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Chapter 33: Air to Breath

Silence.

Years later, when I found myself wishing for some peace, I would think back on this. This crushing quiet. The sound of absolutely nothing. Behind me, I could hear the beat of a thousand breaths, the whisper of voices all trying to mute their own horror but in front there was the silence of the graves. The silence of a hundred lives snuffed out in seconds.

Robb's breath was harsh in my ears, his hands tightening and loosening on me like he was trying to distract me from such violence. As if he was making sure I was still there, in his arms. As if my body gave him a splinter of comfort.

Those small motions almost made me laugh. The thought of anyone finding comfort in me was ludicrous. My skin felt grimy as if the death that had been wrought had rubbed off on me, the grime and gore staining my skin.

Sansa's breath stuttered from her in hard gasps, her eyes darting across the fields like she was searching for a single living soul. But I was looking at the same thing that she was and I found none. The keep was nothing more than gray debris, crumbs being shuffled around by vines that convulsed upon each other. The hard-packed dirt was reduced to mulch, vines weaving through each other like one giant beast stuck in an infernal slumber. They almost seemed to breathe, moving in languid pulses like a child napping. They tightened around each other, slipping back and forth through the dirt and blood and body parts.

"I want to see my brother," I said suddenly, eyes trapped on a cluster of vines that were coiled lovingly around a man's chest, knitting through where his hips should have been to nestle into his ribcage. The words grated along my throat, my voice raw from screaming.

I should have felt bad, I realized sluggishly. I blinked around, trying to find the remnants of the people I had feared only a few minutes before. I tried to think of that feeling I had had last night - scared but hopeful. I didn't feel bad. I didn't feel like any of them deserved anything more than what they had gotten. I would have done it all over again.

I didn't feel bad.

But I didn't feel good either.

The bloodthirsty rage had faded with so much carnage, recoiling back inside of me like a strange visitor sent back to their chambers. But in its place was…emptiness. I was left a table with no guests, no one to speak to, no one to yell with. There was… nothing. Nothing but the crushing knowledge - the knowledge that - that all of this - all of this was for nothing.

Their deaths… meant nothing.

"My Lord," Theon suddenly said, his face stony as he wheeled his horse a bit closer. His mouth tightened as those green eyes flicked to me and hardened even more at whatever he saw there. "I can't let you go out there."

I couldn't bear to look at him. A terrible, vile feeling was rising inside of me. One that made me want to tear his hands away from me and run. Run so far and so hard that no one would be able to catch me. Run until I couldn't anymore, my body giving way like a tool cranked to hard.

Robb's voice was quiet and firm when he finally answered. "I don't think the Bolton's will be giving us much trouble, Theon."

There was a long pause and in it, I could hear every single word that Theon was too afraid to say aloud. "I wasn't talking about them."

I kept my mouth shut, my eyes drifting to where a coil of vines was tightening almost lovingly around the corpse of a child. They had almost reached the keep doors… A distant part of me fluttered in horror, letting out a high scream before darkness enveloped it. It would have been somehow even more revolting in my mind to feign dismay now. What right did I have to mourn any of the lives that I had taken so quickly?

Robb's big hands moved, hovering near my face for a moment before he was pushing back the wiley hair at my temple, his touch so soft. So gentle. And all I could force myself to do was blink. I should have felt sad. I should have felt like never getting up. I should have felt rage or satisfaction or - or -

His arms tightened on me, pulling my back more securely to his chest. "We don't have anything to fear," Robb said, gently enough that, for a moment, I thought he was only talking to me. It baffled me that he still wanted to hold me close, that he still wanted to talk to me like this. "Isn't that right, Willa?"

"I won't tear out your insides if that's what you mean," I whispered, feeling a spark of anger flare beneath my skin. I hadn't gone mad. I knew where I was. I knew perfectly well what I had done. I was painfully sane. Maybe that was even more frightening.

"See, Theon?" Robb threw over his shoulder as he kicked his horse to a canter. "Perfectly safe."

"Robb," Sansa's voice warned as we passed her, her eyes sharp.

Robb's voice roughened in slight reprimand. "I've told you that we're safe. I've told you where we're going, when we're going, and I expect you to either come or stay behind and watch as we collect our dead. I give the honor of a choice to everyone here." His eyes were frigid as he threw a hard glance over his shoulder, catching his sister and friend and small court of lords in a withering stare. "What isn't up for debate is the movements of myself or my wife. Is that clear?"

It only took a moment of tense silence before each of them dipped their heads in stiff acceptance.

He didn't wait for any more discussion.

My eyes kept track of the ground as we drifted forward, slowly, carefully like the final draws of breath before the Stranger finally took the soul. We moved this way and that, Robb's hands tightening and loosening along the reigns as he guided out mount around the deep trenches and coiled vines.

I hadn't noticed but there had been a small gathering of men flanking our army, their movements barely hidden by the dips and hills around the Dreadfort and the sparse outcroppings of trees. If this had been any other fight, he might have won. I wanted to snort. As it was, my weapons needed little more than a thought, a single scream, a single name. Even though I hadn't known where they were, my vines did and they tore into them with feverish frenzy.

It was something to be feared. I would have feared it. Such a single-minded attack… such utter destruction in minutes…

"My lady." Our house had come to a stop, the ground beneath us nothing more than mud and withering foliage. Blood and spit and urine mixed it all up into a slush, the smell so strong that I nearly gagged. Men rarely got to leave this world in dignity, no matter what the poems said. They would leave in screams and begging if they were unlucky. Or the dignity would be taken from them after when their bodies released.

I didn't say anything, slipping from Robb's arms, my slippers and hem growing heavy and cold from the vile mud beneath. The horses would go no further unless we wished to render them lame within steps. This was a field that I had made by myself, one that was near impossible to navigate even without a mount.

Sansa and Theon and the other lords followed warily, their tight lips and shuttered eyes giving away very little. I could only assume that they had seen the treasures of war and this was just another to add to the pile. There was nothing new about the carnage, nothing startling except for the means to this end. Lord Glover was the only one who seemed frazzled by the whole ordeal, his eyes tracking to a teenage boy who had been standing near the front. Or at least that's what I assumed by the placement of his head which was the only thing left of him, my vines curling through his bloody hair.

"Willa." Robb's soft voice drew my attention, his solid form deeper within the trenches, his hair shivering in a burst of wind as it rolled over the fields. His eyes were cold, cold like distant oceans and ice upon the sills of windows.

He took one more step forward and a groan like the construction of a million vipers rumbled around us.

His feet had reached the only section of land utterly untouched, the grass still there, covered in a light dusting of snow.

"My lord, please," Theon snapped sharply and I heard the worry like a series of pokes. I was tired of their worry. I was tired of their nagging. I was tired of them acting like these fucking people were the victims just because we could see their insides decorating the ground.

"Do shut up, Lord Greyjoy," I hissed, earning the startled stare of nearly everyone gathered. I hiked up my skirts, trampling through the muck, shoes slipping and sliding and sinking. "If I wanted to tear out your fucking eyes and feed them to you, they would already be in your belly. Let's stop playing these games. Now either help me or get out of my fucking way."

His eyes blazed, his jaw setting as the wind and his own emotions whipped his cheeks a ruddy red. At the very edge with our abandoned mounts, Sansa barked out a quick guffaw. I didn't have time to deal with any of it.

"My wife is rather marvelous, is she not?" I heard Robb murmur to Torrhen as Theon moved to the side with a dramatic, insolent bow. He didn't help me. Not that I could particularly blame him for not wanting to touch me.

I was sure that everyone thought me a monster. And it was a hard point to argue in the current setting.

I moved across the field to Robb with single-minded focus, one step in front of the other like a horse with blinders. I didn't look up. Didn't look at those monstrous wooden Xs staked into the ground. I looked at the grass, the vines. I kept my eyes there until there was nowhere else to go, until the stale scent of decaying meat and blood nearly gagged me.

I took a breath and then another. This was where I needed to look up. This was where I needed to do something. The chilled air stung at my throat, my shoulders hunching as my whole body seemed to dip. It felt like someone was pressing down at the nape of my neck, whispering urgently into my ear. Don't look. You can't look.

"They nailed them," a low voice murmured and my breath tore out of me on a harsh exhale. Don't look, that voice begged, and I couldn't. I was a coward. After all of this, I was nothing more than a small, insignificant coward.

"We don't have any tools to pry the bolts out." The ground wavered in front of me, those wretched wooden frames sitting buried into the ground, surrounded by trampled grass. If I looked up the barest amount, I would be able to see the tips of my brother's - his - his toes.

A dizzying memory of him pressing those feet to my chest and neck as I squealed for him to get away crashed across my mind and the world spun even more.

Robb didn't say anything. He simply moved forward with a sureness that I would never be able to possess. How did he know what to do? How did he not hesitate?

His hand curled forward and my whole body jerked with the action, my head snapping up as he let out a sharp snarl. "Don't." Robb's cool eyes met mine, his face thankfully blank as Torrhen lingered just on the other side - I gulped down a hard breath, staring up and up and up - Gods. Gods.

Every tendon and muscle was on stark display, my brother's lovely body shaved away of all humanity. The frigid air burned, expanding in my lunges so much that I choked. His head lulled, the muscles in his neck bending so that his chin nearly touched his chest, his hair an unruly mess shadowing his face.

Beside him, Walda's body sagged, a rope cinched tight around her waist. They had given her no dignity in her death. Unlike my brother, they had cut away every bit of her, taking her lips and nose, her teeth gleaming in the cold sun. They had - they had gouged out her eyes as well.

I gasped in lungfuls of air, dazed by the horror.

"Willa?" Robb whispered softly. I couldn't drag my eyes away from them, my whole body locked in this one moment. I would wake screaming from this. I would relive this moment every day of my mortal life.

"You'll hurt them," I blurted, winded and lost. It sounded like I had run miles and miles as if every breath was being pushed out of my lunges by a mighty hand. I felt my knees weaken. "You'll-"

I stopped myself. They were dead. They were dead. I blinked, dazed.

Robb's eyes tracked me, taking in my wild gaze, the way my breath came in rapid, deep gusts. His jaw hardened at whatever he saw there as I finally met his gaze before he tore away, giving Torrhen a silent nod.

They had to break his hands and feet. I gulped down a yelp at the sound, my whole body seizing. His hands a feet were barely there anymore when his body finally sagged, stiff and heavy. I moved forward before I could think, clutching at him, his body so much heavier than I had expected.

"I've got you, my lady," Theon whispered in my ear and I finally realized that I was shaking so hard that my skirts were making an insistent ruffling sound. His arms banded around me and my brother, guiding us to the damp ground.

They don't tell you about how stiff a body gets. If it hadn't been for that hair, that iron, earthy, rotting scent that clung to him then I would have thought he was nothing more than a doll made of wax and wire. The tendons that they had exposed were dry and frail as paper.

His body draped across my lap, his shoulders so much thinner than I had remembered them. A deep part of me welled up, crashing against my ribcage like a bird clambering for escape. It was horror. It was such agony that I could barely draw in a solid breath. His hair shifted, flopping away from his brow-

Gods, they had left in his eyes.

I struggled for breath, trapped. Trapped in those eyes so like mine. Trapped. Gods, I couldn't get out. The sun blazed down at me, stunning me as I floundered. Agony lashed through my chest, sizzling along my lunges as I tried and failed to draw in anything more than a sip of air at a time.

"Breath," Robb hissed in my ear. I couldn't. Stars speckled her brother, his harsh red muscles and bones and- God's they had washed his hair after. They had touched- "Breath, Willa."

I couldn't. The crunch and thump of my sister's body landing beside me, forced me closer to an edge that I wasn't sure I was prepared to meet. The scent of the lemon soap that they had used to get all of the grit and gore from Corlin's hair stung at my nose.

"Willa?" A new voice. Air still punched down her throat like a fist driving into flesh but that small, feeble voice-

"Daltis," I breathed, searching out a small tangle of vines a few steps away, all tangled up like a grave… or a hiding place.

Robb gently took Corlin from my arms as I stumbled to my feet, Theon shadowing my steps as I made my way clumsily toward the feeble cry. My vines had made a small nest just large enough for a body, interlocking like a fist wrapped around something precious.

I urged them to slip away, fighting against my own wild, rampaging emotions. Those keen, cunning eyes blinked blurrily up at me, Daltis' body curled up in the fetal position, chin tucked tight to his knees like a scared child. I stared down at him, my mind and emotions struggling to catch up with one another. Some sort of oil darkened his torn clothes, staining his skin a noxious yellow.

I should have been happy.

Distantly, I realized this. But the thought was there and gone in a second, replaced by pure, raging anger. I hated the very sight of him. I despise how he gulped in a breath, his eyes shining brightly up at me like he was happy - happy to see me. I wanted to claw his fucking eyes out.

"Willa," he breathed, swaying as he rose.

"Daltis Frey." Grover had wandered closer, his hand resting easily on the hilt of his blade. He eyed the scrawny Frey warily.

"How long?" The words sounded like ash and rusted nails, dirt and scum water. I bared my teeth as my brother flinched, his face paling beneath the muck. The sting of my nails break the skin of my palms centered me. "How long was my brother dead?"

Daltis' throat bobbed in a sharp inhale, his eyes glassing over with pain. The wind shrieked a mournful call across the field.

Pain lashed across my insides. "Tell me that he died last night. Tell me that you didn't come out to meet us and-"

He didn't say anything, his eyes staring down at the vines at his feet. Theon was a dark shadow at my back, his warmth barely registering. The silence dragged on, unforgivable.

"SPEAK!" Daltis jerked, my voice shrill and thundering even to my own ears.

His lips parted, closed and then parted again. "He - they… The night before you arrived."

My whole entire world crumbled. I felt the very ground beneath me shift.

He had been - before we had even arrived. I stumbled, my knees giving out for a moment before I could regain my bearings. They had - This had all - I looked around, seeing nothing more than blood. Blood as far as the eye could see.

"I had to-" Daltis whispered, his delicate features pleading as he shrank farther into himself. I had never seen someone look closer to the edge - closer to misery, his skin worn and thin, lips chapped and cracked. They had beat him so badly. "You don't know what they did-"

"Shut the fuck up," I hissed, low and vicious and so filled with hatred that even Glover flinched. Daltis shrank further into himself. I felt vicious, cruel words bubble and fester on the tip of my tongue. But - what was the point? What did any of it matter? What would I get from hurting him more? My lips twisted into a disgusted sneer. "Lord Glover, will you kindly show my brother to a holding pin?"

"Willa-" Daltis started, reaching forward like he wanted to touch me.

I turned away from him, hearing him give a tired struggle as Glover took him. "You are a liar. I would sooner cut out my own tongue than listen to any tales you spin for yourself to make yourself seem like anything other than a lying rat."

Robb watched me as I made my way slowly back to him, his hands so gentle as they held my brother. He didn't say anything as I knelt, dragging Corlin back to me, my other hand reaching to clasp on to Walda's arm.

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