Requested by @mumbling-brain-babble and a couple of anons ! Sorry itâs taken so long!Â
In which Arya travels to Dragonstone with Jon and meets Gendry again. Finally some Gendrya. Love my Jonerys of course, but itâs always nice to try something new.Â
Jon spends most of the trip to Dragonstone brooding. Arya gets sick of it after the first day.Â
Granted, she uses the term lightly-sheâs with Jon again and sheâs just happy about that. There were times, lying awake in Braavos or in the Riverlands or in the ship on the way back to Westeros, when she would have given anything to see his brooding face again. And the way he smiles whenever he sees her, like he still canât believe theyâre really togetherâŚit cracks her wide open, tears down all of her carefully erected walls. She feels like Arya Stark again, Arya Horseface, Arya Underfoot, chasing her older brother through Winterfell again begging him to teach her to fight.Â
But now everything has changed. Even though the fundamentals remain the same, Jon is King in the North. Their parents and two of their brothers are dead. Nothing will ever be the same. Not now, not ever. Especially if what Jon says is true, about the enemy to the North.Â
At first Arya would have said without hesitation that she didnât believe in an army of the dead but after everything sheâs seenâŚafter the Brotherhood Without Banners, after the Faceless Men, even after Nymeria, sheâs beginning to reconsider what exactly was impossible.
Maybe they should all be a little more open to change than they are.Â
She wonders what the Dragon Queen will be like. Everyone in the North seems to have a different opinion-they agree that Daenerys Targaryen canât be trusted but besides that the particulars are fuzzy. They say sheâs a goddess or a siren, enticing men with her body and her pretty words until they fall into her trap. Either way, sheâs trouble.Â
She and Jon stand on the top deck when they come sailing into port, Stark flags rippling in the wind. In spite of her misgivings, when she sees the castle she has to catch her breath. Itâs old-not as old as Winterfell, but the castle seems to show its age more. It crouches on top of the old hillside, sparkling in the morning sunlight. From this distance she canât see the dragon carvings that give it its name, or see the place where Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya landed on the beach-but all of that pales in comparison to the three creatures flying around the towers. Dragons. âSeven hells,â she mutters.
Jon grins, amused in spite of how nervous he must feel. âThey were right about one thing, werenât they?âÂ
âThe queen knows how to make an entrance.â She knows how to inspire awe-and loyalty. âWhat do you think sheâll be like?â
âI donât know. Lord Tyrion trusts her-â
âHow do you know you can trust Lord Tyrion?â
âHeâs one of the better Lannisters. Youâll like him. And heâs about as welcome in Kingâs Landing as we are.âÂ
She can barely see the slope of Flea Bottom on the other side of the water. Just the sight of it makes her shudder, remembering the atrocity at the Sept of Baelor-remembering when Maegorâs Holdfast had been her home and sheâs crept through the streets of the city like a shadow, chasing cats and counting down the minutes to her dancing lessons with Syrio. âI didnât know there were good Lannisters.â
âI suppose youâll have to decide yourself and then tell me.â He sighs and drums his fingers on the railing, as the castle pulls them forward like a magnet to whatever fate awaits them there. âI appreciate you coming, Arya.â
âAs if Iâd let you go alone.âÂ
Standing side by side, feeling him next to her, she can almost pretend that everythingâs normal again. Nothingâs changed. Itâs her and Jon against the world. And they always win.Â
The Dragon Queen isnât what she expected. And judging from the look on Jonâs face, sheâs not what he expected either.Â
Sheâs beautiful of course, but itâs her eyes that draw Arya the most-theyâre crackling with intelligence, burning with a fire that seems to burn from inside her very soul. Sheâs not just a girl wearing a crown-sheâs a queen.Â
But she doesnât say sheâll kill them outright, so Arya thinks thatâs probably a good sign.Â
When Jon refuses to bend the knee she expects her to get upset. Arya isnât afraid of her, or of her Dothraki bodyguards-if she had to protect Jon sheâd slit that pretty queenâs throat, ease her down onto the stone floor of the throne room while her warm blood filled her hands. But Daenerys doesnât-or she does, but her anger is steely, like a fire bubbling under ice. Itâs a relief when the guards escort them to their rooms, two adjoining suites on the other side of the castle. Arya feels like she can finally breathe easily again.Â
âWhat do you think of her?â Jon asks once theyâve settled in and heâs written to Sansa to let her know that theyâve arrived safely.Â
âI see why they call her the Mother of Dragons. Sheâs half dragon herself.âÂ
âBut she didnât believe me.â
âOf course she didnât. Think about it-youâre a king she doesnât know and youâre telling her to abandon her conquest to defeat a threat that sheâs not even sure exists. I assume you had a better plan than just telling her the truth, didnât you?âÂ
One look at him is enough to know he didnât. She wants to laugh, even though the timing is not appropriate, because itâs such a Jon thing to do. Some things donât change.Â
âIâm going to take a walk,â she says, while he sits back down at his desk. The first faint roots of grey are showing in his hair-signs of a life of stress and hard work. He works himself too hard-always has, always will.Â
âDonât be long,â he replies.Â
âI wonât. If theyâre planning on poisoning us while we eat, Iâll find out.â She slips out the door and down the stairs, passing the Unsullied in their strange outfits. Even though itâs so warm compared to Winterfell that sheâs sweating in her winter outfit, thereâs still a bite to the air that necessitates long sleeves.Â
People are grouped loosely here and there, talking in low voices, but for the most part the castle is deserted. She tries some doors and finds few locked; there are empty bedrooms for visiting dignitaries (Dornish coins are spilled all over the floor in one room and she puts them all in a pocket in her coat for safekeeping), a few outlooks over the Narrow Sea, and a dim and dusty library that makes her sneeze. When she gets tired of looking at the castle and the old dragon carvings that Stannis Baratheon couldnât quite get rid of she goes outside, where mountains and meadows roll away to the edge of steep cliffs or down to soft and sandy beaches. She stands on one outlook for a while, looking out at the coming night, watching waves break on the shore far below. She wonders if itâs Jonâs first time seeing such a big body of water. He canât have sailed to Eastwatch; he probably took the kingsroad north to the Wall all those years ago.Â
Suddenly she hears a faint pounding noise, like the beating of drums but more erratic. It sounds like hammers, which means blacksmiths, which means weapons.Â
The forges are down a short walk from the castle, clustered among a series of rocky outcroppings. A wave of heat hits her as soon as she walks inside, smelling of heat and damp. Burly men with more hair on their bodies than on their heads mutter in languages she doesnât know, carving wickedly sharp arakhs that look like they could take a manâs head off in one swing.Â
She touches the handle of her own dragonglass dagger, the one that almost killed her brother. Itâs far older than these weapons, and far more dangerous.Â
That voiceâŚeven after all this time, she would know it anywhere. But sheâs afraid to look up, afraid to be disappointed.Â
At first she doesnât recognize him-heâs grown taller and filled out, and muscles ripple under his skin as he wipes a sheen of sweat from his forehead. He wears a simple apron and breeches and sheâs suddenly aware of just how much of him she can see, every inch of him sculpted and toned from hard work. Thereâs a hammer in his hand that looks like it could decapitate a man in one swing. Her breath catches-this time for a much different reason. It hits her. âGendry.â She can barely hear the words herself and under the loud music of the forges she has no idea how he can understand her.Â
âItâsâŚitâs been a long time.â He seems as shocked to see her as she is to see him.Â
âHow did you get here? I thought-â
âThe Brotherhood took me to Dragonstone. The Red Witch tried to kill me. ButâŚthey didnât. Davos saved me. I worked in Flea Bottom for a while-they didnât even notice Iâd been gone, the bastards. Then a few of them said they were leaving for Dragonstone in the dead of night to make weapons for the Dragon Queen andâŚI couldnât help the Lannisters. They tried to kill me. They tried to kill you.â
The words make a little thud in her chest and her heart breaks, just a little bit. âItâs dangerous. If she knows youâre a Baratheon-â
âShe wonât notice a blacksmith. Iâll tell her, when the time is right.â
âSheâll kill you.âÂ
âI donât think so. But even so, Iâm no threat. I donât want the Iron Throne. Anyone who does is mad. But how did you get here? What happened?âÂ
âItâs a long story.âÂ
He takes off his apron, firelight dancing over the hard planes of his face. âTrade you? They wonât notice Iâm missing for a while.âÂ
They slip outside and Arya has to shield her eyes against the glare. Itâs a different world compared to Winterfell, where sunlight glitters off snow. The water is a clear, glassy plane-and the dragons swoop and scream overhead. Itâs enough to wake some primal part in her, her entire body telling her to run, to get out now before itâs too late. But Gendry doesnât seem bothered, so neither will she.Â
âThe dragons take some getting used to,â he says, as they sit down on a grassy knoll overlooking the sea. âBut they leave us alone, for the most part.â
âThey like to swoop down sometimes, keep us on our toes. But the Queen says that as long as we donât bother them they wonât bother us.â
âHuh.â Sheâs still getting used to the idea that they exist at all. âHow can you get used to fire breathing dragons?â
âYou really donât.â Thereâs a moment of silence, a moment where they look at each other because they donât know what theyâre going to say next. What do you say to the person whoâs been risen from the dead?Â
Heâs filled out. But she just wants things to be the way they were, when things were so much less complicated than they are now. And why is she even thinking about his biceps at a time like this?Â
They go through the pleasantries first. As a rule Arya likes to cut to the point-but she doesnât now, mostly because sheâs not sure what the point is. It takes a while for them to get to the meat of things-she leaves most of the details blank; she was in Braavos for a while, itâs safer than Westeros but sheâs sick and tired of fish now. But after a while conversation is less stilted and they talk normally, almost-dare she says it-like friends.Â
And it feels like when she talks to him, sheâs recovering a bit of herself that she thought was lost forever.Â
Gendry nudges her and she has to physically hold herself still so she doesnât startle-his touch is so unexpected but not altogether unpleasant. âWhat are they doing?â
She follows his line of sight. Thereâs a terrace below them she didnât notice before-but now she does, because Daenerys is looking out at the ocean. And Jon is beside her. And theyâre talking, civilly. No arguments. Huh.Â
âI donât know.â But at least itâs a step in the right direction.Â
The world around her is turning upside down, and all she can do is be along for the ride.Â
Iâm trash, send prompts.Â
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