reason I’d have listened, but you didn’t, and you’re a Stark. You must always have a good reason for doing something. Besides—it’s not kind to distress your cousin.”
“I’m sorry cousin,” Jon mumbles.
Lyanna sticks her tongue out at Jon. “And you,” Arya says, turning to her, “Gloating is hardly the way to make this better. I won’t always be around to talk sense into my son. You can’t always rely on your mother to fix it.” She shakes her head. “You were both playing so well this morning. I don’t understand what happened.”
“She called father a bastard,” Jon says hotly.
“I did not!” Lyanna says, but she’s got the same look in her eyes as when Sansa lies.
Arya narrows her eyes at Lyanna, and she looks as sheepish as Jon had a moment before. “I’m sorry, Aunt Arya. I’m sorry Jon.”
“I’m sorry Gendry, I think you mean,” Gendry says from behind Arya, making her start in surprise. He doesn’t look angry though. He looks at little Lyanna for a moment.
“I’m sorry Uncle Gendry,” she says dutifully.
“Well, that’s that,” Gendry says. “Jon. Don’t lock your cousin out of your fort.”
“Yes father.”
Arya takes Gendry’s hand and behind them she hears Lyanna ask, “Why do you have a pile of pinecones?” and Jon’s excited reply of “To throw at stray grumpkins!”
“It’s amazing how far children’s voices will carry,” Gendry says as he sits down with Sansa and Arya.
“Could you hear them from the yard?”
“Yes,” he says. “Distracting some of the new guards I’ve been training.” He shakes his head.
“Any word from Rickon?” He and Steffon were riding down to see Sansa and Lyanna and little Catelyn asleep in her basket.
“Nothing yet, but I imagine they’ll be here soon,” Gendry says. Arya leans against him.
Across the godswood, she hears Jon let out a howl like a wolf, and Arya blinks, then looks up at Gendry. He looks down at her and kisses the top of her head, as Lyanna also lets out a wolfy howl.
Arya opens her mouth and howls as well, just as loud as her son’s, and next to her, Gendry laughs.