[ fic ] i've seen them chewing on the shadows in your eyes ; arya/gendry, game of thrones
Written for the prompt "she has winter in her blood" by redbrunja at the Nostalgia Fest 2011. Originally posted here. Just a short little thing. SPOILERS for A Clash of Kings if you want to get really, really technical but I don't think it gives much away?
i've seen them chewing on the shadows in your eyes » game of thrones/asoiaf. arya/gendry. pg. 650 words.
Gendry tries to make sense of Arya as they journey North. warnings: none, really? I don't own these characters.
i.
She is not a lady - or she is not like any lady he has ever known.
Gendry watches her threaten the other boys when they get too rough, watches the way her hand darts so instinctively to the hilt of that little sword she never seems take off. He believes what she told them, on that first day when they left King's Landing, that she has killed with that sword.
He studies her when she is looking anywhere else, tries to fit the scruffy hair and the scowl she wears so often with the ladies he'd seen in the city, who wore dresses of Myrish lace and styled their hair in long curls.
She catches him staring on more than one occasion, and then he's treated to that scowl too, briefly, before he looks away as if she'd never caught his attention in the first place.
He thinks he is a horrible liar, though.
ii.
Sometimes he feels special for knowing her secret, and then he remembers that he only knows because he figured it out himself.
It is not as if she trusts him or anything.
He doesn't think she trusts anyone, but maybe that's the trick to getting by. Keep a sharpened sword at your side at all times and mistrust the entire world.
Although what has that world come to, he thinks, that he is learning life's wisdom from a little girl?
At the very least, he realizes then that it is slightly easier to think of her as a girl than a lady.
iii.
Arry-- Arya-- sleeps worse than any of them. She fights it off stubbornly; everything is a battle that she thinks she can win if she fights hard enough, if she is strong enough. And even when she does succumb, she twitches in her sleep-- He sleeps on the ground beside her often, and is woken in the middle of the night by a sudden kick on more than one occasion.
Sometimes her fingers twitch, and he wonders if she is holding Needle in her dreams. She never stops fighting.
He is more amazed by this than he should be.
iv.
She is from the North, he reminds himself sometimes, when he again fails to reconcile this Arya with the ladies of the South. They are different in the North.
He has heard stories about the North, but none of them spoke of girls who fought with swords, who killed their foes and dreamed of murder-- He has heard her whisper names in her sleep, seen her fingers clench around ghostly weapons, and he is no fool.
v.
One night, she cries out in her sleep and they both wake. There are grumbles around them, but Arry-- Arya, is sitting up and he can hear how quickly she is breathing, thinks for a second that he sees her wipe at her eyes, but it is dark and darkness plays tricks with the mind-- and he cannot imagine that Arya would cry over nightmares.
But he sits up as well, wonders if he should reach out, put his hand on her arm to calm her. He doesn't, settles for clenching his fingers and then almost laughs at himself for mirroring her.
And then she says "Wintefell" quietly, and he does not laugh, and does place his hand on her arm.
"I was a wolf and then I was a girl in Winterfell," she whispers. "I was home."
"We are heading North," he reminds her, and keeps the m'lady silent in his mind only for fear that someone else would hear it.
"And I am a wolf even here," she says, and he is not sure which one of them she is trying to convince.
She is silent after that, though, and so is he, and eventually Gendry falls back into sleep.
vi.
He wakes the next morning and remembers dreaming of wolves.