"Bran? Brandon?"
The boy in question cracked his eye open at the sound of a strange voice beckoning him. He sat up in his bed but noticed he wasn't in his bed, but lying on the ground. The cold air floated past him lightly as he glanced his eyes around his surroundings, but the absence of any light source made his task infinitely harder. He carefully patted the ground around him until his hand hit a stone wall to his right, he grasped at the wall and pulled himself closer to the structure.
Shuffling to his right caught his ear, "Gods, Brandon I can hear you moving." It was the same woman, Northern by the thick accent that laced her words. He let his hand travel on the wall and curled his fingers around a corner built into it in front of him. He lifted his other arm to the corner and pulled with all the arm strength he had to move his partly paralyzed body around the pitch-black room. He paused as his body moved and frowned at the added pull of his legs as if they had some extra weight on them. He patted the side of his left legs and furrowed his brows when the feel of the limb was not his own, it was too wide and had far more muscle than he had ever felt on himself.
"Brandon!" The ten-year old's attention shot away from his new leg issue when the woman's voice sounded right above him. "Why are you on the floor you fool?" He scanned the area above him but the blackness cloaked the mystery woman from his sight. "Oh, it's too dark for you, isn't it? I don't know why you hate the crypt being this dark anyway. Perfectly natural to me."
The crypt? Is that where he was? Did Hodor bring him here? And how did she know he didn't like the darkness of the vast tomb?
His questions stopped when a torch appeared in front of his face and he leaned back at the flash of light, squinting to catch who was holding the new source of light. When his eyes focused they did little to solve his confusion. The woman holding the torch with her hand and reaching out to him with her other was of average height with long black hair and pale grey eyes, but her face looked exactly like Arya's. But less angry he supposed since a calm smile was stretched across her pink lips as she lightly waved her hand in front of the child. She was dressed in a pale lilac dress and he gasped at the dark bloodstain in the middle of her dress.
"Come on lazy, don't have all day here."
The Stark boy pulled his eyes away from her wounded torso and raised his brow at her insistence, "I can't walk."
The Arya look-alike exasperatedly rolled her eyes. Now she looked exactly like his sister, "Stop joking around, I'm serious. I heard our little brother wandering around and I don't want him getting lost."
"Why is Rickon wandering down here by himself?" He muttered as the black-haired woman eyed him oddly.
"Just come on," She sighed. "I have no idea how I was saddled with one of the most useless men in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms."
"Oi," Bran yelped. "Just cause I can't walk doesn't mean I'm useless."
"No Brandon," She agreed. "Lack of leg movement at the moment does not make you useless, but Ned's wandering around lost and I'm worried."
Bran widened his eyes when he heard the nickname many used for his father slip through her lips, and to his surprise, his legs moved as if they had a mind of their own and he leaped to his feet. He stumbled and hit the wall to his right, but the woman's arm reached out to help steady him. She then wrapped her arm tightly around his waist and he leaned on the unnamed woman as they slowly shuffled further into the crypt past his grandfather Rickard's resting place and his aunt Lyanna's before they paused at a space next to the Stark Lady's grave. Bran saw a slight movement in the darkness of the alcove and attempted to walk towards it, but the grey-eyed woman grabbed his waist, successfully keeping him in place.
"Ned?" She whispered. "Is that you?"
The form froze in its pacing but suddenly jerked itself towards the torchlight coming from her left hand. Bran raised himself to stand up straight and looked down upon the woman lightly trembling next to him. He raised his line of sight back to the form and smiled as the man stepped into the light.
Brunette hair, grey eyes, Northern clothing, and a weary but warm smile all gave the man away as Bran's missing father. He tried to run to the older man to embrace him, but once more the woman's arm tugging at his clothes stopped him from hugging his previously lost family member.
"Wait, Brandon," He rolled his eyes at the woman's hesitation.
"It's fine, it's Father," He turned to the Stark patriarch, missing the woman furrowing her brows in confusion. "How did you escape from King's Landing? Did Robb free you? Is he home too? What about Jon, Arya, and Myria?"
He felt the woman jerk back, "Jon?"
Bran ignored her, instead focusing on his father and he finally noticed the man was looking at the two people in front of him with an expression of dread and sadness as if he couldn't believe they stood in front of him. The Stark man gently brought his hand to his neck and Bran frowned at the line of red against his father's throat.
"You're hurt."
Once again his words were met with silence as Eddard Stark remained still. The Lord of Winterfell breathed deeply before words finally slipped from his lips.
"Brandon? Lyanna? Where am I?"
Bran jumped at his father's words and twisted his head to look from the woman next to him and to the statue of his aunt a few feet away, "Wait, you're Lyanna Stark?"
"Ugh," The woman, Lyanna, groaned. "Brandon, stop acting stupid, our brother's scared."
"Brother?" He questioned. "Eddard Stark is my father, not my brother." The other man widened his eyes at the boy's words. "My brothers are Robb, Jon, and Rickon."
Lyanna opened her mouth to retaliate, but Ned's soft voice cut through the air once more, "Bran?"
"Yes," He nodded his head at his father. "Why are you both looking at me like I've gone around the bend?"
Lyanna huffed and tugged on the Stark boy's shirt, dragging him further into the tomb and shoving his face towards a sword set into one of the statues and raised the torch towards it so he caught his reflection in the metal of the sword, except it wasn't his reflection.
The eyes staring back at him were dark grey and his hair was pitch black, he looked like a weird mix of Robb and Jon with a black beard across his jaw and deep purple bruises donning his neck. He pulled back from the opposing reflection and ran his hands over his face, cringing at the roughness of the now apparent beard.
"Honestly Brandon, you're acting as if you've never seen your own face before," Bran ignored Lyanna's snarky words and turned back to his father. For him, it was father and son meeting gazes, but he knew now that Eddard Stark was giving him the same look Robb and Jon shared many a time. He stumbled towards his father or was it brother? as multiple voices filled his ear.
"Bran! Bran! Bran!"
"Aaahhh!" Bran shook and thrashed his arms around to get the offending weight off of his chest, opening his eyes to see Rickon laying on the other side of his bed.
"Rickon," Pale blue eyes shot to the doorway and caught Maester Luwin glaring at the youngest Stark child. "You shouldn't jump on your brother to wake him up." The seven-year-old pouted but reluctantly nodded at the Maester's words. The old man then gestured for the young child to remove himself from the room. Bran waited for Rickon to leave before he let his shuddering breaths out, the whole thing was a dream. Just a dream.
He let his breath even out before he let Willow and Hodor come in and assist him in dressing for the day. He sat silent as Hodor lifted him and carried him to the great hall for breakfast with Willow trailing behind. He was seated next to Rickon who was already face-deep in a plate of eggs and sausage, which had the shaken ten-year-old laugh. Willow sat across from Bran and silently picked some fruits and meats to nibble on. Bran joined in the eating with a slice of bread and a small pile of eggs. The meal ended swiftly and Bran was led outside by Hodor while Willow was dragged away by Rickon.
Outside, Hodor placed Bran upon one of the benches by the wall and wandered off. Bran glanced around the area until his eyes landed on the door with two wolf statues next to it which led into the crypts. He narrowed his eyes at the door which was the only barrier to the somber area he had dreamed of two nights in a row, two vastly different dreams.
One dream: The confusing meeting of himself, his dead aunt, his father, and somehow also his dead uncle. He still did not know why he was seeing from the older Brandon Stark's point of view, or why his aunt led him to an empty area of the crypt where his father was residing. And the other dream: he was having target practice when a raven landed on one of the wolf statues and spoke to him, urging him to enter the Stark tomb. But he refused and ran off, which always led to him waking up.
The later dream was a common occurrence over the past week, but the one of him inside the crypt itself was completely new territory. He was pulled from his thinking from a hand on his shoulder and he lifted his eyes to meet Osha's. The Wildling woman smiled worriedly at the boy before sitting by him.
"What's wrong, little Lord?" She asked.
"Dreams," He responded. "I have no idea what they mean."
She nodded and bent before him so he could wrap his arms around her so she could pull him up onto her shoulders to sit, he tightly held her hands with his as she started to walk through the yard.
"One dream had a raven," He started. "It had three eyes. Told me to come with him, but I ran off." She hummed as a signal for him to continue. "And the next one I was down there. I saw my father talking with my dead aunt." He muttered out the shortened version of the confusing dream.
Osha squeezed his hands with her own, "Your father's not down there, little Lord. Not for many years yet." She paused at the entrance to the crypt.
"You're afraid, just like Hodor."
She shook her head, "I'm not afraid of some hole in the ground."
"You lived beyond the wall, what are you scared of?" He raised his brows. "I'm a crippled boy and I'm willing to go."
Osha eyed the door warily before giving up and taking the young Stark into the crypt. The halls were exceedingly dark and the light scattering of torches did little to illuminate the area for the two visitors. Osha switched Bran to her hip and passed him a torch so he could help light the path forward for them. They walked down the hall and came to a statue of an older Stark man sitting in a chair with a sword in his hand.
"That's my grandfather, Lord Rickard. He was burned alive by the Mad King Aerys." Osha continued along the path and came to another male statue baring the face Bran witnessed as his reflection the previous night. "That's my father's older brother, Brandon. He died trying to save his father from the fire the Mad King attacked him with." Then was Lyanna's statue, "That's Lyanna, my father's sister. King Robert was supposed to marry her, but Rhaegar Targaryen kidnapped her. Robert started a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar, but she died anyway."
The wilding woman gazed at the female statue for a moment but continued her wandering until they reached an empty alcove basked in darkness.
"That's where I saw Father."
"You see?" She asked when they only observed darkness. "He's not here." A growl from the end of the alcove made both Northerners jump and Osha took a step back when she heard footsteps making their way toward the pair. Both screamed and Osha covered Bran with herself when the large jaws of a direwolf shot into view.
Both began to calm when they noticed Rickon coming up behind the beast, "Here Shaggydog."
"Rickon!"
"That beast," The woman huffed. "Is supposed to be chained in the kennels!"
Rickon patted the neck of the large black wolf. "He doesn't like chains."
Bran glared at his younger brother, "What are you doing down here? Come back up with us."
"No, I came to see Father."
Bran quirked his brow at his brother's words, "How many times have I told you, he's in King's Landing with Sansa. Arya is with Robb and Mother in the Riverlands along with Myria and Jon."
"He was down here," The youngest Stark exclaimed. "I saw him."
"Saw him when?"
"Last night," He replied. "When I was sleeping." With that, he slowly led his direwolf back into the darkness of the alcove, almost perfectly blending with the darkness. The wilding woman shared a glance with Bran before they both quickly left the crypts, as they exited they caught the eye of Willow wandering around looking for Rickon and Osha pointed to the door of the tomb, which the other woman smiled at before entering herself to retrieve the younger Lord.
"You both miss him, you know," Osha blurted out as they walked through the yard once more. "It's only natural he should be in your thoughts and some dreams. But that doesn't mean that-" She paused her words when she caught the distressed look upon Maester Luwin's face and glanced down to see a raven's scroll clutched in his hands.
"Bran," The old man wearily addressed the boy. "It's your Father."