A Vow Without Honor

The Crossing - Part I

Arya

"Lady Arya! Lady Arya, where are you?"

They'd been running around for hours, servants and guards, calling her name, asking quietly, then demanding that she make her presence known to them. They thought they could intimidate her into coming out of her hidden corner of the world, but the Mountain hadn't, Tywin Lannister hadn't, what did these people have next to that?

Only her mother had ever known where to find her, and on the rare occasions that she could not, only she had the tone of voice that could compel Arya to leave her sanctuary. Father may have been Lord of Winterfell, but she could always get her way with him, but her mother stood as firm as the walls that surrounded them.

But this wasn't Winterfell.

And her mother was dead.

Arya tucked herself a little further into her corner, listening as more calls drifted in and out of the area.

She didn't cry. She wanted to, and had scrunched her face and huffed until her cheeks hurt, but the tears wouldn't come. Sansa was the one who cried, and she used to make fun of her for it. She'd cry over her hair coming undone or a song that had some silly little romantic lines in it; she'd cry at dinner or when she went to bed or even when she woke up in the morning. Arya used to think that crying was one of the stupidest things a person could do.

Now she felt stupid for not being able to do it at all.

So, she sat. She watched the shadows move across the space with the sun, listened as the blacksmith hammered heated steel into shape, felt that heat on her face as the fire roared and died with the breeze. She didn't think, she didn't feel, and she didn't notice when a large figure stood in front of her.

Gendry sighed. "Thought I'd find you here."

Arya blinked, looking up.

Jory had insisted that Gendry be treated well in his absence. She wasn't sure if he'd told Maester Vyman the truth about his father or not, but he acted as though Gendry was a young lord nonetheless. They'd had him bathed and given him clean clothes. The smile nearly split his face in two, Gendry had been so happy. Never had clothes without stains or holes, he'd told her.

She told him he looked like her sisters, twirling around in his new outfit.

He'd said she still managed to look like a boy in her dress.

She smacked him, and he laughed.

"Why?" she asked. She sounded like she'd been crying, even if she hadn't.

He shrugged, sitting against the wall that led to her small corner. She'd taken to hiding behind the weapons rack at the smithy. The man had seen her do it, but didn't seem to mind, nor did he seem keen on letting anyone know she was there. She liked that.

"It's loud, so no one can hear you, and you can't hear them. It's dirty, so no maid is going to go climbing through here looking for you, and maybe..." he trailed off, looking to second guess his next words. "Maybe you were waiting for me to drop by."

"Why would I be waiting for you?" Arya snapped.

Gendry shrugged again, looking around. He'd been poking around the smithy the last couple days. The blacksmith chased him off the first couple times, but then he'd grown used to his presence, and then he saw how good Gendry was. He'd talked about making him his apprentice if he was up to it.

Arya didn't think he wanted to work for people like the Tullys, but he hadn't left yet, and didn't look eager to either.

"You're going to want to talk to someone."