Chapter Text
Storm’s End, present day
When her train pulled into the station at Storm’s End, one of the first things she saw was the familiar form of Ned Dayne, standing on the platform waiting for her. Arya grabbed her suitcase from the overhead compartment and pulled it along behind her as she stepped off the train. She raised a hand in greeting to Ned, who returned the greeting enthusiastically, a grin spreading across his face.
“Arya! It’s been too long!” he said.
“It’s good to see you, Ned,” she said, and meant it. She hadn’t seen him in almost ten years, but his smile was still easy and his hair still blonde, perfectly falling over his forehead.
“Academia sure is a small world, isn’t it?” he said. She nodded her agreement. She had been surprised to learn that Ned, her former boarding school classmate, was now a professor at Storm’s End University, and would be her research colleague during her time in the Stormlands.
“I guess we both always had a passion for ancient Westerosi history,” she said as they began to make their way out of the crowded train station. Once outside, Arya took note of the slowly clearing storm clouds that filled the gray sky.
“How are things going with your program?” he asked as he loaded her luggage into the trunk of his car. He would be dropping her off at the university housing apartment complex that would be her home for the next three months.
“It’s… good,” she answered hesitantly. In truth, Arya questioned her decision to pursue a PhD almost every other week. The end was in sight, she just had to keep reminding herself of that.
“I’m planning on finishing my dissertation in a few months,” she continued.
“That’s so exciting, Arya. I think you’re going to find that Storm’s End has a lot to offer when it comes to your topic of research.”
“That’s what I’m hoping. Oldtown has a lot in the way of primary sources, but it doesn’t have any of the archaeological finds that Storm’s End has.”
They chatted easily about Arya’s research as Ned drove them toward her apartment. She told him of the work she had done in researching the role of women in the establishment of the merchant class in ancient Westeros. He told her about the class he was teaching in the fall about the development of democracy in ancient Dorne.
“Here we are,” he said as he pulled up to a large brick building that was several stories high. The large complex stood in sharp contrast to the smaller, older buildings they had driven by as they made their way toward the university section of the city. The streets were mostly empty, devoid of the bustling crowds of college students now that summer was upon the university town.
“I’m so excited that you’re here for the next few months,” Ned told her. She was warmed by the kindness she remembered so easily from their school days.
“And,” he continued, “I just want to say I was so sorry to hear of your mother’s passing.”
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it, though it was difficult to get the words out. “I appreciate that.”
“I know we haven’t exactly kept in touch over the years, but… I’m here for you, if you need anything,” he said earnestly.
“I– thanks, Ned.”
“Oh, before I forget,” he said, rummaging around in his pocket, “here’s your key.” She took it from him and climbed out of the passenger seat. Ned pulled her luggage out of the trunk for her.
“Once you get settled, you should come out to the pub tonight for drinks. A few of us from the history department will be there. It’s a spot just down the block from here, called the Ebbing Tide.”
“I’m there,” she said eagerly. Arya Stark never turned down a bit of fun.
After settling into her new temporary flat and unpacking a few of her things, Arya got changed and ran a brush through her long, dark hair.
The pub was just a couple blocks from her apartment, in a small brick building covered in ivy that she found decidedly quaint. The interior was dimly lit and cozy. She quickly spotted Ned, sitting in a booth at the back with several others. He waved her over.
“Everyone, this is Arya, a PhD candidate from Oldtown. She’ll be in Storm’s End for the next three months.”
He introduced her to Shireen Baratheon, a graduate student and TA with bright blue eyes and a distinctive scar on her face that didn’t detract from her beauty. Sat next to Shireen was Meera Reed, a young professor who Arya was delighted to learn was also from the North. Sat next to Ned was Trystane Martell, also a TA, who, like Ned, was from Dorne. The group made conversation easily, talking about their subjects of interest as well as filling Arya in on fun things to do in town. She was particularly interested when Meera told her about the cliff-side hiking trails in the region.
Arya sipped at her beer as the time passed, occasionally glancing around at the other patrons of the bar. She noticed him when his blue eyes met hers across the room.
Her eyes widened as they took in the sight of him. At first glance, he looked exactly like someone she hadn’t seen in over a decade. Tall, with a large, athletic build. Thick, black hair that appeared effortlessly tousled. And the color of his eyes was an exact match— a startling shade of cerulean blue that Arya had thought of, on and off, over the span of years that stretched between the time she had last seen him and the present.
She stood from her seat, telling her group that she was grabbing another drink from the bar as she made her way over to him. The man smiled easily as she walked toward him. Arya felt her eyebrows draw together as she got closer. She could see his features more clearly now in the dim lighting, and could see clearly that he was not Gendry Waters. This man had a longer face than Gendry, with a long, narrow nose. His complexion was a bit lighter, and rosier, like he was the sort of person who probably became sun burnt if he was outside for a stretch of time. Gendry had always tanned easily, becoming a shade darker whenever they spent time outdoors on a sunny day. And although this man was certainly taller than average, and with a similar build, he was not quite as tall as Arya remembered Gendry being at eighteen. Still, she couldn’t be blamed for assuming it was Gendry. The man really did look a lot like him, and Arya knew from Gendry’s extremely scant usage of social media that he lived somewhere in the Stormlands.
Realizing she was still staring at him, she gave him a slight smile before averting her gaze. She ordered a beer from the bartender, hoping her stares wouldn’t be read by the man as an invitation to come chat to her. She quickly made her way back to her booth, noticing from the corner of her eye that the man was talking to a woman standing next to him, his head tilted down to be closer to her. It looked intimate.
Arya continued to get to know Ned’s friends, but couldn’t help but let her eyes wander to the man who looked so similar to her childhood friend. She watched as he talked to the woman, their body language and mannerisms making it clear that they were flirting with one another. The man reached out and gently tugged on a piece of the woman’s dark hair, the action immediately making Arya think of Gendry. Arya routinely wore her long hair in a braid back in her boarding school days, and pulling on it was something Gendry would do, usually only after she punched his shoulder or futilely shoved at his chest.
She imagined that she and Gendry were standing at the bar together. Not as kids, but as the adult versions of themselves. She pictured him leaning down to talk to her, flirting with her, touching her hair or her face or her arm.
Maybe if things had gone differently, all those years ago, she began to think, but then cut that thought off cold. There was no point in trying to rewrite their history.
—---
Acorn Hall Boarding School, 12 years previous.
Arya sat up on the roof of the dormitories, a spot that she had discovered in her first year at Acorn Hall. The door leading up to the roof had a broken lock, something that, surprisingly, most students– and apparently all of the staff– hadn’t discovered. The space was small, a balcony of sorts with only enough room for about two or three people, and so she sat with her knees pulled up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her small form as she looked up at the stars. Looking up at the stars reminded her of the North, of her home and her family. They were almost as abundant in the Riverlands as they were back home.
“Arya?” came a voice behind her. She didn’t need to turn to know who it was.
“Hey,” she greeted.
“Can I join you?” Gendry asked.
“I don’t own the roof,” she said, her voice coming out with a bit more bite than she intended.
He sat down beside her, his arm brushing against hers. They sat in silence for a moment, the two of them gazing up at the stars. After a minute or so, Gendry pulled out and lit a cigarette.
Arya turned to glare at him.
“Smoking’s bad for you, you know.”
He rolled his eyes, a small grin on his face as he wordlessly held the cigarette out to her. She grabbed it and took a drag, blowing the smoke out into the cool night air. The first few days of classes at Acorn Hall Preparatory Boarding School were always so hot, the muggy late summer air seeping into the old castle-like building, making classes almost unbearable. But the nights were blessedly cool, like a promise of the beautiful autumn weather that would arrive in the coming weeks.
“Why are you out here?”
“I just didn’t feel like being inside,” she replied moodily, knowing he would see through her lie. Inside, all of their classmates were watching a movie on a large projector screen in the auditorium. Movie night on the first Friday of term was an annual tradition. The professors in charge of it even handed out bags of popcorn to every student.
“You love movie night,” he said. Which was true, Arya did love it. She loved movies, a subject she and Gendry had bonded over when they had met three years previous at Acorn Hall. Gendry was two grade levels above her and three years older than her, but they had found themselves seated next to one another on the bus when the school took a day trip to go hiking. They had hit it off immediately, after Gendry threatened a boy who was hurling spit balls at the back of Arya’s head.
“And I’m pretty sure that Wenda the White Fawn is like, in your top five favorite movies of all time,” he added.
Arya heaved a sigh. She couldn’t tell Gendry that the reason she had come up to the roof was because she had seen Jeyne Heddle leaning her head against his shoulder in the auditorium. The twisting, burning feeling in her stomach was enough to tell Arya what she had been denying to herself for some time: she liked Gendry. She liked him more than she had ever liked any other boy, and she found that the idea of doing things like holding hands and kissing were not at all unpleasant if she imagined doing them with Gendry.
He stared at her, waiting for her response. His eyes were so blue, even in the dim lighting of her little roof spot. She wanted to grab the front of his gray sweatshirt and pull his lips down to hers.
“I just needed some air. I just… I miss my dad,” she said. It wasn’t a complete lie. The death of her father two years ago had shaken her family, and her grief, though far more manageable, was still a part of her.
Gendry nodded, remaining quiet. She knew that his mother had died when he was quite young, and that he’d never met his father. He leaned into her a bit, offering the cigarette again. She took another pull.
“Are you and Jeyne dating?” she asked suddenly, staring up at the stars. She couldn’t look at him when she asked.
“What?” he said around a laugh. “Where did that come from?”
“Are you?” she asked, turning her head to look at him. Gendry’s brow furrowed as he stared back at her.
“No, I’m not dating Jeyne. I– we’re just friends.”
She silently hoped that he would ask why she’d asked him. Maybe if he asked why she’d have the courage to say because I want to date you. But he didn’t ask her why, he just kept looking at her, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Come back inside,” he said. “We can sit together and watch the movie. I’ll give you the rest of my popcorn.”
She smiled.
“I’m holding you to that.”
—---
Storm’s End, present day
By the end of her first week in Storm’s End, Arya had fallen into a routine. She spent the first half of her day doing research, often holing up in the largest campus library. There was no shortage of primary sources for her to delve into, and she started to find that her passion for her work was returning. In the afternoons she would either work on her dissertation or meet up with Ned to discuss her research with him. Most of her evenings were free. She would occasionally go out with the same group from her first night there. Some nights she stayed in and chatted on the phone to her siblings.
At the beginning of her second week she decided to take a break from her research to go grab a coffee from a local cafe not far from her apartment. Downtown Storm’s End was both bustling and quaint, with winding, cobblestone streets and a steady breeze coming off the sea. Most days were gray and cloudy, with brief, intense rainstorms in the afternoon or evening. But this day was a rare and beautiful exception. The sun was warm as it shone down overheard, with the steady breeze cooling Arya’s skin and ruffling her hair.
She passed a storefront with large glass windows and peaked inside at the display of expensive-looking furniture. Arya nearly jumped when she saw the man kneeling next to one of the end tables in the display, meticulously running a feather duster over every inch of the piece.
It was the man she had seen at the bar who looked so much like Gendry. He finished dusting the table and moved toward the back of the store. Her curiosity piqued, Arya walked through the front door. She moved about the store slowly, hoping she looked casual. The man was talking to a couple that seemed to be interested in a dining room set.
The store wasn’t large, but contained several displays that looked carefully considered and put together. The furniture itself was beautiful, the various shades of wood and metal catching in the sunlight streaming in through the windows. It was modern and sleek yet practical.
Arya could hear the man talking to the couple. His voice didn’t sound like Gendry’s at all. It seemed that he had grown up in the Stormlands. Gendry had a very distinct regional accent from the neighborhood in King’s Landing in which he grew up. Though Arya would sometimes tease him over the way he pronounced certain words, she found his accent endearing.
“And everything you see here is designed and built in-house by my brother and I,” the man told the couple.
Brother? Arya thought.
“Hey, Ed!” called a voice from a staircase at the back of the store. “Did we get that order from the new lumberyard?”
Arya froze. That was a King's Landing accent, just like Gendry’s. And the voice was deep, like she remembered–
Her thoughts were cut off abruptly when she saw him. And it really was him, not just a look alike (who seemed to be his brother). The years had been kind to him. He was as tall and broad as she remembered him being. The muscles of his arms were well defined. His black hair was shorter than it had been in their boarding school days, but he now had a short beard that she found made him look ridiculously handsome. His eyes were as blue and intense as she remembered them. He was dressed in what appeared to be his work clothes– a pair of dirty, paint-splattered jeans, a white t-shirt that appeared to be marked with saw dust, a pair of beat-up work boots, and plastic safety glasses that rested on top of his head.
Arya watched from afar as Gendry approached the man that she assumed was his brother. He hadn’t seen her yet. She could turn around and leave, she wouldn’t have to say a word to him. She stood there, frozen to the spot. Her heart was beating wildly in her ears, half nerves and half something else, something that felt like the attraction she had felt towards him as a teenager, mixed with another emotion she couldn't quite identify. Sadness? Regret?
He must have sensed her staring, because before long his eyes darted up, locking with hers as his eyebrows rose in surprise. She chanced just a hint of a smile.
“Arya?” he called across the store before striding over to where she stood. The other man looked between them for a moment before turning his attention back to the couple, leading them further into the store as they continued to browse the furniture.
“Gendry,” she said, a full smile settling on her face when she saw that he did not react negatively to seeing her for the first time in over a decade.
“It’s really you,” he said as he came to stand before her. His eyes raked over her, and she suddenly wished she was wearing something nicer than the jeans and baggy sweater she had pulled on that morning.
“I– it’s so good to see you,” she said earnestly, her voice suddenly thick with emotion. He nodded.
“It’s really good to see you, too. What are you doing in Storm’s End?”
“I just moved here for the summer. I’m doing research for my PhD.”
“That’s… really great. Your PhD, wow,” he said, one hand coming up to absently rub at his beard.
“Do you own this place?” she asked.
“Yeah, with my brother, Edric,” he said, nodding toward the man who looked so much like him.
“That’s amazing,” she said. “Everything in here is beautiful.”
“Thanks,” he said, dropping his eyes to the floor. “I made all of it.”
“You’re insanely talented.”
He smiled at her, and she suddenly felt very warm.
“Are you, er, shopping for anything in particular, or…?”
“Oh! No, actually, I’m not. I live in a fully furnished apartment on campus. I– I sort of, saw your brother at a pub about a week ago. And at first I thought he was you.”
“Yeah, we get that a bit,” he laughed.
“And then I saw him just now, in the window, and I had to come in and investigate.”
“Imagine how I felt the first time I met him, just a few years ago,” he said with a half grin. “It was downright weird.”
“How did you–” she began asking, sensing that it could be an awkward question, but Gendry answered straight away.
“He’s my half brother. It turns out our dad was a huge piece of shit who really got around.”
“Bloody hells,” she shuddered, but Gendry was laughing.
“How have you been, Arya?” he asked. She quite liked the way her name sounded when he said it. She always had.
“I’m good,” she said. “I’m enjoying Storm’s End. The change of scenery is nice.” She took a moment as she considered what she wanted to say.
“I’m really happy to see that things are going well for you. I’m glad I ran into you.”
Gendry smiled in a way that she remembered from when they were teenagers; a small smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Gendry, can I get your help with something?” his brother, Edric, called from the back of the store.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you around town, then,” Gendry said to her.
“Yeah, you will.”
She left the store with a whirlwind of thoughts racing through her head. The remnants of her teenage heartbreak had been stirred up by seeing him, and by the discovery that she still cared for him.
You were in love with him back then.
As much as she tried to push the thought away, it stuck in her mind, keeping her company as she made her way to the coffee shop and then back to her apartment to work on her dissertation.
An hour later, she sighed deeply and closed her laptop. She couldn’t get him out of her head. She closed her eyes and saw his smiling face. She imagined his strong arms wrapping around her, pressing her against him.
Feeling silly, she pulled out her phone and searched the name of the store, Stormwater Furniture , and found a page full of pictures of the interior of the store and the furniture Gendry had made.
She hadn’t even gotten his phone number. She didn't have any reason to believe that he would even be interested in spending time with her. Arya let out an audible groan as she reopened her laptop, determined to at least get a little bit of work done.
—---
Acorn Hall
The shady patch of grass between the trees and the small, reed-filled lake was Arya and Willow’s favorite spot to study, or– more often than not– just talk after classes. The two girls sat there, the fall air crisp and cool, their history books open and forgotten before them.
“What do you think of Lommy?” Willow asked, picking at her nails.
“What do you mean?” Arya asked.
“I don’t know,” Willow said, staring out at the trees that were starting to turn shades of yellow and russet. “He’s sort of cute when he’s not being a total idiot.”
Arya looked at her friend and laughed.
“I think you’ve officially lost it.”
Both girls laughed then, the autumn breeze gently rustling their hair.
“Well we can’t all be as lucky as you, you know.”
“Meaning?” Arya asked, though she suspected she knew where this conversation was headed.
“You know… you and Gendry.”
“Willow, we’re not together,” Arya started, but she couldn’t help the smile that came to her lips or the blush that heated her cheeks. In the last month something had shifted between her and the older boy who she had always previously insisted was just a close friend. Her sister Sansa had pestered her about their relationship over the summer, when Arya came home and told story after story about her and Gendry. But after multiple denials that they were anything more than just friends, Sansa had given up her line of inquiry, though perhaps that would change if she could see the way that Gendry had been looking at her since movie night at the start of term.
“Yeah, yeah,” Willow said, sounding exasperated. “Not yet. You guys are like, in love with each other.” Her voice took on a dreamy quality when she said it, and Arya wondered if it was true.
“It’s only a matter of time,” Willow added.
“Whatever,” Arya said, trying and failing horribly to sound nonchalant. There was no hiding the grin that now lit her face.
“I’m off to find Lommy,” Willow stated suddenly.
“Wait, seriously?” Arya asked. She had thought her friend was mostly joking about her interest in the lanky, goofy boy one year above them.
“Also, Gendry’s coming this way,” Willow said with an exaggerated wiggle of her eyebrows.
“What?”
Before Arya could process her statement, her friend was walking briskly back toward the school. She watched as Willow passed by Gendry, waving at him cheerily before continuing on her way.
“Hey,” he called out as he approached. He was smiling widely at her. He tended to be more melancholic, even surly at times, but Arya loved when he smiled. Even in his worst moods, she could always get him to laugh. She waved at him and smiled back.
“You hungry?” he asked, holding up a paper bag.
“When have I ever said no to food?”
He sat down and began taking items out of the bag and placing them before her: a plum, a piece of cheese wrapped in cling film, and two chocolate creme-filled biscuits, the kind that she always made sure to grab when they had them in the cafeteria.
“Thanks Gendry,” she said as she went straight for the cookies. They chatted easily about classes, their friends, and an upcoming school-wide trip into town.
“There’s no way I’m spending two hours at a geology museum,” he groaned, referencing one of the stops on their trip.
“Harwin is chaperoning,” she said. “Sneaking off won’t be too hard to manage.”
He looked over at her, a gleam in his eyes. It made her stomach feel like it was doing a somersault.
“We should ditch the museum and go see the new White Walkers movie. Just you and me,” he said.
“You’re on,” she replied. He grinned down at her and she couldn’t help but grin back, thinking of the way he had said the words you and me.
At some point in their conversation Gendry got up and began walking slowly toward the edge of the lake, his eyes trained on the ground. Arya knew exactly what he was doing and got up to join him. A particularly strong gust of wind blew across the lake, and she pulled her denim jacket tighter around her uniform shirt, her hands stuffed in the jacket pockets.
“Here,” she said when she found a perfectly smooth, flat stone. She offered it to him and he thanked her as he took it, their fingers brushing. The sleeves of his uniform shirt were rolled up past his elbows. The sunlight glinted off his black hair, which he brushed off his forehead. It was getting longer, almost long enough to push behind his ears. Arya wondered what it would feel like between her fingers.
He cocked his arm back and hurled the stone, the two of them watching as it skipped three times across the water before dropping below the surface. She picked up her own stone, preparing to toss it. Overhead, a flock of geese let out a series of synchronized calls as they flew south. She let her stone go– only two skips– and turned to look at Gendry. Although she could see groups of students clustered about on the school grounds, she felt as if she and Gendry were the only two people who really existed in that moment.
The wind blew strands of hair in her face and she pushed it futilely behind her ears. She had forgone her usual braid and was regretting it. Gendry skipped another stone and paused, turning to look at her as she struggled with her hair. She stilled as she looked back at him.
“What?” she asked, almost feeling defensive.
“Your hair looks pretty like that,” he said softly. She almost didn’t hear him over the sound of the wind. His cheeks were pink, but he held her gaze.
“Thanks, Gendry,” she said, and her voice was soft and sincere, too.
—---
Storm’s End
“We have to take advantage of a sunny day,” was the explanation Meera had offered that had convinced Arya to get up early on a weekend to go hiking with her and Shireen.
They were on the last leg of their nearly three hour hike, making their way down one of the rugged cliff sides of Storm’s End and toward the sandy beach at the bottom. She could hear the relentless roar of the ocean tide, punctuated by the cries of seagulls, as they made their way steadily on the downward sloping path. Arya was sweating and nearly out of breath– the hike had started off uphill and was proving to be quite the workout. It did her good to be out of her desk chair, where her nose would be in a book or pointed at her laptop screen. She had been quite outdoorsy as a kid, spending the warmer months in the North camping, fishing, and even climbing trees, usually with one or more of her brothers at her side.
Shireen whooped as the trail finally leveled off into sandy beach.
“We made it!” Meera shouted excitedly, skipping ahead and onto the beach. She had made fast friends with Meera and Shireen, finding that both women were similar to her in their high energy and outgoing, sociable nature.
Arya dropped her small hiking backpack onto the sand and began taking her shoes off, eager to put her feet in the water. The summers in Storm’s End were hot and muggy, especially so on a sunny day. The water was delightfully cool, as it was still early in the summer, as Arya waded in up to her calves. The other two soon joined her, and it wasn’t long before they were daring each other to get all the way in the water. Never one to back down from a dare, Arya did a dramatic jump and dive into the waves, emerging fully soaked.
“Shit, that’s cold!” she shouted, joining in with her friends’ raucous laughter. The warm wind felt cold against her wet skin. If anything, she hoped it would dry her tank top and shorts faster.
They passed the next hour or so sitting on a blanket in the sand, an array of snacks spread out between the three of them. More people were showing up to the beach, the sunny weather drawing people outdoors. Several families had set up beach chairs and blankets, and a number of small children were building sandcastles and splashing about in the shallow waters of the shore.
Meera was telling Arya and Shireen about her latest dating misadventure; she had gone out for coffee with a guy she’d met online.
“Everything was going so well. We’re parting ways, and he leans in to kiss me, and I’m totally into it. Tell me why this man pushed his whole tongue into my mouth!”
“Nooo,” Shireen cried. Arya made a disgusted face, shaking her head.
“That’s something you expect to happen when you’re a teenager, not in your late twenties,” Shireen said, then launched into her own story about an overeager and inexperienced date.
“Alright Arya,” Meera said once they had stopped laughing at Shireen’s tale, “tell us your worst dating horror story.”
Arya looked up at the sky and wondered if she should just make something up. She decided against it.
“I’ve never really had an awful date,” she said quietly. It was something she was particularly self-conscious about as a twenty-seven year old woman. The looks that her friends were giving her were more curious than judgmental.
“Ned and I actually went on a few dates back when we were in school together,” she said, referencing their last year at Acorn Hall. “It was nice, but we both realized pretty quickly that we were just friends. Then in uni I dated a few guys, but it just didn’t go anywhere.”
She thought about the dates she had gone on with boys at university. There had been a couple of random hook-ups, but she had never fallen for any of them. She had never felt the depth of connection she had with Gendry—
Dammit, why are you thinking about Gendry again?
She mentally shook herself before continuing.
“It sounds extremely lame, but I just haven’t thought much about dating these past few years. I’ve always been so busy with school and work.” Not to mention the loss of her mother only two years ago, though she didn’t want to discuss that with two people she was still getting to know.
“Honestly, Arya, I should be more like you,” Shireen said good-naturedly.
“Maybe you’ll have a whirlwind summer romance in Storm’s End,” Meera joked. Arya laughed and rolled her eyes.
She went to bed that night with a pleasant soreness in her legs from the hike. She fell asleep thinking about Meera’s comment, her mind switching between images of Gendry at Acorn Hall and Gendry a few days ago in the furniture store, his face alight with disbelief when he’d recognized her.
A bit of romance really didn’t sound so bad.