Chapter Text
Dream lover, where are you
With a love, oh, so true
And the hand that I can hold
To feel you near as I grow old
“He likes baseball. That’s all I know. That’s all that matters.”
“All that matters? Don’t you want to know more about him?”
The ball lands in the basket of her mitt, and she pops it to her left hand and hurls it back across the quad. Gendry catches it easily and pops it to his right hand, and tosses it back. He’s got a curious expression on his face, like he can’t quite believe what she’s saying, but what does he care? This is the first time he’s ever asked her about her soulmate, in nearly three years of knowing her.
“What’s the point? So long as he likes baseball, I don’t care,” Arya responds testily as the ball lands in leather again.
“You don’t care what your soulmate is like? Not even a little?” Gendry asks. His voice is pure disbelief and Arya almost laughs.
“I’ll care when I meet him. Besides, soulmates are more trouble than they’re worth. For now, all that matters is that he likes baseball.”
“Watch your elbow—you’re sending your pitches wild,” Syrio calls to her. She bites her lip and hops up and down, re-centering and taking another ball from the feeder. “Careful now—don’t overstep. Precise as a cat on a high-wire, Arya.”
The pitch is placed perfectly and Syrio smiles. “Good. Now do it again.”
She centers herself on the mound and sends the ball down the middle of the plate again.
“Good—good,” says Syrio. “You have been shaky in your steps, but you’re coming back to it.”
She grimaces. “Is it so obvious?”
“To others? No. To me? Yes.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Why?”
“I dream baseball sometimes,” she says.
“Baseball? Not softball?”
“Yeah.”
“Aha,” says Syrio. “You must dream softball then. You are teaching your muscles new things in your sleep.”
“I thought you might say that,” she sighs. He won’t be happy about that. He doesn’t like softball as much as baseball. But he’ll understand. And if he doesn’t she’ll make him.
She finds the seams of the ball, lines them up, and swings her arm, stepping neatly forward as she does. It lands exactly where she wants it to.
“Did you watch the Dragons game earlier?” she calls to him. The ball is a softball tonight, and she knows he’ll complain because he’s a snob that way and says that softballs don’t go as fast and don’t make a nice thwacking sound when they connect to his bat, and that the diamond is so tiny it's hardly even fair, but Syrio’s right—this feels right, and she feels glad. She likes softball. It’s where her muscle memory is, and as fun as it is to pitch baseball for a change, baseball isn’t her sport. She’s played softball for years, ever since her dad signed her up for the local girls league because she saw Jon and Robb playing baseball and wanted a go herself. She thought it was stupid that girls weren’t allowed to play baseball properly—still did—but these days that carries on almost beneath the surface, a mild irritation drowned out by practice and games and teammates and stats and making sure to stretch everything out properly after a good pitching session. She lives and breathes softball and at this point, she can’t imagine her life without it.
Her soulmate makes an indistinct groan and swings his bat behind his head so that he’s holding it in both hands behind his neck, stretching his chest. It’s funny to her—that she sees his body more clearly than his face. She can see the way his pecs seem to want to burst through his baseball uniform but, depending on the night, his face is either blurry or has that look of a lottery card that’s been scratched out, always hidden from her. “I have literally never seen a more painful game. Do you think Targaryen’s ever going to be able to actually play?”
“Given the amount of money they’re paying him, I certainly hope so,” she grins. “You hit better than he does.”
“I hit better than most people.”
“Arrogant,” she teases and sends the softball towards home. He swings and misses. “Arrogant bastard who can’t even hit a fucking pitch,” she calls again, doing a little happy dance as he fetches the ball. He tosses it up and hits it lightly to her and she catches it barehanded, sending a jolt through her palm to her elbow.
“That,” he says, lining up with the plate and swiveling his hips slightly as he raises his bat again, “was to make you feel better about throwing something slow and fat right down the center of the plate.”
“Oh really?” she says, raising an eyebrow.
“Yep.”
She pitches again, and he hits it far beyond the stands that are miles and miles away because this is all a dream, and he trots around first, to second, to third, to home.
“Need I say more?” he says as he steps onto home base.
“Shut up,” she mutters. “Now go get me another ball, will you?” The ball basket is by home tonight.
“As m’lady commands.” He mocks a bow and goes towards the dugout and he has to play in real life, not just for fun, because he’s got a player’s ass—all muscle, and she grins to herself as she watches him bend over to grab another ball.
“So you play with him in your dreams, but you don’t know what he looks like?” demands Lyanna Mormont as Arya’s lacing up her cleats the next day. It’s an afternoon practice, and it’s fucking hot and Arya does not look forward to playing with the hot sun beating down on her hair. Lyanna, at least, also has dark hair, and is also from the North and hates it when the summer sun—because fuck the southerners who say that this is only springtime; springtime you’re still supposed to be wearing wool socks and sweaters all the time—beats down and makes her scalp boil in its own sweat.
“I do—just not his face,” Arya says. She can’t remember who on the team already knows this. She knows she’s told some of them, but apparently not Lyanna. “It’s fine though. I like playing with him.” Baseball, softball—both of them…they’ve always been a part of her. She finds it hard to explain how. Going to Wolves games with Dad and Jon, playing in the local league growing up—those had been the times when she’d been at her happiest, the times she’d felt that she could conquer the world. Maybe her soulmate understood that, felt the same way, even, which was why they only ever played.
“I mean—of course it’s fine,” says Elia, coming over and pecking Lyanna on the cheek. “That’s how it started off with this one.”
“It’s also fine,” says Shireen, who’s sitting on the ground in front of her locker, stretching her legs out, “because soulmates aren’t always about sex. Not everyone’s as horny as you two.”
Elia sticks her tongue out at Shireen. “What, like you and Devan don’t have tons and tons of sex all the time.”
“Yeah—but it’s not sex that makes a soulmate,” Shireen says. “Sharing important things is what makes the soulmate. Everyone knows that.”
Arya knows that too well, but it’s not her place to throw her siblings’ affairs into the discussion, so she shrugs. “Yeah, and for me and mine, it’s baseball.”
“What’s his team, then?”
“He likes the Dragons,” she says, and everyone moans.
“No, no, no!” says Cynthea.
“I don’t care if he’s your soulmate—this ends here,” agrees Alysanne.
“The Dragons? Has he no self-respect?”
“Maybe he’s from King’s Landing?” suggests Myrcella, shooting what is supposed to be a helpful look at Arya.
“Or maybe he has crap taste in baseball teams,” says Lyanna forcefully.
“Better than the Bats at least,” says Arya, almost defensively. It’s not his fault he has crap taste in baseball teams. Well, maybe it is, but they can’t get up in his face about it. Besides, Gendry likes the Dragons too—she watches games with him sometimes in the student union because no one else would—and no one gets up in his face about them. But then again, Gendry is very big—people probably don’t want to start things with him.
“Well, the Bats are cursed,” says Obella, “Everyone knows that.”
“Anyway,” says Lyanna loudly, “we were talking about how you still don’t know what he looks like.”
“Yeah, well. His face is always a bit fuzzy,” Arya shrugs, suddenly feeling self conscious about it. Surely this had happened to one of them, hadn’t it? She remembered telling the team about it her freshman year on the bus back from Riverrun, and Megga had just stared at her in blank confusion.
She can’t ask Shireen, of course—Shireen’s known her soulmate was her soulmate for ages now. They got kindergarten married and everything, and Shireen had once confessed drunkenly—during initiation last year—that they’d even played doctor together starting when they’d been six.
“I can’t even see mine,” says Cynthea. “No idea who they are. Their voice is indistinct too—can’t tell if it’s a girl or a guy,” she sighs.
“But you talk, yeah?” asks Arya. “You talk about things, right?”
“Yeah. Stuff. They haven’t got a big family like I do. So it’s just usually me complaining and them snuggling with me.” She frowns. “I can’t even tell what type of body they’ve got. It’s all confusing.”
“Maybe they’re still sorting out identities?” suggests Obella. “I know when Alleras was transitioning, his soulmate was all sorts of confused about things. It settled in the end though.”
“Oy—you lot,” calls Joy into the locker room. “You nearly ready?”
And they file out to the field and begin doing their laps.
As much as Arya would like to pretend, though, not everything is softball. Mother had been thrilled when she’d picked a math and econ major. “It’s so useful,” she’d said happily into the phone, and Arya had been pleased, because Sansa was majoring in literature with a focus on medieval poetry, which was about as useless as you could get. More useless, certainly, than trying to play softball professionally. She had wanted to for a long time, and a part of her still does, but the part of her that has her mother’s voice reminds her constantly that the money isn’t as good as it is in the men’s baseball league, that no one watches games, that she’ll only be able to play for a few years before her body starts to wear down and then what will she do with herself?
Better to go into something with numbers. Numbers are where the jobs are these days. Business, and data analysis and research and the like, taking Braavosi on the side so she could do work with the Iron Bank if her career brought her into finance. Math would take her everywhere softball wouldn’t.
She’s good at it, at least—that’s the fun part. She’s always had a head for numbers—working through team stats that the Winterfell Herald printed every day with her father, calculating and recalculating RBIs and ERAs as she listened to games and checking her math against the numbers printed the next day, crowing with delight when she was right and they were wrong. She’s good at it—but that doesn’t make it easy, and though she should be paying attention—rapt, she thinks is the word that Sansa would pick—in her lessons, sometimes it’s a little too easy for her to get distracted.
Arya is sitting in her Advanced Quantometrics class when Bran’s name flashes across the chat feature in her open email account.
Bran Stark: I told Jojen.
Arya frowns. There are so many different things that Bran could tell Jojen that this is hardly enough information to go on. So she wings it.
Arya Stark: How’d he take it?
She watches the little message “Bran Stark is typing” for about thirty seconds, completely missing the solution to the problem that Professor Ryswell is putting on the board.
Bran Stark: Not well. I mean well. But like—not well at all. I mean, he gets it, right? Of course he does. Because he knows I’m not gay, and he knows I love him, but I’m not ~in love with him~ you know? So he gets that, and that’s good. And he doesn’t begrudge that. But on the other hand, I think he’s devastated. Like it would have been easier if it weren’t Meera, right?
Ah. So that’s what Bran had told Jojen.
Arya Stark: You told him it was Meera?
Bran Stark: Yeah. I did. I…I had to be completely honest. And like—fuck I know she’s got her own soulmate, right? I’m not stupid or anything. I am pretty damn sure I don’t stand a chance. She’s also Robb’s age. So there’s that too. But…I don’t know, I just couldn’t not tell him. It felt wrong. It was making everything suck.
Arya Stark: And it doesn’t suck now?
Bran Stark: oh, it REALLY sucks now. But it’s a more honest form of sucking. Like an “everything’s out on the table and it sucks” kind of sucking, rather than a “I can’t tell you this thing and it’s eating my soul” kind of sucking.
Arya Stark: I guess that makes sense. I’m sorry things suck.
Bran Stark: Yeah. I know. It also would be easier if he were still in school here.
Arya Stark: He’s working in Winterfell, though, isn’t he?
Bran Stark: Yeah—but his schedule’s different now. We don’t sleep as much at the same times anymore.
Arya Stark: So, all-in-all, shitty end to your freshman year?
Bran Stark: That’s putting it lightly.
She collapses on the couch in the student union and toes off her sneakers. Her hair is still wet from the showers, and she has about fifteen problems to do for Advanced Quantometrics, not to mention three pages of Braavosi to write for her Friday seminar, but she doesn’t really care because the Dragons are playing the Wolves tonight and if the Wolves don’t win, Gendry’ll never let her hear the end of it.
He comes bearing two bottles of beer.
“May the best team win,” he says, popping the top off hers and handing it to her.
“Didn’t know you turned into a Wolves fan,” she says somberly, taking a swig of the stout. Gendry likes stout. She likes IPA. They don’t talk about it.
He stares at her incredulously, then laughs. “Nice try there, dickhead.”
“Who’re you calling dickhead?” she demands.
“You.” He puts the bottle to his lips, kicks his feet up onto the coffee table in front of them and turns on the television. They are singing the national anthem at the stadium in King’s Landing, and Arya wishes she were there. The feeling of being lost in the crowd, probably with Jon or her dad, waiting for them to throw out the first pitch so the game could get going, screaming herself hoarse as Cassel came up to bat again…instead she was stuck in Harrenhal with stupid Gendry and his stupid Dragons t-shirt, the smell of his pine deodorant. Well, at least it’s pine. Pine could remind her of home. At least it isn’t something stupid and ghastly that reminded her of middle school.
“Not my fault you like a dumb team.”
“There is nothing dumb about the Dragons,” Gendry says. Connington throws out the first pitch and Cassel hits it and sprints to first.
“Sure,” snorts Arya.
“There’s not.”
“Look, I’m not saying you’re wrong. But you’re wrong. King’s Landing doesn’t have a team.”
“It does, actually, and they’re called the Dragons.”
“And the only reason they exist is because they moved from Highgarden and changed their name.”
“The Reach did not need two baseball teams,” Gendry says dryly.
“Who’d you like before the Dragons, then?” demands Arya.
“Doesn’t matter. That’s ancient history.”
“Is not,” she snaps.
“It is.”
“It’s four years ago, Gendry. That’s hardly ancient.”
“Yeah? You were in high school then.” Sometimes she forgets that Gendry had a few years before college. He doesn’t talk about it much—she just knows he’s more than a year older than her and his jaw juts out if you ask him about it. She never understands what he chooses to tell her and what not to tell her. She knows he tells her more than he tells other people—she can hear it just from the way that the baseball team makes comments that she knows probably niggle at him while he grunts and grows surly—things like nudging him to drink more, or making fun of him for being that much older than them, or that he actually stays in Harrenhal on summer holidays, things that they don’t seem to know frustrate him, and which she’s known for ages. But at the same time, there he is, determinedly close-mouthed about other parts of him.
Part of her wonders if he’ll ever be fully open with her. The part of her she tells to shut up more often wonders if he’d ever want to.
“So?”
“So—ancient history. I won’t be held accountable for my high school self and my high school self’s choices.”
“Well, my preschool self was smarter than your high school self because she decided that the Wolves were the best.”
As if to prove her point, Fat Tom knocks a ball out of the park and she lets out a whoop and sticks her tongue out at Gendry. He takes a sip of his beer and ignores her.
She walks back to campus with Weasel, their freshman pitcher. She hasn’t accidentally hit a hitter in a few weeks at this point, which has all of them in a good mood.
“Do you think that we might make playoffs this year?” Weasel asks her. She’s small—smaller even than Arya, and her ponytail is longer too, swinging back and forth and brushing against the top of her huge black backpack.
“Could,” Arya says. “We’re beginning to get on track, though it’s too early to tell.”
“One of my friends in my Non-Violence and the Theory of Peaceful Protest seminar thinks we won’t.”
“Well, your classmate is probably an idiot who doesn’t know much about softball,” Arya says, shooting Weasel a sideways glance.
“He says that the baseball team won’t make playoffs, and if they don’t, we won’t.”
“What’s the baseball team got to do with anything?” Arya asks, raising her eyebrows. “The only thing we have in common with them is the transport to games.”
“I…” Weasel blushes. “I don’t know. He just…he just sounded like he knew what he was talking about.”
Arya rolls her eyes. “Every idiot thinks they know what they’re talking about just because they’re a guy and guys know sports better than girls. Bull fucking shit. Bet he doesn’t even know the differences between softball and baseball.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Weasel mumbles, and Arya sighs.
“Sorry—habit. People give us shit. You get used to it, but you also don’t, you know?”
Weasel cocks her head, her brows knitting together. “What do you mean—give you shit?” She sounds nervous, but not nervous enough to hide her curiosity.
“Oh—usually it’s bullshit about how softball is a watered down version of baseball. Anyone who says that to you—threaten to wind them with a pitch that’ll have them bruised ‘til next month. That shuts them up fast. Or there’s the bullshit about how we’re all lesbians and masturbate on our bats.” Weasel’s eyes widen, and Arya plows on, “Even though most of the team isn’t, and even if they were, what difference does that make? They just like tearing us down. So don’t let them.”
“Don’t let them,” Weasel echoes.
“Tell that dickbag in your class that we’re going to make play-offs this year. Also, if he says shit like that to you, he’s not a very good friend.” Arya throws her arm over Weasel’s shoulder and squeezes the younger girl to her. “Friends don’t put down other friends. That’s not friendship. Friends support one another—look out for one another.” She smiles down at Weasel.
Weasel smiles back.
“What’s yours like?” she asks Gendry when they next play catch. They’re in the middle of the quad, and there are some prospective student tours going past and Arya’s sure that the tour guides want to kiss them for making Harrenhal look like a fun place to go to school.
“My what?”
“Your soulmate?”
Gendry frowns at her, and she almost misses his throw. “She’s alright,” he says slowly.
“Alright?” Arya says. “I’m sure she’d be thrilled to hear you say that.”
“Well—I mean, we don’t talk much. I don’t know, I think she’s distant sometimes. Warm. But…distant. It’s fine though. I like the dreams we have. But I don’t know if she has a real impression of me.” He catches the ball she throws back to him and tosses it into his mitt a few times, not looking at Arya.
“Maybe she’s going through things?” Arya suggests, thinking of what Obella had said about Alleras.
“Maybe,” Gendry says. “It’s ok. I mean, you’re supposed to be happy with your soulmate, right? And I’m not unhappy—I’m just…I want to know her better is all.”
“You will,” Arya says, shooting him a supportive smile.
Gendry looks at her and then rolls his eyes and pops the ball over to her. “This from the girl who only cares that her soulmate likes baseball.”
“Baseball is important,” Arya says, throwing the ball back to him.
“Yeah—but it’s not everything, is it?”
“You only say that because you like a shitty baseball team.”
“How did you find baseball?” Arya asks him that night as he lines up to the plate, his face blurry but the muscles in his arms and legs bulging as he crouches down, shifts his hips, and waits for her pitch.
“Just did.”
“Your dad didn’t take you to a game?” she asks hopefully as she throws the ball. He bunts it back to her and she catches it.
“No. I don’t have a dad,” he says. “It’s just me and mum back home. She works at a pub and they’d have games on the television and I just got sucked in.”
“What’s your team?” she asks.
“My first team was the Wolves,” he says. “When they won the series when I was eight, I thought I would die of happiness.”
“Your first team?” Arya asks. “You can’t just switch teams. Because such an act is base treachery and I’m not sure I can trust you after that.”
“Well, I did.”
“Why?” she demands.
“Found out my dad liked the Wolves.” The response was so simple, but there was a bite to his voice, and Arya felt her questions die in her throat. She threw him one just down the middle of the plate and he knocked it clear of the stands.
“What about you?” he calls to her as he circles the bases.
“My dad and brothers took me to a game when I was six. I was hooked after that.”
“Sounds nice. Family pastime?” he asks.
“Close enough. Me and my brothers and my dad. My mum and sister don’t care for it too much, but that’s their problem. It was…it was sort of nice.”
“Nice?” he asks as he reaches third.
“Yeah. It was the one thing my sister couldn’t do better than me—well, apart from math. But that doesn’t count. It was the one thing she didn’t want to touch.”
“Oh.” He’s back at home now, picking up his bat again.
“What do they think about you playing? Your dad and brothers?”
“They love it. When I was in high school my dad came to all my games, even though he had to go back to work afterwards. And my brothers used to play catch with me.” Her soulmate pauses while fetching her another ball to throw. “What?” she asks.
“Is this some sort of ‘sleeping with your dad’ kind of thing, then? These baseball dream settings?”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. And besides—that’s not real psychology. Just because people thought that those sorts of complexes were real doesn’t mean anything. I just like baseball and like sharing it with you is all. It’s important to me that we share it.” She swallows, and her next words sound a little gruff, but better gruff than melodramatic. “Like—really important.”
He throws the ball out at her and she catches it. “I was teasing, you know,” he says.
“Didn’t sound like it.”
“Well, I was.” He squats down again.
“Why do you always shift your hips like that when you line up at the plate?” she asks.
“Do I?” he asks vaguely. “I’d never noticed.”
“Yeah—you do.”
“Dunno.”
She throws the ball and he sends it into left field, and she runs out to get it, racing him to the ball.
They reach the ball at the same time and their hands touch when picking it up and a jolt runs up Arya’s arm. Arya blushes and looks away.
“For what it’s worth,” he says. “It matters to me that we play baseball too.” He squeezes her hand around the baseball, and they walk back to the infield together.