Author's Note

I do not own A Song of Ice and Fire.


After her last pregnancy, Cat's fourth is her easiest. The babe is calm and barely impacts her until the latest moons.

She is in her eighth when Ned finds her crying in his bed.

"What is it?" he asks.

"I'm scared." She runs her hands over her bump. "What if it's like the others?"

It. Not he, the way the girls had been.

Ned wraps his arms around her. "Then we love them."

"Our children, Ned. You've seen our children."

"And they're wonderful."

"They're monsters!"

"But they've got you for a mother. We teach them the right way."

"You won't let me teach them the ways of the Seven," she grumbles. That remains a matter of contention between them. Ned built her a sept, but his children have to be raised under the Old Gods. They are Northerners, Starks, and if they want the respect of the North, they must follow the North's Gods.

"The Seven are not my Gods," Ned reminds her gently.

Cat only curls into his embrace.

#

After her first three births, Bran's is easy and quick. Cat requests he stay, which is unusual, but Luwin concedes, perhaps knowing their fears.

Like Robb and Sansa, Bran is born with the Tully looks, and as Sansa had done, he settles immediately in Cat's arms. But she is not at ease, Ned sees, and soon takes the babe from her.

"Did you want to name him?" he asks. He has asked this before, but every time Cat has rejected the idea, and she does so again. She fears the babe, even while it looks more human than Arya and more tame than Robb. Ned smiles at him. "Then he shall be called Brandon. Brandon Stark."

And if this babe is human, then his brother will be honored

#

Arya should have another two years in the nursery, but she is moved to her own chambers. They might have placed her with Sansa, but she cannot share with any other. She is too much of a liability. So Arya is given her own chambers, and staff to mind her, and Bran is placed in the nursery.

He is a quiet babe, after the whirlwind of fury that was Arya, and rarely, if ever, makes a noise. He feeds without terrorising the nursemaids, and as he grows, he plays without being a terror.

But Cat is not at ease. Ned sees how she wants to love Bran, the perfect son she dreamed of, but she does not trust the babe.

The older ones never harm him. They circle round him like a pack of wolves, but they never bear fangs.

"They sense him too," Cat whispers. And Ned doesn't want to believe it, but at the same time he sees it, the way they have accepted Bran so readily, the way they never accepted Jon.

#

Bran's eyes are always too-knowing, and he watches as though he knows much of the world. Arya is curious and keeps form around him, and Sansa brings birds to make them dance until Ned again forbids her to do so.

Cat has requested septas to teach the girls, but none stay long. Their current is an older woman known as Septa Mordane, who is most charmed by Sansa and most terrorised by Arya. Robb, meanwhile, takes his lessons with Ned and Luwin, and learns swordsmanship from Rodrik and Jory.

Slowly, Cat becomes more at ease with Bran. He has yet to show his other, beyond being the quietest baby Ned has ever known, and perhaps that endears him. He sees Cat in the nursery with the boy sometimes, singing and tending to him the way she had Sansa. He is their easiest child, and even Old Nan tends to him sometimes, when the younger maids need a rest.

That is something Ned is glad for after Bran's birthday, because one of the maids comes flying to find him, and he doesn't even have to ask to know.

He finds Cat in one of the rooms alongside the nursery, rocking with her arms cradled though nothing is in them and humming to herself.

"Cat?" he asks, but she does not respond. Ned hurries too the nursery, where Old Nan is standing by Bran's crib, the same crib his siblings had used, and pleading with him like one might a grown man.

"She is your mother, little lord! You must come back to your own self!"

Bran is quiet as always, but his Tully blue eyes are vacant, as though he's a thousand leagues away.

"What's happening?" Ned asks.

"He's a skinchanger, my lord. He's trying to take Lady Catelyn."

Ned returns to Catelyn and catches her arms, pushing her against the wall. "Stop this at once!"

The haze clears from Cat's eyes, and she stares up at him, uncomprehending, and then collapses into his arms.

A child's wail echoes from the nursery.

#

. Cat refuses to be around Bran alone after that, even though he is her own son. She fears him, even more so than she fears the elder three. Ned removes Old Nan from caring for him, too, and instils the rule that no one is ever to be around Bran alone, though it does not stop the child climbing into their bodies sometimes and making them dance. Only Sansa and Ned can bring him back to him again. Ned thinks perhaps he is the worst of them.