Work Text:
Among the Ashes
Cool air blew glowing embers into the sky. Arya poked the fire with a stick to keep the crackling logs from collapsing as she ignored the smoke gusting towards her eyes. She was two days out from King’s Landing, two days away from killing Cersei.
The Hound had insisted they stop for the night, roughly grabbing the reins of her horse to stop her from continuing along the road once he had dismounted his own steed. Had she gotten her way, Arya would have galloped through the night to get to the Red Keep as soon as humanly possible. She had the plan memorized with a dozen alternatives - Cersei would die in all of them. But this was their fifth night without stopping and the Hound had demanded they pause for an ale and something to eat at a local tavern. The alcohol took its effect and made his eyes heavy, and Arya could not bring herself to abandon him again. He drifted in and out of sleep while propped up against a tree; she tended the fire and listening for the wolves she desperately hoped might leap from the forest to meet her.
A snore turned into a choking cough and the large man against the tree woke up aggravated and drunk.
“Why are you still up?” His gruff voice rang out louder than she expected in the night air, “No Lannister soldiers for miles. You don’t need to stay on watch.”
Arya did not reply, but stared at the smoldering logs before her.
“When’s the last time you slept?” She stayed quiet. Thrice she had dozed off while riding South, but she had not truly slept in nearly a week. “Fucking hells, girl, I know you aren’t deaf.” Arya turned to him and narrowed her eyes in contempt. “If you’re going to kill that bitch you’ll need to rest.”
She pushed his words from her head and stirred the coals of the fire again. This time there was no need to move the wood, nothing to be aerated or rearranged, but she pushed anyways. The contents shifted and crumbled into a mess of orange and disintegrating black remnants.
The Hound moved behind her and she heard as he sat two arm-lengths to her right. He swilled his wineskin and then tossed it at her; she didn’t need to look to reach out and catch it with her non-dominant hand.
“The ride back will be longer, you know. And I won’t be here to make you stop and eat.”
Arya turned to face him now. He wasn’t looking at the flames - he never did. The long ago-charred flesh stretching over the left side of his face peaked through his wild hair.
“Already told you, I’m not going back.”
“Storm’s End is still almost a week.” Arya’s head spun towards him in surprise.
“Not going to Storm’s End,” she responded, trying to ignore the softness in her voice as she said it. The Hound turned his head just enough to acknowledge that he knew more than she thought before going back to his wineskin.
“Not going to find that twat of a smith?” He asked.
Arya disliked this. She could hear the knowing tone in his voice and wished he would just shut up and go back to sleep by that tree again.
“He ever find you after the feast?” When did the Hound start caring about her personal life? They had gone nearly three weeks without talking about much of anything, but now he wanted to insert himself where he didn’t belong?
She nodded just enough to acknowledge his question and hoped he wouldn’t see. Since leaving Winterfell - since refusing his proposal, truly - she had tried to block off thoughts of Gendry. He was distracting. Thinking of Gendry lead to thoughts of their night together before the Battle for Winterfell, to memories of roaming hands and laughter and warmth that threatened to pull her into fantasy.
“Better not be pregnant.” Arya wrinkled her nose in disgust at his comment. She wasn’t pregnant, she had bled the day after they passed Moat Cailin, but she certainly wasn’t about to tell him that.
“I’m not,” she defended angrily.
“Of course not. If you were you might actually sleep.”
They sat in silence until he finally laid down and rolled to his right side to return to his slumber. Arya kept stabbing at the remnants of the fire until they turned from orange to red, finally smoldering into black ash and wisps of escaping heat rather than smoke. The sun lit the eastern sky a glowing pink, and she readied their horses before poking the Hound with the fire stick and continuing down the road.
—
“Sandor, thank you.”
Arya had never said his given name aloud before, but it seemed right. The huge man looked at her one last time before turning to face his true purpose.
Nearby, the dragon roared and made the castle shake violently. Arya had never been allowed in the map room in her months here as a child, but there was no time to take it in now. She turned and ran.
The feeling of bittersweet realization and redemption was ripped out of her the second she exited the Red Keep. Plumes of smoke and rubble clogged her lungs and singed her eyes; Violently-finished corpses lined the streets; smallfolk moaning against the wall consoled bodies that resembled cinders more than human beings.
Arya ran with all her might. For a moment, she wished she could escape through the tunnels as she once had all those years ago; no, it was too dangerous. The castle stood in precarious shards, each remnant one gentle breeze or flap of a dragon’s wing from crumbling.
She sprinted forward and tried her best to ignore the desperate pleas of those around her.
“Have you seen my wife?” A man asked while grabbing her. She didn’t know him, but for a moment he seemed to resemble Gendry - she wondered if they were related. No, no time for that, she reprimanded herself when she wondered about how many of those screaming by her may have known the new Lord of the Stormlands.
She ducked to avoid falling debris and tried to keep her eyes forward, desperate to ignore the screams and blood of innocent civilians. The dragon screeched overhead as she desperately tried to find her way out.
Fleeing people crashed into her; exploding stones disintegrating from the load of the crashing buildings they had held for generations ripped into her face. She turned again and followed her feet as they led her through a cloud of stone and screams.
Suddenly, Arya was caught in a tempest of panic. A mass of bodies collided with her and she crashed to the stones below. She tried to push herself up, but feet caught upon her elbows and a knee smashed into her shoulder. Someone stepped on her rib with a sickening crack. It was too loud to know where to twist to avoid them, too hectic to strategize. A man twice her size fell on top of her, shoving her back down. She desperately tried to protect her head and neck as more and more people trampled her small body.
“Take my hand. Take my hand! Get up!” A woman with cropped hair and a child half Arya’s age pulled her up. She had seen them when she and Sandor had shoved their way into the Red Keep; the guilt she had pushed down then resurged as bile boiling up into her throat.
She accepted the woman’s hand and watched with her as the dragon melted stone and metal. As quickly as she had been pulled up, she was separated from them. Bodies pushed past her and she soon lost track of the mother and child in the chaos. Arya wanted terribly to keep them safe, to stay by their side as they escaped, but they were gone.
The crowd around her turned to watch a building fall violently; Arya pushed ahead, finally in front of the shoving masses. A grey wreck of stone and ash surrounded her and all became still.
—
Arya wasn’t sure when she had stood back up, nor when soldiers had surrounded them. The men around her were dressed as Northeners, but she did not recognize their faces.
“Arya!” That was a voice she did recognize, one she knew all too well. She spun around to see Gendry leading a small battalion of men dressed in shades of yellow and black, stags adorning their breastplates. A flood of Unsullied and Dothraki followed after his men. Clashes of steel and flesh mingled with the roar of the dragon and the collapse of the buildings.
Gendry was behind her now, his back not an arm’s length from hers. She unsheathed Needle and water danced to skewer and slice the men coming towards the screaming women cowering under the archway. Gendry smashed a hammer - or was it a mace? She could have sworn it changed with each swing - into them; together they ushered the commoners beside her to get out to safety.
Suddenly the attackers fell just as the dead had after she plunged her dagger into the Night King. They were alone now, breathing heavily through the smoke and dust. He took her hand and led her around a corner to a Weirwood tree that looked exactly like the one in the Godswood of Winterfell.
Arya breathed deeply, savoring the clear, cold air. The ground below her was not the smolders of pulverized stone, but soft moss and clean dirt. The wind whispered words she couldn’t quite understand in her ears as it caressed her face and cooled her mind.
She looked up at the blood-red leaves of the white tree. Pangs of sorrow shot through her heart as she thought of her father - this was where his gods lived. One could not be dishonest before it.
Gendry was there again, a gentle presence just one deep breath from her back; she pivoted towards him and took him in slowly. His dark hair had grown faster than she’d expected in the weeks she traveled from Winterfell. Why isn’t he wearing armour? She quieted the thought with a soft touch to his tunic. His rough hands found hers - or perhaps hers had found his, she wasn’t sure - and pulled her closer.
He reached up and looked concerned as his fingertips grazed her neck and face; his touch stung and felt strangely wet.
Arya tipped onto her toes and closed the distance between their lips, absorbing any emotion she could get from him in an attempt to fill the hollow dread radiating from her gut.
Gendry snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her down to sit upon a large root of the Weirwood tree. She rocked forward and kissed him more deeply. This felt different - it was less frantic than their first night together before the battle and less needy than the impassioned exchange they had shared in a random room upon finding one another after realizing they had both survived. These had none of the tender sadness that her kisses had when she heard his proposal; they were warmed honeycomb spread upon fresh bread - open-mouthed, lovely, and slow.
He pulled away slowly and smiled softly.
“You’re going to get up, right?”
Arya buried her face into his chest and ignored the question. She never wanted to leave, never wanted to let this moment end.
“Arya,” his voice was less gentle now, “Arya, you need to get up.” She ignored him again.
“Arya!” Sansa’s voice rang out behind her. It was not the calculating, intentional voice of the Lady of Winterfell as she was now, but the shrill cry she had called throughout their childhood.
“They’re right, girl. Get up.” How had Sandor gotten into the Godswood?
Gendry gently moved her off of his body and stood before extending a hand and pulling her up.
She woke with a gasp. Smoke and soot clogged her lungs and throat, but she was alive. Slowly, the sounds of the disarray around her came back. She was atop a pile of rubble in King’s Landing, nearly a thousand miles from the nearest Weirwood tree.
Arya tried to shake off the disorientation pounding in her head as she stood and moved forward. She tried to run, but her body would not change pace until she doubled over and hacked up everything in her lungs.
The bell tower above her cracked audibly and suddenly her legs remembered their speed. She ducked into a storage corner in a desperate attempt to avoid the collision and panted in the darkness, not fully sure if she was really still alive. Everything hurt, her lungs burned and the broken rib jutted out so far she could feel it when her arm brushed her torso. Yes, she confirmed, I’m still here.
The woman and her child were in front of her, as were fewer than dozen other survivors. Sobs rang out and the stench of blood and piss rose above the other smells of disaster.
Her brief dream, addictive as it had been, trickled determination back into her heart. She would get these people out of here; she would live to see the Godswood and hear her pack’s voices again.
Arya tried to pull the girl and her mother to escape. How could they possibly think this was safe? “You can’t stay here,’ she urged, “You have to keep moving.” The mother’s eyes shined with hopelessness. Arya knew this look, the look of resignation - they had given up. The survivors argued with her, pleaded shallow excuses that endured analysis like the buildings around them endured dragonfire. “If you stay here, you’ll die!” Her words ripped through the dust coating her vocal chords and shouted with urgency. But they did not move.
“Follow me,” she said, taking the woman into her arms and physically lifting her towards safety. “Follow me!” She could not carry them all.
Some of the dust had cleared, but the chaos was just as rampant. Now Dothraki charged through the streets to cut down anyone in their path. Arya shoved the mother and her child to the side as she fell, certain she’d feel a blade open her back. Miraculously, she felt only the pain of her fall - she had been spared. The mother was not so lucky.
“Mama,” the little girl cried repeatedly as she shoved her mother’s body. Arya looked for a way out. The woman stirred, but the dragon was coming for them again.
She pulled at the older woman’s arms and shoulders and supported her as they moved. The woman stumbled; she was done for. “Take her,” she begged, nodding towards her daughter before dropping to the ground.
Arya spun to grab the girl but she screamed and wriggled free just as the dragon breathed fire upon the street.
Screaming, she dove into an alley behind a pile of bodies and fallen slabs of granite.
Long ago, when they had first seen the charred ruins of Harrenhal, Gendry had asked her and Hot Pie what fire could burn hot enough to melt stone. “Dragonfire,” she had responded. Arya had always loved learning about the Targaryen rule, the decimation and destruction their dragons had brought upon Westeros at the hands of fascinating warriors like Visenya and Rhaenys. The irony was clear to her now as she felt the scalding heat of everything around her turning to liquid and ash: she would be killed by the modern incantation of her heroes.
Aya laid there, her arms wrapped around her head as if they would somehow prevent tonnes of limestone from crushing her. She did not move as men with the accent of her homelands laughed while slicing and forcing themselves upon the screaming women around her; she remained still as the dragon swooped down once more to roast the main street just two corners to the south.
It seemed as though a lifetime had passed before the roar of the dragon was too far too hear. The streets were empty now, at least from living creatures. Ash floated down from the heavens; for a moment, Arya wished it were snow, she wished she had never left Winterfell at all.
She rose slowly, still not sure anything was safe or real.
The pain in her body didn’t matter anymore; the stink of death and flame around her no longer registered in her mind. This was shock - she was sure of it. Her father had told her of battleshock, of how sounds and fears changed at war and of all the ways soldiers came home changed men. Arya had always thought she was different, that she was indestructible and made for war.
The few surviving structures burned from the inside. Corpses resembling abstract cinders more than human remains littered the streets. The girl and her mother had been burnt to blackened skeletons, the child’s arm forever wrapped around her parent while her charred toy had become permanently joined to her hand.
Arya’s heart burned for her own mother now, a mother she hadn’t thought of in some time. She hadn’t saved her just like she hadn’t saved these two. Killing Walder Frey hadn’t brought her mother back to her - killing his sons hadn’t sewn Robb’s head back upon his body.
She could no longer push back the tears streaming down her face as they mixed with blood and ash.
A horse neighed to the east; she was grateful for any sign of life. The mare was pale and bloodied, but it was alive. They stared at one another for a moment as if both believed they might burst into flame and burn each other at any second.
Slowly, Arya stepped forward through the destruction. The horse did the same.
She reached out and grabbed the rein, soothing the mare with a whisper. She pet her gently to let her know she was a friend. The sensation felt oddly comforting, not unlike when she had clung to Nymeria’s fur when she heard the news about Bran’s fall.
She swung herself up into the saddle and patted the horse’s neck to let her know she was ready. Together they galloped past the carnage and death until they were far gone from that damned hellscape.
Arya wondered if the horse had a destination - she certainly did not know where she was going. “The ride back will be longer.” Sandor’s words repeated in her mind.
But she wasn’t going home. Not yet, maybe not ever.
They rode until they found a wooded area past the smoke and the zenith of the stench of death. Arya dismounted the mare and pet her gently before leading them to a small brook bubbling past lichen-covered rocks. Her gloved hands skimmed the water and cupped it to her face, stinging wounds she didn’t realize existed.
The horse lowered herself to drink from the stream. Arya sat fully, leaning back against the horse’s massive side. Her eyes burned and she couldn’t bear to keep them open any longer; moving water and the horse’s deep breaths lulled her to a land beyond the chaos they had escaped. For the first time in ages, Arya let herself sleep.