Flashforward

In his right hand, was a blue winter rose, the moist green cut at it's bottom, indicating that it was picked not to long ago. In his left, was a piece of parchment that had been wrapped around the thorny stem. Both had had found on the bed, atop a roughspun wool blanket dyed black.

Only two words were on the parchment, but they were enough to make his heart lurch when he read them against the faint light of a small chamber stove, whose fire was still burning and seemed to cling to the fleeting feeling of life in this room.

Instinctively, his hands curled and their grip tightened. The parchment crumpled, but the thorns on the rose, just simply entered the flesh of his palm.

He winced in pain, and cast the now bloody winter rose into the stove in his attempt to get it out of his skin.

He could not explain why he felt so bad about the flower, there were many others to be found in the glass gardens, and it was a minor problem compared to the meanings of the note. Perhaps it was just an omen of some sort that made feel concerned. For a moment, the blue rose dotted with his blood, seemed unaffected by the dimming fire that surrounded it. A few seconds later, it burst into flames almost spontaneously, and it was as if new life had been brought to the flames within the stove.

Tears came freely now at the thoughts of it all. He transferred the paper to right hand which was now bleeding profusely. His left arm wiped away the salty tears. His right hands gripped the note, as if it was worth his life, and maybe it truly was.

Once his tears were wiped away and his vision clear, the parchment was covered in blood. Even though the light from the fire was still a little brighter from the fuel of a blue winter rose, he could no longer read the writing which was now soaked in dark crimson red.

Forgive me ... I have failed.

Jon

He must have died, that was the first thing he thought when he saw the light. The pain inflicted on him from the Greycap, no longer plauged him, but his mind was still muddled. He had seen some terrifying things underneath his boyhood home, and that was before the poison had gone to work on his mind causing bouts of mad visions.

He could now feel his mind clearing up like the passing of a great storm. The blinding light overhead receded and he saw the night sky. In the place of the light, strange trails of lights reached across the clear starry sky. It stretched on as far as it clear and maybe further still, with the illuminated clouds in the far in the distance that seemed to form a peculiar ring around him could , Hues of green, blue, and purple like some great banner fwaving itself against the constellations. From where he lie, he could spot the crown, the ghost, the sword of the morning, he even saw the moonmaid, and noticed that the red wanderer, or the theif as the free-folk called it was visible here. The last time it was this bright, was the night he captured Ygritte.

Below the stars, were the high reaching walls of the icy mountains, more forbidding than even the Frostfangs that could be seen on both sides of him, their peaks like the twisted spires of ruined castles with a trail ahead and between them that formed a pass.

He tried to move, and became conscious of the blanket of snow that he was wearing and the bed of ice beneath him. He shook it off, all the snow, and got up. Jon did not know where he was, but here, he did not feel the cold. He picked up a handful of fresh, powdery, snow and watched it slip through his fingers like fine sand. He noticed that he was wearing his old tattered blacks, which made him almost feel like the ghost of a previous life. He even saw boodstains on the cloaks where the daggers had made their entrance.

"Come," he heard a voice that was clear with tones of iron, but where it came from, Jon Snow could only guess. He looked above, he looked behind, he looked below at the snowy ground.

Nothing. There was no one there, but mayhaps someone had just been here. A single set of horsetracks were on the ground and they looked fresh.

The solitary set of tracks went down the pass, which Jon followed, and when the pass turned to the right, he saw a queer sight up ahead.

Before him was a palace of ice, beautiful and seemingly ageless. It was directly in the middle of the small valley that the pass opened into, standing like a small forlorn mountian amidst its flat surroundings. Its design, was almost reminiscent of the Moat Cailin, which was first put up by the children of the forest in the Dawn Age. It was roughly half as tall as the wall. Above it all, He could see the Ice Dragon, it's blue eye that pointed the way north for many weary travellers looked to be directly above the great foreboding structure shining brighter than any star, even the red wanderer.

Jon walked down to the strange fortress, and crossed the small causeway at it's entrance. The gates were open, but of life this place was bare. He felt a queer chill as he crossed the courtyard, which was bare execpt for thirteen spikes of ice that jutted from the ground and nearly met at the top as if to support some great pavillion. Within, he saw what appeared to be an altar of some strange oily black stone that was round and polished on the top.

It was as if some invisble force was pulling him into these halls. The main doors to the great hall, if that is what it was, had its doors wide open and Jon entered.

The place looked to have been in great condition on the outside, but within, no man would have expected the state ruin it was in. Much of the roof had collapsed, and a thick blanket of snow covered the floor in the absence of the roof. He noticed steel in certain parts of the room. It braced the shattered windows of stained glass and wound itself around the massive coloumns, and at the end he saw what looked like a jagged mass of twisted metal that crowned the dais of the hall. Above it, was another piece of steel with three pieces standing tall, of what might have once been a set of seven.

Jon walked towards the end of the hall, but as he approached the dais, all the steel in the room vanished.

As if that was not strange enough, another opened door appeared only a few steps behind, where the ugly mass in front of him had been.

The room was a bedchamber, smaller and warmer, he heard music, a lovely sound from a harp as soon as he entered. His eyes went to a man inside who held the harp. He was tall man with the features of a fabled Targaryen. His eyes were a dark indigo, the hair on his head was a silvery blond that made Jon instinctively wonder if maester Aemon had once looked like this.

"Aegon," he said to a woman nursing a newborn babe in a great wooden bed. "What better name for a king?" The beautiful man put down his harp.

"Will you make a song for him?" the woman asked.

"He has a song," the man replied. "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." He looked up when he said it and his eyes met Jon's, and it seemed as if he saw noticed his presence in the room. "There must be one more," he said, though whether he was speaking to him or the woman in the bed he could not say. "The dragon has three heads." He picked up a harp once more, and ran his fingers lightly over its silvery strings. Sweet sadness filled the room as man and wife and babe faded like the mist, only the music lingering behind to speed him on his way to the next opened door.

He was now walking inside a dungeon of some sort. It was like the inside of the a mine long played out, its support timbers now linked iron grates throughout the corridor. Dimly lit by a few torches, and bereft of prisoners, this place looked deserted.

But then he heard a familiar voice.

"The darkness will devour them all she says, this night that never ends, unless I triumph." The voice of Stannis Baratheon, left no room for doubt. "I never asked for this, no more than I asked to be king," he continued. "We do not chose our destiny, but we must still do our duty."

His back was to Jon, but he still looked like the Stannis he remembered. One of his arms was reaching into the iron grate, where the door must have been. He was speaking into that cell, and Jon was able to make out the features of a man within.

"What's one bastard boy against a kingdom?" Stannis asked to the man behind the cell. Jon could feel the hair standing on the back of the neck. A cold gust of wind blew down the tunnel and everything he saw around him turned to ice before breaking and disappearing leaving an open cell door that led him to another sight.

This time it was a cave, one with weirwood roots lining its walls and a seat fashioned from a tree.

"It's time," an ancient voice occupying the weirwood throne proclaimed. Its speaker was a pale skeletal figure whose rotted blacks instantly marked him as a man of the Night's Watch.

"Time for what?" The voice of a young boy asked.

Jon's eyes were drawn to a boy with auburn hair who sat on smaller throne of Weirwood. His features twiched in recogition when he realized that it was Bran, his voice was a little deeper than Jon recalled, he even sounded more familiar through the weirwood.

"For the next step. For you to go beyond skinchanging and learn what it means to be a greenseer."

"The trees will teach him," for the first time Jon noticed the strange creatures that were also present in the cavern. Their skin was nut brown dappled with spots of white, their eyes were golden like those of cats. Jon had never seen them before, but he knew enough to know that these were the Children of the Forest. The speaker held a many faced bowl of Weirwood which contained a white substance with what looked to be splotches of blood. "This is the paste of Weirwood seeds, this will awaken your gifts as a greenseer."

A thought flickered in his mind, was this lord Brynden that the voice of Bran had mentioned earlier?

"Bran!" Jon called out, but he did not hear him, no body seemed to pay attention to his presence, they only vanished like those before fading into mist until only the ugly withered thing on the overgrown seat of Weirwood remained. "Lord Brynden, is that you!"

Lord Brynden did not vanish as the rest did. It merely cocked it head, and Jon felt a mysterious force trying to enter his mind. A cry of fear left his mouth, he was being warged.

He had seen many of the free-folk skinchange into their animals, but he had never seen anyone skinchange into a fellow man. The creature's will entered his head with overpowering force.

It was agreed among those who warged never to enter another man's mind, and now Jon understood why. If a man's soul could be raped, than this was how.

It has been a long time since I saw a living person in blacks, A voice in his head that was not his spoke.

Who are you? He thought against the invading force. His body suddenly began moving against his own will.

I had many names when I was young and quick like you, some call me the three eyed crow, among other names for I watch the world with a thousand eyes and one and many of them have followed you.

A leg lifted, one that he didn't control, and he felt his body jerk with the movement of an unwilling footstep.

You seek to stop the inevitable. The darkness that cannot be stopped.

His body jerked forward again and suddenly, Jon was overlooking a ravine

You hope to preserve the realms of men, but you don't want to see the change. You want to be a hero, but you fight your true nature. You were meant for great things, things greater than wearing a cloak, but to realize them, you must submit to the power of the cold and worship its icy dieties.

Bastard born I too was, but I have hold greater power when i'm gone to the trees, than I did in life, and so can you.

His head lowered and he tried not to look, at the ravine below. No sooner had he closed his eyes, however that a great pain took him in the forehead, as if a sword entered him. He screamed in pain and cursed the monstrous thing on his weirwood chair with his mouth which he could now control.

You will see, and with more than your eyes.

His knees gave out from the pain, and suddenly the terror in his head was gone. But he was falling down the ravine, it faded from view, but he could still feel himself falling.

All around his saw strange sights. "You know nothing, Jon Snow." Ygritte was mocking him one final time as she died in the snow. A lizard-lion emerged from murky water and bared its teeth long and sharp as daggers.

Rubies flew like drops of blood from the chest plate of a dying knight in regal armor, and he sank to his knees in the water and with his last breath murmured a name. He saw a dragon, on a mountian carved into stone breathing fire as it woke. Ice, the sword of house Stark, came down on his father's own neck as he whispered a prayer. Ghost was by a stream north of the wall drinking from the cold fresh water.

A city with a tall tower in its harbor was aflame, its collective shrieks were heard. He heard a familiar raven call out "King." A man in black with no face but a giant pomegranite, approached an altar occupied by a woman in red bound to it hand and foot drawing his dagger, as a beautiful creature of ice looked on and gave a nod of approval. A blue rose was being consumed by flame. On an island of carved weirwoods, men in green knelt before him.

Suddenly the visions were all ripped away.

Jon Snow opened his eyes with a scream, and tumbled out of bed. Much to his surprise, he felt the force of the ironwood flooring kiss his body.

He looked around, he knew this place, it was the room that he had called his own as a boy. Jon looked down at his body, and realized that once again he was a boy as well.

It had worked, he was back in Winterfell long before any of the madness that would later grip the north happened. He felt around the room, to make sure that this was not another illusion.

Though his quarters where fairly simple in terms of furnishings to his trueborn siblings as he recalled, the familiar, and very comfortable surroundings and it almost brought a tear to his eyes as he thought of his mostly carefree childhood and the happy times. He remembered the blankets over his bed of black wool, and the small stove that against the wall that heated his room. Looking under the bed, Jon found the small chest where many of his personal effects were stored.

He pulled it out and opened it, taking out the darks furs that were covering all other contents. After putting it on, Jon closed the box and bolted out of his room...

And tripped over a small figure.

Once again, he felt the assurance of the solid wooden floors when he fell. When he turned around, he saw that he had tripped over one of his brothers. At first glimpse, he almost thought it was Rickon. That was clearly not the case, as he been crouched in front of Jon's door.

A second look convinced him that this was Bran at five namedays. The Bran Stark he knew was always a curious boy, who loved to eavesdrop on anyone.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "Are you hurt?"

His trueborn five year-old brother shook his head. "I'm ok"

his expression then turned to one of sheepish curiosity.

"Who's lord Brynden? He sounds mean."

This one was lots of fun, I don't know if I can top this.