Chapter Text
I love my job. I love my job. I love my job , Arya repeated the thought to herself like a mantra.
Arya had always felt proud of her role as a fire fighter. It truly did feel like a calling. Arya was a small, agile, adrenaline junkie and so it was basically the job she was born to do! She was a natural.
But yet... she had fallen out of love with it.
When she started as a trainee, she imagined that her biggest problem would be the patriarchal culture and so she tried to compensate for it by trying to ‘out-macho’ the guys but none of them really cared. Hot Pie was the only problem, and only right at the start, he had tried to make himself look less afraid by implying that she was the weak link. But they all accepted her fairly quickly, when all of the trainees took on their first blaze together, because they all realised they were just as afraid as each other.
She had been naive then. Thinking patriarchy would be the biggest problem in the firefighting profession was a complete oversight.
No, the biggest problem was loss. She had seen too much of it. Loss of life, of course, but also the complete devastation in the faces of those rescued at the loss of their homes... and their memories.
The real kicker had been Lommy. He had been at training with Arya, Hot Pie and Gendry and they had felt like a team... they felt invincible... but they weren’t. Lommy made a rookie mistake and the whole squad struggled to recover from that loss. Especially Hot Pie.
Most days she would drive to work with her mind all mixed up with anxiety, emotion and questions about her future.
Because she didn’t feel sure of anything. Nothing but her squad.
Arya pulled up in her parking spot, distracted by her thoughts, entered through the safe haven surrender door as was her routine. That door was always unlocked to provide a sheltered area for the surrender of children under safe-haven law but the area was never used for that. Arya, instead, associated the name with the shelter she would aim for when she ran from her car on days when it was raining. And it was always raining in the Riverlands of Westeros. The automatic light came on when she entered the dim room and immediately she heard crying.
The cries of a baby. Arya spun on the spot looking for the source, expecting to find a tape recorder or something like that, because that was something that the guys would do... but no... for the first time in the years that Arya had worked at Harrenhal Fire Station... there was a baby in the surrender site.
Arya was stunned. Her heart was racing. For some weird reason she was reminded of her femininity and expected some surge of maternal instinct to kick in and she would immediately know how to act but, of course, nothing kicked in. Instead, Arya approached the Moses basket and said, in a voice pitched so high that she surprised herself, “hey there baby,” as she lowered herself to a crouch beside it.
What is it doing here? It? Am I allowed to call it an it? Isn’t that something that parents get really offended by?
She thought to herself while trying to stroke the baby’s cheek with her finger to sooth it. The crying did stop and Arya wondered whether that maternal instinct had kicked in after all.
Would a man think that? It doesn’t matter
.
And then the baby grabbed her finger, and Arya forgot how to breathe. It was so heartwarming, and yet so heartbreaking that somebody had left it there.
Arya let the baby of so-far-unknown-gender-and-therefore-‘it’ hold her finger and grabbed the handles of the Moses basket with her other hand, lifting it with care, and pushing through the next door to the actual station, down the hallway and into the recreation room.
That was where she found Gendry, the one person that she was hoping to find in there. His eyes lit up when he saw her, a large grin spread across his face and he opened his mouth to speak - and then the smile turned into a gape and the light in his eyes turned to shock. Arya would have normally found it hilarious if she wasn’t HOLDING A BABY!
“Arya?” Gendry managed to say, no less stunned.
“Someone left a baby in the surrender site,” Arya informed him of literally all of the information that she had uncovered so far.
“Wh- what? In the whole time- what?” Gendry stammered.
Arya placed the basket on the table and Gendry came to her side to crowd around the basket with her. The baby had taken her finger into it’s mouth at that point. Arya had the strangest feeling that Gendry might put his arm around her... as if they were the proud parents... she shook her head and the thought away.
Gendry reached into the basket and pulled out an envelope that Arya hadn’t spotted. She had been a bit preoccupied with holding a basket with a baby in it, she thought she could be forgiven for not noticing a letter.
“To whom it may concern, even though I am leaving this beautiful girl here anonymously, please know that I love her, I simply cannot care for her. All I ask is that she be named Louisa and that she have a loving home,” Gendry read out loud and Arya distinctly heard emotion in his voice as he read.
Arya lifted her eyes to look at Gendry who was looking at her in the same way that she felt. Sad, yet loving, yet panicked, yet sad. Sad twice because it was twice as sad. And then she looked away from him quickly. She had never been able to hold his gaze for long for fear of getting caught looking into those bright blue eyes of his, or generally admiring the way that he looked. He was undeniably handsome and she refused to let that be a distraction.
“Louisa,” Arya managed to say.
To her surprise, Gendry did place a hand on her back between her shoulder blades, it was too domestic for Arya to bear! “She likes you,” she heard him say.
Arya laughed softly, her focus on Louisa, “do babies have opinions on anything? They don’t know enough yet.”
“They know what makes them happy and what makes them sad... right? Like being hungry and having a dirty diaper are things that make them sad... oh man, we need food and diapers... don’t we? Or formula? I don’t know-“
Arya sensed the panic in his voice and chuckled, hoping to reassure him, “calm down, Gendry, I guess we call social services and they do all of that.”
The door to the recreation room opened and Gendry’s hand dropped away from her back like she had burned him. Arya looked at him, he looked guilty as well, then turned to see Hot Pie walking over with a smirk on his face aimed at Gendry. She turned back to the baby, no doubt Hot Pie would brag about whatever he was smirking at later. He probably got laid or something.
“Well, well, well, what do we ha- oh my goodness a baby!” Hot Pie must have gained a visual of the situation then.
“Pie, will you go to the office and call social services?” Arya asked, and soon he was running from the room.
Arya suddenly felt sad that Louisa was going to be taken away. She could get used to having her around, she had gotten fond of her extremely quickly. She caught herself grinning at Louisa and looked at Gendry, hoping he hadn’t noticed. The guys would make fun of her for doting over a baby. She might get away with it from Gendry though. He was different to the others.
Gendry was smiling at her, so no such luck at getting away with it, “what?” she asked, but she knew he was silently making fun of her. She just hoped that by asking it would embarrass him into denying it.
“I dunno, it kinda suits you,” he said, stunning her into silence. He was smiling... affectionately? Surely not.
Gendry blushed, “I better go tell Hot Pie the actual story. He ran out before we could say,” he cleared his throat and left.
———
The morning passed, lunch passed and it was late in the day before Arya got to go to the bathroom.
She had been so mesmerised by Louisa that she hadn’t noticed the time pass. Social services had explained to Hot Pie over the phone that they would come and collect her but it could be quite late so to arrange some sort of childcare for her, like a nanny, and they would reimburse the station. It seemed unorthodox to Arya and so she just stayed with the baby herself. The rest of her squad got called out to an emergency cat-in-a-tree rescue and swore that she could sit this one out.
She changed a diaper twice and made formula every four hours... because she wasn’t sure of how old Louisa was so she just kept making it and hoped she would take whatever she needed. It seemed to work out alright.
Gendry had taken the baby so that Arya could take some time for herself and that was when she noticed her bladder screaming at her.
When she walked back into the recreation room, a stranger was holding Louisa and Arya felt a jolt in her stomach at the realisation that she was being taken away. Gendry looked a little put out as well. Hot Pie looked like Hot Pie.
The lady from social services seemed lovely enough. Her name was Willow, and she spoke with an extremely reassuring voice, but it didn’t make Arya feel much better. Arya gathered the few things that she had bought, a teething ring that doubled as a rattle, formula and diapers and walked Willow to her car with Louisa.
Once Louisa was settled in a carseat, Arya’s eyes started to sting. “Hey, er, would you mind... this might be stupid but... could you let me know what happens with her?” Arya found herself asking.
Willow smiled, “it’s not stupid at all Ms Stark. I have witnessed countless doctors and nurses and even firefighters adopting babies that had been left on their grounds. It is very easy to form an attachment. Sometimes it feels like fate.”
“I didn’t mean that I wanted to adopt her, I just care about what happens to her,” Arya tried to clarify, but she would be lying if the thought didn’t excite her a little.
Willow smiled again, a little knowingly, “she will be taken by a foster carer tonight, we will look for a parent and give them the option to reconnect and then after that she will be up for adoption. I have your station number but I can take your personal number if you would like?”
Arya gave it to her and noticed that she wrote it on Louisa’s form under ‘adoption - interested parties’. She did nothing to correct her.
And then Louisa was gone and Arya felt a pang of grief.