Forbidden

Broken Hearts

Sorry for the late update! Enjoy!

The sun was about to rise when Arya managed to drag her feet up to her rooms in the Maegor fortress. Despite exhaustion, moving silently was as natural to her as breathing.

Opening the door to her daughters' room without making a noise then was even easier. They slept peacefully and sprawled each on their bed. The beds as close as it was possible. They lived fighting but were inseparable even at bedtime. But it wasn't over them that Arya's gaze lingered. It was about the man sleeping awkwardly in the only armchair in Visenya and Nymeria's room.

She knew that Gendry was in Kingslanding. That he was in the Red Keep. And that she would probably find him there. Watching their sleep. Of the two impossible little girls they had placed in the world.

He wore elegant robes. He must have come from the Great Hall dinner.

Arya thought about waking him up, as he was going to dawn with a terrible stiff neck, in case she didn't do that. But all she really did was turn around and close the door quietly. She needed a bath. She was dirty. Weary. There was dried blood on her hands. And screams of horror in her head. The men she had tortured in search of more clues. More answers.

The blood, at least, could be washed. As for the screams, the broking bones noises, she was already used to them. They would continue to echo until they would disappear. Until she would not be bothered anymore.

And it never took long to happen. The faces, the actions, the pleas, they never really haunted. They never took their sleep away. That part of humanity had already been lost of her, for a long, long time.

Arya entered the bathroom, relieved to see that there were tubs of water there. Cold, for sure. But it would do. She poured the water into the bathtub, as quietly as she could, took off her clothes and dove, rubbing her arms and hair with soap, coloring the water with a faint shade of red.

Before the door opened, before the sound of footsteps was even audible for a normal person, Arya's hand flew to the handle of the dagger that rested on a chair, close to the bathtub.

"I heard a noise," Gendry murmured when he saw her there, his voice sleepy. The attentive blue eyes focused on Arya's hand dropping the dagger.

"I tried not to wake them up. Sorry" Arya said, watching him standing, one hand still attached to the door handle. His hair slightly kneaded. The well-trimmed black beard glittering in the candlelight.

More and more like King Robert. Except for not being fat.

Arya couldn't help thinking. Age has made her husband a thin copy of his late father. But that copy did not laugh with the ease of the original.

Gendry remained standing where he was, staring at her without showing anything, even when she got up from the bathtub, even when she took wet steps across the room looking for a towel. He released his hand from the door and took a step inside, not in her direction, but in the direction of a wooden furniture there, taking a clean towel and throwing it. Arya twisted her short hair with one hand when she trimmed the flying towel with the other up in the air.

"I see you've got some new scars," she heard him say. Moving none inch closer to her, even though her blue eyes scanned every bit of her body.

Yes. His gaze traveled over her naked body . She noticed. And he knew that she noticed. But that look... there was no desire in it. Not a single drop of heat. Maybe, a little bit of concern. And only that. His words were what they were. A simple affirmation. There was nothing else there.