A/N: This came out of nowhere, but hey. Shireen/berks OTP. This is set five years post-ADwD at the Wall during the Winter War and contains vague spoilers; granted, I haven't finished it yet, but still. EGG SPOILERS.

Gendry always wondered what it was like to be a brother.

He used to play at it, used shield orphans back in the Bottom; they would clamber onto his shoulders, hiding behind the boy who was already as big and strong as a bull. Mott fed him well, and sometimes patrons slipped him extra coin; he would go out and buy the sweets and pies his mother used to smuggle home to him and would generally end up giving it to dirty little boys and girls with open mouths and swollen bellies.

Then he was bundled out of King's Landing with a runaway lady, a fat baker, and an annoying dyer's apprentice. He tried his hardest to protect them, like an older brother would, like the way Ned Stark went to war for his sister, but he doesn't think he did a very good job; Lommy's green skin has long rotted away, Hot Pie got fatter and fatter and eventually left, and Arya doesn't seems to regard him as a brother at all, judging by the incensed looks she throws him every time he talks to someone with teats.

But now he has many, many siblings, scattered across the world; a girl in the Vale who is as fierce as the fury of her unclaimed house, a boy across the Narrow Sea who looks just like him, Shireen says, but for his ears, the whore in Stoney Sept who offered to ring his bells. He is glad he declined; he is no Lannister, nor is he a Targaryen

He is a Baratheon, and so is Shireen.

He knows Stannis' daughter is secreted away in a tower somewhere, presumably with her mother, Selyse; a cold woman, as cold as the Red Priestess is warm. No wonder Stannis is said to prefer her to warm his bed.

But when he looks from his anvil one day, having finished hammering out the blade of the axe, he notices a girl with eyes as blue as the ones he sees reflected in the quenching trough. Her hair is braided over her shoulder, restrained by leather cords; the thick black hair that he shares with her must be a pain to tame. The side of her face is mottled, like white-hot wood in a fire just before it crumbles away. He wonders if it is painful, and then remembers his manners.

"M'lady," he mumbles, dropping to one knee. He almost expects to gets yelled at; she is a princess, not a lady, but she doesn't seem to mind.

"You are the blacksmith?" She takes in the armoury, the various tools littered around, the roaring fire, the battered anvil.

"Armourer, m'lady, but it don't make much difference nowadays."

She smiles at that, small and tentative. It does not make her look pretty; nothing could ever do that, short of a miracle. But it is an agreeable expression, and he finds himself smiling back.

"Did you make this?" She settle in front of a cuirass hanging from the wall. It is shaped fr someone small and lithe, chest curved to accommodate a woman's breast. He's seen women wearing armour with dips in the middle; attractive, but dangerous. One good blow to the right area would snap the armourer and stab the wearer with their own breastplate. He would never endanger anyone like that, let alone her.

"For Arya, m'lady."

She nods at the wolves snarling on it. "I gathered as much." She turns to face him. "I have always wanted to wear armour, but it would just be a waste of steel. I can barely wield a penknife."

"You are lucky, then, m'lady. Some have had no choice but to learn." He pushes back his memories, the ones of the hammer he is holding crushing chests and caving skulls. "I have heard that you are very smart, m'lady. We need clever people if we're going to survive this war."

"Warriors do not win wars. Planning does. I plan, and, in a way, you plan too." She pads over until she is standing in front of him, and he sees her father in her, stern old Stannis who needs no throne to be King. "But I grow tired of scribing letters. Would you teach me your trade?"

For a few seconds, he is speechless."The hammer is heavy, m'lady," he finally stutters.

"I am stronger than I look." She takes it from his slackening grip and gives it an experimental swing; it is weak and it is taking her an immense effort to hoist it, but she does it all the same. Baratheons have more obstinacy than sense, Arya said. Looking at this little girl, smiling as she hands him his hammer back, he has no choice but to agree.

He gathers scraps of metal, asks her what she wants to make.

She is quiet, for a moment, as she thinks; she wrinkles her brow just as he does. "A dagger," she says finally, lines disappearing. "For Father."

He nods and tosses her an apron and a pair of thick leather gloves; her hands are swamped inside them, but she handles the hammer deftly; a true stag. He shows her how to stoke the flames with the bellows and to retrieve the metal when it is at forging heat. He does the heavy hammering, but she draws the blade out with a fuller on the point of the anvil and punches it with a chisel to create a dip in the centre, and she bends the handle against the anvil to fit he father's hand. Finally, she quenches it, and wonders at the suddenly hardened steel. She files the edges of the blade until they draw blood and finishes the process by polishing it on a grinding stone.

The product of their efforts is fine enough; Gendry tried not to intervene, but he kept the dagger mostly in the right shape. It is utilitarian, bearing no ornamentation, no enamelling, not even a gem. It will suit its recipient. Stannis bristles every time his Red Lady tries to fasten a protective ruby onto him.

She wields it with delight, twirls it on her hands. It falls, and she gasps and picks it up quickly, polishing it against the woollen breeches she wears. Gendry pretends not to notice as he brushes up the last of the ashes.

The sun is beginning to sink; they've been working for two or three hours. The time slipped away quickly; Shireen was an ardent student, and filled the gaps as they waited for metal to heat or cool with stories. She told him about Dragonstone, about her cousin who looked so like him, of her fool. She talked of Ser Davos and the books they read together. "Can you read, Gendry?" she asked, as he located the bending fork.

"A little. I know my name, and I know numbers, but not much else." He shrugged. "Never needed it."

He doesn't pay it any mind, until after, when the dagger is wrapped in leather that he crudely marked with a stag and secreted away in a pocket of her breeches, she proclaims "As repayment, I shall teach you letters."

He starts to protest, but she turns on him with a strange brightness in her blue eyes, the brightness she had seen in Stannis when he yells commands and structures offences. "We shall start tomorrow after first light."

He acquiesces and opens his mouth to say something when someone barges in.

"Shireen?" It is Arya, gazing at Shireen and then at him with varying levels of confusion. "Lady Selyse wants you."

"Of course." She curtsies to him briefly. "Tomorrow then, Gendry." In a moment of childishness that plainly displays her six-and-ten years, she jams a finger to her lips and slips away before he even bows back. She bumps into Arya's shoulder and gives her a sharp grin; Arya grins back, butting her with her hip.

"Friends?" he questions when Arya stumps over and settles on the anvil. He almost roars at her, but he's so used to her flaunting rules that he's given up on giving out. It's her fault if she dies of a singed arse rather than on the end of a sword.

"Shireen's the only one of them with any sense. She knows everything there is to know about those damned beasts and she's brilliant with words. I don't even want to know how many lords she has swayed. If wits were blades, she'd be deadlier than me. Why was she here, anyway?"

"Asked me to teach her how to smith. She can swing a hammer right well, that one. Tall too, unlike you. True Baratheon." He smirks at her as she twists her face.

"You even smile like her! All you stags are stupid. You don't even know when to stop growing."

He shakes his head; it has been too good a day to start arguing with Arya again, so he changes the subject.

"She says she'll teach me my letters, starting tomorrow." He knows Shireen swore him to secrecy, but he'll never be able to keep a secret from Arya; she even knows the names of the maids he's laid with. Sge finds the list amusingly short, and threatens him with some sort of vague pain if he dares add to it. He is happy to stay celibate.

Arya looks at him then, eyes strangely soft. "I forgot..."

"Not all of us grew up with maesters jangling after us." He quashes that familiar old flare of inferiority, of not being good enough. He's a knight, he's killed men, and they're at war now. Names mean nothing. Words are wind.

She doesn't say anything, but watches the flames as they die out. He takes the chance to watch her. Her hair is still hacked off and short, and she still wears the clothes of a man, but her face has hardened and her body has broadened and her eyes have grown tired. She's still short, though. Shorter than Shireen, and shorter than Sansa, reasonably safe in Winterfell.

"Gendry, I-" she begins, but her words are interrupted by a bell ringing. Dinner.

Looking at him as if she were just raised from a dream, she flees the forge without ceremony. Part of him is glad that she did not finish that sentence; he needs no pity. At a much slower pace, he follows her.

The solar is hardly luxurious, but then again, nothing about war is luxurious. The Others advance in waves, and ships ferry dragonglass up from Dragonstone and bring ashes back down. The only reason such nobles as Shireen and Selyse are even here is because the South is even more perilous; down there, the Dragon Queen rages against her nephew, the last son of the Mad King. Rumours abound as to whether Jon Snow should be getting involved, but he stays steadfast at the Wall and still names Arya sister. The Night's Watch no longer exists, having been absorbed into the mammoth army of Tyrells and Lannisters and Martells alike, and the War of the Five Kings is nothing but a memory. The Dragon Queen commands obeisance, but Stannis ignores her and asks for dragonglass, which she grudgingly gives, and dragons, which she doesn't. If there will even be a Seven Kingdoms to rule over when all is said and done, he doubts there will be much fighting. Even dragons tire.

Shireen is already reading when he enters. She nods her head towards the chair without lifting her eyes from the page and he sits down opposite her. Finally, she sets the paper down.

"Arya asked for an invite," she says evenly, "but she was called away to a scouting party in the Gift." She rises, and after rooting around for a while in the stacks of books perched on a dresser, returns with a volume in hand.

"Thank the gods," he grumbles, taking it from her. "Don't need her laughing at me."

She smiles. "You're the only person who can make her laugh, besides Jon, and he doesn't have the time for much of that anymore. Everyone needs a fool."

He begins to ask her what she means, but she cuts him off with an imperious command to look at the first page.

It's an old book, and much-loved, going by the furry edges of the pages. It is a lavishly illustrated book on the War of Conquest; for children, he suspects, but he won't complain. It helps that eh knows many of the words already. The Field of Fire, the King who Knelt, the Yellow Toad of Dorne... every child in Westeros grew up hearing these stories, and then those of the Blackfyres and the Dance of Dragons, and finally, those of Robert's Rebellion. He never heard about Lyanna, though, or of the fate of Princess Elia. Some stories are not fit for children.

After a few hours of repetition, of sounding out and some confusion (Why is the g in knight silent? How in the name of the gods are you supposed to pronounce Vhagar?), Gendry has a decent handle on the book, and once he's stumbled through the coronation of King Aegon I, he puts it down.

"Very good," Shireen says, sounding pleased. "You did a lot better than Davos, but I suppose that's understandable. You're a lot younger than he is."

He flips the book over and examines the back cover and the fading ink, feeling rather proud, as if he has just made a flawless helm, or some such.

"We're not done, though."

"M'lady...?"

There's a rather happy gleam in her eye. "I can't take you from you work every morning, but I will once a week. We'll get through every single volume of these histories."

He almost argues, but quiets when he sees the satisfied look in her eyes. If Shireen said that Arya rarely smiled, Shireen is even more sober than her. There is not much cause for merriment in any of their lives, and he is happy if his cousin finds his pronunciation of trebuchet amusing. Besides, Shireen is an superb storyteller; when she talks of the roaring pyres on the beach at Dragonstone, he can almost feel the fire licking at his clothes, see the devotees swaying, in thrall to the flames. He could listen to her talk all day.

"You might as well ship me off to Oldtown now, so," he tells her , and she laughs, a high, happy sound. She sounds just as young as she is.

There is a knock at the door, one light rap following by two heavy pounds; Shireen sighs. "I am wanted by my father. I will see you again next week.. but hopefully sooner."

He nods, and rises after her; she stops before the door to look back at him.

"And, Gendry... please ignore my father. " Her eyes brighten."You are a much better person than he says; you are nothing like my uncle."

"Thank you, m'lady." He has never been so glad to hear Robert Baratheon mentioned. When people told him they were similar, he wondered if it was in him to become such a drunkard, the type of man that would get a tavern wench with child and abandon here to filth.

Her steps ring out as she descends. Gendry makes to leave a swell, but someone hops in the window and almost sends him flying.

"Are you a thief?" he asks exasperatedly when Arya gets off him and settles in a chair.

"No, just a murderer." She grins brightly and snatches a winter apple from a bowl.

"That's Shireen's," he says lamely.

"She takes my clothes, I'm allowed her food." She bites into the apple with a crunch.

"I thought the breeches were a bit short." She snarls at him though a mouthful of fruit and claws at him half-heartedly.

"Breeches are warmer than skirts here. Winds blow up, too." She crosses her legs and mimes shivering; he snorts at her idiocy, ears turning red.

He glances at the sky, and realises that he's been here far too long; he has a lot of repairs to do today, dropped in on him by the Mormonts with copious winking and threats. "You sit around here and eat your food like a little lady, I'm off to do some real work."

"Save two seats at dinner for me, will you?" she hollers when he's half-way out the door

"Two?" He halts suddenly, almost falling on his face down the steps. "Does Nymeria want to eat inside?"

"Do as you're told, you bull-headed idiot!" She tosses the apple; he dodges it and shuts the door on her cursing.

Later, in the hall, Gendry fends off enthusiastic camp followers and some of his old brothers to save two empty places; luckily, Arya is small, so she'll fit.

When he looks up and sees Arya stomping down towards him, a laughing Shireen in tow, he very nearly falls off his bench.

But he stays upright, and they sit down, and the meal passes without incident but for Stannis' blue-eyed stare; when Gendry meets it, he sees what must be grudging approval. Jon is, strangely enough, smiling as well.

He ignores the high table, and joins Shireen in making fun of Arya's odd table manners. She complains about nosy stags, and for the first time, the name does not cause him discomfort.

Perhaps, when this is all over, he'll journey to the Vale and climb alongside Mya Stone; he may even cross the Narrow Sea and find Edric Storm. For now, he is happy to have not just a cousin, but Arya as well.

Right now, he'll read with Shireen and he'll fight with Arya and he'll smith for Stannis. For the first time since the Brotherhood broke, he isn't alone.

He grins at Shireen as Arya hits him with a spoon, and she beams back.