Call me Out

[dammitmasa]

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code by cawaii
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- I don't play for shipping, fluff, or smut. If it arrives naturally, I'll play it. But not as a starting point.
- In universe, AUs, crossovers, post-game, or other situations are cool.
- I will play prose or brackets, but definitely prefer prose.

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[bullhorned]

It was still strange to have servants who opened doors and tried to blend into the background so as to be unnoticed. It unsettled Gendry, as he'd always tried to do the same around his betters.

But now he was walking with a lady to meet another lord. And she called me Gendry Waters before.

"Even a dull sword can do harm and I don't do woodwork."

[steeledskin]

Who could Robin harm?

But she thought better of the question before she gave it voice. The boy had wrecked so much. She still mourned for her snow castle.

"Armour, then. Or anything. It doesn't matter much."

[bullhorned]

"I could make a helmet. A proper one. Shaped like a falcon."

He thought of his own helmet, now long abandoned. After he made the little lord's helmet, he might try and remake his own.

[steeledskin]

"...Really?"

Mikken had never made armour shaped like anything else. The North was filled with steel, but it was all so stale and serviceable. "Won't that be difficult?"

[bullhorned]

Gendry, for a rare moment, smirked to be able to brag about his own skill. He was no master smith, but he knew well that he was better than most.

"It will take some doing. But my master learned me well. Tohbo Mott was the best smith in the Crownlands."

[steeledskin]

She paused outside the High Hall's doors. They would not be opened until they were both prepared, she decided. And she was still not prepared to share him with the lordling. Robin would grow attached, she suspected, and custom would allow Gendry to spend more time with him than with her. She would lose him.

"How old were you when you were first apprenticed?" Her voice has dropped to a secretive whisper, for fear of alerting the boy beyond the door.

[bullhorned]

Gendry did not understand the pause, nor the reason for whispering. He looked at the door, wondering who might be on the other side waiting. Was it just the boy?

"... I had six years," he answered in his own whisper. "Near the end of the last winter."

[steeledskin]

"I was five when winter ended." She sounded surprised that they were so close in age.

[bullhorned]

"There's snow on the grounds. I saw it when I came to the Keep. Last night, as well." There had been some snow before that, but it wasn't until he arrived in the Eyrie that there had been enough to truly accumulate on the ground. Only soft blankets had covered the ground before, accumulating in the evenings and dying by the next day's sun.

"Winter is coming. Those are the Stark words, right? My father's words are Ours is the Fury. Seems more fearsome, don't it? At least up until the snow shows up."

What good is fury in the face of winter?

[steeledskin]

"Every house has words of strength. Words to make their owners feel bigger. The Starks..." She pressed a hand against the door; she would open this one herself. "Theirs are the only words of warning, I think. It makes it all seem so inevitable."

She lifted her chin. She composed herself. And she pressed into the High Hall with honour on her mind: "As High as Honour. Arryn's words. Lord Robin, I would introduce to you Gendry Waters. The Eyrie has a smith again."

The boy was on his throne; it swamped him. It made him look even frailer than he already was. And he sat huddled on his seat, with barely a care for the two who had just entered. It was almost as though he hadn't heard them at all.

[bullhorned]

Gendry Waters. She was going to introduce him to the Lord of the Eyrie with a bastard name. It did not make him noble, but it made him so much more than he had been before. It made him nervous as he strode into the great hall. And then there was the boy...

He was a poor, meek little thing. Even Weasel looked to be more alive than this boy did. This is the Lord Protector of the Realm? Gendry wondered how it was that grown men could learn to suffer having little children as their rulers. Presently the king of all seven kingdoms was a boy hardly older than this one.

"M'lord," Gendry said. He did not look the boy in the eye. "I'm honored."

He then realized he should take a knee, so he did so.

[steeledskin]

Signs of fealty were like sweeties to Robin Arryn. He gobbled them up, and finally found the sense of self to grin at the bastard boy kneeling at his throne. Alayne Stone did not kneel nor did she curtsey, but Robin suffered it because she was sweet and she sang to him and she let him crawl into her bed when he was cold and frightened. Even now, he teetered off his seat and rushed to her skirts. Claiming her, in his own childish way.

"Now, Sweet Robin," she chided him with a honeyed voice. A mother, cajoling a son. "This isn't very lordly!"

It was an act. She wasn't the quiet and thoughtful girl she'd shown to Gendry, but a vibrant creature prone to smiling. This was the biggest lie of all, and it was an exhausting one to maintain. "Tell Gendry about what you found in the godswood, yesterday."

Robin was persuaded to stand on his own two feet, separate from Sansa. And he shared his news with such earnestness: "A hare! We found a hare, but its fur had gone all white -- all white! Alayne says they turn like that when winter is come."

[bullhorned]

The difference was striking. She was so solemn before. Conspirative in a way. More than that, she had struck him as so utterly alone. She had a detached way about her that seemed as though she was all alone in the world.

But this Alayne was different. Like an entirely different person. Which is the real one?

Gendry did manage to smile. "She's a smart lady, m'lord." He ventured to stand on his own feet as well.

[steeledskin]

"She knows things. Like songs. Alayne knows the best lullabies."

Sansa could only suffer the discussion in a haze of beatific silence. To argue with the little lord, or else to invite disagreement into his day...it might bring on another fit. When with Robin, she felt as though she only ever existed to curtail his malady.

[bullhorned]

Gendry was trying his hardest to pay due respect to the boy, but he found it taxing to do so. In Fleabottom, a boy that would tell such stories was likely to get ignored at best. Or beat at worst. But Gendry could do neither and had to treat these words as he would from any great lord.

For a moment he noted Alayne's silence. That was more like the woman he'd been coming to know.

"She says you might like a helmet, one like a proper knight. I thought to make you one at your forge. It would be like a falcon, fit for a true Arryn, if it pleases you, m'lord."

[steeledskin]

"How wonderful!" She gushed, leaning down and widening her eyes. All in the manner of an elder hoping to inspire excitement through some sort of contagious verve. "A helmet, Sweet Robin. All for you."

For a moment, the boy seemed to almost smell a lie. A plot. Some contrivance to steal something from him -- permission or compliance or something. But it passed quickly. He remained curious: "A real one?"

[bullhorned]

There she went again, shifting all at once to coddle him. Acting as though she were more a mother than... what? An older sister?

"Made with the best steel in your forge," he promised. He'd yet to go through what was at his disposal here, but there'd be no lie otherwise. He'd make use of the best of what was on hand.

[steeledskin]

Robin hung his head back at an odd, tilted angle. He looked to his Alayne for encouragement, and she only smiled. The lord was so often unable to see how her smiles often didn't creep beyond her lips, but today they crept a little further.

"Make it so," he commanded. Or tried to command. It always came out weak and petulant when he tried to give orders. It was a good thing he had Petyr to play regent for him, because otherwise the Eyrie would be a wreck.

[bullhorned]

"As m'lord commands," was all Gendry said. And just as the little lord looked helplessly to Alayne for support, Gendry was left to do the same.

Had he already overstayed his welcome? Should he stay longer to entertain the little lord? He felt at a complete loss already. He only knew now that he had orders to work the forge. He needed to get the fires going. Make the steel sing. And try to make himself indispensable for as long as he could manage it.

[steeledskin]

Robin certainly believed the smith had outstayed it. He was off in a trice, gone to assemble everything else he might need to be a proper knight. Without his mother alive to keep him on her lap, he had unprecedented access to the castle. Sansa could not summon the effort to tie him to her apron strings in the way Lysa Arryn had done.

But she could be bothered to offer a sly opening to the new resident smith. "Will you be requiring anything at the forge?" She asked, by way of offering to join him there later. If even under the pretext of making a delivery.

[bullhorned]

Gendry had been at court for far too short a time to be nearly so sly as her. He took her at her word and for a moment, tried to imagine anything he might need to best do his work at the forge. There was little that came to mind, save one thing.

"I've always been an apprentice, m'lady. My master Tohbo did sums. Made sure we had all the metal we needed. If you've a servant what might help me work out what all is to be had..." He trailed off, feeling like a fool to even need such assistance.

Some bastard lord I am. I can't do sums or letters. I'm good only with a hammer in my hand.

[steeledskin]

"...I am certain we can spare someone."

She misread his signals, seeing appreciation where she deeply hoped to see it. Sansa thought Gendry was participating in her little game, praising her learning in as sly a way as she had offered to come to him.

[bullhorned]

He bowed his head. "Thank you, m'lady."

And so when he was led to the courtyard, he was allowed to go on his way. Having broke his fast before the meeting with his new liege lord, he had little reason to waste time with other things. He wouldn't idle away for her servant to come find him. Sums could come later. He'd gone through some of the supplies already, so he found steel as best as he could find and began the process of heating the force, so it could be melted and shaped. The Eyrie may have been cold, but the forge burned with a monstrous heat. But Gendry barely felt it.

He'd always liked the forge, even as a boy. It was here he had power. It was here he commanded the flames.

[steeledskin]

"You are playing with fire, sweet girl," Petyr spoke quietly. He always spoke so quietly, making others lean towards him in order to pick up on his words. But Sansa stood still. Her hearing was good; she could make out his meaning just fine over the rhythmic strike of the smith's hammer in the courtyard below. "But we learn our best lessons when we are burned."

She had left his chambers with fire on her mind. She feared it, certainly. Fire had eaten up her younger brothers, though the Greyjoy traitor had first fled those flames. The Hound had feared fire, too. And she had coincidentally heard that tale from Petyr, as well. She had witnessed the Hound's fear, he had come to her looking for a song and more. He had taken his kiss, and he had left.

Now, in a late hour of the afternoon, she ventured willingly into the forge's heat. She was dressed in pale blue and had worn a shawl over her head to protect her ears from the cold, but had soon realized that it wasn't necessary once she'd reached the narrow wooden canopy signalling the forge's entrance.

"It's hot," she observed -- a little lamely -- when she finally caught his eye. Before then, she'd let him work. And she had watched, fascinated.

[bullhorned]

The steel had not yet begun to sing. Even with cold winter air seeping in through the cracks, he'd abandoned his shirt so he could shovel more coal into the fire. It required more work than it had in Harenhal, back when the days were still warm. But the cold could never defeat flames. Only hinder them.

It surprised him to realize she was standing there. He'd expected a servant, not a lady. All at once, he felt self conscious to be exposing himself the way he was. But he felt sillier still when he considered covering himself.

"... it needs to be," he answered warily. He still feared reprise for any small slight. "Or I can't work the steel. Is there something the matter, m'lady?"