this is a disclaimer.
AN: scenes from a happyending!AU.
the magicker.
"But the question is, what now?" says Jon softly into the silence. Bran feels Sansa shift at his side and moves with her a little, rests his head on her shoulder. Sansa has changed in ways he can't quite understand; she's become harder and softer both at once.
"What would you have us do?" she asks quietly. "Bolton is dead, his bastard besieged at the Dreadfort –"
"That siege won't be lifted in a hurry," says Robb, mostly understandable now they've been listening to him all day. "It's one thing to truce with the kraken's daughter, and thank the gods the Crow's Eye is drooling over his imaginary dragons, but with half our armies tied up at the Dreadfort, we're still vulnerable."
"The krakens ceased to worry me a while ago," says Jon ruefully.
"I know," Robb answers. Jon and Bran were closeted with him for long hours today; he has heard the tales of half the Night's Watch, and if he had any scepticism left in him this morning, he doesn't now. "Winter is coming."
"So we've got to find a way to get into the Dreadfort and kill the Bastard of Bolton," says Arya, thoroughly practical. Bran grins a bit. Arya has a way of getting at the heart of things these days, and a ruthless cunning in a fight that matches Robb's.
Robb twists his mouth. At least, Bran is sure he does – he remembers the way Robb looks when he has to do something he doesn't want to. "You sound as if you're suggesting an assassination."
"Maybe I am," Arya says flatly. Bran thought she'd be more defiant about it, but Robb and Arya have been travelling with each other for months, just as Jon and Bran have been here together for months, and Rickon and Sansa, first in the Vale and then at Greywater Watch. Robb, Bran supposes, knows what Arya is capable of.
Bran knows it too: can see it when he looks at her, like a shadow behind-over her, the shape of the woman she will be. The Lady wears leathers, dark gray and black, and while she carries Needle in her left hand there's a strange knife in her right, with a dragonsteel blade. The Lady of Winter, Death's Lady, the Witch of Winterfell with a thousand faces, Lady Iceheart; the Lady of the Dreadfort.
He cannot see the hows and whys. All he knows is: it will happen.
They don't call her that because she wed the man.
"Our luck's turned," he says suddenly.
Jon snorts. "Has it? There's the Dreadfort to the east, the ironborn in the west, Stannis sat at Eastwatch with nowhere else to go but not enough strength left to ride against us, the Freys in the Neck and White Harbour blockaded. Whether you're standing at Winterfell or Castle Black, you're hemmed in. And winter is coming."
"Still," Bran says firmly, "our luck has turned. We're all here, aren't we?"
One of the girls laughs softly, a warm, quiet laugh. Bran realises it's Jeyne. He still doesn't know her very well, but Robb loves her, and Arya calls her little mother, teasingly, and she's gentle-hearted and patient, and the first thing she said to Jon when she put Kitten in his arms was, I was trying to come to you, when I thought Robb dead, and he said, I would have done everything and anything in my power to help you, and Bran had known then that things would be all right.
"I think Bran has a point," she says now, tired but content.
"I thought you were asleep," Robb says gently.
Jeyne yawns. "Very nearly. But Rickon already is."
It is true; the Prince of Winterfell is fast asleep, snuggled between Shaggydog and Nymeria, who has her head on Arya's lap.
Bran cannot truly see, not the way he could before. The greensight comes quick and clear to him now. He's grown used to seeing normal things from Summer's perspective, translating them to his own. And then there are some things, sometimes, that he just... knows. Where another person is. What they're doing.
Sansa yawns as well, rather hugely, and ruffles Bran's hair. "Bed for the pups at least, I think," she says. "Robb, how is your nose?"
"Broken," says Robb sourly.
"Serves you right," says Jon, unrepentant.
"I shall wear it as a badge of honour," says Robb snidely.
"Or a reminder not to trust in other people's honour," says Jon.
"Don't you worry," says Robb, suddenly grim. "The Freys will be – taken care of."
Sansa sighs. "Don't you try any plotting, Robb. You're no good at it."
"Too honest," says Arya.
"It's a major flaw among the men in this family," says Sansa, perfectly serious. "If Uncle Brandon had killed Littlefinger when he first had the chance, all sorts of things might have been different."
"I did think," says Robb blandly, "that I might give you the honour, Sansa. Perhaps you could come to some accord – with the kraken's daughter."
Silence.
"You want me to send Asha Greyjoy reaving into the Green Fork," says Sansa softly.
"Why not?"
"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword," says Jon.
"True. But I cannot be in two places at once, and I have plans for the Dreadfort."
"The Frey lord at Riverrun will be sure to march north," says Sansa sharply.
Robb grins: wide and... well, wolfish.
"That's what you want," says Bran, staring: for here sits the King in the North, just as he saw him this morning, riding into Castle Black. Not just Robb-the-Lord, but Robb the Young Wolf, the warrior, the battle commander.
"The man's a fool by all accounts," Robb explains. "Half his bannermen had sons at the Red Wedding. There were rumblings enough when Sansa was writing to the lords in Rickon's name. How much more if they see me alive at Moat Cailin? The Lannisters can talk imposters all they like, but it will be rather difficult to argue with Grey Wind, don't you think?"
"And then what?" asks Jeyne quietly.
"A dead Frey lord, and open rebellion among the river lords," says Robb. "They'll not come north again."
"Are you sure?"
"They will not be able to afford to, love. They have lost too much already. So have we, in truth, but we have no other choice."
"It makes sense," says Sansa. "But the Frey – what is the man's name? Emmon? You will have to be brutal, Robb. No burials for this one. Put his head on a pike and leave it there."
"I thought to hang him, actually," says Robb. "Like a common criminal."
"Even better," says Arya.
Jon sighs. "I can't claim I like it. But thankfully, it is not my decision."
"I can't claim to like it," says Robb, flatly determined. "But Father's way simply did not work, and I think it's time to look to the old Kings of Winter for examples. I failed you all once. I will not do so again. Especially now there's Kitten as well."
Ah, Kitten. She'd been delighted by the Wall, and deeply interested in Castle Black; she'd clapped her little hands in glee and flung her arms around Summer and Ghost, completely unafraid, with a happy cry of "Wuff!" She was fierce and strong and curious about everything, and currently fast asleep on her Uncle Jon's lap; and Bran, the first time he had seen her, had seen first and foremost the Queen in the North superimposed on his baby niece: Catelyn of Winterfell, House Stark's Shadowcat with a direwolf at her side and her gloved hands wrapped around the hilt of her father's sword.
And perhaps, perhaps, a shadow behind her that might have been her siblings.
"We all failed each other, Robb," says Sansa quietly. "We were children."
"Not anymore," says Arya.
Hardly. Bran tilts his head; someone is coming up the stairs to Jon's room. The wolves stir, very slightly. Summer catches Brienne's scent, and a stranger who smells of fire.
Knock on the door.
"Yes?" Jon calls, handing Kitten back to her father and getting to his feet. Bran pushes closer to Sansa with the sudden emptiness on his other side, and Jon mutters a curse, trying to climb out from the pile of blankets and wolves and Starks that's heaped by his fire. Brienne opens the door.
"Lord Snow," she says, "a rider to see you, from White Harbour he says."
"Manderly?" wonders Robb. Bran hears him stand too.
"No, I'm afraid not," says the fire-stranger. "I'm a simple traveller."
"The Lannisters have been blockading White Harbour for months," says Jon.
"A simple traveller with a lot of gold," says the fire-stranger with an easy grin. Bran can see him now; he's dressed all in black and gold, and he carries two swords – one's a longer version of Needle, the other's shorter, curved. Summer looks up, at his face, and sees pale silvery hair, like Grey Wind's fur around his scars, and dragon-eyes.
Brienne leaves quietly at a nod and a smile of thanks from Sansa; she takes it seriously, the charge that Mother laid on her. Keep them safe.
But she has her secrets too, and sometimes Bran is a little afraid of them.
"So," says Jon. "Where have you come from, if not White Harbour?"
"Most recently, Sunspear," says the fire-stranger. "Before that... Meereen."
"Meereen!"
"Slaver's Bay. Rather a long way away. My uncle was... unimpressed with my insistence on coming up here myself after all that travelling, but there –" the fire-stranger grinned again; he was ridiculously cheerful for someone who'd arrived at the Wall after dark and a long ride in the cold – "I overruled him. I don't suppose, Lord Snow, that there's a chance of a private word?"
"No," says Robb.
"Ah-hem!" says the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch.
"Ghost or no, I'm not leaving you alone with him," says Robb firmly.
"I was almost hoping you would say that," the fire-stranger admitted. "It is rather a complicated tale. I was not truly looking forward to telling it twice."
"Oh, Jon, offer the man a drink," says Sansa. "He's come a long way."
The fire-stranger bows to her. "Milady," he says.
"My sister Sansa," says Jon, and an odd look passes swiftly over the fire-stranger's face. "This is Robb Stark – Queen Jeyne – Brandon – and Arya Stark."
Summer turns his head; Arya arches her eyebrows at the fire-stranger. "Valar morghulis," she says to him.
The dragon-eyes widen. "Valar dohaeris," he replies solemnly.
"He's Bravoosi," Arya explains.
"I spent my childhood there."
"Welcome to Castle Black," Jon says dryly. "Are you ever going to tell me what this is about?"
The fire-stranger smiles again, but sadly this time. "Perhaps we should start with this," he says quietly, holding out a letter. "It's from my foster-father – Jon Connington. My foster-mother died recently; a fever. Her name was Ashara Dayne. Father – Griff, I suppose I should call him now – then deigned to, uh. Honour me with some information I would rather not have had. And now I fear I'm about to do the same to you, Jon."
He looks round at them, from Robb to Jeyne to Rickon – woken by Brienne's knock, yawning as he sits up. Oathkeeper, Longclaw and Needle all lie on the table beside him; the wolves are watching him back. Grey Wind and Nymeria are wary, but Ghost, for some reason, is not.
"You see," says the fire-stranger quietly, "it would seem I owe my life to my mo- to Lady Ashara. And to Lord Eddard Stark.".
He draws a breath. "My name is Aegon Targaryen."