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“See you tomorrow stupid.” Arya said with an eyeroll as she clambered down out of Gendry's pickup truck. He was still chuckling to himself over the truly terrible joke he had just told her and did not seem the least bit offended by her insult, but she had been calling him 'stupid' for so many years now it was more of a nickname than an actual insult.
He lifted his hand off the steering wheel to wave at her as he pulled away and Arya worried on her lower lip and hoped that the next time she saw Gendry was tomorrow. She hoped that he made no appearances in her dreams tonight, but at the same time she really hoped that he did. He had been gone from them for so long and she desperately wanted to know the rest of his story even though it wasn’t really her Gendry’s story at all.
The dreams began on her twelfth birthday. She was able to talk herself down from the first one, saying it was the result of too much birthday cake and the Lord of the Rings marathon her and Bran had done the week before. When the dreams came again the next night Arya began to feel a little bit concerned. She had never really had very vivid dreams before and certainly not ones that she remembered once she woke up. These dreams were like nothing she had ever had before. These dreams she was having now didn’t really feel like dreams at all, they were almost like (memories) something she could feel rather than just dream. Arya would wake up breathless and covered in cold sweats more often than not.
The dreams got worse as time went on. The things she was seeing (remembering) grew more horrifying with each passing night. Their new neighbor, the older boy who sometimes hung out with Arya's older brothers, he started showing up in them too. The dreams didn't seem too bad after that, it was a comfort to Arya to see a familiar face in her nightly terrors. The Arya in her dreams (memories) had long been separated from her family, who eerily resembled Arya’s own family. Having Gendry beside her in her dreams was a relief she didn’t know that she had needed until he was there. Even though things were dark and brutal while she slept having a familiar face around her made it easier for her to come back to herself when she woke up. With Gendry there it was easier for her to dismiss the dreams as figments of her imagination even though as the years wore on Arya knew that was a lie she was only clinging to by the skin of her teeth.
All good things come to an end of course. The Arya she was knew that well enough and the Arya in her dreams (memories) had known that even longer. One night when she went to sleep Gendry was there and the other Arya was telling him he could be her family, the one thing that mattered to her more than anything. He rejected it; said she’d be his lady. The word stung worse than any insult Sansa had ever hurled at her, worse than any blow that she had ever felt.
Arya woke up in a tangle of bedsheets and felt moisture on her face. She didn’t have to reach up and feel her cheeks to know that she had been crying in her sleep.
The next night, but day in her dreams, he was taken from her. Sold away like an animal by men who were planning to do the same thing to her. She didn’t know why she was surprised, both the current her and the past her. When she woke up from that dream Arya found that she could no longer deny the truth anymore. They were not just dreams, they were memories. They were her memories.
As time went on it became easier for Arya to live with this knowledge. Easier for her to accept the truth of them, that they weren't going to go away anytime soon and maybe not ever. She did not confide in anyone about her sleeping memories; they would only dismiss them or worry about her mental health. No, Arya kept the truth of her new memories to herself and for the most part they presented no problems to her waking life. Sure, the morning she woke up screaming after seeing Robb's headless body all she did that day was cling to him like a barnacle, but no one needed to know the reason why.
The years passed and life went on, both outside of her and within. The dreams grew steadily more vivid with age. Soon Gendry was no longer just her brother's friend but Arya's as well. It was hard for her at first to speak to him casually after seeing him in her dreams. She could still feel the phantom longing of the old Arya in her heart when she looked at him and it was a hard thing for her to work around. That and her sting from his rejection. But just like they had been in the past they were a good match in her current life; he was the only one would go along with all of her plans and he had a way of keeping her from going too out of control with her schemes. With no intention of letting it happen Gendry became Arya’s closest confidant and by the time her brothers left Winterfell for college and careers it was well known that he was more Arya's friend than theirs.
Part of that was in small part due to their past, Arya admitted that much at least to herself. Arya felt a pull to him she couldn't explain. She hadn't seen him in her dreams for years now, not since that cold winter night she was fourteen and she woke up with tears on her face after watching him be taken away. She had yet to see him in her sleep since. Arya was both scared that she would and more scared that she wouldn't. She had accepted years back that the dreams were memories of a life she had lived long ago. A life that greatly paralleled her current life, not in events thank the Gods, but in the people she was surrounded with. The Arya of long ago was all alone across the sea while the Arya she really was was surrounded by their loved ones. It made Arya cling to them even tighter, knowing how easy it was for them to be ripped away.
She had tried to ignore the dreams for a long time but it had gotten her nowhere. She had tried not sleeping for days on end and only ended up making herself sick. No, the dreams were a part of her reality and that was not going to change no matter how much she tried so after a while she simply stopped trying. Arya did not know why she was reliving the past every night but she didn’t know how to stop or change it so eventually she just accepted it, as hard as that was at first. For years she was plagued with the knowledge that she was relieving the past every night and unable to do anything about it. She felt guilty for the sufferings of the old Arya when she herself lived such a privileged life, when she still got to see their family every day. It was guilt she could explain to no one and that would not leave her no matter how hard she tried.
The only thing that helped assuaged her guilt was Gendry. When she was around Gendry, she was able to forget the dreams, at least for a little while. A lot of that was due to the knowledge that they had known each other once, eons ago, but he was gone now. It made her feel like being around him now was erasing some wrong in her past life, like she had been given a second chance to do right by him. That this time around they really could be family.
It was an incredibly strange and unsettling feeling to have two separate crushes on the same person at once.
The night Gendry dropped her off with a laugh Arya didn't dream of him after all, nor did she in the weeks after. But Arya could sense that something was coming in her dreams, in her memories. Something big. The Arya of the past was riding for Winterfell. The Arya of the future was nearly sick with what she would find when she got there. For years she had dreaded going to sleep each night and now Arya didn't want to wake up. She wanted to see how this would play out, what was going to happen. No, she needed to see it.
The closer past Arya got to Winterfell the more current Arya began to get the feeling that an end was quickly approaching. She wasn’t sure what would be ending, past Arya’s life? Her trauma and pain? She didn’t know but in the mornings when she woke up Arya was overwhelmed by a keen sense that she would not be haunted by the memories for too much longer.
She was watching a movie with Gendry while rain fell heavily outside the window and she kept having to hide yawns behind her hand as she pretended to pay attention to what was on the screen. Her thoughts were really caught up in the things she was seeing at night. It was hard for her to think about anything else. Gendry was acting strange too which wasn't helping. She kept catching him watching her from the corner of his eyes and it made her teeth grit and she had to resist the urge to throw things at him. She just wanted to pretend to watch a movie, not be stared at. She didn’t have the time or energy to wonder at what he meant by looking at her like that.
It was getting harder for her to stay awake throughout the day. She kept pushing her body to physical limits so that she would fall asleep faster. She needed to see what happened next in the dreams. She was back in Winterfell now, in the ruins of the castle that still stood on the hill overlooking the city. Only they weren't ruins in Arya's dreams, they were sound and teaming with people. People who were preparing for war.
Arya jolted awake suddenly and looked around her in confusion, nearly hitting her forehead against Gendry's chin in the process. She had fallen asleep against him on the couch and he looked down at her in concern as she sat up and rubbed her eyes tiredly. The dream had been so vivid she could almost smell the courtyard she'd been standing in.
“You okay?” Gendry asked quietly, reaching up to brush back a section of hair that had escaped her ponytail.
Arya swallowed hard at his touch. They used to touch casually all the time but Arya had stopped wanting the touches to be casual long ago. She couldn’t deal with the dreams and navigating her relationship with Gendry at the same time. She was afraid Gendry was just going to have to wait until her dreams reached their conclusion, whatever that might be.
“Fine.” she grunted, pulling her legs up onto the couch and wrapping her arms around them. She tried to shake the phantom feeling of the dream off her but it clung to her, making her brain foggy. The dreams had never been that vivid before. Her fingers felt cold as ice despite it being warm inside the house. It was almost like she had actually physically been there this time.
“You look a bit-” Gendry trailed off when she turned to glare at him and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “What were you dreaming about?” he asked softly causing Arya's heart to stutter in her chest. She hadn’t been asked that question in a long time.
“Why?” she asked before she realized that was probably weirder than just making something up or saying she didn't remember. Isn't that what everyone else usually said?
Gendry ran a hand through the hair he was growing out again and shrugged. “You just seemed-” he trailed off and Arya felt a twinge of panic that maybe she had been talking in her sleep. “Really peaceful.” he finished with a shrug and Arya had to bite down a sigh of relief. She certainly hadn’t felt peaceful, maybe he had just been seeing the affect being back in Winterfell had on her. Whatever the cause that had made her seem peaceful she knew that she could never tell him because it would open far too many questions about what she saw while she slept.
“I don’t remember.” Arya lied, chewing on her thumbnail rather than looking over at him as she told a blatant lie. She did remember, that was the whole problem with the dreams.
All she ever did was remember.
Past Arya was reunited with what was left of her family, they were preparing for a war against a deadly supernatural force that could end the world and despite what current Arya had told herself for years, Gendry was back.
He looked remarkably like her Gendry, except for the close-cropped hair and battle-hardened personality. Both Aryas were wildly unprepared for his return to their lives and past Arya definitely played it cooler than the future one. Past Arya made coy jokes and left him staring after her longingly. Current Arya stared at him for so long that he asked her if he had something on his face.
The battle was steadily approaching in the dreams and Arya was filled with a gut clenching anxiety. She could not eat, she both dreaded falling asleep and wanted nothing more than to sleep until she saw the end of this. She didn’t think anything would be able to distract her from the upcoming battle until she dreamed of the events of the eve of it. Until she dreamed of her and Gendry in the castle’s forge...
She woke up in the middle of the night blushing wildly and Arya was unable to bring herself to go back to sleep despite wanting to see the outcome of the battle. That day Arya was not able to look at Gendry without blushing and she found it incredibly hard to meet his eyes. The one time she did manage to look at him she was surprised to see his ears were bright red. She hoped that the truth of the dream wasn’t written across her face. If she was going to be having sex dreams about Gendry she would prefer if they came from her own imagination and not memories of her past life.
Arya managed to bundle the thought of what took place in the forge away. She had more important things to worry about right now, such as the fate of the world. Although the fact that she was alive and having these dreams at all was proof that they succeeded. Still, Arya wanted to see how it happened.
As she laid down to sleep that evening Arya curled herself around her pillow as a thought suddenly occurred to her. She didn’t know if her family or Gendry would survive the night, she didn’t even know if she would. It was an incredibly strange sensation knowing that when she closed her eyes she was about to live two lives but that when she woke up she might be left with only one. She had been with the dreams for so long now that they were almost a comfort to her. The thought of being without them made her feel nervous. But past Arya was about to bravely march into battle against the dead the least current Arya could do was close her eyes and see what happened.
The battle was horrible. There were dead everywhere and people dying all around. Arya could smell the scent of the battle, heavy with smoke and blood and shit. She smelled the phantom scent of it for weeks after.
It was terrifying, reliving it but being unable to stop it or change it. No actions were her own, they never had been. All she could do was watch it play out and pray that they succeeded and that no one woke her up. Not for the first time since the dreams started Arya wondered if she was going to have to learn what it felt like to live through her own death.
It was a worry she would still have but would not have to face that night. They won, somehow against all odds and terrible numbers, the living won. Even more than that it was Arya, little Arya Underfoot, who defeated the Night King. Arya Stark saved the world.
When she woke up in her bed in the gray light of dawn Arya cried as an overwhelming sense of pride washed over her for the Arya of the past. There was no one alive who knew the story, it was from her own family lineage and Arya had never once been told that her namesake (and her past self) was the savior of the human world. It was a tale long lost to time and Arya felt the sudden urge to shout about it, to make sure everyone knew the reason they even had a life was because of the bravery of a young woman named Arya Stark, just not this one. It was only the knowledge of how maddening that sounded that kept her quiet.
Arya met up with Gendry for dinner that night and when she passed him a fork he surprised her by not just taking it from her but wrapping his hand around hers and squeezing it tight.
“Thank you.”
Arya looked up, startled by the sudden sincerity in his tone and the feel of his hand on hers. It had only been a few nights since she’d dreamed of the forge after all, it was still hard for her to meet his eyes without blushing.
“It's just a fork.” Arya said with a breathless laugh wanting to pull her hand away before she started blushing but also wanting him to keep touching her.
“Just, thank you.” Gendry repeated, his blue eyes burning into hers for a long moment and she knew in that moment he was not thanking her for the utensil. Arya nodded uneasily and Gendry finally broke the gaze to slip the fork out of her hands. As he turned away Arya gripped the countertop to keep herself upright as she was suddenly hit with the startling realization that she might not be the only person who spent every night haunted by the past.
The thought that she might not be the only one dreaming of the Westeros of old consumed her every waking moment. Arya tried to wiggle it out of all of her family members if they remembered anything but none of them bit at any of the bait she dropped. She was less than subtle as time went on and half of her family wasn’t very good at lying. By the time she finished questioning Sansa Arya had to admit defeat. If there were other people with these dreams it seemed she was the only Stark with them.
Not for the first time Arya let herself wonder why she was having the dreams. She was reliving an entire life every time she slept and yet she had no idea why. Was there a purpose to the dreams or was she just being tormented for her past actions? Was this the price she was paying for all the lives she had taken, all the wrongs she had done? Or was this simply her punishment for turning down Gendry’s proposal?
Arya understood, for the most part, why the Arya of the past turned Gendry down. Part of it was his timing (like seriously dude? Wait until the funeral pyres stop burning at least) and part of it was the fact that he asked her to be a lady. But Arya knew that he had just been drunk on survival and ale and the thought of being legitimized. Gendry thought he finally had something to offer her, that now he could give her everything Arya ever wanted. When Arya woke up, she both wanted to kick her past self and yell at Gendry that he already was everything she ever wanted. She hadn’t needed a title to be with him. She didn’t know which one of them handled the proposal worse.
Things with her Gendry were strange and the more time she spent around him feeling like there was some unspoken thing hanging heavy in the air between them the more Arya had to admit to herself that the chances that he was having dreams too were looking higher and higher. She didn’t know what to do about it, did she ask him if he was having dreams like hers? What if he said no and called her crazy? Worse still, what if he said yes?
The dreams continued in their bloody pace and Arya woke up choking on phantom smoke for days while she dreamed of King’s Landing. She watched her younger brother be crowned king, her sister crowned queen, her brother/cousin exiled. She looked at the claw marks on Gendry's jerkin and wondered if it was his way of saying she had ripped his chest opened. Arya watched her past self board a ship and set sail for the west, chasing the setting sun.
Arya went to sleep the next night wondering if past Arya would come to her senses and turn around and go back to her family or if Gendry would come after her on a rowboat. She wondered where their ship would land and what they would find there when they did. She wondered if past Arya would ever see her family again.
Arya woke up feeling incredibly unsettled and it took her a long moment to figure out that it was because she had not dreamed while she slept. For the first time in years she did not relive a memory of another life during the night. She managed to get through her day by telling herself it was a fluke and she went to bed early that night expecting a return to her dreams and answers to her questions. Again, she woke up from a dreamless sleep. As the nights passed, each one dreamless, Arya forced herself to accept the fact that the dreams that been plaguing her for years had come to their conclusion. All of these questions she had about past Arya and the rest of her life were ones she would never have the answers too.
She felt strangely adrift without the dreams. She had not realized how much she had come to depend on them over the years. They had always been there, the one undeniable constant in her life. Losing them made her feel off kilter, like a strong gust of wind would knock her off balance. She couldn’t tell if Gendry was feeling strange too, she wanted to ask him if he was still having dreams even though she wasn’t but since she didn’t know for sure if he had them at all she couldn’t very well do that.
It was just another unanswered question she was going to have to learn to live with.
Every winter her family went to the ruins of the castle of Winterfell and walked through the halls, remembering the legacy they had been born from. Arya had talked her way out of it for years, claiming homework or fake illnesses to be the cause. The truth was she didn’t want to see the castle in this state when she had seen what it looked like in its glory days.
This year Arya did not try to weasel her way out of it and instead let herself get bundled into the car with her siblings, watching the snow falling outside the car window. Arya was hoping that being in the castle might spark the dreams to start again, or at least might make her feel a little bit better about the loss of them.
There were a few other people milling about the castle doing their own tours, the ruins were always popular in winter. Part of it was the way the castle looked framed by snow and another was the infamous Stark words. Arya wandered after Sansa for a little while through the Godswood before she spotted a building that made her heart start speeding up. Slipping away from her sister Arya made her way noiselessly down the path to the stone building that was roped off from visitors.
Arya cast a quick look around to make sure no one was watching her and seeing the coast clear she ducked under the rope and approached the small window cut into the stone wall. To her surprise all four walls were still standing although the roof had long since been lost to time. Arya had never paid this building any mind on any of her previous visits. You weren’t allowed inside so she didn’t care about it. That was before she had dreamed of it.
Arya walked slowly past the remains of heavy metal equipment that had once been used to shape weapons that would help to save the world. The sound of her footsteps were swallowed by the snow underfoot and Arya ran her fingers lightly over a large anvil that was long past its prime.
“I’m surprised how much stuff is still here.” Arya did not jump at the familiar sound of Gendry’s voice behind her, not surprised at all to find him here in the forge of Winterfell. She closed her eyes at his words, those and his very presence there confirming what she had suspected for some time now.
He had dreamed of them too.
Arya turned slowly to look at him, unsure if she should apologize for the actions of her past self or not. His black hair was curling into his eyes and Gendry had his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his coat as he looked at her, seeming to be just as lost for words as she was. The silence seemed to stretch on endlessly as snow fell softly around them, coating the ruins even more.
In the end it was Arya who broke the silence after all. She wanted to apologize and she wanted to ask him if he was still having the dreams she no longer got to have. Arya wanted to ask him if he felt for her now as he felt for her then. If he felt the same way she did right now in that very moment. Instead she did neither and the words that come out of her mouth once came out of his. “Took the long road...”
“You’re here now.” Gendry said, cutting her off which was a small blessing since she didn’t really know how she was planning on ending that sentence. “We’re both here now. That’s what matters.”
He laughed softly and shook his head in a self-deprecating way as he took a small step towards her. Arya mimicked it on instinct. “I never should have asked you to be my lady.”
“No, you really shouldn’t have.” Arya agreed, taking another small step forward.
“I should have asked you to be my family.” Gendry continued as they both came to a stop in the center of the forge. He was close enough to touch now, she could reach out and wrap her arms around his middle and pull him towards her if she wanted. Arya very much wanted.
“That’s all I ever wanted from you.” Arya whispered before reminding herself to be as brave as the Arya of old. “That’s all I still want.”
Gendry smiled at her, his eyes never leaving hers as he rose his hand to brush a lock of hair behind her ear. His fingers felt like ice against her skin but Arya did not think that was the only reason she shivered at his touch. When his lips met hers Arya could feel both the girl she is and the girl she was once sigh in relief at the feeling. She pressed up onto her tiptoes and twisted her fingers into his coat, trying to pull him closer to her. It had taken a road longer than Arya doubted she would ever understand for them to get to this moment and now that she had Gendry in her arms, she planned on never letting him go ever again.
When they finally parted Arya wrapped her arms around Gendry’s waist and burrowed against his chest, content to finally hold him like she had wanted too for so long.
“Are you still dreaming?” she asked softly into the down of his coat, both needing to know and dreading the answer.
“No.” Gendry whispered into her hair. “They stopped after I left the Dragonpit.”
“Mine stopped when I was on a ship.” Arya whispered, not sure if she felt relief that Gendry also wasn’t dreaming when she wasn’t or that she was sad that she didn’t have a way to get answers to her questions. “What do you think happened to them? To us?”
Gendry was quiet for so long that Arya pulled back to look up at him. His brow was furrowed in thought and finally he shook his head slowly before looking down at her.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure it matters.” he said slowly.
Arya bristled, “Of course it does. That was us, those were our lives once.”
“But they’re not our lives now.” Gendry argued softly, causing some of Arya’s agitation to slip away. “We’re together right now, right here. That’s what matters.” Gendry reached up to cup Arya’s face, his blue eyes bright on hers as he whispered, “We can write whatever ending to our past that we want Arya because we’re writing it right now.”
Arya smiled at him and rose up onto her tiptoes to kiss him again. His words were sweet and she knew they were mostly true except for one thing. They weren’t writing an ending to their story right now because she was beginning to suspect that their story would have no end. They had found each other so many times now, in two separate lives. Who was to say they wouldn’t find each other again down the road?
Their story would forever be one without an end. Arya could live with that.