Chapter 1

The very instant Karina was aware, the only thing she could focus on was that her face was burning.

Well, when she actually focused on the pain and tried to blot it out, she realized that no, she hadn't woken up with half her face in a lit puddle of alcohol, but that didn't really help matters. With willpower she dredged up from experience dealing with pain she managed to force the pain down and lock it away in a box to deal with later. Having done that she was able to open her eyes, only to realize that one of them didn't want to open.

The one that did open immediately saw a thatch roof, which immediately told her that something was horrifyingly wrong. The last thing she remembered was that she had just finished rebandaging a flesh wound caused by a particularly aggressive sniper and promptly collapsed onto her sleeping bag from exhaustion after having spent over sixteen hours crouching on a rafter waiting for her quarry to appear. As far as she knew, there were no buildings anywhere near her hiding place that had a thatch roof, since any that did would have long-since been set on fire by incendiary airburst rounds.

So the fact that she was staring at one affixed her attention, at least for a few moments, before she tried to get up and realized another fact, one that completely shattered her composure. Her body was tiny. She was used to having a small body, malnutrition and bad habits in her youth made sure she stayed short forever, a fact that helped her to sneak, but this was on another level. Unless someone out there was playing a really weird practical joke on her, she shouldn't have been able to fit into a crudely-carved wooden...well, she'd call it a crib but that was honestly giving it too much credit.

Recomposing herself and re-affixing her grasp on her own pain, she noted that the pain wasn't just on her face, it was on her neck and shoulder as well. Twisting her body around as much as she was able to, she caught sight of what honestly looked like scales on her skin. Unfortunately, her body wasn't strong enough to allow her to remain like that for more than a few moments, and she was forced to lay back down again in mild exhaustion from her little exertion.

As she caught her breath, she noted how the 'scales' on her throat shifted, as did those on her cheek. Slowly and cautiously, she raised a hand to gingerly touch at those scales, poking at them. Each poke brought a small burst of pain, but she pressed through it, wanting to understand what the fuck was happening to her. She very quickly went over everything she could think of, and arrived at a conclusion...she had gone mad.

Of course, she threw that conclusion right out of the window as she still felt coherent and rational, so honestly, she had no idea what was going on, nor had any theories. All she could do, after she stopped jabbing at her own face, was lay down and observe the room, which gave her a little more information. It was a wooden house, and no matter how she looked at it, it looked...Amish.

She wasn't in America, sure, but that was the best way she could put it. There was not a single modern convenience in sight. No television, or phone, or oven, nothing that suggested the advance of human progression had reached this place. It explained the crudely-made crib, as well as the rough fabric that was wrapped around her body. Sighing softly, she made another attempt at getting up, this time rolling over onto her belly them pushing up with her arms and sliding her knees under herself, succeeding in getting herself into a mobile position.

Karina crawled to the wall of her crib and grasped it, using it as a support to stand up and better observe the room. But even from this advantageous position, she merely confirmed what she already had seen, that there really wasn't anything in that room that she could call a modern convenience. There was even an actual burning fireplace, which as far as she could see was the only source of warmth in the room.

Frowning then wincing as the scales on her face grated together and painfully twinged, she looked down at the floor. It was...a long way away actually, long enough that she might break a bone if she tried to climb out of her crib. Looking around, she spied a path down, but decided against using it. If someone caught her outside of her crib, it might be bad news for her.

Instead, she started to exercise. Of course, by exercise, all she was really doing was using her hands to hold the bars of her crib as she started walking in circles, both to train her leg muscles as well as keep her from thinking about the pain that was ever-present. If she wanted to figure things out, she'd need time and exercise. Sure, she could climb out of her crib and try to find a way to escape, but unless she had been poisoned and suffered from muscle atrophy whilst being taken care of by giants, she was a fucking child, partially covered in some kind of skin-based infection and extremely weak. Trying to be autonomous was just asking to get killed.

After a moderately long period of walking, Karina felt her legs start to cramp up from the exercise, and so she carefully laid back down and started to roll her arms and twist her torso from side to side, occasionally lifting her head and chest up a little with her ab muscles, though she was so weak she barely managed to lift herself. Whilst not exactly great exercise, it allowed her to build her strength, and it'd be something she'd need to do if she wanted to progress to more exhaustive exercise.

A sudden sound snapped her to attention, to which she immediately stopped what she was doing and pretended to be asleep as she heard a door open and close. She controlled her body as cold washed over her for a brief moment before the heat from the fire covered her once again, and she tensed up a little as footsteps on wood approached her.

In her mind, she was in a dilemma. The footsteps were coming towards her, and chances were that she was their focus. She could either keep pretending to be asleep, or pretend to wake up. That decision was quickly made as she continued to pretend-sleep. She was most definitely not confident in being able to act like a baby, but she could fake sleep like the best of them.

The footsteps came to a stop beside her crib, and she felt the sensation of being lifted up by hands much larger than her, a feeling that made her unconsciously squirm a little. "Oh little Karina, did I wake you up?" Deciding the jig was up, she blinked her eyes...eye open and looked at the face of a woman that she most definitely didn't recognize. Her face had scales on it though, and she realized they were exceptionally similar to the ones on her shoulder and presumably also her neck and face. "Well, that's good because it's time for food." The woman spoke softly, taking Karina to the table beside her crib and setting her down, then taking a bag that was hanging from her waist. "Now, open up."

For a moment Karina debated the pros and cons of obeying, since honestly she was still somewhat processing that she really was a baby or at least a juvenile, but the woman made the decision for her by placing a finger against her lower jaw and opening her mouth for her. She could have fought it by clenching her jaw, but what was the point? If it was time to eat then it would be best to get some food.

The woman then put her hand in the leather bag and took it back out with some kind of mashed up goop on her finger. She put it in Karina's mouth, and after just a moment of ponderance, Karina obediently swallowed the food, getting a pleased look from the woman that honestly pissed her off more than anything. "You're being a good girl today Karina, that's good, good girl."

In the back of her mind, Karina wondered whether or not her mother, or at least the woman she assumed was her mother, was slow or something. The way she spoke sounded slow, at least until Karina remembered that she was a baby or at least very young, and the woman was obviously doing baby-speak. With that great conundrum solved, Karina ate as much of the food as she was able to, and was surprised to find that the food ran out before she was full. "Well done Karina, you ate it all."

Getting a pat on the head before being lifted up and put back in her crib, Karina felt...weird. She only just realized that the woman was saying her name, which meant...well, she honestly had no fucking idea. Nothing about her current situation made any fucking sense, and it was starting to piss her off. As she was laid down and the woman left her behind, she stared after her, then grit her teeth as she resolutely decided she was going to figure this shit out.

...Right after the agony of shifting her face so much went away.

Days and weeks passed, during which the pain that burned her face remained.

Interestingly enough, it seemed the infection wasn't actually spreading, or if it was it was doing so at an incredibly slow rate. What was actually going noticeably faster was that she was getting stronger. While she couldn't stand up completely under her own strength, she was getting tired less and less, and was able to even sit up just by using her abs.

One thing that was a bit worrying though was that while she had heard other people speaking before outside of the building she was in, she never saw anybody else. Presumably it was because of the infection she had, but then why was the other woman not also under the same boat. The only assumption she could think of was that hers was an active strain, whilst the other woman had a neutral strain that wouldn't spread, since she didn't seem to be in pain or anything. There were proper scientific names but she didn't bother remembering them, she had bigger fish to try.

Sticking her tongue out, she performed another half sit-up and flopped back down after holding it for a moment, her abs relaxing after the strain. She decided that she'd done enough ab exercises for the time being and shimmied over to the bars of her crib, using them to assist her in getting up, then starting to walk around the crib. She was using the same sort of notion that she used for ice skating, trying to move whilst keeping a hand close to the wall for support. Every time she felt she was going to fall she would grab the wall and stabilize herself, then let go and keep walking.

While it was boring literally walking in circles, she was at least able to exercise and practise staying upright and walking around. The problem wasn't really her sense of balance, that she'd already fixed. It was really just a fact that her legs didn't want to respond to her commands, so when she walked, sometimes her feet wouldn't rise far enough or wouldn't angle properly, causing her to fall over. Thanks to her exercise, her legs were already strong enough to hold her up, and her walking practice meant her balance was fine, but as long as her body was still unwilling to properly respond to her commands, all she could do was keep practising.

Hearing the door be opened, Karina quickly laid down, not wanting to be seen as abnormal. However, this time, it wasn't the woman she had grown used to seeing. It was a different woman, who looked a bit younger than the woman she was used to seeing. "Is she..." Karina then realized that following along behind her was the woman she was grown used to seeing and felt a bit...irritated when she didn't see the leather bag she'd grown accustomed to being fed from.

"I think so, but he doesn't want her coming anywhere near him until it's certain to have stopped growing." She blinked up at the woman that fed her as she lifted Karina up and brushed a finger against the stuff growing on her. "Nobody here knows how it works after all, but this looks just like mine when it stopped growing but before the colour faded into this." The woman tapped her own face, and Karina took the opportunity to pat the section she had just touched, noting the feeling even as the two women amused themselves at her actions.

They could think her as just childishly pawing at something interesting all they liked, this was important to her. She very firmly cemented in her mind what it felt like, so she could check for herself in future whether her own skin turned out like that. But from what the woman said, this was probably very good news, especially due to the relief in her voice and on their faces. "I hope so as well. Selene is going to be over the moon once she finds out."

Selene was a name, that was something she could also focus on. So far she hadn't heard the woman say any names aside from her own. One thing she noted was that the other woman made no move to get near her, nor did she touch pretty much anything in the room. That cemented in her mind that whatever she had contracted, it was highly contagious. That led her to the belief that she was being quarantined to prevent her from spreading it, though from the sounds of it, her infection was now turning...benign? Neutral was the closest word she knew for certain described it, though benign sounded correct to her.

She would have given a lot to have Wikipedia at that moment.

After a few more weeks of isolation, during which the infection turned to the same form her carer carried, Karina found herself cradled on the arm of her carer and being taken outside for the first time since she first woke up.

As soon as they left, Karina felt a wave of cold that immediately and unconsciously pulled at her lips, making her grin even as she hid it. It was absolutely freezing, which was perfect for her. In Karina's eyes, being cold was far better than being hot, since the cold could be warded off with extra layers, but if you were nude and still too hot, there was little you could do to solve it.

In the moments they were outside traversing to a much larger building, Karina took in her surroundings, heavily forested and utterly blanketed in snow. There were a few other buildings, and she could see women doing various jobs like chopping wood, tending to animals and hauling things around. The passing of her and her carer didn't attract much attention, probably because the women were too busy to spend time gawping randomly.

Interestingly enough, she noted the presence of men, or rather, the utter lack of them. There was not a single man, adult or child, present there, though there were young girls working alongside the older women. As her carer had mentioned a 'he', that told her that there was at least one male present, so maybe they all simply resided in the main building or were out hunting or something. There was something wrong though, some part of her mind telling her something was horribly wrong here, something she should remember.

Their short stint outside didn't last long, nor gave her the chance to figure out what was wrong, as they quickly entered the main building, a cozy wooden longhouse with several roaring hearths banishing away the cold that crept into the building after them. The building had more women inside doing other jobs, though it wasn't cramped, leaving plenty of space for her carer to carry her through the building.

Finally, they came to a stop, and Karina laid her eyes upon the first man she had seen in her time awake. "Father, Karina's infection has stopped entirely and solidified, your daughter will not be taken by the plague." Peering up at the man, the feeling that something was terribly wrong crept up her spine, the feeling that there was something horrifically crucial she needed to remember. But, for the life of her, even as she peered at the man who gazed at her placidly, she couldn't place it.

"So the runt survived I see. Guess that woods-witch was just a faker after all, going on and on about her like some bloody banshee. Glad I kicked her out then, what a waste of time. Well, she can stay with the other brats then, you know the routine!" The man waved them away, and the woman carrying her nodded lightly before carrying her away from the man. As they left, Karina couldn't stop herself from turning over the events in her mind over and over again.

Something about the entire situation was screaming at her, and she couldn't figure out why. She didn't recognize any of the faces she had seen thus far, and that included the man that she now knew was her father, at least from how her carer had spoken. As she was deposited into a crib in a corner of the room, she found herself pensive as she tried to piece together what she knew. "You are one smart brat, you know that?"

Blinking, she twisted her head to look at her carer in time to see her gently caress the hardened skin on her face. "With luck, father won't show any interest in you. Your face might...protect you from him. The Old Gods may yet protect you, as they did to stop that infection. Gods know that Craster cares little for them, but..." The woman shook her head, brushing her cheek a final time before exiting the room, leaving Karina reeling from what she just revealed.

This...this was Craster's fucking Keep!

Karina wouldn't admit it, but she spent the next few days in silent contemplation.

The facts were thus: she was about half a year old, she was in a fictional universe, she had contracted and survived Greyscale, she was stuck on the wrong side of The Wall, and, worst of all, she was one of Craster's daughters. That last fact was what she was most focused on. Craster was a rapist who took his own daughters as wives. It was what her carer, who she eventually found out was called Mara, had been talking about. Thanks to the Greyscale which marred her face, neck and shoulder, her appearance was detracted by it, which could possibly have Craster choose not to take her.

It was true of some of his daughters, they looked uglier than their siblings, probably due to the incest they had been bred from, and thus Craster chose not to take them as wives. He kept them around as they were still useful for dumb labour. His sons of course he dropped off in the forest for the White Walkers to claim. And that was also terrifying, knowing she was on the side of the wall with giants and White Walkers and Wights. It was not a fact she relished, not at all.

One fact she did relish was that she was given a good amount of unobserved time to practice her exercise. The only ones who could observe her were the other children in the room who likely wouldn't rat her out considering that only two of them could even speak, and their 'speech' was just babbling mostly. Thus, she used her time to ponder what the fuck she was supposed to do now, and while she was at it, she continued to exercise.

Of course, that blissful state of being able to pretend she wasn't advanced for her age came to a stop when one of the girls in charge of looking after the children caught her walking around without even using the crib to support herself. This found its way back to Craster, who took a little more interest in her, having nothing better to do with his wives doing all the housework.

That was quite literally the opposite of what she wanted. She wanted to stay so far under his radar that she could just disappear and he wouldn't care, presuming her to have tried to flee his home and died out in the wilderness. With him taking interest in her, even a little, it made it that much harder to be abnormal. She didn't even bother trying to hide the fact she already knew how to walk, something that astounded her mother.

Yes, as it turned out, Selene was the name of her mother. She had guessed so based on what had been said when she was checked upon by Mara and the other girl, but had it confirmed when her mother began to actually see her and spend time with her. While it was partially nice to be held and adored, it also majorly irked her, as being treated like a baby wasn't exactly something her intelligent and adult mind appreciated.

But, she allowed it. Of course, there was nothing she could do about it anyway, but her mother had obviously, from the tear-filled hug she had given her, been terrified of losing her to Greyscale. From what Karina recalled of Greyscale, only those who had contracted it and survived were able to come into contact with those who carried live strains. As her mother hadn't contracted it, she couldn't see Karina for fear of catching it, leaving only Mara able to tend to her. How she survived it she had no idea, the only person she remembered actually surviving it was Shireen Baratheon, and she was tended to by a bunch of people, so the actual cause of her survival was something Karina didn't know.

What mattered though was that she was still alive. As long as she was still alive, she could plan and figure out just what the fuck she was going to do. She never finished watching the show, only getting to season 7, so she had no idea what happened in the end or how they ended up winning against the White Walkers. She also had no idea how long she actually had until shit hit the fan. From the fact Craster wasn't yet old and bald, she still had time to grow up and plan something before shit went sideways.

At the bare minimum, she planned to be away from Craster's Keep and preferably south of the wall by the time Karl and the other crows mutinied and took over the keep. Preferably she'd be in Essos or somewhere else, but she honestly didn't want to leave Westeros. Not for any notion of honour or wanting to be helpful really, she just didn't want to go somewhere so fucking hot. If she did, she'd go to Sunspear.

But to survive, she needed to get her old body back, which meant repeatedly exercising and practising. In her...well, she supposed it was probably her past life, she had been exceptionally small, lithe and stealthy, and had learned to use that to her advantage, killing people from the shadows, looting what possessions they had, then disappearing before anybody realized what had happened.

While she daren't compete with masters of assassination like the Faceless Men, she wanted to be able to cut a throat or two if she needed to. Considering they were north of the wall, chances were high that Karina was going to be stuck with a short body once again from malnutrition, as the food she got was not exactly baby formula, though it was still at least food.

One thing she did have to appreciate was that it seemed she had managed to avoid breastfeeding, which was a humiliation she probably wouldn't have been able to endure. While she did enjoy women just as much as men and certainly had no qualm with giving pleasure to her partner's breasts, being an actual baby and breastfeeding from her biological mother would have been a step too far for her, especially with her mind focusing on the sexual nature of nipple-sucking.

Though she had been caught walking, Karina still exercised heavily in secret, doing twists, stretches, even progressing from walking to lightly jogging around her crib. Sure, it would attract attention, but she already had attention on her, and it was either this, or waste this time doing nothing. She obviously still kept it as secret as possible, and while she had some close calls, nobody ever caught her doing anything but walking around in her crib.

While it was incredibly boring, Karina daren't waste the time she had. Step one was to get a body strong enough to survive with on her own, step two was to train that body to be as good or better at killing than she was in her past life, and step three was to get the fuck out of dodge, either by finding a way to sail around the wall, or making herself a hideout that could last for a long time and hiding herself away from the world.

After all, she knew what was coming, so the only real options were to run...or to hide. She wasn't an idiot, she knew that the world she was in was brutal, it wouldn't hesitate to see her die a pitiful and utterly worthless death just because that was life. Paired with the fact this was now reality and not just words on a page or actors on a screen, and she was doubly sure that getting in any way involved with the plot was a horribly bad idea.

Hiding was an option, but that'd mean living in wight-infested territory when the White Walkers moved out of the Lands of Always Winter. Alternatively she could head south, but if she was in Westeros that meant risking being swept up in the War of the Five Kings. Essos carried its own problems, namely the potential to be captured and sold as a slave, something she absolutely abhorred. The Summer Isles was also a good option, except for the fact they were a tropical hell, at least in her eyes. No, if she wanted to stay in a cold climate but keep away from the White Walkers, there was only one location she could go to.

Skagos.