Arya x Gendry 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
“You will marry a high lord and rule his castle. And your sons shall be knights and princes and lords.“
What would her lord father think of her now? Arya thought to herself as she reigned her horse to a stop and looked over her shoulder at Gendry, who had Lyanna sitting in front of him, her little hands clinging to the horse’s mane as they caught up to her.
Married to a high lord, ruling his castle.
Lyanna was promised to Jon and Daenerys’s son, and she would be a princess someday. And little Ned -- she turned her face down to look at the boy sitting in front of her, blue eyes wide with excitement as he babbled on and on incomprehensibly. He would be a knight, perhaps. At the very least lord of Storm’s End someday.
“That’s not me,” she’d told her father that day, terrified and stubborn and wanting nothing more than to make her own way in the world.
But she had made her own way; she had also grown up, and she’d fallen in love, and she’d married for love. The legitimisation, the castle... that had come later. The children had been a happy surprise, one that Arya was grateful for every day of their new lives.
Family.
She had longed for it for years, and years. Sansa had been her family, briefly, with Bran, up in Winterfell. So had Jon, before he had settled in King’s Landing with the dragon queen.
This was her family: just hers. Gendry and Ned and Lyanna and her.
“Come along, Gendry!” Arya called back laughingly. “Winter will come again before we make it back home if you keep up this pace.”
Gendry tapped at his horse with his riding boots and he sped up until they were riding alongside each other once more, down the road. “Do you want your daughter trampled? She keeps trying to slide off!” he protested defensively, motioning at Lyanna, who was all smiles and giggles.
“I wonder where she gets her stubbornness from?” Arya smiled at her husband teasingly.
“Is that an accusation!?” Gendry exclaimed. Their words carried in the wind as they rode a little harder. It was getting chilly, and they weren’t bundled up for cold. “You truly do not see yourself properly, my lady.”
She laughed gleefully, turning the reign over in her hand to wrap it around her wrist more securely. She remembered when she had hated him calling her that. It had felt like a jape, a taunt, something that she couldn’t shrug off no matter how dirty she got or how many curse words she used.
It was an endearment now.
She was his lady, dirty and a little wild, and just as stubborn, and absolutely his.
They made it back home before sundown, once Gendry had sped up the pace and Lyanna had started behaving - nothing like the promise of going to bed without supper to get her back on track - and Arya hopped off her horse smoothly, holding her hands out for Ned.
He fell into her arms, blindly trusting that she would be there to catch him, and Arya pressed a sound kiss to his forehead before lowering him down onto the ground. “Don’t go running off now, we have to get you dressed for supper,” she told him, as he immediately waddled off to join his older sister where she’d also sprinted out across the courtyard. “Lyanna, be back inside in ten minutes!”
Whether her daughter heard her or not, she didn’t know. Either way, the wet nurse would go out looking for them eventually and no harm could come to them within the castle walls.
A shadow crept up behind her and Arya side-stepped before Gendry could reach her sides to tickle her. She arched an eyebrow at him, amused. “Don’t keep your hopes up for my reflexes to dull anytime soon, dear.”
He was sulking only a bit, but he smiled regardless, and held out his hand instead. When offered, she took it, threading their fingers together. “Shall we go get presentable for supper?” she asked, tilting her face up to him.
Gendry leaned down, slowly, deliberately, to kiss her softly on the lips. “Yes, m’lady.”
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