Arya Stark returned to Westeros with a singular purpose: to get vengeance for her family. After failing to assassinate Cersei Lannister, however, she is forced to turn to the only familiar face in King's Landing. Her resolve will be tested when the stranger she's become is reunited with the remnants of her past.

A.N.: Jon will also be in this story, but I could only choose four characters, so I went with those who will be in it most frequently. This story will focus on Arya and her fractured psyche, generally from the perspective of others, and will feature elements of Arya/Gendry as well as the altered familial relationships between the remaining Stark children.

For the most part, this story starts shortly before 7x01, but I've altered the timeline slightly from the aired chronology such that Arya dealt with the Frey's a short time after Jon retook Winterfell. This timeline will be posted in a note at the end of the first chapter and will be updated as I post new ones-but the timeline will always be in the first. I'll update this story as I can, but I still need to work on a few others as well. It won't be a terribly long story, like mine tend to be. I've got about 14 chapters planned at the moment, and they're shorter than my usual-about three Word pages each on average.

Her blood dribbled on the stone cobbles underfoot as she made her way, droplets from tendrils of crimson iron that snaked down her dominant arm. Her fingers were sticky with it. Her clothes were wet with it. She'd tied a rolled cloak around her back, but it stemmed the flow little now, probably soaked through with it. Her eyes were already going dark. She'd lost far too much blood. So much, in fact, that she failed to lift her foot when she thought she did. She lurched forward when her boot got stuck on an errant cobblestone and the world tilted sharply. She hit the stone hard but didn't have the energy even to utter more than a pained wieze.

Her vision failed for a moment and returned as a blurry window of sight that was less than it had been before. It would be so easy then to just lie there, to let the rest of her blood leave her and to expire in that damp alley smelling foul of excrement and vomit and fish. But, if that happened, they would surely find her. If she was recognized, war would go to Winterfell for her actions that night.

And if she fell, she failed.

She'd come too far to fail.

Physical pain was not new to her. She had in fact become quite well-acquainted with it over the past couple years. Even still, the sheer agony, the fire that lit every nerve in her back, as she pushed herself up off the cold damp stone was like nothing she'd ever experience. She probably cried out. She couldn't hear it over the ringing in her ears, but it probably sounded quite pathetic. She pushed through it all until she stood once again, hunched but upright, and then she continued on her way with sluggish, dragging steps, supporting her weight on the wall using the arm she could still feel.

There was only one place in the entirety of King's Landing she could go. She'd cut through an irrigation canal to break off her blood trail and was now cutting her way through the dark alleys along River Row. She couldn't spare the energy to reach into her bag and retrieve the face of a stranger, to protect her identity from any brave few souls who might look out their windows in morbid curiosity with those bells ringing out from the Red Keep so close by. But, even if she were physically able, she probably shouldn't disguise herself. It'd been three years. She had no idea when he'd returned to King's Landing. Or why. But, he was going by a different name. The Gold Cloaks had to be looking for him still. He may not help a stranger, not on a night like this with the entirety of the guard to be out looking for her.

But, he would help Arya Stark.

Gendry, or Joseth as he'd made himself known since his return to King's Landing, was woken by the bellowing cadence of the bells from the Red Keep. Those bells only ever meant one of a few things. They'd rung only weeks before when the King, young Tommen Baratheon, had thrown himself from a window after the Sept had been razed to the ground by Wildfire. Gendry wondered for a time, staring up at his ceiling, what had happened this time. At the least, he took some solace in that there had been no explosions. Was it a siege, then? Stannis Baratheon was dead, but he was hardly the only man with eyes for the Iron Throne. The smith allowed himself a brief moment to wonder if the Queen had been assassinated. That would hardly be the worst thing to happen to the city. Queen for a little over month and already the city was terrified. Some had fled, left for business out of town or to visit distant relatives when in fact they had no intention of returning, and the idea looked more appealing by the day. There would certainly be no love lost from her people were her rule to end so soon after it had begun.

Ultimately, Gendry decided that, one way or another, he wouldn't be sleeping that night. Not with that racket from the Keep. So, he stood and redressed and went out into his small smithy to start on an order of fish hooks that had come in the previous day. He didn't do many swords or much armor anymore, mostly equipment for the shipyards, but it was still good work, kept him busy and was more probable to keep him away from the scrutiny of a woman who wished him dead for his lineage alone. The pay wasn't terrible, even in the Waterfront. He ate well-enough most weeks and only forewent some because he was saving his coin to leave King's Landing and open a forge somewhere else, perhaps in the Riverlands or the Rainwood somewhere.

Fish hooks were easy. Roll a narrow steel rod, heat it, hammer one end into a barbed point, then bend it into shape. There were plenty to be made, though, a dozen in a single order and many orders a day. He was halfway through a second order when a knock came at his door, two pounds on the wood a lengthy beat apart. Gold Cloaks, he suspected immediately. Out for whatever the disturbance was about. He hated it whenever they came round. It didn't happen often, but he feared one of them would recognize him from his time as an apprentice under Tobho Mott. It had yet to happen, but it was surely only a matter of time.

Gendry set his hammer and the tongs holding the latest fish hook aside with a sigh and left his work. The chiming of the bells got louder as he pulled his door open and he was surprised to find it wasn't the city guard at his door but rather a single stranger, a small figure slumped against the wall beside the hollow of his door, dark form silhouetted by the pale light of the moon and stars above.

"What do you want?"

He let his irritation clear through because, if the guards found them talking in such a manner with those bell ringing through the night, he'd likely be hung for suspicion of treason by morning. He was about to tell this person off and send them away to bother someone else for whatever they needed.

Then his visitor looked up at him, long brown hair parting, and Gendry was struck dumb, staring into a face he'd thought departed from the world long ago.

He hardly had time to be surprised, however, didn't even have the time to utter her name in shock. Arya Stark pushed from the wall beside his door and started forward, surely to enter his forge. If the Gold Cloaks were out swarming the city for whatever those bells were ringing, she certainly wouldn't want to be found by them. But, Arya failed to take even a single step and pitched forward. Her knees buckled as her eyes rolled back in her head and her frame went slack. Gendry still had enough sense to catch her, fortunately enough, her dead weight landing on his front.

The first thing he noticed was that her clothes seemed to be wet, a curious thing since it hadn't rained in weeks. The second was that Arya Stark had grown since he'd last seen her, a young girl dressed as a boy staring after him as he was carted away to the slaughter at the order of Stannis Baratheon. In height, she had certainly grown since then, if little at that, but it was her front, pressed into his chest, that spoke of her growth into womanhood during their separation.

The third was that her clothes were not wet with water.

Dread seeped into his veins as he drew his hand from her back to find it sticky with blood and he looked down to find her back drenched with it. Gods, there was so much blood…

Panic was his driving force then, and Gendry stooped to sling the limp girl across his shoulders. She didn't groan or protest to his manhandling of her, didn't make a sound, and it was so unnatural that it scared him near out of his wits. She'd already passed out and he thought it a miracle she hadn't before then—by the looks of things, she'd been bleeding for some time. He brought her to his room. His bed, just a linen-wrapped straw mattress set against the wall, was the only place in the entire smithy where he could put her and he eased her down onto her stomach as gently as he could manage to assess where all the blood was coming from.

Rolled fabric, probably the remnants of a cloak or something similar, had been slung around her back and was soaked through, so he cut through the material with a leatherworking knife to peel it away without having to turn her over to untie it. The gash beneath was so long that he struggled for a word that could do it justice. It went from her left shoulder, arching over the lump of muscle at the base of her neck, and reached almost all the way down to her right hip, surely bone-deep for the majority.

Gendry did what he could, which was maddeningly little. He plugged the very large wound with a shirt, which he'd ripped down the side to add length, but was at a loss then. He was very far out of his depth, having only dealt with the much more minor injuries of his trade. She was still bleeding. Arya Stark was bleeding out on his bed, the crimson of her life leaking out slower than it surely should, which meant she'd probably bled a good deal of her blood already. The timing, he knew, couldn't be a coincidence. The bells. Then Arya with a wound obviously from a sword. Any who looked at her would surely think the same.

But, he wouldn't be able to save her life. He needed help, so he left to find it.