The Stag and The Frog - (GendryxMeera GOT fanfic) Part 1: Alone

1: That's not me

Gendry almost walked away from it all after Arya turned him down. The title, the castle, and everything that came with it.

But he didn't.

After she left he sat down on the floor of the forge. He curled up with his head against his knees and cried.

He was drunk, heartbroken, and disillusioned. He felt like it had all been for naught, everything he had gone through. If he still couldn't have her. If he still wasn't good enough.

What use was being a lord if he couldn't have the girl he loved? And of what use was being lord of a place he had never been anyway? He was a fool if he believed that the people of Stormlands would accept him as their lord. He could never be Gendry Baratheon, Lord Paramount of Storm's End. That was just a fairytale, a beautiful dream. That was not him. He was not a fool. He was a blacksmith and bastard. There was no use trying to be someone else.

And that's how he fell asleep, right there on the cold and soot-stained floor of the forge. Among furnaces, workbenches, and tools. Surrounded by everything that had been his life.

When Gendry woke up the next morning he was momentarily confused about where he was.

The cold floor of the forge made him think he was back in King's Landing, working in the armorer's workshop and sleeping on the floor as he had done every night. Usually, he didn't fall asleep as much as pass out from exhaustion before it started all over the next morning. Hammering pieces of iron for hours, until his hands were bleeding, and his ears were ringing from the noise. It had been his life, his whole life. He had thought it would be his life until the day he died. Another life existed only in his dreams.

But a few moments after waking up Gendry realized that he wasn't in King's Landing anymore. He was in Winterfell. And all the memories from the night before came back to him. How they had celebrated the victory against the army of the dead. How the Dragon Queen had made him Lord Baratheon. How Arya had turned down his proposal.

And that's when he knew what he had to do. That's when he knew he couldn't walk away. Because that was not him. Gendry hadn't given up when his life was nothing but work and suffering, and he wasn't going to give up now when he could finally have something more than that. He was going to be Lord Gendry Baratheon. Or at least try to be.

So he got up. His head still hurt from whatever he had drunk the night before. His heart still hurt from being rejected by the only woman he ever had loved. But Gendry still got up. He steadied himself on a workbench, he dusted himself off, and he walked out the door. He walked away from the forge and towards another life.

The life of Lord Gendry Baratheon.