
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/558174.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Choose_Not_To_Use_Archive_Warnings, Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Game_of_Thrones_(TV), A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire_-_George_R._R._Martin
  Relationship:
      Arya_Stark/Gendry_Waters, arya/gendry_-_Relationship
  Character:
      Arya_Stark, Gendry_Waters, Robb_Stark, Jon_Snow, Theon_Greyjoy, Ygritte,
      Osha_(ASoIaF)
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Modern_Setting
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-11-09 Chapters: 1/? Words: 3233
****** and the lion's roar, the lion's roar, is something that I have heard
before ******
by Gorgeousgreymatter
Summary
     and I'm a goddamned fool, but then again, so are you.
      
     Modern AU: guns and gangs, motorcycles, and drug rings, oh my!
When Arya wakes up, everything seems kind of fuzzy and out of focus. The
brights are brighter— really bright, and her brain feels like it’s pounding in
her skull. She tries to move and feels restrained—she looks down, expecting to
see ropes or chains, shoelaces, anything—she’s surprised to find it’s just a
seatbelt. She wrenches the buckle, and it comes apart with a click, and she’s
scrambling in her seat to see the road pass by.
                “Should keep yourself buckled up, princess.”
She starts at the sound of a voice, light and teasing. It’s one she’s heard
before, and it’s calming for a moment, like one of her brothers ruffling her
hair, a reassuring palm on her shoulder.
                “Gendry? You.…how the fuck did I end up in this car?” She
shouldn’t ask, really. She knows what happened. She had been so angry with her
brother. Never go to bed angry, their mother had always said. And he’d even
brought her the tea in bed, stroking her hair. ‘I’m sorry, little sister. I
just want to keep you safe.’It had been sweet. So she’d thought. Stupid Robb.
Stupid Arya.
                “Robb said I had to keep you—“
                “Robb said? My brother actually told you to drug and kidnap me?
Strap me into this fucking car against my will?!”
                “’wasn’t the one who drugged you—that was your brother’s genius
idea—and would you have gone otherwise? Kid, I haven’t seen you much since you
were ten, but I’m guessing not fucking likely.”
At that, Arya snarls indignantly, feel her anger boiling and bubbling, hot in
her stomach.
                “Turn around. Take me home. I have to help my brother…and then
kill him.”
                “No.”
She starts to thrash and kick at Gendry’s seat, screaming at him to take her
back to the Winterfell house, actually reaching for the wheel as if to turn
around the car herself. Gendry swears, wrenching the wheel to the right and
slamming on the breaks, the engine sputtering to a stop. He turns to look at
her, blue ice that cuts so deep it floors her and she’s suddenly so cold even
in the hot haze of the afternoon. But the burn returns and she raises her fist
as if she means to slap him and he grabs her wrist, then the other, not even
loosening his grip while she struggles and curses and fights.
                “This stops now,” he says. And he squeezes her wrist, so hard
it hurts, but she just clenches her teeth like a horse at the bit. “Stupid
idiot girl. Sansa’s in with the Lannisters, and who knows what they’re doing
with her. Robb is basically planning a fucking gang war, and I’ve been given
one job—just one— and that’s keeping you safe.”
                “I should be with my family, they need me, I can’t…”
                “Robb needs you to be alive. You think they wouldn’t use you to
get to him? You think they aren’t looking for your scrawny ass right now?”
Gendry’s hands are clenched so tight around the wheel his fingertips are white.
When Arya looks down at her own hands, the skin there is red and inflamed, but
she can’t seem to feel it.
                                        
                                      //
 
Gendry thinks she could be asleep again, as the engine roars to life. She’s
quiet as he pulls forward onto the highway, with her head resting against the
windowsill.  
                “Listen, Princess—“
                “Don’t call me that,” she snaps. “Like you really care anyway.”
                “Maybe not. But your brother has been good to me, and I owe him
one.”
                “I can take care of myself,” she says. As she mutters this, her
fingers trail reverently over the pearled handle of Jon’s knife, still stuffed,
like a secret, into the lining of her jacket.
                “Don’t doubt it. But you’re still stuck with me.”
               
Gendry is certain that this is not going to end well. He isn’t sure why Robb
even thought this might work, but at this point, he has no choice in the
matter. Besides, the girl is right, there’s nothing for him there in King’s
Landing, just the shop, rusted metal, the reek of gasoline and dust.  In that
town, he’s got nothing to fight for. He’s got no allegiance. No stake. And, as
he looks at Arya, her face strangely pointed and fox-like, thinks that if he
has to fight for something, it might as well be her.  
 
The next few days are tense at best. Gendry is stiff and agitated as he drives,
trying to put as many miles between them and the Lannisters as they can,
refusing to stop unless Arya is desperate, her bladder practically near
bursting on more than one occasion. And Gendry all but forgoes getting sleep—
(when he does, catching a nap curled into the steering wheel, he dreams of
stampedes, of being bludgeoned under hooves cut like razors). Arya is just as
wary of him as he is of her. He doesn’t let her out of his sight, shoots
daggers if anyone so much as coughs in her direction, and he smokes so many
cigarettes that his hands shake constantly, fingers tap-tap-tapping against the
gearshift. Arya is restless and by the end of the third night, they’re both
ready to slit each other’s throats and be done with it.
 
They eat burgers and fries out of paper bags stained with grease while sprawled
on the hood of Gendry’s car. They’re thirty miles outside of Dallas, and the
sun’s just setting. Everything muted pinks and yellows, Arya’s ears hum from
the rattling song of the cicadas and the buzz of freeway traffic in the
distance. Gendry licks his fingers, and then his lips, tasting Coke coupled
with the sickly sweet bite of nicotine.
 
Arya doesn’t eat much, can’t bring herself to feel hungry. Not in this heat.
She used to like her long hair—really the only thing she liked about being a
girl, but damp with sweat and hanging in her face, she wishes she could chop it
off right here. So when Gendry says the words—motel, sleep, shower it’s like a
dream. A beautiful dream.
 
“I’ll get us out of Texas tonight, and we’ll grab a room tomorrow for the
morning…get some real sleep, figure out where the fuck we’re going next…”
Arya blinks. “You don’t know?”
Gendry shrugs. “You’re brother wasn’t too clear on that part.”
Arya thinks on that for a moment, struck suddenly with the strange realization
that she is freer under the guise of a hostage than as little Arya Stark of
Winterfell. It was strange, a little thrilling. And wholly confusing. “We could
go anywhere then? Anywhere I wanted?”
“Against my better judgment, I’m going to supply you with a tentative yes…”
“What about Montana?”
“And what, pray tell, is in Montana?”
Arya smiles genuinely for the first time in what feels like weeks: “Jon.”
 
The prospect of a room with a real bed, a shower, even a toilet that isn’t
shoved in a stall is almost too much for Arya to even process right now.
There’s a layer of grime on her skin an inch thick, and she can’t wait to scrub
it off, shed it like snakeskin. Mostly what she wants is to remember what it
feels like— to be cool and pink and shiny and new again. She’s just so tired.
 
Once they get off the freeway, Gendry pulls into the first motel they see— 24
hours, free wifi, the whole shebang. It looks like shit, but after being on the
road for so many nights, it feels like the fucking Taj Mahal. He throws their
two duffels over his shoulder, and he knows that Arya’s definitely just a step
or two behind him because when the door to the lobby slides open, the air
conditioning blasts them both in the face; he hears her gasping into his ear.
 
“Thank fuck,” she breathes.
“No kidding.”
“You kids need room?” 
 
Gendry asks for a double room, but the woman doesn’t seem to hear him. Or maybe
she just doesn’t care. Arya thinks it’s probably the latter because when Gendry
tries to argue with her, she shoves the keys across the counter, scowling
around a mouth full of teeth and a gap the size of the Grand Canyon stretched
between two pointed incisors.
 
“One bed left. You take, or you sleep in street.”
 
Outside there is just crackling neon and the no vacancy sign flickers.
 
On, off, on, off, all night until dawn.
 
The room is too small, a little dingy, dimly lit, with a carpet of the 70’s
shag variety, sickly green, stained, and balding in patches around the bed.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” says Gendry with finality. “I’ll shower first,” she
answers.
               
She thinks she’ll save them both the trouble, any of the awkwardness that
hormones and nudity—that war of the sexes Sansa’s always talked about—seemed to
cause. Arya doesn’t know very much about boys but she’s not stupid—Gendry is a
boy, a man really, and she’s a girl and it’s the last thing she wants to think
about.
 
                                      //
The bathroom is cramped, with yellowing tiles that were probably white once,
and peeling wallpaper with curling ends, spotted with mildew. But regardless of
all of that, it has a fairly decent sized shower, so as soon as Arya sheds her
clothes, leaving them in a crumpled heap on the floor, she quickly forgets
about all of the room’s imperfections when the first heavenly blast of hot
water hits her naked skin. When she sticks her head under the hot spray, she
has to literally bite her tongue to stifle the moan that tries to escape from
between her lips. She braces herself, palms splayed against the wall to support
her shaky legs and just...breathes. By the time she finishes washing (she
shampoos her hair three times before she finally feels clean), the water's
practically run cold but she doesn't care that Gendry’ll be pissed. And when
she steps out onto the bath mat, shrouded in steam, she pauses, she just stands
still because she still can't seem to fathom that she’s here, now that they’ve
stopped moving for a moment and she can just take it all in.
 
The towel on the rack is a little too small, more than threadbare, but she
wraps it around her shoulders anyway, shivering as the water starts to
evaporate off her skin, leaving gooseflesh behind. The mirror is fogged up, but
she can still see herself clear enough. What she sees isn’t exactly pleasing,
but she’s no troll—though she knows she’s too skinny for a girl her age, all
knobby knees and sharp angles, her face possessing none of the soft feminine
curves that Sansa’s always had, the ones that had boys buzzing around the house
like flies since Sansa turned twelve; but Arya, she’s quick, she’s strong, and
that’s really all that matters to her anyway.
 
Like she’d said before, her hair is the only thing really noticeably feminine
about her impish looks. It’s annoyingly thick, she thinks, especially now, as
it hangs loose and heavy all the way to her hips. Normally Arya keeps it
subdued in a tight bun or braid, something that always drove her mother and
sister mad—Why can’t you let it down? You look like such a lovely young
lady—and now it’s more bothersome than ever, drenched and dripping cold
droplets onto her toes. The knife is still in her jacket pocket, and her hand’s
clenched around the handle before she even realizes she’s done it.
 
All it takes is a steady hand, a quick sawing motion, and the first clump of
tresses falls into the sink. Maybe it’s stupid, she thinks, as she hacks off
more and more of the offending curls, but the act of cutting it feels sort of
therapeutic, a little like being reborn, maybe like she’s finally letting go of
some of the weight that’s been crushing her since her father looked the wrong
way down the barrel of another man’s gun.
 
Either way, by the time she’s finished, Arya doesn’t recognize the face in the
mirror looking back at her, and frankly, she’s perfectly fine with that.
 
                                      //
 
Gendry’s still not able to relax, even after he’s stashed their bags and spread
a blanket and pillow out onto the floor for himself. So while the girl’s in the
bath, he smokes on the stoop with the door cracked so he can keep an eye on the
place, and seriously, he’s pretty sure he’s taken at least ten years off his
life with the rate he’s finishing packs these days.
 
“You know that’s a disgusting habit.”
 
Her voice is sharp and sudden, and he jumps, swears as the lit end of his
cigarette falls onto the top of his hand, singeing the thin skin stretched
across his knuckles.
 
“Fuck, make a little more noise when you walk, christ,” he hisses, brushing ash
from his t-shirt, sucking at the burn with his lips curled into a scowl.
 
“Don’t be such a whiner,” she says airily, and before he can protest, she’s
grabbed his hand, her tiny fingers, unexpectedly rough against his own
monstrous palms, pressing, insistent, against the burn. “You’re fine—there’s
not even a blister. Men are such babies…”
 
Gendry huffs, “Are you always this pleasant?” He couples the words with a harsh
stare, feeling inexplicably pleased that she breaks first, her grey eyes
darting away from his face.
 
“Only when I’m kept hostage against my will,” she says.
 
“Whatever,” he answers, crushing the still-smoldering butt under the heel of
his boot. He shuts the door, locking all three bolts with a satisfying
click.Though when looks up, he’s startled to see that she standing right next
to him, the flowery scent of cheap motel soap/ mixed with the metallic bite of
hard water, spinning around his head.
 
Her hair is down, but it’s much shorter now, with the fringe hanging over her
eyes and the edges blunt and uneven, like she’d hacked them off with…
 
With a knife,he realizes sourly.
 
All of a sudden, he’s assaulted with a slew of various images of all the ways
Arya could stick him with the point of some needle-knife like he’s a suckling
pig. To say the least, none of them are on a list of things that sound fun to
him.
 
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she spits, but he doesn’t answer her,
pulling her close by the front of her bathrobe, thrusting his hands into the
pocket, ignoring the way she’s squirming and cursing in his arms.
 
“Hey, asshole!” she screeches, and he winces, though he’s back and away from
her in a no more than a second. “What the fuck!”
 
He shrugs, grasping the thin blade between his thumb and forefinger, holding it
out in front of him like the object’s offending him in some way.
 
“Not really looking to get stabbed in my sleep, Princess,” he says, examining
the tiny knife with an appraising gaze. It’s skinny, light, but it’s well-
crafted, and expensive, he notes, fingering the shiny silver inlay etched on to
the mother-of-pearl handle.
 
“I wasn’t going to do anything with it, so give it back,” she grits, her fists
balled at her sides. He wants to laugh, because with the way her face is
reddening, she looks like a little kid about to throw a temper tantrum. “It’s
mine,” she adds, slow and furious.
 
“Mine for the night,” he singsongs, slipping into the bathroom, faster than a
blink, locking the door behind him. He’s got something almost resembling a
smile on his face,  even as he steps into a cold shower, because he realizes
can have a few minutes of peace, knowing the girl’s not going to run anywhere,
not without her brother’s knife to take with her.
 
                                      //
                                        
Arya is fuming, stomping around the room, tossing clothes out of her bag and
knocking things haphazardly off the dresser just because she’s angry and needs
something to throw. She’s always had a hot temper, and Gendry is yanking on
every last thread of her patience, unraveling it like it’s an old sweater.
Sure, Arya’s been surrounded by brothers her whole life, no stranger to
excesses of testosterone, but she’s certainly not used to being treated so
rudely, to having her personal space so completely and utterly violated.
 
It’s unnerving.
 
Plus, he’d taken her knife, and she hadn’t even seen it coming—that was the
most irritating thing, she thinks, that he’d been able to one-up her like that.
He was faster than she was, which didn’t happen often, not to her, and that
bothered her more than she wished it did.
 
“Bastard,” she mutters under her breath, plopping down on the bed with her arms
crossed and her knees pulled up underneath her.
 
And maybe pouting is more exhausting than she thinks, because Arya doesn’t even
remember falling asleep. It just hits her, as sudden and unexpected as a blow
to the head.
 
                                      //
                                        
When the bathroom door creaks open, Arya stirs, though she doesn’t open her
eyes right away. When she does, the room is only dimly lit, the curtains having
been drawn sometime while she was asleep, she guesses.
 
She just barely makes out Gendry’s outline in the dark, but he steps closer,
and she can see he’s bare from the waist up, jeans slung low on the steep
slopes of his hips, hair still damp from his own shower. She doesn’t know what
he’s doing as he approaches the bed, his hand shoved into his pocket. When he
pulls it out, he’s got the knife, and her heart starts to hammer in her chest.
 
Needless to say, she feels stupid, and a little perplexed, when he places it
delicately, like it’s something precious (which it is, to her), on the
nightstand next to her head.
 
Up close, Gendry’s skin is much darker than her own milk-white complexion, but
when he turns, the slope of his back catches the light, and she has to stifle a
gasp into the blanket because the entirety of it is branded with ink, thick
lines, intricate and swirling, but the design is too complicated for her to
make out in the poor lighting.
 
She tries to close her eyes, feign sleep, but he looks down, and she’s once
again not fast enough. Their eyes meet again, and Arya feels herself
unwittingly blushing.
 
She hates it.
 
“Go back to sleep,” he says, but the words aren’t said venomously, and it’s not
a command or a thinly-veiled threat, for once.
 
She turns towards the wall, instead of saying anything, and curls around one of
the pillows, burying her face in the soft cotton. She hears rustling, the
sounds of Gendry trying to make himself comfortable, something that she thinks
must be difficult on this awful floor.
 
But then there’s only silence in the room. Just the sounds of shallow
breathing.
 
After about five minutes of silence, she guesses he’s sleeping, and she’s just
about to let herself drift off when she hears him, his voice barely a whisper.
 
“I’m sorry…if… if I scared you.”
 
Arya doesn’t roll over to look at him, but she stiffens underneath the pile of
blankets she doesn’t remember covering herself with.
 
“You didn’t,” she murmurs.
 
Neither of them wakes until early the next morning.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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