Bran
She looks so like Mother, Bran thought as he watched the man in in the red jerkin who'd picked Sansa up out of the snow slip her into bed. Her lips had gone blue and her skin was white as bone. "Is she breathing?" Meera panted. With longer legs and no ennui to recover from she'd made it to his sister first. The man looked at Sansa for a moment before holding his hand in front of her face. "Not that I can feel." he said bluntly. The yard below the window was still an uproar of confusion and anxiety, evidently they'd picked the worst possible moment to return to Winterfell. A big maester came into the room next, red-faced from having run clear across the castle. He looked lost for words. "What's wrong with her?" Bran asked him, trying not to cry to let his nerves get the better of him. I finally make it back and Sansa heads to her deathbed, Bran thought. The maester took Sansa's hand and cried out in pain as he dropped it, a cold dry burn rising across his own. "Cold." he said in a shocked whisper. Even with a blanket over his hand Bran could feel the cold that radiated from Sansa's body as he tried to find her pulse. With a happy gasp he felt it. A single beat every three minutes. It didn't go any slower or fade entirely, and Bran felt he was waiting for the world to start spinning again, but it was consistent and unmistakable. "Got it…" he said shakily, trying to get the maester to corroborate. He looked utterly mystified. "That's impossible. Blood won't travel through the body on a beat every three minutes." "Not normally. Does this look normal, jingling man?" Branch's voice made the maester and man in red turn and give twin yelps of alarm. "There's no need for alarm, sers." Meera said, a hand on the man's shoulder. "Branch and his kind are here at Prince Brandon's invitation." "Jon Snow's brother is a cri-" a young woman with honey blonde hair began before screaming aloud at the sight of Branch, who pursed his lips. "No longer, my lady." Bran said, standing shakily. From nerves, not weakness, he realized. "I thought you all were supposed to have direwolves of your own?" she asked, face pale. "Summer was killed by wights. May I ask your name, my lady?" Meera inquired firmly, stepping forward while the maester pulled a blanket up to Sansa's chin. "Val, and yours?" the blonde asked in turn, eyes locked on the girl in the bed. Meera introduced herself without pomp as befit a crannogwoman, as befit a Reed. Val bit her lip. "You missed the King in the North by a few days. In fact, there's a great deal more than that you missed."
It took her a good few minutes to bring them current on matters that ran apace. While they talked, Branch left to be with his kind. "Jon's gon south to treat with a Targaryen?" Bran asked, stomach feeling stormy. "Aye. Your sister had the right of it though. No need to get pissy about who's standing next to you when the Others are coming and she's supposed to have three dragons. No doubt they'll help up polish the wights off if nothing else." Val said. "We meant to stop at Last Hearth to see if Jon was there, but…" Meera blushed. "I know how fussy you southerners get about marriaging and bastards. Why you get your smallclothes in a twist is beyond me, but I'll not question the workings of your lot." Val said, trying to get her breaths out in a measured steady pace. Jon's King in the North, Bran thought, feeling incredibly excited and terribly anxious both. The only reason the northmen would have gotten close to the wildlings is because Jon must have told them what comes for all of us. "What of you? How did you manage to find the Children of the Forest?" Val asked. "They found us. They'd been living underground and we were with them a good year or two, if not more." Bran said. "Uh, speaking of living underground, Princess Sansa gave orders to burn the crypts out as well as fire all the barrows in the North. Apparently it's wasted space as is and can be put to better use elsewise." The man in red told them, introducing himself as Rylis. Bran could only shrug. "The babes of the future cannot be sacrificed to please the ghosts of the past." Meera said, taking his hand in hers. Then Bran remembered what they'd brought with them. Not what, who, he reminded himself. "Meera…maybe we should ask the Children to get some red vines across one of the crypts. If we had the dragonglass I'd rather use that, but…" Meera nodded, paler by the moment. "The fuck are you on about?" Rylis asked. "If you could start putting the yard to order, we have something to show those gathered in the castle. Not just the lords, either." Bran said firmly. Rylis nodded at once and left immediately. Used to taking orders, Bran surmised. He gave Sansa a last look. Frost had appeared on her lips. With the softest sniffle he left Meera guide him from the room.
It was about an hour before everyone who could be found had squeezed into the yard. Bran had never seen so many people at once, not even when King Robert visited Winterfell two lifetimes ago. No kneeling, he remembered Val impress on him over and over. When not a soul did he wasn't taken aback. Not like I could bloody kneel until recently anyway, he thought. Meera held her smoky sword point down, the fur wrap at her side containing an altogether different kind of blade. While Jon may have found a king's voice in his many battles and at the Wall, Bran had spend his years on the run and underground with only Meera and Hodor for company. I do not have a prince's bearing, he gulped. Meera prompted him with a kiss on the cheek, causing more than a few surprised and raucous calls. "You all know why Jon went south. Not because he wanted to or because he desires a powerful ally in marriage. Because he had to." Bran noticed a blonde man about Jon's age, a little older, sitting at the forefront of the Knights of the Vale. He listened attentively. "Now that you lot have all got used to each other you don't go weak-kneed at the sight of a wildling or a knight or a giant anymore." "Ah, some of us still do." someone called, drawing some light laughter from the sea of people. "What I mean is, removing that veil of mystery makes it easier to see what we have in common with each other. I believe removing it from our shared enemy will likewise make them easier to face." "Oh, aye. Got one in your pocket, then?" another voice called. "No, but I have one just outside the walls of Winterfell. We're going to have a look at him, all of us at once, that way your first time seeing an Other won't be with one of these in its hand." he nodded to Meera who wrapped a fur-clad hand around the hilt in the wrap and drew the razor crystal sword. The jesting and idle words died immediately. "Bring me forge scrap." Meera said. When a lump of rusted iron was provided she drove the Other's sword straight through it one-handed, clean as spearing a frog. There was a horrible screeching sound, ice cracking at an impossible shrillness as she pulled the blade out, giving the iron a good kick. It shattered into a thousand pieces of sparkling dust. "Seven save us," one of the knights murmured. Bran looked to Branch, who nodded. Several Children dragged a snugly wrapped form into the yard, looped a dozen times in the red vines.
Bran took a breath. "Get him out." he said. Branch drew a stone knife and drew it vertically down the bundle, backing off immediately one the task was done. The bundle remained motionless, not a person in the yard breathed. Bran counted the moments in his head. Maybe he's de- The bundle exploded in a flurry of fur and strips of vine. The people nearest gave out cries of alarm to a man save the blonde knight who only watched with wide eyes. Whether brave or paralyzed with fear Bran could not say. Meera had taken off the leg at knee and arm at elbow both of his left side when she captured him, so when the Other stood his left leg ended in a cruel sharp ice spike, almost like a pirate's peg leg from all the stories. His elbow was much the same, the missing hand replaced with a curved icy sickle. The legendary blue eyes that shone like stars ran over the crowd in disinterest. Bran saw the fear on their faces. It isn't everything you think it would be that makes them scary, it's the little things. The things that are inexpressibly inhuman. His face was uncolored by emotion, his body lithe and sleek like a runner's. The hand that remained was slender, the fingers nimble and delicate, gripping a strip of fur to hide his pelvis. He had no hair on his head, evidently he hadn't recovered from Meera's dragonglass touch- in fact, the image of the arrowhead she'd used was burned into the flesh of his temple, smoking ever so slightly. As cold as it became when the Other showed himself, it wasn't enough to keep him at full vigor and whatever sustenance the Others required was obviously being denied him. His eyes were sunken and his thin frame showed the ribs beneath the skin. "They can run faster than a fleeing horse, throw a big man thrity feet, shatter steel with a touch and send our own dead after us, for a start.." Meera said, her voice the only sound. The Other turned to look at her at once. "…but they are not invincible." She had dropped the razor crystal sword and drawn her bow, a shaft tipped with dragonglass pointed at the Other's unarmored chest. The Children had followed suit, some with spears tipped of the stuff, others with little bows of their own. "If he moves, kill him." she said clearly before stepping forward, arrow nocked. She kept walking toward him until there wasn't ten feet between them. Bran could see the frost form in her hair, her breath come in white clouds. Slowly, deliberately, she touched the arrow to the Other's chest. Instantly there was an unholy hissing and the flesh began to bubble, began to boil. The creature threw back his head and let out a shrill high shriek that caused the new greenhouse's panes to shatter clear on the other side of the castle. It collapsed backward, writhing as its improvised limbs melted away. If he's hurt too bad he can't keep normal ice attached, Bran saw. Or at least, if he's hurt with dragonglass. The Other finally stopped screeching, taking long pained breaths, the place where Meera had poked him slowly congealing into an ugly black wound oozing smoky droplets in the nearly translucent skin. His mouth moved and there was the sound of ice cracking on a lake. He's talking, Bran realized. The Other rolled over onto its side, perfect frozen drops falling from its squeezed-shut eyes.
As he rolled again, this time onto his back it was clear he was in a daze. Or wants us to think so, Bran suspected. The fur had fallen away and any question of him being a he was answered. Meera straightened up. "Dragonglass kills them. More than that, dragonglass hurts them. Badly. Worse perhaps than any person can do to another. We don't know why, we don't care why, but if the King in the North has gone to get us more of it, that can only be good." she concluded. "Take him to the crypts. An empty one, make sure he can't get out." Bran told Branch. The Child nodded and he helped his fellows drag the Other, still twitching, off underground. "Any questions?" Meera asked. "Gods be good…" the blond knight spoke finally, exhaling slowly. "Quite a performance. Did you come upon those green child-people after they'd lamed it?" he asked her. "I did the laming." she replied, more than a few heads turning in surprise to look at her with new interest. She turned and strode back to Bran's side, who slid an arm around her waist. "This is Meera Reed, daughter of Howland Reed, Lord of Greywater Watch. She took me beyond the Wall to fing the Children of the Forest and lost her only brother, her father's only son on the way. Then she brought me back and helped me get my legs back," he introduced her, "and once we marry, Princess Meera Stark." The murmurs and quiet whispers were not what Bran expected. No doubt the northmen think of crannogmen as little hidey people with green hide and moss for hair, Bran thought, not keen-eyed beauties with skin like snow and hair like night. They certainly didn't sound disdainful. "You say you've got a pa? And countrymen besides?" one of the mountain clansmen asked her. "Yes." Meera replied simply. "Well, why in balls are they not among us?" he asked with his palms to his cheeks. "The raven will leave presently." Bran said turning to the big maester, who needed two healthy prods and a horn of ale to get moving, dumbstruck as he was. "That is all, my lords. Carry on." Bran said, he and Meera headed back to Sansa's bedchamber through the crowd, hastily parting for them. More her than me, Bran thought. To my happiness, my delight.
"I think I'm going to have to go in and get her. I don't think she'll be able to come out on her own." Bran said after an hour had passed with no change in Sansa's state. Meera's eyes went wide and the color rose in her cheeks. "I'll be here to pull you out then, in case you go too deep." No objections, no fear, Bran wondered at the girl the gods had so burdened with him. He took her hand and kissed it. "I love you, Meera. Just in case." he said, feeling Bran the Boy all over again. "I love you too, Brandon." Her hands found his face and her lips met his. "Just in case." she said, the color in her cheeks rosier by the moment. With that he warged. Not into Summer or a tree, but into Sansa. Instantly the world became an icy whirlwind, a howling storm of sleet that made it impossible to divine even where he was, let alone Sansa's whereabouts. He could feel an arm around his waist even then. Meera, he knew. Making sure I don't float off. He took a few steps into the wind, body going numb immediately, but as it wasn't real flesh Bran wasn't worried. He kept pushing, pushing, trying to get through the storm, and found himself falling quite out of it and sinking to his knees in foul river water. Dead men waded to and fro, blindly staggering away from the storm that centered near him. Stupid sleet. I want to see Sansa, not more stupid wights, Bran protested. Only when he peered into the tempest from outside it did he see a figure within, a white fur mantle hiding whatever it could have been. Sansa hasn't got anything like that…Bran thought. The figure walked across the water with ease, the corpse-choked run freezing as the figure moved across it. He followed clumsily, trying not to slip off the narrow icy path and tumble off into the clutches of the dead that massed in the water to either side. Finally under a rotting tree trunk that had collapsed into the river, the figure stopped. Bran caught long white hair flowing from under the hood of the mantle, hair so white it hurt to look at. The figure stooped, the tempest broke, and Bran could see an Other's dainty hand emerge from the mantle, reaching for something under the log. Something wanted to make him run at it, push it into the water, but the tiniest voice in his head held him back. Ice is patient, ice can wait, it said. His heart hammering, Bran crept closer. If she sees me… he had no doubt the Other was female. The hand he saw was not used to the sword as the one in the waking world's had been, and its movement was slow and fluid not quick and sharp. What does an Other need with a mantle? he thought to himself, feeling stupid. I'm missing something. He got so close he felt she must know he was there, standing right behind her, but so intent was she on the river that either she could perceive nothing else or he wasn't worth her time. Or both, Bran realized. He tore his eyes from her and looked into the green water, and lay his eyes on the naked corpse of the woman who had been his mother. There was a sound of crackling ice and in this world of half-past half-future, he understood just fine. "Awake." In the water Catelyn Stark's eyes shot open.
He gripped the she-Other by the shoulder and pulled away the mantle as the water under the log churned with movement. Rather than the face he exepectd to see he saw red Tully hair and blue Tully eyes and he was on the floor of Sansa's bedroom, the world spinning as Meera held his head in her lap. "Bran!" she cried out, hand to his cheek as he waited for her face above his to stop spinning like a potter's wheel. "Did I pull her out?" he asked, sounding drunk as a lord. Movement from the bed tore Meera's eyes from him and slurred speech was interrupted by a thud and a cry of pain as the bed's occupant fell out. Bran finally got his head screwed on straight and crawled on hands and knees around the foot of the bed to find Sansa throwing up with gusto. Cold clear water came out in gushes and Bran kept her hair out ofh er face and held her shoulders until it stopped. She jerked out of his grip with an energy he wasn't ready for, making funny guttural sounds before she seemed to remember how to breathe, filling her lungs with a deep greedy inhale. Meera came around the bed next, easing Sansa into a sitting position while her blue eyes groggily rolled in their sockets. "Ogg…" she gurbled unhelpfully. "Princess Sansa. Princess Sansa." Meera repeated her name until a glint of recognition sparked in his sister's Tully eyes, the ones he'd seen when he pulled away the mantle. They locked on Bran and widened, a clammy hand reaching for him. He took it immediately. "It's me, Sansa. Bran. And this is Meera, your sister-to-be." She woozily took Meera's measure, thought Bran doubted she saw more than a dark blur. Bran turned to Meera. "Let's get her in a hot bath. Maybe if we drive out the cold it will help bring her out of it." he said. She took off on her lovely legs while Bran cradled Sansa. "It's alright, Sansa." he whispered in her ear, her head on his shoulder. "I'm home now."