the world keeps turning (it's us that just stands still)

1

The first time Gendry walks through the gates of Winterfell, Arya didn't even talk to him.

She had her reasons for that. Mostly because it was an overwhelming sight, all these unsullied and wildlings and redeemed royals trampling in through the courtyard behind the King in the North and the Mother of Dragons, and Gendry was just lurking in the middle, his war hammer swinging at his side.  It would have been easy to pretend that she didn't see him, if only they hadn't locked eyes and his mouth hadn't twitched into half a smile before Arya had torn herself away from him and towards her brother.  Gendry wouldn't have been able to tell that she wasn't telling the truth.  Among so many other things, Arya has become quite the excellent liar.

(Littlefinger had told me the trouble was that I couldn't lie, Sansa had told her, when they were standing over the spot where his body had fallen, specks of his blood still staining Arya's wrist.  That it was a court full of liars and every single one of them better than me.

Funny, how that turned out, Arya had told her, staring down at the spot where the blood had been thickest.  She was running out of names on her list.  You here, and him gone.

Yes, Sansa said, her hands on her ribs where some phantom injury still pained her, maybe a memory or maybe a scar.  Arya doesn't ask.  She never will.  Doesn't have to- she had heard the stories about what Ramsay had done, had sat outside of Sansa's chambers with Needle in hand while she listened to her scream herself awake from her nightmares.  Funny, that.)

"Jon!"  She could hear her mother's voice in her head, telling her that this wasn't proper, that she was not allowed to have such familiarity with the king, even if it was her brother.  That she had to greet the other lords and ladies that had come with him first before she could move onto reunions, and that she certainly wasn't supposed to ignore the Dragon Queen in favor of barreling into her brothers chest and letting him twirl her around in the air like she was ten years old again, like they were right back to how things were before this whole bloody mess started.  "You're home."

"And you."  He was kneeling to look at her.  Arya had thought she had gotten taller but she was still so much smaller than him.  Half of her wanted to tell him to stand up, that it's not fit for a king to dirty his breeches over his little sister.  But the other part knew that that was never going to be the kind of king that Jon wanted to be.  "You're okay."  His face is screwed up and he is squinting at the sun, and Arya steps back a little bit, enough to see the queen watching them with a smile on her face. "You're safe now."

Do you think I was waiting on you to keep me safe?  He had made her a sword, put it in her hand.  Arya wonders if he had heard stories of the things she had done.  What he thought about a room full of Freys lying facedown in their pudding.   Do you think that I've been sitting here, fearful and waiting?  Fear cuts deeper than swords, and I have seen too many monsters too be afraid of anything men might bring to my door.

"And you're a king."  Her brother, her bastard brother who was always too angry for his own good, a king.  Sansa, in charge of Winterfell.  Bran a prophet.  And her... she's something.  Not a soldier.  Not just a killer- the things she does is a bit more elegant for that.  Arya supposes she'll just have to wait for someone else to tell her what she is.  "The King in the North."

"Not anymore."  He turns away from her and to the Queen standing beside him, and Arya thinks for a half a second that this, standing in front of her, is what royalty is supposed to look like.  The crown is not something that you can take by force or steal by cunning, not something that can be given to you.  It's something that sits in your bones.  "I bent the knee."  He raises his voice, louder, to address the people that have surrounded them and to reach Sansa and Bran standing at the door.  "I've bent the knee to the rightful heir to the Iron Throne."