Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire. I make nothing off of this.

Author's note: Chronologically this bit is set after ADwD, but as the Weirwood takes Bran back in time some times, what he sees is meant to accompany Sansa's second narration in ACoK when she goes to the Godswood for the first time.

As the Raven Flies

Bran

The best and perhaps oddest thing about the Weirwood Seed Paste was that it tasted differently every time he ate it. It might have made some sense to him had the paste tasted like a food he craved, but more oft than not it tasted of a food he hadn't thought of in months. Thus, Bran never knew quite what to expect. Tonight when he put the paste to his lips he was assaulted by a taste that was all at once sweet and tart. It took him three bites to recognize the flavor: lemon cakes! They'd eaten them often at home for some reason. After a few more nibbled he recalled that lemon cakes had been his sister's favorite. The memory brought a smile to his lips and as he slipped into the Weirwoods among the roots, it came as no shock to him that he was looking at his sister.

The months of constant practice had made it easier for Bran to decide what memories he saw and for how long. He knew now how to look for a specific time or a specific person. Whether he looked for Sansa that night because of the lemon cake paste or whether the paste tasted of lemon cakes because he would see her tonight, Bran didn't know. What he did know was that whatever way influence went, tonight he'd find his sister. It hadn't taken long to locate her in a Godswood in King's Landing.

She'd come running into the holy place with a look of both fear and determination in her deep blue eyes. In all his life, Bran had never seen his sister so sloppily dressed- it looked as if she'd donned her clothing in the dark and without aid. Her slightly rumpled auburn hair added credence to that theory. When Bran's Weirwood eyes settled on his sister's sweet face he noticed how pale and drawn she was. Her eyes bore dark marks beneath them that showed lack of sleep and her lip was swollen and cracked in the middle as if it'd been recently bloodied. A lip like that would have been perfectly in place on their sister Arya's face, but not on Sansa's. Arya was a fighter, but Sansa was ever gentle.

With a wrenching pull deep in his roots, Bran whispered Sansa, and stretched his boughs toward her.

Her eyes had darted all around the Godswood looking for danger and finding none. His sister didn't speak, but when she moved and touched the base of the tree, Bran could feel her prayers.

Help me, send me a friend, a true knight to champion me...

The girl moved from tree to tree, the same desperate plea in her heart. She was broken and helpless- a condition which Bran knew all about.

It took a great deal of concentration and effort to effect any sort of change, but Bran was determined to help. When he saw his sister whirl around and pull out a blade, he knew times were desperate for her and he had to move quickly. Stretching his spirit from tree to tree, he reached up searchingly into the topmost branches. It took him longer than he wanted to find what he was looking for. Eventually, he felt the dark claws holding one of his upper branches, and he slipped inside the raven. As he'd caught the raven on the tree in this time, he could stay inside the moment with the bird too. The more time Bran spent amongst the weirwoods the more unwound time became for him as well. Yesterday meant little to him and a century ago meant even less. As long as he was in a moment it was his present.

Animals were decidedly less reliable sources of information than trees. Trees were silent observers, but animals formed their own opinions and put a curious slant on things. Still a flying bird observed many things and Bran was able to sort through the bird's brain to pick something useful. He found the image twisted in the bird's head, a dark man who seemed to always be watching his sister. The bird never got close to the man since his towheaded companion was unlikable, but he'd gathered enough of the man's form to spot him from above.

Now fly.

The bird stretched its wings and took to the air in a graceful rush of dark feathers. After locating the man and landing on a stone wall before him, the raven eyed him up and down. He was leaning up against a wall holding a flagon of wine and looking very much like he world had wronged him again. The scars on his face made him a fearsome sight to behold, and it was obvious to the boy if not to the bird that this man had been drinking. Bran almost decided that this was useless and that birds were a very unreliable source when the man spoke.

"What are you staring at?" came his drunken slur, the scarred side of his mouth twitching.

Bran supposed he could try to get the man to follow him, but this man seemed unlikely to spring up to follow a bird on a whim. Ravens, luckily, had a very rudimentary ability to mimic human sounds and grasp basic speech patterns. Still, they understood little. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Bran searched the bird's brain for any word that might stand out to get this man moving-something that the raven might have overheard more than once. He found it.

"Bird," croaked the raven.

"Yeah," the man rasped back glancing at the raven with his hate filled grey eyes. "Bloody useless bird. Leave a man to drink in peace!"

One word wasn't enough. It was harder to get the bird to say more than one thing, but it was worth the effort if it would help his sister. "Little Bird," came the raven's caw.

This time the man's eyes went wide and he looked down to the flagon in his hands before looking back up to the raven. But in the end his face hardened and his eyes narrowed. "Go on! Get out of her before I decide to take up knife throwing! You'd make a nice fat target!" When he raised the flagon to his lips, the man muttered as if he were cursing. "What would you know of little birds?"

Bran knew he'd struck a cord with the man... he only needed to see it through. He began bobbing up and down chirping. "Little bird. Little bird. Little bird."

"Don't MOCK me!" the man growled fiercely, launching himself half way at the raven.

Bran flew up and only settled back down when the man sat again and brought his flagon to his lips. For a moment, Bran considered leaving and finding someone else, but an instinct that came not from tree or bird but the green sight told him that it had to be this man and he had to get through to him at this specific moment.

The man before him shook his head and said, "I can't stop what they do to her. No one goes 'gainst the King. Not if he like's his head." After a long draw from his wineskin, he continued. "Me? I don't like my head very much, but I figure it's more use to me and her if it's still on my shoulders."

Stomping a clawed foot impatiently, Bran cawed. He needed to make the man understand even if what he did seemed uncharacteristic for a raven. So he spoke again in his raven's voice adding words to his meager message. "Help Little Bird." Then he flapped his wings insistently to show that he was serious.

The man looked up at him and rubbed a large hand down his face. When he spoke again, he addressed the wine flagon and not the raven. "Think I've had more of you than I thought. Buggering ravens are telling me what to do now!"

Impatience seized Bran as he was quite tired already. In a last futile effort, he flew to the man's head and challenged, "Help Little Bird Now." For good measure he pecked a bit of scalp before taking to the air.

"Seven bloody hells! You buggering raven! I get my hands on you I'm going to pull out all those fucking feathers!" He was on his feet now, coming after the raven, and Bran recognized that this one would tower over most men.

Adjusting his path so that he flew slightly higher, Bran took them back toward the Godswood. He saw his sister fleeing from the wood looking no less distressed and perhaps even more confused. Content that the man would find Sansa, now. Bran cawed one last message. "Help Little Bird. Always!"

The last thing Bran saw was the wide-eyed expression on the man's unfortunate face. The man stopped short at the words with his eyes on the raven and gave a curt nod of his head either in understanding or promise. That was when Sansa, heedless of where she was walking knocked right into the man. Bran wanted to stay and watch the interaction, but he was too tired, and he flew back to his broken body.

It took Bran a few minutes to come back into himself and when he did he turned to look at the three-eyed crow. The man was looking at him with one red eye and his rustling voice came out soft yet strong. "Did your greenseeing show you anything interesting?"

"I saw my sister at King's Landing. She was alone and scared and praying. I wanted to help her and I think I did only..." Bran trailed off and looked confused.

"Yes?" The last greenseer asked with a pointedly knowing smile upon his dry lips.

"Well you said you can't change the past and I've been in enough Weirwoods to know that Sansa isn't at King's Landing anymore. She's somewhere where I can't reach her."

The sound that came out of the three-eyed crow's mouth might have been a laugh, but Bran couldn't be sure. "The past cannot be changed anymore than you can make people do something they wouldn't choose to do on their own."

Greenseeing was a mess of riddles and frustrations. With an angry sigh Bran pouted, "I don't understand. I was in the Weirwood, I hopped into a raven, I flew to a man who would help my sister and told him to get moving! He heard me! I know he did!"

"Tell me," asked the Three-Eyed Crow, "Did you know this man?"

"Well, yeah," Bran's voice was quiet and uncertain when he added, "It was the Hound."

"Tell me," the rustling voice was almost mocking, "Is that the man you would have sent to save your sister?"

"No!" Bran shot out right away, "He was mean and scary. He's Joffery's dog!"

"And yet, that is the only man who will save your sister." Bran stayed quiet pondering this and his mentor was quiet for a long while too. When at last he spoke, his voice sounded weary to Bran. "What you saw was a memory of my own making. I was the one who sent Clegane to your sister. I watched them both for a while with my raven eyes and when your sister came to the Godswood to pray, I couldn't help but answer her. Though, I am afraid that your sister didn't realize Clegane was the one sent to help. She was blind to the truth. She put her trust in another and was lost to us."

This news distressed Bran greatly. He didn't like the way the greenseer said lost. He remained quiet as the other man continued talking. "I thought he was lost too until recently when I found him again. It will be your task to find him and lead him to your sister."

"But you said we didn't know where Sansa is!" Bran whined in aggravation.

"Ah!" his mentor said, "We might not know where she is but we know where she isn't." When Bran looked at him blankly, the three-eyed crow spoke again. "Imagine you are standing in the center of a room so that you have three of its corners in your vision, but you cannot move to see the fourth. If you know someone is hiding in the room, but you can't see them, where must they be?"

Bran's eyes went wide as he said, "In the fourth corner!"

His mentor smiled. "She isn't in Riverrun and she didn't go back to Winterfell. We've checked along the roads and in the forests. It is unlikely that she went south and we only saw one of your sisters at the ports to the free cities. Where might Sansa be?"

"The Vale!" Bran exclaimed suddenly. Back when he was learning to locate specific Weirwoods, Bran had learned that the Godswood in the Vale wouldn't grow Weirwoods on top of the mountain. It must have been a good guess because his mentor looked pleased.

"This is the conclusion that I have come to as well. Can you do it Bran? Can you lead him to your sister and mayhap save them both?"

Bran's nod was full of grim determination.

"Good," said the three-eyed crow. "Tomorrow you will learn how to stretch your influence."

Bran smiled. The ordeal at Winterfell with Theon Turncloak had left him feeling less than useless. And up until now, greenseeing seemed useless as well. What good was it to look and not be able to do anything? It would feel so good to do something for a change- to help someone. He couldn't save Winterfell, but he would save Sansa.

Author's note: I began this as a one shot but decided to elongate it a bit and make at least a few more chapters. I intend to do them in POVs of other characters as well. I hope you like it so far! More to come soon!