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He shifted next to her carefully so not to wake her. It was barely dawn and though she should be returning to her own bed before anyone noticed her gone he couldn’t stand the thought of sending her away again. She’d faced questions upon her return before. And he needed every one of these stolen moments to keep him sane. He wondered every morning if it might be the last. Every time he watched her walk out of the forge it felt like she was gone to him forever, out of his reach only an arm’s length away. They didn’t belong together. It just felt like they did.
Arya was beautiful when she slept. She was beautiful awake, too, but there was something about the quiet look of peace on her face that was so different from the mask she wore for facing her family and the lords and ladies that made up their life now. It transformed her into some ephemeral, ethereal thing that he didn’t have a word to describe. If he were a poet or an artist he could work for the rest of his life and never capture what she was. As it was he made swords, and maybe that was a medium she would have preferred over calligraphy and oil paints.
Gendry cupped her cheek and brushed away a strand of hair that had escaped her fallen coiffure. With his thumb he traced the path of a dried tear and he hoped at least while she slept that they were happy in her dreams. She stirred and turned into his palm, nuzzled against him and sighed softly, a frown creasing her features. No. Not even there. That was okay too. He’d rather take the tears and the shouting and the fists than not ever have her at all, and that was a reality that was coming closer and closer every night they found comfort in one another’s arms. Days crept on, no matter how you wished they wouldn’t.
Once, years ago, when he had been even younger and stupider than he was now he had tried to picture the grubby little girl he still thought of as Arry in satins and silks and her hair done up in elegant braids, pearls at her throat and gold on her fingers. It had been an amusing pastime then. Now he’d seen her drowning in brocades and jewels and he hated himself for ever wishing it on her. For wishing it on both of them.
Nothing so wonderful and perfect should ever hurt like this. Their bare feet brushed under his blankets and he tried to push out all the other things and just focus on the way they were tangled in the covers and one another. That was the only thing that mattered. Arya would come to him nightly and cry bitter, stubborn tears onto his shoulder; he’d put her to bed-- his bed-- and break both their hearts every morning when he made her go back to her life as a lady. And then he’d get out his little hammer and pound away dutifully at metal that didn’t want to take the shapes he meant for it, and they’d go on like that until they couldn’t anymore. He was fine with that. He kept telling himself he was fine with that.
Gendry had always thought himself an honorable man. Maybe he was no Stark of Winterfell, but he had as much honor as any bastard boy from Flea Bottom could. He’d killed but only when he’d had to, tried not to tell lies, didn’t thieve what would be missed or what he could do without. That had been before. Now he dreamed nightly of murder; running a sword through fucking Ned Dayne, whose betrothed he’d stolen away; he lived a lie every time he nodded politely at Arya in the courtyard or at supper when he’d been under her skirts not an hour before. He should have hated himself for a thousand different transgressions but he didn’t, and somehow that was worse than the guilt.
When there was no more time to delay he murmured nonsense endearments against the shell of her ear and pressed his lips against her brow until she began to wake. He woke her as gently as he could manage, as sweetly as he knew how with his lips and his hands so that for a moment, before she remembered where she was (where they were) they could share a bit of joy. And when her red-rimmed eyes flicked open there was only bare, painful happiness. Love, even, though neither of them ever dared call it that.
“It’s late, m’lady.” he whispered regretfully, his voice roughened with sleep and emotion. For once she didn’t argue and he was thankful for that. He helped her pull her dress back on, tied all the laces in neat little bows of necessity. Watched as it swallowed her up again but somehow she wasn’t any less.
She stood in his doorway with the harsh morning light turning her golden and she was caught between here and there for a moment.
“Gendry?” she turned back to face him, a look of surprise on her face.
“Yes?”
“I don’t want to go back.”
“You never do.”
“No, but… this is different. I really don’t, today. Not ever.”
He stood behind her, and in the early morning quiet he let himself wrap his arms around her and pressed a kiss behind her ear. Before them the yard stretched long and grey and the distance between the smithy and the castle seemed a thousand leagues. “It’s Winterfell,” he reminded her. “It’s what we fought for, what we rebuilt, what you wanted to come back to.”
The first time he’d seen her kill a man she’d been no more than a slip of a girl, too tiny to be so vicious. He’d watched her walk through killing fields and abattoirs without so much as a surprised look at the slaughter. Calm as still water. This was the same, a look of ice, deadly calm and silent fury.
Arya looked at her home and then back at him, as though she’d never really seen either of them before. When she pulled the door closed he couldn’t bring himself to tell her to open it again. As long as they were on the same side of the divide, the world out there didn’t matter.
“No. It’s not. I don’t want to marry Ned Dayne. You don’t want me to marry him, either, but you’re too good to say it.” she accused.
His selfish tongue couldn’t form the words to convince her otherwise.
“I’ve made my decision.” Arya told him. “It’s you or nothing at all, Gendry. I’d trade a kingdom for you. I’d burn a thousand castles to the ground and raze every city if it meant you were with me.”
It would not be the first time the world had caught fire for love.
“It doesn’t matter, what I want.”
Her lips teased the lie away. “It does,” she whispered. “We fought for Winterfell. Now we have to fight for ourselves. For us. None of this means anything without you.”
It wasn’t the words that convinced him. It was the look on her face, the same look she wore when sleeping beside him. Of peace, and of dreams where they were happy. For that look alone he’d fight anything.
And he was going to start with Ned Dayne.