Author's Note: Thanks for reading, m'dears! Your comments/likes make me smile…unlike Bran who became totally insufferable as soon as the whole Three-Eyed Raven transformation happened. *heavy eye roll* But hey, an all-seeing being is helpful in moving the story along sometimes. Also, p.s. I miss Meera. She was cool. *writes note to self – make time for future Meera chapter*

Bran

The Three-Eyed Raven weathers all storms with the patience of a weirwood tree's deepest roots or the old bones of glaciers at the top of the world. Even this storm, which threatened to be the worst in a generation, the kind of storm that would be talked about for a hundred years to come—this too shall pass, the Three-Eyed Raven knew.

I've seen it all. Life and death, rise and ruin, tide and time. Spinning, spinning, spinning.

Brandon Stark sat in his wheeled chair, beside a merry, crackling fire that the servants refilled twice between midday and evening, and pondered much. He'd asked to be left alone and, though Arya came and sat with him for a time, silently, pondering her own deep thoughts, they granted his request.

His mind and his body were in different places, his gaze vacant, seemingly stuck on the orange flames but distracted, as he sifted through the memories of the world, reflecting on the ways they flowed like a raging river, white-capped and furious, tumbling down a great waterfall, scene after scene, hour after hour.

Here he perched, as a black-winged raven in the branches of a gnarled oak tree far beyond the ruins of the Wall. There he lingered, watching the unholy origins of the Night King birthed once again. The man was bound to a tree, fighting against his restraints. The Children of the Forest were gathered around him, afraid but determined, forcing that organic blade into his chest cavity as he screamed and screamed. The screams rang out with piercing familiarity. Bran returned to this spot so often, as it was the North's most painful memory and could not be forgotten.

Should not be forgotten.

Blood dripped down from the man's chest, until it froze in red beads that burst when touched. The scene flickered and Bran watched the trickle of blood mirrored in the eyes of the weirwood trees, as their lidless eyes cried red, first in thin strips, then thicker and thicker, until buckets of blood stained their trunks and roots, pain absorbed into the white wood itself, all for the sake of this memory's safe-keeping.

That blood dripped steadily onto scarlet leaves of an old autumn's winnowing. They blew away in lukewarm breezes, licked with frost, that fluttered up to the raven's thermals and pushed him a league south and a thousand winters forward.

Now Bran flew with the Night King on the back of Daenerys Targaryen's once gold-scaled dragon. He was the Night King in that moment…or some part of him was anyway. He felt his own ice-cold hands clutch at the leather reins, his grip tightening in fierce anticipation as the demon-creature caught sight of Jon's black hair and his wolf-crested cloak, streaming in the wind. The Night King was pleased, thinking he had the element of surprise, but the pleasure lasted for seconds only, as the young King of the North suddenly turned his mount sharply and descended upon him. Rhaegal's jaws opened wide and his talons stretched out for a death blow.

The scene shifted and Bran felt the free fall of descent, as he found himself with Jon as the young king, the lost Targaryen prince, twirled through the air. The cloak Sansa had made him came loose and broke free, the Night King's hands were grasping, scratching, both of them hurtling towards the ground and Jon's gleaming, silver sword drawn back and plunged so deep into the enemy's heart, where shards of the Children's blade were lodged still. The howling scream of the Night King echoed across a generation and blew Bran back in a flurry of black feathers.

He came to rest in the canopy of the deep woods.

Brandon, come down now! His mother commanded with a gravelly power on his name. She was up in the branches with him, dressed in dark green, holding out her hand to seize his own. But she wasn't his mother any longer. The Three-Eyed Raven has no mother. In the vision, he watched Catelyn Stark's features blanch, sensing the change in her son. Still, she pleaded with him, Brandon, come down!

But he was gone already, falling, flying? Was there a difference? It was all mad joy and agony and that familiar spinning, spinning, spinning.

Time spun backwards. He was pulled further North again, on winds high and bright, under a summer sky, all the way to the edge of the sea and beyond, breezing over an island where he watched Ser Jorah Mormont bid his father farewell. Ser Jorah shifted his step on the dock and Bran watched the summer sun glint off the bear pommel and hilt of that same silver sword that Jon had wielded in his last moments.

He kept his raven-form for a string of long moments, always so unwilling to let go of flight. In a moment of pure instinct, Bran dove with the terns and gulls in the sunshine-happy bay, feeling the cool water dribble down his throat, as he followed the ship that carried the Old Bear back across the water. But distance and time splintered and time moved forward with unnatural speed, to this very hour, where the skies were dark in shadowed twilight and the wind decided to change its course, shifting decidedly west.

Bran saw a small ship with green, bear banners floating near the rough-water coast, its sure-footed captain on deck, speaking with his first mate and pointing out two weary figures waiting on the shoreline.

They survived the battle. Bran noted, as he saw the Targaryen queen and the Mormont knight, both wounded and battle-weary, but standing on that shoreline, nonetheless. The Three-Eyed Raven felt nothing at the revelation. No surprise, no joy, no grief, nothing.

But the boy Bran, who had once scaled castle walls and ash and oak trees, to climb as high into the rafters of the sky as he could manage without wings, still lived somewhere in the Three-Eyed Raven's head.

It was Bran's heart that warmed every time Catelyn Stark reached out her hand in his visions. And Bran, good, sweet boy that he was, who tried so hard to snatch back the cruel, lifeless words that the Three-Eyed Raven spoke to Meera Reed when he told her to return to her family, that he was done with her, that she was of no further use.

I'm sorry, Meera.

And now, Bran gasped in delight, seeing through the eyes of the Three-Eyed Raven the same sight that had thrilled him a hundred times over and would thrill him a hundred times more.

It was a dragon, black and magnificent. It flew over the ship in the harbor, its shadow darkening the waters as it passed with outstretched wings. The dragon rejoined his weary mother as she crossed the channel to Bear Island.