AN: Any recognisable dialogue belongs exclusively to the HBO Tv Show; Game of Thrones and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire

Cripples, Bastards and Broken Things

We know no King, but the King in the North whose name is Stark

Chapter XXI – Bran

He wakes, to a world so loud his chest is crushed and he can't breathe.

His wings hold him aloft and his feet are bare; the cold sinks into his bones with the bite of a thousand knives drawn slowly across his skin. His mouth falls open in a silent scream- before his eardrums shatter and he bleeds, hot and red, his blood leaving a burning trail as it drips past his jawline and down his neck, an unholy screech cutting violently through the frigid air.

He's wrenched sideways by the wind, and he realises, in an instant; he knows this place, though he's never seen it quite like this. He's a hundred leagues from Westwatch-by-the Bridge, eight hundred feet above the ground he was dragged across. Watchmen and Wildlings alike scramble to regain their footing as they run, down, down, down the zig-zagging staircases and Bran thinks them dead, for that is what they'll all surely be.

He watches, as the ice cracks, and the Wall... falls.

Bran's wings falter, and for a moment, he goes the way of the Wall, tumbling, dropping, freefalling until he regains his strength and rights himself, and he realises his world is... silent.

The air chills further, and Bran feels his blood turn to ice as the last of the Wall drops and the snow settles, the true extent of the Night King's army revealed to the South. The dead walk; half dismembered giants, wildling children, brutalised Watchmen, sunken cheeked Spearwives and skeletal men of every size- a macabre parade of bodies, guarded by the Night King's lieutenants astride once beautiful Destriers. His heart threatens to stop in his chest as the air shifts and the hairs on his arms stand on end; eyes as bright and blue as stars stealing the breath from his lungs.

"Dragons are fire made flesh... and fire, is power."

Horror strikes him; wrong, wrong, wrong his mind screams, a Dragon, a being born of fire, perverted and twisted by the Other's magic. Part of him recoils, glimpses of gold and cream pass across his mind, of this of this glorious creature, wondrously, gorgeously alive in the salt and sun of Meereen, plumes of orange flame spewing from his jaws- dead, dead, dead- his mind roars, and the vision is gone, replaced with torn wings and wilted deathly blue scales, the personification of ice riding upon it's back.

Bran's body twists, his back bends, and he's somewhere else. His eyes close, and sound returns to his world.

He drops from the air and finds his footing atop the tallest of a squat square tower of crisp white stone, knees weak and struggling to breathe easily. Three tiers of gardens and beauty, circled by three rings built from the same white stone lay spread out like a map on a table before him. The lowest level, almost a full league from the tower he stands upon is a labyrinth, dotted intermittedly with hidden enclaves with carved stone settees for lovers to steal a secret kiss and well-tended rose gardens of every colour, with raised stone bird-baths filled with water. With a raven's eyes he sees an orchard filled with fruit ripe for the picking and hears a frog croaking so loud it echoes off the stones of the pond it sits beside. It's beautiful, and he itches to explore; the child he once was could have spent hours here, running through the hedges, climbing the old oaks he sees standing tall, dipping his fingertips in the ponds so filled with life.

The second is different. Homes and market stalls; alike with Winter Town, but filled with people, seemingly as small as ants from his view, as they go about their lives ignorant of the eyes watching from above. He hears the faintest strains of music drifting up from the city below and smells the unmistakeable scent of fresh bread, mingling with something that tastes sweet on his tongue, but he cannot name. His wings expand, and he drops. Unseen, he walks among them, following a path he inexplicably knows, though he's never trodden upon these cobblestones before. Children run happily through the streets, merchants hock their goods; coloured silks and cotton, lace and threads of every colour, jewellery and barrels upon barrels of Arbor wine. Trade is roaring here he sees, quickly losing count of the number of times he witnesses coin changing hands as he walks.

The third and highest tier is different again, the buildings here are both old and new, the original square fortifications are of age with Winterfell, constructed, he knows, in the Age of Heroes. There's something familiar in the white brick, and when he lays his palm flat against the stone, he feels it, thrumming beneath his fingers, faded and dissipating as it is… magic. Bran knows the legends, he feels the truth of them in the Raven, of the end of the Dawn of Days and the beginning of the Age of Heroes. How the First Men crossed the Arm of Dorne from Essos and cut down the Weirwoods, how the Children of the Forest, angered at the disrespect to their Gods, broke the Arm, and flooded the Neck. He knows the Maesters have mourned not the loss of the names of those who signed the pact of the Isle of the Faces and ended the War but Bran suspects Garth Greenhand, did so, for the familiar magic built into the elder towers of Highgarden tells its own tale. A tale, he imagines, is repeated in the bricks in the bricks laid by Durran Godsgrief, after the divine parents of his Elenei raised his keep on the eve of their wedding, massacring his family. Only the seventh castle built stood against the wrath of the Gods, and stands still, though Durran's line exists only through a Bastard line of House Targaryen… House Baratheon of Storms End. His own ancestor's story is woven throughout these legends; tales from the Reach claim him as Garth Greenhand's descendant, tales from the Stormlands insist he advised Durran Godsgrief on the construction of Storm's End. Even the Raven knows not the truth of Bran the Builder, only that he wove magic into the stones of Winterfell with the aid of his Forest bride and rose the Wall on the backs of Giants and magic.

Curiously Bran reaches for one of the newer towers, tall and slender, covered in climbing roses and ivy and feels… nothing. He's surprised by the disappointment that blooms in his chest. Their sigil is stamped on every surface, golden and shining; etched onto armour and woven into tapestries, shaped into the cobblestones and emblazoned upon doors. Growing Strong his mind whispers. The Castle Sept of Highgarden is grand and ostentatious, overshadowed only by the Starry Sept in Oldtown and the Great Sept of Baelor in Kings Landing, he knows. It makes the Raven within uncomfortable; the New Gods are not theirs to worship, no matter his Lady Mother's preference for the Seven's pantheon. He is of the Old Gods, of the Children and the Weirwoods; a First Man, for forever and a day.

The Three Sisters loom powerfully ahead, ancient and graceful in the breeze, bone coloured trunks so entwined by the ages it is hard to tell where the first begins and the third ends.

It's like coming home.

Vermillion leaves rustle above him, and three solemn faces stare into his very soul. Only their eyes follow his movement, the Old Gods marking his footsteps, and guiding his way to her. She looks… young. Incredibly so, even beneath her dyed blonde locks and the smudges of coal along her jawline and cheekbones changing the perceived angles of his wild sister's face into something less Stark and more Tyrell. She's unencumbered by the memories of her last life; this Arya knows not the pain she survived nor the loss she suffered, she'll not arrive too late, too late, too late, to be reunited with their family... this Arya, this this sweet summer child… she'll not have a list, she'll not become No One, or Lanna or Arry or Mercy.

"A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell... and I'm going home."

Arya sits at the base of the Three Sisters, Needle unsheathed and laid across her lap, the Knight of the Flowers, amour-less and smiling, sits aside her, his own blade at his feet and whetstone in hand. He's pretty, far prettier than any man has a right to be; the third son and the second Knighted, arrogant, but tempered here, with a child at his side he swore to protect. Bran watches, as the man Sansa charged with Arya's life, hands his wild sister the whetstone and a rag, teaching her patiently how to care for the blade she was gifted.

"Careful of your fingers against the blade's edge." The Knight whispers, and Arya nods, adjusting her grip and guiding the whetstone along the blade. "Your Needle is quite an impressive blade for a Lady of a Noble house to carry."

"I'm no Lady." Arya replies softly, pausing in her ministrations. "My brother had Mikken make it special. Sansa, she had her knitting needles, and now, I have my own Needle."

"Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart-tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile."

"Not many brothers would arm their sisters." Loras murmurs, Bran thinks he sees admiration in his eyes.

Arya grins, smiling up at the man guarding her life. "Not many brothers are like Jon. He and Robb... I cannot wait to see them again."

Bran sees the Knight return her smile. "Soon, wild wolf, soon."

The Three Sisters fade, and he's wingless again. Home, his mind supplies, Winterfell. But... not. Half burned and decrepit, he feels only one of his family safely within the walls. Sansa. He's not seen Winterfell like this, though he knows instantly the chambers he's found himself in are his. Red seeps from the walls, sticky and thick, the green veins of magic in the stone obscured by all that's occurred here; this is after, he realises, the Bolton's bloody reign. The North remembers, he muses, stepping back from the stone.

"Chaos is a ladder."

He turns, and clutches at his chest as Littlefinger walks through him; it's not… pleasant, the feeling of someone walking through him when he's wandering like this but as he watches the traitorous bastard shiver violently in the warm room, he thinks perhaps, this time it's worth it. Bran smirks, and his eyes wander. The room is stripped bare of everything that made it his; the toys he played with as a boy, the sketches Robb had drawn for him of their family, the carved wolves that used to sit on the mantle- Bran's stomach lurches, as he sees himself, crippled as he was in his last life, seated in a wheeled chair with his back to the fire, an all too familiar dagger in his lap.

"What's that?"

Bran's knees falter, and he staggers, clutching at the nearby bedpost to keep himself steady. That voice, her voice… Meera. She's older than he's ever seen her, dark curly hair tied back, clad in grey furs head to toe. His heart aches. Gods, how he misses her.

"Maester Wolkan built it for me." He hears himself say. Wrong. "So I can move around more easily."

Meera smiles and Bran hates how sad that smile is, how different it is to the one he remembers, so early on in their journey. "It's a very good idea."

"You're leaving." The boy beside the fire states, and Bran shivers. When, he wonders, did he become so cold?

"I don't want to leave you." She whispers, "but when… when they come, I need to be with my family. And, and you're safe. As safe as anyone can be now… you don't need me anymore."

Emotionless, the boy in the wheeled chair responds. "No. I don't."

Meera's pretty face falls and Bran wishes she could hear him instead. "That's all you've got to say?"

"Thank you."

"Thank you?" She repeats, shock colouring her tone.

"For helping me."

Meera stumbles forward, her eyes glassy and her face pale. "My brother died for you. Hodor and Summer died for you. I almost died for you!" She stares at him, and the stranger stares back. "Bran!"

"I'm not really." The boy responds, and Bran loses his grip on the bedpost. "Not anymore."

He hears Meera's breath hitch, and sees the tears fall from her eyes, as the empty child continues again.

"I remember what it felt like to be Brandon Stark… but I remember so much else now."

She trembles, and Bran realises his own hands are shaking. "You died in that cave."

"I am who you will become Brandon Stark."

Bran looks up. Meera is gone, the boy in the chair stands unaided, and he feels like he's staring into the polished looking glass on the back of the door, rather than standing eye to eye with his last life.

Weakly, he shakes his head. "No."

"I am who you became when you awoke after falling from the Broken Tower, I am who you will always become."

"No, no, I will not become you." Bran shakes his head. "I changed this, I changed all of this, I am Brandon Stark of Winterfell and I am the Three-Eyed Raven, I do not have to choose!"

The thing opposite him smiles wanly. "One day, Brandon Stark, you will find you will."

AN: The Winged Wolf flies again.

Thank you all for your patience, I understand this has been a long time coming, but as it usually does, life got in the way. I can't thank you all enough for every follow (1472), every favourite (1218) and every review (489), they mean the world to me.

This chapter is for Pete, who didn't know what I wrote, but encouraged me anyway. I love you buddy. Until we meet again.