Chapter Text
"Honey, I'm home!" Gendry yelled in the same joking way he and Arya would every time one arrived at their shared apartment.
The joke would continue as whoever was in would always reply with an overly dramatized 'And what sort of time do you call this?'
Unexpectedly, Gendry was greeted by silence, even when he could see the back of his best friend's ponytail slumped against the sofa.
He walked to the small living room and sat on the ottoman opposite where Arya was seated. Her body slumped against the pillows; eyes open but staring at the ceiling, her left leg twitching.
"What's wrong?" He asked.
"Why must something be wrong?" She replied, lifting her head and pulling her legs in so she could place her chin over her bent knees.
"Well, I'm fluent in Arya Stark's moods, and right now you look like you are itching to take off any minute, so something must have gotten seriously tits up and spooked you. Let's save us the grief and just tell me."
A tight coil broke within her, and all the pent up energy that had her ready to leap left her body.
Her mind had finally crashed against the signs she had been ignoring for weeks. When she fainted in the middle of rehearsal earlier that day, Syrio forced her to go to A & E. They had drawn her blood, and now the piece of paper with her abnormal results laid crumpled at the bottom of her bag.
She didn't wait.
She had already decided what she would do when her leukemia returned, the decision made years before.
It was not a question of 'if' but 'when.'
"It's not a big deal," she said still unsure if she'd share her news with him.
"It is if it gets you like this," he reassured her by placing his hand on her knees.
'He's going to figure it out soon,' she thought, 'and he will be furious if you don't tell him.'
But perhaps he could understand her decision, and support her. Gods knew that her siblings would not.
Not Sansa, that much was for sure.
Sansa who against all the odds had been the right match.
'The gods must be mad,' she had thought, for having Sansa, who despite being her sister didn't seem to share any sort of genetics with her, except of course for the lifesaving bone marrow she gave her amidst their family's tragedy.
Arya took a deep breath and spoke her truth.
"It's back," she confessed.
"What's back?" Gendry asked in confusion.
His sincerely dumbfounded face irked her to the point of explosion.
"Winter!" she yelled, "you're such an idiot! What do you think? I'm no longer on remission!"
Her words punched him right in the gut, and he felt all air leave his lungs. Just like it did that night next to his mother's bed when she stopped breathing and time stood still.
"Arry."
"Don't say it. I've always known this moment was coming."
He had already been there. That wretched disease had once before stripped him of everything that tethered him to the earth.
Leaving him with only fury to fight his despair.
"When will you start the treatments again?" He asked after a moment.
He never took that poison, but he was there to see the doctors and the nurses slowly pumping it into his mother's body.
And soon after, into his best friend's.
He remembered the messiness of it, breaking him as he witnessed it. It wasn't fair that he felt traumatized for something he didn't suffer, but he did.
He would do it again, be there for her, as long as she was saved once more.
"I won't," she said quietly, and he doubted he had heard her clearly.
"What do you mean?"
"Last time it almost killed me. I won't go through that again."
"Last time it saved your life!" He yelled, standing up, ready to punch a wall.
"And my parents died, and Anna died."
The mention of his mother smartened Gendry's wound, the pain fresh, as if it had happened just minutes before, instead of seven years prior.
They had met at chemo, Gendry sitting next to his mother, and Arya with Catelyn, taking care of her. Every Wednesday without fail he'd see the tiny furious fifteen-year-old she had been, with the skull t-shirt and the short hair.
He recognized fury.
Fury was his friend.
As it was the friend of any of the poor souls who found their place in that room, taking the poison or witnessing impotently how it was fed to someone they loved.
He was nineteen.
Bigger than his peers of the same age, but clumsy, looking like a man, but desperately trying to cling to his mother.
They had become friends in that room, as their mothers became friends themselves. Fears not vocalized, but binding them.
A mother scared of leaving her child, another scared of losing hers.
One day she had asked him for the music he was listening, and he'd offered her one earphone.
They both had loved music.
He loved guitars and taught himself.
She had music lessons since she was four and a place waiting for her at the conservatory, as soon as she turned eighteen.
Until one day she had come to chemo with a murderous look, her aunt Lysa choosing to drop her off there and pick her up after. A nurse told them that Arya's parents had been killed in a car accident, which had also crippled her younger brother.
Turns out cancer doesn't give you a chance to grieve.
You still need your dose of poison every Wednesday at 3 pm.
Anna, Gendry's mother, had taken over reassuring her during her treatments, aching for the little girl who had to go through the same hell she did, mourning the mother that wasn't supposed to die.
And one day Arya arrived to see Anna's chair empty, and Gendry nowhere to be found.
She made her brother Jon take her to the funeral.
They were kindred now in their orphanhood.
The following Wednesday and every one after that Arya had a session he would be there, even when his mother was not. And he was there when she almost didn't make it. Next to all her siblings.
When it came to finding a bone marrow match, he was tested, just like her brothers and sister, even when he knew he wouldn't be one.
But her sister had been.
Three years of fighting and getting dangerously close to not making it, but at the age of eighteen, she beat leukemia. She took a year off to backpack on her own after that, sometimes meeting up with Jon in a distant and exotic place, sending postcards to Gendry, who collected them all.
No one could say no to her, knowing what she had gone through. No one could longer say no to her since she was an adult.
She'd gone to conservatory, majoring in the cello, while Gendry had gone into lutherie, learning how to repair and construct fine stringed instruments. He had excellent acoustic listening skills and was a lyrical guitar player. After going to a vocational school, he then took an apprenticeship with famed guitar maker Tobho Mott. And now, at 27, he made his living as a sought-after guitar specialist, who had a loyal list of serious musicians who trusted their instruments only to him. He ran his own little repair workshop, he mostly restored and repaired instruments, and managed to make two or three special custom ones a year as pet projects. He wasn't wealthy, but he could make a modest living doing something he was passionate about.
Arya was part of the city orchestra. To be honest, she made peanuts and had to teach music lessons on the side, but after her lot in life, she was determined to live as she wanted, convinced that there was not enough time for anything else. After her parents died, the trust fund Ned Stark had set up for his children had kicked in, and while she wasn't the average wealthy trust fund kid, Arya knew she had the privilege to do what she loved and not worry she wouldn't have a roof over her head or food on her table.
The only thing Gendry had gotten from his biological father, the rich fat fucker who had been with his mum only long enough to get her with child and nothing more, was his last name and a lump sum of money at the end of his life. He had his lawyers find him when Robert was close to dying and wanted to make amends. With that money and a bit that Arya had saved, they purchased a very modest two-bedroom apartment in the dodgy part of town and started living together. They had decided that the worst thing would be not having enough to pay rent, and so, the best investment for both would be to never have to worry about having to sleep rough.
And so they had been living together for the past two years.
And now she was telling him that she wouldn't get treatment again. And this time he would lose the only other person he had left.
"They didn't die because you got treatment," he explained.
"But I missed my time with them because I did."
"You cannot do this to me," he said, and he kicked himself internally for putting his feelings before hers.
"I am not doing this to you."
"Please, tell me you'll fight," Gendry pleaded, turning back to face her, and crouching by her side.
"I want to live."
"Then fight, and live," he said cradling the side of her face and making her look at him.
"I don't want to fight and miss out on everything again. Whatever time I have left, I want that," Arya said pointing at the massive board on the wall covered in the postcards she sent him and pictures of their lives together, "I want to get as much of life as I can, I want to eat, and laugh, and drink, and play music and sing. I don't want to spend whatever I have left puking my guts out."
"I cannot lose you," he pleaded.
"Then live with me," she urged him, covering the hand on her jaw with hers.
"I won't be able to change your mind, will I?" He finally accepted, choosing to sit down next to her.
"I don't know," she replied, looking down to see her fidgeting hands.
"Have you told your sister? Your brothers?" He asked, turning towards her.
"No."
"You know they won't like this."
"It's not their decision to make. This time I get to choose."
He took a moment to process her words.
"You are asking too much of me," he finally offered, without looking her way.
She turned sideways in her seat until her left knee was gracing his thigh.
"Hey, let's do this, just give me a month."
"For what?" He asked, looking, back at her.
"To process all this, to live."
"And then what?"
"And then I'll tell my siblings," she acquiesced.
"And go to your oncologist?"
"Maybe."
"Arya!"
She couldn't continue with this back and forth. She needed Gendry's support, and she would do whatever she could to get it.
"Best friend right," Arya said.
"Arya don't. It is not what that was for! You cannot use it for that. Please be serious."
"You know the rules, no questions asked."
"That was supposed to be for something else, like help you move, bail you out, give you an alibi. Fuck! I don't know, help you bury a body! That I would have expected of you."
"Not that different from burying a body."
"Don't you dare go there," fury was burning in his eyes.
"Fine. I won't joke about that. But I need you to support me on this. I need to live whatever life I have left on my own terms. Do you rather help me out not be part of it?"
He shook his head in disbelief.
"You are a cruel woman."
"You're only figuring that out now?"
"This is a hostage situation, but fine."
He saw her smile for the first time since she told him life as they knew it was about to end. And it was unfair, but her smile was his Achilles heel.
"Fine! What now then?"
"She got up and offered him her hand to pull him to his feet.
"Now, we drink," she said, walking to the kitchen and grabbing two beers from the fridge.
After opening them, she handed him one and hopped on the counter of the tiny center island, while he leaned against the sink facing her.
"Best thing about dying young, go," Arya demanded.
"You are so morbid," Gendry declared, shaking his head.
"If that is news to you, you are a bigger idiot than I thought. Come on, you are breaking the rules. Help me with this, what is an upside to dying young?"
Gendry grimaced as he scratched the back of his head, following the rules.
He went along just to check out from his emotions.
"Leaving a beautiful corpse?" He guessed, trying to say something that would impress her.
"Hmm, not going to happen, lots of scars already."
"Yes, we're going to believe you are not good looking."
"Don't start sugarcoating things, not dead yet, leave that for the eulogy."
"I am not!"
"Okay, my turn, not worrying about taxes."
"You've never paid taxes!"
"I have!"
"Your trust fund accountant does it, so then, it doesn't count."
"Okay then, not taking anyone to the airport anymore, not helping anyone move."
"So not helping me basically. Nice."
"Not being anyone's bridesmaid!" She yelled in excitement.
"Sansa is going to kill you for that one," he pointed out, tilting his beer towards her.
"It's okay. I'll be dead by then."
As much as he tried to disassociate the morbidity of their talk from the fact that their friendship had now an expiration date, her words had found the way to fill him with dread once more.
"How can you joke about that?" He finally asked unable to look her in the eye, and instead, fixating on the liquid inside the dark bottle.
"How can you not? Hey, this is supposed to help me. It's getting all those things out of the way."
"Let's think of something less morbid. How about your bucket list?"
"Been there, done that."
"Finished it?"
"I did. After finishing treatment and not dying, I did everything I could think of doing."
"Everything?"
"Yes, you were there for lots of things."
"And what I wasn't I got a postcard," he said, pointing to the board.
"You're welcome."
"So what does one do if they've completed their bucket list?"
"A fuck it list?" She suggested.
"What is a fuck it list?" He inquired, amused.
"I don't know, all the things you no longer worry about breaking the rules for since you are dying anyway? Like, robbing a bank."
"Using your mobile loudly at the cinema? Cutting a line?"
"Lame."
"Seriously, tell me something you haven't done. There has to be something."
Arya took a couple of minutes to think. She pretended she had to think about the only item she had never crossed from her list. The list that her therapist had forced her to make, with five hundred items that ranged from the simplest 'find a four-leaf clover' to the more ambitious 'see the aurora borealis.'
Four hundred and ninety-nine items written in her teenage left-handed penmanship, all crossed out.
All but one single pesky item.
"There is."
"And?"
"You'll laugh at me."
"I laugh at you all the time, so out with it."
Why was it hard to say it when they had little boundaries in their friendship?
She wondered if it was because it seemed vain, or ludicrous, or weak.
Just thinking about it was making her scowl, and she could see that he was looking at her intently. He would find out anyway, and it would be worse the longer she took to say it.
"Falling in love," she finally said.
"You've fallen in love."
"Not for real. Not the once-in-a-lifetime, 'you are the love of my life' sort of way. I never did that."
"You could still do that."
"What? Do the rounds at pubs looking for the love of my life? Join Tinder? I don't think so."
"It could happen. Maybe not in a meet-cute sort of thing."
"Meet-ugly then?" she asked with a smile, "sounds awful."
"There is still time to have one last romance, one last hooray."
"One for the road?" She offered, lifting her beer bottle along with her eyebrow, "nuh, not doing that in a rush. I'm doomed to not have a great love to mourn my death. People will have to lament that there is no handsome widower who they can hug and give condolences to."
"Ned Dayne will probably think it's him."
"Oh, fuck you! You had to go there?"
"You dated him."
"He took me to one stupid school dance."
"Snogged him."
"I did not! He gave me once lousy goodnight kiss!"
"He will claim he was the love of your life anyways."
"Seven hells! You are right. You will have to set the record straight. Avenge my honor."
A chuckle caught in his chest, sounding more like a sad sob.
This was really happening, and he would be there, at her funeral.
The thought suddenly seemed real.
"It's okay I guess," she said, taking another sip from her beer, "I'm sure lots of people die without having truly fallen in love."
They were both silent for a few minutes, each nursing their own beer. Gendry's heart had been aching since hearing his best friend was once again battling a terminal disease. He could feel the despair and the sorrow from his own mother passing nipping at his ankles, and yet, her confession of being disappointed about not experiencing that kind of love squeezed his heart even tighter. Years later, he may try to explain his train of thought at that precise moment, but it wouldn't be easy, and he wouldn't be sure of how it happened exactly. At the end of the day, it came down to the care and love he had for his best friend, the fifteen-year-old girl who had been with him during the worst time of his life, while she was going through the same, who was now a twenty-three-year-old woman facing the end of the line.
The only thing he knew was that he would do anything to make real every whim she had.
And before he knew it, he was in front of her, taking her beer bottle out of her hands and placing it along with his own on the kitchen counter.
"Hey! I wasn't done with that," was all she got to say.
She would have said a lot more, but her mouth was now occupied with Gendry's kissing her like she had never been kissed before in her life.
The kiss had started desperate and unbridled, but then it had turned soft and slow. When they finally parted, both so dizzy that they had remained like that, eyes closed and foreheads touching for a moment.
"Not complaining, or anything, but why?" Arya asked out of breath, eyes still closed.
He opened his eyes then and leaned back a little to explain himself.
"I know it is not what you would have dreamed about, but, we could do this," Gendry proposed with a sheepishly smile.
"What, a pity fuck?" She asked, opening her eyes wide.
His best friend had always been direct and crass.
"No!" he yelled.
"No?" She asked, and he was horrified at seeing the rejection on her face.
"I mean, yes, maybe, for sure if you say yes to what I'm proposing, and if you want to."
"Be clear."
"I mean, you and I could fall in love."
"Pity romance then," she concluded tilting her head to the side.
He shook his.
"You deserve everything, and I would give you anything I could. We're best friends, and we already love each other, so how difficult could it be to fall in love?"
And there it was, her best friend.
She had no doubt that if she told him she was to rob a bank, he would ask her what getaway car he should get.
She would be lying if she said that there hadn't been moments, as they grew up, when she had wondered what would happen if they kissed, but it had never happened.
And it was fine.
She had lived those years focusing only on surviving and nothing more.
But now, her best friend was proposing they try to fall in love with each other.
"You're an idiot," she said, and for a moment he feared he had made a colossal mistake, "but yeah."
"Yeah?" he asked with a wide grin.
The goofy smile that he would always reserve for her.
"So, we're fucking?" She asked.
"In due time, if that is something you think you could do with me?" Gendry asked blushing slightly.
"You're not so bad to look at," she declared.
"I knew you'd been checking me out."
"Cocky."
"You bet," He replied with a wink.