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Dead Little Crow [discontinued]

Summary:

She never wanted to be here, trapped in a world that can never seem to follow through on its threats of death. She wished it would.

By divine injustice, she finds herself at the Wall in the midst of the Night's Watch. Her disguise as a boy keeps her safe - for now. Both the living and the dead, however, grasp for her power, eager to cup fire in the palms of their hands. It is power that could set the world on a course it was never meant to take.

And she can't say anything about it. Literally.

 

This fic is based off the television show far more than the books.

Notes:

Hi everyone!
This is my first Game of Thrones fanfiction. Hopefully it's worthy of being a good Modern Character in Westeros story.

Chapter 1

Summary:

Revised 6/26/20

Chapter Text

It was too cold, too gloomy. Too…too…

Haunting.

Something hummed within the great wall looming over the creaking wagon she and other recruits swayed in. It made her stomach clench. Then again, her stomach always clenched, whether it be from fear or fury or both. But was she the only one who felt it? That ancient, frozen power that seeped into everything for miles? Its pulse, its breath, grew stronger with each icy wind that swept through her hunched frame.

She didn’t want to be here. Anywhere but here. This was one of the worst places to be. Even the people who already lived in hellish parts of the world thought to themselves, “Well, fuck, at least I’m not at the Wall.”

Why did she leave Braavos again? It was warm in Braavos. The people smiled more. Not that she smiled with them.

But she had departed from the Free City over a year ago, and now that she was here, amidst the Crows, she would never see it again. Being at Castle Black meant only two things: flee past the Wall, fight, and die—or stay here, fight, and die.

Except dying was an odd concept to her, now. Something almost unattainable. It should have been a standard, shouldn’t it? Even when she tried to force it upon herself, it didn’t grant her what it granted everyone else.

An escape from this world.

The rat-faced man with a scar uglier than hers was staring again. What was his name? She couldn’t remember.

You just remember him dying.

He examined her blunt features, the square jaw with too-high cheekbones, the broken nose, and the splotchy pink birth mark spanning across half her face with a lengthy scar stretching over it. He was trying to decide if she was just a dainty boy or a girl in disguise. She hoped that, like the rest of those who questioned her on the way here, he’d guess the former. Though, she had learned not to underestimate even stupid men—their violence made up for any idiocy.

The gates to Castle Black opened for the two wagons. It smelled like piss, blood, leather, and metal. She used to be nauseated by similar stenches but had grown used to it over time. That was just how everywhere in this world smelled. And with such cold temperatures, it wasn’t quite as bad.

“Alright! Get out, the lot of you!” a Crow ordered. She stood along with the rest of them and hopped out, legs and back popping from stiffness. They lined up in a row. The rat-faced man stood next to her. Two Crows strolled along the line. One loudly asked for their names, looked down at a scroll of paper, then listed their crimes to the other Crow. The one that didn’t speak was a hard man with eyes set too close together and a permanent scowl.

She imagined them different. Alliser and Slynt. But of course they looked different. Those she previously caught glimpses of in passing wore faces she had not been familiar with. Perhaps if she reached her hand out to them when she had the chance, maybe—maybe she’d be somewhere else. Somewhere better. Somewhere like a home.

When they came to her, she was ordered to give her name.

She didn’t. They waited impatiently for a few moments before the other one huffed and said, “I know this one. Bramble, Lord Thorne. Says here he’s a mute. A murderer and a mute.”

“Got your tongue cut out, boy?” Lord Thorne questioned. She gave her head a single shake. “Born without a voice?” A nod. He grunted and continued onto the next.

It was too cold. Unnaturally cold. Nothing like the winters back home.

Home is another world away. Remember that?

Bramble wished she didn’t have to. She wished—distantly, bitterly wished—that she was home again, instead of having to face what was coming for her.

How can you prepare for something like this?

By the time Bramble and the other recruits had been addressed and outfitted in black, warm clothing, nightfall bore upon them. She found a corner in the rowdy mess hall and kept her head down, eating tasteless, hot stew. And when Castle Black became shrouded in the pitch of lightless winter, Bramble stared at the dark ceiling that roofed the recruit barracks, clinging to the only thing she had known for the past three years.

Survival.

 

 

Chapter 2

Summary:

Revised 6/26/2020

Chapter Text

Bramble had a training sword shoved into her hand the next day. She drew it close to herself, hands gripping the frigid hilt, remembering the last time she had a similar weapon. The last time she killed. It had felt good. Too good.

“You’re the mute, aren’t you?” the ranger she prepared to spar with asked. He stood taller than her by more than a foot and just knew he was going to squash Bramble. But despite that, she glimpsed a gentleness about him underneath his hulking exterior. Maybe, though, her imagination of people being better than they really were played tricks on her isolated mind.

He’s different, the one who’s staring her down. Different and familiar. They all are.

Bramble nodded once. “And you never thought to become a Silent Sister?”

The recruits and Crows around the two of them shared a good laugh over the joke.

Bramble glared at the ranger, took a sharp breath, then attacked with such sudden swiftness it caught him off-guard. He only managed to parry two, three times before Bramble sidestepped and mercilessly hit him in the side with the flat of the training sword. He cried out and collapsed onto the half-frozen, muddy ground.

Be careful, Bramble reminded herself. Someone your size shouldn’t be stronger than a full-grown man.

Seeing the big ranger felled only spurred the laughter, but there was no vitriol to it. Some even cheered. When was the last time she had been part of the laughter? She didn’t like it—didn’t like the noise. She never wanted to fucking laugh again. What was the point?

Bramble’s mouth remained serious. She watched the ranger stagger upright. “So not a Silent Sister, then,” he smiled with a slight wince. He held his arm out to grasp. After staring at it for a moment, Bramble took it. She felt warmth bleed through his heavy garments. “The name’s Grenn.”

Grenn.

“The lad looks like he can handle himself,” said another man the rest of the Crows had gathered around. He regarded her stoically, face too grim for his age. Now he was somebody Bramble recognized instantly—even if he wasn’t the spitting image of the actor. Bramble could sense the weight he carried, the dread that there wasn’t enough time. “Give the other recruits a chance to get knocked off their feet.”

Grenn shared another nod with Bramble before she handed off the training sword to another recruit. Her eyes met Jon’s for a brief instant. Fire surged behind him against a dark and snowy storm. Bramble would have been surprised at the revelation, had she not already known just who he was.

Jon’s gaze passed over in less than a second. Then Bramble went back to being cold, standing still, and planning for an escape.

-

“Childish Gambino is probably the greatest artist of the twenty-first century,” her dad declared over the dinner table. “If The Rock and Donald Glover run for joint prime ministers, not only would I vote for them, but with sure knowledge that this grand country could become what our ancestors wanted it to be.”

“Okay, honey,” her mother calmly replied, smirking down at her plate as she cut a cooked chicken breast.

Bramble’s father took another good swig of zinfandel. “I’m telling you, we need to—”

The sound of several people sitting down forced Bramble to relinquish the memory she selfishly tried to keep intact. It slipped from her fingers like water, ocean water, leaving her staring at bloody hands that would have made her parents weep.

She looked up from her meal, then scowled to hide surprise at the sight of familiar Crows sitting across from her.

“If you keep it up with the sour looks, nobody will want to walk to you,” said the scrawny one with a glint in his eyes. She could hear the actor in him, the singer. It was in her mother’s voice.

“He’s mute, Pyp,” said the other ranger. Bramble recognized him as Eddison, the other ranger beside Jon when they had recruits training. “He can’t talk back, anyways.”

“There’s a lot one can show in a face, you know,” Pyp frowned. To her, he leaned forward and asked, “What, don’t know how to change your expression? Did it freeze that way? Cold up here, innit?”

“I suppose if I was a mute, I wouldn’t have a bright face,” Grenn contemplated.

“Oh, leave him alone,” the chubby Crow mildly chastised. That was Sam. She could recognize him not by his stature, but by the pure kindness lacing his words. How had he stayed so kind in a world like this? Bramble hadn’t. She wanted to call him a fake, but she’d be lying to herself if she did.

He spoke to Bramble directly. “Forgive them. They don’t know the things they say, sometimes.” He took a bite of his meal. “Ah—None of us know your name. What might it be?”

“Yeah, we wanna know just who it was that knocked Grenn on his ass,” Eddison laughed.

“Me, too,” Grenn said.

“Do you know how to write?” Samwell inquired, flourishing his wooden spoon like a quill. “Maybe you can put it down so we’ll know.”

Bramble could shake her head and lie. It would keep her safer. But Sam’s earnest eyes and the other’s actual interest in her put pressure on a long unused spot in her brain, and it quickly collapsed her resolve.

She gave a single nod, her scowl turning almost pained. Sam grinned and quickly reached down to pull out an extra scroll from within his coat. “You gonna pull a quill and inkpot out your ass?” Eddison questioned. Sam pointedly ignored him and set the parchment and a piece of coal in front of Bramble.

Pushing her stew aside, Bramble picked up the coal. It sat heavy and awkward between her fingers. Clumsily pressing the tip down to the paper, she wrote down her name, wondering how long it had been since she’d written anything at all.

Once Bramble finished, she slid it back to the men so they could read it. “Bramble, eh?” Samwell said aloud.

Edd was the second to say something about it. “You were named after a thorny bush?”

Amusement flickered at the corners of Bramble’s lips. That was what her dad always said.

“I think I saw something,” Grenn observed seriously. “Maybe you’re not as dark and deep as Jon after all.”

She returned to an impassive scowl.

“You’re a good fighter,” Jon said. “Who taught you?”

Bramble reluctantly picked up the piece of coal again and wrote:

Myself.

“Yourself? That’s incredible.” Bramble shrugged up and down. It was a better response than “I was magically and mysteriously bestowed with the skills when I came to this shitty fucking world.”

“Where were you from?” Sam continued to press. The unusual amount of attention made her want to squirm, but she scraped the charcoal across the parchment in response. The scratching sound made him flinch.

Nowhere

There was a brief silence. “Well,” Eddison breathed, “I don’t recall any Nowhere in Westeros. Essos, maybe?”

Again, Bramble felt the corner of her lip crawl upwards for a second or two. “Well,” said Jon with a small smile, “Welcome to the Night’s Watch, Bramble of Nowhere.”

A sort of heat ignited inside her stomach. That desire to belong.

Bramble quickly suffocated it to maintain the empty space in her chest. Emotions like that would spiral out-of-control and make her suffer.

But she had to survive here. And in order to survive—in order to hide her true identity—she’d have to get close to some people. These men, maybe? But they were important; Bramble wasn’t.

She came from another world, though. That had to count for something, right?

In most cases—in all cases—it never did.

Unnerved by the notion of expressing some semblance of humanity, again, Bramble scowled more and hunkered down over her stew, trying to make it clear that she didn’t want to be poked and prodded any more.

The men still upheld their kindness, though, and asked no further questions. They allowed her to listen to their conversations, letting her gather that Jon had just returned from beyond the Wall after infiltrating the approaching wildling army. He wanted to go back and kill the mutineers who had betrayed the Order and killed Lord Commander Mormont.

That was where she landed. Great. The wildlings would come, fight, and die now, only to return later to fight and die for sworn enemies.

So much death. Bramble used to want to prevent it, to make people see reason. But nobody listened to someone without a voice. They hadn’t listened before, and they wouldn’t listen here.

Jon needed men to go with him to Craster’s Keep. Eddison and Grenn said they were with him; they had barely escaped with their lives from that place. Jon didn’t ask Bramble to join him. He didn’t even acknowledge her.

But she would go. It was a chance to see what beyond the Wall was like. To see if she could survive out there. Bramble wasn’t going to last long here. Even if she could hide her breasts, her privates, and her period for now, something would slip up. Somebody would figure it out. Bramble got herself trapped, and the only way to get out was if she continued northward. Because to go back meant…meant running straight into the same things she fled from.

When Jon stood up in the mess hall and asked for volunteers to go with him, Bramble silently rose. She was a good fighter; at least the others knew that.

The rat-faced man stood up to volunteer as well. His name, Bramble found, was Locke. She didn’t like him in the show, and she didn’t like him in reality. He had a shroud of darkness around his shoulders, with twisted vines crawling up from the bowels of the earth and grasping his heart. Bones jutted from his neck and shoulder, reminding Bramble of just how he was going to die.

He deserved it, though.

Jon Snow had the flame of a dragon in his breast, yet bore claws and fangs made of ice. The cloak of Lord Commander wrapped around his shoulders, but blood poured from his abdomen before turning to ash. It was still a hair-raising thing to see, even if Bramble knew what it all meant.

Pyp had a thousand faces and voices hiding behind him, whispering and giggling. Death crawled up his feet, ready to catch him when he fell.

Grenn had a bull standing over him, with his steady gait and powerful force. He was strong and gentle, and the memories of a farm still etched into his hands. But death, too, awaited him.

Edd had the cloak of Lord Commander on his shoulders also, ice on his breath, and the hands of the dead grasping his arms, his throat.

Sam had the chains of a maester wrapped around his waist, a crown of valor, and ancient texts tucked under his left arm while a sword just as old held with his right hand.

Bramble wished she didn’t have this…Sight. She didn’t understand why she had another thing gifted to her when she came to Westeros. It wasn’t as if she didn’t already have a pretty clear idea of how things played out. So how come she was given such a useless ability in exchange for her voice?

She couldn’t recall what it sounded like, anymore.

“Are you sure you want to go, lad?” Edd asked Bramble when they sat back down and finished up their meal before retiring. “You haven’t even taken the Black; you might die out there.”

“And nobody should want to die beyond the Wall,” Grenn added darkly.

I know, Bramble wanted to say. I know more than anyone. And if I should die, I’d gladly have my corpse burned to nothing but ash. That’s all I’ve wanted for a while, now.

The mutineers also killed Mormont. She had liked Mormont, even if she only knew his character from a scripted television series.

But she just looked at Edd for a hard moment, nodded, and ate the rest of her food.

-

It got colder. Colder and darker, where the air of magic was as brittle as Bramble’s bones. She stuck with Grenn, Eddison and Jon for the journey. It was useful that she could ride a horse, as all of them were given one. Nobody talked much, especially on Bramble’s part.

Don’t try to be funny, Bramble snapped at herself. You left funny on another world. Here, there’s just death, sorrow, and anger.

They dismounted and tied the beasts up to trees when they reached the keep. Bramble felt its energy, its trauma. Like an invisible wound had been hewn open and festered with infection. She could feel the women and their terror, their hatred, their suffering.

Her hands balled into fists.

Locke returned from scouting. “How many?” Jon asked him after a brief greeting.

“Eleven men. Most of them already drunk. No guards posted. They don’t seem to have a care in the world.” He smirked. “We’ll carve them up like walnut pie.”

“Karl was the top paid cutthroat in Flea Bottom,” Grenn said. “I’ve seen what he can do with a knife.”

“Have you seen what I can do with a knife?” Locke asked back.

That made Grenn smile and Bramble scowl. “Not yet.”

Locke looked back to Jon. “There’s a hut on the west side of the keep. We should steer clear of it.”

“Why?”

“They’ve got some hounds chained up inside. Closer we can get without the dogs sniffing us, the better.”

Liar.

Bran was in there. Hodor was in there. Meera and Jojen were in there.

What if she changed the course?

 Dare she?

What if she joined Bran? Was that what she was supposed to do?

Grenn looked up to the darkening sky. “New moon tonight,” he observed.

“Get some rest,” Jon said to them. “We move at sundown.”

Bramble did as he ordered and curled up at the base of a tree, making herself small so she could conserve some warmth. Though her eyes closed, she didn’t sleep. The air was too tense to find it.

Somebody settled beside her. Bramble cracked an eye open and saw Grenn propping himself up against the same tree and breathing out great billows of steam from his mouth.

What do you want? Bramble nearly asked—except she couldn’t. So instead she turned her shoulder away from him and tried making it clear she didn’t want any conversation.

Grenn didn’t catch on. “You’ll be a lot less cold if you huddle with someone else,” he spoke. “Come on; it’s not as bad as you think. The gods aren’t here to judge if two men are shoulder-to-shoulder.”

Bramble glared.

“Is that the only thing you can do? Make a mean face?”

She punched him. He only chuckled softly. “Must be frustrating to not have a voice, eh? ‘M not the smartest, but at least I got one. I can tell people when I want ‘em to shut up.”

A huff from her. That was true. “Stick close to Edd and me if you can. You can fight just fine, but you’ll live if you have another Crow at your back. Got it?”

Slowly, she nodded again.

“Good.”

How fucking annoying. Did she look like she needed another person to care about her well-being? Bramble wouldn’t have come if she couldn’t take care of herself in battle.

Grenn was sincere, though. Such a foreign concept.

After a few fuming moments, Bramble released a stream of agitated air and let herself lean against him.

 

 

 

Chapter 3

Summary:

Revised 6/26/2020

Chapter Text

Too soon did the night overwhelm the icy wasteland. Bramble could see the glow of the keep from a way off, and soon she found herself running right toward it, behind Grenn and Edd. Her breath came sharp and even, and she sunk into that blaze of terror and excitement. She’d kill men, soon, and they’d try to kill her; the thought of her plunging a sword into a man’s belly made her heart race.

The thought of a man plunging his sword into her own belly made her long for what she could not have.

While they screamed war cries into the darkness, Bramble’s own open mouth released a faint, scratchy whisper.

Locke had been right; none of the mutineers were prepared, and a good number of them found their own steely sleep within the first ten seconds of entering the grounds of the keep. Women—the daughter-wives of Craster—screamed and fled from the carnage.

Bramble killed one man by gutting him, another by slicing at his knee before cleaving her blade into his neck, and the last by cutting one’s face nearly in two. Though she had lost sight of Locke, she saw a cleared path to the hut.

Grenn and Edd didn’t take notice as Bramble slipped past, blade still in her hand and thunder inside her ears. She approached the hut and, without pausing, pushed the hide curtain aside and stepped in.

Two people, both around her age, stared back, their wrists and ankles bound. The girl had been strung up; the boy strapped to a pole.

Bramble locked eyes with Jojen and saw him engulfed in flames, but his eyes—his eyes were witnessing her life, her death, her destiny. She could feel it, she could feel him, stripping away secrets she could not see in her own wretched reflection.

Bramble’s mute throat dried. She ignored it as best she could and cut Meera of her bonds before cutting his.

Jojen stared up at Bramble in awe. “You’re not from here,” he whispered. “You’re from…” His eyes widened, but while his next breath came out shaky, it did not tremble in fear.

I know, Bramble mouthed. She glanced over her shoulder, unsure if Locke had been dealt with. Assuming from Bran’s absence and the torn chains formerly attached to the wall, she hoped he had.

“Why is there a dragon latched onto your throat?” Jojen croaked. To answer him, Bramble let out a scratchy whisper. “You want to join us, don’t you? To flee from those who hunt you.”

She glanced away. “The Night King will take you for the power you don’t realize you’ve inherited, yet. Leaving with us does not make you safer. Stay with the Night’s Watch. You will…you will change the course of more than you could imagine with them.”

Something in Bramble crumpled. She wasn’t sure why.

It took a second before she realized her head was shaking. She didn’t want to be at the Night’s Watch, to have her back literally against a wall as those she ran from closed in—

No, Bramble voicelessly spoke. Please, no.

“Don’t you understand?” Jojen said firmly. “If you run any further, you’re giving them what they want. They’ve been pushing you here all along, to put you in the hands of the Night King. You need to stay.”

The cold clutched her limbs, deadened her blood. A shiver ran through her, feeling the form of shadows from far away slouching toward her even now.

Was that fear weighing heavy in her stomach?

“Hodor!” Meera suddenly cried out. Bramble spun and saw a hulking, giant of a man standing at the entrance. Another door was behind him, wooden and bursting with the dead as they grasped at him, tore at his flesh and stabbed him with rusted weapons, bit him with decaying teeth.

For the first time in a long time, Bramble’s expression cracked with horror. Hodor, her lips formed. Hodor.

“Let her pass, Hodor,” Jojen instructed.

“…Her?” Meera repeated.

“A long story,” Jojen said. His face took on an even sicklier sheen after talking to Bramble. “And one that we will never know about. Go in peace, Bramble. May you find what you’ve lost here.”

No. No, wait—she’d come all this way—she had to—fuck! Fuck! No.

She’d grown used to disappointment, to unhappiness.

Bramble dipped her head to him. He returned the gesture. She brushed past Hodor, eyes narrowing to keep the unwanted grief at bay, and walked back out into the cold night.

Okay. That hadn’t worked out. What now? What-fucking-now?

The battle was over by then, and the Crows collected the fresh dead. Bramble joined Grenn’s side as they looked down at one of the fallen. It was Locke, with his bones split at the neck and shoulder. Her scowl remained impassive.

“What in the Seven Hells could do that to a man?” Grenn asked incredulously.

Bramble looked off into the black past the keep, watching figures using darkness to cover their escape. Her heart ached, and she blamed it on her insane ability to cling to any emotion she should have shed when she buried the farm family. Her head ached then, too, and the sting of blood running from the wound on her cheek and into her eye shattered what had already been broken.

Or, maybe it ached like a sore muscle long unused.

“I count ten dead mutineers,” Jon spoke.

“Locke said there were eleven of them,” Edd confirmed. His brows furrowed. “Where’s Rast?”

Not a moment after he asked the question did Bramble feel somebody violently consumed by death by a pair of massive jaws. It almost made her jump.

Her hand found Eddison’s shoulder to get his attention. When he looked to her, she pointed a finger just beyond the edge of the keep and grunted.

“Rast?” Edd repeated. “You saw him go off there?”

Bramble kept pointing her finger. “Well, let’s go after him then,” Grenn said, taking a step forward. Bramble grunted again and shook her head.

“What happened to him?” Jon asked her.

She let her hand drop and gnashed her teeth together. They wouldn’t get it, but it didn’t matter. Nothing freaking mattered.

Bramble turned away from confused expressions and walked over to a corpse to clean her blade. She killed so casually, now, and couldn’t bring herself to feel anything even as she wiped fresh blood off on a man that she might have ended. She never remembered their faces, anyway. They all blurred together into a single, undefined mask of terror and pain.

Sparkles was buried on a late spring afternoon, in a sheet her mom had wrapped the old dog in. “Everything dies, sweetie,” Bramble’s dad explained after he shoveled dirt on top of the bundled pet. “And for something so universal, nobody likes it. But at least Sparkles had a good life with us. With you. She knew she was loved. We’ll always remember her. That’s what death gives us. Memories.”

Would anyone remember these mutineers?

Bramble’s dad was wrong. Death didn’t give memories. Death was death. It took and gave nothing back.

They never got another pet after Sparkles. Her mother loved animals. She loved animals. But it’d been easier to avoid the pain of death by never loving in the first place.

As the others rounded up the dead and the women, Bramble looked off into the blackness once more. She could still run. She could make it on her own.

…Could she?

“Jon!” Grenn suddenly said. His friend turned to him, who was looking in the direction of the main path. Bramble and the rest of the men turned their gazes that way, too. Something made from the snow itself trotted through.

Bramble quickly hid her smile as Ghost walked up to Jon. He was nearly as tall as Bramble and blood stained his maw. He was beautifully dangerous.

She squashed the desire to pet him.

“Where in Seven Hells?” Jon exclaimed, a genuine grin splitting his face. “Come here!” He waved for the dire wolf to meet him, and Ghost did so willingly. Jon crouched down so he was level with the wolf’s head. It whined affectionately when the Crow placed a loving hand behind his ear and said words Bramble couldn’t hear.

She tilted her head and stared at Ghost. Old blood ran through him. Old blood that promised something new.

“What should we do with this lot?” Eddison asked Jon, making him break eye contact with Ghost. He stood and turned his attention to the group of women huddled a few feet off.

“It’s not safe for you here on your own,” he explained to the women. “Mance Rayder has an army heading this way, and there’s worse out there than Mance. Come with us to Castle Black. We can find you work. Keep you safe.”

“Meaning all respect, Ser Crow,” one of the older women answered bitterly, “Craster beat us and worse. Your brother Crows beat us and worse. We’ll find our own way.”

Death only crawled at a few of their feet, waiting patiently. Nothing loomed, nothing lurked. How strange in a monstrous place like this.

“You want to stay here? In Craster’s Keep?”

The woman then spat. “Burn it to the ground,” she growled, “and all the dead with it.”

And so it burned. The heat of the fire gave the first real warmth Bramble had felt in a long time. The vile magic coating the air shied away from the flames and its cleansing power. It protected the corpses from being more than just corpses.

What a world she was in.

What a fucking world.

 

 

 

Chapter 4

Summary:

Revised 6/26/2020

Chapter Text

Bramble “took” the Black the day after they returned to Castle Black. The life of a ranger chose her. It was hard to swear vows when she couldn’t speak, but she meant it more than she thought she would.

Nowhere was safe, according to Jojen’s ominous warning. Not behind the Wall, not past the Wall, and definitely not at Castle Black. But…Grenn and Pyp and Edd and Sam were kind to her, and Jon was a better man than anyone could portray. Bramble should have stayed away from such important characters; she hadn’t directly interacted with any since being here, for better or worse. Westeros was big. Bramble? Next to nothing.

Yet these men acted as though they wanted to bring her into the fold. Bramble tried to dissuade them with a bad attitude, but that only made them act friendlier. It made her fucking irritated.

Wherever their true intentions lay, however, Bramble understood the poor, plain truth that she was on Jon’s side. She selfishly listened as superiors shut down his idea of sealing the tunnel. All the while, the wildling army marched to meet them in battle. Even as they returned to the castle, Bramble could feel the army following them, their feet and their fear making the frozen earth tremble.

And behind them, behind the army, there was nothing. Nothing but the winds of winter scratching at her scalp and thousands of icy eyes stabbing into her back.

Death pooled on the floor of the mess hall. Bramble wished she could see something, anything concerning herself. But whenever she looked at her reflection, all she saw was a blunt, scarred face, sheared black hair, and dark green eyes commonly mistaken for brown. When she was little, she wished she had prettier parts, but now…now she was fortunate. Pretty girls never lasted long in this world. The large birth mark encompassing the entirety of her left eye and washing down to her jawline in splotches would have done the job all on its own. The scar that began at the left corner of her lip and scrawled up to her temple helped even more with the ugliness. It made her look kind of like the Joker. Not that anybody here would appreciate it.

“So?” Sam asked, leaning forward on the table to speak to Bramble amidst the mess hall’s clamor. “You’re one of the Night’s Watch. How does it feel?”

He then hastily pushed forward a piece of parchment and charcoal to write. “You just snatched that out of thin air, didn’t you?” Edd said dryly.

Bramble unrolled the blank parchment and wrote. When she pushed it back to Sam, he read it aloud. “‘It still feels cold.’”

That made them laugh. All except for Jon, who only sat with them. He didn’t listen to anything they said. The boy, Olly, sat next to him, silently eating his stew. Conflict and loss surrounded him, as well as revenge and fear of revenge.

She remembered when her parents talked about how glad they were when Olly died for betraying Jon. But Bramble just felt bad for him. He was just a boy beaten down by war.

He was just a boy.

“Better get used to it,” Grenn said, bringing Bramble’s dark green eyes back to the Crows. “’Cause it’s not going to get warmer anytime soon.”

Perturbed by Olly’s presence and the wildling army at their throats, Bramble motioned for Sam to give her back the parchment. He did so, and she took to writing. When they realized she was writing out something more than a handful of words, they went back to talking amongst themselves. Mostly about the wildlings. A little about the army of the dead. Nothing else.

Bramble had to impatiently wave the piece of parchment to get Sam’s attention once she finished. “Oh! Sorry.” He took it and read, articulating each word so he got them right. “‘Why do you have to fight the wildlings? Why not let them in and become allies to fight the Army of the Dead? If you keep them out, they’ll just become White Walkers. The Wall wasn’t built to keep wildlings out. Obviously. It was to keep the dead out. Battles like these will only weaken us. It’s what they want.’”

Sam’s voice grew softer the more he read Bramble’s message. The men stilled. Jon left his own thoughts to listen—and to grow grim. Olly’s mouth turned into a frown. “Kill the past. Save the future.”

Lamely, Sam muttered the last word. “‘F-fuckers.’”

Six pairs of eyes turned to look at Bramble. She remained unmoving. “It’s not that easy,” Jon eventually spoke. He regarded her in a different light. “They’ve murdered entire villages—they’ll murder us, too, if we don’t defend the Wall. And even if we wanted to, you think Thorne would consider something like that?”

“The wildlings deserve to die,” Olly spoke up, timid but defensive. When her glare settled on him, he shrunk back.

Bramble snatched the parchment back from Sam, who jumped at her action. The charcoal piece scraped and thumped against the hard surface. Edd, who sat nearest to her, read the response once she signaled she was done by tapping the charcoal definitely. “‘If the wildlings deserve to die for what they’ve done to us, then we deserve to die for what we’ve done to them. It’s not about deserve anymore. If everything was about deserve then the world would be empty.’” He paused, glanced at Jon, and continued. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.”

Jon’s dark eyes pierced through Bramble. His face stayed unreadable, but a cloud of conflict weighed on his shoulders. She had, through the others, voiced his same thoughts. Bramble wanted to say more—to say that Ygritte could be saved, that they could avoid war just this once.

Who was she kidding, though? They couldn’t avoid anything.

She wrote down one last thing before trudging out of the mess hall, dour and dark.

Edd quietly read the final question. “‘But what is a pack if they’re all dead?’”

-

Bramble curled up in her cold cot, shaking uncontrollably. What had she done? What had she done?

Don’t go fucking around with things! She yelled to herself, teeth gritted and eyes screwed shut. What has gotten into you?

What happened in the mess hall was reckless. And dangerous. And completely and utterly redundant. It’d arouse suspicion, and the next thing Bramble knew, she’d be drug out of her bed and put on the chopping block.

Maybe that would be for the best, though. It wasn’t like Bramble had any way of getting back home. She died and her family died, there. Or, at least from what she could remember, she had.

After the hundredth uncontrollable shiver despite being under a heap of blankets, Bramble got up, ignored the mass of sleeping men around her, and snuck down to the baths. Not only did the men rarely use it, but the hour was late, and the only people up were atop the Wall. Nobody here appreciated bathing. And damn, it showed.

Bramble used a candle to light her way down the corridors and down to the baths. It was, as she suspected, completely vacant. Steam wafted from the medium-sized pool.

She almost smiled at the sight. Quickly setting the sconce down, Bramble stripped off the several layers she wore and stepped in. The heat of the water burned her cold toes and fingers, but she welcomed the pain. A soft sigh rushed out of her.

Finally, warmth.

Bramble sunk farther until she became completely submerged. Her shaggy hair tickled the tops of her ears as it floated beneath the surface. She tucked her knees under her chin and intended on holding her breath until her lungs screamed with protest.

If she should die when the wildlings attacked, at least she’d be clean—

Grenn and Pyp’s faces flashed in Bramble’s memory. Blood coated their faces, eyes glossed with death. Screams rang in her ears, and a fire, hotter than anything she had ever felt in her life, erupted in Bramble’s chest. It paralyzed her bones, boiled her blood.

Save them, a voice—a force—said. Commanded. Prophesied. Change EVERYTHING.

Bramble’s eyes shot open in the fiery depths which trapped her. Amidst the black waters stood a vision of her, engulfed in roiling flames, lighting the dark with fury.

The illusion spoke with the voice Bramble lost long ago. This is the beginning.

Fire rushed out at Bramble, roaring and raging. The moment it struck her, the invisible, suffocating bonds wrapped around her burned away, leaving nothing but memory of its pain. Bramble broke through the surface of the water in a thrashing frenzy. She clambered onto the stone floor, unbearably hot and sick. Steam rose from her red skin in billows until she completely dried.

Bramble rolled over on her back, gasping for cold air’s relief.

What the—

What the fuck?

 

 

 

Chapter 5

Summary:

Revised 6/27/2020

Chapter Text

Mole’s Town had been attacked.

Bramble knew what it meant. The wildlings would attack by nightfall. Everyone else knew it, too, even if nobody said it out loud. Few words were spoken to her; they had not fully recovered from what she said to them the night before. The only person who would have attempted to strike up conversation with Bramble was Sam, but he was too worried about Gilly and her baby to do much else.

It made Bramble think. What she was in right now was…what, season four in the series? Yeah, that sounded right. It’d been years since she’d seen it even before she landed in Westeros. Her memory was spotty on what occurred in the battle against the wildlings.

Grenn and Pyp died. She remembered that. Whatever inexplicable vision she had surely reminded her. Pyp got an arrow through the throat, and Grenn was killed by the giant trying to storm through the tunnel.

Ygritte died. Olly shot her with an arrow while Jon watched.

They beat the wildlings off the first night. Jon went to Mance Rayder to “negotiate.” Before he or Mance could do anything, Stannis Baratheon and his army decimated the wildlings.

Tormund Giantsbane lived. Mance Rayder got shot with an arrow before the Red Woman’s flames could take him.

Yikes. Melisandre was coming. Better watch out for her.

Bramble drug her hands down her face and sighed. “What’s gotten into you, now?” Pyp asked her.

She pulled out a parchment and refined charcoal to respond. Relying on Sam for paper quickly got tiresome, so Bramble went to the library and found a bundle of small parchment scrolls to use. Maester Aemon heard her shuffling around for charcoal and asked what she was doing, but when he didn’t hear an answer he simply went, “Ah. You’re the mute. Sam has spoken about you. Take whatever writing materials you may need.” And continued about his business.

Bramble liked him.

Pyp read the reply once Bramble finished. “‘Want to talk. But I’m mute. That enough for you?’”

“Damn,” Edd dryly chuckled. “I guess so.”

“Oi, Bramble, been meaning to ask you a question,” Grenn said. Bramble glanced his way, seeing yet another flash of his death.

“Careful,” Pyp drawled, “the wildlings will have come and gone by the time he finishes it.”

Bramble made a what? motion.

“How’d you get that scar?”

She gave him a flat expression. “Seven hells, Grenn, you don’t just go askin’ people where they got their scars,” Edd said.

“What? Why? I’m just curious! Just like you lot!”

“Yeah, but we’re not stupid enough to say anything,” Pyp said back.

With a shake of her head, Bramble jotted down how she got it. Even her scrawling had a jagged, violent form to it. Despite the men getting after Grenn for asking, they all waited eagerly to receive an answer.

She tossed the reply onto the table. Pyp was the one to snatch it up. “‘You really want to know, you twats?’ Very hurtful, Bramble, very hurtful. ‘I got it because I tried to stop Lannister soldiers from ransacking the farmhouse I worked at. They were accused of being Northern sympathizers. I got my face nearly carved from my skull. The family was butchered, and the farmhouse burned down. Took me a while, but I tracked them down and killed them. That’s why I’m here. Because revenge solves everything.’”

Bramble smiled a bit at her last statement.

“You killed Lannister soldiers?” Jon asked, interest piqued. Bramble nodded once.

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Edd questioned skeptically.

“It’s true,” Sam put in, finally involving himself in the conversation. He sounded despondent. “I was filing the reports of all the new recruits that came to Castle Black in the library. He was charged with killing six Lannister soldiers.” Sam’s eyes nervously flickered to Bramble. “In various ways.”

“Various ways?” Grenn repeated. Bramble hunched lower, scowl growing, but waved to Sam to tell them. It’d take forever to write down, anyway.

“He—er, Bramble, well—correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe he gutted one and crushed another’s skull. One got drowned, one had their throat torn out—” Grenn and Edd audibly winced— “One was strung up in an alleyway, had honey slathered on them, and fed to the rats—”

“Shit,” Jon muttered.

“—And the last was, well, drawn and quartered.”

There was a brief silence before Pyp plainly said, “Well, boys, it looks like we’ve befriended a completely insane bastard. Better not get on his bad side, otherwise he’ll hang us with our own guts.”

Bramble scribbled down a sentence and flashed it to them so they could all read it. “You had to get creative?’” Edd stated incredulously. “Who do you think you are, the bloody Mountain? Maybe you can meet up with him, exchange some ideas and the like.”

Bramble wrote something else down. Jon wanted a turn this time and took it before anyone else could. “‘They took turns raping a twelve-year-old girl while her family watched. You tell me if what they got was enough justice.’”

There was a small silence. Bramble took the parchment back and drank some of the piss-flavored mulled wine, which quickly grew cold. She shrugged her shoulders and gave them a well? look.

“You’re crazy,” said Edd, but it was almost…fondly? A tone that made Bramble still feel welcome.

Bramble stiffly nodded in agreement and continued to eat. It got their mind off the imminent danger for a few minutes, at least. She wished she could tell them the wildlings would be here tonight. She wished she could take Sam aside and guarantee that Gilly would make it back.

She spared another glance at Pyp and Grenn. She didn’t have to save them. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be saved. That would…alter things. Bramble’s dad was a high school science teacher and a geeky guy, so she knew the dangers—and wonders—of time travel and potentially creating parallel dimensions, however hypothetical it all might have been. Nobody actually had any idea on what changing the future would do.

It was Pyp and Grenn, though. Why not take the chance to save them? Why not be responsible for saving them? They didn’t die in the books, did they? She couldn’t remember; she had never read the books—never really read a lot of books, actually.

Shit. “Responsibility” was a big word Bramble had grown distant from during her time here. And this…this was a big responsibility.

-

Darkness quickly swallowed Castle Black. Bramble decided to take a shift with Pyp guarding the front gate, almost certain that Gilly would eventually show up and demand to be let in. Ser Alliser ordered them to keep it shut, but Ser Alliser was a dickhead. Bramble didn’t like dickheads.

She kept eyeing Pyp when he wasn’t looking. He could be defined as “scrawny” in every aspect. Even though she’d been taken for a boy a few years younger than him, in reality, they were near the same age. About twenty, right? Bramble didn’t keep track of the years too well, but she was seventeen when Westeros became her nightmarish home.

Honestly, it was all so fucking funny. Bramble went from worrying about graduating high school and what she was going to get her parents for their anniversary to worrying about keeping her life intact and where to get her next meal. What a way to grow up fast.

“You think them wildlings are gonna come tonight?” Pyp asked her. He nervously glanced out the gate’s barred window. Bramble nodded, and Pyp made a noise. “Really?” He then gave a slight shake of his head. “I guess it’s not a big surprise. Jon said—”

“Help! Let me in!”

Pyp and Bramble sharply turned their heads and opened the slate to the entrance’s grated window. A figure ran toward them with something bundled in their arms. When they came close enough to the firelight, Bramble saw a young woman, perhaps a bit younger than them, dirty and shaking and gasping for air. She carried a fussing baby who hadn’t liked being jostled for miles.

“Seven hells!” Pyp exclaimed. “Gilly?”

“You have to let me in!” Gilly cried. “They’re coming! The wildlings are coming, I saw ‘em!”

“I—I can’t! We’re under strict orders to not open the gate!”

“Please. Where’s Sam? You need to let me in! I need to see Sam!”

“I’m sorry, but I—Bramble, what’re you doing?”

She gave him a look that said, Opening the gate. What else does it look like?

“But the Lord Commander!”

Bramble cracked the gate wide enough for Gilly and her baby to slip through before soundly shutting it. She then made a rude gesture concerning Ser Alliser. Pyp opened and closed his mouth, but never got a response out because Sam exclaimed, “Gilly!” from just outside the library’s walkway.

“Sam!”

Bramble watched the portly Crow race down the stairs to see Gilly. They embraced as best they could with a now-crying baby in her arms. “Are you alright?” Sam asked frantically. He looked down at the babe and tenderly touched his cheek. “Are you alright?” He paused. “Of course you are, my brave little fella.”

Gilly took in a couple of terrified breaths. “It was horrible, Sam.”

“I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know until I got back—”

“Don’t let them send me away, Sam.” Gilly began bouncing her child to calm him down.

“Never.”

“I know there’s no women allowed—”

“Anyone who tries to throw you out will be having words with me,” Sam promised. “From now on, wherever you go, I go, too.”

A distinct horn blowing two time through Castle Black cut off their sweet moment. The four of them turned their gazes to the top of the wall. Bramble’s stomach twisted.

She moved forward and placed her hands onto Sam’s and Gilly’s backs, pushing them to the castle. When Sam looked back to her, she only mouthed, go. He nodded once and ushered Gilly to somewhere safe.

Bramble turned back to Pyp. He had turned very, very pale. The horn blew twice again. She strode back to the steward and grasped him by a shoulder. His eyes reluctantly tore away from the Wall. “They’re here,” Pyp whispered. Bramble’s lips pursed into a thin line, stretching her scar. She could hear the castle burst into action. Ser Alliser, who was making his way to the lift, shouted for her to get to the Wall with the rest of the rangers.

A glance at Pyp’s feet showed death waiting to catch him. “I have a feeling,” he suddenly whispered, “that I’m going to die tonight.”

Dare you risk defying death?

Bramble moved her hand to the back of Pyp’s neck and firmly drew him close to her. She firmly shook her head.

“Oi! Bramble!” Edd yelled from across the courtyard, moving along with the masses of black. “Come on!”

Before departing, Bramble release her grip on Pyp and lightly punched him in the chest. Then, a rare, small smirk twitched at the corner of her scarred mouth.

Pyp’s expression changed a little. Like he saw something different in her.

Damnit. Of course Pyp saw something different. Saw that hint of a woman when she smiled.

But that was something to worry about after dawn greeted them as the victors. Bramble wiped the smile off her, turned, and jogged to catch up with Edd and Grenn.

 

 

 

Chapter 6

Summary:

Revised 6/27/2020

Chapter Text

Cold bit straight through Bramble’s soul, icy and uncaring. Northern wind turned her bones brittle and threatened to pull out the black hair she’d been meaning to shave off.

The sight before them chilled her even more.

An enormous bonfire blazed through the wintry forest. Through the smoke and flame and cold came the wildling army, which moved in one roiling mass. Their war cries rang so loudly that they could be heard from where Bramble stood. Giants walked among men, and mammoths strode alongside the giants. Stretched underneath them came death, death, death.

Bramble looked to both sides of her. The same darkness slinked across the icy ground on which the Crows stood upon.

She nocked a flaming arrow in her bow upon Ser Alliser’s commands. She hadn’t used a bow that much, but figured she’d be fine at it, anyway. Upon killing her first person in Westeros, Bramble found that fighting came rather naturally to her. Didn’t matter the weapon or the person, she just could. It was a gift weirder than the Sight she bore, and even more dangerous because she held so much anger in her all the fucking time.

Beside her, Grenn fumbled and let a barrel plummet hundreds of feet below. A tense silence on the Wall followed. Grenn watched the falling barrel despairingly. It was almost funny. This was all so fucking funny. Dying. Darkness. Fuck.

“I said nock and hold, you cunts!” Alliser shouted. “Does nock mean draw?”

“No sir!”

“Does fucking hold mean fucking drop?”

“No sir!”

“Are you all prepared to die here tonight?”

“No sir!”

“That’s very good to hear! Draw!”

Bramble aimed her bow into the smoky night sky. It blotted out the stars and the tendrils of whatever galaxy her ass landed in.

Another horn blasted in the distance. She half-turned to look at the castle below and felt a tug, a sharp prompting that said, Go down. Now.

Most of the men defending the front gate were stewards and builders. Pyp and Sam. Pyp.

But she had people dear to her die here, too. What made Pyp and Grenn any different? Everyone died.

“They’re attacking the southern gate!” Bramble heard Janos tell Alliser.

“Now?” She shifted slightly to watch the exchange between them. “I’m going down there,” Alliser said after a pause. “Brother Slynt, you have command of the Wall.”

“What?” Jon and Slynt both regarded one another with shock.

Alliser began striding away, abruptly stopped, turned, and bellowed, “What are you fucking waiting for? Loose!”

Bramble unleashed the arrow. She didn’t wait to watch it fall. Dropping her bow, she quickly raced to catch up with Alliser and the Crows he’d gathered to defend the front gate. He didn’t notice her presence, and she easily blended in with the brothers.

Adrenaline caused her body to tremble, electric and nauseating. Was she really going to do this? Was she going to change what shouldn’t be changed?

A feeling of fire burned in Bramble’s chest. It was hardly comparable to the one that raged inside her that night in the baths, but she couldn’t brush it off as heartburn or nerves.

“You feel that stuff inside you?” Bramble’s dad asked, pointing a finger to her chest. She nodded and shifted her feet on wet tiles. The familiar smell of chlorine filled her nose. Her hair felt like it was falling out of her cap, so she adjusted it while her dad continued to speak. “That’s a winner’s fire. Means that you just don’t want to swim—you want to swim the fastest, the hardest, and show yourself that all you did to get to this point was worth it. It makes you nervous, but that’s a good thing! Let it fuel you, not freeze you.

“Because if you fail, at least you know you tried. You didn’t freeze.”

Bramble found her hand had move to her chest. Time stilled and suddenly, so suddenly, she missed her dad. She missed his laugh and his jokes and his love. She missed his cheesy pep talks when really, he had enough faith in his daughter to do her best without a single word. He only hyped her up because he loved her.

Tears burned Bramble’s eyes like the fire inside her chest. She would never see her parents again. She didn’t have to see their death, but she knew their lives ended in the plane crash along with Bramble’s. Only unlike them, she came here instead, to a place that nobody in their right mind would ever dream of visiting.

This isn’t a dream, Bramble said to herself for the thousandth time. The lift stopped and the doors to the ground level opened. Chaos, chaos mingled with firelight and darkness, unfolded before them. Not to me, not to them.

Bramble couldn’t change the fact that her parents died. She couldn’t change the fact that she was here. She couldn’t even save most of the lives tonight.

But she could save at least two.

She asked herself in the past if she even dared to do what she was about to do.

Yes. She did dare.

Bramble slipped past Alliser and the other Crows, not bothering to listen to any speech he had to rally the men. She raced to the stairs and bounded up them, footsteps light and fast. Already, she could hear the sounds of wildlings reaching the top of the gate’s fortifications.

With sword unsheathed, Bramble weaved her way to the southernmost part Sam and Pyp defended. In the dim firelight, she spotted wildlings engaging in combat with the Crows. Among them, she spotted a particularly vicious fighter who chopped down every single man daring to get in his way.

Bramble didn’t need to recognize him to know his name. He delivered death with each vicious swing of his axe.

Tormund Giantsbane.

Oh—fuck.

Fortunately, Bramble found the two figures she’d heatedly been searching for. Sam and Pyp stood directly in Tormund’s path, wholly unprepared to fight such a man, a beast. Pyp fumbled with his crossbow, and Sam held his sword in front of him with all the courage he could muster.

Bramble grabbed the backs of their collars and hauled them off to the side with the strength she normally hid. If only she’d been this strong when she swam, she dourly thought amidst the destruction and desecration. She could probably punch all the water out of the pool.

“Oi! What the—” Pyp started, but upon seeing Bramble, his sentence cut off. She angrily motioned for them to run to the eastern ramparts. Seeing the look on her face told them that their best interest lay in not arguing with her.

Bramble faced Tormund, scowling to the point that it became a snarl. The sight of her spurred on the wildling’s bloodlust. He flashed a crazed grinned at her and rushed forward, giant axe in hand, glistening with the blood of her brothers. She doubted she could beat him; her skills were good, but they weren’t that good. Not compared to his.

So Bramble did the second best thing to buy the Crows more time. She dropped her sword just as Tormund swung and stepped towards him, putting her out of the axe’s direct path. She threw her hands up and grabbed the shaft to stop it mid-swing. Tormund grunted in surprise. It satisfied her to see confusion cloud his raging eyes. Bramble shot him a wicked glance before hauling him over her shoulder and throwing the wildling right through the wooden sides of the ramparts. He crashed onto the slanted rooftop below.

The chaos in the courtyard protected her from anybody noticing. The Crows on the current section of the ramparts only stared at her with their glassy gazes. Excitement—furious and glorious—coursed through Bramble. She wanted to scream, to fight, to kill, to live in this exalted, bloody state.

Picking up her dropped sword, Bramble sprinted onward to find Sam and Pyp again. By now, the contingent of wildlings had knocked down the front gate and engaged in combat with the small number of brothers defending the castle itself and not the Wall.

A couple wildlings had the nerve to get in Bramble’s way. She cut them down without missing a beat. Their blood spattered across her face, salty on her lips. The fire within grew hotter. The death around her grew deeper.

Sam and Pyp had fled to the ramparts she pointed them to go to. As Bramble ascended the stairs, she could see Pyp exposing himself with each bolt he fired from his crossbow. Death shrouded him almost completely, like a cloak to protect him from the cold of the North.

Just as she reached the top of the ramparts, Pyp fired on a wildling and made a direct hit. He crouched back down to tell Sam the good news. Neither immediately saw Bramble as she ran at them, silently screaming Pyp’s name.

She was going to be too late.

Pyp reloaded his crossbow and took a breath. Right before he went up to shoot, he spotted Bramble racing towards them. He returned the smirk she had given him earlier and moved to aim again. Death laid so heavy on his shoulders it was a wonder he couldn’t feel it.

Fear clutched Bramble’s heart, tempting her to give up.

She wouldn’t freeze, she wouldn’t freeze, she wouldn’t freeze.

Bramble leapt at Pyp and crashed into him, a soundless shout pouring from her dry lips. Above them a white-fledged arrow flew past and embedded itself into the wall behind them.

Death evaporated in an instant. Bramble rolled off of Pyp and slammed him against the wooden protection they crouched behind. Her head peeked over just enough so she could see who had fired.

On the other end of the ramparts was Ygritte. Kissed by fire. Pierced by death.

Pyp began to shake uncontrollably. He stared at the arrow meant for him just a few feet away. “You’re okay,” Sam hastily comforted, patting his head and shoulders and chest. “You’re okay!”

Bramble examined him, trying to see if death would return and make up for what she kept it from accomplishing. But Pyp remained clean and untainted, as though death had never grasped him in the first place. The world didn’t shatter, dimensions didn’t split. Pyp was still Pyp, Sam was still Sam, and Bramble was still Bramble.

Well. Whatever was left of Bramble.

She pounded her fist against his chest and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks,” Pyp whispered hoarsely. Bramble gave him back his crossbow and got to her feet. Ygritte had left her position, and wildlings flooded the courtyard, chopping down her brothers like nothing. Tormund still battle on in his frenzy, she could see, having survived the throw.

She had to get back down there. More importantly, she had to get to Grenn. Bramble couldn’t see him anywhere, and the tunnel still appeared unprotected. A little time to spare, then.

“Bramble,” Sam called as she began to leave. “Be safe, please.”

He meant it.

Something stirred. It wasn’t the fire; no, that had faded as soon as the arrow missed Pyp. It was familiar—familial.

These were her brothers. How was it possible that a bond had formed so quickly? Bramble only ever had her parents. Sibling love was something she never experienced.

So this was what it felt like. Maybe not completely identical, but it was a start.

With a bloodied sword in hand, Bramble propelled herself off the ramparts and rammed her blade into an unaware wildling below. She rolled, feeling her sword leave the now-lifeless body, and got back up on her feet. And she just had to look back and see if Pyp and Sam saw that.

They had. Bramble could see their wide eyes peeking over the ramparts.

Such a show-off, Bramble thought to herself as she engaged in combat with another wildling. Don’t take the brother thing too literally.

There was a cry off to the west side. “Ser Alliser is injured! Quick! Get him to safety!”

At the same time, the lift clanged at the bottom. Grenn and a few other Crows poured out and made a beeline to the tunnel, chopping down wildlings that got in their way.

Bramble charged after them, distantly hearing Alliser yelling at the top of his lungs, “Hold the fucking gate!”

A simple arrow caused Pyp’s death. Easily avoidable. How was Bramble going to save Grenn from a fucking giant?

The carnage in the courtyard would have, in another life, made Bramble’s stomach churn. Bodies and body parts strewn everywhere, a myriad of substances slick underneath her feet. Bramble had to jump over a whole body or pieces of one with every other step. Why hadn’t she thought of saving these men, too? She knew these men. Some of them were even likeable.

But Bramble couldn’t think of that now. She skirted the edge of the courtyard, passing the lift and spotting Olly cowering behind the lift’s mechanism. Keep going, she told herself. The rest of her wouldn’t listen, though, so she paused to quickly raid a corpse for a bow and a half-quiver of arrows. One of the arrows, a faint voice echoed in the back of her burning skull, was destined to kill Ygritte. Telling exactly which one would find its way through her chest was impossible; indiscriminate death coated multiple tips.

Olly jumped when Bramble neared, but upon recognizing her, he returned to frozen fear. She crouched, uncaring of the war around them for a few seconds, and stretched out the bow and arrows. The bow was too big for a boy his size, but it’d have to do.

“I—I can’t,” Olly gasped through his tears. Bramble only pushed the weapon further until he was forced to grab it.

You have to, Bramble mouthed. Then she reached out a bloody hand and ruffled his hair before moving it down to his chest and punching it. Be brave. She tried to move her lips as clearly as possible for him to understand.

Olly nodded once. Bramble stood and locked her eyes on the tunnel. Grenn and the brothers had barely entered, the light of their torches casting a red glow on the inner walls. Death followed them.

Bramble followed Death.

She quickly caught up to them. The tunnel gate groaned in protest as it was hefted up by the giant hell-bent on getting in. Bramble’s nerves started to spike. This was a giant. There could be no way around it. Maybe she’d be able to punch it hard enough to break a leg? But the other Crows would plainly see. She had risked revealing her abilities with Tormund—doing something even grander meant trouble.

Grenn wouldn’t just flee, either. He took his duty as seriously as the rest of them. He’d probably try to kill Bramble before she got close to dragging him out of the tunnel.

So. Basically no plan. Just great.

“How are we going to stop that thing?” Cooper asked Grenn, terror lacing his words. Cooper had always been friendly towards Bramble. Actually, come to think of it, all these men had. They were brothers, after all.

Still, was she only supposed to save Grenn?

“We’ve put twenty arrows in it already!” Donnel Hill exclaimed. Bramble pulled to a stop, unnoticed by the Crows preoccupied with the dilemma of stopping a giant.

“Doesn’t matter! We hold the gate,” Grenn ordered.

“Snow’s not the Lord Commander—”

“We hold the gate!”

The giant hefted the gate up, held it with his shoulder, and shoved his way in. Bramble watched in terror and awe. The sound of swords being drawn echoed in the tunnel.

“Mother save me, Father save me—” Cooper began to chant.

“There are no gods down here!” Grenn bellowed. “It’s the six of us, you hear me!”

The giant let the tunnel fall with a crash behind him, leaving only a thinly-barred portcullis between them. Cooper started to hastily back away, but Grenn grabbed his collar and pulled him back. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins,” he fervently recited. “It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children.”

The giant began to charge at the portcullis, shaking the frozen ground. Grenn continued to recite the oath; brothers joined him to speak their final words. “I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls!” Grenn drew his sword and looked back at his brothers. He finally noticed Bramble standing in the back and almost grinned. Like he wouldn’t mind dying alongside her.

Grenn didn’t stop speaking the vows and turned back to face the giant head-on. “I am the shield that guards the realms of men!”

The giant roared, unholy and final. Bramble gripped the hilt of her sword with both hands; she bared her teeth like a challenged, unyielding animal.

“I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come!”

Though they bellowed in defiance at their enemy, their final shouts went unheard against the screech of the giant crumpling the secondary gate. He yanked it off its hinges and threw it at them. The brothers scrambled back to avoid being crushed by the gate and formed a tight circle. One of the brothers pulled out his axe and threw it at the giant, wetly embedding it in its shoulder. The giant hardly even noticed.

Donnell and Grenn attacked from both sides, chopping at the giant with all their strength. A mighty hand swept at them, missing Grenn but catching Donnell square in the chest. He slammed against the tunnel wall and died instantly.

Bramble glanced down at the ground. Inky death seemed to run for miles, catching brothers when, one by one, they fell.

What if Grenn couldn’t be saved, no matter hard she tried?

She refused to think about it. She just needed to act.

The giant turned from Bramble, distracted by Grenn and Cooper. She gripped her sword and rammed it into the back of his meaty leg. He inhumanly roared and swung his arm around to crush her. Bramble narrowly dove out of the way, then rolled back to her feet to keep up the fight.

The fire in her chest had returned with a vengeance. It didn’t build like it had with Pyp; all of a sudden, it consumed her insides. One look at Grenn told her that death was mere moments away from catching him. Grenn, the Bull. Grenn, who showed Bramble kindness when she wanted none. Grenn, who chose to uphold his duty to the very end.

Bramble watched Cooper give up his life by sinking his sword into the giant’s belly and delivering a substantial blow. The giant picked him up, crushed his body in one massive fist, and threw him to the ground. A little part of Bramble’s heart crushed, too.

Cooper’s death left Bramble and Grenn alone with the giant. Grenn raced to Bramble, and they held their swords side-by-side. Death cloaked his broad shoulders, just as it did Pyp’s. The giant also had tendrils of blackness wrapped along his legs and waist. A few strands crawled into the stomach wound Cooper left.

Grenn charged at the giant just as a fist was brought down to smash him, screaming “Fuck you!” for his final words. Bramble’s chest threatened to explode but there was no way, no way she could save Grenn—not without revealing her monstrous powers.

Stop being fucking selfish and save him!

Bramble tossed her sword aside and dove forward to roughly shove Grenn out of the way. She threw both hands out, with hope—no, without hope that it’d do a single fucking thing, but she did it anyway because she had no options left to choose from. Maybe this would end her measly, ugly life, and Grenn could life from her sacrifice. She’d like that. She liked it more than the thought of living after the fire died down and winter turned dead flesh cold.

She caught the giant’s fist with both hands.

The frozen ground cracked from the sudden and intense pressure as two forces collided. One of Bramble’s knees slammed down, turning her into Atlas, who held up the weight of the world. She scratchily cried out as the fire erupted and burned away everything inside her—

Mag Mar Tun Doh Weg was his given name. The wildlings called him Mag the Mighty—

—Hunting for food to feed his people, a chief should not be out on the frozen plains, but his people’s survival came before—

—His son died in his arms, blood pumping from his neck. He said “Father” before the sightless shroud blanketed over him. The world no longer mattered, no longer existed. Only grief—

—More leaving and few returning. They speak of blue eyes and he remembered the tales, the whispers. The war against the undead. His grandfather fought alongside the fae and those who called themselves men—

—Mance Rayder promised safety across the Wall, where men ran amok like fleas on the back of a dog. There was little chance of safety there. But there was no safety in his homeland, anymore. And the wildling army was large. Perhaps—

—The laughter of her father and mother as they sat around the dinner table—

—Looking out the window of the plane as it dove down to the blue, blue ocean expanse, screams filling Bramble’s too-pressured ears, holding the hand of her mom as they fell—

—Dornish soldiers showing kindness and wrapping a blanket around Bramble when she failed to comprehend what had just happened, terrified because she couldn’t speak—

—Burying the family killed by Lannister soldiers, working through the nearly unbearable pain from the gash on her face, vowing brutal revenge—

Bramble fought the flames, pushing the curtains of fire aside to show Mag the Mighty what he needed to see, not an exchange of glimpses of memories. What she should actually show him.

Her fucking question had been answered, no matter how much she wanted to ignore the responsibility that came with it. She could save others besides Grenn and Pyp. But it wasn’t just about the Crows. It had never been just about the Crows.

While their connection lasted another half-second, Bramble conjured disjointed memories of the shitty show. Stannis’ army coming and demolishing the wildling army in a matter of moments. Mance Rayder being put to the stake. Jon Snow clasping hands with Tormund in an agreement to ally with the wildlings for the coming war.

And she showed him Hardhome. Over and over again, as much as she could before they lost the connection. The Night King, the Army of the Dead, the boats that got wildings to safety, Wun Wun, Jon killing the wight.

The Night King again. The blue eyes. The dreadful quiet of an army with hundreds of thousands of soldiers being raised.

Mag Mar slowly lifted his fist off of Bramble. She realized her nose bled profusely, staining lips with her own blood, mingling with the crimson of the murdered. Weakness coursed through every vein. The fire had burned away most of her strength.

“Truth?” Mag stated. His tongue thickly accented the language of man, but Bramble understood it, nonetheless. She dipped her head in a nod, too tired to stand and too tired to hope he would believe what he saw.

Grenn, who had gotten to his feet by now, hesitantly stood beside Bramble and brandished his sword. She grabbed his ankle with shaking fingers in an effort to stop him from trying to kill Mag.

Death, however, had receded. The tendrils that once entrapped Mag faded. Only a few clutched at his wound, but even those had a faintness to them.

Mag and Bramble stared at each other for several seconds. Then, rubbing his protruding brow, Mag turned and heavily walked back to the tunnel. Bramble motioned for Grenn to help her get up.

“What the fuck is going on…?” he whispered. He hooked his arm under hers and lifted. Bramble wavered, breathed, and felt feeling return to her legs and hands. Limping, she followed Mag to the gate. He wouldn’t be strong enough to lift it himself. Bramble didn’t have a ton of strength remaining, but together, maybe they would have a chance.

Mag Mar didn’t say anything when he saw her dig fingers between the steel grates and start to lift. He did the same. It took them a while, but they managed to get it high enough for Mag to prop his shoulder underneath and get through. Bramble stepped back when he neared the other side and watched the gate come crashing back down.

She just…stood there for a few moments, taking everything in. Her bleeding nose had slowed to a sticky trickle. Its warmth comforted her cold skin.

With heavy feet, Bramble turned around and started limping back. Everything hurt so fucking much. She could almost laugh at it, at this whole thing.

Grenn was waiting in a stupefied state, watching Bramble do the ol’ Bramble Shamble. It was what her dad had dubbed the way she always walked in the morning. Now wasn’t so different. Bramble felt half-dead.

She passed the spot where the force of Mag Mar’s blow made her put a dent in the ground. Grenn stood near it, sword hung limply at his side. “What…how…what did you…” he sputtered. Bramble wearily picked her own sword up and sheathed it. Keeping Mag and Grenn alive was all well and good, but the bodies of her brothers still littered the tunnel.

Grenn finally found his voice. “You need to tell me how you did that!” he shouted. The tone he used hinted at his attempt to be angry.

Bramble gave him a look, both eyebrows raising in challenge. Grenn, who had stood tall and strong against a fucking giant, immediately deflated under her scrutiny. “You can’t blame me! What I just saw…what I think I just saw…”

With a sigh, she knelt down and pulled out a roll of parchment and charcoal. Her gloved fingers made it hard to write, and the parchment quickly got wet from the ground, but the message was still readable.

Grenn took it and slowly read aloud. He stumbled over the words. “‘I…I need you t-to, uh, I need you to k…keep this a sec—secret. No one…can know. Please.’” He lifted his gaze to Bramble. “Are you serious? I can’t keep something like this from them.” Grenn took a step forward, and Bramble resisted reacting. “You just—you just stopped a giant! And you just let him walk away! Helped him get out, even. I can’t explain this!”

Bramble snatched away the parchment, making her irritation clear. She messily wrote a response. Grenn snatched it back, read it in his head, looked at Bramble, read it again, and repeated incredulously, “‘Then don’t?’”

She shrugged, wiped her bloodied face with the back of her hand, and brushed past Grenn. He made a few noises before angrily sighing and joining her. “You’re an insane bastard. You know that, right?”

 

 

 

Chapter 7

Summary:

Revised 6/27/2020

Chapter Text

“He’s walking right to his death,” Edd muttered bitterly. He and Bramble watched a single black figure stride across the barren land between the Wall and the forest. “That mad fucker.”

Bramble could already hear the pounding of hooves and taste the promise of slaughter. Stannis’ army would be upon them soon. She felt some pity for the wildlings; they had no way of knowing what came for them.

Could she save them from something much worse?

“Heard you and Grenn were the ones to chase that giant out of the tunnel,” Edd mentioned. “Saw it running back to the army with the rest of ‘em.” He turned to Bramble. “How’d you do it? Grenn just said you hacked at it enough until it couldn’t fight anymore. But that giant looked like it was ready to die trying to get in the tunnel.”

Bramble just shrugged and patted the spot where she kept her parchment and charcoal. “Lemme guess,” Edd said sarcastically, “It’d take too long to write down?”

Bramble nodded, a glint in her dark green eyes.

“Also heard that you saved Pyp from a wildling arrow,” Edd went on.

Another, more somber nod.

“For somebody who tries their hardest to not care, seems like you don’t really do all that well at it.” This time, Edd smirked. Bramble snorted.

They didn’t have much conversation after. Not only because Edd had to do all the talking, but because neither of them could stave off the worry of Jon not making it back. Bramble knew he’d return…except that didn’t make it any less tense.

She couldn’t help but glance at the ground below. It was a dizzying long way down. She wondered what would happen if she jumped. It could test the limits of her strength—or she’d finally die trying.

Bramble hadn’t had a thought about dying in a while. Strange. She’d been so concerned about keeping the others alive that she forgot her detached wish for the end.

But she couldn’t get too comfortable. They were coming. Those inky figures who blinked in and out of existence. No matter how far she ran, where she ran, they followed. Whatever their goals were, Jojen made it clear that so far, Bramble had gone exactly where they wanted her to.

She waited for the day when she’d feel the darkness they brought with them, the fear. Only this time, she couldn’t run.

Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?

“Oh,” Edd breathed, interrupting Bramble’s grim thoughts, “light of the fucking seven.”

She looked on, amazed, as a vast army entirely on horseback thunderously swept in on both sides of the forest. Bramble had never seen…never thought she’d see an army of this size in her life. Sure, the wildlings were great in number, but they didn’t have formation or such brutal unification.

The dark haze of death buzzed atop the forest like a swarm of flies. It made Bramble grateful that she was spared from seeing such mass slaughter, just this once. If she lived any longer, she knew she would.

“Who…which army is it?” Edd questioned the other Crows on the Wall, who had gathered to watch the miraculous spectacle. “I can’t see the flag.”

None of the men could answer, and Bramble didn’t want to make the effort to write Stannis’ name down anywhere. They’d know who it was soon enough.

She heard the screams from where she stood and, eventually, silence. The bulk of the wildlings were seen running from the northern end of the forest line. While the brothers around her cheered in victory, Bramble stayed quiet. If they saw the way she witnessed death, they wouldn’t cheer, either.

The battle had come to a finish. For now.

The Red Woman was on her way. Melisandre. Bramble didn’t have to have any sort of Sight to know she meant a heap of trouble.

And…oh.

Oh. Shireen.

Bramble’s nose began bleeding, like the thought alone spurred it on. No. There was absolutely no way of saving the little princess from the flames. She died outside of Castle Black, surrounded by an entire army, Melisandre, and her parents.

An image of Ser Davos flashed in her mind. Fucking no. She couldn’t change it, so she would not entertain hopeful, stupid ideas.

Couldn’t, or too afraid to?

She angrily wiped away the blood trickling from her nose and walked back to the lift. If she had been sent here to save every fucking person that died in a television show—

But this isn’t a television show! This is real.

Shireen is real. A real, little girl loved by all.

Come on. You have to.

Why was Bramble being so obstinate about saving someone? Wasn’t that supposed to be a great thing to do? She saved Pyp and Grenn and Mag; why were they different?

But she already knew the answer. Because if Bramble continued on this path, she’d be turning away from solely surviving. She’d start to live. To love. To feel that terrible, horrible pain of humanity.

Bramble tossed her head back and sighed the loudest sigh she could muster on her way down to the castle.

Guess if you die trying, you can be done with it all, she dryly thought.

Everyone clustered around the bottom of the lift to hear word of the sudden commotion, but upon seeing the mute, they all groaned and continued waiting for somebody who could speak. Bramble shoved her way past them, scowling furiously, only to be stopped by Sam, Olly, Pyp and Grenn.

“What’s happening out there?” Pyp eagerly asked. Bramble gave them a look that clearly meant piss off.

“Come on, write it down,” Grenn pushed. He eyed her bloody nose.

It was the first time he had spoken to her since leaving the tunnel together. She’d been mildly surprised—and yet at the same time not—that he had kept what he saw a secret. Bramble figured he couldn’t completely understand what he saw, so he had little choice but to keep quiet. Maybe he just blocked it out of his mind entirely.

With a scathing eye roll, Bramble took out her writing tools and spun Pyp around to use his back as something to write on. When she finished, she whirled him back and pushed the parchment in his hand. “Stannis Baratheon?” Pyp questioned aloud. He looked up at Bramble. “Seriously? His entire army?”

“So that’s it? The army is gone?” Grenn followed up.

“And Jon?” Sam asked worriedly. “Do you know if he’s okay?”

Bramble shrugged and took the parchment back. “What was it like?” Olly said. “Did you see them kill all the wildlings?” There was an eagerness in his eyes that worried Bramble.

To him, she shook her head. “You get a nosebleed?” Sam prompted. He was always so genuinely concerned. “You should go see the maester about it. A lot of men get them from the cold weather.”

She found it impossible not to sneak a glance at Grenn. He only looked confused and a little nervous.

“Or he just bashed his head into the wall,” Pyp grinned. “Have to channel that craziness somehow.”

Bramble feigned coming after Pyp. He immediately jumped back, grin vanishing, and he let out a light yelp. It made the others laugh, herself included, though she kept it to a hissing chuckle.

Pyp saw it again. That difference. He was more observant than the rest of them. Ugliness could only go so far.

The horn blew once, directing all their attention to the tunnel. Soon after, Jon strode through, blood spattered on his face but otherwise unharmed. Everyone rushed to him, Bramble forgotten, putting off their duties for just a little while longer to hear what occurred.

With the whole castle distracted, Bramble snuck off to the library for more parchment. Maester Aemon was nowhere to be seen, so she took it upon herself to snatch up more blank scrolls and stash them in an inner pocket.

As soon as she turned around from one of the writing desks, she saw Gilly and her baby sitting quietly by a table near the fireplace. They had been so quiet she hadn’t even noticed their presence.

She was probably afraid of the Crows. All alone without Sam.

Bramble smiled, but it felt awkward and stiff on her marred face. Gilly only held little Sam closer to her.

In an attempt to save the situation, she motioned to little Sam and pinched at her own cheeks. Gilly appeared confused for a moment but eventually said, “You think he has chubby cheeks?”

Bramble nodded. “You’re the one who let me in through the gate last night, didn’t you?” Had it only been last night? Seemed like days ago. “Sam said you’re a…a mute. I don’t know what that means.”

She neared a few steps closer and formed words with her mouth. Gilly’s eyes widened in understanding. “You can’t talk, can you?”

Another nod. “Well,” said Gilly, shifting little Sam in her arms, “thank you.”

An idea came to Bramble. She motioned for Gilly to follow her. “Oh, no,” she started to say, “Sam told me to stay here. It’s safe here.”

To assure Gilly, Bramble patted the pommel of her sword. She smiled again and repeated the gesture. Reluctantly, Gilly stood and followed her out of the library. Instead of taking the corridor that led outdoors, she took the turn to the barracks and went down the two flight of narrow stairs. Bramble had to light a torch to see the way. She hoped Gilly wouldn’t think she was trying to do something sinister to her.

They came to the vacant baths. Bramble lit a couple of other torches on the wall and turned to Gilly.

She looked at the pool of steaming water in amazement. Bramble motioned for her to use it. It sucked a little that there weren’t any towels available, but Gilly probably wouldn’t mind.

“I—this is…am I allowed to use this?” Gilly asked uncertainly. Bramble nodded. “But I’m a wildling.”

Water is water, Bramble wanted to say back. Doesn’t matter who sits in it.

But all she could do was make assuring gestures that everything was alright. And, as best she could, she tried to wordlessly tell Gilly that she’d be outside keeping guard while she bathed.

Gilly’s face turned serious. “If you’re…if you’re going to try anything I’ll scream. I have a knife.”

And there it was.

Bramble furiously shook her head and backtracked until she was through the entryway. Then she promptly closed the door behind her.  

Ugh, men were absolute pigs. Luckily, they were piggish enough that Gilly could bathe in peace, for not another soul came down to the chamber the entire time.

 

 

 

Chapter 8

Summary:

Revised 6/27/2020

Chapter Text

“They came to us from White Harbor, and Barrowton, from Fair Market and King’s Landing. From north and south, from east and west. They died protecting men, women, and children who will never know their names. It is for us to remember them. Our brothers, we shall never see their likes again.”

“And now their watch is ended.” Bramble mouthed the words while the others spoke it for her.

“And now their watch is ended,” Maester Aemon concluded.

Flames consumed her brothers, and smoke sunk into her lungs. She stood between Pyp and Grenn while they, too, looked onward at the ceremony. Forty-eight died last night instead of fifty. Instead of them being among the corpses, they were beside her, breathing and shivering from the cold.

It was a small victory.

Princess Shireen and her mother stood with soldiers on the small balcony behind Bramble. Ser Davos and Stannis Baratheon were above them on the ramparts. She hadn’t gotten a good look at them, yet, but she knew who they were.

And on the other side of the pyre was Melisandre.

Bramble couldn’t help but stare at her, the mysterious Red Woman. All the Sight showed were ancient, unending flames. The red stone set in the golden choker she wore emanated a deep, unnerving glow, which made Bramble’s eyes hurt if she gazed upon it for too long.

A small sniff from Olly drew her attention. Bramble cast a sidelong glance at the boy and saw a line of tears running down his dirty face.

Her heart felt that aching twist she tried so hard to avoid. He had lost more of his family to the wildlings. Had he even had time to grieve for the parents so violently ripped away from him?

Bramble knew she hadn’t. She could still feel it, stifled and suppressed in a small corner of her heart. If she touched more than the little bit she did the night before, it’d be hard keeping everything back.

Disregarding the manly code of not touching other men here, Bramble reached past Grenn and grabbed Olly’s cloak. He didn’t fight as she pulled him to her side and put an arm around his shoulders. Olly turned his head slightly inward towards her and let his body quietly shake. Bramble squeezed him tighter. For once, she didn’t care about the stares.

Edd had been right; for somebody who made it seem like she didn’t give a damn, she had a poor time executing it.

Forget the Red Woman being dangerous. Bramble posed a big enough danger to herself.

When the fire ended, and there was nothing but ash and the remains of a pyre, Bramble set to work. The rangers didn’t have much to do in the castle itself; the stewards and builders were tasked with reparations for the place. Instead, the rangers were to take inventory of the equipment on the Wall and gather all the wildling corpses to burn.

Amid the cleaning, where her mind wandered to dark and hopeful thoughts, Bramble came across Ygritte’s corpse. She hadn’t meant to; she thought Jon would have taken her by now.

Her breath tumbled into the air before dissipating. Oh, Ygritte, she thought, crouching by the woman. Dried blood caked her lips almost delicately, like a dark red lipstick. Ygritte was beautiful and fierce, and Bramble wished she could have known the warrior. A warrior kissed by fire. A warrior unable to evade the cold clutches of death.

The other men would want her burned with the rest. But Jon wanted to take her past the Wall and into the true North for burning, didn’t he? Bramble thought she remembered that bit correctly.

All this Sight, Bramble grumbled to herself, and you still can’t remember the show.

It wasn’t the first time she got upset with herself for not watching the re-runs with her mom and dad. It’s because of the sex scenes, she rationalized for the thousandth time. Nobody wants to sit through soft-core porn with their parents.

If Bramble left Ygritte, one of the other Crows would come along and drag her off. There were plenty nearby that’d instantly spot Ygritte’s splash of red hair on the dark ground. She’d be tossed into a heap with the other corpses.

Where the hell was Jon, anyway? Why did Bramble think she needed to help him?  She didn’t owe him anything. And what had he exactly done for her?

The woman he loved is dead. She shouldn’t be such a bitch. She understood that keen, stabbing loss.

Guilt washed through Bramble. She was just upset that she was starting to…come back, again. Not wholly, no. Never wholly. This world had taken parts of her old self that could never be returned. There were bits and pieces, though, struggling to find a place amidst the emotionless world of survival.

It kinda hurt.

Bramble looked around the area to make sure nobody noticed her before reaching down and putting her hands underneath Ygritte’s stiff arms. She dragged her to a nook underneath one of the staircases where nobody would go looking for a wildling corpse. Then Bramble got back to work, eyes sharp on the lookout for Jon. There’d be no point in hiding her body if he didn’t know where to find her.

Thirty minutes later, she spotted Jon coming out of the cells and heading down to the courtyard below. She briskly walked to him before anyone else could get in her way, making it clear that she didn’t want to be interrupted.

Jon carried a haggardness, maybe more so than the rest of them. Bramble couldn’t see much around his shoulders where everyone’s emotions and fates usually perched. A gray cloud hung around them, like winter fog hanging low on the mountains.

“What is it, Bramble?” he asked, not unkindly. Only tiredly.

She led him to where Ygritte was hidden. Jon stopped and stared at her, face an unreadable mask. The gray cloud darkened and roiled in pain. While the change was far from drastic, Bramble suddenly felt like she intruded on something very, very personal.

She turned to leave and forget what she had seen when Jon said, “Thank you. For…this.”

Without looking directly at him, Bramble nodded once. “Oh, and before I forget,” he added as she took another step to leave. “One of the wildlings wants to talk to you. His name’s Tormund. Best go see him before nightfall.”

-

The guards let her into the cell. The sun begun to set, and soon, the only source of light coming from the windows would be gone.

Tormund sat on the ground among miscellaneous crates and sacks. The cells had not been used as actual cells for a long time.

He propped himself upright when he saw Bramble walk through. The door shut solidly behind her. “Didn’t think you’d come,” he said. His brogue was thick.

She walked forward a little, still keeping a large distance from him. She had no idea what he wanted her for. But, Bramble supposed, anyone like Tormund would like to meet the person who threw him right through the rampart wall.

“Jon tells me you’re a mute,” Tormund went on. His eyes searched every inch of Bramble, making her feel the same way whenever Pyp did it. He, however, had more confidence in his observation. “But don’t worry—it won’t stop me from talking.”

Tormund had little settled on his shoulders, which mildly surprised her. Bramble didn’t think he’d accept this sort of fate so easily. Maybe he knew better. Maybe he was just that kind of person.

“I didn’t tell him what you did. That you hurled me through solid wood like it was nothing.” Tormund laughed to himself a little. “Nobody should be able to do that. Even me, and I’m fucking strong. And yet you did, a little lanky twig of a thing.” He gestured for Bramble to come closer. “Can’t see you that well. Getting dark in here. Don’t worry, I won’t bite. Not right now.”

Reluctantly, Bramble neared until she stood only a few feet away from Tormund. He gazed up at her. A slow smile crept on his face. “You a woman wanting to be a man? Or a woman wanting to be a Crow?”

Bramble stilled and grew grim. Tormund’s smile widened. “None of the others know, eh? Night’s Watch isn’t full of the brightest lot. Even Snow’s not gonna see a girl if he doesn’t think he has to. You pull it off good. Probably haven’t taken a piss in front of anyone. But they’re gonna notice your little jawline is as smooth as a baby’s bottom here pretty soon. That, and other things.” His eyes wandered down to her crotch.

She tilted her head in a challenge. Tormund easily read it and said, “You’re not gonna have to kill me, Little Crow. I won’t tell anyone your secret. Mostly because I don’t really care. You don’t need a cock to fight, as you’ve well shown. Like a wildling woman. I just wanted to meet the person who had the strength of five men.” A pause. “Maybe more.”

Bramble and Tormund stared at each other for several moments. She couldn’t process everything running through her. Anger, fear, excitement, dread—they all up inside her chest with nowhere to go to.

Her fists clenched. Tormund caught the reaction, then said, “Be careful, Little Crow. There are more dangerous men here than me.”

He added another grin, but this one was sharp and knowing.

After giving him one last look, Bramble swiftly turned and exited the cell.

 

 

 

Chapter 9

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Regularity at Castle Black resumed the next day. Bramble found herself sparring with Grenn, Edd, and Olly. Sam, Gilly, and the baby sat at one of the tables. Jon had been with them, but the Red Woman swept him away, informing that Stannis wanted to speak with him. Bramble avoided Melisandre’s gaze. The longer she could stay hidden, the safer she’d be.

Tormund was right. There were more dangerous men in this place than him. But Melisandre could possibly be the most dangerous one of them all.

The shadow-baby-monster she gave birth to looked similar to the creatures that chased her. It might have been a coincidence; darkness was darkness. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was something far, far worse.

Bramble loved suspicion. It really did calm her soul.

She shoved Olly to the ground and aimed her training sword at his neck. “You know what you did?” Edd asked.

Olly pushed the sword out of his way and got back up. “I wasn’t paying attention to my feet. Didn’t stay in a proper stance.”

“Good,” Grenn said with a nod. “Do it again.”

Bramble tilted her head and leaned on her sword like a cane. Olly got back into a stance and held his sword in front of him. She shook her head and pointed to his right foot. He shifted it in forward. She nodded.

Her sword moved, moving quickly enough that it challenged Olly, but not so harshly that he’d never have a chance to learn. He managed to block four times before she tripped him up. When Olly looked rightly frustrated, Grenn said, “You need to learn how to fight with a sword. A bow and arrow are good…until you’re toe-to-toe with somebody who wants to kill you.”

“You’ll get to use a shield in a few days to make blocking a bit easier,” said Edd. “But before that, you have to get used to swinging a sword.”

“Alright,” Olly sighed, getting back up to his feet for the hundredth time. “Just—”

A sudden feline yowl drew all their attention. Bramble’s eyes narrowed in on the scene. Two brothers had a cat cornered against the wall, trying to step on its tail and jab it with a training sword. The cat screamed and hissed and swiped, but the Crows weren’t bothered. It only spurred them on.

Cats were common at Castle Black. They kept the rats and mice away. But a lot of the men in the Night’s Watch were here for a reason, and most of those reasons stomach-turning. They had sadistic tendencies and liked to hurt little helpless things.

Gilly spoke terse words to Sam, pointing to the scene unfolding. He only patted her leg and sadly directed her away from the sight.

“Come on,” Grenn muttered, looking on at the Crows with a degree of anger. “Let’s get back to training.”

“Derrick and Brandt,” Edd spat. “Couple of fuckers.”

Brandt violently jabbed the cat with his stick and drew blood. Its cries echoed the courtyard. Derrick reached down and grabbed it by the neck, ready to snap the little cat’s bones.

Nobody did a fucking thing.

Her mom used to say with complete conviction that people who abused animals should be put on death row. She always had to change the channel when animal cruelty prevention commercials came on. Though it wasn’t right hurting people, it was even more evil to hurt something that couldn’t defend itself. Ganap na kasamaan.

Uncontrollable, hot anger that swept through Bramble like a sun flare. She didn’t used to get like this; on Earth, she rarely got angry. And when she did, it was usually resolved with a good cry and a talk with her mom or her friends. But here…here it resulted in pain.

It was a problem, yes. But not one Bramble planned on fixing anytime soon.

She gripped her training sword and swiftly moved to the brothers. Both their backs were turned to her, so Derrick didn’t see the flat of her weapon swinging towards his head until it was too late. The wooden sword splintered and broke against his head with a resounding crack. Derrick immediately dropped the cat, then he crumpled to his knees, crying out and clutching the back of his bleeding head. Veins of it rolled down the back of his neck and underneath the collar of his dirty shirt.

Brandt whirled to her. “What the fuck, you fucking m—”

He never finished the word “mute” because Bramble punched him so hard, she felt one of his teeth pop out.

Blood spurted from Brandt’s mouth. He stumbled away, groaning from the pain. Bramble chucked what was left of her training sword and hit him square in the back. He fell to the ground with a pitiful yelp.

The courtyard went silent. Bramble ignored every stare she felt on her and made her way up to the cat, crouching down and examining it. Blood stained its fur, but it didn’t look like too bad of a wound. Fear buzzed around its tiny little body.

She slowly started to reach out her hand towards the feline. It immediately bolted. She held back a sigh. Not surprising.

Bramble stood and made her way back to Olly, Grenn, and Edd. Olly looked at her with outright admiration, and Edd shook his head and chuckled. Grenn appeared confused, again, and was regarding her with some form of suspicion.

It made her wonder. Would he ever say anything? Or would he take her secret to the grave?

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Edd muttered as he glanced over at Brandt helping Derrick to his feet. “If they’re okay doing that to a cat, then they’ll do it to a person, too.”

She shrugged, took Edd’s training sword, and went back to knocking Olly off his feet.

-

Nightfall had a weight to it. Bramble grimly looked on at the fully constructed pyre in the middle of the courtyard. Baratheon soldiers circled it with lighted torches, dotted amid the Crows and imprisoned wildlings who’d been forced to watch the execution.

Mance Rayder was to be burned alive. Sacrificed to the Lord of Light for not bending the knee to a man grasping at ideas of the throne.

It made her angry. Angry at Stannis, angry at Mance, angry at herself.

Angry at the Red Woman.

Melisandre stood with Stannis and Davos twenty feet in front of them. She didn’t seem to notice Bramble’s presence; she concerned herself with Jon and tried really hard to look like a mysterious priestess.

Shireen and her mother stood on the balcony with guardsmen looming behind them. The little princess had a young beauty to her, dressed in furs and her brown hair pulled back. The greyscale matched the shades on her furs. Bramble liked creating similar outfits that went with her large birthmark. It was part of her, so she might as well have looked good donning such a unique trait.

They, Stannis, and every soldier in the courtyard stood upon lakes of death. Black liquid dripped from the balcony where Shireen and her mother stood in heavy sloughs, dissipating before they ever hit the ground.

Bakit ko nakikita ito?

Bramble was being sentimental today, it seemed. She didn’t think much in Filipino, anymore. Her mother’s language—her language—only made her heart ache after too much use. Bramble’s mother was gone, and she had no way of even speaking in the tongue to keep that small piece of her mom with her.

Stop it. She’d only make herself hurt.

“Why do they want us all here?” Edd grumbled lowly. “Can’t they just burn him at their campsite?”

“Because they want to make an example,” Pyp said, voicing Bramble’s thoughts. “They want to show us that we can just as easily end up like Mance.” He eyed the back of Melisandre’s head. “I know…I know they killed our brothers. I’m happy he’s being punished. But…”

“But not like this,” Sam finished lowly. “This isn’t justice. It’s a sacrifice.”

Sam’s words sent a chill through Bramble. Sakripisyo.

The courtyard quieted as a single, shackled man came down the stairs flanked by two Baratheon soldiers. Everyone, Bramble included, watched Mance Rayder slowly face Stannis and Melisandre. Dread filled his eyes upon seeing the pyre constructed solely for him.

Would she mind being burned alive? Would she even burn at all?

She should try it sometime.

“Mance Rayder,” Stannis spoke, “you’ve been called the King Beyond the Wall. Westeros has but one king. Bend the knee, and I’ll promise you mercy.”

Mance remained silent. His eyes flickered to Jon for a brief second.

“Kneel, and live.”

This time, Mance plainly replied, “This used to be my home for many years. I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.”

Bramble heard Jon let out a small, defeated breath. She wanted to look down at her feet and spare herself from the unfolding scene. Her gaze wouldn’t drop, though, and she continued to watch Stannis nod once and signal for his soldiers to tie Mance to the stake.

Melisandre addressed the crowd. “We all must choose. Man or woman, young or old, lord or peasant, our choices are the same. We choose light, or we choose darkness. We choose good, or we choose evil. We choose the True God—or the false.” She took a torch from one of the soldiers and held it aloft. Shadows unseen to the normal eye danced across her beautiful face. “Free Folk, there is only one true king. And his name is Stannis. Here stands your King of Lies. Behold the fate of those who choose the darkness.”

She turned and began putting the torch to the pyre. The fire spread quickly, filling the air with smoke. Resolve soon fled from Mance, replaced with unadulterated terror once fire licked at his feet. He began thrashing against his bonds. His cries started out low but rose with the height of the flames.

Bramble could clearly see the whites of Mance’s eyes as he was offered up. Jon made a noise and abruptly walked away. She barely paid him any mind. Death was hardly visible in the midst of the fire. Bramble caught a few glimpses at it, existing between the roils of flame. The dance between the two entranced her in a horrific way. It was almost as if—

An arrow screamed through the air and pierced Mance’s chest. Death leapt out and took hold of him before the fire could, like a hand eagerly and ruthlessly grasping at candy. Its surprising ferocity almost made Bramble jump back. She had never seen it happen like that, before.

Sakripisyo.

As Mance went limp, as the courtyard turned to look at Jon and the bow in his hand, Melisandre spun to regard the spot where Bramble had stood. She managed to hold onto her composure, but her eyes were shocked, and her full lips parted in confusion.

Bramble watched Melisandre’s reaction from behind Edd and Grenn, hidden from view. Her heart rapidly beat in her tight chest, and her limbs shook.

What the fuck did she just see?

She cast her gaze to Jon, who stood with death forming at his feet among the shadows cast by the lord’s light.

 

 

 

Notes:

Hope there's at least one person liking this?

Ganap na kasamaan: absolute evil
Bakit ko nakikita ito?: why do I see this?
Sakripisyo: sacrifice

Chapter 10

Summary:

Revised 6/27/2020

Chapter Text

“Ah, I see you’ve brought some food for the ravens,” Sam said, getting up from where he was seated in the library. “Did hunting go well?”

Bramble shrugged and tipped her hand from side-to-side. “Ah. Grenn was saying a lot of the game could have been scared away by the battle.”

She handed him the bucket filled with chopped rabbit’s meat and lightly punched his chest. “Hello, Bramble,” Gilly spoke up. Bramble turned to say a silent hello but stopped.

Princess Shireen sat next to her with a formal, genuine smile on her face.

After staring a moment too long, Bramble remembered her manners and bowed to the princess. “Hello,” Shireen said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Bramble made a “likewise” gesture, hesitating to meet Shireen’s innocent little eyes. “He’s a…mute,” Gilly slowly explained. “He can’t speak.”

“Really?” Shireen asked, immediately alight with curiosity. “Have you always been like that?” A nod. “How interesting. Can you only communicate through writing?”

“That, and scowls,” Sam put in, then chuckled at his own joke. Bramble rolled her eyes and took out parchment. She wrote on it and then gave it to Shireen.

“‘He thinks he’s funny,’” Shireen read, giggling. She looked back up at Bramble. “I don’t know, I’ve heard him say some amusing things.”

“You see, I’m appreciated here in the library,” Sam sniffed.

Another eye roll. “The princess is teaching me how to read,” Gilly eagerly informed. “So soon you’ll be able to pass me notes about Sam, too.”

“Erm, no, that’s not exactly what notes are meant for,” Sam said rather hurriedly. Gilly and Shireen snickered while Bramble poorly hid her smile. Sam huffed like he usually did when he got flustered.

A shuffling of feet interrupted their conversation. “What is this?” Maester Aemon asked as he slowly walked over to their nook. His right hand reached out slightly to help navigate where he went, though Bramble figured he had the layout of the area memorized perfectly. “Libraries are meant to be a quiet place of contemplation, if I remember correctly.”

“Apologies, Maester Aemon,” Sam said. Aemon then smiled and hoarsely chuckled. Bramble glanced down at the floor beneath him. Death followed along, but it moved like a gentle shepherd. It often did for people in their older years.

“No apologies necessary, Samwell. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a lady’s laughter. Quite a refreshing sound in a place such as this.” He paused and tilted his head in Bramble’s direction. “Is our voiceless ranger here?”

It was a bit unnerving how he could do that. “Yes,” Sam replied. “He came to deliver food for the ravens.”

“Ah. Wonderful. Bramble, Samwell, you should begin the journey to the mess hall. Election for the new Lord Commander will begin soon.”

“Right, maester. Thank you.”

Bramble and Sam gave each other the same nervous look as Aemon shuffled away.

“It sounds like people are going to vote for Ser Alliser,” Shireen quietly said. “He seems mean.”

“He is mean,” Gilly affirmed.

She wrote on some parchment and gave it to Sam. He read it to himself and then sharply looked at her. “You…you couldn’t possibly think…”

She nodded firmly. Sam drew his brows together. “Jon doesn’t want to be in such a position.”

Bramble let out a frustrated sigh. She glanced at Gilly and their little boy and raised her brows.

Sam understood what she conveyed. “Yes, but—I mean—”

Bramble cut him off with a not-so-light punch to the chest. She bowed to Shireen and Gilly once more and left the library. Sam watched her go, the bucket of rabbit meat still in his hands.

-

It was bound to happen, no matter what, so Bramble didn’t feel too bad about nudging Sam to put Jon up for candidacy. Maester Aemon probably had a few words to say to Tarly, too, the old fox. Because of Sam’s actions, she and the Crows fondest of Jon were now pounding the tables and cheering for their new Lord Commander.

But this meant things were coming. Things worse than the Battle for Castle Black.

She decided she’d go to Hardhome when the time came. It was probably a bad idea—no, ha, hold the fuck up, it was a bad idea. Who in their right mind would want to walk into a giant, unstoppable massacre?

Bramble hadn’t been in her right mind for a while, though. She couldn’t just sit here and wait around while everyone else risked their lives. She was part of this, now. Ever since she saved Pyp from that arrow, she had become part of this whole shitstorm. Might as well see it through.

If you run any further, you’re giving them what they want. They’ve been pushing you here all along, to put you in the hands of the Night King. You need to stay.

Jojen’s warning made Bramble’s cheers turn hollow. But Jojen was probably dead by now, taking his cryptic messages along with him. Maybe he didn’t know why the Night King wanted Bramble—he just knew she was wanted.

It probably had to do with the Sight, or the fact that she was from another world. Or that she knew things that were to happen. Or all of the above. Bramble didn’t believe he intended to kill her. He intended to use her.

If she went to Hardhome, she might make things worse.

The second she doubted departing for Hardhome, though, Bramble looked at the smiling faces of Jon, Edd, Grenn, and the others who would volunteer to go because of their loyalty. They planned to save the wildlings—to save men, women, and children who didn’t deserve the fate they’d be dealt.

And isn’t what she wanted to do when she first came to this world? Try to save people? Before the world itself spat in her face, kicked her in the vag, and stripped her of every emotion except bitter survival.

Fuck, she was stupid. But fuck, she was loyal.

The Night King could piss off. Bramble had stuff to do.

-

The cat came back to the courtyard, looking mangy as ever. It had cleaned itself of blood from its injury and was now rubbing against Bramble’s legs while she took a break at one of the tables. “Looks like it remembers you,” Grenn said. He came and sat down beside her.

She took out a stash of salted jerky and tore off a piece to give to the cat. It snatched it from between her fingers and nosily started chewing. Grenn chuckled at the sight. “Now it’ll never leave you alone.”

Good, Bramble thought. The cat was…scrappy. Her dad had been allergic to cats, so they never had one growing up. But this little orange tabby with squinty yellow eyes was cuter than most of the people here.

“Hey, er, I’ve been meaning to talk to you…” Grenn said in a quieter tone. Bramble stilled for a moment before returning to giving the cat scraps. “About—about the night of the battle. I didn’t tell nobody like you said, but there’s no way I can forget what I saw.”

Bramble didn’t look at him. “You stopped a fucking giant, Bramb. That ain’t normal.”

He called her Bramb.

“Do you ever think you’re gonna tell someone? Like Jon? He should prolly know you…”

She shrugged.

“Look,” Grenn said, “I’m no snitch, yeah, but I don’t want you to tear my head off if I accidentally let somethin’ slip.”

Bramble gave him a sidelong, doubtful glance. Grenn tossed his hands up. “Hey, you killed a whole lot of men in a whole lot of ways. Don’t blame me for being a little scared.” Grumbling, he added, “it doesn’t help that you could literally tear my head off, too.”

After sighing and tossing the cat the last of her jerky, Bramble took out her parchment and wrote a response on the cold table.

They will find out soon enough. Can’t keep my secrets just to myself much longer. It might be my head that will get torn off. Thank you for not telling anyone. But your hole stays shut.

“Right,” Grenn drawled before crumpling the parchment up. Bramble ripped it from his hands and stuffed it back in her pocket. “You’re fucking confusing.”

Bramble shrugged her shoulders again and went back to petting her feline friend. It closed its eyes and started purring like a broken motor. Grenn stiffened next to her, probably just getting himself more upset. She ignored him.

“Can I pet him?”

Princess Shireen didn’t wait for permission before crouching down and running a sable-gloved hand over the cat’s back. It appreciated the attention and gave a scratchy meow. “B-begging your pardon, princess,” Grenn said nervously. He stood up, gave a stiff bow, and hurried off.

Bramble looked at death pooled beneath Shireen and felt her stomach turn. “So many of these men are afraid of me,” Shireen said while she continued to pet the cat. “I don’t know if it’s because of the greyscale or that I’m a princess.”

She gave the princess a look that said, Both.

Shireen understood and smiled. She had a keen sense of humor. “What’s his name?” she asked while she scratched behind the cat’s ear. Bramble shook her head. “Can I name him?” A definite nod. Shireen pushed her lips to the side in brief contemplation. “I really want to name him after a Targaryen. He looks brave. Or…or maybe one of the dragons?”

Bramble smirked and nodded in agreement. Shireen’s finger moved under the cat’s chin. “Hmm. He has to be Balerion, doesn’t he? Dreaded by all.”

Balerion the Dread, Bramble voicelessly mused. Shireen looked up at her. “What do you think? Is it an appropriate name?”

Because Bramble honestly would have gone with something boring and stupid like Sir Stripes or Tom, she approved of Shireen’s choice. “Wonderful,” said the little princess. “He’s in desperate need of a bath, though. Can’t go burning his enemies with dirt and fleas—”

“Princess!” a rough voice exclaimed. Shireen and Bramble turned their heads to watch an older man make his way down the stairs and into the courtyard. “You’re not supposed to leave without somebody guarding you. It’s not safe.”

“Do I look like I’m in danger?” Shireen asked back rather sassily. “I was just petting Balerion the Black Dread.”

Ser Davos huffed and came to them. “He doesn’t look black. Or a dragon.”

“It’s metaphorical,” Shireen said with a perfected scoff. Bramble’s brows raised, and she glanced at Ser Davos with a half-smile.

“Well, I’m not metaphorical in saying that you’re gonna get fleas from Balerion the Orange Dread,” Davos replied.

“We’re going to give him a bath.”

“My lady, cats hate baths,” Davos tried to reason. Shireen ignored him and directly addressed Bramble.

“Do you mind if I take Balerion for a bath?”

Bramble made a “go ahead” gesture. Shireen picked up Balerion, who squirmed against her for a moment before going limp, and marched past Davos and back up the stairs.

“She’s a little tyrant,” he grumbled before marching off to catch up with Shireen.

Davos, Bramble thought. He could save Shireen. They’ll be leaving, soon. Tell him before it’s too late.

But, then again, it might already have been too late.

 

 

 

Chapter 11

Summary:

Sorry you guys have to put up with my short chapters. They'll get longer here in a bit.

Revised 6/27/2020

Chapter Text

“Sam,” Jon lowly called before the meeting began. He tilted his head toward the empty seat beside him. “Maester Aemon?”

“He’s not feeling well,” Sam said. Bramble took a quiet drink of her swill. She pretended not to hear their conversation. “He apologizes for not being here.”

“Take good care of him.”

Bramble looked up at their new Lord Commander when he called the hall to order. “Brothers. As you all know too well, it’s long past time to dig a new latrine pit.” There was a short bout of laughter, but she could already feel tension rising between those on Jon’s side and those on Alliser’s side. Nothing would come of it, though, if she remembered correctly. “First Builder Yarwyck and I have decided to appoint a latrine captain to oversee this crucial task.” This time, Jon laughed a little with the men. When his smile faded, he said, “Bryan. Seems like a good a good job for a ginger.” He smiled again and raised his mug towards Bryan. Tension dissipated with more laughter.

Wait. Something…something was going to happen.

“Ser Alliser. You have more experience than any other ranger at Castle Black. You proved your valor many times over and defended the Wall from the wildling attack.” Jon’s face didn’t crack. “I name you First Ranger.”

 What was going to happen next? Something bad, right?

Bramble felt death over her shoulder. She turned and followed its direction just as Jon spoke again. “Lord Janos. I’m giving you the command of Greyguard.”

Ah. Right. That was going to happen.

“Greyguard is a ruin,” Janos sneered.

“Yes, the fort is in a sorry state, rebuild it as best you can. First Builder Yarwyk can spare ten men—”

“I’ve been in charge with the defense of King’s Landing when you were soiling your swaddling clothes,” Janos cut off. Bramble watched death wrap around his throat with dark green eyes, unaware of its grip. “Keep your ruin.”

The hall erupted in dissent of Janos’ words. Bramble noticed Olly raise his hackles next to her. She put a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “He’s speaking to our Lord Commander,” Olly growled.

He wouldn’t be talking at all, soon enough.

“Alright, alright!” Sam yelled over the hall to regain order. “That’s enough of that.”

“You mistake me,” Jon said, voice all at once low and loud. “That was a command. Pack your arms and armor, say your farewells, and ride for Greyguard.”

Janos leapt to his feet, chair scraping against the cold floor. “I will not go meekly off to freeze and die. Give it to one of the fools who cast a stone for you! I will not have it! Do you hear me, boy? I will not have it!”

Emotions in the hall solidified into one.

Offense.

Even those who weren’t fond of Snow looked at Janos with full knowledge that he had just committed something unforgivable. Jon was their Lord Commander.

It was so still that Jon didn’t have to speak loudly when he said, “Are you refusing to obey my order.” It never had been, never would be, a question.

“You can stick your order up your bastard ass.”

Jon didn’t look at Bramble, Grenn, and Edd. His eyes remained locked on Slynt. “Take Lord Janos outside.”

Then she was getting out of her seat and flanking Edd’s left side while Grenn flanked the right. A cloud only she could see fell upon them. She walked like one of the brothers. They’d turn their backs on her when they realized what she was.

Bramble would worry about it later.

“Olly, get my sword.”

The entire hall rose to their feet to make way for the three of them. Alliser Thorne stood in their way, eyes hard and cold. Edd stared him down, posing a silent challenge. Grenn moved his hand to the hilt of his sword. No words were spoken.

Alliser then stepped out of the way, leaving Janos out in in the open. The smug look he wore from being protected vanished in an instant, replaced with confusion and biting fear. Edd roughly grabbed Janos and pushed him towards the door. When he resisted, Bramble and Grenn linked their arms under his and started dragging him. Janos’ boots scraped against the floorboards, but to Bramble, his resistance was barely anything at all.

The doors opened for them. “Stop! You cannot do this!” Janos shouted, but his cries fell upon deaf ears. They continued outside and into the dark, cold air. Nowadays, the sun never fully reached the top of the sky, leaving them in dim light and underneath the looming Wall.

“You think the boy can scare me?” Janos half-laughed, but it was riddled with terror. “He’s mistaken! Yes, very mistaken!”

A wooden chopping block was placed on the deck they were leading Janos to. He continued to rant in denial even as Bramble and Grenn led him up the stairs and stopped him in front of the block. Edd shoved him to his knees. She looked to the hall’s entrance and saw Jon appear, shrouded in black and holding a power to him Bramble didn’t see so much as she felt.

Olly waited for him at the bottom of the stairs with Longclaw. Jon took it from him without pause. When he made it up to the deck, Bramble released her unmovable grip on Janos. She and Grenn stepped back beside Edd.

Janos lifted his head to Jon when he removed Longclaw from its sheath. Bramble shivered at the sound of scraping steel. He handed the sheath to Edd and placed Longclaw in front of him with the tip touching the ground.

“If you have any last words, my lord, now’s the time.”

Dark eyes, a voice seemingly disjointed from Bramble’s own thought. He has such dark eyes.

They’ll be the same dark eyes looking down at you as you die.

The thought came so suddenly, so forcefully, it nearly knocked Bramble off her feet. She sharply glanced down, expecting to see some semblance of death waiting for her. Only a frosty floor and black boots met her gaze.

“I—I was wrong!” Janos blurted. His body trembled. “You’re the Lord Commander! We all serve you. I’m sorry. Not only for this, f-for all that I’ve said.”

Jon closed his dark eyes for a moment, giving Bramble the chance to regain some of her composure.

“I was wrong!”

When Jon opened them again, he raised Longclaw above him to bring it down on Janos’ neck. “My lord, please! Mercy!” Janos cried, stopping Jon mid-swing. “Mercy! Mercy!” He started to sob in ugly heaves as a confession spilled out. “I’ll go, I will! P-please. I’m afraid. I’ve always been afraid.”

The courtyard watched Janos reduce to a pile of whimpering tears.

And the courtyard watched Jon remove his head from his neck.

Bramble refused to take her eyes off Janos. Death surged around him, claiming whatever soul he had. The act itself was soundless, but the thump of Janos’ head hitting the floor and wet blood pouring from the stump of his neck thundered in Bramble’s ears.

Jon’s dark eyes went to the lone figure standing on the guest wing’s balcony. Bramble didn’t have to follow his gaze to know that Stannis had watched the entire thing.

You’re going to die, she whispered to herself. You’re going to die.

But when?

And are you ready to die now? After all this?

“Bramb,” Grenn’s own whisper cut in. She looked to him and saw he was motioning for her to wipe her nose. She put a gloved finger below a nostril. It came away with glistening blood smeared across the black leather.

Great. If Bramble was going to get nosebleeds, she deserved to have the power to control things with her mind and fight monsters from other dimensions.

Oh, wait. She was in another dimension and was being chased by monsters as scary as the Demogorgon. Except she didn’t have cool eighties music to fight to and Steve Harrington to swing a bat with nails in it.

Damn, she missed Netflix.

 

 

 

Chapter Text

Bramble used to be a poet.

Or, at least she tried to be a poet when she was fourteen. They were mostly about boys not liking her, how nobody understood the pain she went through, and the view outside her bedroom window.

They were complete shit, to say the least.

Shireen’s poetry, on the other hand, should have been bound in a book, published, and entombed in history.

Maybe Bramble thought of it that way because she already loved the little girl. Didn’t matter either way.

You loved Reesa and Jak, too. You died that day they did. What if you can’t save Shireen? Will you spiral again?

“So you like it?” she questioned, both eager and hesitant to know Bramble’s reply. Shireen didn’t move that much because Balerion the Dread currently curled up on her lap. He even had an intricately braided leather collar, now, and was rid of fleas and other unsavory bugs.

Bramble leaned back in her chair and made a mind-blowing gesture. Shireen’s brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”

I love it, Bramble mouthed, making her lips concise to Shireen could understand. It produced a bright smile from the princess.

“I know it still needs work. No poem is perfect the first time around. Maybe I’ll have Sam take a look at it or read it to Maester Aemon so he can critique it.”

Shireen didn’t suggest her mother or father.

Good idea, Bramble wrote on the large piece of parchment in front of her. Already, numerous responses for Shireen scattered across the paper, all disconnected and patchy like the inner cover of a yearbook.

Somebody cleared their throat a few feet away. Bramble and Shireen turned their heads and saw Olly standing there. “Lord Commander Snow wishes to speak with you, Bramb.” His eyes darted to the princess. “Er, Bramble.”

“Bramb?” Shireen repeated. “They call you Bramb for short?” She considered the nickname for a moment. “I like it.”

Olly had suddenly turned red in the face. Bramble smirked. “I suppose I’ll have to go find somebody else to bother,” Shireen sighed in a tone much too old for her age. “Maybe Gilly needs help with something.”

The princess liked being here. She could retreat from the harsh eyes of her mother and actually talk to people. Bramble supposed Shireen liked her because, well, they were both marred. Bramble had a birthmark and a scar to go with it; Shireen had greyscale.

Bramble stood and bowed to Shireen, who smiled and waved goodbye. As she turned to follow Olly out of the library, she glimpsed fire upon snow and the burnt corpse of a little girl hanging limp within the flames.

She’s not going to be Reesa. Not going to be Reesa.

“So are you friends with the princess now?” Olly questioned, trying to keep his voice nonchalant. Bramble drew herself from the dark thoughts and teasingly elbowed him. He made a noise and scowled. “Shut it. I don’t like her. She’s a princess. You’re not supposed to like princesses.” Another elbow. “Stop!” Olly protested. The redness traveled up his ears and down his neck. It only made Bramble scratchily laugh.

He grumbled and glowered the rest of the way to Jon’s study. It gave Bramble time to think about what Jon could possibly want with her. Was she in trouble? Had he finally found out about her sex? Did Grenn let something slip? Or was she just being called in for something routine?

Olly opened the door for her. Jon sat at his study, going over an endless stack of papers. He glanced at them. “Thank you, Olly. Go and get some lunch.”

With the dip of his head, Olly departed and closed the door. Jon rubbed his eyes and motioned for Bramble to come closer. “I’ve been wanting to talk with you,” he said. She took a seat on the other side of his desk. Jon slid parchment and an inkwell and quill in front of her. “Is that alright?”

Why was he asking if it was alright? Jon was the Lord Commander. He technically had no obligation to do such a thing.

But Jon was a good man.

Bramble nodded and awkwardly picked up the quill. She didn’t have much experience writing with one, but it’d have to do. Just like a pen, right?

“You spoke against fighting the wildlings when you first came here,” Jon started. “And you suggested that we let them pass through peacefully and ban together to fight the real enemy.” He straightened in his chair. Those dark eyes stared into Bramble. “If I remember correctly, you said that it’s not about deserve, anymore. Do you still believe that?”

Instead of nodding, Bramble wrote down, I do.

Jon glanced at it and went on. “And do you believe the Northern saying? ‘When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.’” He spoke with a somewhat distant gaze, as if he could distinctly recall his father saying it.

Bramble tapped what she wrote down. Where was this going?

Nowhere good.

“You are not to divulge the information I tell you before I make an announcement,” said Jon. “Do I have your word?”

This time, she just nodded.

“Good. As you well know, the real threat is the Army of the Dead. If we don’t get all the wildings across the Wall, they’ll end up as more soldiers for the enemy.”

Bramble had already started writing when Jon finished. You don’t need my opinion to know what the others will believe. They’ll think you’re betraying the Night’s Watch.

Jon sighed. “Yes, I know that. But it’s not their decision to make. It’s mine—even if it means angering a few brothers because I want to keep people from the hands of the dead.”

It seems you already have your mind made up. Why do you want to discuss this with me?

“I…don’t know, exactly.” He smiled a little, but it was strained and tired. “You came in like most of the other Crows. Bitter, angry, a bit feral. I thought I had you figured out as someone who liked to kill. But then you went and protested against killing wildlings. You made points that nobody at Castle Black would have ever said aloud without fear.”

Well, not any fear in the moment. That all came afterwards.

“You’re not who I thought you were, Bramble. You care. You care about the wildlings, you care about Olly, you care about your brothers.” He smiled for real this time. “And you even care about cats.

“I’m going to ask Tormund to convince the wildlings to take safe passage on Stannis’ ships. When they arrive, I’m tasking you with finding a safe place to locate them south of the Wall.”

Bramble stared. She opened her mouth to speak, then remembered she had no voice to speak with. “I won’t hold it against you if you refuse,” Jon continued. “But I think you’re the best man for the job. You’ll ensure they’re taken care of—and you’re not afraid to throw a few punches to get people to do what you want. Most of the brothers are too afraid to challenge you, and if the wildlings aren’t, they will be.

“So, are you up for the task?”

Shit. Fuck.  Don’t do it, you little bitch. Don’t you put your hand out—

Bramble glared, but she put her hand towards Jon despite the protests in her mind. Pride shown in his eyes the moment he clasped her hand with his own. His expression made her…happy? Glow?

Something suddenly fluttered in her stomach.

Oh fucking hell. Did she just get butterflies because of Jon? Jon?

He was handsome, yeah. Now that she didn’t have to focus solely on survival, she began to be more aware about the people and places around her. The reawakened third eye undoubtedly made her life suck. And besides, Jon and Daenerys were, you know, a thing.

Before her face could turn red, Bramble ducked her head down to write on the parchment. When will you make the announcement?

“Depending on what Tormund does, tomorrow night.”

After hesitating a moment, Bramble scribbled, Does Olly know about your plans?

Jon replied with partial confusion. “No.”

She pursed her lips, trying to decide if she should say what she wanted. But this was about Olly. Bramble cared about Olly. She didn’t want to see a little boy strung up on a rope. She didn’t want to see death take him.

He waited patiently while she scrawled.

Olly watched his parents get butchered by wildlings. He’s just a boy, but he’s old enough to hate. He still feels the pain of losing his parents. If you don’t help him understand why you’re about to do this, you’re going to lose him. Talk to Olly.

Jon had to read her words a few times before finally looking back up at her. Then he nodded once, saying, “You’re right. I will. Thank you.”

Well, she had gone this far. Might as well prod Jon some more. When is Stannis leaving?

“A fortnight.”

A tremble ran underneath Bramble’s skin. She was running out of time—and with no plan or way to tell anyone what would happen. “Sam tells me you spend time with the princess when you’re off-duty,” Jon spoke. “You and Shireen get on very well. Did you have any siblings? Before you came here, I mean.”

Bramble shook her head, eyes cast down. “And you don’t have any…tendencies to liking little girls, do you?”

Her gaze went back to Jon, furious. An image of Reesa lying on the ground, raped and bloodied, flashed through Bramble’s mind. She shook her head once. He raised his hands plaintively. “I didn’t think so, but one can never be too sure in a place like this,” Jon apologized. “It’s good you’re Shireen’s friend. I imagine it’s not easy living a life like she does.”

Bramble wanted to tell Jon that they’re going to sacrifice their daughter. But how could she?

He lightly rapped his knuckle on the desk. “I think that will be all, Bramble. Thank you.”

She stood, bowed, and left the study. Olly stood outside the door, waiting for his next orders from Jon. “Olly,” Jon called, “come in here. I want to talk to you.”

Bramble tucked her head down and stifled a smile. The urge passed in another moment.

-

Grenn liked to talk out loud, especially when Bramble couldn’t respond with anything more than a head movement or the shrug of her shoulders. The howling wind atop the Wall couldn’t drown out his country-accented voice, either, leaving her to listen to him while she scowled at the sprawling expanse before them.

Despite her facial expression, Bramble didn’t mind hearing him talk. She liked Grenn—more than she thought she would. He didn’t spill the beans on her big little secret, and he still stayed nice to her.

But he’d be going to Hardhome with all of them in two days’ time. Bramble kept looking down at his feet to see if she’d spot the beginnings of death. So far, though, she saw nothing.

“You think that big giant will be there?” Grenn asked aloud, shifting to warm up another part of his body on their watch. “At Hardhome, with the rest of the wildlings.”

Bramble tilted her head in a nod. Grenn grunted. “That’s gonna be fucking awkward, yeah? I mean…he killed our brothers. He tried to kill us. You…did something that made him stop and now we’re gonna see him again.”

Another nod.

“What’s with you and them bloody noses?” Now that they were on the subject about the strange things Bramble did, Grenn wasn’t likely to change it anytime soon. “You get ‘em whenever stuff is happening. Killing and the like.”

This time she made a face and shrugged. “You lying?” Grenn squinted at her. Bramble shook her head. “Huh. Doubt you’ll be asking anyone what it means, either.” A blast of wind nearly knocked them off their feet, but the warmth of the small fire they huddled near to kept them safe and close.

When the wind passed, Grenn dusted flakes of ice from his hair and asked, “Have you always been strong? Like the way you are now? You’ve lived like this your whole life?”

After a moment’s pause, Bramble shook her head again. “What? Really? When did you become a beast?” To add effect, he swung a few punches and then made exploding sounds.

Bramble scratchily chuckled and held up three fingers. “You…were three when you got it?”

No, she mouthed firmly.

“…Three years ago?”

Yes.

“Shit, really? W—how did you get it? Can I get it?”

He probably wouldn’t want it once he got it. Though being strong and good at fighting was a plus in a world like this, she felt like it was a package deal with the Sight. Bramble had a feeling that Grenn wouldn’t be the type of person who liked seeing a manifestation of death consume people.

Bramble gave her head a shake. Grenn craned his own head back and sighed. “S’pose it’s not all bad, yeah? You probably had to do some sort of human sacrifice or perform dark magic to get it.”

If only.

“Oh, don’t be scowling like that, Bramb,” Grenn laughed. “Doubt you’ll ever tell us the reasons behind it, so might as well lemme have my imagination. Did you drink the blood of a virgin? Did you have sex with a witch? Did you—”

Bramble pretended to lunge at him. Grenn jumped back but guffawed even louder.

“Don’t listen to that whole thing your mom says about being nice to boys,” her dad advised while he drove her to school. She was thirteen. “Be mean to them! Because boys are nasty. If you have to kick one, then kick them! They deserve it! And if you can’t do it, then tell me, and I’ll kick them and their dads.”

“Got it,” Bramble said. “Kick boys because they’re mean and nasty.”

“And don’t forget gross!”

“If boys are gross, then why did mom marry you?”

“Because your mom fell in love with a man, not a boy,” Dad replied with a smug smirk.

“Dad, you still play with Legos and went to that convention dressed as Aragorn.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean? You went with me as Frodo.”

Bramble lived by her dad’s advice about boys. Yet as she stalked off from Grenn while he continued to laugh at her reaction, she couldn’t fight the smile caused by a gross boy. Man. Whatever.

First Jon, then Grenn. Who was next? Pyp? Edd? Probably.

What had gotten into her? She needed to stop being so…horny.

Disguising herself as a boy proved hard enough. Bramble didn’t need have her insides churning with emotions. They’d only get her into trouble—as a guy or a girl.

The first thing Grenn needed to do was stop calling her Bramb. Stupid nickname, anyway.

 

 

 

Chapter 13

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

By the time Grenn and Bramble finished their watch on the Wall, dawn bled onto the horizon, though it had not yet peaked onto Castle Black. They took the lift down, then separated to routinely walk through areas of the castle. Bramble checked over the stables, armory and library.

In the library, she found Shireen Baratheon asleep on one of the tables, using a thick, open book as a pillow. A few tables down, Sam tirelessly scribbled on parchment with blood-shot eyes. He remained unaware of Bramble until she rapped on his table. It scared him more than it should have.

“O-oh, Bramble! What’re you doing here?”

Bramble made a crude, sharp gesture that practically said, What am I doing here? What are you doing here?

“Right, right. You had watch tonight. Sorry, I’m a bit tired.”

A bit? Bramble silently questioned.

“Is it almost morning?” A nod. Sam sighed. “Oh, wonderful. I’ve been trying to solve this equation for the past month, and I haven’t made a scratch.” He acknowledged the sleeping princess a little way off. “And I didn’t want Princess Shireen here all by herself.”

Despite the own fatigue wearing on her eyes, Bramble sat next to Sam and pulled out her parchment to ask why he worried about an equation in the first place.

“Because Maester Aemon could never figure it out, and he assigned it to me to solve when I first came to the stewards. And now that he’s getting sicker, I just…” Sam trailed off, a look of sadness befalling him.

Bramble consolingly punched his arm and gestured for him to hand the book over. Sam was slightly befuddled, but he pushed it across the table to her without question. “There, that’s it.”

She furrowed her brows and examined the equation. It had been three years since Bramble did any mathematics, but hey, it was worth a shot.

And a shot well fired, come to find out.

Ah, Bramble mouthed, a rare smirk coming out of her. She snapped for Sam to hand her the quill. He made a timid noise and put it in her grasp. The letters were only a little different, but they all had the same principle. Math could be transcendent, too.

At one point in the equation, Bramble got stopped. She rubbed her scarred-over birthmark and grumbled. If only her dad were here. He held a master’s in physics at the University of Toronto and taught calculus and science classes at her high school in Thunder Bay. Some of that smartness spilled onto her, thankfully, but it took a bit longer for her to figure out things he’d understand within a second.

After sifting through mathematical memories and formulas she once thought useless, Bramble remembered what to do next and quickly scrawled it down. It would have been infinitely easier with a calculator, but now she was glad her dad used to make her solve things without requiring one.

A couple minutes and a few drawn graphs later, Bramble had the answer circled and the proof to show its logic. Sam hastily grabbed the parchment with all her work on and went over it with darting eyes.

His mouth opened and closed several times, and he made a few astounded sounds before any real words came out. “What…how did you…? No, that can’t be—oh, my.” Sam’s sudden, boyish giggle made Bramble think of her dad whenever he found something more interesting than it should have been. “Oh, my!”

Then he sharply regarded Bramble, who sat with a wan smile on her face. “The—the maesters in the Citadel can’t even solve this! They’re not sure what type of equation it is, o-or what it relates to because it’s been unsolvable!” Baffled, he then asked, “So…so how were you able to solve it?”

Parametrical equations are a bitch, Bramble thought. But she just shrugged her shoulders to Sam.

“This…this formula, the one you used. I don’t think it exists! Does it? How do you know how to correctly apply it? Because it all makes sense!” His ecstatic demeanor turned him red in the face with excitement.

What a nerdy little guy, she thought while she soundlessly chuckled at Sam. And what a good friend.

Bramble grabbed the parchment to write on it. Sam eagerly leaned forward to see her response, hoping for an explanation to her knowledge of things the smartest old farts in Westeros couldn’t comprehend.

He frowned when he saw what she actually wrote.

Go to bed Sam.

Bramble stood up, woke Shireen, and escorted her back to her quarters, leaving Sam to continue staring at an equation she had learned in high school.

Shireen walked with eyes half-closed as Bramble guided her down the hall. How did you sneak away from your guards? she wanted to question. How have you possibly gone this long without being found by someone?

“I was waiting for you all night,” Shireen sleepily reprimanded.

Bramble made apologetic movements. “It’s alright,” Shireen said. “I’m glad I got to see you before we left.”

Left?

“Father moved up the date to start marching to tomorrow,” she explained, sensing Bramble’s confusion. “There’ve been reports of bad weather approaching. He wanted to leave before it hit.”

Bramble slowed as the reality of the situation sunk in. Shireen, who was more awake now, looked up to her with wide, innocent eyes. “What’s the matter?”

What’s the matter? What’s the matter?

The Baratheon army would march south to Winterfell. Bramble would travel north to Hardhome. The trek to the former Stark home took about a week. There couldn’t possibly be enough time.

Bramble recollected herself and patted Shireen’s shoulder. The little princess smiled. “I’m going to miss you too,” she said. “Thank you for making things less boring here.”

She threw her arms around Bramble’s waist and hugged her tightly. All Bramble could do was stand there and bite back growing fear. Then Shireen let go, smiled one last time, and rounded the corner to sneak back into her chambers without a dirty Crow right there beside her.

A moment passed. Then another. Bramble stood there, breathing in cold air and feeling the walls close in around her.

Whatever made her think she could still save Shireen in the first place?

Davos. There was still Davos. Bramble could—

The door on Bramble’s right creaked open. Something poured from the room, oozing and fluid and old, sending shivers down her spine.

“Well, well,” Melisandre purred. “One of Lord Snow’s little friends.” She left the confines of her room and stood in the narrow, dim hallway. “Such delicate features you have, Lady Crow.” She made a sympathetic noise. “I think you know it’s only a matter of time before the truth is revealed. Already, I hear whispers among the brothers about the nature of your sex. Your Lord Commander and friends defend you, but even they are beginning to wonder.”

Bramble turned fully to face the Red Woman, fighting the urge to shake. Melisandre smiled and angled her head a fraction. “The longer I look at you, the more the Lord of Light tells me all is not as it seems. Shadows are cast upon you—ones that even He cannot penetrate. Yet the shadows hide something bright. Bright and dangerous.” Her eyes languidly roved over Bramble. “I do not know of the secret powers you possess. But I will.”

This woman. This woman was going to sacrifice Shireen for nothing. She sacrificed others, murdered others, and she’d do it again and again and again if she could get her fucking way—

The large necklace she wore made Bramble’s eyes sting, but it wouldn’t quell the fresh fury rising inside her. Nothing would.

Just as Melisandre opened her mouth to say something more, Bramble’s hand lashed out and gripped the large ruby set in the middle of Melisandre’s necklace. It sent an electric jolt through her system, leaving her insides buzzing. She refused to let go.

Melisandre froze, most likely feeling the same sensation Bramble fell victim to. I know who you are, masamang babae, she spat with such vitriol Melisandre was sure to hear it. Bramble wanted to crush the pendant and show everyone just what the Red Woman was. To save Shireen and all the soldiers about to lose their lives in a hopeless battle. To save everyone from her lies and witchcraft.

An aura burst from Melisandre. It was something born of fire and light and revenge and fury. It was real and human.

Still. Bramble had killed humans before. What difference would this make?

But she saves Jon, that same, detached voice reminded. She saves Jon.

Bramble let go. Her palm burned from an unknown source of heat. Melisandre had backed up against the wall, and she regarded her with eyes too old for her body. She heaved deep, even breaths that echoed in the frigid silence.

It took all Bramble had to turn on her heels and leave. She felt Melisandre’s gaze on her back even after she disappeared from view.

An imprint of the pendant had been scorched onto Bramble’s palm. She shoved her entire hand into a drift of snow to soothe the pain.

Sickness twisted her stomach. Whatever exchange had happened left her weak and vulnerable. You’re being stupid, again. Just because you can solve a little math doesn’t mean you’re being smart.

Blood dripped from her nose and into the snow, leaving little red punctures in otherwise untouched purity. Bramble stared at the sight for longer than normal. She watched each unobstructed droplet fall into the same spot of the one before. Eventually, she began to laugh little hisses. How could she not? This world was so fucking insane that acknowledging it became morbidly funny.

She should have died on that plane with her parents. They just wanted to go to Hawaii for their first long-distance vacation, after all. Now their bodies were probably at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean while she was here, making friends and enemies, killing then killing some more, and possessing supernatural powers in a world supposed to be fictional.

Once the pain in her hand faded and turned numb, Bramble took it out of the snow. She wiped her nose. She needed to sleep. Fuck, she needed sleep.

-

“You’ll take care of him for me, won’t you?” Shireen asked from atop her horse. Balerion sat comfortably in her arms.

Bramble nodded and tried not to show too much emotion once the cat slipped from Shireen’s arms and into hers. The princess bit back tears. “He prefers cooked chicken over rabbit, and he likes it mashed, not cut up.”

Goodbye, Shireen, Bramble mouthed.

“Goodbye, Bramble.”

She turned away from the princess before any tears could creep up. Anxiety budded in her chest. There was a note tucked in Bramble’s coat meant for Ser Davos, but she couldn’t spot the man anywhere. He wasn’t with Stannis, who at the moment spoke with Jon.

During Bramble’s scanning, she spotted Melisandre. The Red Woman stared back at her for a few moments before smiling. Ugh. What a bitch.

After fruitlessly searching for a few more minutes with Balerion cradled in an arm, Bramble tapped on a Baratheon captain’s shoulder. She mimed having a beard and then pointed to Stannis. “Wh…Oh, you wanna know where Ser Davos is?” the captain said out loud. Bramble nodded. “He left this morning with the front squadron.”

A high-pitched ringing in her ears drowned out the other sounds of Castle Black. Bramble made her way atop the southern ramparts to survey the army train. Davos was at least three hours away by now, meaning Bramble wouldn’t be able to sneak away until nightfall. But she wouldn’t be able to even then. Jon was going to have a meeting with all the Crows—and Tormund—joining him on the journey to Hardhome. It’d be suspicious if Bramble skipped out on that. Suspicious and stupid.

But Shireen—

Hardhome was a two-day journey from Castle Black each way. She’d still have time to do something.

Wouldn’t she?

Balerion meowed at Bramble. The sound grated against her ears, bringing her back to reality. For such a feral cat, he had sure gotten used to being packed around. And being fed.

She made a face at him and carried the cat off to the kitchens. Gilly was there cutting potatoes with baby Sam settled in his basket. “Hello, Bramble,” she greeted after a glance. “What do you need?”

Bramble jostled Balerion, who meowed again. Gilly looked back to them with a real gaze, this time. “Oh,” she quietly breathed. “They left today, didn’t they? The princess, too. I’m going to miss her.”

Gilly then squinted her eyes at Balerion. “Is he actin’ like he’s starving? The liar. He got fed this morning.”

Bramble smiled and scratched behind the cat’s ears. Gilly sighed. “But, s’pose he’s sad, after all. Alright, bring ‘im here, I’ll get some food ready.”

She set Balerion on the ground. He trotted after Gilly while Bramble meandered over to baby Sam. He cooed at her when she waved.

Babies were awesome. Bramble liked kids a lot. Becoming a pediatrician was one of the many careers she had on her list before that plane sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Along with paleontologist, cosmetologist, designer, director, film scorer, teacher, and engineer. She hadn’t really whittled down her aspirations before she died.

You remind me of the babe, Bramble suddenly mouthed, leaning in and poking his nose. What babe? She drew back out, then came back in again. The babe with the power. Back out. What power? She poked at Sam’s tummy. He giggled and kicked those stumpy legs of his. The power of voo-doo. Who do? You do. Do what? Remind me of the babe.

By the end of the soundless song, Bramble bounced on the balls of her feet and had her hands splayed to the sides, causing little Sam to laugh. “What’re you doing?” Gilly asked with a bemused but delighted expression.

Bramble scratched the back of her head and made several gestures that practically said, Well, you see… and I was just…

It made her nervous to think anybody saw her acting like a regular human being.

“I’ll watch over Balerion,” she grinned sweetly. “You’d better be off.”

After scratching behind Balerion’s ear and bidding farewell to Gilly and Sam, Bramble slunk off to gather her things for the journey. Not that she had a lot of things, per say, but what she really needed were strips of cloth to stuff in the linings of her underwear. Bramble could feel cramps coming on. They throbbed faintly for now, but soon they’d be worse—and bring the torment with them.

Periods sucked already. Being in Westeros and having them? Even worse. Zero fucking stars. Bramble thought about concocting her own sort of tampon, but she didn’t want to experiment with stuffing random things up her vag and seeing how it worked out. And Maester Aemon wasn’t likely to have Monistat up his sleeve should anything go wrong.

Speaking of which.

-

Bramble lightly knocked on the door to the maester’s quarters. Sam opened it and smiled a little when he saw her. “Hello, Bramb. What brings you here? I thought you went hunting.”

Just got back, Bramble mouthed, tossing a thumb over her shoulder so the point would get across. Sam made an “ah” noise and stepped aside for her to enter.

“Is that the silent Crow?” Maester Aemon called from the bed where he rested. At the end of his question, he broke down in a bout of ragged coughs. Sam rushed over and held a cup of water to Aemon’s lips so he could take small sips.

“It is, maester,” Sam replied when the coughing fit had subsided.

“Does he have an ailment that needs remedying?”

Sam looked to her, brows raising expectantly. Bramble shook her head and walked over. She took the hand she was hiding behind her back, then showed it to Sam.

The wooden item made Sam smile a bit more. “He has a gift for you, Maester Aemon.”

“Oh? Is it some light reading?”

Bramble smirked at the old man’s snark. She moved to his bedside and put the small object in his soft, withered hands. He felt it for a few seconds before an old laugh rasped out of him. “Why, is this what I think it is? A dragon’s head? It is!”

“Did you carve that, Bramb?” Sam asked. She nodded. His eyes flickered over to Aemon, making his smile slip. “But…er, how did you…?”

“It doesn’t matter now, Samwell,” Aemon said. He put the carved dragon’s head against his breast. “Thank you, Bramble.”

Though he could not see it, Bramble bowed in his direction. “You carved it? I didn’t know you were a woodworker,” said Sam as he inspected what he could of the dragon.

She nodded again and shrugged her shoulders in a double response. Bramble learned how to carve from her dad. They weren’t exquisite, but the charms and small figurines she sold kept her from starvation in Braavos and White Harbor. Since Aemon didn’t have that much long to live, she thought she’d revive the trait and give him something to hold onto until the next life came.

But it wasn’t as if Sam or anyone else would know that.

Bramble didn’t linger. For some reason, the death hanging over Maester Aemon made her uncomfortable to be around. Like it had unseen eyes of its own looking back at her. If it had always been that way, it ignored Bramble. And if it hadn’t…

Well. Best not get into it now.

 

 

 

Notes:

Bramble liked The Labrynth a lot. Her dad carved her a staff for her tenth birthday so they could pretend to fight with magic in the backyard.

Chapter 14

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble swung herself into the saddle and clutched her horse’s reins. Snow fell from the sky in thick, heavy flakes that stuck to everything they landed on. Hopefully, it’d stay only snowfall and refrain from turning into a full-out storm. Not just yet. Not until she got back and could do something to save Shireen.

Jon, Edd, and Grenn escorted Tormund out to the courtyard. Everybody else present watched, too. The palpable hatred from the men around her gave Bramble a headache.

Olly was one of the contributors. The boy glared at Tormund from the blacksmith’s station, feelings unchanged about the wildling.

Bramble wrote him a letter and left it on his cot before she came to the courtyard for departure. It was a poor attempt at getting him to see beyond heartache and hatred. She had written that she understood what it all felt like, and because of her own harbored hatred, she ended up here at Castle Black.

Maybe he hadn’t read it yet. Maybe he had and didn’t care. Either way, Bramble…hoped he’d be able to see the path he headed down before it was too late.

When Olly realized that Bramble stared at him, he looked her way. She offered a faint smile and a small wave. He briefly raised his hand in a farewell.

I’ll be back, she wanted to say. I promise.

Tormund drew her attention away from Olly by bringing the horse he sat on next to Bramble. “You’re looking grim, Little Crow. Haven’t ripped anything to shreds, lately?”

She gave him a sidelong glare. It’d been a mistake; Tormund met her with his shit-eating smirk. He always had one whenever he spoke to Bramble. Take the meeting yesterday, for example. The moment Bramble entered the room where Jon had those on the mission convene, Tormund had grinned and said, “Looks like Lord Snow is bringing the real muscle, then. At least I know I’ll be safe with the Little Crow protecting me.”

He still hadn’t told any of them about her identity. Bramble expected he wouldn’t, but it was still a relief to hear him refer to her in male terms.

Grenn voiced her thoughts perfectly as he rode up on her other side. “Piss off, wildling.”

“Can’t. Already pissed. Don’t worry; I won’t take too much of his attention away from you.”

This time Bramble slowly turned her head to Tormund and full-on scowled. His smirk only widened and, to make it worse, he added a wink.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” Grenn asked frustratingly. Tormund just shrugged his snow-covered shoulders and pointed to the opening gates.

“Looks like we’re about to leave. And I have to say, Little Crow, I’m looking forward to our future conversations.”

Bramble punched him hard in the arm. It wasn’t satisfying, but it was better than nothing.

-

Kindness did not exist north of the Wall. It was too damn fucking cold as usual. Her nose bled constantly from the vile magic saturated in the air, and then the blood would quickly crust over and freeze in the temperatures. Because she rarely had a solid, constant surface to write on, Bramble basically became an extra. Grenn was the only one who’d take the time to talk to her every once in a while, and even then, sometimes it’d just be too cold to open any mouths.

Then they arrived at Hardhome.

Bramble could feel the death permeating from the settlement miles away. The weight of it rolled across the ocean waves and into the ships Stannis had lent them. It made her muscles weak and stomach churn.

“You alright?” Grenn asked, lowering his voice. They and most of the Crows stood on the deck, too anxious to do anything else. Bramble pinched her bleeding nose in a futile attempt to keep it from spilling. “You…you don’t look well.”

Though Pyp would have definitely made fun of Grenn for stating the simple observation, he wasn’t wrong. It didn’t help that Bramble had started her period the previous night. Meaning, she bled from not just one, but two places. Just fucking peachy. Cramps combined with the overwhelming, impending atmosphere of death really made her shitty day.

Bramble answered Grenn by holding her hand flat and tilting it from side-to-side. “Well—what’s the matter?”

A dark mass on the horizon caught her attention. Bramble fixed her gaze on the black, rolling blanket almost completely covering the shoreline. It stretched across for a few kilometers. The longer Bramble looked at it, the more she reckoned with. The mass roiled in deep purples and blues and reds, like sunlight hitting gasoline. Only its hues were far, far more. Her brain said that she shouldn’t be seeing these colors on such a void-like canvas. Because so much—so much—death awaited, it had taken on a more complex state of being.

Bramble could already hear the screams. Could already feel a coldness falling upon her that surpassed the weather.

This had been a terrible, terrible idea.

Stepping foot on the settlement would land Bramble in a world of hurt.

“Bramb?” Grenn looked to Hardhome and back to her, unsure of why she had started acting so strangely. Well. She always acted strangely. Stranger, she should say.

Bramble finally tore her gaze away from the massacre site and turned to Grenn. He really did appear concerned. Why was he always so concerned about her? She didn’t ask for it.

She lied to him by gesturing to her nose. “Ah,” Grenn nodded. “Yeah, it’s been bleedin’ a lot. Prolly a pain in the ass.”

Yeah. Bramble was bleeding a lot. Ha. Fuck.

“If things go to shit, Bramb, stick by me, alright?”

Both her brows raised in half surprise, half skepticism. Did he honestly think she couldn’t take care of herself?

He saw what her expression meant and chuckled. “Nah, don’t mean it that way. Need you protectin’ me, yeah? Especially if we have to fight that giant again.”

Bramble let out an amused huff despite her plugged nose. Grenn was being funny, but she realized what he really meant. Brothers of the Night’s Watch stuck together. If it came down to it, they’d choose their own side over the wildlings.

But he didn’t know what came for them. Nobody did.

Except for Mag Mar. Did he remember what Bramble showed him? Did he even care? Or had he just accepted the fate of all those who sought shelter at Hardhome?

Was he even still alive?

Jon walked up to them, interrupting Bramble’s thoughts. He liked to do that a lot. “We’re going to be sailing a bit further in before anchoring and taking rowboats from there. Best get prepared.”

Bramble and Grenn nodded. They both looked back to Hardhome, each seeing something different. While Grenn probably saw people gathering to watch as southern ships drew near, she only saw the dark beast of death, maw opening to catch all those who fell.

-

There wasn’t enough daylight to make it seem like daytime, but it’d be a few more hours before unforgiving night actually fell. It trapped them in a sort of limbo. Not light, not dark. Somewhere in between. Somewhere terrible.

Bramble had gotten ahold of herself as their rowboat neared the shore of Hardhome. Death broke apart into individual pools the closer they got, but it didn’t bring her any comfort. Differentiating death only meant Bramble stared into the faces of those going to die.

When the boat halted on the shoreline, Jon stepped out first, followed by Tormund and the rest of them. The present animosity and fear made Bramble’s teeth buzz. Death swirled like the heavy snowflakes around her.

They walked farther into the settlement with purpose. Bramble stayed on her guard. If given the chance, the wildlings around them would gladly rip her and anyone wearing black to shreds. The cramps tearing through her gave them a head start on that.

A whistle pierced through the still air. The crowd of wildlings in front of them parted for a man with a staff and a human skull placed over his face. Oh, right. This was going to happen.

“Lord of Bones,” Tormund greeted, stepping forward to take the front position of their contingent. “It’s been a long time.”

Through the skull, cold eyes regarded Tormund with disgust. “Last time I saw you, the pretty Crow was your prisoner.” They all looked to Jon. “It’s the other way around now. What happened?”

“War.”

“War? You call that a war? The greatest army the North had ever seen, cut to pieces by some southern king.”

Tormund wasn’t bothered. “We should gather the elders. Find somewhere quiet to talk.”

A snarl. “You don’t give the orders here.”

“I’m not giving an order,” Tormund explained with infinite patience.

The Lord of Bones did a once-over on him. “Why aren’t you in chains?”

“He’s not my prisoner,” Jon said stiffly.

“No? What is he?”

A pause, then, “We’re allies.”

The hair on the back of Bramble’s neck stood on end as tension reached a new level.

The Lord of Bones pointed his clawed staff at Tormund. “You fucking traitor.”

Grenn, Bramble, and Edd shifted towards each other, hands straining against the instinct to grab the hilt of their swords.

“You fight for the Crows now?” the Lord of Bones demanded.

Tormund took a step closer, demeanor unchanged but voice taking on a new tone. “I don’t fight for the Crows.”

“We’re not here to fight,” Jon said. Bramble noted that he shone with something. It was faint, but in the overcast atmosphere she could see it more clearly. “We’re here to talk.”

“Oh, is that right?” The Lord of Bones tapped his skull-capped staff against Tormund’s chest. “You and the pretty Crow do a lot of talking, don’t you? And when you’re done talking, do you get down on your knees and suck his c—”

Tormund’s sudden movement caught even Bramble off-guard, and she was the only person who knew what he was about to do. He viciously ripped the Lord of Bones’ staff away from him with a harsh grunt. The wildling leader didn’t have time to react before Tormund delivered a swift kick to the gut that sent him flying.

Vacantly, Bramble watched Tormund kill the wildling with his own decorated staff.  

The sprawling death rippled, claiming its first victim of the day.

Tormund dropped the blood-covered staff next to its former owner. Oddly enough, the tension had dissipated substantially. Somebody had already died, so now they could move on. The suspicion didn’t end entirely, but now Bramble didn’t feel the need to have her sword in her grip.

“Gather the elders, and let’s talk,” Tormund said in the same calm voice he previously used. Bramble suppressed the notion to smile a little. Tormund was unhinged. But maybe in the right way? He knew when to flex it to get attention and command respect.

The crowd carved a pathway to the meeting house without any further trouble.

-

The wildling elders—who were less like elders and more like chiefs and the children of chiefs—gathered in the circular hut that was as tall as it was wide. Bramble didn’t recognize any of them, but she suspected one of the women of being the lady who everybody liked but died by the end of the episode. Death pooled under her feet, just as it did almost everyone else’s.

Not a single kind eye regarded them. Once everyone gathered, a sharp silence followed, save for the crackle of the fire in the middle of the hut. Grenn shifted too uncomfortably next to Bramble, which irritated her. Couldn’t he just stand still and at least act like he wasn’t a single scare away from shitting his pants?

A larger portion around the hut’s door swung open, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. It hadn’t been a door made for humans, but for giants.

Oh. That was mint.

An unfamiliar giant stooped below the top of the crude door frame. He surveyed the room with small, dark eyes that fell on Bramble and stayed a little too long.

When he moved aside, another massive form entered the hut. Grenn reached peak antsy beside her, so she subtly gripped his arm and gave it a squeeze.

Mag Mar Tun Doh Weg stood up to his full height, emanating a powerful presence demanding respect. He didn’t even spare a glance at Jon and Tormund. Bramble and Mag immediately locked gazes. What was he thinking about her being here? What did she even think?

Mag took a step that immediately brought him to the Crows. More specifically, Bramble and Grenn. She heard Grenn start to breathe heavily. Was he going to say something about them? About her? About what she showed him?

Questions and doubted lanced through Bramble’s mind, freezing her to the spot. Not only did Mag have his eyes on her, but everyone in the hut stared at her back. Jon, Edd, Tormund and the other Crows knew the story about how they supposedly beat him back through the gates. Except, why would a giant be glad to see somebody who defeated him?

Stones sunk in Bramble’s stomach. They’ll probably have to be told something else entirely, soon.

Mag placed a ginormous hand over her head and curled his fist so he only had his pointer finger outstretched. Then he lowered it onto Bramble’s shaggy head until she felt some of the weight resting on the top of her skull.

“Truth.” He rumbled the same word he had in the tunnel, only this time, he didn’t pose it as a question.

Bramble waited for his finger to lift back off before offering a respectful nod. Mag glanced at Grenn and bared his teeth. She wasn’t quite sure if he meant it to be threatening in a real way, or if he just had a sick sense of humor. Either way, it made Grenn pale and dig his heels into the dirt so he wouldn’t step back.

Mag joined Wun Wun at the back of the hut. Bramble faced the fire once more, keeping her eyes locked on the flame so things didn’t appear more suspicious. Jon shrugged off what had happened, though. He cleared his throat and spoke.

“My name’s Jon Snow. I’m Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.” He surveyed the room full of wildlings. “We’re not friends. We’ve never been friends. We won’t become friends today. This isn’t about friendship. This is about survival. This is about putting a seven hundred-foot-wall between you and what’s out there.” He pointed beyond the hut.

“You built that wall to keep us out,” said the wildling woman.

“Since when do the Crows give two shits if we live?” the Thenn chief muttered darkly.

“In normal times we would,” Jon replied, “but these aren’t normal times. The White Walkers don’t care if a man’s Free Folk or Crow. We’re all the same to them. Meat for their armies. But together, we can beat them.”

The woman snorted. “Beat the White Walkers?” she asked incredulously. “Good luck with that. Run from them, maybe.”

Jon pulled out a black leather satchel from within his cloak. The Free Folk shifted in preparation to retaliate, but Jon only held it out to the woman for her to take. “It’s not a trick,” he promised.

The woman took it and examined the contents within. “It’s a gift for those who join us,” Jon said as he walked back to the Crow’s side. The woman took out a shining black dagger and looked to him for explanation. “Dragonglass. A man of the Night’s Watch used one of these daggers to kill a walker.”

“You saw this?” the Thenn questioned.

“No. But I trust the man.”

“There are old stories about dragonglass,” the woman said, one of her fingers running across the flat of the dagger.

“There are stories about ice spiders as big as hounds,” the Thenn countered.

“And with the things we’ve seen, you don’t believe it?” she posed back.

Jon focused the topic again. “Come back with me, and I’ll share these weapons.”

“Come with you where?” asked the woman. Bramble glanced at the death at her feet again. It had already grown larger. All of theirs had.

“There are good lands south of the Wall,” Jon said. “The Night’s Watch will let you through the tunnel and allow your people to farm those lands.”

Murmurs from the Free Folk rippled quietly through the hut. Jon continued before somebody could stop him. “I knew Mance Rayder. He never wanted a war with the Night’s Watch; he wanted a new life for his people. For you. We’re prepared to give you that new life.”

“If?” the woman followed up, aware that there were stipulations to the proposal.

“If you join us when the real war begins.”

“And where is Mance?” the Thenn questioned. There was a short silence before Jon answered.

“He died.”

“How?”

Another span of silence. “I put an arrow through his heart.”

Bramble didn’t get defensive when the hut burst with emotion from the Free Folk. She was too busy trying to push out the memory of Mance dying, of how death attacked whatever left him like a predator falling onto its prey. A sakripisyo.

Tormund stepped in and calmed them down. The Thenn made a threat, but Bramble didn’t listen to him. She gazed upon their death, again. It was growing, growing, growing.

He is coming.

The Thenn unsheathed a dagger and came for Jon, but Tormund interceded. “None of you saw Mance die,” he spat. “I did. The southern king who broke our army, Stannis, wanted to burn him alive to send a message. Jon Snow defied the king’s orders. His arrow was mercy. What he did took courage. And that’s what we need today. To have courage to make peace with men we’ve been killing for generations.”

“I lost my father, my uncle, and two brothers fighting the damn Crows,” the woman growled.

Jon finally lost his patience. “I’m not asking you to forget your dead! I’ll never forget mine. We lost forty-eight brothers the night that Mance attacked the Wall. But I’m asking you to think about your children, now. They’ll never have children of their own if we don’t band together. The Long Night is coming, and the dead come with it. No cold can stop him. The Free Folk can’t stop him! The Night’s Watch can’t stop him, and all the southern kings can’t stop him! Only together, all of us—and even then, it might not be enough, but at least we’ll give the fuckers a fight.”

It was a true and strong speech. Bramble barely heard any of it. Her nose had started bleeding again, and with it came a cold that penetrated the warmth of the hut.

“You vouch for this man, Tormund?” the woman asked.

Tormund stared at Jon for a while, then said, “He’s prettier than both my daughters, but he knows how to fight. He’s young, but he knows how to lead. He didn’t have to come to Hardhome. He came because he needs us, and we need him.”

The bloody nose intensified. Bramble turned away from the fire so nobody would see it gushing. She could distinctly feel Mag’s eyes watching her.

“My ancestors would spit on me if I broke bread with a Crow,” the Thenn growled.

“So would mine,” the woman said resignedly. “But fuck ‘em, they’re dead.” She sauntered up to Jon and sighed. “I’ll never trust a man in black.” Her head turned to Tormund. “But I trust you, Tormund. If you say this is the way, we’re with you.”

Tormund addressed the entire hut and vowed to them. “This is the way.”

“I’m with Tormund,” another wildling said. “At least with King Crow, there’s a chance.”

Another bout of cold blasted through Bramble, this time taking her breath away. She seized up and grabbed Grenn’s arm so she wouldn’t collapse.

Cold, cold, cold.

“Bramb?” Grenn whispered. “Is every—”

The cold lanced through Bramble like a spear, turning her organs, her bones to ice. She coughed a sudden spray of blood and fell on all fours. Hot liquid streamed from her nose like a running faucet. Whatever conversation Jon and the Free Folk were having abruptly halted. All gazes once again returned to her.

But this time, Bramble didn’t care about who watched her. Because…because something singular had set its attention on Bramble’s very soul. It was the cold that swept off a frozen lake, it was the wind from atop the Wall, it was…it was…

The Night King.

Bramble lifted her head and regarded everyone with unhidden, uncollected fear. She tasted blood on her lips and terror in her heart. Of fucking course Bramble knew what would happen, that the massacre would always be a massacre. But she never thought she’d feel this new and terrifying sensation overwhelming her, burrowing into her brain.

Unable to stand from the unyielding weakness, Bramble crawled closer to the flames and wrote in the soft dirt with a gloved, shaking finger stained by her blood.

They’re coming.

Jon crouched down beside Bramble and touched her shoulder. “What’s this supposed to mean, Bramb?” The tone in his voice, however, suggested he already knew the answer of her hastily scrawled words.

“Truth,” Mag Mar rumbled from the back. “Get to ships. Hurry. Dead coming.”

“This is the seer?” the woman incredulously prompted. She then scoffed, but it came from deep, troubling concern. “The one that showed you the vision?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t say it was a bloody fucking Crow—”

The cold struck Bramble yet again. Though it lacked severity, it came with a heart-stopping forewarning. A threat. A promise of destruction.

And nobody could stop it.

 

 

 

Notes:

Bramble doesn't know Karsi's actual name because I don't think they ever actually say it? And if they did she wasn't around to hear it.

Chapter 15

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

With no time to spare, any questions were saved for later.

Bramble thrust herself into the whirlwind of helping the Free Folk onto rowboats, trying to maintain some sort of order. When word spread that the dead pressed to Hardhome, those who remained stubborn about staying suddenly clambered aboard.

The Night King’s cold came in waves, each one giving Bramble the sense of the army getting closer and closer. It scared her enough to want to pile onto a rowboat with the rest. She could get away with it for being in such a weak state. And man, the cramps were killer.

But Bramble stayed and put children into the arms of their parents, grandparents, siblings, strangers. She couldn’t fucking leave. Not when so many needed to be protected.

Despite small amounts of death winking out of existence as soon as a person got into a boat, it laid thick upon the settlement. They wouldn’t be able to save everyone; thousands still waited to get on board beyond the wooden walls of Hardhome.

“…You listen to her. She’s going to take care of you.” The woman from the group of elders lifted her children into a rowboat behind Bramble. She paused to listen.

“I want to stay here with you,” one of the daughters protested. The darkened sky made her skin pale, and she looked at her mother with scared, pale blue eyes.

“I need to get the old folks on the boats,” the woman said. “I’m right behind you, I promise.”

The death under her rippled with the shore’s waves, like oil from a spill.

Bramble grabbed her shoulder and got her attention. The woman turned, face growing stoic once she saw who touched her. “What is it, Crow?”

Go, Bramble mouthed, gesturing to her daughters.

“I can’t do that. There are still too many people here.” The woman kissed her daughters on their foreheads before sending the boat off. When they departed from the shore, the woman regarded Bramble with masked sadness. “We have a duty to do, little seer, as you’ve seen. Best get back to it.”

The women started walking back to help others get in the approaching boats, passing Jon and Tormund while—

A screech surpassing anything ever heard filled Bramble’s head. She stumbled and silently cried out, instinctively clasping her ears to thwart it. Unbearable coldness burst from the ground, fell from the sky, and squeezed Bramble until she thought she might explode. The noise grew and grew, and although Jon shook her and spoke, Bramble couldn’t understand him. Blood spilled from her nose; death roiled into an almost tangible swarm and—

And then Bramble had full control of her body again. The unnatural sound still rang in her ears, but now she could hear dogs barking and the clamor of people getting into the boats.

Jon tightly grasped her shoulders. Dark brown eyes met dark green ones. “They’re here,” Jon whispered to her, hoarse and grim. “Aren’t they?”

Bramble’s blooded lips twisted. She nodded.

He helped her stand up, then began shouting quick orders. From the west came a fierce, controlled storm that poured over the cliffside meant to protect Hardhome. Bramble watched it descend. Dread filled her bitter mouth. It fell in voracious quickness, and with it came a swift and savage massacre.

Panic started almost immediately. There was no suspense, this time, no doubt or confusion. Everybody knew who had arrived. When she got shoved by a scrambling body, she snapped out of the disorientation and started grabbing the children being pushed forward by frantic parents, handing them off to strangers on the rowboats.

Terror overtook Stannis’ soldiers manning the rowboats. One shouted to his compatriot, “We gotta get out of here! Fucking hell! Start rowing!”

Bramble grabbed him by the rim of his breastplate and delivered a hard slap to the cheek. He careened back, dazed by the hit. She snapped her eyes to the other, who looked just as scared but a bit more composed. “We won’t, sir. We won’t go until our boat’s full!” he promised, voice catching halfway.

The storm swept through with distinct, pointed savagery. Screams from the west became louder as people attempted to flee through the gates. At this point, Bramble basically threw wildlings into boats. She couldn’t feel her feet from the frigid water, and her nose hadn’t stopped bleeding. There were more children, though, more mothers and fathers and those who needed to escape death. Because death was everywhere, consuming lives, swallowing them whole.

The only sound more frightening than thousands of people screaming was when the screams suddenly stopped.

A vileness lurked behind the walls. Something born of hate and ice and magic too old to comprehend. Nothing about it was human. Bramble keenly understood the presence of death, but she could hardly comprehend the absence of it. A void in reality.

Oh, just fucking great.

Bramble snarled silently in her throat to stave off the terror.

Shrieking and snarling wights breached the gates by swarming atop it and underneath it. Thunder cracked in the sky; snow cut like razors in the howling wind. Through it all, Bramble heard Jon shout a command.

“Night’s Watch! With me!”

She pushed against the mass of fleeing wildlings and raced to Jon’s side. As soon as her sword unsheathed, familiar fire blossomed in her chest. It staved off the relentless cold and gifted Bramble with energy she had lost throughout the day.

But would it be enough?

Bramble cleaved through her first wight, ignoring its foul, inhuman aura. Jon and Tormund ran a few paces ahead of her, fighting their way through the undead to try and stop them from getting through the gates.

Where’s the woman?

“Bramb!” Grenn shouted suddenly from a hundred paces away. “Behind you!”

She turned and caught the rotting corpse with her blade just as it launched itself at her. Once she shoved it back on the ground, her foot slammed into its head, shattering the skull.

Grenn and Bramble put their backs to one another, swords brandished. Jon and Tormund tried to patch up holes in the gate; others fought the ones that had gotten through. The fire burned brighter with each swing, and for a split-second, she thought they could actually hold the wights off until more boats returned to get the Free Folk on.

And then Bramble felt them watching.

Her fire flickered, breath stuttered, and she desperately wanted to let the fear consume her.

Through the haze of icy snow and smoke, four figures on horseback stood at the cliff’s edge. When Grenn and Bramble spotted them, he appropriately yelled, “Oh, fucking hell!”

A new wave of wights hit, this time so large in number that they separated the two. Grenn got pushed towards the docks while Bramble had to retreat in the direction of the cliff.

It’s just what they want. It’s just what they want.

Mag Mar and Wun Wun burst from the hut, roaring and tearing wights off them. Bramble caught a glimpse of Jon and the Thenn running into the decimated building for what she most likely assumed was the dragonglass. Damn, she should have grabbed the satchel when she had the chance.

Except chances were a rare thing, these days.

Bramble cut through one wight after the other, unable to keep her ground with all the directions they came from. Death took the living more quickly than she could fight to keep them alive.

She tried charging through the corpses when she had the chance, deciding that it didn’t matter if she got cut up along the way. The separation between her and the rest became wider and wider with each passing moment. Bramble could barely see Grenn fighting in the storm. Edd had joined him, but their fighting rapidly proved fruitless as the dead outnumbered the living.

You need to get back! Run, now!

With a hoarse growl, Bramble raised her sword in front of her and began charging through. Corpses flew left and right, some of them cut in half and some thrown back by the sheer force of being hit. But she was doing it! She was going to make it—

A frozen hand grabbed the back of Bramble’s shaggy hair and threw her several feet backward. She hit the snowy ground hard, but thankfully, her breath remained intact. She quickly rolled over and stood upright, only to find herself facing one of the Night King’s generals. An icy spear stood at his side, ready to impale her should she prove too problematic.

He didn’t want to kill her like anybody else. Bramble was wanted. The Ice King watched and waited to have whatever power she held for his own.

Well. Maybe getting impaled wasn’t all that bad.

Bramble rushed forward at the general with full awareness that her common sword wouldn’t stand a chance against his weapon. She dodged the first swing and took an open spot in his side to slice, but he moved significantly faster than she had anticipated. Her sword clashed against his spear, shattering instantly. Bramble refused to hold her painfully jarred hands and arms close to her chest. Instead, she lifted her fists up, snarling.

She prepared to fight the general in hand-to-hand combat. In a blur, though, her throat suddenly found itself in the wight’s clutches. The general lifted Bramble off the ground like she weighed nothing. He viciously extinguished the fire keeping her so alive and alert.

Though Bramble struggled, her energy had snuffed out. Her boots weakly scraped against the frozen ground. She could hear the sound of her lungs scraping for air. All she felt was cold, cold, cold.

Bramble’s gaze lifted to the gray sky, blurring.

The general made a pleased, raspy noise and squeezed her throat harder. Her hands wrapped around his icy, brittle wrist slipped and dropped to both sides.

She didn’t…she didn’t want to go. Or maybe she did.

Something moved from within, crawling up and down her throat and grating against the ice. An invading force followed it, numbing her insides like an anesthetic. Blood rose from the back of her mouth and spilled out onto loosely parted lips. The violation suffocated any change of that tiny fire Bramble had grown accustomed to reigniting.

Bramble’s legs went limp. The general didn’t apply enough pressure to choke her out, but the ritual taking place killed without killing. It sapped Bramble’s life away to replace it with something else. She used the last of her fading strength to glance down and, for the first time in her life, saw death dripping from her boots. The inky rivulets smattered black onto the snow.

She should just accept it. She had wanted it for so long, now.

They would twist her into something horrendous, another voice countered. They were going to use her to kill. To conquer. To destroy.

But she’d already be dead by then. It wouldn’t matter.

Would she really be dead? Or would she see what she’d been commanded to do through her own horrific blue gaze?

Bramble let her eyes drift shut. It didn’t seem so cold, anymore. The general made another noise. It welcomed her to the fold.

She should rest. It was finished.

The high-pitched scream of Valyrian steel meeting an ice spear shot through the air, followed by an unseen force that struck the general holding Bramble.

His focus swayed, hand lessening its grip. The cold within subsided for less than a moment, less than a second, less than a heartbeat.

A small flame ignited, providing enough warmth to make her feel the pain, the agony of what was being done underneath all the icy numbness.

Bramble’s eyes shot open.

She wasn’t done, yet.

The general looked back to her, and she relished in seeing his shock a second before the flame turned into a fire.

The invasion within was scorched away. Bramble’s world burst into furious colors of red and orange and yellow. Flames exploded outward from her, destroying everything in its path, and it felt fucking good. The general shrieked and shrieked in his unholy tongue, but his ancient magic couldn’t defend against the sheer, unrelenting power forcing its way from Bramble.

He disintegrated into nothing but icy ash, weapon and all.

When the roiling flames dissipated and descended from a roar to a murmur, Bramble saw that the explosion hadn’t just replaced the snow on the ground with jagged, charred marks thirty meters around. The air had completely dried; snow fell everywhere except above Bramble. She remained unscathed, too, her clothes untouched.

But something was wrong. Terribly, sickeningly wrong. The fire had done its job and yet—and yet—

Bramble fell to her knees and clawed at her throat. It was being burned, burned away, and she couldn’t fucking stop it because the fire could not be controlled, refused to be controlled.

There was so much blood. It came from her nose, mouth, and ears, hot as the molten lava coating her throat. And this—this was how she would die. Not by the design of the Night King, but by her own incapability to control the thing that saved her life in the first place.

She tried to manipulate it to her will and force it to stop. The fire defied her, though, and was it really meant to be controlled in the first place? Or did the insatiable rage have a mind of its own?

Just what had been inside Bramble this whole time?

Blackness edged her vision. Bramble would have laughed at the irony of it all, had she not been in such writhing anguish. The fire had, by now, spread from her throat. It consumed every cell, every molecule composing her body. It was only a matter of time.

“Bramble!”

Dad shouted her name. Dad. Clear as day.

The world became sharp with lucidity. Bramble breathed through the flames inside her, using the cool air to combat its intensity. When it wouldn’t comply, she hunched over and hissed, gripping it in a vise. The fire finally listened, reluctantly. It solidified back into her throat to do what it was meant to do all along.

Cleanse.

Through the blood and ash, the snow and smoke, Bramble tilted her head back and screamed.

-

Mom and Bramble both sipped on their own Starbucks frappuccinos, and Dad drank an iced coffee. They were boarding for Hawaii in forty-five minutes. Despite the layover in Vancouver, Bramble and her dad already had their matching, ugly vacation shirts on. Mom didn’t want to look like a tourist, so she opted to keep hers indefinitely packed in the suitcase.

“I’m going to come home a professional surfer,” Dad said, “and become a hero of Thunder Bay.”

“You’re going to come home a professional beet,” Mom retorted without looking up from her phone. “Because you’re a pasty little white boy.”

“Excuse me? My Basque blood is offended.”

Bramble chuckled through the green straw in her mouth. Dad nudged her and gestured to Mom. “Can you believe this, kid? Your mother, an unbeliever in my dreams.”

“Yeah, Dad, okay.”

He put his arm around her and planted a kiss atop her head. “We can become professional surfers together.”

Somebody half-pulled, half-dragged Bramble to her feet. It took a couple of tries, but she eventually got her footing and tiredly ran with her arm hung over a pair of broad shoulders.

Death had dispersed by now, for it claimed most of what it was promised. The undead closed in on them, and from atop the cliff, an unearthly screech echoed across Hardhome.

“Run faster, Bramb!” Grenn shouted harshly. Of course it was Grenn. Who else would it have been?

She looked over her shoulder at the mass of wights falling from the precipice and landing in the heaps of thousands at the bottom. A few seconds later, their own shrieks put the step into Bramble’s feet.

Fuck, she’d run faster.

The gates keeping back thousands more undead crashed to the ground. Bramble took her arm off Grenn’s shoulder, stumbled, and used the present fire burning unwaveringly in her chest to move onward.

Cries from the remaining Free Folk spread throughout the settlement as their dwindling forces were finally overwhelmed by corpses. Bramble kept her eyes on the single rowboat waiting at the docks; if she looked around, she’d be too tempted to save the souls near her.

It wasn’t as if she could close her eyes and ignore it all, though. A wight attacked an older wilding man ahead and to her left. He fended it off with a small axe, but it wouldn’t last. Other corpses saw the fight and began closing in for the slaughter.

Shit. Shit!

“Bramble, no!”

Grenn’s yells fell upon deaf ears. Bramble veered from the path. He slowed, hesitated, swore, and joined her.

The man’s neck was about to be torn open when Bramble intervened with a ruthless kick to its decomposing stomach. The wight snarled. Its body messily snapped in half, dried-out guts scattering across the snow.

The fire returned to her like it had in the beginning of the battle. Bramble lifted the man up by the collar and linked her arm with his so they wouldn’t be separated. Grenn did the same on the other side, swearing up a storm while they ran.

The undead practically bit at their heels. A few instances, their bony fingers grabbed onto cloaks and furs, but Bramble and Grenn proved to be strong enough to not fall. Despite the detour, the three of them made it to the last rowboat anxiously waiting at the dock. Bramble threw the old man in rougher than she should have and jumped in alongside Grenn. No sooner than they had landed in the boat did Jon, Tormund, and Edd dive in as well.

“Go! Go! Go!” Jon bellowed. The rowboat pushed off, but two giants followed its course. Mag Mar and Wun Wun fought off wights climbing them as they waded out into the sea, unaffected by the water’s resistance. Mag was down a hand, for one clutched a person close to his chest. When he neared the boat, he dropped the body into Bramble’s lap.

The woman—the fucking woman—was unconscious but alive. Death didn’t sow at her feet, anymore.

Mag Mar had been shown a vision. Bramble didn’t think he’d remember a single face of those who died in it.

She placed the woman in the care of the other wilding man and stood upright with the rest. They helplessly watched every single person abandoned at Hardhome being killed beneath a sunless sky. Death winked out, one by one, once it had claimed what it sought out.

Bramble’s eyes clouded with unwanted tears. What had she prevented? Had she fucking tried at all?

As the last person rattled off their dying breath, a sole figure walked to the edge of the dock they departed from.

He was unmade. Vile, abhorrent magic permeated from his being, corrupted and older than the construction of time. Blue eyes not of this world penetrated Bramble, threatening to extinguish the fire she had fought so hard to regain.

It was silent, save for waves breaking on the sides of the rowboat.

The Night King turned his head to examine the mass slaughter, the corpses laid to waste. He looked back at them, without expression, without humanity, and slowly raised his arms to begin the summoning.

A darkness unlike death ruptured from the ground, grasping with claws and wriggling like tentacles to find bodies. Thousands came from the depths of the unknown to wrap around their prey, their new possessions. A hand flew to Bramble’s mouth to stifle the horror she alone witnessed. This wasn’t a forsaken usage of death. This wasn’t even death. For though death sometimes frightened her to witness in action, it never permeated evil. It did not disobey its own laws. It did not bear the color of the thing currently attaching itself to the dead like a parasite.

What was this?

Bodies started twitching. Started sitting upright. The dark entity surged into each and every corpse with such power that it made Bramble weak in the knees. The fire inside recoiled from the violating possession, adding truth to the fact that this stood against nature, against gods, against the universe.

And then thousands rose, quiet like the death that took their original souls.

Bramble sat back down and hunched over. Her arms crossed tightly over her cramping stomach. She rested her bloody head on the edge of the rowboat. The closer she curled in upon herself, she closer she could feel the fire’s warmth. Maybe it would dry the stupid fucking tears from her eyes, too.

There, Bramble stared blankly into the ocean’s depths until unconsciousness finally took mercy on her exhausted soul.

 

 

 

Notes:

Please be gentle with me, I love canon divergence

Chapter 16

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The ship creaked and swayed. Four walls muffled sounds from the outside world, allowing privacy.

Or imprisonment.

Bramble stared up at the wooden ceiling. Plush pillows settled behind her head, and soft, heavy furs covered her and the bed she laid on. She found herself borderline uncomfortable with all the warmth, considering she had a much higher internal temperature.

Passing out on the rowboat—and staying passed out—hadn’t been intentional. But enough time went by that the truth revealed itself all on its own. A peak under the furs showed Bramble how she’d been undressed down to her smallclothes. The binding she wore to keep her breasts strapped down remained intact. Cloth padding had been placed underneath by a stranger to catch any menstruation blood. While it grossed Bramble out to sit in a wet patch, she was glad she wouldn’t cause any stains.

The blood from her face had also been wiped clean.

Nobody had come to see Bramble from the time she awoke. It gave her the chance to suppress the embarrassment, the shame of lying, and let her mind run wild with ideas of what they were going to do with a traitor.

Her black garbs draped over the back of a chair, but she couldn’t find her sword—

Oh. Right. Bramble didn’t have a sword, anymore.

The inside of her throat hurt like a bitch. She hadn’t dealt with anything like the pain before. Bramble was familiar with the aftermath of being choked. She even recognized the soreness after giving some drunk patron a blowjob. This, though, felt like a pulled muscle mixed with a burn mixed with gargling gravel.

Bramble remembered screaming. Screaming with such volume and strength that somebody on this ship must have heard it.

But she couldn’t scream. No. She could barely do more than make a hissing noise. Bramble was mute. Voiceless. Wordless.

Too afraid to try and speak.

The door unlocked and slowly opened. For a second, Bramble considered pretending to be asleep again. It’d give her a bit longer to process what the fuck was going on and avoid the harsh truth.

Jon stepped through, alone. Seeing him made Bramble keep her eyes open, deciding to face whatever came next. This was Jon. He’d be fair. He was always fair.

They stared at each other as he closed the door behind him. Several seconds passed before Jon spoke. “You’re awake.”

Bramble gave the barest of nods. He didn’t appear angry, but he had a look about him she’d never seen.

Jon made a few short strides, then he sat down at the foot of the bed. When Bramble made no move to act, he eventually dragged a hand down the side of his face and loudly sighed.

“Bramb. What in seven hells is going on?”

She mirrored the sigh and gave her head a small shake. “Grenn tells me that you stopped Mag the Mighty in that tunnel with your bare hands. Then you made him swear that he wouldn’t tell. We go to Hardhome, and all of that happens! I don’t even know where to start. You—you knowing that the Night King was coming and...and then the explosion! You killed a general with fire! Fire that came from you, Bramble. I saw it. We all saw it.”

Jon opened and closed his mouth, struggling to get words out. “The Night King wanted you. And I need to know why.

“Oh. And not to mention that you’re a fucking girl.”

Bramble hadn’t even been yelled at; Jon had taken to exclaiming in general. Yet his chastisement felt like whips on her back. It made Bramble painfully aware of how much she respected Jon Snow and the depth of her loyalty to him.

If Bramble thought hard enough, maybe she could get the bed to swallow her whole.

When it did not, a scowl etched onto her face, though it mingled with pain.

Jon’s brows drew together. “You do realize what the Night’s Watch would have me do to you? A woman who joined our ranks under the guise of a man?”

Bramble thought about it every night when her mind ebbed between reality and dreams.

She only stared back at Jon. The unresponsiveness visibly upset him, and he stood up and strode over to the porthole. The truth of her being added more weight of yet another giant problem to the Lord Commander’s shoulders. Not only was Bramble a woman, but one wanted by the Night King because of her abilities.

“Why did you lie, Bramble? Why have you been hiding all this the whole time?”

Why, indeed.

Bramble ground her teeth together in frustration. How could she possibly explain all of this? Without a voice?

Except.

No. Bramble wasn’t even sure if she had a voice to speak with. What dangers might she unleash if she could? So much had already been altered without a voice; how much chaos would they be plunged into if Bramble talked?

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Jon muttered. His expression became hard and resolute. “But until I get answers, you’re confined to these quarters until we return to Eastwatch by the Sea. You will be bound when we dock, and a trial at Castle Black will take place to decide what to do with you.”

He moved back toward the door, refusing to meet Bramble’s gaze. She couldn’t see any ever-present aura hanging over his shoulders. The longer she stared at the empty space, the more she realized that ever since fleeing Hardhome, nobody had an aura.

Or Bramble could no longer detect them.

She suddenly felt vulnerable and small. The thing Bramble had grown so used to relying on had just…vanished. Taken away without warning, without permission, leaving behind a tangible, hollow space.

She would lose much, much more if Jon walked out that door.

Bramble sat up, letting the heavy blankets slip and feeling the cool air of the cabin meet her skin. She ran fingers through her hair, took a breath, and did what she hadn’t done in over three years.

Speak.

“Jon.”

He stopped, hand on the doorknob. When Jon eventually looked over his shoulder at Bramble, brown eyes visibly filled with shock and disbelief.

Bramble mirrored his expression. Had she just…what had…she talked.

“You’re not a mute?” Jon quietly said. He suppressed his initial anger, but it bled through into his demeanor.

“Not anymore,” Bramble replied. Her voice sounded foreign in her ears. Was it always that way? It shouldn’t have been this scratchy, this painful.

Jon took a hesitant step forward. “What…what do you mean, not anymore?” His cheeks reddened from Bramble’s lack of clothes. She didn’t care. Not at this point in her life.

“I mean,” Bramble said slowly, trying not to overwhelm herself, “that this is the first I’ve spoken in a long time.” She closed her eyes. “It hurts. Real bad.”

“Will it stay?”

Bramble shrugged and rubbed her throat in a futile attempt to alleviate the ache. “Don’t know. But I guess I should explain in case it goes.” Opening her eyes again, she said to Jon, “Better go get Grenn and Edd. And Tormund. And that lady, too. The one who—” who was supposed to die. “The one on the boat with us.”

“Karsi?”

Bramble nodded. Right. That was her name.

“And you’ll explain everything?” Jon questioned. “Everything about what happened?”

“As best as I can,” Bramble muttered.

Jon stood quietly for a moment, sighed again, and then left the room.

Bramble sat in the bed and processed what just occurred. “I can talk,” she said aloud. “I’m talking. Right now. Sinasabi ko.”

A hand covered her mouth to stifle the sudden burst of giggles. They weren’t exactly gleeful—more like disbelieving and manic. But Bramble could hear the giggles. They were no longer pitiful hisses and dead branches scraping against one another. They were real.  

Jon and the others would be coming back, soon. Bramble didn’t want to stay undressed for that awkward and confusing conversation.

Throwing the heavy blankets to the side, Bramble moved to grab clothes from the pack next to her Night’s Watch blacks. She grabbed clean cloth pads and stripped off the stained underwear. Hopefully, Jon would be kind enough to let Bramble bathe when they returned to Castle Black, seeing as she was now unofficially a prisoner.

Bramble dressed back into her shirt and trousers, stuffing the cloth padding inside to keep from bleeding through. Her period started to wane, but every girl knew that it always faked out before returning one last fucking time.

She didn’t get dressed into any other layers. It was too hot for anything else.

After making the bed and repositioning the black garbs that might never get worn again, Bramble realized she was mumbling odd phrases to herself. Muddled reassurances and quotes and outspoken narrations.

Bramble worried that there might be something missing in her head. Maybe the fire burned away a bit of her sanity in its destruction.

What if she just…blew up again? Right here on the ship? How had she even been able to do it? Everything was a blur, looking back on what happened. One second there was nothing but cold darkness, and the next was blinding, bursting fire.

Dad had spoken, though. Dad.

Bramble grumbled at the heat within. A furnace was on full power inside her, like the sun beating down from the inside out.

She moved to the porthole and pushed it open. Northern ocean air swept in, bringing relief with its cooling touch. Bramble sighed as a spray of icy seawater hit her face. She briefly considered tearing the porthole window completely off and hanging out of it, but that would probably be a little too drastic.

So Bramble stood there, waiting for Jon to return with the others. She watched the slate blue waves roll by. Everything leading up to this grim moment had happened so fast. It felt like an eternity, sure, except Bramble had only been at Castle Black as a brother of the Night’s Watch for around a month and a half.

At what point had she changed?

When did she start becoming human again?

The door creaked open. Jon entered, followed by Grenn, Edd, Tormund, and Karsi. Edd and Grenn wore the most palpable shock. Without the protection of heavy clothing, they saw a lean frame, slender collarbones, and bindings peeking through the V of her tunic.

“Little Crow,” Tormund chuckled, leaning against the wall. “A strong Little Crow.”

“Bloody hell, Pyp was right this whole time,” Edd muttered, unable to take his eyes off Bramble. “You’re a fucking woman.”

“Like there’s something wrong with that?” Karsi asked, sauntering over to a chair and sitting in it. She had a scabbed-over cut on her forehead.

“This bloody woman threw me through the rampart wall at Castle Black,” Tormund said, almost as if he was proud. “And you dumb shits didn’t know she had a pussy the whole time!” He threw his head back and loudly laughed. “What, thought sitting was normal for taking a piss?”

“But—but she pissed standing up!” Grenn protested. “I mean—I never watched b-but we all saw’er stand and piss!”

“Yeah!” Edd agreed.

“She’s been pretending to be a man this whole time, and the first thing you bring up is how she’s pissed?” Karsi snorted. “Fucking idiots.”

The whole conversation caused Bramble’s face to go on an expressive journey.  She shook her head, left her spot near the porthole, and went to her cloak to dig around in a pocket. When she found what she’d been searching for, she pulled out a little wooden carving that had been pivotal in protecting her identity.

“What the fuck is that?” Edd said, squinting at the object.

“It helps me piss standing up,” Bramble replied. The sentence wasn’t the first one she’d hoped to say in front of all them—and she really didn’t imagine that things would wind up on the topic so fast—but she might as well get on with it.

She placed the urination device between her legs to depict its use. “I pee into the cup, and it shoots out of the little spout. Since men don’t look at other men’s dicks when they piss, I could get away with it. Carved it up when I started pretending to be a man.”

The wildlings were having a grand ol’ time, poorly stifling their laughter while the Crows realized the grand deception Bramble had pulled. She put the device away and fanned at her quickly heating face. “Now, that’s out of the way, let’s talk about more important things. Like how I can talk.”

“Right,” Jon said. Bramble moved back to her place by the open porthole. “Now that we’re all here, explain how…” He made wide gestures. “Everything happened.”

Bramble crossed her arms and looked down at her bare feet. “I…where do I begin? I lost my voice three years ago.” She decided to leave out the small detail of coming from another world. “And I’ve had these, uh, abilities ever since. Strength beyond that of a normal man, being able to see what a person is feeling and bits of their future with just one look, and, um…” She glanced at Jon, who gave a small nod, encouraging her to continue. “I can see death.”

Silence.

“Death?” Karsi repeated.

“Yeah. I can see when someone is going to die. It…appears at their feet and grows wider like shadows in a setting sun the closer they come to dying.” Bramble absently rubbed at her throat. It hadn’t gotten any sorer since she began speaking, but it didn’t feel any better, either. “At Hardhome…at Hardhome, there was so much death that it morphed into one overwhelming, giant entity spreading across the entire settlement.”

Her voice became quieter as the confessions poured out. “I saw it at Grenn’s feet during the battle for Castle Black. I saw it at Pyp’s feet. They were supposed to die that night. I stopped it, proving that in some ways I can divert death from its course.” She lifted her gaze to Karsi, whose face had been washed of some color. “You were supposed to die at Hardhome. So were many others, who fortunately got on the boat before that blackness could swallow them whole. But I didn’t save you. Mag Mar did. And I saved him. He and Grenn were supposed to kill each other in the tunnel.”

Bramble didn’t want to look at Grenn.  

“And the vision?” Jon asked. “You apparently showed Mag a vision of Hardhome. Why didn’t you say anything? Why only show it to him?”

“That vision…I don’t know how that happened. It’s been the only time. And I’m not sure I can do anything like it again. But I didn’t tell you because how could I? Without revealing myself? Without explaining all of this? The Night’s Watch would have me hanged. And even if I told you, and if you believed me and if this and if that, nearly the same amount of time would have elapsed, anyway. And who knows? The Night King is intelligent; he could have sensed the Night’s Watch coming to save the wildings no matter what time we went. So I went to Hardhome, and…I did what I could.” Bramble turned her face to the open porthole and regarded the mist rolling in.

“And the explosion?” Edd spoke. “Bramb, you—you exploded.”

“Right.” Bramble rubbed at her chest where the fire sat. “That was a first, too. Sometimes I feel…flames inside. It’s sparked in the past, but never literally. The general did something to awaken it with the magic he was forcing on me. Guess it was his mistake to try.”

“Do you know what the Night King wanted with you?” Tormund, now serious and engaged, inquired.

Bramble shook her head once. “Not exactly. Maybe for my strength? Maybe to manipulate my abilities into something entirely new?” Something clicked in Bramble’s head. She darkened. “Or…”

“Or to use your fire to burn the Wall down,” Jon finished solemnly. A heaviness fell upon the room. Bramble couldn’t visibly see it, anymore, much to her despair.

“Yeah. Or that,” Bramble said. “But whatever he wanted was nothing good. And I don’t intend to be part of his plans.”

“Good,” said Karsi. “Because with what’s coming, we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

“That is if she’s allowed to live,” Tormund sighed. “What’re the rest of your brothers going to think, Lord Snow?” He gestured to me. “That’s a woman. As far as I know, women aren’t supposed to join the Night’s Watch.”

Jon frowned. “No. They’re not.” With a touch of exasperation, Jon asked Bramble, “Why did you pretend to be a man in the first place?’

She stared at him for a second before scoffing. “Have you lived in this world, Snow? Women are beaten, raped, and murdered, and not one person gives a fuck. I shouldn’t have had to pretend to be a man, but here we are. It’s safer that way.”

“And all those soldiers you murdered? Did you actually kill them?”

Bramble mirthlessly chuckled. “Of course I fucking did,” she snapped, and damn, did her voice feel good spitting through her teeth. Jon didn’t balk, but the corner of his eye twitched. “I killed those fucking rapists. But I got away with it as a man because men just like you would never have questioned if a woman actually committed those murders. And as long as men stay ignorant, I can keep giving them what they deserve.”

The fire had grown hotter, now, becoming more than just a temperature. Bramble could sense it underneath her fingertips, licking against bones and burning bright inside her chest.

She inhaled and ran a hand over her head, leaning closer to the porthole to try and cool down. “Don’t get her too worked up, Snow,” Tormund suggested sagely. “Else she might burn this entire fucking ship down.”

“There’s something else,” Bramble said. Mist droplets caught on her face. “When the Night King raised the dead, he didn’t use death. It was something else that possessed their bodies. It’s evil, and it’s alive in some way. Whether it be his own magic at work or something else entirely, it means that what we’re facing is…unbelievably powerful. More powerful than I could have imagined.”

Another span of silence, this one longer. Bramble broke it again to add more information. “I can’t see as much as I used to, anymore.” She swallowed the hard truth being faced. “My voice was returned, but at the expense of being able to see…auras. What people are feeling and the like. I don’t know if I’m still able to see death. Something was taken in the exchange. Not sure why.”

Tormund posed the important questions. “And your strength? Is it still with you?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“Well, how can you be sure?”

“Want me to toss you up in the air like a baby to test it out?” Bramble flatly proposed. Tormund gave a shit-eating grin. He’d probably enjoy that.

“So, Lord Snow? What will be done with her?” Karsi asked, leaning forward in her chair.

Jon regarded Bramble for several moments. She stared back, mouth forming into a hard line. He didn’t have many options to choose from, meaning that Bramble might find herself being attacked in the middle of the night by men who once considered her a brother.

Then again, things for Jon were about to drastically change as well.

“We’ll start with a trial,” he eventually said. “And you’ll be put in a cell when we reach Castle Black. But your safety will be ensured. No one will lay a finger on you.”

“You think I’m afraid of what the men might do to me?” Bramble said, low and hoarse. Jon did not respond, nor did she say anything else.

Tormund stood upright, patting his stomach. “Ya heard the lady, Snow. Well. I think this brings an end to our current conversation.”

He and Karsi left, followed by Edd and Grenn. Grenn wouldn’t look at Bramble, either, keeping his head down and leaving without a word.

Jon was about to leave, too, when Bramble realized something very, very important.

“Hey, wait,” she quickly called to him. “Jon. Please.”

He stopped and half-turned to her. “What?” Jon sounded tired. Bramble couldn’t blame him. She was tired, and she had done most of the talking. But she guessed Jon did a lot more deciding than she did.

Bramble stepped away from the porthole. “I…Jon, something bad is going to happen to Princess Shireen.”

His brows furrowed. “How do you know?”

“Before we left, I saw death at her feet. She’s in danger.”

“Wars are a nasty thing, Bramble. She may just get caught up in the thick of it all—”

“No.” Bramble clenched and unclenched her fists, feeling the fire rekindle. “I…” Know. “Believe the Red Woman intends to sacrifice her. She’s King’s blood, and they’re going to sacrifice her to help his army win the battle against the Boltons. I wanted to warn Ser Davos, but he left before I could give him the letter with my concerns.”

“And you didn’t see this in another vision of yours?” Jon asked, a hint of skepticism in his voice.

Bramble shook her head, prepared to lie through her teeth. “No. I just have a very bad feeling about it.”

“You honestly believe that Stannis will do that to his daughter?”

She groaned in frustration and rubbed at her chest to quell the flames. “Jon, you need to listen to me. Shireen is going to die, and I can save her if you allow me.”

“What if she’s already dead? What if there’s nothing you could have done, and I let you go on a fool’s errand, eh? And then what if you just run off so you don’t have to face a trial?” Jon spoke with outright anger. He pointed a finger at Bramble. “You are not doing anything until I say so. Am I understood?’

Bramble tilted her chin at Jon in defiance. She was only a little shorter than him. “So you’re willing to let a little girl die?”

“Are you willing to lose your life for her?”

“I am,” Bramble spat. “I’ll die for Shireen without hesitation, and I’ll give you my word that I’ll return to Castle Black. It’s the only place she’d be safe. So please, Jon, let me save her.”

He suddenly pulled back into himself, turning the anger into steely resolve. “I’ll make my decision when we return. For now, you’re confined to these quarters until we dock tomorrow morning.”

Jon turned on his heels and slammed the door behind him. She heard the resounding click of a lock. Fucking son of a bitch.

Bramble stood there for a few seconds. The fire grew fierce as it fed off her emotions.

She shouted and kicked the small table in the room. It crashed into the wall and shattered into unfixable pieces. Bramble then went back to the porthole, using her hands to brace herself against it. The wall where her hands were placed started smoking and cracking, so she hurriedly drew them back. Two blackened, smoldering handprints stained the wood.

Bramble would save Shireen, whether Jon sanctioned it or not. There was still time.

There was still time.

 

 

 

Notes:

Jon has had a rough day.

Oh, and if there's any random letters in this chapter or in chapters past (i.e., zzzzzzzzzzzzzz''''''',lllllllllllpppppppp) it's because I have a naughty kitten who thinks walking on keyboards is fun. She's unapologetic, but I'll still apologize on her behalf.

Chapter 17

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Wildings gathered to watch Bramble trudge off the ship. Her hands had been bound in front of her with rope, though it was mostly for show.

Bramble spotted Karsi amongst the Free Folk. She had each of her little girls under each arm, and she nodded toward Bramble in acknowledgement. Bramble gave one back before being hauled up onto a horse. Grenn and Edd flanked her on both sides. Neither spoke. Jon also hadn’t said another word to Bramble; he hadn’t even looked her way since they docked. Death followed behind him like a hungry hound.

She didn’t care about what was going to happen next. None of it mattered. Shireen mattered. That was all.

It should have been a cold journey back to Castle Black. Wind screamed across the frozen landscape as Jon led the Free Folk. Snow chipped away at any exposed skin, and Bramble wasn’t the only one who looked over her shoulder to make sure they didn’t have pinpricks of blue eyes staring back at them through the snowy haze.

But she didn’t feel the chill. Not as a normal human would. Bramble had foregone her heavy black cloak; she wasn’t sure if she was permitted to wear it, anyway. To her, the temperature had become…neutral. The fire warmed her, and it clashed discordantly with the frigid surroundings.

Soon, the Wall, which greeted Bramble when she first arrived at Castle Black, stood there with its impossible height to welcome her again. The presence of its magic made her teeth initially buzz like usual. Bramble didn’t have to see any tension to feel it ripple across the masses.

“Thorne’s gonna let us in, ain’t he?” Grenn asked quietly. “He has to. Jon gave him the order.”

“He will,” Bramble whispered before she could stop herself. If Grenn or Edd heard, neither of them said anything in reply.

Tiny black dots stood on top of the Wall. Bramble was sure one of them was Thorne himself. The world itself seemed to wait with the rest of them to see if the tunnel gate would lift. What if it didn’t? What if Bramble…changed something? Started a chain reaction that led to everything being messed up?

Before she could freak herself out too much, the gate cracked open and permitted entry. Bramble kicked her horse forward with the rest, dreading the events that were bound to happen once she found herself on the south side of the Wall.

Crows stared at the mass of enemies crossing through their courtyard. Bramble reckoned they didn’t care to notice how many held children in their arms or were too old to swing an axe. The only saw dirty wildings ready to slit their throat when they got the chance.

And the brothers stared at Bramble, whose disguise finally failed.

Grenn and Edd ushered Bramble to the stables. Pyp waited for them there. The baffled expression on his face said it all.

She slid off the mount, soon feeling Grenn and Edd put their hands under her arms to take her to the cells. “Wh—what’s going on?” Pyp eventually stuttered when he found his words.

“I’m a girl,” Bramble replied. If anyone had to explain, it’d be the one who formerly didn’t have a voice to explain in the first place. She held up her bound wrists. “Congratulations, Pyp. You weren’t insane.”

Pyp didn’t look satisfied. He didn’t even celebrate. He just looked shocked and sad and emptied.

“Come on, Bramb,” Edd muttered, lightly tugging Bramble’s arm. She gave Pyp one final glance before turning away.

They headed toward cells. Bramble finally caught a glimpse of Olly standing on the castle’s upper walkway. For a moment, that unquenchable anger towards Jon left him. Seeing Bramble’s true identity had him utterly helpless. She wanted to tell him that it’d be okay, that this was the right thing, that he needed to trust Jon.

But honestly, Bramble might never get to talk to Olly again.

“You’re not cold?” Edd asked as they delivered Bramble to the same cell Tormund had been held in. Ironic.

“I feel like I’m sunburned from the inside out,” Bramble said flatly. She sounded so curt all the time; was that how she normally talked? She couldn’t fully remember. “So no. I haven’t felt the cold since I detonated.”

“Oh.” An awkward silence hung in the air. Both Crows acted like they wanted to say something but couldn’t spit it out. Bramble lightly punched Edd on the shoulder and tried smiling. It didn’t work.

“Hey. Don’t worry ‘bout me. You’ve got bigger things to be concerned with.”

“Like what?” Edd said. “What could possibly be worse than what’s happenin’ right now?”

Bramble gave him a look. Years of being a mute perfected the expression. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “Now get going. Jon will need assistance handling the shitstorm I’ve caused.”

Edd pursed his lips and nodded. “Come on, Grenn.”

Grenn opened his mouth to speak, but he made a choked noise and then closed it. For some reason, his unresponsiveness hurt. Bramble wanted him to just say something. She’d answer all his funny questions, thank him for keeping her secret…

Bramble watched them leave the cell door. It locked behind them.

Then it was her and the silence.

She didn’t have fucking time to pout. Bramble pinched her lower lip in thought as she paced, thinking of all the ways she could get to Shireen in time. The storm worsened outside, and soon it’d be too severe to see through in daylight, let alone the consuming night.

Davos would be on his way here, right? Bramble didn’t see him in the courtyard, which was a good sign. If she was quick enough, she might be able to catch him. Explain things, team up—

But how could Bramble get out of Castle Black without a horse to ride on for the journey? Escaping was one thing; escaping with a mount would be impossible.

Go without one.

The thought made Bramble’s brows furrow in derision. She couldn’t possibly run through a blizzard and four feet of snow in the dark—and expect to make it.

Could she?

The fire said yes. Bramble said no.

But what other option was there?

Bramble sat down on a crate and ran fingers through her hair. When she brought them back down, she traced over the deep scar running up half the side of her face. It’d never seal. Maybe lessen in its depth, but the skin wouldn’t stitch itself back together again.

She’d overestimated her abilities once. Bramble thought she could fend off those soldiers, but they’d cut her face in half before she could raise her fists. Then she was left out there to bleed into the dirt and watch Lannister steel cut through Hammon, the husband and father who’d let Bramble into their lives.

Jysel was run through because she screamed so loudly watching her daughter get raped that the soldiers figured she’d be better off silent. Jak’s own silence followed soon after, when they had enough fun torturing the boy by forcing him to watch.  

And Reesa…oh, Reesa.

Everything happened so quickly. By the time Bramble stumbled onto her feet, blood cascading down the front of her dirty shirt, it was all over. She was left with nothing but death and a burning farm. One cut to her face had left her incapacitated. What would a northern snowstorm do?

Except that was then. This was now.

A knock on the door interrupted Bramble’s insane, mounting thoughts and plans. She stood, listening to locks click before the door creaked open. When Bramble saw Sam’s face peek through, she couldn’t help but let out a small breath.

“Hello.” He spoke just above a whisper. Healing bruises and wounds smeared across his face. A flare of anger ignited within Bramble. Who hurt him? Who did this? “I—I know this is a bad time, and I shouldn’t even be here, but Maester Aemon wants to see you.”

Maester Aemon? Bramble thought he would have died by now, while they were away. The blackness was upon him, vast and ready.

But the old man shuffled through, blind eyes wandering the room and shoulders hunched. Death was still ever-present, but even its clutches couldn’t drag down the old Targaryen just yet. “The tales I’ve been hearing, young Bramble, are most disturbing. I’m afraid not even I can keep up with the information I’ve been told.”

How long had it been since Bramble was thrown in the cell? She glanced out the window and, to her horror, saw that barely any light trickled through. Darkness came swiftly, and so she would have to act swiftly.

Bramble bowed her head. “I…I’m sorry, Maester Aemon. I’ve been lying to everyone this whole time.” For some reason, standing in front of the old blind man made her feel lower and barer than ever.

He flashed the faintest of smiles across weathered, papery skin. “So what they say is true. I’m afraid I won’t be present to see what becomes of you, Bramble. Young Samwell and I are traveling to the Citadel in continuation of his apprenticeship.”

She looked at Sam for confirmation. His gaze flickered away from her before nodding. “Are Gilly and little Sam going with you?” Bramble asked once she processed what she heard.

“They are, yes,” Sam replied. “Gilly…Gilly wanted me to tell you that she and the baby will miss you dearly. You’ve been kind to them in such a cruel place.”

Bramble almost smirked. “Women have to stick together.”

Aemon laughed at that. “Yes, they do, don’t they?”

“When are you leaving?”

“Er, tomorrow morning. I—I told Jon that he should give you the benefit of the doubt but—”

Bramble held up a hand to stop Sam from stumbling over worried promises and foundered assurances. “It’s alright. Whatever comes, comes.”

“And you intend to sit quietly, waiting for men to decide your fate?” Aemon inquired. An odd question.

She wouldn’t lie to him, though. “No. No, I do not.”

He grinned, this time, which deepened his wrinkles and brightened the light against the darkness of death. “Good,” Aemon whispered. “That is very good.”

“We’d, er, best get going, Maester Aemon,” Sam said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “If we…if we don’t see you again, Bramble, I, erm…”

“We will, Sam,” Bramble said with a strange resolve. Aemon’s simple words strengthened her, gave her focus. “If I live through these next few nights, we will.”

He smiled and began leading Aemon away. She wanted to pull the old maester aside and share with him that Jon was a Targaryen, that he and Daenerys would rise and fight, that the Targaryens were no longer alone in this world.

It didn’t happen. She stayed silent like she lost her voice again, watching as the two left the confines of the cell. Aemon wouldn’t make it to the Citadel. But maybe he’d get a taste of warm river winds and feel the unobstructed sun on his skin before death made its embrace. Maybe that was why it waited. To respect a descendant born of fire and blood.

-

When it sounded like the outside hall was empty, Bramble broke into the crates sharing the cell and began rummaging through its contents. Most of them contained things like empty glass bottles, extra blankets, and saddle polish, but she managed to scrounge up some black fabric to wrap around her head and face to blend in better with the surrounding darkness. Bramble couldn’t find any weapons (because why would there be weapons in a prisoner’s cell), and she wasn’t sure if she should risk sneaking to the blacksmith’s and taking a sword.

Guess all she’d arm herself with were unclipped fingernails and a strong punch. If Bramble could produce a controlled fire around her bare hands, that’d be neat, too. But she wouldn’t get her hopes up.

It had been dark for hours when Bramble mustered up the courage to act. The time to hesitate had passed. She covered her face with the fabric, took what may be her last calm breaths, and broke the door’s locks as quietly as she could. It worked better than she thought. Nobody was posted outside the cell, either, giving Bramble the chance to escape without close-quarter fighting.

Bramble stuck close to the wall, ready to duck into a corridor or a room the second she heard anything. At one point, there were a pair of voices lowly talking to one another, but they quickly faded away and left Bramble breathing heavily, clenching sweaty palms.

She rapidly realized she was not cut out for this stealth shit. For a split second, she thought she fucking Corvo Attano, but the moment she fumbled down the stairs, she jolted back to the awkward twenty-year-old trying not to get killed.

The frigid air made for great relief when Bramble stepped foot outside. She had never…snuck before, so she found herself crouching against the landing’s railing, probably looking like a crab. Nobody seemed to be in the courtyard, but with the moon hidden and a storm violently tossing snow around, Bramble might have been blinded to other bodies.

But fuck it.

Bramble propelled herself upward and over the railing. A snow drift muffled her fall, but she was left wading through four feet of snow. Nobody shouted or told her to stop, which was good, right?

Ducking low, Bramble ran across the courtyard to the closed gate. She might need to bust through that, too. Could she afford to stop and lift the lever? Or would she go all out and act like a battery ram?

While Bramble got caught up in deep thought, a pair of hands emerged from the darkness to grab her shoulders and attempt to drag her back. She cried out in surprise, then threw the attacker off into the ankle-deep snow.

“Hey! Hey!” Grenn hissed, rolling upright and scrambling backwards. He raised his hands. “It’s me! It’s me.”

“Grenn? What the fuck?” Bramble snapped through the whipping snowfall.

He pointed an angry finger at her. “I leave your post for one minute to take a shit, and when I come back, you’re fucking gone!”

“You were guarding my cell? And you didn’t say anything? You fuck!” Bramble shoved him but not hard enough to do any damage. Enough to let the pain inside trickle out. “You haven’t said anything to me this entire time!”

“Well how could I?” Grenn shot back. “You—you lied to everyone! To me!”

“Oh, so you would have kept that secret, too? You wouldn’t have told anyone that I was a girl?”

“I—I woulda—that’s not—”

Bramble brought down her cowl and wiped the snow colleting on her eyelashes. “It doesn’t matter now, Grenn, does it? I can talk, the truth is out, and I saw death waiting for Shireen before she left. She’s going to die out there if I don’t save her!”

The wheels were slow to spin in Grenn’s mind, but once they did, his eyes lit up, and he hastily sprung toward Bramble. “You can’t! Bramb, Jon set up your trial in three days’ time! If you leave, they—they’ll think you run off! And Jon—”

“I’m coming back!” Bramble snapped, cutting Grenn off. “I’m coming back with Shireen.”

“But…but what if she’s already dead?” he weakly asked. The wind spurred again, catching Grenn’s black cloak. Bramble would never wear one of the same like again.

“She’s not,” Bramble said, feeling snow turn to liquid before it even reached her skin. “I just…I know she’s not.”

“And what if you die trying to get her?”

A silence. “Then find my body when the snow melts,” she growled.

Grenn looked just…lost. He gestured to the gate. “Then go,” he spoke, and for some reason, it broke the remnants of her heart. “There’s no way in seven hells I’ll be able to stop you.”

Unable to come up with the right words, Bramble began to backtrack to the exit. Grenn watched her lift the wooden beam barricading the door and disappear into the darkness of the blizzard.

Bramble didn’t see it, but Grenn’s face turned from despondent to anxious and then to concerned. He then tiredly walked to Jon’s study to inform the Lord Commander that Bramble was gone.

And she might never return.

 

 

 

Notes:

Yes, I know Aemon dies at Castle Black in the show, but I honestly forgot that he died before Hardhome so I thought I'd send him off like in the books (under less perilous circumstances, of course).

Chapter 18

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble ran.

The surrounding storm brought a pitch black that no normal person should have been able to tread through without getting lost. And the cold…the cold would freeze a man in a few hours out in the open.

But they weren’t Bramble. They didn’t sense the death like she did. Though solely pinpointing Shireen wasn’t possible, the entire Baratheon army and their approaching demise made for a mighty target.

At one point, Bramble saw faint fires built by the wildlings. She wondered would happen to them, seeing as Bramble’s intended appointment to finding them a suitable place to live was probably out the window.

She continued her pace. There were no hints that she was tiring, straining herself too much. The fire’s unending fuel gave Bramble what she needed to keep going.

Despite the drive, she couldn’t help but imagine what might happen should she arrive at the encampment and find Shireen already gone. What would she do? Where would she go?

It was dangerous to invest this much love in a single person destined for death. Bramble set herself up for the chance of grief and loss and pain. Not just for Shireen, either: for Olly and for Jon, Sam, Edd, Pyp, Grenn, and even Gilly and the baby. She told herself that it wasn’t by choice, but what else could it have been? These emotions weren’t forced upon her. They came naturally. They came humanly.

She hated it here. She hated the winter and the magic and the clothes and everything. Bramble didn’t know starvation until she came to Westeros. She didn’t know what it was like walking through feces in the streets or selling her body night after night for money before she came to Westeros.

And she had never known crushing, incapacitating loneliness until Westeros forced itself upon her. That, and death. So much death.

Through the hate, the anger, the bitterness, somehow, fucking somehow, the desire to protect and love crept through like weeds in sidewalk cracks. Bramble picked and plucked at them, yet still they returned and regrew.

She didn’t used to be like this. She used to allow love in, quietly and consistently. She was given love, too, by her parents and friends. Even a couple of boyfriends thought they gave her their idea of love. Bramble used to be happy. She used to live for the day and live for the future. Now she hardly lived at all.

Nobody loved Bramble here. Cared, maybe, but not loved. Bramble could disappear and be forgotten within weeks. So why did she let herself care in return?

The questions raced with her through the blizzard.

This was so messed up. Everything was so fucking messed up. Bramble should have been asleep in her bed at home with a late-night comedy show blaring from downstairs. She should have been going to school and preparing for university and dressing nice and being happy and just…just…

Bramble slowed to a stop, hunched forward, and screamed into the tempest. It was full of ragged rage and chronic sadness and more fucking rage.

The storm consumed it all.

Dad drove and Mom sat in the passenger’s seat, holding hands and talking about the speakers at the parade. Bramble stretched out in the back, the pink-and-blue-and-white paint on her face dried flaking on her skin. She gazed out the window, watching as houses and trees and signs blurred together. A smile trailed on her lips, and dark green eyes grew heavy with fatigue.

It was her birthday tomorrow. She’d be twelve. But right now, she was happy. The kind that came from falling asleep in the back seat of a Nissan Rogue as “Nandito Ako” played for the millionth time, and the loving eyes of parents flitted back to Bramble through the rearview mirror.

When she had no more air left in her lungs, she bent over and buried her face in her hands. She couldn’t afford a meltdown. The meltdown would have to wait until Bramble faced the consequences after she and Shireen returned to Castle Black. Together.

After taking a few breaths that seemed louder than the howling wind, Bramble stood upright and bluntly confessed to the darkness, “I’m not cut out for this.”

The storm calmed for a brief second in response. With the blizzard stilled and the wind tamed, Bramble saw something she hadn’t noticed before in the distance, flickering and glowing.

A fire.

She squinted, trying to determine if it was real or not. The campfire—or hopefully it was a campfire—lay several feet off the path Bramble assumed she followed. But who was it? Who was out alone in the middle of a northern blizzard?

Bramble straightened. Realization dawned on her. Hadn’t Stannis sent Davos away when…?

Maybe it wasn’t…

But maybe…

Then she was running again, trying to keep her eyes trained on the fire before it disappeared. A large drift of snow threatened to slow Bramble down, but she plowed through it, sending puffs of snow up into the unrelenting wind.

Shaking white powder out of her hair, Bramble slowed to a jog and high-stepped through more snow to get to the fire. Little more than embers remained, now, suffocated by the storm. If Bramble hadn’t seen it when she did, the chances of spotting it in the blizzard were slim to none.

The campsite wasn’t much of a campsite. A small tent had been pitched and stood meekly before the battering gusts of wind. A soft glow emanated from within, meaning that whoever kept inside was probably awake. Next to the tent, a horse had been tethered to the trunk of a slim pine tree, its head bowed from the cold, a layer of white covering its fur.

Poor thing. Bramble crossed over to the horse while keeping an eye on the tent. She pressed warm hands on its neck to give it some desperately needed heat. The animal perked its head up, lowly whinnying and leaning into Bramble’s touch. She moved a hand up to its nuzzle, letting it sniff before she placed it there. The horse didn’t protest.

Bramble’s hands had become heat packs. Really, her entire body had been transformed into one. Just give her a couple fucking shakes and she’d be good to go.

Even after running for hours in a fucking snowstorm, she still didn’t feel tired or cold.

It took a little longer than Bramble would have liked to leave the steed and approach the tent. What if it wasn’t Davos? What if she just wasted time? Or what if it was Davos, and he tried killing her because, after all, a rando just poked their head into his tent after cuddling with his horse?

Fuck, did she really have get all anxious? Right now?

Chewing on her bottom lip, Bramble firmly reminded herself that this was about Shireen. This was about saving a girl who deserved to be saved, who needed to be saved. The sun would be up in a few hours, and the Baratheon army was still a long way away.

She then strode up to the tent and awkwardly patted the flap. The pat sounded exactly like the wind hitting it, unfortunately, meaning that Bramble had no polite or gentle way to make her presence known.

So.

Maybe if Davos saw her face, he’d be friendly? She tugged the cowl down and let it drop. Then, taking the edges of the tied-together flaps, Bramble ripped the leather cords apart enough to push her head in.

This was a bad fucking idea.

But, honestly, all her ideas were shit.

The second Bramble got her head through, the blade of a steel sword kindly met the exposed skin of her jawline.

Davos towered above her, eyes fierce and unrepentant. He’d kill her without remorse if he had to.

“State your business, Crow,” he growled. The blade dug deeper.

Well. At least Davos recognized Bramble.

Her current position didn’t exactly mis well with the imperative information she had for Seaworth. Bramble could only imagine how fucking stupid she looked with her head poking into his tent. It didn’t matter, though. She only had to speak, and this time, this time, she could.

“Shireen is in danger,” Bramble replied, trying her best to look as truthful and serious as possible. “The Red Woman plans to burn her at the stake.”

Davos’ furrowing brows made it apparent that her abrupt statement was the last thing he expected to hear. The sword drew away from Bramble’s neck, although it didn’t drop entirely. Davos took a step back, incredulous. “What?”

Bramble snuck a hand through and untied the nearest knot, giving her more room to step into the tent. Davos didn’t protest her entry, so she went ahead and stumbled into it. The candle dimly illuminating the inside threatened to die out from the sudden wind that burst through.

“Shireen. She’s going to die. I—”

“I thought you were a mute?” Davos bluntly interrupted. “Meaning no offense—I think—but weren’t you also a boy?”

“Yes and, uh, yes,” Bramble said. They were standing too close in the small tent. She hadn’t really thought this through, but fuck it, thinking things through took up too much time. “It’s a long story. I’ll explain it when we have the time. But I know Shireen is going to die. This storm, it’s too strong for the army to move on. They’re going to starve if it doesn’t let up, and they don’t have enough food to return to Castle Black. So, Melisandre will convince Stannis to sacrifice Shireen to stop the storm.”

Davos shook his head, but his eyes darkened with dread. He did not want to admit that Stannis could do such a thing, but deep in his grizzled heart, he knew the truth. “No. The princess is the heir. Her father wouldn’t accept it.”

“Why do you think Shireen was taken with them? She’s the fallback plan! And with Melisandre whispering in his ear, he’ll do anything to achieve his goals because they think he’s the Prince Who Was Promised or whatever the fuck you call it.”

Davos gave her a suspicious look. “How do you know all of this?”

“I…am different.” The words sounded lame tumbling out of Bramble’s mouth. She grimaced afterward. Davos almost smiled at the explanation.

“Well,” he huffed, sheathing his sword and grabbing the cloak he used as a blanket. “Now that I know you’re a girl, I s’pose you might actually have wholesome care for Shireen.”

Bramble’s brows drew together. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means I don’t trust men of the Night’s Watch around little girls,” Davos said as he tied his cloak around his shoulders.

She stared at him, her brain trying to speed through every fucking thing that was wrong with Westeros. She wound up simply muttering, “I hate this place.”

Davos, who thought she meant the North and being in the Night’s Watch instead of this world, snorted and hefted the saddle pack underneath an arm. He extinguished the candle between two gloved fingers, plunging them into darkness. “I imagine so, my lady.”

They abandoned the tent and went back out into the frigid night. The clouds had relinquished their oppression of the moon and let her faint pale light shine down on them. Combined with the vast amount of snow, it created enough visibility for Davos to saddle the horse.

“You’re going to follow me,” Bramble explained over the wind. “I know the way.”

“How? When the moon disappears again it’ll be pitch black.” Davos stopped, then started again. “And did you say follow? Where’s your horse?”

She stuck her bottom lip out for a second and shrugged. “I ran,” she tried to say as casually as possible.

“You ran.”

“Yes.”

“When did you start?”

“A few hours ago.”

Davos paused to consider if he had it in him to ask more questions about the already strange conversation. Bramble stood there, hoping he wouldn’t. With the shake of his head, Davos cinched the saddle and grumbled, “Let me guess: you’ll explain later?”

“Hopefully,” Bramble said, watching him mount. She grabbed the reins near the horse’s bit and started guiding it back to some semblance of the path. She only had to extend her senses out again, like a palm opening, to catch the thousands awaiting death. Shireen slept somewhere within that void.

When Davos warmed up the steed, he started into a slow lope. Bramble kept up, and he shouted something that got lost in the wind. He probably asked if she was doing alright? Physically? Absolutely. Mentally and emotionally? Questionable.

They needed to pick up the pace, though. Bramble pushed farther ahead, the momentum only fueling the fire’s power. Had she been running this fast in the first place? Davos’ horse was now at a full gallop, and still she remained ahead.

Freaky.

Bramble wondered if she could fly as well. Might want to test that by jumping off the Wall. Use the fire like Princess Azula or some firebender shit.

If only she had been drop-kicked into another dimension instead of this shitty one, where the dead walked, and seasons lasted for years on end. Why couldn’t it have been, like, anywhere else?

At least there were dragons here, though.

But there were dragons in a lot of other places, too. And more of them.

Why the fuck was she thinking about this now?

Because she had little else to think about when she ran fast as horse, through a snowstorm, on her way to save a princess.

-

They traveled the rest of the night and into the morning. The poor horse was exhausted, frozen sweat stuck on its fur. Death trickled down its legs and into the broken snow. Bramble had Davos stop and let it rest—and let Davos himself take a breather.

The older man got off and stretched, but he didn’t look at all relieved. “We still have at least twenty more miles to go,” he said. “We’re not going to make it in time. Not at this rate.”

Bramble’s heart tightened from hearing the truth. “I can keep running,” she said. “I’m not worn out yet.”

“Begging your pardon, but have you ever done this before?” Davos put in abruptly. “Or have you just run for, oh, I don’t know, days on end for pure amusement?”

“No. I haven’t done this before. I haven’t done most of the things I did in the past few days. So we’re on a learning curve here, alright?

“Lovely,” Davos grunted. “And what if you do start getting exhausted? What then? Without a horse to put Shireen on? And let’s say that if you do make it there still feeling as fresh as a spring daisy, how’re you going to sneak in? There are guards and soldiers and Stannis himself! What if Shireen won’t go? She’s stubborn. Very stubborn.”

“I don’t know, okay?” Bramble said exasperatedly. “Melisandre and I don’t exactly have the best, uh, relationship either. She might sense my presence. But you can’t go in, either. Didn’t Stannis order you to leave?”

“Yes—how did you know that?”

“I just do. Fucking keep up. He did it because he knew you wouldn’t let him go through with sacrificing Shireen if worst came to worst.”

“And right now is the worst,” Davos grimly said. He tilted his head up at the heavy flakes of snow drifting to the ground. “The soldiers are starving, and the storm isn’t letting up.” He looked back to Bramble. “Are you certain about all this?”

“Yes. And if…if I’m wrong, then at least Shireen will still be safe from the Boltons when they go to war.”

Bramble cupped some snow in her hands and let it melt into a puddle of warm water. She lifted her palms up to the horse and let it take some much-needed drinks. Davos watched with an appropriately stunned expression. Bramble didn’t know she could do that, either.

“So what do we do?” he eventually questioned. Bramble repeated the snow melting process and shrugged.

Don’t ask me, she wanted to say. I’m just a kid.

But she wasn’t, was she? Bramble hadn’t been a child for a while, now.

“I think I can get Shireen. If you go anywhere near the camp, they might recognize you.”

“And you? You’re a girl—a lady, I mean.”

Davos’ sarcastic yet sincere correction made Bramble almost smile again. “I know how to pretend to be a boy. Don’t you remember?”

“Point taken. Your best bet at getting into the camp is where the mercenaries are set up. They’re at the southern end of camp, luckily. Your problem will be getting to Shireen’s tent. It’s in the center of the camp, and she may not be alone when you do find her. I’ll follow behind when my horse catches its breath.”

Bramble raised the cowl. She didn’t need it at this point, necessarily, but it felt cool to put on. “Understood.” She turned to start running, again, but Davos hurriedly grabbed her arm before she left.

“Save Shireen,” he said—no, commanded. Such an intense look made Bramble see Davos in another light. The light of a fatherly love. “Save her at any cost.”

She nodded and resumed running, trying to get the expression on Davos’ face out of her head. It only reminded Bramble of the deceased.

 

 

 

Notes:

School has got me all out of sorts, guys. You understand.

Chapter 19

Summary:

Revised 6/28/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The Baratheon camp looked similar to Hardhome in the sense that death seemed to be a void among the white snow. The blizzard continued to rage on, and even Bramble could tell the temperature had dropped more.

She ducked behind a cropping of rocks upon nearing the encampment. She didn’t see any guards posted, but Bramble couldn’t be positive. Mercenaries and soldiers hunched over meek fires flickering against the unforgiving wind. They were too busy starving and freezing to notice Bramble walking right on in. Death had broken apart into individual pockets at this point. She could differentiate between the mercenaries and the soldiers because of the darkness they lacked under their feet. Not all of them wore Baratheon armor, either, which was good for Bramble’s terrible disguise.

Bramble stood and pretended to pull up her trousers, acting like she had just taken a dump. A few eyes flitted toward her, but as soon as she folded her arms and stooped down to imitate being cold, gazes turned away.

Nobody wore cowls, though, so Bramble tugged hers down. She kept her head bent close to her chest, making it hard to see any feminine qualities through the snowstorm.

Walking through Hardhome, surrounded by death, had been a tense and disturbing circumstance. Walking through the Baratheon camp, however, felt like a graveyard. The soldiers knew death was upon them. Nobody talked, nobody moved if they didn’t have to. Bramble should have been drawing attention because she lacked any sort of cloak or armor, but thinking required work, and work meant straying from the fire.

A discarded sword sat atop a snow-covered crate. Bramble saw it as she passed and snatched it up to use. Sneaking through a camp to steal a princess was stupid enough. If Bramble had a sword, she felt better about her dumbassery.

With the sword belted around her waist, the search for Shireen’s tent continued. Bramble kept a sharp eye out for Stannis or Melisandre. She didn’t see either—which only made her gut twist. They could pop out at any moment, and she’d be screwed. Bramble hoped that somehow, she’d sense Melisandre with the plethora of freaky powers she possessed. She couldn’t exactly put it to the test right at the moment, though, leaving her to wander toward the center of camp and hopefully find Shireen before everything went to fucking shit.

After avoiding a sudden patrol heading in the opposite direction of Bramble, she decided to go where they came from and slunk through rows of tents. A stillness rested in these parts. With no soldiers heavily congregated, the weight of death temporarily lifted, leaving an absence.

In the absence, a girl sang.

Bramble stopped, listening to where it originated from. Her heart quickened. Shireen. It was Shireen.

She turned westward, trying to keep from drawing unwanted attention by walking at a normal speed. Shireen’s tent was four more rows down and in the center of camp like Davos promised. However, two soldiers guarded the entrance of her tent. Even though they appeared cold and miserable, Bramble still couldn’t take them down without being seen.

As Bramble circled back around to find another way in, she saw soldiers piling wood onto a pyre not three hundred feet away. Her stomach immediately soured. Things were going to become very bad very fast.

A poorly thought-out idea formed, much like all of Bramble’s other ideas. She went to the back of Shireen’s tent, unsheathed the sword, made sure nobody was around, and promptly slashed through the canvas.

The singing abruptly stopped. Shireen audibly gasped, but whatever scream brewing cut off when Bramble stepped through. Her entrance was much better than it had been with Davos.

Frightfully clutching her cloak, Shireen sputtered, “B-Bramble?”

Despite all the chaos, all the evil and terror, Bramble couldn’t help but smile a little when she saw the alive and well face of Princess Shireen.

Shireen smiled back.

She sheathed her sword and rushed forward to kneel down and grip Shireen by her shoulders. Death amassed at her feet. Bramble could almost feel it seeping through her trousers, sucking away heat when nothing else could. “What are you doing here?” Shireen asked. “And why did you stab a hole through my tent? What’s going—”

Bramble hastily covered Shireen’s mouth with her hand. Though wide-eyed, the princess didn’t push it away. “I can talk, and I’m a girl,” Bramble simply put. Those dark brown eyes grew even wider, and Shireen spouted something inaudible. The hand stayed put. “Something very, very bad is going to happen to you, princess. Your father…” She trailed off for a moment, unsure if she should tell Shireen that Stannis intended to sacrifice her for the sake of his army. “It’s not important. What’s important is that I get you out of here. We need to move quietly, and we need to move quickly. Davos is waiting for us a few miles north of here.”

Lowering her hand gave Shireen the opportunity to talk in a soft voice. “But what about Father? Why do you have to sneak me out? Does he know about all this?”

Bramble screwed her eyes shut and sighed. She hadn’t exactly figured out how to break the news to Shireen about everything. Honestly, she hoped she never had to. “He…look, Shireen, things are very complicated right now and—”

“What is he going to do.”

Bramble opened her eyes and gazed back up at Shireen. The princess stood solemnly before her, strong and graceful enough to handle whatever news escaped past Bramble’s grimacing lips. “Tell me,” Shireen said. The girl appeared years beyond her age.

With a dry and aching throat, she replied, “The Baratheon army is on the brink of death in this snowstorm. Melisandre has…convinced your father that sacrificing someone with king’s blood will bring an end to the storm and allow them to advance to Winterfell.”

Shireen stared at Bramble as she gave her weak explanation, still and reactionless. Waiting for a response seemed like an eternity. Bramble prayed to whatever cruel god watching over this world that the little princess saw reason.

“He won’t win, will he?” she eventually asked, barely above a whisper. The howling wind outside almost drowned it out. “No matter what. We’re not going to take Winterfell.”

Bramble didn’t hide the truth. She gave her head the smallest of shakes. The princess briefly closed her eyes and sighed. When she opened them, her eyes glistened with unshed tears. But she remained unwavering and noble, giving a glimpse of the strength inside her. “Take me away from here, Bramble.”

After breathing a heavy sigh of relief, Bramble stood and scanned the tent. “Do you have a pack of clothes?”

“I—no, only a chest—” Shireen hastily grabbed a small satchel and stuffed it with the stack of books on one of her end tables. Despite the anxiety clawing at Bramble’s senses, she smirked at what the Baratheon princess considered a necessity.

After adding hairpins and a comb, she tied the bulky satchel shut. Shireen slung it over the shoulder and nodded as a sign that she was ready to go. Bramble ushered her out of the tent and resisted the temptation to grab her hand. The gesture would only raise alarms.

Snow softly crunched under their feet while they tried to maintain a normal pace. Shireen drew her hood up, but that would do little to keep attention away from them. As soon as they walked out into the open space, eyes from freezing and starving soldiers immediately wandered their way. Did they already know who the pyre was being built for?

“Bramb,” Shireen whispered fearfully. They barely broke past the central part of camp. “We’re not going to make it out.”

“We will,” Bramble replied, hardly moving her mouth so nobody would see she talked to the princess.

They had to.

The southernmost end of camp was a welcome sight. Each step with Shireen felt like another death sentence stacked on top of the other. Soldiers, though their gazes lingered, stayed where they were and kept their mouths shut. No alarms had been raised.  Surely it couldn’t have been this easy, could it?

The instant Bramble fantasized such a hopeful escape, she reckoned something bad was going to happen.

“Hey! You there!” a voice shouted. Bramble made the mistake of glancing in the direction of the yell. When she did, she let out a silent curse.

The soldier. The one who told Bramble where Davos went before the Baratheon army left Castle Black. He easily recognized her. And of course he had to be right at the very edge of camp, unknowingly stopping everything from going smoothly.

“Bramble,” Shireen whispered again. “What’re we going to do?”

She didn’t reply.

“Stop! What’re you doing with the princess?” the captain demanded to know. He started to walk up to them, ready to cut off their path.

They were so close.

Behind them, back at the center of the camp, a horn blew on the icy wind. “The princess has been kidnapped!” somebody in the distance yelled. “The princess has been kidnapped!”

The captain’s eyes widened. He broke into a run, drawing his sword to fight and be a hero. But they didn’t have time to fight! They needed to fucking run.

Bramble took Shireen’s hand and nearly pulled the princess off her feet. She sprinted the rest of the way to the very edge of camp. The captain, ready to lay down his life in the Baratheon name, staggered to a stop when Shireen thrust out a hand and harshly exclaimed, “No! Leave me!”

He was going to die, anyway. Every soldier and some of the mercenaries who started to chase them would, too.

The camp fell behind them, but the escape was far from over. Shireen, weighed down by layers of clothes, had an even harder time keeping up with Bramble. Their tightly interlocked fingers kept them together.

Bramble let Shireen go once before. She wouldn’t let her go again.

“The soldiers!” Shireen gasped. “We can’t lose the soldiers!”

Glancing over her shoulder, Bramble saw what she already expected. More than twenty soldiers hotly pursued them. The chance to save a princess and be rewarded by their king renewed their strength and stamina. Soon, the rest of the army would follow. A large bulk gathered twenty paces away—and closed in fast.

Bramble caught the terror in Shireen’s eyes. Death still clung to her cloak like molasses. Some of its essence was left in the snow with each fleeing footstep, but it still wouldn’t be enough.

Use it, the voice beckoned. Use it.

She couldn’t—

It might not work—

Fucking use it!

As the fear ebbed away, fire took its place.

Bramble swung Shireen around in front of her. She stumbled into the snow, crying out at the sudden change. Her face filled with terror at the thought of not being able to get back up, of being sacrificed, of dying.

Heels spinning, Bramble faced the army and the trail of death they spread.

Snow melted beneath her feet. She could feel the flames licking and snapping under her skin, warning Bramble that whether she used the fire or not, it would find a way out.

One breath, two breaths. Steam billowed from her mouth like smoke from a dragon’s maw.

“Brace for impact!” the pilot’s broken voice blared over the radio. “Brace for impact!”

“Mom!” Bramble shrieked like a helpless little girl. The word was captured by the oxygen mask over her mouth. Pressure from the fall made it hard to move, to think, to breathe.

Outside the window, the entire world blurred blue. Light, dark, split by nothing and everything. Ready to embrace. Ready to punish.

The plane collided with the ocean water.

Bramble slashed a violent hand in front of her, slicing through memories and the frigid air. Fire roared to life on the ground where she traced it into existence. It rolled viciously through the snow, climbing high into the gray, gauzy sky. Its red-and-orange tendrils burned existence itself, coiling, churning, spitting.

It didn’t want to stop. It wanted to rage onward, to cut down the soldiers it now barricaded Bramble and Shireen from. She fought the strong, pressing urge to let the fire’s will spiral into chaos. She knew its ways now, though, its resistance to control. That was the nature of fire. Humans understood it as surely as they understood that cold could kill and death was inescapable.

Bramble understood.

She refused to relinquish the reins and stopped the fire from continuing on its wild, destructive path. Through its heat, Bramble saw soldiers standing helplessly on the other side of the curtain, stunned by the terrible creation before them. The fire spanned fifteen meters across and just as high. It’d give Bramble and Shireen a little time to distance themselves before anyone realized they could simply walk around the hellish wall.

On the other side of the burning veil, dressed in deep red and deep magic, stood Melisandre. Whether the flames distorted her smile, or it was simply her wicked expression, Bramble couldn’t tell. She stared back for another moment before spinning around and sweeping an aghast Shireen up into her arms.

She broke into a run, the fire swelling in her chest. Shireen didn’t speak, didn’t move as they fled.

The blizzard picked up again. It graciously hid the two in its white embrace.

Left behind in the chaos of it all was Shireen’s death.

 

 

 

Notes:

Honestly it's the change we all wanted.

Chapter 20

Summary:

Revised 6/29/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble let go of Shireen once they had put a few kilometers between them and the camp. By then, the princess had gained some composure and only staggered a little bit when she found herself back on her own feet. Bramble had spotted her own faint footprints nearly covered by the snow, giving her faith that they headed in the right direction. The farther they traveled, though, the more she feared they would eventually become lost.

Shireen took a few steadying breaths and tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears. Bramble hadn’t planned on showing her that she could control fire. Honestly, she never expected to summon it again.

“You…you did…”

“Yeah.” Bramble surveyed the white wasteland. “It’s a new thing.”

“So—so you’re a priestess like Melisandre?”

“No. Never.” She couldn’t be a priestess in a world that didn’t belong to her. “We went to Hardhome. Everything changed there.”

“How?” Shireen drew her hood up to protect her ears from the biting wind. Though she could feel its intensity, the cold failed to even redden Bramble’s cheeks.

“It…” She had just saved the princess from being sacrificed. Would it really be a fucking good idea to tell Shireen about the Night King and his army? “It’s not important.”

They started walking through the snow. Shireen scoffed. “Not important? I cannot believe you really said that.”

“I don’t want to scare you.”

“I saw you create fire out of thin air,” Shireen said rather flatly. “I saw the pyre being built for me. What could possibly be scarier than that?”

“A lot of things.” Bramble tried sensing small pieces of death all the way from Castle Black, but it proved futile. She only sensed death from the army behind them.

“I think I have the right to know.”

Bramble glanced down at Shireen. Another wave of dread passed over her. She didn’t have to test Shireen’s stubbornness to know that it was there, ready and waiting to wear her down. Bramble didn’t have the best argumentative streak, while Shireen had about twenty streaks of it.

One last attempt. “No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Bramble sighed loudly, and it felt good to make the noise. To hear the sigh and feel the sigh and be the sigh. “No, alright? You’ll just get scared.”

Shireen let out a shaky laugh. “I’m already scared, aren’t I? How is a little more fright going to change things?”

The wind struck out at the princess, and she stumbled to the side. Bramble grabbed hold of the fur cloak to draw Shireen close. Instead of pulling away, the princess leaned into her and siphoned off warmth.

Where was Davos? Not far, hopefully. The old footprints were becoming harder and harder to recognize.

“Alright,” Bramble said after a short silence. “We went to Hardhome. Thousands of wildlings were gathered there. Thousands perished.”

“How?”

“The Night King. He killed the living with his army and then added them to the dead.”

Shireen sharply turned her head to Bramble. “The Night King? But—but he’s just a story—”

“No. He’s real. One of his generals tried to take me. They knew of power within me I didn’t know I had myself. Only when I was on the brink of being consumed by evil magic did the fire manifest itself. Back at the camp was only the second time I brought it into existence. The first time, I could barely control it at all. I almost got eaten alive by it.”

Bramble felt ridiculous spewing those sentences out. But, then again, this whole world was fucking ridiculous.

“So…so you saw the Night King?” Shireen asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve read about him. Everybody thinks he’s imaginary. A bedtime story. But…he’s on his way here, isn’t he?”

“Uh huh. That’s why Jon had us go there in the first place. He knew what it meant for them if they stayed North of the Wall.”

Shireen tripped again, so Bramble stopped and crouched in front of her. Wordlessly and without hesitation, Shireen clambered onto her back and let herself be carried again. “Did any of the wildlings get saved?”

Bramble started jogging to quicken the pace again. “A lot did. But still not enough.”

“How big is the army?” Shireen’s breath bumped with the movement.

“Hundred thousand, probably.”

Her stunned silence told Bramble that she spilled a little too much. “A…a hundred thousand?”

“I mean—well—I couldn’t get an exact head count,” Bramble rambled on, trying to backtrack.

“But there were a lot?”

She recalled the vivid memory of blue-eyed dead spanning the entire snowy shore. “Yeah,” Bramble said softly. “A lot.”

“And we’re going back to the place where they’re most likely to attack first?” Shireen didn’t try to hide her sarcasm.

“Pretty much.”

“You don’t seem afraid. Are you afraid?”

“Terrified,” Bramble breathed. “This is the last way I expected my life to go.”

They ran for a little while longer with no sign of Davos. Bramble started to worry. “Where is your accent from? I’ve never heard it before. Sam told me he thought you were from somewhere in Essos, but nobody could be certain.”

The question a long time coming. “I’m from a place called Thunder Bay. It’s far away.”

A place Bramble could never go back to, no matter how hard she wished for it.

About thirty minutes later, they found Davos, much to her relief. The man didn’t say a word to Bramble; he only pulled Shireen into a tight embrace and held her like a father holding a daughter. Bramble looked away from them. She didn’t need to be reminded of what love felt like.

“Did things go smoothly?” he finally asked after putting Shireen on the horse and making sure she was secure. “I saw smoke.”

“More or less,” Bramble said. “But we’d better get back.”

“You won’t hear any arguing from me,” Davos grunted as he got on the horse. “But are you certain you want to return to Castle Black? I take it none of the Crows were very happy when they discovered that you were a girl.”

Huffing, she said, “No, they were not.”

“So why not just leave? Escape whatever fate they have for you.”

Bramble looked up at Davos, trying to tell if he actually cared about her well-being or if he thought she was just stupid for going back. “I have nowhere else to go,” she said, then remembered to harden her face and scowl a little. “And I think all of you are going to want me by your side for whatever comes next.”

-

Tormund and Karsi waited for the three of them. It was a few hours before daybreak, and the wildlings barely stood visible against the snowy landscape. When Bramble saw them, she motioned for Davos and Shireen to hang back. Not because they posed a threat, but because she didn’t want them overhearing any grim, potential news.

Tormund smiled first, wild as it was. “All that smoke in the air yesterday,” he prompted, “that was you? Make some fire, eh?”

Bramble nodded. Tormund chuckled and shook his head. Crazy bastard. “Damn, what I would have given to see that fucking sight.”

Karsi snorted at Tormund’s statement. To Bramble, she said, “We told Jon Snow we spotted smoke rising from the south. We all believed it to be you. He’s waiting for you at Castle Black.”

“With a trial tomorrow,” Bramble found herself sighing. She’d forgotten about that. “If I live long enough to get a trial.”

“Don’t worry, Little Crow,” Tormund shrugged. “Deep down, Snow knows he needs you. But you best hurry. Some of your brethren don’t see it that way. If you make it before daybreak, you may avoid most of them.”

Karsi looked over Bramble’s shoulder at Davos and Shireen. Her face remained mostly unreadable, but Bramble thought she almost saw a ghost of a smile on the corner of the wildling woman’s lips. “So that’s her, eh? The princess?”

“Yeah.”

“And who’s the old man?”

“Davos.”

“He was one of Stannis’ men,” Tormund said, eyes suddenly sharp while his voice remained casual. “Stood there and watched Mance Rayder die.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not one of Stannis’ men anymore. Here in a while he won’t be able to even go back to Stannis.” Bramble tilted her head up to the dark sky. “The storm’s stopped. Wonder if they sacrificed somebody else instead of Shireen.”

The outspoken thought disturbed both Karsi and Tormund. They exchanged heavy glances. She remembered that they were both parents. That they both had daughters.

“To think that somebody would do that to their child,” Karsi muttered with a disgusted shake of her head. “Evil. Pure evil.” She spat on the ground.

“This Lord of Light doesn’t sound like a nice god, does he?” Tormund asked to no one in particular. “All these sacrifices and shit. Burning little girls and helpless soldiers. What kind of god asks for that?”

Still, Bramble said, “A bad one.”

Tormund levelly gazed at her. “Aye. And looks like you’ve got his flames, doesn’t it?”

She made the same scoffing noise she did when she was mute. “Don’t think so.” Bramble scratched the side of her nose and said more seriously, “But, eh, you two had better get prepared.”

“For what?” Karsi questioned. “Did you see something?”

Bramble glanced over her shoulder to make sure Davos and Shireen still remained out-of-earshot. “Yeah. Kinda. But whatever’s going to happen, it won’t be good. We’ll probably need your help.”

“We?” Tormund repeated. “Is it really going to be that big of a fucking problem?”

“Most likely. I—” Bramble swallowed hard, which reminded her of the constant, minor ache in her throat. “I wish I could tell you. But…I’m afraid this is something I can’t fucking change.”

“Cannot? Or afraid to?” Karsi said, though not accusingly.

Bramble shrugged. “Don’t know.” She then grimly scowled. “Either way. Best be ready for some hell.”

-

The sound of the castle’s gates creaking open gave Bramble more chills than the cold ever could. She walked next to the steed that carried Davos and Shireen. The only question Shireen asked between the wilding camp and Castle Black was, “Were those really wildlings?”

Yes, Bramble had said. They were.

She replied, “They’re awfully normal.”

Edd met them once they crossed the castle’s threshold. Seeing his grave face made Bramble’s throat go dry. “Bramb,” he said lowly with the dip of his head. Bramble reciprocated the nod. A few other men had gathered to see the False Crow return, casting vicious and vengeful glares.

Grenn was not among them.

Davos slid off the horse and helped Shireen down. She stumbled, breath catching, as her legs nearly gave out from under her. Bramble steadied the girl with her hand. Shireen looked at Bramble, and she glimpsed the princess’ frightened state before it receded back into noble—albeit somewhat tired—detachment.

Edd bowed to her. “My lady,” he said, then gave another, shorter bow to Davos. “I imagine the both of you are tired. Take your belongings, and one of the brothers will show you to your quarters.”

Shireen reached for Bramble’s hand as she passed, squeezing it as quickly as she could before their hands slipped away. Edd watched the exchange. His frown deepened.

“What have you done,” he said to her. Not in accusing way. In a grieving way. The tone still hurt Bramble. It meant people continued to care for her in spite of what happened. The responsibility that came with it did not carry lightly.

He jerked his head towards the cell and started walking. Bramble followed, keeping her head down against the growing gray sunrise. “Thorne wanted to send a search party out for you. Wanted to hunt you down. Jon crushed the idea, but don’t be fooled thinking that all their sentiments have gone.”

“I won’t,” Bramble said quietly. Everything moved so slowly now, which brought an ache in her bones and a tired kind of heat.

Edd, for some reason, started to chuckle. It was low and dry and bitter, but it made Bramble turn her head to him. “First you save Pyp and Grenn,” he started to list, “then you go and save the wildlings. And now you’ve saved the damned Baratheon princess. Tryin’ to make the rest of us all look bad?”

The corner of her lip twitched. “Something like that,” she said.

Her eyes lifted to the top of the stairs. Whatever smile cultivated turned to ash at the sight of the Lord Commander. He wore a dark expression—even darker eyes pierced Bramble. To be on the receiving end of the gaze made her feel very small.

Bramble forced herself to maintain eye contact out of spite. Jon locked her up. Jon didn’t want her to save Shireen. And yet she broke out and disobeyed orders all the same. She didn’t need to look so guilty about it.

And besides, Bramble didn’t want to directly stare at the miasmic death bubbling up from the bottom of Jon’s shoes and slowly trickling down the stairs.

They stopped two steps below Jon. His jaw worked as though he wanted to say something to Bramble, and yes, say anything, just say something, she thought. But the jaw only locked into a hard set and cut off any possible discussions. Bramble refused to be hurt by it. “Take her back to the cell,” he instead spoke to Edd. “Strip her of any weapons.”

“Aye, Lord Commander.” Edd nudged her along. Jon stepped aside to let them pass. Her limbs grew heavier with each step, like they weighed more than anything Bramble could manage. Everything started to catch up, unfortunately, leaving her to trudge through the creaking halls. When Edd opened the door to her cell, she walked in without complaint, without a sound. The hard floor and a pile of shapeless clothes Bramble had strewn on the ground when she dug through crates welcomed her.

She didn’t turn to watch Edd close the door. The lock clicked in an almost ironic way. Its frail aptitude mocked her and the place she was back in.

Slumping to the ground, Bramble ran fingers through her greasy hair and sighed. Though being able to run for miles—for days on end—was a nice perk, the severe fatigue that came after it was something Bramble had never experienced before. Unconsciousness pulled at her eyelids, wore her bones down, and threatened a kind of rest Bramble couldn’t afford to allow.

Bad things were going to happen tonight.

As Bramble fought an unwinnable battle against sleep, there was a soft knock at the door—accompanied by tendrils of black death crawling under the gap between the floorboards.

Olly.

No. No no no no no no.

“Bramb?” he called quietly. “I heard you came back. Are you there?”

Grimacing at the sheer weight of the heaviness upon her, Bramble managed to choke out, “Olly! Olly—you need—listen to me. Please. You need—”

“You’re not going to change my mind. You or Jon.” Olly’s voice, though muffled by the door between them, was steely and practiced. “Do you understand? I’ll never forgive him for what he did.”

“Please, Olly…” Bramble’s voice had been reduced to cinders and gravel. “Ngani.”

He didn’t hear the Tagalog plea, for his footsteps already strode down the hallway and out of reach. She had to…she had to get up...

But Bramble’s head thumped against the floor, and the warmth of the fire in her chest beckoned. The last thing she heard before darkness swept her away was that the Red Woman approached the gates.

-

Dad grilled at the barbecue in their backyard. Mom worked on the small garden running along their white fence. Bramble sat in their lawn chair, brushing shades of glimmering highlighter across her arm to see which one would best match her skin tone.

The grill caught on fire. Dad continued whistling and making light conversation with Mom. Bramble meticulously concentrated on making the highlighter shades even with her beauty blender.

Davos walked into the backyard and stopped on her left, dressed in his heavy cloak and winter clothes. “It’s too hot for that,” Bramble said to him. Davos looked down at her.

“Don’t think so, my lady.” He gestured to the backyard. When Bramble turned her gaze back, snow covered the lawn, and the sky was a starless, moonless black. Mom and Dad staggered upright, blue eyes shining against dead skin and snapping teeth.

Bramble examined the shades. She was still too warm from the summer sun. The highlighters began to melt together on her skin, bubbling and churning like molten wax.

“Better get going, my lady,” said Davos. “You’ve got a world to save.”

“But this world isn’t mine,” Bramble said back. She casually watched her parents shamble and lurch forward, screeching, their hands reaching out to grab her. “Not my problem.”

Fire rained from the sky, punching holes in the void above them, turning the world red and angry and bright. The fire destroyed the white fence, destroyed the barbecue grill, destroyed the blue-eyed corpses of Mom and Dad. From their burnt and blackened bodies wriggled out ethereal, tentacled masses of Death Corrupted.

“It is now.”

Jon stood on Bramble’s right. Blood poured from his chest and melted the snow, melted like the highlighter on her bare, burning arm. Fiery light made the blood glisten and shine like precious, liquid jewels.

Jon pinned a sharp, stern gaze to Bramble that went about six inches out her back. “It is now.”

The raining fire melted the snow entirely. It had turned to water, ocean water, as cold and unforgiving as Westeros. Bramble tried to lunge away when swelled above her, but the waves drug her down below its surface, down, down, down, highlighter fading from her skin, swirling, glittering like a strange galaxy, and the watery black flooded Bramble’s lungs as passengers screamed and the plane’s wing shattered, and Mom cracked her head against the screen in front of her, shattering it, slumping forward, and Bramble’s life jacket crushed her chest—

Bramble opened her eyes and sucked in cold air with empty lungs. It took a few seconds to reorient herself. She had fallen asleep on the floor and was left with an aching back and a stiff jaw. Whatever dream that manifested in her mind began to fade, now, with only fragmented pieces of blood and fire and snow and ocean water haunting her mind.

Blackness filled the room. With it came a bitter feeling of dread and urgency. Bramble spent a few moments rubbing the sides of her head and shaking away the fog before her cognitive senses returned. And then she remembered—

She remembered—

“Oh, fuck.”

Bramble scrambled to her feet and felt her way to the door. Dim torchlight flickered underneath the crack, and she heard somebody snoring on the other end.

Thoughtlessly, her foot brutally connected with the door and sent it shattering open. Bramble stepped through and into the hall. Grenn—because of course it was Grenn—had fallen out of his chair in the sudden burst of chaos and commotion. His curses faded from Bramble’s ears; she sprinted down the hall and out into the courtyard.

He was going to die, anyway. Jon needed to die.

This wasn’t about fucking Jon!

It was about Olly.

Bramble had saved everyone she wanted to save and more. Why couldn’t she save Olly? He was just a boy! He was just a boy who listened to the words of false brothers. If she could tear him away and shake some sense into him and say that everything was going to be alright—

From beyond the walls of the castle, death swept in and took a life.

It clung to her heart, stinging like acidic poison. Bramble stopped in her place, eyes stretching wide with horror. She let out a “no” and a soft, stifled gasp. Then she was running again, but her movements felt lethargic and slow, like the whole world had turned into a warped nightmare instead of real life. The walls seemed too narrow, too long, constructed from half-conscious memories and fears.

But it wasn’t a dream. The air still bit cold, the moon’s light still gleamed in snow, and Jon still laid in the courtyard beneath a post with the inscription TRAITOR nailed on it. His own blood pooled under him now, as dark as the death that once pursued.

A boy stood several feet away from Jon. A boy with freckles on his face and a bloody knife in his hand.

Beneath him, a shadow blacker than anything she had seen marked his soul.

“Olly,” Bramble uttered. No other words, no other movements, would come to her. She had been broken, twisted until she cracked and shattered.

He snapped his attention up to where she stood on the landing. Their breaths escaped out into the night; their hearts beat blood through them. In the moonlight, Olly’s expression reflected his rage, his uncertainty, his guilt, his fright.

Then Ghost began to howl, and Olly fled.

The world returned with an unforgiving sharpness. Grenn’s footsteps fell heavy behind her, and when the Crow saw what had happened—who laid lifeless in the courtyard—he raggedly cried, “Jon!”

Davos had come out to see what was going on from the western side of the castle. When his eyes landed on Jon, he urgently rushed down to see what had become of the Lord Commander.

Bramble stayed rooted to her rotten spot.

She could fix it. She could fix it. She could fix it and save Jon and save Olly.

Something told her no, though. No, she could not. Olly’s fate had been sealed when his dagger plunged into Jon’s heart, and not even Bramble’s powers could stop the forces now in motion.

So, she blinked away the bleary vision, shoved down a helpless sob, and walked with shaking legs to help Davos and Grenn.

 

 

 

Notes:

Sorry for the delay to those who read this. Things got busy, and the next thing you know it's been forever since an update.

I hope you guys are enjoying this! I know I am.

Chapter 21

Summary:

Revised 6/29/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The world was back to normal. Dark. Depressing. Filled with death.

Bramble stood over Jon, memorizing the place of each stab wound and the look of his lifeless brown eyes. What should she have been feeling? Guilt? Grief? Anger?

But she felt nothing. Just emptiness. Was it because she knew he wasn’t really gone? Or because something had cracked in Bramble, and she couldn’t cope with any real emotions?

Edd moved a hand over Jon’s eyes and closed them shut. Through gritted teeth he said, “Thorne did this.”

Davos, who had quickly grabbed Shireen from her quarters and brought her back to the safe room, held a protective arm around her and lowly asked, “How many men do you think you can trust?”

“Trust?” Edd looked around at all the darkly-dressed figures. “The men in this room.”

“Does the wolf know you?”

Edd nodded.

“Better go get him. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Bramble suddenly sensed the presence of a creature moments before she knocked on the door. She would have drawn her sword along with the rest of the men, but Bramble still remained as unequipped as the day she was born.

“Ser Davos?” Melisandre’s voice sounded faint and muffled. Bramble looked to Davos, Davos looked to Bramble, Shireen looked to both of them, and the rest looked to everyone else.

It took a moment to realize that they waited on Bramble to give some kind of signal. Though unable to stop a small scowl from crawling on her face, Bramble waved a hand for someone to let Melisandre in. When the door creaked open, a dark swath of red emerged from the black hall beyond. Melisandre’s pale face depicted a beautiful canvas of loss, confusion, and hopelessness.

Bramble didn’t have it in her to feel bad.

Melisandre’s eyes glanced over Bramble, Davos, and Shireen, but they ultimately fell upon Jon’s corpse and stayed there. The longer she looked at the Red Woman, the more Bramble found the priestess held no light. No danger. No faith. Only a terrible kind of grief that overwhelmed her as she examined the dead Lord Commander. If Melisandre noticed Davos taking Shireen to the other side of the room and setting her in a chair, she didn’t react.

Her slender fingers grazed over the cold, sticky blood glistening on Jon’s black leathers in the firelight. “I saw him in the flames,” she whispered, not to any of them, but to something unseen. “Fighting at Winterfell.”

“I can’t speak for the flames,” Davos said lowly. He drew near the fire again. “But he’s gone.”

Melisandre lifted her hand and stroked Jon’s cheek. Then she drew it away like it was a sin to have touched him. Before Bramble could try and say anything to Melisandre—and even if she had, she wasn’t sure just what she would say—the woman turned and walked out of the room.

The door shut so ominously Bramble had a moment of doubt about the way things were going to happen.

Bramble sighed and sat down next to the window. Dawn crept in, a quiet invader. The pale light reminded her of yesterday, of when she too crept into the Baratheon camp at morning and ran back out with Shireen in tow.

Shireen slumped in the chair, gray in the face and exhaustion circled under her eyes. Davos looked the same. The two had been through so much already, and now this. Bramble couldn’t even take comfort in knowing that things would get easier.

Davos pulled up a chair beside Bramble (why he chose to sit next to her, she had no fucking clue) and groaned as he settled into it. What an old man. He sounded just like her dad.

No. She shouldn’t think about that.

Edd returned with Ghost. The dire wolf whined upon seeing Jon’s lifeless body and went to his master’s side. He got bigger with each week, it seemed, currently coming up to Bramble’s waist.

“What is Thorne going to do?” Pyp asked, being the one brave enough to speak after the tense silence following Melisandre’s departure. He stood next to Grenn near the door. Grenn, who wouldn’t look at Bramble. And Bramble, who tried her hardest to not look at Grenn.

Ghost licked at Jon’s hand and whined again. “He’ll have seen we didn’t come,” Davos said plainly. “Thorne will have made it official by now: Castle Black is his.”

“I don’t care who sits at the high table,” Edd growled, approaching Jon once more. “Jon was my friend. And those fuckers butchered him. Now we return the favor.”

“We don’t have the numbers,” Davos firmly reminded.

“We have a dire wolf,” Edd argued, “and we have Bramb.” He pointed to her.

Bramble figured it was coming. She shook her head. “No. I’m not going to risk burning this place down.”

“Then don’t!” Pyp said, taking a few steps forward. “You can still take them down without a spark.”

Her scowl grew. “I can still get run through with a sword and die all the same. They’ll know I’m here with all of you. They’ll be prepared if I do anything.”

“So you’re just going to let them do this? Take control?” Edd asked angrily. “Bramb, they killed Jon!”

“I. Know.” She didn’t appreciate being yelled at. “But we’re still greatly outnumbered if you’ve fucking forgotten. If you put me in there, chances are that I’ll massacre them, they’ll kill me, then they’ll all kill you. It’ll be a blood bath. You know a lot of those brothers still out there aren’t bad. They just know which side will come out on top.” She forced herself to not think about Olly. “We need more men.”

“But we don’t have more men.” Edd had withdrawn his anger when faced with the blunt truth.

Davos had her back without hesitation. “I didn’t know Lord Commander Snow for long, but I don’t believe he would have wanted his friends to die for nothing.” He paused, an idea forming in his mind, the same idea Bramble had. “We may have to fight, but we don’t need to die. Not if we have help.”

“And who is gonna help us?”

“You’re not the only who owe your lives to Jon Snow,” Davos prompted.

Revelation dawned on all their faces. “Bolt the door,” Edd commanded. He started walking to the exit. “Don’t let anyone in. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

“Let me go,” Bramble found herself saying. “I’m faster, and they’ll trust my word more.”

Edd gave his head a shake. “No. You stay here. If things go to shit before I get back, they’re gonna need you.”

Like Melisandre, he didn’t give Bramble a chance to get another word in before he left the room, the door shutting soundly behind him. Pyp quickly bolted it. He hadn’t been this pale since a white-fletched arrow almost took his life.

Then, all of them waited for Thorne to come knocking while Jon’s cold dead body lay right in the middle of the freezing room. It was all so terrible that it had to be funny.

Ten minutes into the awkward silence, Bramble realized she was hungry. Super fucking hungry.

She got up, feeling every single eye on her, and wandered over to Jon’s desk. Bramble started to rummage through all his drawers and private matters, wishing she could sense the presence of food like she did death.

“What in seven hells do you think you’re bloody doing?”

Bramble didn’t bother to glance at Pyp, who had asked the question. “Looking for food. I’m hungry. I haven’t fucking eaten since…” she paused, eyes darting around as calculations added up in her head. “Three days ago? Holy shit.” Her search continued. Jon had to have kept snacks around. Brooding and being dark burned a lot of calories. Bramble would know.

“You—you can’t just do that,” Pyp poorly tried to argue. “He’s dead! Have some fucking respect, Bramb!”

She ignored being yelled at again. “Who ever said it was disrespectful to eat?” Her eyes finally flickered to Pyp, who, for once, was struggling to come up with the right words. “When Jon comes back, I’m sure he won’t mind if I’ve eaten a candy or two.” Bramble’s hand grabbed onto what she was looking for, and she pulled out a small box containing some wrapped hard caramels. It had probably been sent by some royal wanting to gain his favor. She unwrapped one and popped it into her mouth. When it nearly cracked her teeth to bite into, she shoved it to the side of cheek and began sucking on it.

Grenn finally lifted his head to gaze at Bramble. He looked like he didn’t want to say anything—Grenn was never a talker in larger groups—but he couldn’t force himself to keep quiet.

“Did…did you say, ‘when’?”

“When what?” Bramble said as the candy rolled around in her cheek.

“‘When Jon comes back.’ You said that. You just said that.” Grenn’s words no longer struggled to come out. He stared Bramble directly in the eyes.

The candy suddenly tasted like rock. Everybody stood there, realizing the fact that Bramble had indeed just said when Jon was coming back, not if.

Fucking hell.

She just gave away everything. Was that allowed?

Apparently.

“You knew, didn’t you? You fucking knew!” Grenn pointed an angry, betrayed finger at Jon. “You saw he was gonna die! And you did nothing!”

“What?” Pyp breathed, but he too edged on betrayal. “No. No, you wouldn’t—”

Bramble only lowered her gaze for an instant. It told the truth better than any words could.

Pyp made an outraged noise, and the environment suddenly grew hostile. Bramble forced down the rising panic and continued sucking on the candy. Even when she had a voice, she wasn’t that great of a talker. How could she possibly say anything that wouldn’t make everyone want to kill her more?

Bramble could almost smell the soil from the hole she had dug herself in.

“I’m sorry, but what’s going on?” Davos rightly questioned. He directly addressed Bramble. “Did you know this would happen to Snow?”

Grenn shook his head in disgust and turned away. If Edd were still here, she might have had a sword pointed at her throat. That could still happen, with the way the rest of the brothers regarded her. The only thing keeping them at bay was her power.

With candy sweet like decay in her mouth, Bramble said to the confined room, “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

Chaos broke loose in a perfectly-timed instant. Insults and accusations went flying. Amidst it all, Bramble had to face that she was no longer a Crow. Of course, she knew that nothing would be the same once her gender had been revealed. But to see them acting like she had betrayed them all for no fucking reason was a right punch to the gut.

She did what this world taught her to do—take the sadness and turn it into kindling for anger.

Bramble scowled and crunched down on the candy so hard it shattered like glass in her mouth. She balled a fist and, feeling heat roar to life in her chest, ruthlessly swung an outstretched arm without turning her body. It connected with the wall she stood up against. Wood splintered like a gunshot, breaking against the force.

The room fell into an immediate, stunned silence. Heat spread from her chest to her neck and limbs, whispering and wishing to be freed. Bramble withdrew her fist from the small wooden crater she created and shook away splinters that were probably older than everyone in the room combined.

Her parents would be disappointed by such a display of unnecessary viciousness. Dad especially. He had enough violence inflicted on him growing up; he never wanted to see it in his daughter.

But they were gone, and she’d been left with nothing but violence.

Shireen stood strong among the men. She had already seen what Bramble could do. Unlike the rest, though, Shireen radiated silent trust in her.

At least somebody had faith in Bramble in this fucking room.

Her fist relaxed. Sighing and pursing her lips, Bramble said, “Yeah. Yeah, I knew Jon was going to die. But—” she continued before anyone could interrupt her, “but this isn’t the end.”

She sounded like the dumbest fuck in the world.

Out of everyone, Davos had the easiest time keeping his cool. “And what do you mean by that?”

“I mean that this is supposed to happen.”

“This is supposed to happen?” Pyp repeated disbelievingly. “Jon fucking dying was supposed to happen? Is he gonna come back, yeah? Is he gonna come back from the fucking dead? Or did you want this to happen so you could take over?” Murmurs of agreement followed Pyp’s accusation. To have them even think…

Bramble refused to let hurt shine on her face. She refused to do anything but scowl to keep the weakness away. “No. I never fucking wanted to be here. And I can’t wait to leave.” A flicker of something passed over Grenn’s otherwise angry face. “We wait for Edd to return with the wildlings. Our position needs to be secure before anything else can happen.”

“And what is that, exactly? You don’t want to help us. You didn’t want to help Jon. How do we know you’re not just waiting for all of us to be executed?” Pyp had gotten his mouth back, and it brought another rise from the brothers. It wasn’t as explosive like it had been moments ago, but it was steady enough to be more dangerous. Somebody—Yate, possibly, or Ryle and Ean—would try and run a sword through her. Then she’d fight, blood would spill, and Edd would come back to more dead brothers.

“Not to be the voice of reason,” Davos said with a dryness that matched his intent, “but Bramble came back here to see this through. There’s something in that.”

Pyp clicked his tongue derisively. “Why did you come back, eh? Why’d you come back just to stand aside and let Jon fucking die—”

Bramble strode across the room and grabbed the collar of Pyp’s shirt, hauling him off his feet and slamming him against the wall. His mouthy attitude vanished the second he saw her coming for him, fire in her eyes and fists clenched. “Listen here, you little fucking asshole,” Bramble hissed. Her face came inches from his, and she could see her own fury in his dark gaze. Heat radiated between them. “I saved your life, remember? I saw an arrow go right through your skinny throat, and you choked on your own blood while Sam fucking held you, telling you that it’d all be okay. Do you understand what that means, eh? You could have died, and we’d all still be standing here.”

Pyp’s throat bobbed up and down, all color gone from his face. She scowled at him, teeth gritting because how could he fucking say that shit? They were supposed to be—supposed to be—

She pressed him against the wall harder for a second longer, then let go before her fist could begin to shake. Pyp dropped back onto his feet, stumbling, but he chose to stay silent for one fucking moment.

Heels scraping on the floorboards, Bramble faced the room. Drawn swords glinted in the firelight. “This moment was going to happen with or without me. You understand? Do you fucking understand? What happens from here on out in this room is so important that if I risked changing it, I risked changing a course of events that determine whether or not this world will survive the army of the fucking dead marching this way.”

She directly glared at Grenn. Her next question came dripping with sarcasm. “You want to make sure people are still living by the end of winter? Then Jon has to die, first.”

With an aggravated sigh, Bramble went back to the chair she’d originally been sitting in and sat down so hard that the chair scraped against the wooden floor. The noise was especially loud, considering the complete and utter silence hanging in the room. But nobody said anything. Nobody looked her way. After a while, swords sheathed, and the tension calmed somewhat. Bramble didn’t want to even guess the look on Davos’ face, so she kept her head down, arms folded, feeling the heat subside.

And fuck, Bramble was still starving.

 

 

 

Notes:

Bramble is an angry girl.

And sorry there was such a delay in this being posted. I wanted it to be longer, but the urge to post became stronger than the urge to write more content. Life and school, am I right?

Chapter 22

Summary:

Revised 6/29/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Alliser Thorne and his men came once in the afternoon to persuade them to come out and let this all be.

The door didn’t unbolt.

He came again at nightfall with more men and more lies, promising Davos that he and Shireen would be safe and protected if they stepped out. The princess shook her head once. Bramble almost gave her a smile. In all the darkness, Shireen remained, like a small light bobbing up and down in a vast black ocean of death.

Davos grabbed Longclaw and walked to the front of the stifling room. “I’ve never been much of a fighter,” he confessed and, after a sigh, said, “apologies for what you’re about to see.” He unsheathed Longclaw. The rest of the men who had swords followed suit. Bramble took Shireen to the far end of the room, near the spot where she made a crater in the wall with her fist.

Pyp shifted around, lost and panicked amidst the fighters. Watching him flounder made her grimace, so Bramble reluctantly got his attention. She beckoned him over with a wave of her arm, making sure he saw her scowl. Pyp scowled back but, after a moment of hesitation, quickly joined both of them.

Grenn had gravitated towards their area. Whether it was just practicality or if he thought he could protect them in some way, Bramble didn’t know. He glanced back at her and roughly asked, “Edd’s gonna come back with some wildlings, right?”

She unclenched her jaw and replied, “I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I’m gonna fucking burn your eyes out, Grenn, if you doubt me one more time.” Bramble didn’t mean for her words to sound so vicious, but they came out in a threating growl. Grenn frowned at her—not exactly angrily—and stared back ahead at the entrance.

The first blow to the door made Shireen grab Bramble’s hand. She held it tight.

The next four blows came in brutal succession. The fifth blow splintered the wooden door, and the seventh blow created a small gap.

Ghost snarled and snapped his teeth; the dire wolf prepared to meet his end like the rest of them. Bramble would see this place burned to the ground before Shireen was back in death’s clutches. Pushing Shireen farther behind her, Bramble raised her free hand like some dumb fucking superhero ready to blast fire at the bad guys.

Canada produced two good superheroes: Wolverine and Deadpool. Bramble doubted she’d make it onto the list. Superheroes fought for something good, and Bramble had no fucking idea what she fought for.

A heavy axe broke through the door. Davos readied Longclaw, the fire roared under Bramble’s skin, the men prepared to die and—

Something heavier slammed against Castle Black’s gate. The sound snapped so loudly across the grounds that it drew the attention of everyone inside and outside of the room.

The attack on the door stopped as another attack begun.

Bramble let out a small sigh of relief when Thorne and his men retreated. The cavalry had come. Fucking finally.

She lowered her hand. “What’s going on?” Shireen whispered. The men in the room poured outside to see if the wildlings had really turned the tables.

“Edd came back,” Bramble replied. The sense of dread returned from its brief absence. Her throat hurt again, too. “He came back with the Free Folk.”

What she didn’t say was that the wait was over, and everybody would be waiting to see if Bramble had been right all along.

Nobody liked that much pressure on them.

-

Greeting Tormund again came a lot less pleasantly. After Shireen had been put back in bed—with so much protest that it took some convincing from both Bramble and Davos to get her to go—they again retreated to the room where Jon’s body rested.

“So this was the hell you were talking about, eh?” Tormund lowly muttered to Bramble while they stood over Jon. “I expected a war, but…” he shook his head, eyes distant. “Not this.”

Tormund scanned Jon’s body once more. “Took a lot of knives.” He stepped back to address Bramble. “So what’s it gonna be, Little Crow? Need to burn some bodies? Or something else?”

Bramble didn’t like the fact that Tormund went over Edd and Grenn to ask her what to do next. She was just the traitor who let Jon die. Both he and Edd had been informed of Bramble’s betrayal upon their return to Castle Black. Tormund took it a lot better than Edd had. He didn’t threaten Bramble—and maybe he didn’t have it in him to threaten her—but he made his opinion about the situation clear. His finality drove the wedge even further between Bramble and her former brothers.

“No burning,” Bramble eventually said, keeping her gaze away from Edd, Pyp, and Grenn. “But something else, yeah.”

She looked to Davos, who immediately recognized what dwelled in her mind because he had been thinking it, too. “You can’t be serious,” he muttered dryly. When she met him with a slightly pained grimace, his sarcasm quickly slipped. “Can you?”

“Melisandre is our only hope,” Bramble replied. The words tasted sour in her mouth. “She may be able to bring Jon back.”

“And you’re sure that it’s supposed to be this way?” Edd put in skeptically. “You’re not just fucking with us?”

Bramble slowly turned her head to him, expression flat as her voice. “I only fuck people who pay me.” Her retort made Edd blink. “And I’m not getting paid at all here. So no.”

Tormund laughed, thankfully.

“You’d better go get Melisandre, Davos,” she said, getting back on topic. “Before Jon gets any deader.”

“Oh, no.” Davos shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere near that woman alone.” His face took a dark turn. “Not after what she tried to do to Shireen. Can’t you just go and get her? You’re the one who has the best idea of what’s going on, after all.”

Bramble scowled. “Fuck no? I hate her.”

“Sounds like you two best go as a team, then,” Tormund said, amused by the conversation during such a terrible moment.

Davos and Bramble both stared at each other in resignation before silently agreeing. They left the room and walked down the dimly-lit halls that creaked from the wind.

“So,” the older man said gruffly, “you’ve gotten yourself into quite the predicament. If you’re wrong about all this, you’re fucked. If you’re right about all this, we’re fucked.”

“Sounds about right,” Bramble sighed. “My life is one big circle-jerk.”

He chuckled a bit. “From what you told that Crow, at least you got paid for it.”

“Not enough, believe me.” Certainly not enough in Ashford, not enough in King’s Landing, and not enough in between.

Bramble tried to forget her time in King’s Landing. Then again, she tried to forget her time spent everywhere here.

There was a short silence. Then Davos said in a quieter voice, “I never got to thank you. For saving the princess. You put your life at risk for her.”

“Risking my life was never a worry,” Bramble said back, trying to keep her emotions under check. “But I couldn’t let it happen to her. Not that way. Shireen deserved—deserves better.” Though a lot more went unsaid, Davos heard it all, anyway.

“Aye, that she does.” Davos sucked in a breath as they approached Melisandre’s chambers. “Well. Let’s go talk to the woman who tried to sacrifice her.”

The Red Woman’s presence seeped under the door and oozed out the walls. She didn’t want to knock, so with much strain, Davos took on the responsibility. He rapped twice, and after a brief silence, a soft voice called, “Enter.”

They shared one final, grim look with each other before Davos opened the door and stepped in. Bramble reluctantly followed behind. The ancient sensation of Melisandre’s power washed over her. She did this for Jon, she did this for Jon—even though what she had done for Jon got him dead on a table.

And then there was the woman herself. Melisandre sat in front of the room’s fireplace, staring at the flames with listless eyes. She didn’t tear them away as Davos and Bramble slowly walked farther into the room.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” Davos started. “We did not mean to interrupt.”

“You interrupt nothing.”

The more they drew near, the clearer Melisandre’s appearance became. Hair disheveled, shoulders slumped. Her hands clutched the thick fabric of her cloak with a sort of terror that didn’t match the rest of her demeanor.

After a pause too long to be comfortable, Davos continued on. “I…er, suppose you know why we’re here.”

Melisandre still didn’t look to them. “I will after you tell me.”

Davos glanced sideways at Bramble and gave the slightest motion of his head. Times like these made Bramble wish she were mute again.  

But she sucked it up and said, “It’s about the Lord Commander.”

“The former Lord Commander,” Melisandre corrected distantly.

Bramble swallowed back the ache in her throat. “He doesn’t have to be.”

The statement sounded loud in her ears. Melisandre finally lifted her gaze from the flames. Once, it could have pinned the both of them down in a mere second; now, though, it was devoid of all power.

“What are you talking about, Child of Fire?” Melisandre asked tiredly.

Davos took a turn speaking. “Do you know of…any magic that could help him? Bring him back?”

Bramble was glad Davos chose to tread lightly. If she had gone to Melisandre all by herself, she might not have gotten this far. Bluntness didn’t work well in most situations here, as Bramble’s past decisions showed.

“If you want to help him, leave him be.”

“But can it be done?”

Melisandre inhaled. It sounded exhausted. “There are…some with this power.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

Davos’ voice grew firmer. “Have you seen it done?”

She seemed reluctant to answer. “I met a man who came back from the dead. But the priest who did it…it shouldn’t have been possible.”

“But it was. It could be. Now.”

Melisandre suddenly stood, though she had no place to go, no place to flee. “Not for me.”

“Not for you?” Davos followed her away from the flames. Bramble lingered. He could handle this, right? The conversation was going to happen with or without her. “I saw you drink poison that should have killed you. I saw you give birth to a demon made of shadows. I—”

The Red Woman spun on him, glowering. “The vision of the great victory in the flames was destroyed because of one girl.” Her scornful gaze turned on Bramble, who stiffened her shoulders defiantly. “A girl with the Lord’s power at her fingertips. Tell me, Crow, were you part of his plan? Or did you ruin it with your kidnapping of the princess? Did an entire army die because of you?”

Trying to collect her thoughts and articulate something other than, “Fuck off, bitch,” Bramble bought some time by walking closer to the fireplace. “You were the one who sent an entire army to its death.” Alright, probably not the best way to start out. “Shireen’s sacrifice would mean nothing. Stannis was never going to win.”

Instead of asking how Bramble knew this, Melisandre said with surprising despair, “Then it was all a lie? All of it?” She braced herself against a nightstand. Seeing such a shattering of faith almost made Bramble feel bad for her. She remembered what Melisandre tried to do to Shireen, however, and held fast to the disgust.

Glancing over her shoulder, Melisandre whispered to Davos, “You were right all along.” Her voice broke against the howling wind outside. “The Lord never spoke to me.”

“Not exactly.” Unwilling to look at Melisandre any longer, Bramble crouched down in front of the flames. In a spur of morbid curiosity, she stuck her hand into the fireplace and felt warm tendrils twirl and twist around her fingers. The fire she possessed inside began to dance along with the ones touching her skin. It was an odd sensation. “Have you ever considered that you just got the wrong person?”

A long silence. Bramble continued to play with the flames. They were an element with a simple will: to burn, to grow, to live.

“What are you saying?” Melisandre questioned slowly. Bramble turned her hand over, entranced by yet another ability.

“I’m saying that these visions of yours aren’t false. Stannis just wasn’t the…what was it? Prince Who Was Promised?” In a murmur Bramble added, “What a mouthful.”

“And you believe Jon Snow is?” Melisandre inched closer to Bramble. She looked up at the woman, the disciple of a god she’d lost faith in. Whatever Bramble said next could restore or destroy it.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” She had to keep it vague. Then, she couldn’t be blamed if things went to shit. “I just saw Jon coming back. And you bringing him back.”

Melisandre put her hand on Bramble’s shoulder, a scared, ordinary woman. Was this the real Melisandre? The Melisandre without the fanaticism and the danger and the arrogance. “Where did you see this? In the flames?”

Bramble retracted her hand and stood. She stood about as tall as the Red Woman. They squared off evenly. “You’d think so, but no. I saw a lot of things at a lot of different times.”

“But you saw Jon live again?”

“Yeah.”

“And what else did you see?” Fervent eyes searched Bramble’s face for something possibly there, something possibly gone.

“More than what you have in some ways, less in others. But it doesn’t matter right now.” Bramble turned and gestured to the door. “So, do you think you can bring Jon back?”

Melisandre flashed with doubt. “I’ve never had this gift,” she breathed, confessing to them like she committed a sin.

Davos came to stand beside Bramble. “Have you ever tried?”

-

Water sluiced back into its basin as Melisandre squeezed the rag of excess. Jon lay on the table with nothing but cloth covering his privates. Bramble had helped undress him for the ritual. The wind continued to screech and scorn the North, but an unnamed silence hung in the room.

Melisandre stood over Jon for several moments, eyes cast down, unsure what exactly to do. Her gaze flickered up to Bramble for assurance. She gave Red Woman a small nod. Bramble had already started to worry that something would go wrong. Maybe because she spilled the beans on Jon’s short-lived death. Maybe because she told Melisandre that she should be able to bring Jon back. Too many maybes, too little certainties.

But Bramble couldn’t voice any of her doubts out loud. Not when everyone latched onto the hope she gave them.

The ritual began. Melisandre wiped off the blood caked onto Jon’s chest and stomach. Rivulets of rust-stained water dripped onto the floor, their murky color glinting in the firelight. She then cut off pieces of his hair, chanting archaic Valyrian in hushed tones. The locks sizzled in a lit brazier. The process repeated twice more.

Melisandre took a pitcher and gently poured water over Jon’s head, wetting his hair while continuing to chant. Her hand caressed his scalp almost intimately. When she finished, she set the pitcher back down and stopped at Jon’s side. Again, Melisandre glanced at Bramble before continuing. She placed trembling hands on his chest and finished the prayer to the Lord of Light.

Nothing happened.

Another glance Bramble, who couldn’t hide the tension furrowing her brows. Melisandre placed her hands back on Jon and repeated the foreign words, this time closing her eyes. Then, they snapped back open to see if it worked. When he remained lifeless, Melisandre dug her fingernails into his cold skin and said the fervent prayer three more times. The last one was just above a whisper, followed by a distraught sigh and a begging, “Please.”

Bramble had said that word in the exact same way when the plane crashed. “Please, please,” she whispered to God, to the universe, to anyone. She wasn’t sure if she spoke it out loud. “Please save us.”

Something—or someone—saved Bramble that day. She doubted it was God.

Hopefully, Jon wouldn’t share the same fate as hers.

Melisandre removed her hands from Jon and despairingly gazed at Davos and Bramble. Everyone in the room looked to Bramble, the one who said this would work.

She couldn’t speak. Her throat had closed up, and the silence overwhelmed any other noise. Tormund took her speechlessness for the end, shook his head, and left. Edd, Pyp, and Grenn did the same. Melisandre lingered only moments longer before she, too, departed. Davos approached Jon, and Bramble moved to follow suit—

Get out.

The voice-that-wasn’t-her-voice came so suddenly, so invasively, that it made Bramble flinch. Her heart began to pound in her bitter chest like something approached, something with heavy footsteps, something with quiet breaths, something greater than anything she could fathom.

It slouched across the shadows of time, flickering in the candlelight, gathering, murmuring in its quiet. Bramble had felt it before when Mance was sacrificed, except this time, it came with much, much more terror.

Bramble turned and fled from the room. She stumbled into the hallway, gasping for air in a too-tight throat and trying to get far away. It was coming, it was coming from the other side, that other side she had once been plunged into, once been thrust out of, to deliver the infinite expanse of a soul through the blackened gateway of death.

It was not to be seen by her mortal eyes.

Somebody caught Bramble in her frantic state. Grenn, of all people, gripped both her arms. Her head lolled back, fire brimming in her mouth, gauze stuffing her ears, water in her lungs.

“Bramb?” His voice came muted like he was underwater, like she was underwater, choking, drowning, dying.

The world compressed upon her, tight, too tight, too soon, and she grabbed Grenn’s collar in fear because she was—

She was gasping for air, but her hands pressed against the metal roof of the plane’s cabin. Everybody screamed in the darkness as the cold ocean swept in to claim them. There had to be a way out there had to be a way out and where was Mom and Dad? And the water rose, and, and Bramble sucked in a final breath, a final breath like she readied to swim in a competition, this was all a competition, not real, not real. She pushed down to swim to escape but it was so so black and she couldn’t—she couldn’t breathe and Mom—Dad—her lungs burned with fire but this couldn’t be it so she took another breath and it burned it burned but then—

The world cleared. Bramble’s eyes fluttered open, and she could taste saltwater on her lips, smell saltwater in her nose, cold and wet. They stood together. Everybody in the hall stood. Nobody drowned.

She lifted a hand to her nose. Her finger came away smeared with red.

Bramble locked eyes with Grenn and smiled.

In the room beyond, Jon gasped for life.

 

 

 

Notes:

My summer semester is over, my stress levels are down, the sun is shining, and I can write again.

Chapter 23

Summary:

Revised 6/29/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Jon Snow sat upright on the table with Davos’ cloak covering his naked body. The knife wounds still gleamed brightly on his pale skin. His breath came rapid and uneven, eyes darting wildly as he tried to get a grip on the world he had been shoved back into.

Bramble remembered the disorientation well. Only, Jon returned to his own world. She didn’t.

But she’d been right about everything. Bramble had enough maturity to not rub it in everybody’s dumb fucking faces, but damn did she come close.

Melisandre gaped at Jon, utterly aghast that her power had worked. She grabbed Bramble’s arm for support, too stunned to fully stand on her own. Bramble made a face. Since when had Melisandre decided they were close?

Still, she let the woman keep ahold. Her mother would have wanted her to show a little respect for the one who brought Jon back from the dead. Jon was, after all, Mom’s favorite.

“What do you remember?” Davos asked calmly.

Jon stared up at him, brown eyes finally focusing. Their lucidity gave way to the horror of what had occurred. “They stabbed me,” he said brokenly. His face twisted in anguish. “Olly…put a knife in my heart.”

Bramble’s own heart crumpled at the reminder. She couldn’t think about what would happen to him. She couldn’t think of her failure.

Jon slowly shook his head. “I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered.

“The lady brought you back,” Davos explained, gesturing to Melisandre. She regained her strength and strode across the room to crouch in front of Jon.

“After they stabbed you, after you died, where did you go? What did you see?”

Jon’s horror only grew. “Nothing,” he said. “There was nothing at all.”

Bramble may have had an explanation for that thanks to what she felt moments before Jon’s soul returned to his body, but she figured she didn’t need to dig herself into another hole. When things had calmed, maybe she’d give some insight.

“The Lord let you come back for a reason. Stannis was not the Prince Who Was Promised…though someone has to be.”

Jon only bowed his head, loose black curls veiling his face.

“Would you give us a moment?” Davos glanced at Bramble, making it clear she needed to stay.

Melisandre nodded, then gathered her skirts and departed. Bramble closed the beaten door, locked it, and pulled up a chair beside Davos. They faced Jon, who finally looked at Bramble. He hadn’t done such a thing since Hardhome.

“You were dead,” Davos stated plainly. “And now you’re not. It’s completely fucking mad seems to me. I can only imagine how it seems to you.”

Jon wasn’t the intimidating Lord Commander. He was just scared and heartbroken and young like Bramble. She sympathized with him. She knew the terror he felt, the confusion, the wrongness of it all.

“I…I did what I thought was right,” Jon confessed to them. Tears glistened in his eyes. “And I got murdered for it. And now I’m back.” A sob escaped him. “Why?”

Davos turned his head to Bramble for an explanation. She rubbed her tired, marred face and leaned forward. “I can’t exactly describe it,” she finally said. “I just know that there are greater powers at work here. You’re unfortunate enough to be in the middle of it all.” Bramble lifted her gaze to Jon. The fire guided her next words. “The fight between the living and the dead is far from fucking over. The living need you, Jon. You have to go on, you have to fight for as long as you can, as much as you can. And maybe, maybe it will all have been worth it. I think, though, I think…I think it might be.”

Jon shook his head. Hollow sadness enveloped him. “I don’t know how to do that. I thought I did. I failed.”

“Good,” Davos said. “Now go fail again. Clean up some more shit while you’re at it, too.”

Bramble almost smiled. That sounded like something her dad would say.

She stood up. “You need some clothes, yeah? It’s probably cold in here.” Bramble couldn’t discern the temperature. “And you can’t go making your great return butt naked.”

-

The warm pool of water greeted Bramble. She made no languid movements. Water splashed frantically around her legs and hips as she waded in, and once she found herself near the center of the bath, she submerged herself under the surface.

After scarfing down an undignified amount of soup and bread from the kitchen, Bramble headed straight to the baths with a bundle of clean clothes she’d scavenged from storage. Though her bones no longer needed to be soothed from the chill, layers of sweat and grime and blood needed washing off. Since there had been a break between one dire situation and the next, Bramble took the opportunity to sneak off.

She harshly scrubbed away the past few days’ worth of sight and smell until her skin became red and raw. After, Bramble washed her short hair repeatedly to rid the black strands of stinking oil and blood. Her short fingernails scraped against her scalp, tugging at the hair, twisting it to the point where she wanted to violently rip it all out.

Bramble’s fingers abruptly loosened. She dunked her head underwater to rinse the soap out. When she came back up, she sat against the edge of the bath and stared up at the ceiling. The lapse in chaos allowed Bramble’s mind to wander, to recall what happened, what would happen, what might happen, what wouldn’t happen.

Frustrated tears sprung to her eyes, but she did not let them roll down her dour cheeks.

The earlier flashback reopened a particularly sore scar. Bramble’s memory of drowning alone in a trapped plane had been hazy at best. But during Jon’s return, it came back in vengeful, vivid clarity. She could still feel the uncontrollable panic, taste the saltwater in her mouth, hear the plane creaking as it sunk. One moment she was fighting for her life, banging on sealed-shut walls. The next, she was too weak to swim anymore. Her quickly lapsing body cried for relief. She breathed without knowing it, and the ocean flooded in to claim space in her lungs.

And then? Then Bramble died.

…Until she found herself throwing up seawater on the sandy shores of Dorne, naked and alive. She could not piece together the moments between glaring black and warm sunlight. Bramble hoped it stayed that way. She wasn’t ready to see what awaited on the other side of death’s veil.

She wished she didn’t remember her final moments so clearly. She had suffered enough.

Olly was the second, greater reason why Bramble struggled to keep back tears. He and the other mutineers had been sentenced to die tomorrow morning. He’s just a boy, she wanted to wail at Jon. He didn’t know! He’s just a confused, scared boy.

It’d be pointless, though. The law was the law, and without the law at Castle Black, there would be nothing. But she could break him out, go on the run, get him somewhere safe—

Bramble couldn’t do anything. Not without betraying Jon. Again.

Jon was alive. Olly wouldn’t be, soon. She needed to fucking get him out of here.

No, no. She just couldn’t.

But why not?

Bramble buried her head in wet hands and stifled the twisted, stale emotions threatening to come up. Everything was so fucking wrong.

She missed home. She missed Mom and Dad.

Sometimes, Bramble wished she would have stayed dead.

Tucking her knees under her chin, Bramble tried to make herself as small as possible in the large bath. She refused to acknowledge any sort of crying. It was just the water. Just the water.

Alone in more ways than one, Bramble continued to sit in silence. She softly ran fingers up and down her unshaved legs. Nobody cared about women having hairless skin outside of brothels.

The madam in Ashford did one sweep of Bramble and refused to take a starving, unwashed girl in. But Bramble motioned that she could dance. It was nothing special, but a few modern-day Earth moves with a bit of basic jazz thrown in proved to be scandalous in Westeros. “We’ll cover your face up,” the madam said once Bramble had been bathed and shaved. “The men won’t mind.”

They didn’t. In fact, the mysterious veil covering most of her face made her highly exotic. Put together with the dancing, the men scrambled to touch her, to be inside her. Bramble had sex twice before coming to Westeros. In Ashford, she eventually lost count. It became a job, a routine, a process that’d be over in a few minutes.

The other women were kind. They took care of Bramble, who was on the younger side of girls in the brothel. Her hair, as dark and thick as it was, fascinated them. They had their hands on it whenever they got the chance. They taught her the tricks of the trade and gave her herbs to decrease the chances of getting viruses or pregnant. The women wanted to know where she came from. Volantis? Mereen? Myr? Dorne? Bramble didn’t have pale skin like the rest of them. She got away with not telling them because of her muteness, but by the time Bramble was sold to another brothel in King’s Landing, the women all agreed she undoubtedly had Dothraki blood. It gave them all a good laugh.

Bramble didn’t end up in Petyr Baelish’s brothel, thankfully. It was another establishment between the Street of Steel quarter and Cobbler’s Square. Much higher-end than the brothel in Ashford. Soldiers from the west barracks and noblemen getting their arms and armor repaired created the most foot traffic. Bramble attracted a lot more business with her shitty dancing. They didn’t know it was shitty, though, so she became a prize rather than a laughingstock. She got paid more, but she got beat more, too. The madam in Ashford ran a stricter place than the one in King’s Landing. As long as the men didn’t commit murder, they could get away with whatever they wanted. That was how she had her nose broken.

Even the women in King’s Landing weren’t kind to her like they were in Ashford. Whoring had a competitiveness to it there. But despite her slipping grasp on humanity in King’s Landing, she managed to survive there for a year without any problems. Then, one day, the shadows returned to stalk her, to haunt her like they had never left. They crouched along walls, stooped behind veils, crawled underneath chaises. Their presence put her so on edge that when one of the women was getting abused by a couple soldiers, Bramble snapped. It hadn’t been her first snap in Westeros. It wouldn’t be her last. Her rage tumbled out furiously, and it felt good. She nearly choked the life out of a soldier, the sight of her bare hands wrapped around his throat more pleasurable than anything she’d been given in the brothels, before the other bashed her square in the nose with his thick fist.

Bramble found herself on the street that same night. With her earnings, she bought passage to Pentos, then fled up to Braavos. When slavers nearly took her in the East, she made her way to Gulltown. There, she decided to disguise herself as a boy. Shortly after in her meaningless, half-starved wanderings, Bramble came upon a small farm run by an uncharacteristically happy family. They gave her work on their small plot of land. No sex, no beatings, no dancing. She picked weeds and hauled straw and tended to the crops.

But the family was killed by Lannisters, and Bramble snapped again. That snap lasted for a long time. She wanted it to last for a long time, liked that it lasted a long time.

She stretched out in the bath and rested her head against the stone. The fucking shadows. When were they going to come for her? Bramble was surprised she hadn’t seen one lurking behind one of the library shelves or underneath a staircase. Maybe since she and the Night King were so close in proximity, they figured they had completed their job.

What a chilling notion. Bramble didn’t want to consider what the dead would do to her if she fell in their clutches.

Or maybe she already was in their grasp.

The invasive thought made Bramble grit her teeth and get out of the warm water. Water noisily sluiced off her. She quickly patted herself dry with a towel and put on the new clothes. The underwear and trousers fit about the same as the last ones, but the tunic and vest sat more snugly. Bramble didn’t have to hide her breasts, anymore. In fact, she went without any sort of ache-inducing binding. It felt weird. Nice, but weird. She didn’t have much to begin with, but she did have a little bit. The last time she had unbound breasts, Bramble danced in silks and suffocated underneath heavy, rutting men.

Hair still damp and wavy, Bramble made her way out of the baths. Jon had appointed her a room since she was now “officially” a woman. It was next to Shireen’s, fortunately, which gave her some comfort. There weren’t any Baratheon soldiers to post outside her room, and now that her father’s army had been demolished, the men no longer had to fear any severe punishment. Many of the Crows had it in them to hurt little girls.  

She’d burn a hole in their heads before they laid a finger on Shireen.

Jon waited for Bramble in her small chambers. He sat by the fireplace, head bowed, eyes closed. He did not stir at her entrance. Although he had come back from the dead, he would not have the chance to rest from his duties. She didn’t blame him for dozing after his ordeal.

Bramble took off her boots and walked over to the nightstand. She poured a cup of water and, once it was full, brought it over to Jon. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He immediately jerked awake, making a startled noise.

“Here,” Bramble said, offering Jon the cup. Once he reoriented himself, he took it with a muttered thanks. She sat down in another chair and stretched out her legs.

Jon suddenly chuckled, eyes ghosting over her exposed frame.

“I can’t believe how daft I was,” he said, glancing away. “I can’t believe how daft we all were. The more I look at you, the more I realize how much of a girl you are.”

Bramble smirked, happy to see Jon laugh a little. “Yeah. Tormund got it right off the bat. So did Melisandre. I think Maester Aemon might have known, too. But it would have only been a matter of time before Pyp or someone said something, and then they’d pull my trousers down to prove it.”

“Aye, that’s true.” Jon took another drink. He met her gaze. “You’re still not cold?”

“Nah. Got the fire now.” Bramble patted her thinly-layered chest. “It keeps me warm.”

Jon licked his lips, struggling to articulate what he wanted to say. “Bramb, you—you knew this was going to happen? All of it?”

She sighed. The light conversation had to be short-lived, apparently. “Oh, Jon.” Bramble twisted her finger around a strand of hair. The women at the brothel would have been sad to see most of it gone. “Yeah. In a sense.”

“So you—”

“Let me finish.” Jon did not take offense to being cut off and motioned for her to continue. It’d been the most decency a Crow had given her these past few days. “Most things aren’t certain. You have to know that. And the things that are certain are that way for a reason. Your death was one of those certain, have-to-happen things. I couldn’t stand in its way.” Bramble’s voice grew soft, and she cast her eyes down. “Believe me.” Olly hanging dead on a rope flashed unwantedly through her mind. “I wish I could have.”

The low, crackling fire danced in the silence, casting shadows across Jon’s solemn face. “Do you know what it’s like to die?” he asked.

Bramble blinked. She needed to tread lightly, but she didn’t want to outright lie to Jon. Besides, part of her wanted to tell him, to share the gruesome experience with someone else.

“Yeah. I do.” For a confession of such magnitude, the chambers stayed void of tension or shock. The air itself had been exhausted from today’s ordeals.

“How did it happen?”

Bramble shifted uncomfortably as the memories rippled in her skull. “I drowned. But then I was alive and on the shores of Dorne.”

“Where were you sailing?”

Time to get twisty with the words. Bramble gave a slow shake of her head. “I don’t remember traveling by boat. My life in Westeros started the moment I woke up.”

Jon’s brows furrowed. “How long ago was that?”

“Three years.”

“And you…had these powers when you awoke?”

“Yeah. I’m still figuring it all out.” Bramble stood up, took her vest off, and pushed up the sleeves of her tunic, already too hot. “I think the magic up here started something. I could see death and other strange things beforehand. I was already strong, too. But up here I became a lot stronger, and then there was that vision between Mag Mar and me and—well, you saw what I did at Hardhome. The wight magic made for a catalyst.” She poured herself a cup of water and took a drink. Wiping excess droplets off her mouth, Bramble said, “I found out I could run faster than humans can. Kept up with Davos’ horse on our way to save Shireen. The horse gave out before me, actually. I went without sleep or food for a long time. I also conjured fire at my own will when Baratheon soldiers were chasing Shireen and me.” Bramble took another, longer drink, waiting for Jon to let the information sink in.

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, pinching the bridge of his nose. Bramble sat back down, ready let the silence linger on, but instead added, “Mm. I almost forgot. I stuck my hand in a fire and didn’t get burned.”

Jon ran a tired hand down his face and groaned. “Bramb,” he muttered, though not unkindly, “what are you?”

She breathed a laugh. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“You put a hole in my wall, too.” Jon looked at her again. “Did you have to fucking do it?” The corner of his mouth flicked upward, and he had life in his eyes, no matter how sad.

Bramble scowled in a joking way. “Everybody was being dumb shits. I got mad. I punch things when I get mad, fuck off. Just be glad I didn’t put a hole in someone.”

Jon’s smile slipped again too quickly. This world liked to steal happiness before it ever fully formed, she found. “Bramb, about Olly…”

Stealing happiness, indeed.

Bramble shook her head. The heaviness in her chest returned, and the ache in her throat felt too familiar. On-the-verge-of-tears familiar. “No. No, there’s nothing to be said.”

“But—”

“Jon.”

The two stared at each other, too emotional to continue, to talk about him. Olly. Their boy.

After a long silence, Jon brokenly whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Bramble drained the rest of her cup to soothe the ache. She blinked away tears. When she swallowed the last of the water, she lowered the cup and said, “I’m sorry, too.”

Sorry for not trying harder, sorry for letting everything happen, sorry for what was to come, sorry for the loss they were about to bear.

If Bramble went and saw Olly before the execution, she knew she’d try to break him out. Then she’d go against Jon and the Night’s Watch again, and this time, there’d be no coming back. So she stayed in her room, roiling in agony. Jon retired to his own quarters to probably do the same.

Was this what true betrayal felt like? Was this how much it hurt? A pain so deep, it lanced through bones, through muscles, through the soul and then back out again. And could Bramble really do nothing? Or was this meant to be?

She had no fucking idea. Nothing felt like the right thing to do, which was the worst part of it all.

Stupid boy. Stupid boy. Why didn’t he listen to her?

Bramble curled up on her side, asking herself the question over and over again until she drifted off into a bitter sleep.

-

The grim sky released calm, drifting flakes of snow into Castle Black. Melisandre stood alone on the castle’s open hall, dark red dress rippling in the soft breeze. Shireen watched from a staircase landing on the eastern side, Davos by her side and Balerion in her arms. Either she had found him, or he found her. It made Bramble glad. Glad that she had some sliver of happiness to cling to once this was all over.

Bramble stood beside Tormund and the other wildings present. She couldn’t look at the sight before them in the courtyard. Instead, he examined her black shoes, the snow collecting onto the frozen ground, and her hands—the same color as her mother’s. She tried not to feel.

Tried, but couldn’t succeed.

Jon moved past them. The Lord Commander’s black cloak laid particularly heavy on his shoulders. Bramble followed him, and eventually she was forced to look at where he walked.

Steps creaked under Jon’s weight in the ominous silence. The gallows welcomed him, displaying the three men and one boy balanced on a raised plank of wood. Ropes had been tied around their necks.

Bramble couldn’t hear the words spoken between them and Jon from her distance. She didn’t care to. All she saw was Olly. Olly, who looked at Jon with hatred and disgust and fear. Bramble doubted she could keep it together if she saw the expression on Jon’s own face.

He unsheathed Longclaw and raised it above the execution rope. Bramble clenched her fists and furiously blinked away tears. Death laid ready at their feet.

Do something.

Fucking do something!

Too late.

Longclaw swung down on the rope. Olly’s eyes shot to Bramble in the exact moment, full of terror and resolution. She swore she screamed at the top of her lungs when the floor dropped out from under him. She screamed and wailed and burned and died and came back to repeat it all over again.

Bramble’s mouth remained shut, and she lived.

Olly and the traitors hung in the cold gray light of the North.

Jon turned away. After a brief exchange with Edd, he took off the Lord Commander’s cloak and handed it to him. Jon strode back down the stairs and through the crowd. In the vices of agony and anguish, Bramble heard him say, “My watch has ended.”

She stood there, letting the moments pass by. It was already over. Frost crept over a place inside her the fire could not melt.

And then she found herself striding to the gate. Nobody tried to stop her. Nobody dared. Bramble had to fucking get away. Get away from Olly’s corpse, from the images that plagued her mind of a grinning boy who got back up as many times as he got knocked down. A boy who turned red at being teased but couldn’t quite yet come up with his own retorts. A boy who followed Jon around, who followed Bramble around, who—who—

Who died right before Bramble while she stood there doing fucking nothing.

She made it to the tree line before her insides shattered. Bramble let out a ragged, broken sob and sunk against the trunk of an old pine. Grief, indescribable, blackening, gnawing grief burned through her, burning her lungs so she couldn’t breathe. She hoped it’d make her heart stop, so she could crumple over and die in the snowbank. Her uncontrollable, unstoppable cries sounded like a foreign language in her ears, a language she once spoke but could never speak again. She hurt, she fucking hurt. The tears streaking down her cheeks stung like venom. Her stomach cramped, but she could not retch out the poison in her system because she was the poison, constantly killing herself.

Blinded by agony and despair, Bramble lashed out at the tree trunk with a low scream. Wood splintered and cracked in the quiet forest.

Bramble doubled over, clutching her abdomen. The melting snow seeped through her trousers.

She should have done something. She failed. She failed Olly, she failed the wildlings, she failed Hammon and Jysel and Reesa and Jak. She failed her parents. She failed. Failed.

Why did she have to live through this? She didn’t want to live with this. Live like this.

Jumping off the wall really would have been the better alternative.

A hand placed itself on Bramble’s shoulder. She didn’t have the energy or care to see who it belonged to. She just wanted to die. It’d be a mercy if they plunged a knife right through her ribs. She’d say thank you.

“Bramb.”

Grenn’s voice splintered what already shattered. She wanted to shout at him, to shove him away and leave her to die of heartbreak. Why did he fucking care? What did he fucking plan to achieve?

Though her brain screeched at him to fuck off, Bramble found herself clinging onto him, burying her face into the familiar smell of leather and fur. Without hesitating, Grenn wrapped his arms around her and tucked his head into the crook of her neck. Bramble couldn’t stop fucking crying, wracking sobs muffled by his chest. They both knelt on the ground, holding each other with everything they had.

The old trees watched in their looming quiet.

In the midst of the overwhelming darkness threatening to drown Bramble, Grenn’s arms kept her head above water.

And, though she hated every second of it, she continued to breathe.

 

 

 

Notes:

:'(

Chapter 24

Summary:

Revised 6/29/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble sat with Pyp in the kitchen, chopping potatoes for the usual stew. Though things had returned to an uneasy calm at Castle Black, she decided to stay out-of-sight. Many of the men still wanted to see her punished, but with the strange turn of events, the punishment had been delayed indefinitely.

Pyp had recovered when Jon came back to life. With Olly dead and Edd the new Lord Commander, they all silently move from the past and to the present, where the obstacles ahead made the past seem small in comparison.

The kitchens provided refuge from the cold winter and unforgiving memories. Bramble’s sleeves had been rolled up past her elbows while she cut. Pyp stripped roasted rabbits of their meat and tossed them into the giant, bubbling pot.

Bramble had started the fire that sat under the pot. Pyp rather forced her to try it out (“You can make fire, yeah? Takes me five minutes just to get a light. It’ll take you, what, three seconds?”). Just a little rub of her fingers next to the kindling and…poof. The fire wanted to ignite the entire room, but Bramble kept it contained. Pyp stared wide-eyed at the feat before beaming two moments later. Not like the smile Melisandre had given when she escaped with Shireen, but an actual, amazed grin. Bramble tried not to let the pride steep too long in her heart; her grief remained too fresh for anything else to linger.

Chopping vegetables provided a numbing rhythm. The kitchen didn’t smell like muck and horse and men; it smelled like a faraway semblance of home. Pyp whistled a tune Bramble heard a lot in Ashford. The men visiting the brothel liked to sing it before or after their festivities. She smiled a little to herself and, when she moved on to the potatoes, quietly sang what lyrics she remembered.

Pyp stopped whistling and smirked at her. “You know that tune? Only the people near the Cockleswhent sing it.”

“I lived in Ashford for a time,” Bramble replied quietly. She peeled the potatoes the way her mother taught her how.

“Really? What’d you do there?”

She paused her peeling, then replied, “I was a whore.”

Pyp gave her a glance. “Any good?”

Bramble snorted, and Pyp snickered. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Come now, it’s an honest question. I ain’t looking for anything except story.”

She moved to the pot with the cutting board and deftly swept the potatoes into the stew. “I had to have been decent, at least, with a face like mine. They’d throw a veil over me to get men interested, but when it came off, I had to entertain them enough that I’d still get paid.”

He hummed neutrally. “You must’ve been pretty young when you started.”

“Younger. Not the youngest. But yeah.”

“At least you got out. Not many girls do.”

With a smirk, Bramble said, “I, uh, actually got kicked out onto the street.”

He laughed. “That doesn’t fucking surprise me. What’d you do, slit a fucker’s throat when he wouldn’t pay you?”

“Nah. Not that bad. I’d been sold to a brothel in King’s Landing after Ashford. The soldiers that frequented liked to get rough. They started being bad to one of the other girls, so I almost snapped one of their necks.” Bramble inhaled and more seriously said, “it was a good thing, really, being tossed out. Not sure where I would have ended up if I stayed there.”

In Petyr Baelish’s house, potentially. She didn’t speak those words out loud.

“Yeah, look where you are now,” Pyp said, waving a wooden spoon around. “At the height of fucking nobility.”

The door opened and Shireen walked in. Balerion was tucked in her arms, as usual, his eyes half-closed and comfortable. Her hair had been washed, and it hung down her shoulders. “Hello, princess,” Bramble greeted, moving to wash off the cutting board and knife.

“Hello,” Shireen replied, but her voice was tight, and she didn’t smile.

Bramble frowned. “What’s the matter?”

Shireen set Balerion down. “He needs to be fed,” she said to Pyp, who wordlessly dipped his head and began to prepare a bowl for the cat. She still had the authority of a princess around here, after all.

Bramble finished washing and beckoned Shireen to come and sit by her. Visibly distraught, she sat down in a chair. Ashamedly, she said, “I can’t do my hair.”

When Bramble only blinked, Shireen hung her head and looked down at the leather cords clutched in her hands. “There’s…there’s always been someone to do it for me. But now—” Shireen pulled back and sniffed. “It’s silly, I know. But I feel stupid for being so helpless about something so trivial.”

Wiping her hands on her trousers, Bramble motioned for Shireen to turn her chair around. “I can do it for you,” she said.

“Oh, no, please—”

Bramble gave Shireen a look. “I’m going to do it. And later, I’ll show you how to do it yourself.”

Her smile came reluctantly, but once it appeared, it stayed. “Alright. Thank you.”

Shireen gave Bramble the cords then turned her chair away. Bramble stood and ran her fingers through the princess’ brushed locks. “I used to have hair this long,” Bramble informed as she started to pull Shireen’s hair back, weaving strands between one another.

“Really? Why’d you cut it?”

“Boys don’t have long hair,” Bramble replied. “But I’d like to have it long again someday.”

“I can’t imagine you with long hair,” Shireen said, and she could hear the smile in her voice. Bramble continued to braid, but she tugged a little harder on a strand. “Ow!”

Pyp lightly laughed as he tended the stew.

“It’s true,” said Bramble. “It was down to my back at one point. I could weave it with ribbons and everything.”

“Hm. Well, I’d like to see it long again, too. Then I can braid it when I know how. And we’d have matching ribbons, as well as one for Balerion. He needs a ribbon.”

Bramble glanced at the cat noisily eating scraps of food nearby. She smirked. “He does, doesn’t he. But if you keep feeding him like this, that ribbon will get stuck in his fat rolls.”

They shared a laugh at the vision.

The pot had begun burbling richly by the time Bramble finished up Shireen’s hair. Then the princess said, “Will you teach me how to use a sword?”

“Uh, sure?” Bramble had no problem with a girl sword fighting. She’d need to protect herself, anyway. Also, swinging swords was actually pretty cool. “You’re gonna need proper clothes for it, though, and have your hair pulled back. Like this.” Bramble bound the hair and secured it. Shireen patted her scalp and felt the French braid running down the center of her head. It was only half-done; Bramble figured she still wanted some of it down. Although it wasn’t the princess’ usual style, it would suffice. And besides, Shireen might have wanted something new, something that didn’t resemble her own mother’s hairstyle.

“Thank you, Bramble. I like it.” She turned and called, “Do you like it, Pyp?”

He smiled and dipped his head. “Yes, milady.”

“Do you want to cut up some bread slices?” Bramble asked. She liked keeping Shireen in her sight. The princess had lived a lonely fifteen years; she could use some social interaction.

“You’ll have to show me the right way of cutting,” Shireen giggled. “I’ve never done it myself.”

“Then this can be a precursor to sword fighting.”

-

Night fell, and Bramble couldn’t fucking sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Olly. She saw him hanging on that rope, blue in the face and neck at an odd angle.

She dug her hands in the fireplace for a while, acting like a child who discovered a new trick. But the flames couldn’t hold interest. Not when Bramble’s mind carried such burdens. After spending some time pacing about the room, she gave up trying to get any rest and walked outside.

Maybe she’d go to the wildling camp. Hang out with them. They liked her there, didn’t they? Or they were just as weirded out by her. Maybe she’d bother Davos. But that old man needed his sleep. Jon was probably still up, trying to keep the same nightmares at bay. He and Bramble made for poor company together, though, and they’d only wind up making each other sadder. She’d leave him alone.

There was always Melisandre to visit. Or Bramble could disembowel herself, and it’d be just as pleasant.

Or…Grenn.

No. That’d be stupid. She didn’t even know if he was on the Wall or asleep; the Night’s Watch routinely duties escaped her knowledge, now. They wouldn’t go hunting anymore, or patrol the Wall, or train together. Soon, she’d depart from Castle Black entirely. At least, that was where things probably headed. So why did she get even more sad when she thought about leaving Grenn behind?

Because she liked him, dumbass.

Like? Like? A crush? Here?

That hug two days ago was out of grief, out of comfort and consolation. Nothing more. And besides, Bramble couldn’t afford to even think about any semblance of happiness. Not when this world liked to rip it all away.

Bramble stomped off to the library. At this hour, nobody should have been in there now that Sam was gone. Oh, Sam. She missed his calming presence. She missed Gilly and the baby and old Maester Aemon, too. But she’d never see Aemon again, and she might not ever see that strange little family, either.

Since when did she start to miss people from Westeros? In all her years here, Bramble had missed only four people, who had all died. Other than that, she never allowed any roots to take place.

Well. She had roots again.

Shit.

Bramble spent the rest of the night reading by candlelight. She learned unnecessary information about the former lord commanders of the Watch and what medicines to use for common ailments. The library had some mathematic books as well, but Bramble knew all of the content. Dad would have been happy about that. Even after all the hell she had been through, she still had trigonometry under her belt.

The sun began to peek through the library’s dirty windows as Bramble skimmed through a book on native plants and animals in the North. She frowned. Had it really been that long? She feared that the longer she stayed awake, the harder the crash would be. That was what happened last time. The only time, frustratingly enough. There still weren’t enough instances of exercising her powers to make definite conclusions. Just like statistics. And Bramble hated statistics.

She’d roll with the whole not-being-tired thing for now. Besides, it was the perfect time to start training.

Davos was leaving his room when Bramble came down the dimly-lit hall. He frowned at her and immediately asked, “Aren’t you cold?” Then a second later said, “Wait. No. Of course you’re not.” He carried on with the conversation while Bramble stood there listening to him “You know, the Lady Melisandre doesn’t feel the cold, either. Maybe the two of you can have a chat about it.”

“I don’t want to have any sort of chat with that woman,” Bramble said. Davos dryly chuckled in agreement.

“Aye. But she thinks Jon is who Stannis was supposed to be. I have the dreadful feeling that she’ll be sticking around for a while yet.” He made an oh well face and shrugged. “So. Where are you coming back from at this hour?”

“The library. I couldn’t sleep.” Bramble crossed her arms. “And you? Where are you off to?”

“And old body like this doesn’t let me rest for too long,” Davos smirked under his well-trimmed mustache. “I was going to check on Lord—Jon. The lad’s going to need some help. Might as well be of use.”

A faint smile touched the corner of Bramble’s scarred mouth. “That he will. Thank you for being there.”

Unable to come up with a sarcastic response, Davos grunted and nodded at Shireen’s door. “The princess told me you were going to teach her how to use a sword.”

“I’m going to try.”

He amusedly huffed. “She’s pretty excited about it. And I’m glad that she’s going to learn how to defend herself.” Davos’ face grew serious again. “The world’s getting darker with each day. Even little girls need to know how to kill a man to protect themselves.”

“Or a woman.”

They stared at each other for a few moments, then Davos gravely said, “Aye, even women. The dead, too.”

“Yeah, nearly forgot about those.” The sarcasm in Bramble’s voice made Davos smile. Bramble tried not to think of her dad.

“Well. Best get to waking her up. Maybe I’ll get to see some of the training before it ends.”

Davos left, and Bramble knocked on Shireen’s door before entering. The princess lay asleep on her bed, fur blankets piled high on top of her. The fireplace glowed with dying embers. The books she had carried with her sat on the small table, but nothing else attested to Shireen’s personality. Bramble’s heart ached. The princess was adrift, now, like so many of them. No place to go, no place to return. In a matter of minutes, Shireen had abandoned everything she knew.

And yet, she was still so brave.

Bramble hoped that one day, she could have the heart of Shireen Baratheon.

She gently shook the princess and said, “Shireen. Wake up. It’s time to train.”

The princess made a noise and opened her eyes, blinking a few times before she turned and stared up at Bramble. “It’s so early,” she groaned. Beside her, an orange head popped out from under the covers. Balerion yawned widely and peered at Bramble as well, silently voicing the princess’ sentiments. What a spoiled cat.

“It is. I’m sorry. But we need to practice before the rest of the men come out.”

With her eyes closed, Shireen nodded and flung off the blankets. Bramble placed a few logs in the fireplace and coaxed the flames out of the embers. She didn’t really know how she did it. Like most of these things, it just happened.

Once Shireen got dressed for the outdoors, Bramble did her hair without asking. Another braid, this one tighter so it wouldn’t come loose. Balerion followed them out the door and into the frigid courtyard. The training sword Bramble grabbed for the two of them looked big in Shireen’s hands, but she was awake, alert, and ready to learn. For safe measures, Bramble put her in training armor. It weighed her down a little bit, but she’d be safer with it on.

“Alright,” Bramble said in the early morning air. “We’re going to practice holding the sword. See how I’m gripping it? Yeah, just like that…”

A glow shone Shireen’s eyes, a drive, a fire. Shireen wasn’t a loud person, or a greedy one. But if she wanted something—like knowing how to fight with a sword—she would do everything in her power to get it.

They practiced until the courtyard started to stir with life. It’d already been a couple hours, and Shireen’s brow glistened with a sheen of sweat. Bramble needed to get her some more clothes. She had just that one dress and a pair of boots, which weren’t suited for a tough kind of lifestyle.

If any of what Shireen wore was a problem, she didn’t show it. The princess stayed tenacious and constant, never faltering, even when she got smacked by the training sword on the arm or leg. Bramble hadn’t planned for any contact swordplay for their first lesson, but Shireen stubbornly insisted. She didn’t even care when Tormund came to watch, and when Davos observed from one of the walkways.

Snow fell in heavy clumps as Bramble and Shireen put the training armor and swords away. Tormund walked up to talk to them with that usual, shit-eating smirk on his face. “Not a bad practice, Little Crow,” he said to Bramble.

She replied with a small scowl, “I’m guessing you have something else to say about it.”

Tormund’s smirk grew. “Princess could use some hand-to-hand training. Swords are only good protection about half the time. Better get her a dagger, too.”

Bramble raised her eyebrows. “Why are you so interested?”

He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Taught my daughters how to fight. One more girl that knows how to fight means one more dead man who makes the mistake of touching her.”

That made her chuckle, dry and hoarse. “Yeah, alright, I’ll make sure she knows how to swing a punch and break bones.” Bramble glanced at Shireen, who wandered off out-of-earshot to pick up Balerion. She caught Bramble staring and offered a sweet smile in return. Turning back to Tormund, Bramble said, “I’d like to meet your daughters. They—”

The blast of a single horn ended the conversation. “Riders at the gate!” one of the brothers called from atop the ramparts. Bramble frowned. Who in their right fucking mind would possibly want to come to Castle Black?

Grenn, whose presence Bramble had pointedly ignored when he first came into the courtyard, strode up the stairs and to the top of the battlements. Once he saw whoever waited on the other side, he yelled, “Open the gate!”

It struck Bramble a second before the gates opened just who had arrived.

Three people, haggard and cold, guided their mounts into the castle courtyard. The leader was a giant blonde woman, donned in black armor and a sheathed sword at her side. A younger man in squire’s garb followed on her right, and on the left…

On the left was Sansa Stark.

Deep auburn hair stood out against the pale backdrop of winter. Vivid blue eyes cautiously roamed around the courtyard for enemies. They passed over Bramble for a second. She didn’t need to have her former Sight to know that Sansa bore deep wounds time might not heal. Though all three of them were covered in grime, Sansa looked the most bedraggled and worn.

Shireen came back to Bramble’s side, cradling Balerion in one arm. The other had linked with hers. They watched the newcomers dismount. The blonde woman stayed close to the daughter she swore to protect. “Who is it?” Shireen whispered, but it sounded like a shout in the silent courtyard.

Sansa’s eyes went up to the staircase above them and stayed there. Bramble heard footsteps, and she turned her head to watch Jon slowly walk down. His dark gaze, filled with emotions that made Bramble both overjoyed and despondent, fixed on his half-sister.

As if in a trance, Jon continued to approach Sansa, who stood there in the same sort of disbelief. He finally stopped a few feet away, like the both of them were afraid that this moment couldn’t be real. Bramble held her breath.

And then they were hugging, Jon lifting Sansa off her feet, Sansa burying her face into Jon’s shoulder. The two siblings clung to each other with everything they had.

Because really, they only did have each other.

Bramble finally answered Shireen. “That’s Sansa Stark,” she muttered to the princess, whose eyes went wide at the name. Tugging on her mousy-haired braid, Bramble said, “Best go back to your room, Shireen. I’ll get you a bath later.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but Bramble’s look stopped her from saying anything. With a sigh, Shireen left with her round orange cat. “That,” Tormund breathed, drawing her attention back to him, “is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Bramble knew he talked about Brienne. Though the woman wasn’t considered beautiful by conventional standards, she exuded intense strength and calm. Brienne held herself with such conviction in her black armor that even Bramble had a hard time looking away.

“Like you’d ever have a chance,” Bramble said back to Tormund.

“Watch me, Little Crow.”

Jon and Sansa let go of each other. He actually smiled. It crinkled his eyes and everything. Sansa smiled too, but it had a sadness, a hollowness. Bramble’s heart ached for her. Westeros and its people could have been far crueler to herself than it had been. She could have suffered through what Sansa did.

Or maybe she still had, and Bramble simply got used to the horror this world inflicted.

“Bramb,” Jon called, beckoning her over. She and Tormund exchanged a final glance before she walked to the siblings.

With a hand on her shoulder, Jon said, “This is my sister, Sansa Stark. Could you see to it that she and her companions get settled into a room in the eastern wing? Near mine.” Jon asked for more, but he did not say it.

Bramble understood, nonetheless. “Of course,” she said. Sansa, who first regarded her with suspicion, softened her expression with slight surprise when Bramble’s femininity became apparent.

She wasn’t one of the stewards, and neither was she a ranger, anymore. So what was she? Bramble didn’t know, and Jon probably didn’t know yet, either. But in any case, she was a friend to him, and she would do what he wished.

Obliging the request, she saw that Podrick, Brienne, and Sansa got settled into their rooms. Pyp and another steward, Eran, came to assist, bringing food and buckets of hot water for baths. Guest rooms always had their own baths. Bramble stayed with Sansa, who looked about the room in a daze. She personally filled the bath up and didn’t let Pyp or Eran into the room.

“Is she really Jon’s sister?” Pyp whispered to her as she took a tray of warm bread, cheese, and wine from him. “That’s Sansa Stark?”

“It is.”

“What’s she going to do here?”

Bramble gave Pyp a deadpan stare. “Rest. Eat. Breathe. If you just escaped from your captors, what would you do?”

He didn’t answer quickly enough, so Bramble sighed and went on. “Go to Maester Aemon’s medicinal room. Get me some kingscopper ointment and peppermint.” After a pause, Bramble added solemnly, “And see if he has any tansy, wormwood, and pennyroyal.”

Pyp knew exactly what Bramble talked about. Maester Aemon probably didn’t have any moontea in stock, but he should have kept the ingredients for it. The pregnancy-terminating tea was a precaution, but Bramble knew it was better than to just cross her fingers and hope for the best. She saw the way reality deviated from the fantasy, for better or worse.

“I’ll bring some hot water and honey for a tea,” Pyp murmured. Bramble lightly punched his chest and went into Sansa’s room, closing the door soundly behind her.

The Stark sat on her bed, staring vacantly at the old floorboards. “Here’s some food, my lady,” Bramble spoke quietly, setting the tray on a small table. Sansa barely acknowledged her.

In the silence, Bramble stoked the fire and made sure the water was hot (even if that meant sneakily heating it up with highly untested fire abilities) Then she laid out towels and soap and hair wash. Pyp knocked on the door, returning with another tray of the herbs Bramble requested and a cup of hot water and honey. She thanked him and withdrew into the room again.

“I’ll help you out of that dress,” Bramble said. Her voice sounded too loud, but she continued. “You’ll probably want to have a nice bath.”

“I can help myself, thank you,” Sansa replied, finally tearing herself away from disassociation. “You may leave.”

Bramble’s eyebrows only steepled together. “Hey—I’m not going to hurt you. And your dress looks like its frozen on. Even if you can get out of it, you probably don’t want to get back into it while it’s still damp and dirty. I’ll see that it’s washed and dried, and you’ll have other clean clothes to get back into.” When Sansa only responded with more silence, Bramble frowned and said, “You’re safe here.”

Her jaded blue eyes bore into Bramble. “I’m not safe anywhere.”

“Well,” Bramble sighed, shrugging, “that’s probably fucking true. Let’s narrow it down, then. Right now, in this room, you’re safe with me. I promise.”

“And why do you even want to help me.” Sansa spoke flatly, like she made a remark rather than asked a question.

Why? Because she was Sansa Stark. The Sansa Stark. Books and television shows were based around her. She was a fictional name.

No. That had never been the reason.

Bramble stared evenly back. “Because you’re Jon’s sister, and he wanted me personally to see that you were taken care of.” She ran her fingers through her hair and let out a breath.  “And, honestly, you look like you’ve been through some shit.”

Sansa finally showed some emotion. The corner of her mouth barely flicked up. She stood and, with a sigh, said, “Alright. You may stay. Help me out of this dress.”

Bramble did. When the cloak came off, she unfastened the back of Sansa’s dirty dress and let her step out of it. Sansa wore an equally dirty slip underneath. Bramble could still see the bruises, the bitemarks, the gouges everywhere. Though they were fading, the most vicious ones bloomed between her legs and on her breasts. A few scars had even formed, serving as permanent reminders to something Sansa could never forget.

Bramble’s stomach roiled with hot anger. The flames, spurred by her emotions, sprung to life. She had to force them down, lest something catch on fire.

Sansa let out a relaxed sigh as she sank deeper into the tub. Bramble gave her soap and a sponge and gently undid her hair while she scrubbed herself of grime. “So,” Sansa said lowly, “how did you happen to come to Castle Black?”

“That, my lady, is a very long story,” Bramble said with a small smile. She poured a pitcher of bathwater over Sansa’s tangled auburn hair and let it soak. “Very fucking long.”

They sat in silence for a short while. Bramble took the liberty of washing Sansa’s hair. When she finished, she left to search for clothes—but ran into Jon, who waited outside the hall.

“How is she?” he asked, unable to hide his worry.

Bramble adjusted Sansa’s dress draped over an arm. “Bad. Just…fucking bad. She’s been repeatedly raped and beaten by a fucking lunatic, Jon. Tell me how you’d be if you fled one captor just to be handed to other captors. Worse captors.”

Jon looked sick, so Bramble clasped his shoulder and said, “Just be grateful that she’s alive. I think you have Lady Brienne and Podrick to thank for that. Now, where can I find decent clothes for her?”

“In storage. I’ll help you.” Jon started to walk, but then stopped and looked at Bramble with an odd expression.

“What?”

“Did…did you see this coming? Sansa being here?”

“No.”

It was an impulsive lie. Bramble wasn’t sure why she did it. Maybe because she didn’t want to tell Jon that yes, she technically saw his sister coming back, but she deprived him of that hope just because she forgot about Sansa entirely. What a dick move.

Jon nodded, believing her. They continued to one of the storage rooms, where they found proper—albeit, old—underclothes for Sansa and a dress that was probably going to be big on her. Bramble also scrounged up a brush, socks, and hair pins. “Why are there even lady things here?” she had to ask.

“Lords and ladies used to visit the castle,” Jon explained. “The castle kept supplies on hand because nobles can be…”

“Absolute fucks.”

“Yes. Their demands are expected to be met, even on the edge of civilization.” Jon smiled wryly at his comment, making Bramble smile. It was good to see him a little happy, especially in the aftermath of their waking nightmares.

Sansa had fallen asleep when Bramble returned. She stepped as quietly as she could and laid the clothing on the bed. Then she reheated the tea water (a neat trick to have, so, yeah, cool) and made moontea. She added all the honey Pyp gave to mask the bitterness of the herbs.

Eventually Sansa stirred when Bramble made one-too-many noises. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, rubbing a wet hand across her face. “I’m just…”

“Exhausted.” Bramble helped Sansa out of the tub and gave her a towel. “I’m sure you are.” She gestured to the clothes laid out on the bed. “I found some clothes for you. They probably won’t fit the best, but they’re dry, and they’ll keep you warm.”

“Thank you,” Sansa said absently as she dried off.

“I…also got you some moontea,” Bramble added a little more softly. Sansa stopped twisting her hair for a moment before continuing. Something passed over her face, but it disappeared so quickly Bramble wasn’t sure it had been there at all.

“Thank you,” she eventually said.

Bramble helped Sansa into her new dress and gave her the tea to drink while she brushed out her hair. Though Bramble couldn’t make up for the thousands of atrocities Sansa had been victim to, she could at least help the poor woman out in small ways. “That jar over there is also kingscopper. If you hurt anywhere, put it on, and it’ll dull the pain.”

“I will.”

“And…and if you start getting pains from the tea, come and find me.”

“What is your name again?” Sansa asked. Bramble brushed out the last few strands of wet hair and set the brush aside.

“My name is Bramble.”

Sansa turned to look up at her. Her pale cheeks had been cleaned of dirt, and color returned to her lips. “Thank you, Bramble. For all you’ve done.”

“It’s nothing, my lady.”

It really wasn’t. Bramble hadn’t thought twice about helping Sansa. There were no what ifs or will this change the course of everything thoughts in her mind. The usual “life or death” choices that hung over Bramble’s shoulders with every decision were, for once, blessedly absent. If anything, the only thing changed was that Sansa received a little more kindness in a cruel, cruel world.

When Bramble left and crossed the courtyard to Shireen’s bedroom with hefty buckets of water in each hand, she remembered something profound. Something that shouldn’t have been profound, it but echoed in her ears and reminded her of a life before this.

In spite of all the grief, the pain, the sorrow, she could still be capable of kindness. This world couldn’t kill it inside her, and the last world couldn’t kill it inside her. Only she could kill it, and even though she thought she did in a fit of lasting fury, she hadn’t.

Stupid, really. Bramble hadn’t barely realized the truth. She just…forgot it after a while, when all the bad consumed the good and survival replaced living. A rediscovery. Miniscule in some ways, paramount in others.

Bramble would grieve. It could not be stopped, nor the sadness and anger she too often wrestled with. She did not doubt that she’d be knocked to her knees a hundred more times by this place and its coming darkness.

But the fire in Bramble’s chest grew warmer, and the courtyard did not seem so gray and dismal.

She easily spotted Grenn. He awkwardly paused when he caught her looking—or, rather, that she caught him looking at her first. Instead of ducking away, Grenn shifted the pile of chopped wood in his arms and haltingly dipped his head to her.

Who wouldn’t fucking smile at that?

 

 

 

Notes:

Somebody needs to be nice to Sansa

Chapter 25

Summary:

Revised 6/30/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble sucked in a lungful of air, eyes going to the scoreboard on the wall. Despite the water plugging her ears, she heard cheers bouncing off the walls of the pool.

Then she beamed and raised both fist in the air. Mom and Dad were the loudest in the stands, jumping on their feet and shouting Bramble’s name.

She’d won first in backstroke at Ontario’s high school championships. Everything, everything in this moment was so real and good and—

The water turned black and cold, and the cheers became petrified screams that lanced through Bramble’s heart. They felt like ice, ice beyond ice, ice beyond mortality, ice beyond time. A bony hand beneath the surface of the ocean grabbed her foot and dragged her down, down, down. She tried to fight back, tried to swim away, but the ice deadened her limbs and extinguished the fire.

Then someone pulled her back up, through the ice and darkness, someone with brown eyes, and the fire burned.

-

Bramble quickly put out the small fire she started on her bed, muttering, “Shit, shit, shit shit shit shit.”

It wasn’t that bad; the small eruption left nothing more than a scorch mark on the fur blanket she didn’t use anyway. But it happened while she slept. That didn’t bode well. That was a “dangerous superhero destined to destroy the world” kind of thing. If Bramble reacted with every nightmare…

She sighed and rubbed her eyes. It’d be best to tell Jon, just in case a bad dream caused a fire to sweep through Castle Black.

The thought made Bramble uneasy. She didn’t even understand the extent of her powers. How much could she burn?

How many could she kill?

The question didn’t lay on her mind alone.

Bramble, having been invited to the private lunch with Jon and Sansa, devoured her food at the table. She seated herself between Jon and Tormund, and though her ugly eating habits mirrored Jon’s and Edd’s (Bramble was far hungrier these days), Tormund ate slowly, sensually, staring at poor Brienne of Tarth like it was foreplay. When Bramble noticed him basically giving oral to the chunk of meat while making direct fucking eye contact at her, she rammed her bony elbow into his side.

He grunted at the jab, and she muttered, “Would you fucking stop it?”

“Stop what, Little Crow? Can’t a man eat in peace in the South?”

She snorted. “Fuck off—I’ll break your kneecaps if you don’t quit, Tormund. You’re making me sick with all that noise.”

“Can’t a man walk in peace in the South? Jon Snow, you hearing these threats?”

Jon flatly glared at both of them and continued eating.

Edd finally came up for air and noticed that Brienne, Sansa, and Podrick only picked at their bland, fatty food. Pyp wouldn’t be on cooking duty until later in the week, so Castle Black had to deal with shitty meals. “Sorry ‘bout the food,” he said. “It’s not what we’re known for.”

“That’s alright,” Sansa assured with a forced smile. “There are more important things.”

Bramble paused, getting a feeling. A spidey-sense. Something was about to happen, wasn’t it?

The door opened and a brother stepped inside. “A message for you, Lord Commander,” he said, holding out the scroll for Jon.

Jon stared back at it. “I’m not the Lord Commander, anymore.” But, after a terse sigh, he took it and excused the brother.

Bramble saw the Bolton sigil stamped into the scroll’s wax. She shook her head and downed the rest of her ale.

Jon read the contents out loud. They were all threats from Ramsay Bolton. He promised Jon’s death, Rickon’s death—and when he couldn’t read the rest, Sansa took it and finished. He explained all the explicit, gruesome ways he’d have her raped. By his men, by his hounds, by him, and the mutilations that’d follow.

It made Bramble’s stomach turn and the fire roil. After several moments of heavy silence, Jon repeated the phrase they all feared. “Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.”

“His father’s dead,” Sansa flatly explained. “Ramsay killed him. And now he has Rickon.”

“We don’t know that—”

“Yes, we do.”

“How many men does he have in his army?” Tormund lowly said.

Sansa paused, pretending to consider the number. “I heard him say five thousand once when he was talking about Stannis’ attack.”

Jon turned to Tormund, but Bramble knew he prepared himself to directly speak to her. “How many men do you have?”

“That could march and fight? Two thousand. The rest are children and old people.”

Bramble lowered her head and went to drink more ale—then remembered how fucking empty it was. Edd watched her glare at the cup, so he poured her some more. She mumbled a thanks to him.

“You’re the son of the last true Warden of the North,” said Sansa before Jon’s brown eyes would eventually find their way to Bramble. She made the mistake of glancing at Tormund, who had his own gaze fixed on her. He raised a slight, suggestive eyebrow. She scowled. “Northern families are loyal. They’ll fight for you if you ask.”

When Jon didn’t reply, Sansa reached for his hand across the table and held it tight. “A monster has taken our home and our brother.” For the first time since they met, Bramble heard fierceness in Sansa’s voice. An anger that had been built from years of injustice and the lust for vengeance. “We have to go back to Winterfell and save them both.”

Bramble watched Jon from the corner of her eye. She knew his single nod would happen, but to still see it—sitting right beside him, in a world far too real for her liking—added a weight to her stomach.

Then Jon looked at her. He didn’t have to even say anything. That look asked the question more than his words ever could.

She let out a breath and downed her second cup of ale. After she wiped her mouth with the back of a hand, she sharply said, “You know I’m with you. I can’t be here. Not anymore. But—”

“But you may make up for a thousand more men,” Tormund cut in. She ignored the curious looks from those seated on the other side of the table and focused on the half-eaten plate in front of her. “Who knows how much damage you could sow?”

“That’s the thing.” Bramble drug a hand down the side of her face. “None of us know how much I can do. What if it’s not even that much after all?”

“I have a hard time believing that,” Edd said. Bramble turned her glowering gaze to him. “What you’ve done so far is most likely only the beginning.”

“Bramb,” Jon said in that grave voice of his. “We need you. You’re strong, but Tormund’s right. You could turn the tide for us.”

“But what if I can’t? What if you put all your faith in me and I can’t even light a fucking spark? Then everyone gets slaughtered, and that’ll be it.” Bramble paused, exhaled, and continued in a softer voice, “If I can, I’m not sure I can handle killing so many by myself. It might break my brain.”

“Better a broken brain than a lost war, Little Crow.”

“I’m sorry, but what is all this?” Sansa questioned, her serious blue eyes flitting between the four of them.

“I—she can…” Jon, unable to come up with an adequate explanation, quickly gave up and again looked to Bramble. She scowled more deeply this time and ran fingers through her loose hair in frustration.

Then, when Bramble’s hand swept through, she held it in front of her and summoned the fire. It danced between her fingers, played on her palm, and utterly awed everyone at the table.

“So you can control it,” Tormund exhaled rather proudly.

“At this level? Yeah.” Bramble took in a breath and called the fire back in. It was reluctant to go, and she had to grit her teeth to get it to recede. “It’s harder to extinguish. That worries me. The fire is very…demanding. It doesn’t like being told what to do.”

“Amazing,” Brienne spoke, absolutely taken away. Bramble tried smiling, but it didn’t quite work. Podrick remained silent and stunned.

“I…may have burned a bit of my bed after having a bad dream,” Bramble sighed, digging back into her food to avoid eye contact. “So it might not be all that amazing when I burn down an entire army in my sleep.”

Tormund blew a raspberry. “You won’t do that. Just save it for the Bolton army.”

Bramble made a frustrated noise as she ate the rest of the pork on her plate. “You shouldn’t just rely on one person, anyway,” she said through a mouth laden with food. “You still need to gather an army. Once you’ve got an army, once you’ve got more men, then you can rely on my strength.” Mumbling, she added, “Whatever that strength that is.”

“You stopped a giant in its tracks. That’s pretty strong right there,” Tormund said with his shit-eating grin. He just reveled in all this talk. The wildling wanted to see Bramble burn men and bash in skulls more than anyone.

“My point still stands.” Bramble looked to Jon, then to Sansa. “Find an army. We’ll go from there.”

“I already have a plan,” Tormund said, ignoring what Bramble just said. She shot him a scowl. “Mag Mar agreed to it, too. We’ll launch you into the sky, Little Crow, and then—” He made an exploding sound, almost elbowing her in the face as he did so. “Right into the Bolton army. Burn the men to a crisp right then and there. It’ll be perfect.”

Bramble shook her head and went back to stuffing her face with food. “You’re fucking insane, Tormund.”

-

Jon decided to leave in a week’s time. Word spread fast. Bramble tried not to think about leaving the place that’d become her home. Instead, she continued to spar with Shireen in the morning and discuss war plans with Jon, Davos, Sansa, and the others in the afternoon. In the evening, she spent time with Shireen again, hiding in the kitchens with Pyp and Grenn and trying to cling to these last few moments before it all disappeared

“Where’d you get these herbs?” Bramble asked Pyp, who showed Shireen how to chop a rabbit up in the right way. Balerion tucked himself next to Bramble’s feet, curled up by a heat source as warm as the fire itself. “They’re fresh.”

“A few of the rangers found them on their hunt,” Pyp replied. “Recognized what they were and thought it’d be tasty in a stew.”

“It will.” Bramble brought the leaves close to her nose and inhaled their scent. She smiled fondly. “Mm. It smells like parsley.”

“What’s that?” Grenn said

“An herb my mother liked to use for her soups,” Bramble answered without thinking. She saw Grenn trying to chop them with a dull kitchen knife one-by-one and moved a little closer to help him. “Here. It’s better to just pluck the leaves off the stem. Like this, right?” She yanked off the little green leaves and collected them together in a pile. “Then you just chop them up when they’re bundled like that.”

“Thank you,” Grenn mumbled, a small smile on his face. Bramble felt a different kind of heat flush her ears. She picked her own leaves off and chopped them into fine bits.

“You had a mother, eh, Bramb?” Pyp suddenly said in the comfortable silence. Bramble glanced up at him, and something hardened inside her.

“Yeah. Everyone has a mother.” She took hers and Grenn’s herbs to the pot of stew and dumped them in.

“What was she like?” Shireen had asked the question, not Pyp. If it’d had been Pyp, she wouldn’t have answered. Bramble figured Shireen knew this, the sneaky girl.

“She was…kind.” Bramble resumed her place by sitting down. Grenn abruptly followed, and Balerion practically crawled on top of her feet underneath the table. Her throat started to ache. “She and my father loved each other very much. She taught me what she learned in the kitchen from her mother, and her mother before her.” Bramble longed for the fucking day when she could make herself some lumpia again.

“Where was she from?” Grenn took up the next question, quiet and slow, because they were walking into uncharted territory.

Bramble wanted to close off, to go back to one-worded responses. But for some reason, she couldn’t.

“Far away, on a small island that doesn’t have a mark on the map.” Technically true, she supposed. Before anyone could ask another deeper, more personal question, she went on. “The food there is full of spices. It’s rich in flavor. Not like—” Bramble gestured to the stew boiling for dinner. “That. Sorry, Pyp.”

He shrugged with a wry smile. “One of the dishes, adobo, is made when you marinate meat—either chicken, pork, beef, or fish—in a vinegar and garlic sauce, as well as with some other spices. Then you let it simmer for a while, and when it’s done you can pan fry it for some extra crispiness. You serve it in a stew, or over rice, or eat it just like it is.” Bramble found herself tilting her head back and smiling. “I can taste it now.”

“That sounds lovely,” Grenn said sincerely. She turned her head to him, smile fading.

“It was.” Bramble rubbed her nose, trying to stifle the ache in her throat. “But my parents are gone, now, and I’ll never see that island again.”

That ended the conversation—until Pyp couldn’t help but say, “At least I know why you have that funny accent, now. I’ve tried to imitate it, but—” He furrowed his brows and grated out a poor Canadian accent. “I can’t seem to get it right.”

Bramble let out a short, sudden laugh. It sounded too loud, so she clapped a hand over her mouth, but Shireen and Grenn started laughing with her. Pyp joined in, too, and their laughter continued even after it stopped being funny.

Then Edd trudged, and their amusement cut short. He looked around the kitchen, frustration working his jaw. “Well? Don’t stop on account of me.”

“Hard day?” Shireen prompted. Edd bitterly chuckled.

“You could say that, princess. You could say that.” He let out a loud groan as he sat into a chair across from Bramble and Grenn.

“It’s not easy being the sudden Lord Commander, I take it?” Bramble picked Balerion up, earning a disgruntled grunt from the cat.

“No,” Edd sighed. “Especially when you thought you’d die before even coming close to the position.”

“Here. He’ll help.” Bramble offered Balerion over the table. Edd let out a small chuckle and, after a moment, took Balerion and held him.

“He’s getting fat, isn’t he?” Edd commented as Balerion settled into his lap, loudly purring from the sudden attention Edd gave him.

“He needs to be prepared for winter,” Shireen immediately combated. “The journey we’re going on isn’t going to be easy.”

Bramble and Edd exchanged solemn glances. She hadn’t told the princess, yet.

“Still,” Edd said after a moment, easing back into the conversation, “you’ll need to watch out. War cats need to be fit for battle.”

That earned a few laughs. Bramble let her heart ache as she smiled and joked.

She would miss this place.

And she would miss the big idiot who chose to sit next to her.

-

The library offered a quiet refuge for the nights when Bramble couldn’t sleep. After her fire-inducing dream, she had only slept another night before worrying too much about burning anything down. Now the library, without Sam or Maester Aemon to occupy it, remained largely unused. Shireen spent most of her time between the shelves during the day, but after the princess had gone to bed, the library became Bramble’s.

Currently, she was on a search for some ancient text that might say the whole showing-up-in-a-fictional-world wasn’t unheard of, before. So far…nothing more than references saying that the world was a savage place before the Faith of the Seven came to Westeros. Or that the chances of there being life among the stars was impossible, according to the dusty old maesters. This world was the only world, made that way by the Seven.

Those assumptions had Bramble chuckling.

The pursuit was far-fetched, of course. She just figured that in an old library like this, stranger events could have been recorded. Between the White Walkers, the Children, and the magic, maybe a poor person like her ended up as a footnote in the history pages.

Bramble hummed “Life on Mars” while she flipped through pages. The small fire in the library twisted pleasingly to the tune, which made her wonder if she could create dumb visions in the flames to freak people out.

The thought, however, was rudely interrupted by the woman who actually saw fucking visions in the flames. As always, Bramble sensed her presence before she walked in the library. She should have just followed her instinct and leapt through a window.

“A strange tune,” Melisandre said, her voice silken.

“What the fuck do you want?” Bramble asked, lowering her eyes back down to the book on the table.

Much to her disdain, Melisandre seated herself across from Bramble. She smiled wisely, as if she hadn’t made any terrible mistakes in the first place. “You are a very strange and curious creature, Bramble. I merely find myself with questions I hope you would entertain.”

“Hm, how ‘bout you fuck the right off instead.”

“So quick to act in violence. Has it always been that way, or do the fires within make it so?”

“You make it so.” Bramble lifted her gaze again to glare at the priestess. “I don’t like you. I’ve never liked you. I don’t like women who sacrifice innocent people.”

“I only do what the Lord of Light commands.”

Bramble sneered. “But this time around, it wasn’t what he commanded, was it? Burning so many people for Stannis, only to realize that you were wrong this whole time.” Melisandre’s smile disappeared. Her eyes turned cold like the howling wind outside. “Who did you sacrifice instead of Shireen?”

The question had been brewing in Bramble for a long time. Melisandre’s icy disposition melted a little. After a few silent moments, she finally answered. “Lady Baratheon and five soldiers.”

Bramble made a disgusted noise. “You’re fucking sick. Your god is sick.”

“Lady Baratheon gave herself willingly—”

“And the soldiers? Did they? Though, I suppose their deaths came sooner rather than later, seeing as Stannis’ victory was only a figment of your imagination.”

“Enough.”

The room darkened, and the gem set in the center of Melisandre’s neck faintly began to glow. The fire turned inward like it cringed away from the touches of darkness. Bramble scowled and stood, chair scraping against the floor. “You think you can intimidate me? I’ll fucking rip that necklace from your throat, you nasty fucking bitch. Then everyone will see what you really look like.”

She flexed her hand towards the fireplace, which roared back to life and chased the darkness away. Melisandre stood upright as well, the whites of her eyes reflecting in the firelight. “You are not of this place,” she hissed, bringing the truth from behind her pretty teeth. “The powers you possess are not from the Lord of Light. Darkness hunts you—and blue eyes set their gaze on the Wall you hide behind. Yet I cannot see anything about you in the flames. It is as though you have no purpose here at all. No design, no existence. But the world bends itself around you, giving allowance to changes it should not. You have the capability of setting this world on a course it was never meant to follow. Saving lives that weren’t meant to be saved. In trying to help, your fire may plunge the world into an everlasting night.”

Each word seeped into Bramble like poison, making her weak in the knees and drying her throat.

“Get out,” Bramble snarled throatily. “Or we’ll see if your shitty lord can protect you from my fire.”

With a hard stare, Melisandre gathered her dress and departed from the library. When the door shut, Bramble slumped back in her chair and drew in a shaky breath. What the hell was that all about? Melisandre just loved doing shit like that. She wanted to dissect Bramble, to lay all her secrets bare and use them against her.

But would she really?

What if Melisandre already knew the existence of other worlds? She mentioned that Bramble didn’t come from this place. Maybe that implied she wasn’t from this world at all. Or it was just another tactic to get Bramble to talk.

She didn’t know. Better to just wait things out until the Boltons were dealt with. That shady bitch could go to hell. Because though Bramble still didn’t know a lot of things about her, she was certain that Melisandre didn’t have her best interests at heart.

After an hour of scanning arithmetic books and scribbling equations down on parchment paper just for the hell of it, the library door creaked open again. Bramble’s eyes flashed to the entrance, half-expecting to see the Red Woman again.

It wasn’t.

“Grenn?” Bramble called, genuinely surprised. “What’re you doing here?”

She could see the redness in his cheeks from several feet away. “I, er, just thought I’d stop by. Doing the rounds and all that.”

Bramble doubted the truth of his words, but it made her stifle a smile, nonetheless. She beckoned him to join her at the table. His boots scuffed loudly against the floor as he walked farther into the library. It dawned upon Bramble that they stood completely alone.

“What’s all this?” Grenn asked abruptly, pointing to the loose pieces of parchment with equations and graphs on them.

“Oh, uh, just math stuff. Staying here all night gets boring sometimes.”

Grenn picked up a piece of parchment, eyes scanning over its contents in awe. “I’ve never seen anything like this! Where’d you learn to…to do this?”

Bramble shrugged, toeing the line of truth. “Where I’m from, a lot of people can learn mathematics. Most actually have to for their studies.” She gestured to the book of equations. “This is more complex stuff, but it’s nothing I can’t do.” Bramble found herself smiling a little shyly. Was that bragging?

“Amazing.” Grenn looked at the parchment a little longer before setting it down and clearing his throat. “So, er, you’re leaving in a couple days, right?”

“Right.” Bramble said the word slower than normal, creating an awkwardness that turned her ears red.

“Well, I just—I just wanted to say that we’re all gonna miss you. Me and Pyp and Edd. Some of the other boys, too. You’ve done so much here, a-and, er, well…”

Grenn stopped and shook his head, frustrated. “I’m no good with words, Bramb. Never been. But—” He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a thin leather strap with a small, plain gray stone hanging off it. “Wanted to give you this.”

Bramble stepped around the table and tentatively closed the distance between them. The fireplace they now stood beside cast an orange glow on Grenn’s face. His eyes were a soft blue with wells of gray in the center. How had she never noticed? “What for?” she asked, like an idiot.

“I grabbed it before the Night’s Watch took me from the farm. Always gave me good luck. I thought—you could use it, yeah? With where you’re going.”

“Oh, Grenn, I couldn’t—”

“Take it.” He said it more forcefully than he wanted to, so he closed his eyes and talked in a steadier, slower voice. “I want you to have it.”

Darting a tongue between dry lips, Bramble took the leather necklace from Grenn’s hand. He breathed a sigh of relief and opened his eyes again to watch as she placed it over her head. It hung low and settled between her breasts, heavier than it should have been.

“Thank you,” she whispered, unable to come up with more articulate words.

They stared at each other in the silence of the library. Bramble’s heart thumped wildly, fanning the flames inside her. Grenn looked uncertain, and his eyes flickered away from Bramble. Should she be doing something? Was he waiting for her to—

Every thought vanished when Grenn placed a quick, soft kiss on her lips. The scruff of his beard tickled Bramble’s skin. She stiffened, eyes still open in surprise. Before Bramble could close them and relax, though, Grenn stepped away, seeming to have shocked himself more than he shocked her.

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, turning to flee. “I’m so sorry.”

But Bramble grabbed Grenn’s hand, spun him around, and firmly kissed him back. He instantly melted, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close. Bramble found Grenn’s scruffy cheeks and cupped them with her hands, basking in their shared closeness. She felt a smile on his eager lips, spurring a smile of her own.

Happiness blossomed in her chest, petals singing black with dancing fire.

Grenn had always made her the happiest, from the first day she knocked him on his ass in the courtyard to now. A brightness lingered in each kiss, a desire Bramble had no idea she suppressed until it sprung forth, pushing her closer to Grenn’s firm body, pushing her closer to untainted joy.

The fire in the hearth climbed higher the deeper the kisses became, the longer they lasted between each soft breath, until there was nothing in the world but Grenn, Bramble, and the glow of the firelight behind her closed eyes.

 

 

 

Notes:

If there are any Canadian/Ontario region readers enjoying this fic, hit me up with some slang words. I'd love to use them. I just don't know any because I live in Idaho lol.

Chapter 26

Summary:

Revised 6/30/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Shireen sat in a chair. Her arms stiffly folded against her stomach. Instead of looking away like a pouty child, she stared at Bramble and Davos with the cold scrutiny of a princess.

“I’m sorry, my lady,” Davos apologized—again. That was why he needed Bramble here. Because he’d give in if it were just him. She had to be the stout backbone in this team. “But we are going to war. Who knows what will happen? I don’t want you in the middle of it—”

“I won’t be in the middle of it.”

“Even then, we might lose. And then the Boltons will have you, which means the Lannisters will have you. They won’t chance letting a Baratheon live.”

“I have no desire in becoming queen.”

“Aye, but they won’t believe that.” Davos glanced at Bramble for strength. She slightly nodded her head in encouragement. “You’ll be safe here at Castle Black. Edd and Grenn and Pyp are gonna look after ya.”

“Safe? Here?” Shireen clenched her gloved fists and stood. “I’m surrounded by men who want to rape and torment me. Even with this.” She pointed to the greyscale scarring. “And what if you lose the battle? Will I just be stuck here until somebody turns away for a few moments and comes back to find me dead? No. I’m coming with you. I’ve been to war before—”

“And look what happened when you did.” Bramble understood Shireen’s anger, but her mind—their minds—had already been made up on the matter. “You’re staying here, Shireen. When—if—we win, then Edd or Grenn will see that you’re safely brought to Winterfell.”

Shireen opened her mouth to argue again, but Bramble cut her off. “And if we all die, you’ll sail to Essos.”

“Essos?” she rebuked. “Why in the world would I go to Essos?”

Bramble felt Davos’ surprise. This hadn’t been discussed in any prior meeting.

Checking over her shoulder to make sure the door was closed, Bramble moved close to Shireen and put her hands on the princess’ small shoulders. “You will find Daenerys Targaryen. She will protect you.”

“The Targaryen?” Davos repeated more quickly than Shireen could. He stepped closer to them as well and lowered his voice. “She’ll kill anyone with Baratheon blood.”

“No. She won’t.” Bramble sighed and tucked a strand of hair behind Shireen’s ear. “Or, at least I think she won’t.”

“Is this what you saw?” Shireen asked quietly, her anger temporarily subsiding. “Like how you saw…what was going to happen to me?”

Bramble squinted her eyes and tilted her head. “Eh…something like that?”

“What do you mean, ‘something like that?’” Davos tried to replicate Bramble’s accent, but it only made his brogue more pronounced.

“I mean that I’ve seen what a good person Daenerys Targaryen is. She’ll protect Shireen.” Bramble turned her head back to directly speak to the princess. “And besides, you have the Baratheon name. Daenerys wouldn’t hesitate to bring allies of your family to her side.”

“So she’ll just use me? I’ll be a pawn in somebody else’s war?”

“No—” Bramble took a breath and focused her gaze. “Shireen. You would never let yourself be a pawn. You’re too stubborn for that. Think of this just as a backup plan, alright?”

Shireen pushed her lips to the side in thought. Eventually, thankfully, she nodded once in agreement. “Fine. I’ll stay here. But the moment you take Winterfell, you must write for me.”

“I will.” Bramble pulled her into a hug. “I promise.”

Shireen didn’t ask Bramble to promise to come back from the battle. She already knew what happened when armies marched against one another. After Bramble let go, Davos took his turn. He held the princess close to him and kissed the top of her head. They were the closest thing to family, now, and they clung to each other with that unspoken truth.

Bramble lowered her gaze.

-

Jon stood atop the Wall, once a figure of black, now someone dressed in dark browns and grays. A new cloak draped his shoulders, the fur lining around his collar shifting in the icy wind.

Bramble wore nothing more than a tunic and a leather vest cinched tight. The blasts of forsaken Northern air felt good on her skin, soothing the heat constantly burning under the surface. Like Jon, the top part of her black Filipina hair was pulled back and bound in the smallest strand of cord she could find. She hadn’t realized her hair had gone from Zuko-shaggy to just long and unruly until this morning.

“Thought we could get one last look before we go,” Jon said, giving her one of his side-glances and half-smiles. “Seeing as it’ll probably be our last.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Bramble stopped and stood next to him, folding her arms. She stared out at the vast, white expanse of the realm Beyond the Wall. “You never know how things are going to turn out.”

“Always optimistic, aren’t you?” Jon asked the question wryly. Bramble frowned a little. Since when was she considered the optimistic one? Everything here sucked ass.

They stood there, soaking in the last few rays of dawn that disappeared into the gray sky of winter. The burnt trees from Mance’s assault, the black basalt rocks that broke through snow like scales and claws. Bramble breathed in the old, haunting magic she once hated. The Wall’s magic, while solemn and unforgiving, kept another type of blue-eyed magic at bay.

“Those black rocks under the snow,” Bramble suddenly started saying, asking herself why she was talking at such a somber moment, “you know it’s from lava, right? Basalt rock. It means that, at one point in this world’s formation, lava once spewed across the land from a volcano.”

Jon gave her a look comprised of confusion, amusement, and curiosity. “Really? How d’you know?”

She shrugged. “I just know it from what I’ve learned. Basalt rocks are the most common type of igneous rock. Volcanic rock. Somewhere there’s a volcano out there that made all this. If snow didn’t cover everything, we’d probably find more dragon glass. That’s made from volcanoes, too. Or dragon fire, I suppose.”

Biting his lip, Jon considered if he was going to say anything or not. Bramble hoped he wouldn’t.

“You’re a lot smarter than anyone here, Bramb.”

“No, not really—”

“Yes, really.” Jon faced her. Frost formed on his beard. “You’re a lot smarter, you can summon fire on your fingertips, you know the future—”

“No, not really—”

“You can fend off giants, run miles on end, and the Night King wants you. Am I missing anything else?”

She came from another world. Tiny bit of information.

“No, not really.” Bramble sighed and leaned against the Wall’s crude parapet. Jon copied her movement, that half-smile forming again.

“You been kissing up on Grenn, haven’t ya?”

She hung her head and snorted. “Who told you?”

“Ah, Grenn probably told Pyp, Pyp told Edd, an’ Edd told me.” Jon was full-on grinning, now, the corners of his eyes crinkling boyishly. “So?”

“So?” Bramble mockingly repeated. That made Jon laugh more.

“How’d he do it? Trip over you and somehow planted one on? Spill soup on you? Or did your fire actually catch him on fire? There’s thousands of possibilities.”

“Alright, alright, you’re being ridiculous. He kissed me.” Bramble bit her lip, unable to stop the grin. “Then he tried to run away, but I managed to catch him again.”

Once their laughter faded, Jon said a little sadly, “Terrible timing, innit?”

“Feelings always have terrible timing.” Bramble let out a sigh and tried not to let her emotions dig too deep into sensitive areas. “Still, we hope that it will all work out in the end.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Bramble stared out into the vast land beyond. The land of the Night King. If she thought long enough, she could feel something staring back at her from the snowy, dead-infested mountains.

“Then at least it happened at all.”

-

The small stone weighed down on Bramble’s chest. She took it up again for the hundredth time and rolled it between her fingers.

They were leaving today.

The sun hadn’t risen, yet, and wouldn’t peak over the Wall for a while longer. However, she heard the commotion of horses being saddled and brothers giving orders in the courtyard. Her small pack of clothes sat by the door. It was more than anything she’d ever owned since coming here.

Fuck. This hurt.

Bramble refused to cry. She knew this had been approaching for a while—and under much better circumstances. She would help reclaim Winterfell and end the nightmare marching for them. Her being with the Starks was a good thing. A good thing.

Still, the ache in her throat didn’t come from the fire.

Grenn had come to see her just a few hours ago. He’d be on the Wall by the time Jon and Bramble left, so he snuck in to spend the dwindling hours they had together. They didn’t talk much; any words would just further cultivate the entrenching sadness in their hearts. Instead, they shared heated kisses, held each other close, and fervently hoped that they’d see each other again before their lives were forfeit.

Bramble wished things were normal, where she could clutch this newfound adoration and burst with happiness. Where she and Grenn could talk on the phone for hours and text in between, then go on normal dates for normal people. She’d introduce him to her parents. They’d love Grenn. They’d love that she had snagged herself a nice, nice boy.

The happiness she found in Grenn in this world knotted with worry and darkness and flame. Nothing remained untainted.

Shireen hugged Bramble tight, keeping a brave face like a princess should. Bramble gave Balerion one last scratch behind the ear before turning to Pyp and embracing him as well.

“Be careful, yeah?” Pyp whispered. Bramble could only nod.

Then she was on her horse, riding out the gate next to Davos.

Bramble took one more look behind her. The gates to Castle Black slammed shut, ending a part of her life she had not realized had even begun.

So she looked forward again, to the white, craggy landscape of the cold North. Bramble ignored the hole in her pitiful heart. She had grown accustomed to the pain of things ending. At least…at least this time, she had a chance to say goodbye.

Because for all she knew, she wouldn’t make it past this battle.

-

“You have to feel it in your belly,” Tormund animatedly instructed. A fist pounded against his stomach, then hers. “Use the rage!”

“Alright, you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about,” Bramble deadpanned. She, Tormund, and Davos stood on the edge of Jon’s encampment. A single plank of wood stuck in the hard snow about nine meters away.

“Don’t have to actually have the fire to know its kiss,” Tormund grinned. He took it upon himself to instruct her in the Art of Fire…even though nobody but Bramble wielded the power. “It’s the same fire you feel when you’re ramming an ax into a man’s chest or touching a beautiful woman for the first time.”

The same kind of fire when Bramble kissed Grenn, breathless and lost in the taste of his lips.

She shoved the memory away.

“Just—imagine that’s an enemy coming right for you,” Davos said, pointing to the wooden plank. “You got no sword and there’s no way out. What’re you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll die.” Bramble shrugged and made a noncommittal face.

“What—no,” Davos grumbled. “You can be a little shit later. Now you gotta train. Practice. We’re heading to Winterfell in less than a week. Think you’re going to be ready by that time?”

“Most likely not. But…” Bramble popped her neck and got into a stance. “Might as well put it to good use.”

She breathed, called upon an all-too-eager fire, and bounded one, two times forward. Her arm pitched the roiling flame cupped in the palm of the same hand. It released, shooting through the air, and…

Bramble overshot the plank of wood. It violently exploded against rock and snow, sending a spray of stone and water up into the pallid air.

The three stood there.

“Huh.” Bramble clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Well. It works.”

“Ya missed your target,” said Davos. “By quite a bit.”

“It hit the imaginary army behind him, eh?”

Tormund clapped Bramble on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Little Crow,” he beamed. “We’ll get you hitting men left and right. Just need to master the fire a little more, that’s all.”

“Oh, and I’m sure you can show me exactly how.”

He bent down and balled up a handful a snow. Then, with barely a pause, Tormund hurled the snowball at the wooden target. It solidly landed with a small puff when the snow broke apart. “First,” he instructed sagely, “we need to work on your aim.”

Okay. So Tormund knew how to throw a snowball like Buddy the Elf. Nice.

Bramble decided to quit giving him shit and actually listen to advice the two men offered. When Jon and Sansa trudged up the path two hours later to see how things were progressing with their fire-wielder, thankfully she had something to show for it.

“Check it.” Bramble threw a literal—yes, a literal—fireball at a new wooden plank ready to join its charred comrades. Instead of relying on her aim, Bramble relied on whispering to the fire where it should go. As long as she launched it from her hand, it always obeyed. Mostly because it knew it would get a chance to burn whatever it touched.

The plank dislodged from the ground and spiraled into the air like a flaming torch of glory. Davos whistled at the height the plank reached before falling back into the snow another ten meters from its original point.

Sansa stared, speechless. “Well done,” said Jon. “Keep working at it. Think about making things…bigger.”

“Bigger boom. Got it.”

“Will you be able to use your gift against the Boltons?” Sansa finally asked. Her eyes remained on the flickering firelight in the distance.

“Probably. But even with a ranged assault, it still shouldn’t be the primary weapon. I can’t blow anything up when our own soldiers are in the mix.”

“True. We’ll have to use it fast, then, at the very start. Before our men get caught in the blasts.” Jon scratched his beard, musing upon all the choices he had to make in such little time. “Come on. It’s getting dark. Best call it a day and put some food in your belly.”

As they all walked back to the encampment, it dawned upon Bramble that…that she was going to war.

War.

And from the sound of it, Jon planned to have her at the very head.

 

 

 

Notes:

I'm so sorry this took forever to post. It's one of those in-between chapters that have to be there for the sake of transition. I had a really hard time writing just a short amount.
And I'm also sorry that you didn't get to see much Bramble/Grenn interaction. But don't worry, it's not the last we'll see of him :)
The reference Bramble was making in her "Guess I'll die" phrase is that one meme. She tried to mimic the face, too.
Next chapter: The Battle of the Bastards!

Chapter 27

Notes:

TW: This is the Battle of the Bastards, so there are some graphic depictions of violence

Revised 6/30/2020

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The world was silent, save for shifting armor and banners snapping in the light wind.

Bramble stood next to Tormund and the two giants. She wore armor for the first time in her life. It wasn’t much; stiff leather covered her torso, and matching bracers strapped around her forearms. Other than that, she only wore a thick wool tunic, gloves, and trousers Sansa personally fitted to her shape. Even the shoes came from Castle Black.

As Sansa sewed Bramble’s trousers in her spacious tent, she asked the Stark if she was worried about being able to win. Even though they had a few minor houses backing them, two giants, a few thousand wildlings, and Bramble herself, Sansa frankly replied that she was.

So Bramble…nudged her a certain way.

They had to face it: the Starks wouldn’t win this without help from the man Bramble despised more than the Red Woman. The man she had never even met.

A sword hung on each of Bramble’s hips. Tormund gave them to her before they headed out to face down the Boltons. “You’re gonna fight the wildling way, Little Crow,” he grinned. She also had a dagger in each boot.

This wasn’t anything like when Mance Rayder laid siege to Castle Black. Bramble smelled burning flesh from the torched flayed men scattered in the space between the two armies. She saw the opposing soldiers clearly in the gray daylight, bows in their grips and sturdy metal armor glinting in the sparse patches of light. Many of them mounted on horses. Fifty brothers weren’t going to die today; thousands of men were. The black mass of death writhing under each army’s feet testified to it.

The only similarity Bramble could find between the two battles was that they were, again, outnumbered.

Ramsay Bolton emerged from the bulk of his army, towing a teenage boy behind him on rope. Bramble’s stomach dropped. Rickon. He was going to die.

Jon got off his horse and walked to the front line. Bramble nervously looked to Rickon and Ramsay again, then started walking to Jon. Her breath felt hot in her throat. This had to happen. If Rickon lived, Jon wouldn’t be crowned King in the North. He wouldn’t meet Daenerys, he wouldn’t pledge his allegiance, and everything could change in ways Bramble never imagined.

But it’s a terrible thing to live with. Knowing someone who is loved will die and standing aside to watch it happen.

Bramble latched her hand onto Jon’s arm. He didn’t notice; every ounce of his focus was trained on his little brother. “Jon,” she whispered. It took everything in her to stay calm. “Remember what Sansa said? Remember that he’s going to bait you. But you can’t fall for it.”

Ramsay cut Rickon’s bonds and shoved him forward. Rickon stumbled a few feet, confused. He paused for a moment—just a moment. For Ramsay was being handed a bow and a full quiver of arrows.

Rickson started running.

Jon sharply inhaled and ripped his arm away from Bramble to get back on his horse. “Jon, no!” Bramble exclaimed, but her words fell on deaf ears. Jon raced past her on his horse, heading right where Ramsay wanted him to be.

This would all play itself out. Bramble was certain.

Or was she?

Tormund hurried to Bramble. “He’s going to get himself fucking killed before this even starts,” he snarled quietly.

Bramble continued to watch. Death strayed behind Rickon, following like a hound on his heels. Her teeth ground together. This has to happen, she repeated over and over in her head. This has to happen.

An arrow flew at Rickon, missing just by a few feet. Ramsay was only toying with him.

“He’s not gonna make it in time,” Tormund whispered. When Bramble glanced at him, she was surprised to find Tormund despairing.

The thought of Olly cruelly struck Bramble with such force she couldn’t think straight for a moment. She snapped her gaze back to Rickon and Jon, two brothers who would never again embrace and laugh together. Bramble didn’t do anything for Olly, made herself believe there was nothing that could be done. And he died, just like Rickon was about to.

But what if she was wrong? Wrong about everything?

Images, memories, ran rampant. Olly laughing with Bramble. Olly getting up from the muck to keep practicing his sword fighting. Olly blushing as he got teased. Olly dead on a rope.

Bramble let out a strangled cry. Fuck this. Fuck the future.

Then she was running across the empty land, heart a thunderstorm in her ears. She could catch up to Jon’s horse, take the lead, and save Rickon. But the death behind him was rearing up and she needed to go faster.

Everything felt so serene, for a few brief seconds. Bramble couldn’t hear anything. Each time a foot connected with the frozen ground it sent a purposeful, powerful tremor through her system. The fire warmed. Her breath came out in steady rushes.

A little more and she’d reach Rickon—

But death decided to come early for the Stark boy.

The sound of an arrow piercing Rickon’s chest shattered all the silence. Bramble stumbled to a halt, hands brushing against the cold mud a second before she got upright again.

Rickon gasped for his last, bloody breaths seven meters away. Jon could only watch from atop his horse as his little brother went still. Death seeped away into the ground, taking someone with it.

Jon’s head slowly turned to Bramble. His brown eyes were awash with grief—and wrath.

Then he looked to Ramsay, and the whole world braced itself for chaos.

“Don’t, Jon!” Bramble yelled. “We need to regroup—”

But he kicked his horse into a gallop, charging alone into the army.

The whole plan had gone to shit, with Jon racing ahead and arrows already hissing through the sky. Bramble’s fists ignited. She shouted out a strangled, “Piss!” and turned back to their army, avoiding the hail of arrows sinking into the ground where she stood moments before. It’d be too far to leap into the Bolton army from her distance, and she’d be unlucky enough to get stuck with an arrow before even reaching a close enough proximity. No, she needed to get to the line of Bolton archers, who stood behind the large cavalry. Get them, and the Bolton’s long-range defense would be crippled.

The Stark army was charging, now. Bramble ran faster. She swore she wouldn’t even consider what she was about to do.

But these were desperate times.

“Mag Mar!” Bramble screamed at the top of her lungs. She was gaining a terrible amount of momentum, hoping that it’d pay off. “Mag Mar!”

The giant, who was charging with the army, saw her waving a flaming fist to catch his attention. He slowed to a stop, and Bramble swore she saw Mag grin. This was crazy, this was crazy, this was fucking crazy.

But her thoughts didn’t connect with action. She coiled all the momentum into a single, stupidly ill-thought leap.

And she got launched.

Bramble’s arms windmilled as she soared through the air, back to the charging army she rapidly descended onto. Tears from the wind whipping at her eyes streaked back onto hot temples, and oh, no, she didn’t know what to do with her legs at all. They wouldn’t break, would they? Her trajectory to Mag Mar was spot-on, though, so, in the back of her screaming mind, she applauded herself for it.

Instead of throwing fireballs, it seemed Bramble would be throwing herself.

But this wasn’t even the plan. It was just her getting to the plan. Bramble slammed into Mag Mar, who enveloped her in his huge arms to make sure she didn’t slide off like a cracked egg on the side of a window. The force jarred all her senses, so the moments between landing and being cupped in the giant’s hand blurred together.

The next thing Bramble knew, she now sat in Mag Mar’s calloused palm. She adjusted herself with the few precious seconds given to her while Mag raised his arm up and back. Then he started moving forward, again, letting out a mighty roar that made her eardrums ache. Bramble took one last unhindered breath.

Mag Mar catapulted Bramble back into the sky, high enough that she’d avoid the arrows and far enough that she’d reach the Bolton army. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t move.

There should have been a sense of peace, right? Serenity before madness.

Wherever that calm might have been, she didn’t have the patience to find it.

As Bramble soared across the battlefield and into certain destruction, it suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t know how to land.

She wasn’t going to make it to the archers. No, she was falling too fast and too soon, right into the Bolton cavalry. Not that Mag Mar was at fault; he couldn’t read Bramble’s mind on where she wanted to end up. Communication wasn’t her best trait, and because of that, she was going to crash into the charging chaos.

So be it.

Bramble took control of her flailing legs and arms. She wasn’t about to embarrass herself by doing a literal belly flop into the army. The fire cracked and sparked to life inside her. It surged with such uncontained power that Bramble swore she felt flames lick the back of her throat. Just—just a little longer—

Her arms lifted up into clenched, flaming fists. Bramble screamed with all her fury and terror as she fell into the midst of the cavalry and the lake of death below. One Bolton soldier looked up at the last second to see her coming down with full force. His face shaped with shock and fear, and Bramble wondered if he knew he was about to die.

She unleashed her hold on the fire a second before she hit the ground, right between shouting soldiers and thundering hooves.

The fire’s massive roar swallowed up bodies, sounds, souls.

Bramble’s fists slammed into the earth. Immediately, her vision became blinded by hurricane of red and orange and blue. It felt as if her entire body would be burned away to ash with the sheer force of the fire. Just like at Hardhome.

She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t do anything but feel her blood boil and flesh consumed by flames, flames, flames. Maybe it was for the best. Go out in a blaze, secure the victory, and be remembered until memory faded, and the myth of Jon Snow’s fire-wielder passed into a blissful nothing.

Fire clogged Bramble’s throat, suffocating all humanity with savage wrath. One thing rang clear in the battle inside her: Bramble was the weakness.

This had been a terrible mistake.

“Hey, cheer up, Shamble,” Dad chuckled, patting her on the hunched shoulder. She groaned and rubbed her forehead, absolutely and utterly done with school. “So literature isn’t your best subject. Just means you’ll get more juice in the math department.” He lightly rapped the top of her head with his knuckles for good measure.

“I’m never going to use this in my life,” Bramble complained, saying the cursed phrase her teacher parent despised above all else.

“That’s not true.” Dad took Bramble’s text and examined the poem Bramble was meant to analyze. “Oh, hey, this is Robert Frost. He’s an easy poet! You’re just being lazy.”

“Then what does this poem even mean, Dad? You tell me.” She pointedly drew her finger under a line and read, “’The woods are lovely, dark, and deep/But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep/And miles to go before I sleep.’”

“Psh. It just means there’s still a lot to do before you can rest. Wherever that resting is.”

“It’s not as simple as that.” Bramble paused and looked to Dad. “Is it?”

He shrugged. “It’s as simple as you want it to be.”

“I don’t think that’s how poetry works.”

“Then you don’t know poetry at all.” He nodded sagely at his words. Bramble squinted at him.

“I’m just going to Sparknote it.”

Bramble lay there in burning ruins, wishing she could just not care about what happened and lay herself down to darkness.

She also understood why she would not. Will not. It really…it really was that simple. Shit.

Dad had been right.

You’re not done, yet.

His voice fell upon the battlefield for Bramble alone to hear.

She sat up on her knees, fighting the fire’s rage and dragging it back down inside her with all the power of a broken soul’s will. It fought. Oh, it fought.

But Bramble would not be fucking weak. She refused to be scourged out of her own body and lay waste to everything for miles. This battle was hers to win. Not the first, not the last. The power that coursed through Bramble’s veins would not be her undoing.

There were miles to go.

She breathed in acrid, ashy air and opened dark green eyes.

The innermost ring of the blast was nothing but blackened, scorched earth. Farther out, Bramble saw mangled and melted remains of soldiers and their horses. What hadn’t been killed on sight now screamed and fled as fire ate away at their armor and skin. Gray ash hung in the air, replacing the tranquil snowfall. It blocked out the light, and Bramble’s corner of the world plunged into smoky shadow.

Her nose bled. It was…familiar.

Exhaustion weighed down on Bramble. She coughed as foul air tarnished her lungs. Falling ash stuck to her sweaty brow. Fuck, she was too hot.

When a soldier came charging in to cut her down, he reminded Bramble that she knelt in the middle of a larger battle.

Right.

The fatigue receded as fire took up comfortable residence again. She bared her teeth, accepted the forthcoming death, and pulled out both swords from their sheaths.

In a few quick slices, the soldier laid dead behind Bramble. The ash began to clear, like a curtain pulling back to reveal a monstrous storm of metal, blood, and sorrow.

Bramble entered the bloody fucking fray.

-

The battle raged on. Bramble used her fire in a few other dire circumstances, but she couldn’t risk being caught up in trying to tame it again. So she relied on the blades in her hands and cut down without thinking, without feeling. Just killing.

The battle stunk of blood and shit. Death ran in rivers through corpses of men and horses. Because of Ramsay’s relentless hail of arrows, bodies piled up in mountains. They, in turn, became points of defense and offense for both armies. There was no clear military tactic. Both armies fell back onto the instinctive kill before being killed.

 Bramble found herself climbing up a ridge of corpses, breath and movement wild, to cut down an archer who didn’t see her approaching. Death’s saccharine flavor filled her mouth, but she slashed at the archer’s back, anyway. He shouted and fell to the blackened embrace, adding to the monument of this festering world.

Another Bolton soldier Bramble didn’t hear coming because of the chaos tried to surprise her and run his blade through her side. She narrowly dodged it but lost her footing on an arm. The soldier took another swing and landed a shallow slice to her scalp. Bramble grabbed hold of him as she fell, and together they rolled down the hill of dead bodies. She lost the sword in her right hand, but luckily, the left one had been sheathed earlier.

Bramble already scrambled up when they hit the bottom. She lunged for the solider, who struggled to get on his feet, and slammed her hand into his face. He screamed as fire erupted from her palm and burned so hotly the soldier died in a few seconds.

Death caught him, feasting like carrion.

Bramble found herself near the bulk of what was left of Jon’s army. She spotted both Mag Mar and Wun Wun tossing and crushing soldiers. Arrows stuck out from their thick bodies, and she wondered if it hurt them badly.

The head wound Bramble suffered from bled profusely; she could do nothing to staunch the flow. If she had time, she’d strip cloth off a corpse and tie it around the injury, but Bramble couldn’t pause for a second without getting attacked. It didn’t matter if she tried wiping the blood away. It soaked through her armor, her boots. It’d be like trying to dry off with a wet towel.

Bramble started cleaving her way through Bolton soldiers—but there were still so many of them coming at her from all sides. It got even worse in the bulk of it. Bramble was basically side-to-side with enemies, cutting them down only for another to take their place. The head wound mixed with sweat and stung even more. Bramble couldn’t tell whose blood smeared on her face after a while, though. Faces and shouts merged into one hazy memory happening right before her eyes, existing so long as a blade plunged itself into a body. Bramble entered a medium, a state of being that seamed time together.

She lost herself in war.

The brutality of killing, killing, screaming, stumbling, and killing overwhelmed her clarity so much that Bramble forgot what came next. Forgot until she heard more soldiers marching and large Bolton shields surrounding their army. They formed a half-circle, trapping everyone against the largest mountain of corpses.

Shit.

The spears lowered, and Bolton soldiers began moving closer. Bramble quickly got swallowed up by the panicking men around her. She tried pushing her way back without being too excessive, but the soldiers kept tightening the circle.

And then more enemies came rushing down the pile of bodies, sealing off any chance of retreat. Mag Mar and Wun Wun started attacking the shield wall, and other men followed. Bramble got sucked too far in to be with the rest of them. If she could just—get—out—

The suffocating army swelled in a sudden burst of motion, sweeping Bramble away. Her protests were drowned out by men dying and men fighting to live. She needed to make a break for it and get to the front of the line where enemies were pouring over. That way, she’d be able to use her fire without allies being in the path of destruction.

But that’d only add to the bloody pandemonium, wouldn’t it? Then it might actually diminish their chances of winning, especially if the Knights of the Vale couldn’t see in the smoke and fire. She refused to risk being the cause of losing this fucking fight.

A single, slicing question interrupted Bramble’s half-formed thoughts.

Where was Jon?

-

Feet trampled him into the bloody earth, and each breath Jon attempted to take was quickly stomped out by his own men trying to break through the massacre. It was inescapable. No one would look down and see him struggling to stand. To them, Jon had become yet another corpse.

He tried calling out for help, but he had no voice in him anymore, barely any life. Jon’s hands kept slipping on the clothes and armor he desperately gripped to haul himself up.

Oh, seven hells.

Jon was going to die like this, wasn’t he?

Someone kicked his head, and a blunted, deafening ringing sounded in his ears. Noise of the battle fled from him, leaving Jon with only his ragged, dying gasps. Maybe it was what he deserved, though. Thousands of men were dead because of him. They all probably thought they were going to make it through this, too, just like Jon. He’d made it through everything before. Guess he was wrong.

The pain coldly faded. A heaviness clawed at Jon’s eyes, and…

A hand reached down from the heavens, grabbed Jon’s collar, and hauled him up from the depths of death.

His lungs screamed in relief as Jon breathed. He tilted his head back, gasping, coughing, and stared up into the gray sky. His vision sharpened, and his body remembered its strength. He was alive. He was alive.

Jon lowered his gaze back down to his savior. Her foreign face was as grim-set as ever, dark green eyes alight with the fervor of war. Blood soaked her black hair and trailed down her cheek, ear, and neck. It mixed with the muck of battle and ash and sweat. Blood also flowed from her nose, staining lips and chin crimson. She repeated Jon’s name and shook him as best she could while they were crushed from all sides.

He couldn’t focus on her, though. Faint but fierce flames danced on Bramble’s birthmark. Her hand, still gripping Jon’s collar, lightly burned his skin. Heat rolled off Bramble like an open oven, and for a dazed moment, he worried if she couldn’t control the full extent of the fire that already surfaced on the darkened red part of her skin.

When all Jon did was continue to gasp for air, which now turned hot from Bramble’s presence, she turned her anxious eyes to survey the situation around them. Bolton soldiers killed men to the north, and Umber and Karstark soldiers killed men to the south.

It looked like Bramble only prolonged Jon’s death.

They spotted Davos standing several meters away from them, also trapped in the massacre. His foreboding and bloodied expression mirrored Jon’s. They knew what this would come to.

Jon and Bramble locked eyes once more. She seemed to be waiting for something.

Then a horn echoed across the waste. Bramble grinned. It was sharp and wild and rare. White against red.

Jon looked past Bramble’s shoulder to see a cavalry holding the blue-and-white Arryn banner charging right for the Boltons. What in the seven hells?

As Arryn men crashed through the shield wall, decimating soldiers in a matter of seconds, it dawned on Jon who orchestrated these allies. This victory.

Sansa.

Did Bramb know? Was that why she grinned?

The space between Bramble and Jon loosened with the Arryn support. She let go of Jon’s collar and nodded once to him. He returned the same. “Let’s fucking finish this, eh?” Bramble jerked her bloody chin to the hilltop behind Jon. He turned and spotted Ramsay Bolton sitting on his mount, watching as his army was flattened by hooves and struck down by Arryn swords. Watching as an assured victory was lost in less than a minute.

Jon felt his own fire ignite inside.

“Yeah. Let’s fucking finish this.”

-

Bramble ran to Winterfell with Jon, Tormund, the giants, and a portion of the army. Her head throbbed, and her body cried for water. But this was almost over. She could last a little longer, couldn’t she?

It took only a glance to see death flagging behind both Wun Wun and Mag Mar. They’d been targeted by the shield wall when they tried breaking it. The shadows clung more to Wun Wun, whose breaths came heavy, and blood spilled out his side.

She remembered watching him die after he broke through Winterfell’s gate. Remembered feeling a little sad.

But if Wun Wun died now, Bramble would feel a lot differently.

She checked to see if any blackness resided under her own two feet. Nothing yet. Good.

Because, as usual, Bramble was going to do something stupid.

Winterfell’s gate came into view. Bramble couldn’t appreciate the great, ancient castle like she wanted to. They slowed their pace to formulate a plan.

“Wun Wun, Mag Mar,” Jon called to them as they jogged. He pointed to the approaching gate. “Can you break through that?”

“Let me do it,” Bramble cut in before either giant could respond. “I’ll blast through it.”

“No,” Mag Mar rumbled. He surprised Bramble; why would he care what she did?

“They can take the arrows that’ll come down on them,” Jon agreed. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Crow stay,” said Wun Wun. “Crow too little.”

Bramble scowled. The dried blood on her face cracked with the expression. She looked again to death twisting under them.

“Giant stay!” she yelled in anger, pointing a finger at Wun Wun. He growled. “Giant injured!”

“Bramb, that’s an order!” Jon yelled back. The gate was close, now, and premature arrows penetrated the ground upon their assault.

“They’re about to die, Jon.” The fire sparked with each word. His eyes filled with realization because, yes, she actually could still see who had death clutching at them.

“And what about you?”

What about her?

Bramble didn’t answer Jon. She only set the gate as a target, called the fire, and started running faster than the rest of the ragged men.

“Little Crow!” Tormund shouted as she broke apart from the group. Bramble thought she heard fear in his voice. But she refused to look back—or down. If death awaited her now, let it be a fucking surprise.

Arrows landed behind and in front of Bramble. She ran too quick, however, so they all failed to make their mark.

Let me control it, Bramble pleaded to whoever listened. Let me control it.

The gate came within range. Without thinking—just doing—Bramble swiveled both hands together, conjuring a tempest of flame, and threw it with all her might at the gate. The great mass of fire nearly drug Bramble’s soul with it as it left her hands, but she remained grounded.

The fire exploded upon impact, swathing the gate with its burning touch. It blackened, cracked, and splintered. Bramble weakened it. But still it stood. She had to use more than fire. She had to use force.

Bramble accelerated her run. Flames erupted up her arms, adrenaline fueling their power. An arrow sunk into the ground centimeters from her foot. The shaft snapped in her path. Bramble couldn’t mess this up. If she did, the giants might die anyway because of her failure.

So don’t fuck up.

Easier said than done.

Nonetheless, Bramble lowered her right shoulder and amplified the fire so it flowed through her whole body. She became a pillar of raging light, of purification and chaos and power.

Bramble hit the gate and let her flames, her cursed weapon, consume and tear and burn.

Wood shattered from top to bottom. Bolts gave way because of the intense heat and unhinged the gate doors. They crashed to the ground in flaming, charred heaps, unable to withstand Bramble and the fire.

Her fire.

She pulled it back in before it could slip past her hold and stumbled into the Winterfell courtyard. Her boots squelched in the mud and almost caused her to slip. Bramble steadied herself, however, and locked eyes with Ramsay Bolton, who stood only a few meters away from her. He held a nocked bow in his hand. But those eyes. Colder than the Night King’s.

Ramsay released the arrow. Bramble’s enhanced reflexes were the only thing that kept her from getting shot in the head. The arrow screamed past her right ear as she reached in for more fire with one hand and grabbed the hilt of her sword with the other. Behind the scorching wreckage, Bramble heard men shouting as they made for the vulnerable castle.

She did it. Fucking amazing, she did it—

Two arrows struck Bramble’s back, one in the upper shoulder and the other in the ribcage. All air left her, and the fire screamed and thrashed.

Bramble staggered once, sword dropping from her hand. She hit the ground. Mud crawled into her mouth. The embedded arrows moved on the impact, causing Bramble’s vision to turn white from the agony.

As Winterfell returned to the Starks, Bramble bled out in an empty void.

 

 

 

Notes:

I already saved one giant. Why not two?

Chapter 28

Summary:

Revised 6/30/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Oh. Owie.”

Bramble groaned. She didn’t want to open her eyes, but they did unwillfully.

When she was sixteen, Bramble broke her knee when she slipped on the diving board and cracked it against the edge. The surgery and recovery lasted far longer than Bramble wanted, but Mom took care of her, bringing juice with a straw in it and making misua soup. Bramble and Dad binged Cowboy Bebop and Bob’s Burgers. Though she ached and pained, she healed in a cozy home and on a comfortable couch.

But Bramble wasn’t in her home, this time.

The stench of death, wounds, and medicine hung in the air. She lay on her stomach, neck sore from the prolonged position. Bramble apparently had enough importance to be on a cot, but she recovered in the same area with the rest of the injured and dying—outside of Winterfell’s walls, in a large tent where servants and wildling women tended to men clinging to life and begging for their mothers.

Bramble struggled to prop herself up. Pain lanced through her back, jolting and spasming. She whimpered and almost gave out the next second, but a pair of hands reached under her arms to help.

“There ya are, Little Crow.” Karsi’s familiar voice softened the ache living in Bramble. When she sat upright on the cot, sweaty, hot, and sick, Karsi crouched in front of her. Worry and relief wove through her otherwise hardened expression. “Knew you’d wake up.”

Bramble’s mouth had been stuffed with dry, unbearable cotton. Karsi uncorked a water skin and handed it to Bramble, who gripped it with shaking but strong fingers. “Slowly,” Karsi advised. Bramble took a small, delicious sip and swished it around in her mouth before swallowing. Blood and mud went down with it, but she couldn’t bear to even spit the water out. After another small drink that cleared out the rest of the foul taste and dryness, Bramble gave the skin back to Karsi.

Then, she said in all her throaty hoarseness, “I’m still alive.”

Karsi wryly smiled. “Aye, you are. Surprised everyone else, too.”

“How?” Bramble managed to get out. Fuck, she needed to sleep for another week.

“Guessing it was the fire,” Karsi shrugged. “Tormund said when he went to see if you were still alive, the arrows in ya were on fire. They barely needed to pull anything out since most of it burned away. Now look at you; awake and talking only a few hours after.”

“It’s only been a few hours?” Bramble asked the question a little too quickly and broke down into coughs. Each one stabbed into her back. Karsi gave her more water.

“That it has,” she said while Bramble nursed on the water skin, eyes blurred with tears from the hacking. “You shoulda been dead where the arrows got you. I checked your wounds a little while ago; they’re all stitched together. Even the skin. Looks like burn marks.”

Bramble only nodded, processing what she’d been told. Karsi stood with a tired groan. “Come on. Let’s see if you can walk.”

Taking Karsi’s outstretched hand, Bramble let herself get slowly hauled from the cot. She hissed through clenched teeth, eyes scrunching in pain. Whatever got healed sure didn’t feel like it.

Karsi lent support and walked slowly out of the tent with Bramble. It was almost dark, by now. The Northern air soothed Bramble’s heat, calming the very present and rolling fire that awoke with her. Or had it been awake the whole time, repairing organs and muscles, working to save Bramble from the enveloping darkness?

They walked past more tents—both Westerosi canvas and Free Folk hide—occupied by the wounded. Soldiers and noncombatants who walked between them often did double-takes at Bramble. She tried to ignore it. Before the battle, the only ones who knew of her power resided in a single, tight circle.

Now, though, everyone did. The foreign girl with the birthmark could conjure fire.

Great.

Bramble and Karsi passed through Winterfell’s gateless entrance. The twisted and charred wood had been cleaned up, but Bramble noted scorch marks on the stone arch. She did that. Holy shit. Sometimes…sometimes Bramble still couldn’t believe she held the power inside her.

The battle was a blur in her memory. Bramble recalled lots of blood, lots of killing and screaming, lots of fear and fire. By divine luck, she managed to pick Jon out of the mass panic and get him up from under everyone. But he would have gotten out, anyway. Most likely. Bramble didn’t want to think about other possibilities.

More people in the courtyard stopped in their tracks to watch Karsi and Bramble move through. “Your name has been on everyone’s lips, Little Crow,” Karsi chuckled lowly.

“I imagine so.” Bramble tried straightening a little so she didn’t look as hunchbacked, but that only produced another agonizing jolt. “Ow! Fuck.”

Karsi laughed at her and Bramble gave a side-eye. “Easy, there, Little Crow. We’ll get you into a nicer bed soon enough. Jon wanted you to be put in one of the castle’s rooms, but they still hadn’t been entirely cleared of Bolton bastards. It would have been harder for someone to tend to you outside of the healer’s tents, too.”

Bramble only grunted. She slipped into a daze lapsing both past and present together.

The ground began to shake. Karsi slowed Bramble to a stop. “Hey,” she said with a gentle shake. Bramble forced her drooping eyelids back open. “Got a couple of lads who wanna talk to you.”

Lifting her heavy head, Bramble saw Mag Mar and Wun Wun standing before her. They didn’t look happy. Then again, they never looked happy.

“Little Crow hurt,” Mag Mar rumbled. “Just like she was warned.”

Bramble blinked. That was the longest sentence she’d ever heard him construct. “Death followed you,” she replied blankly. Right? It twined around them as they made a mad dash for the gates. Her eyes went down to feet large enough to crush a man whole. “It’s not anymore.”

“Stupid,” Wun Wun said. Bramble managed a weak scowl. “Stupid Crow.”

“Ah, don’t be too offended,” Karsi spoke when she saw Bramble’s scowling expression. “That’s just their way of thanking you.”

“Go. Rest.” Mag Mar instructed, gesturing to a castle door. “Then we practice throwing you again when better.”

Bramble’s mouth curled into an unexpected smile. She nodded. Karsi started walking again, guiding her indoors. The daze returned again, even thicker this time. Bramble recalled shuffling up steps, speaking…words...to Tormund, and then laying her head down on a pillow. Cold whispered from an open window, and the fireplace remained ashy and still. Candles flickered, welcoming Bramble to a place of safety.

Karsi placed a hand on Bramble’s forehead and said something she couldn’t hear.

The lights went out again.

-

Bramble cut down a soldier no older than she was. He screamed and screamed, adding to the cacophony of war all around her.

She waded through a field of bodies. Hands reached out for her; voices pleaded to her. The fire burned brightly.

“Please! Help me!”

Bramble glanced at who called from below. Tyson, the boy who sat next to her in calculus, bled from a blackened, scorched face. He grabbed onto her leg and pulled Bramble down, down, down through writhing bodies.

“Honey, what’s wrong?” Mom asked at their dinner table. Guts spilled across the plate in front of Bramble. She couldn’t grasp the fork in her hand. Dad lay slumped back in his chair, throat slit. Blood spilled onto his tropical-printed shirt.

“Don’t worry,” Mom smiled. “We’ll be in Hawaii, soon.”

Arrows drove into Bramble’s back and came out her front. She touched an iron tip protruding from her chest. It was cold.

Someone knocked on the door. Bramble opened her eyes and watched a figure enter. Red hair flowed down their back. Pale skin contrasted against a black cloak and dress.

“Sansa,” Bramble croaked. The Stark immediately shivered, breath visible in the room.

“It’s freezing in here,” Sansa remarked. After setting down a bundle of some kind, she moved to close the window above Bramble’s bed. “But that doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Not usually.” The ache in her back didn’t throb too terribly, anymore, so Bramble sat up with less difficulty than before. “What’re you doing here? Aren’t you too…” She squinted. “Important?”

Sansa briefly smiled and poured Bramble a cup of water from the pitcher on an end table. “Things are still disorderly. It’s going to take a few more days until Winterfell can return to a proper normal.”

Bramble glanced out the frosted window as she drank her water. It seemed to be late in the morning. She slept all night, then, plagued by half-remembered dreams of gore and death.

“I’ll send for a bath and meal to this room, now that you’re awake,” Sansa continued, looking around the chamber. While it wasn’t grand, it was still more spacious and comfortable than anything she’d slept in since coming here. A few tapestries adorned the stone walls, and a full-length mirror leaned against one corner. “I imagine you’ll want to wash off the battle.”

Bramble scratched the side of her face at the remark. Dried blood flecked off. “Yeah. Thank you.”

Sansa placed a hand on the bundle she brought in. “And I brought you a change of clothes. Once things settle down, you’ll have more of a wardrobe.” Sansa paused for a moment. “Do you prefer dresses? Or pants?”

The hesitant question made Bramble chuckle. “Both,” she said with a small smile. “I like both.”

The nod Sansa gave made Bramble wonder if she already had some design in mind. “Are you still in pain? I can have the maester come see you.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m feeling much better already.”

Unspoken words flashed across Sansa’s solemn face. Bramble wondered if Sansa, too, came to the courtyard in time to see the destruction Bramble caused and how she lay in the mud with burning arrows sticking out her back. What did she think?

Wait, had she already killed Ramsay? Or did he die differently?

“Very well. When you’re ready, I believe Jon wants to see you.”

“Thank you.”

Lady Stark slipped back out the door, which shut with an old, solid thud. Bramble drank the rest of her water in the silent room. It all felt so strange. There should be…more to it, shouldn’t there? One moment she was disemboweling men on the battlefield, and the next she was getting ready to take a bath in a famous castle. Transition apparently held no dramatic value.

While Bramble waited for the bath to arrive, she went through the clothes Sansa brought. A soft, gray tunic with fitted cuffs and collar, sleek leather trousers and a matching vest with the Stark emblem stamped in, underwear, and socks. Bramble smiled at the attire laid out for her. This kind of outfit was apparently becoming her known look. She just hadn’t got the chance to wear dresses, that was all. Though nobody here would never guess it under the circumstances, Bramble loved getting her pretty on. She knew how to do makeup well and had a clear idea of what looked good on her and others. Before that plane crashed into the ocean and left Bramble awash on the shores of Dorne, she considered majoring in cosmetology or fashion. Or math. But that was a less sexy career, despite her father’s vehement and detailed objections.

Bramble could flick on a wicked-sharp cat eye, though, and apply highlighter that matched both her Filipina-brown skin and the ruddy birthmark. And hey, maybe if she lived through the approaching shitstorm, she could show womankind how to slay just with filled-in eyebrows.

The notion made her smirk. She couldn’t be the girl she was three years ago, anymore. Instead of being a college student pursuing some sort of passion, Bramble fought alongside dirty men and giants to claim castles and stand against the dead. Instead of wielding a foundation brush or a pencil to scribble down math equations, she wielded a near-uncontrollable fire. And swords. Couldn’t forget those swords.

Thinking too much about this life and her old one sparked the pangs of homesickness and loss, so Bramble walked to the other side of the room and examined a rich tapestry probably a hundred years older than her. It was sewn of thick material, depicting men and wolves hunting a stag together. Bramble ran a finger along the bottom. It reminded her of Brave. Her mom cried at the movie every time she watched it.

Bramble missed them. Not a day went by that she didn’t.

Before she could have a full meltdown, servants entered with a meal, a bath, buckets of hot water, and plenty of soaps and fragrances. One of the girls nervously offered to assist Bramble, but she declined. She just wanted to take a sad bath in peace.

The water turned lukewarm quickly because of the room’s frigid temperature. It felt nicer than if it stayed hot because it stopped burning tender back wounds. Bramble scrubbed away the battle, and soon, the water turned murky from old blood and muck. She tried not to think about it too much. The servants brought her a razor blade, too, which Bramble hadn’t used on herself since the brothel days. Apparently, ladies who stayed in castles were ladies who shaved as well. Whores and highborns.

Bramble shaved for the sake of familiarity. When she washed her hair, she was reminded of the cut on her scalp. It was tender like her back wounds but didn’t sting like it should. Upon further prodding, Bramble realized that it, too, had healed somewhat.

Okay. So this whole healing thing was…new. Too bad she didn’t have it when her face nearly got sliced off.

Wasn’t this all a little unfair? The fire, the strength, the speed, the healing, seeing death…Bramble shouldn’t have as much as she did. Right? She was pretty fucking sure the cool kids called her something like “overpowered.” And it might not stop, either.

Well. As long as they kept Bramble alive and helped those she cared for, she’d keep using them. Dad wouldn’t have liked the violence part, but he definitely would have wanted to use her fire for roasting marshmallows and searing steak. Mom would have made sure Bramble played fair in swimming. And if Bramble had these powers on Earth? She’d high-five her ex-boyfriend and make her hand super-hot so it’d burn him, but he’d have no way to prove it was her. Just a little revenge for dumping Bramble on her birthday and telling everyone she was a crazy bitch.

While Michael graduated and went off to college, though, Bramble died and wound up in a fictional world.

She pushed herself out of the filthy bath and dried off with a towel. The tang of metal, sweat, and blood had finally left her. Now, Bramble’s skin smelled like cloves and hair like roses. Her shaved legs felt strange against the crisp air.

Before Bramble dressed, she went to the mirror and lowered the towel enough to see what the arrow wounds looked like. Karsi’s description was accurate; the puckered scars had the texture of burn marks. They still appeared red and angry but were hardly bigger than an arrow puncture. And only Bramble’s back was sore; nothing internally hurt at all.

She checked out the new scar on her scalp, too. It ran about six inches across and also had a reddened appearance. But unlike the back marks, the scar maintained a thin, inconspicuous line. It’d only be noticeable when Bramble pulled her hair back really tight.

But Bramble left her hair down. She parted the black mess to the side and thoroughly brushed it out with a proper comb. Though the length was barely long enough to be tucked behind her ears, it kept its shape.

For the first time in a very long time, Bramble regarded herself in the mirror and watched her reflection smile back. It wasn’t a full smile, an innocent smile, but it was real. The stone hanging from her neck rolled around between two fingers.

Then she left her room in search of Jon Snow.

-

“It’s good to see you’re up and walking,” Davos said. Bramble had found him during her search for the main hall, which she’d been told Jon resided.

“Glad to be alive,” Bramble said back, though she wasn’t sure she entirely meant it. Her eyes glossed over the ancient walls protecting them. You’re in a castle. An actual, real castle. Not some ruin or recreation.

Oh, her dad would have loved this.

“You sore?”

“Mm hm. But it’s not as bad as it was yesterday.” She tore her gaze away and looked to Davos. “Have you sent a raven to Castle Black? Saying it’s safe for Shireen to come here?” Bramble tried not to think too hard about who would be coming with Shireen. The stone was more than enough of a reminder.

“No, not yet.” Davos’ face turned grim. They approached the tall, dark doors of the main hall. Bramble stifled the rising anger and slowed.

“Why not?”

“Because of her.”

Davos pushed the door open, and on the other side of the large chamber Bramble saw Jon standing next to her. Melisandre.

Fuck, that was right. She was still here. And without Shireen’s death to exile her, the woman had no reason to go.

“Bramb,” Jon smiled as the two approached. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got shot with two arrows yesterday,” said Bramble, but her eyes stayed on Melisandre. She just had a look that didn’t bode well.

“But you were saved by your fire,” Melisandre spoke with a faint smile of her own. “A very fortunate power. A strong power. One that will undoubtedly benefit us in the Great War to come—”

“Stop,” Bramble cut in with the slice of her hand. “Just stop, alright?” She turned to Jon, pointing a finger at Melisandre. “You remember what she’s done, right? What she tried to do? She planned on killing Shireen.”

“But did it happen?” Melisandre questioned. “No, and nor do I have any further plans for the Baratheon princess. Whatever becomes of her now is in the Lord of Light’s hands.”

“Yeah, but tell them who you did sacrifice, eh? Tell them.”

Melisandre paused, staring at Bramble with cold, disdainful eyes. When she didn’t answer, Jon asked seriously, “Who did you sacrifice?”

In a soft voice, she answered, “Lady Baratheon and some soldiers.”

Davos shook his head in disgust. “You’ve wasted life after life for the sake of your Lord. And look where it all got them! Everyone you promised greatness is nothing but ash and food for crows.”

A silence. Melisandre stayed still, like a sculpture in a dark and sacred temple. Sometimes Bramble forgot the incredible beauty she possessed, cultivated by ages of sorcery and devotion to the strange god overseeing this world.

And she saw a sad woman. Eyes downcast, hands clasped together, skin almost gray in the pallid light.

No. Bramble wouldn’t dare pity her.

Then that dark gaze lifted to Bramble. “You wish for me to leave, my lady?”

“Yes.”

“And why is that?” Melisandre tilted her head ever-so-slightly. Her character shifted again. Out of the corner of her eye, Bramble saw a shadow flicker into motion, like something tried to rise from it. She nearly lost her breath.

Melisandre saw fear instantly grip Bramble. She took a step forward, then another, red dress swaying against the stone floor. “Darkness has followed you for quite some time, hasn’t it? Shadows of the night, agents of the darkness. They pushed you to Castle Black like herding a sheep to the slaughtering pen. But now you’ve escaped.” Melisandre came close to Bramble, and she could smell the sweet incense imbued in the Red Woman’s dress. The ruby in the center of her choker pulsated with life.

“You’ve escaped, and they’re drawn to you once more. Do you think you’re free of them? That you will ever be free the farther you stray from the Night King’s grasp?”

Bramble broke free of the terror and bared her teeth. “And how the fuck do you know about those, huh?”

The corner of Melisandre’s mouth quirked upward. “It’s sorcery, child. Shadow binding. Weaving them beyond the Wall testifies to the Night King’s power, even as he’s trapped. That, or he has agents in this land to do his bidding. But you’ve known that for a while now, haven’t you? Even if you chose not to recognize it.”

“And what does this have to do with you, eh?” Bramble hissed. Her hand itched to rip Melisandre’s choker right off her porcelain neck. “I can take care of myself.”

“I am the only one who has kept those shadows at bay,” Melisandre said. “They cannot break through the barriers I’ve constructed. Why do you think they haven’t come for you since you returned with your voice and your fire? The moment I leave, they will swarm this place.”

Bramble stared. That…that couldn’t be true, could it? Melisandre? Protecting her? There had to be an agenda. Right?

“Alright,” Jon’s interruption held a harshness that tore Bramble away from the numbing revelation. “What in the seven hells are you two talking about?”

“It’s simple, Lord Snow,” Melisandre answered without taking her gaze off of Bramble. “Your fire-wielder keeps secrets. She has since the beginning, and she will until the end. Secrets that could be the downfall of the world as we know it.”

Fire finally ignited on Bramble’s clenching fists. “Oh, you know what? Fuck you, you stupid fanatic! I’m gonna—”

Melisandre began chanting words that shook Bramble’s bones, made her head erupt in agony, made the fire flee. She doubled over, unable to breathe, to think. Melisandre gripped the top of her head and she screamed. In her dimming vision, Bramble watched Jon brace himself against the hall’s long table, clutching his head.

Then the world burst with red, with the taste of spice and flame and magic.

—Mom and Dad held hands and sung “Edge of Seventeen” at the top of their lungs in the car.
Christmas lights blurred on the downtown buildings as they drove.
Jon, Davos, and Melisandre sit next to Bramble in the backseat.
Hot chocolate coated her throat—

—Bramble and her mom ate street food in Manila. Tagalog flowed through the busy street.
Humidity dampened her brow but could not dampen her excitement.
Jon, Davos, and Melisandre stand amidst the crowd—

—Dad taught at the front of the classroom, dry erase marker bobbing in his hand as he spoke.
Equations dotted the white board. Bramble wrote them down with perfect understanding.
She leaned over to explain the complex problem to Tyson.
Instead it’s Jon, staring at her with terrified eyes—

—The concert deafened Bramble. Lights flashed on stage. She couldn’t hear herself singing to the song.
Bodies bumped together. Her legs and feet hurt from jumping so much with the massive crowd.
She looked to see where Renee and Valerie were in the tumult and chaos.
Melisandre stands beside her instead, still and shocked—

—Bramble had dinner with Mom and Dad. They were laughing and Pink Floyd played in the background.
Jon, Davos, and Melisandre sit in the usually empty seats. They look desperately around the house.
This is wrong.
This is wrong.
This is wrong.
Bramble takes the knife she cut her chicken with and stabs herself in the hand.
She screams—

The stone was cold under Bramble’s splayed palms. She coughed and gasped, blood bubbling in her nostrils. Everything—everything was so real. What happened? What happened?

She raised her head and saw the three other people in the hall also on the ground. Melisandre’s ruby glowed hotly, and she clutched at her heaving chest for air.

“What did you do,” Bramble growled, struggling to get to her feet. Her throat burned, like it refused to let her speak. The world tilted and she stumbled back on all fours. Hot sobs choked her. Tears mixed with blood and she was so, so sad. “What did you fucking do!”

Bramble wrapped an arm around her aching stomach as it twisted with each cry. Her parents—Mom and Dad—her life—all revisited in a matter of moments.

Take me back, she pleaded. Take me back.

Blood and salt water dripped onto the dark stone.

“I…showed them the truth,” Melisandre eventually spoke. She raised herself up onto her knees. Bramble could barely see through the haze of tears. “The truth that would have destroyed this world, should it have remained hidden.”

“You don’t know that!” Bramble shouted, voice cracked and hitched. “You don’t—know anything.” A new wave of tears poured over. It was as if she had been gutted and all her suppressed and raw emotions now spilled out.

She forced her eyes shut, sobs bouncing off the floor and back up into her ears. “You—it doesn’t matter if I want you gone or not,” Bramble spoke, all anger swallowed up by anguish. She didn’t care anymore. She hurt inside. Hurt more than whatever swords sliced her face or arrows pierced her back. Hurt like when Olly died. “You just have to go. It’s…necessary. You have to leave.”

The two women stared at each other. “Who are you?” Melisandre asked. Fear consumed those old blue eyes.

“Bramble Aldana.” She uttered her last name like it was a forgotten curse.

Jon groaned and sat up. “What…the hell,” he breathed, wiping away blood leaking from his nose. He looked to Bramble, unable to speak. How could he?

She sighed and darted her eyes between Jon and Davos, the older man pale and weak. He wiped the sweat off his brow with a trembling hand.

None of it mattered, anymore. The secrets. Bramble only wanted to go lie down and cry until she was empty. Everything she tried so hard to keep hidden for her sake and the sake of others had just been brutally ripped out. They all saw the memories. It hadn’t been another one of Melisandre’s illusions. It was real.

“So,” Bramble said, wearily sitting up. The hall seemed to yawn open, and she wished it would swallow her up like she had seen death do to so many. “Those memories. They’re from another world. I’m from another world.”

Nothing lifted off of Bramble’s chest. Nothing changed. She tucked black hair behind her ears. Melisandre didn’t even look pleased. Just as empty as Bramble. Words were hollow as she repeated the long-kept truth.

“I’m from another world.”

 

 

 

Notes:

Ugh, I'm sorry this took so long to post. I had major writer's block as to how I wanted to lay out the last scene with Melisandre.

Bramb is going to get a rest soon, though.

Chapter 29

Summary:

Revised 6/30/2020

Notes:

Heavy dialogue, guys. Sorry about that.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Jon and Bramble stood on Winterfell’s ramparts. A lone figure rode south, shrouded in red that looked almost black in the fading light.

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” Bramble said. Everything still hurt inside her, but it had lessened, like wounds scarring over and leaving aching muscles. All injuries hurt the same in some sense. “But—but how could I? How could I possibly explain it?”

She turned her head to Jon, who continued to stare out into the unbroken winter landscape. If she set her gaze northward, she would see the remnants of a fresh battle that happened two days past but felt like a lifetime ago. The crater of Bramble’s airborne impact sat black against the snowfall. The cold choked out the stench of lingering death.

When Jon remained silent, Bramble sighed and rambled on. “I told you the truth about everything. About dying and waking up in Dorne. I drowned with my mom and dad in an ocean—” she drew herself short when her voice began to waver. Once it steadied again, Bramble said, “I…understand if you don’t want to trust me after this. I may have used up all the forgiveness there is to offer. But I think you need me. Fuck, I know that sounds lame—”

Jon suddenly faced Bramble, which startled her. “It’s not about any of that!” he shouted. Jon’s voice echoed across the ramparts, and upon hearing its volume he drew himself back. She tried not to flinch too visibly.

“It’s not about any of that,” repeated Jon, less loudly but more firmly. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling to find the right words. “Bramb—I don’t even know what I just saw. For fuck’s sake, I knew you were still keeping secrets! How could I not? You’re—you. Of course there’d be things you weren’t going to tell me, and I accepted that fact.” Jon placed a clenched fist against his heart, the other gripping the snow-covered ledge. Bramble realized that this was the most animated she’d ever seen him. “But that? I don’t even know where to start. It’s beyond my fucking comprehension! And that—” He took a sharp breath. “That is saying something, because we literally have the dead marching on us.”

They stared at each other. The fire curled within Bramble to match her shame.

“Then where do you want to start?” Bramble lowly asked. Not for the first time, she felt small compared to Jon. As if disappointing him was the worst possible fate.

“Where—I don’t fucking know, Bramb.” Jon still spoke with a snap to his voice, but sarcasm mingled with it. He rubbed his brow like he had a headache. After a drawn-out silence, Jon said, “Those…those people were your parents, weren’t they?”

“Yeah. David and Rosamie Aldana.” Bramble leaned back on the ledge. The snow melted under her. “They were the best. I miss them every day.”

“A-and the thing you were in? Where they were singing and you sat behind them and it was going really fast, but the inside was warm.” Jon’s anger seceded as he allowed his burning curiosity to take its place. “There were lights everywhere outside, too.”

“We were in a car. That’s the regular mode of transportation where I’m from. They were really nice to have.” Bramble found herself smiling despite the gloominess. “If we had one here, it’d only take a few hours to get to the Wall instead of a week. The vehicle is all technology, not magic. The heat you felt is built into all cars, so you can stay warm and comfortable if it’s cold outside. Or, if it’s hot, you can turn on cool air.”

Jon shook his head in utter disbelief. It amused Bramble to see his usually stoic expression cracked. “That’s…fucking amazing.”

“Wait ‘til I tell you about planes, buddy. I died in one, but they’re still fantastic.”

The fire reignited in Bramble, and a little more of the guilt she carried turned into cold flakes of ash.

Sansa came to speak with Jon before all of his questions could be answered. Bramble excused herself but told him that they could continue their conversation at a later time. And that Davos should probably join in, too. The old man was probably reeling after what he saw.

Bramble retreated to her room. So. That wasn’t as bad as she thought it’d be. No banishment—yet.

Part of her could hardly believe it. People knew where she came from. Bramble never thought that secret would be revealed.

But what was next?

What if they found out the real reason why Bramble could “see” the future? That it was all a show she, her family, and millions of other people watched for entertainment?

Shit.

-

It was decided that Sansa and Tormund should also be informed of Bramble’s true whereabouts. The two of them, Jon, Davos, and Bramble sat in a private chamber with a warm fire. Untouched food spread out across the chamber’s small table. Bramble tried—and failed—to not stare at a perfect loaf of bread for too long.

“Oh, seven hells,” Davos grumbled. He snatched up the bread and placed it in her hands. Bramble lost control. She chomped down on the loaf and tore off a massive chunk with a growl.

“So, er, the reason why we’re here,” Jon began after clearing his throat. His eyes glanced at Bramble to continue, but she just stared back, chewing on her bread. Jon sighed.

“Sansa. Tormund. The reason why we’re here is to tell you that…that…” Jon gestured to Bramble to make sure they knew who he talked about. Then, brusquely, he said, “That Bramble is—from another world, apparently.”

Sansa appropriately blurted, “What?”

Tormund, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes suspiciously and moved them back and forth between everyone. He leaned forward, then backward, then propped an arm on his knee. “Wait,” he muttered, eyes narrowing more at Jon. “You’re telling me you didn’t know already?”

Bramble stopped chewing her bread and audibly swallowed.

Did he just fucking say…?

“And you did?” Jon asked incredulously.

Tormund shrugged noncommittally. “Well. Yeah.”

Numbness crawled up Bramble’s legs. It spread to her arms, her chest, her mouth.

Still, she managed to breathe out, “How? How the fuck did you know?”

The wildling grunted and tossed back some ale. He wiped his mouth and beard with the back of a hand. “Ah, I met some strange folk like yourself before. You acted just like them. Spoke just like them. Figured it was common knowledge, by now.” Roughly, he added with raised eyebrows, “But apparently not.”

Bramble stood. She couldn’t decide on being angry or not. Really, she didn’t know even how to feel, so the fire burned hot in her confusion. The table began smoking as a handprint seared into the wood.

This day. This fucking day just had to get weirder, didn’t it? So it might as well happen.

“Who did you meet,” she spoke through a barely-moving mouth.

“Just a woman. Odd hair. Helped me and a few of my kin when we thought we were going to freeze in the cold. I was just a boy, then. Said she was from another world and was just passing through. I thought she was a spirit or something until she showed up again when my clan was on its way to meet Mance Rayder at Hardhome. They spoke for a while, then she talked to me. All grins and jokes, that woman. Not as serious as you, Little Crow.” Tormund had the audacity to laugh at his funny. Bramble’s scowl deepened.

“Do you know if…if this woman is from Earth? Where I’m from?” Bramble questioned. Tormund’s easiness faded. He leveled her with a sharp gaze, the same as when he said he knew she was a girl hiding amongst the Night’s Watch.

“Maybe. But I doubt it.”

“And what the hell does that mean?”

“Means that you might be different like her, Little Crow,” Tormund spoke with the slight shake of his head. “But you ain’t where she’s from.” He relaxed once more and folded his arms. “Still, though. Makes me look pretty smart compared to you southern kittens, eh? Here nobody talked about your home, so I figured it was already common knowledge.”

“That doesn’t make you smarter, Tormund,” Jon sighed, rubbing his brow raw.

Bramble sat back down and started eating her bread at a dangerous pace. She wanted to cry. Maybe scream a lot. Burn some shit. But she’d settle with stuffing her face for the moment.

So Tormund knew all along. And he just rolled with it? Didn’t ask any questions? Didn’t imply anything?

Wait. Damn. He kinda had implied stuff now that she thought about it. Not heavily implied. But there were moments when he expected her to do more, say something specific. She failed his small quizzes because she was so wrapped up in her own problems and trying to tread carefully.

Fuck. Man, fuck.

There was a drawn-out silence as everyone processed the…new…information. The handprint Bramble marked into the table still smoldered.

Davos cleared his throat. In his clipped brogue, he said, “Pardon my rudeness, but I’d like to talk about what exactly happened with the Lady Melisandre earlier today. I’m guessing it’s the original reason why we’re here, until Tormund gave such a…revelation. He didn’t see what Snow and I saw, though. Which was—shittingly insane if I may say so myself.”

Bramble shook her head. Right. That happened, too.

Best just get it over with.

“Alright.” She ate the rest of her bread and washed it down with a hefty gulp of tame ale. “So I’m from a world called Earth. Because, yes, there are in fact other worlds. Yours isn’t the only one. Specifically? I lived in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in a country called Canada. That’s where the accent is from. And you know what? It gets made fun of by the rest of the world as much as it does by you fucks here.

“My world is highly advanced compared to yours. Technologically, we live thousands of years in the future from where your world stands. You guys are still…probably in the Middle Ages. The Dark Ages. Little scientific and artistic progress, a lot of religious reliance, feudalism, and death because medicine and hygiene aren’t implemented.” Another swig of ale. Bramble felt herself diving off the deep end, but she let herself plummet. “You people literally have rivers of shit running through your streets in Westeros. You don’t have running water. No clean water. No technological innovation that would propel you into the next age. Essos is a little further ahead, but, you know, slavery, and that’s fucking bad. It’s just...this time in my world is considered one of the worst ages to live in. Like, guys, this is really bad. You got epidemics and diseases that’ll make your skin fall off here with no curable antidotes, nor the drive to find any. I honestly wanted to kill myself the first time I had to shit in a pot with just a cloth to wipe with. And then have no soap to wash my hands! Fuck, it’s disgusting here.”

Davos coughed suggestively for her to rein it back.

Bramble leaned back and rubbed her face. “What else? Oh, yeah. We don’t have dragons or shit where I’m from. No magic. No sorcery. No undead. Just old stories that stem from man’s inability to face the sad and terrifying truth of his existence. Plus, dinosaurs. But I’ll get to them later. Oh—we also don’t have seasons that last years on end. That’s weird. Like, it’s not scientifically possible with the way the world ultimately rotates and stuff. So that probably attributes to magic, as well. Back where I live, I’ve seen…seventeen winters? Yeah, I came here when I was seventeen.”

“Seventeen?” Jon repeated softly. Bramble nodded once.

“One for each year of my life. Our seasons don’t work like yours. We get all four within a year—twelve months within that year. They each last a few months.”

“That sounds like madness,” Sansa whispered. A pale sheen cast over her face. Bramble felt sorry for her. Out of everyone, she got the worst punch to the gut with all this.

“Nah, not really. Winter comes, winter goes. Though I lived in a region where it lasted a little longer anyway because of its position in the hemisphere. But people can expect when a season will come.” Bramble then paused and scratched her nose. “Then again, with climate change, things were getting dicier. You see—uh, we have so many people in our world that’ve abused the environment on a global scale that it’s damaged the world. We have terrible natural disasters. Fires, hurricanes, droughts, floods. Those are just a few examples. But it’s kinda too late to do anything about it? So we just live our lives, waiting for our world to die.”

“And you say our world is shit?” Tormund huffed. Bramble gave him a flat stare.

“For the most part, we don’t have to worry about getting run through with swords on a daily basis. Or dying of a cough. There are almost eight billion people living in my world for a reason.”

Another, more stunned silence. Bramble made a face and rolled up her sleeves. She was hot and uncomfortable, making for another tangent.

“I never would have had to work at a brothel to survive in my world. I was…safe there. I had goals. Attainable dreams. I’ve been to school, you know, for most of my life. And I was planning on attending more school once I graduated from my compulsory one.” Since when had her voice grown quiet and sad? “Now look where I am. Who I am. A living weapon.”

She forced herself to perk up. Another drink washed away the dryness, the ache in her throat. “But! I’m fantastic at mathematics. It was my best subject. So if you have any financial problems that you need help solving, come to me. I practically have all the knowledge of a maester. More, even, though I don’t want to oversell myself.”

Bramble gestured for them to direct more questions at her. “Come on. We’ve got all night. Throw stuff at me so I can answer. I’m a person from another world. You’ve got to have questions.”

“I’ve got one,” Davos immediately jumped in. He’d been waiting for a chance since the beginning. “In the vision—memory—thing—scape—what was that city we were in? The one with all the…” He moved a hand up and down. “Towers? A-and all the people and the food, speaking a strange language.”

She nodded, knowing what memory he was referencing. “That’s a city called Manila, in the Philippines. It’s where my mom’s from. They were speaking Tagalog. And it’s why I look the way I do. I don’t know how big my world is to yours, but it’s pretty diverse because, well, there’s no major place that hasn’t been discovered. Earth is discovered, right? And since travel is so easy, we can visit a place on the other side of the world for a week and then be back home in less than twelve hours—depending on the layover,” Bramble added under breath as an afterthought. “But the towers you saw were just buildings. They’re pretty common structures for us. Those weren’t even that tall.”

“And do you speak that language?” Tormund asked.

“Yeah.”

He huffed a laugh. “That explains the strange tongue you were speaking to me when Karsi was hauling you up to your room. You probably don’t remember, you were so fucked up, but that explains it.”

Bramble had no recollection of ever doing that. But it was unsurprising. She had been completely fucked up.

Okay. Okay. This was getting…easier. A flow was emerging. A back and forth. Not an interrogation where she was imprisoned and tortured for information. Just questions being asked by friends—who still considered her a friend.

She’d get back to the fact that there was another person from another world who liked to “drop in” later.

But for now…

For now, Bramble got to talk about her home. Something she hadn’t really done in three years.

It was nice.

 

 

 

Notes:

I struggle with writing aftermaths. But it's done! Meaning that I can hop back into the main storyline. Hope all of you had great holidays and take a respite from the normal stresses of the world. Or, at least this little chapter can give you a moment of peace.

Chapter 30

Summary:

6/30/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble’s heart raced for some odd reason. She tried brushing it off, but that only amplified it even more. If she could punch it to get it to stop, she would.

Davos stood beside her in the courtyard. He shifted on his feet. “This is taking too damn long,” he commented gruffly, then tried adjusting the waistline of his trousers. Bramble gave him a sidelong look.

“Problem?” she inquired.

“These new pants are a little tight,” he said, then not-so-subtly leaned to the side in an attempt to stretch them out. Bramble wiped a smile off her mouth with the back of a hand, but he saw it anyway.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh at the fucking fat man, won’t ya?”

“Just give it a little while,” Bramble advised. “It’ll loosen up. It’s just because it’s new.”

“Says the girl shaped like a banner pole.”

“Whoa, hey, that’s fucking rude.” She grinned as she spoke, though. She followed up with, “And besides, it’s a good thing I’m like this. That way, if Jon and I are walking in a crowd, people can find him because I’ll be the only one visible.”

Davos barked a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself. You two are the same fucking height. It’s Lady Stark who everybody will know to look for.”

Bramble chuckled. “Yeah. True.”

Their banter ended when Winterfell’s gates creaked open. Bramble and Davos stood straight and watched figures on horseback ride through. Lord Commander Edd took the front, Grenn flanked the right, Pyp flanked the left, and a brother named Allin took up the back. In the center of their caravan was Shireen Baratheon.

And bundled up in Shireen’s coat sat Balerion the Orange Dread.

Stable hands came forward and took care of the Night’s Watch horses as the brothers and princess hopped of. Davos was the first to hug Shireen, Bramble the second. She breathed in Shireen’s hair and closed her eyes. Shireen was safe.

Balerion gave a scratchy, agitated meow upon being squished between Shireen and Bramble. She let go and petted the cat’s head. He closed his eyes and purred at her warm touch.

Ed and Pyp gave her quick embraces and quick jokes next. Then she faced Grenn, who scratched the side of his face and couldn’t meet her in the eyes. Bramble didn’t have to look to know that everyone watched to see what they were going to do. And, from the redness rising in his cheeks, Bramble could only imagine what Edd and Pyp had teased him about before arriving.

So she lightly punched Grenn in the chest. He broke out into a grin, and that was a sight Bramble wanted to see since leaving.

“Iven is going to show you to your room,” Bramble said, stepping back and gesturing to a nearby servant. “You’ll all have baths prepared and your clothes washed. Then Snow will see the Lord Commander for dinner.”

“You his little errand girl, now?” Edd smirked.

Bramble scowled.

“Ah, yep, there it is.” Pyp pointed at her face. Shireen snickered, and Bramble’s scowl deepened.

“I literally burned a hundred Bolton men alive. I’m not an errand girl.”

“Did you kill them with that face?”

She punched Pyp hard in the shoulder. He couldn’t duck away in time and yelped an “Ow!” Then he got laughed at by his brothers, which created a scowl of his own. Bramble unstrapped Shireen’s packs, slung them over her shoulder, and guided the princess to her room.

Davos followed behind, chuckling for a good while.

-

The meeting with Jon lasted a couple hours. Bramble, Davos, Tormund, Sansa, Brienne, and Maester Wolkan also attended. It was mostly about how much the Wall severely lacked any defense, and how they could use the Free Folk to man it. Bramble also gave her report on how the relocation of Free Folk clans and families had been going since Jon still wanted her to spearhead it. They had been cooperative—for the most part. Bramble had to knock some heads of chieftains and particularly stubborn wildlings. But since she was already widely-accepted as their ally, they tended to listen to her.

Food was a concern, both for the Free Folk and for Northerners. The Boltons completely wrecked Winterfell’s finances, too, which put the Starks in a nasty pickle.

Bramble looked at the ledgers during the meeting. Like her dad, she saw the numbers as a language. They all made sense to her. Even though she wasn’t an expert in finances, it was just another form of math.

Everyone watched Bramble absently rub her scar while she found three thousand gold tucked away in some unused fund. She then reallocated it to food storage and medicine. They initially protested medicine, but Bramble reminded them that a war headed their way. Soldiers and civilians would need it if they didn’t want disease to wipe everyone out before the dead could.

So, along with Free Folk living arrangement coordinator, Bramble became the unofficial master of coin for the North. That was something.

There’d be an assembly with all the Northern houses, the Knights of the Vale, and Free Folk clan leaders in four days’ time. Bramble was almost certain what would happen there, but she opted to not tell Jon. He was stressed enough. He could savor these last few days before being named King of the North.

Once the meeting ended, Bramble made her way to Shireen’s room. The princess had made herself comfortable in her quarters and wore a fresh nightgown. Her hair was washed and hung clean around her shoulders.

Balerion looked even more at home, perched roundly on the decent-sized bed. For a feral, starving cat at Castle Black, he’d come a long way. He’d also grown a few sizes, no thanks to his new owner.

“I’m happy to see you again,” Shireen smiled after they parted from their embrace. “I didn’t want to go to the Targaryen.”

“But she has dragons!” Bramble mock-exclaimed, stretching out on the bed and petting the cat. “Balerion can meet his family!”

He murped.

Shireen laughed and joined the two of them on the bed. “I’d much prefer to be with you.” She paused, mischief glinting in her brown eyes. “Though, I think dear Grenn would much prefer to be with you, as well.”

“Whoa. Hey. You’re too young to be saying stuff like that.”

“I’m fifteen! I’m practically a woman!”

“No, you’re not.”

“Well,” she sniffed, “after all the talk I heard at Castle Black, I know much more about what men want to do with women.”

Bramble was going to knock those three idiots’ heads together. “Believe me, Shireen. They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

“Well. I know what Grenn was talking about.” Shireen had been emboldened by their conversation. She grinned cheekily. “He just wants to hold you and kiss you.” After a moment, she added, “Then he got made fun of by Edd and Pyp and shut up. But the way his eyes lit up whenever we spoke about you was adorable.”

Bramble’s cheeks grew hot. “Tell me, princess,” she spoke slowly. “Have you ever been tickled?”

“Not since I was a little girl—”

Shireen’s sentence cut off with a shriek as Bramble launched onto her, fingers digging into her sides. Balerion, disrupted by the outburst, huffed and jumped off the bed. Shireen flailed and kicked in an attempt to escape Bramble’s grasp, but her struggle was weak because of the laughter.

Bramble couldn’t stop laughing, either, and eventually, she lost her grip because it distracted her too much. She fell back onto the bed, giggles fading. They sounded so strange. Bramble hadn’t laughed like that since arriving here.

It really was funny, though. After so much time, after so much heartache and grief and sorrow, she could laugh. Should she even have been able to? With everything that has and will happen? Was it alright to laugh?

It had to be. Otherwise, this world wasn’t worth redeeming.

And for Shireen alone, who grinned and rolled on the bed, Bramble would save this place for her. So she could live in a world where it was okay to laugh. Where there was joy and a warm sky.

-

It wasn’t a far walk to Bramble’s own room. The fireplace burned low on specific orders because Bramble didn’t need its warmth. She lit a few extra candles with a finger. The most recent ledger books were wide open on her table, and she was actually excited to flip through the pages with her grubby little paws.

The rather timid knock on the door had been what she truly waited for, though.

Bramble took a breath and glanced in the mirror. She definitely looked cleaner, even if her clothing style hadn’t changed much. Her hair still hung loose and tucked behind both ears.

The little stone necklace gifted to her sat hot against her skin.

She opened the door with a nervous hand. A smile darted on her lips, however, when she saw Grenn waiting on the other side.

He smiled back. “Oh, good—thought I’d be knocking on the wrong door for a second.” Grenn’s confession made his smile widen, and Bramble’s beating heart calmed at the sight.

“Come on in,” she said, stepping back and tipping her head to the room. After half a moment of hesitation, Grenn entered. The door closed behind him.

They were again alone. Bramble hadn’t seen Grenn since their arrival in the courtyard earlier today.

“Ah,” he winced, exaggeratedly rubbing his arms. “It’s bloody cold in here!”

“I’ve got a fire of my own to keep me cozy,” Bramble said. She tapped her chest, and Grenn’s eyes went to the stone settled in the center of it. His face grew warm in the candlelight. “And besides, it’s not my fault you’re not dressed for the weather.”

While Grenn still had on his black trousers and shirt, he had been stripped of any other clothing and leather to be cleaned. He and his simple garb, too, looked fresh and free of grime, and his beard was more trimmed.

Bramble liked it.

“Oi, that’s not my fault. I got practically robbed of everything the moment I stepped in. But I got a bath, though. That was nice.”

“Castle Black has baths, Grenn,” Bramble deadpanned. He sat down in a chair at the table and folded his arms.

“I know. But you look like a twat if you use it.”

She rolled her eyes and seated herself as well. “I used to wonder why those baths were so empty when I used it. But honestly, it makes so much sense why nobody ever realized I was a girl.”

Grenn grinned at Bramble’s comment, but it faded as he looked about the room. “I…can’t really believe it. Being here. Staying in a lord’s castle. Taking a bath in my very own room. Never thought I’d be here.”

Bramble’s mouth twisted. He was just a farm boy in Westeros. Farm boys didn’t get to stay in castles. Farm boys died for the men in castles. And the Night’s Watch died for farm boys and men in castles alike.

Low fire crackled in the silence. Bramble leaned over and pressed her lips to Grenn’s, who quickly pulled her onto his lap. His hands, calloused and gentle, rose up under her shirt and brushed bare skin. The stone dug into Bramble’s chest the firmer she pressed herself to him.

Grenn may not live long enough to stay in a castle again. But at least…at least for tonight, he wouldn’t spend his night in one alone.

They didn’t talk about broken vows. The Night’s Watch was already splintering and adapting to the oncoming threat. Grenn and Bramble’s affair would slip through cracks of ice. And right now, with the dead preparing to rip the world from them, they would never have a better time to be reminded of how they were the living. Of why sharing parts of themselves, all of themselves, could be so good.

Bramble and Grenn wound up on her bed, unclothed and entwined. He laid heavy and shaking on top of her, even as the kisses deepened and quickened pace. Bramble felt his heart thudding against her chest, and before she could pull back, he did.

Eyes flickering away, Grenn muttered. “Listen, Bramb. I—I’m not the best, yeah? Only been with one girl my whole life. And, uh, I d-definitely didn’t feel this way with her like I do with you.”

She let out a little breath and cupped Grenn’s cheek so his gaze turned back to her. The other hand softly moved up and down his muscled back. “I’ve been with…a lot of men. A lot of men I never wanted to be with. But you? I just want to be with you. That’s what matters.”

Grenn laughed once. He twined fingers through Bramble’s short hair. “Guess if anything, you know a few tricks, eh?”

“Oh, hon, I know plenty of tricks,” Bramble said with a smirk. “You probably wouldn’t be able to handle any of them, though.”

His anxiety faded with more laughter. It was a first for Bramble, being comfortable in bed. The boys she had sex with on Earth lasted ten awkward seconds with a fair amount of pain. The men that paid for her body in Westeros wanted a service and nothing more.

But this? This was right. Rough and tender hands, small shivers, occasional laughter between kisses.

Because Grenn made Bramble happy. Since that was hard enough to grasp in this freezing world, she held him tighter against her heated skin. To find this, to feel this…it made being stranded in Westeros worthwhile.

Whatever happened, whatever cold grave they’d be buried in or blaze of fire that turned them to ash, they’d have this night, and maybe, hopefully, hopefully, other nights like this between all the horror and fear. Nights of calm and passion, of slow whispers and firelight.

The window did have to get cracked a little. Bramble was a hot body. But it meant Grenn had something to keep him warm as he curled his large body to fit the curve of hers. Bramble intertwined her fingers with his and kept it close to her chest as she drifted off, the echo of his heartbeat thrumming on her back substantially slower than it had at the beginning of their time together. Earlier, those same fingers brushed the fresh scars on Bramble’s back. It reminded them of how close they were to death, and how far they each had to go before they could let it finally claim them.

But, as Grenn closed his eyes, head filled with Bramble’s sweet and smoky scent, he realized he hadn’t been this warm in a very long time.

 

 

 

Notes:

Short but definitely sweet. Bramb gets a little bit of happiness.

Chapter 31

Summary:

Revised 6/30/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

The two spent most of the morning in Bramble’s room. After breakfast and baths, they reluctantly left the comfort of each other to tend to business.

Bramble took Shireen with her to a financial meeting with Sansa and Maester Wolkan. There was an intense and extensive overhaul of monetary dispensation. Shireen kept along with her keen mind. Edd, Jon, and Pyp joined at one point, but Bramble was too immersed in rearranging the numbers to really give them her full attention.

By late afternoon, a couple hours before it got too dark outside, Bramble, Shireen, Jon, Tormund, and the Crows took up a familiar and welcomed practice.

Shireen blocked consecutive blows with the two small swords in her hands. “Fightin’ like a Free Folk,” Tormund beamed from the sidelines.

“Fix your footing, princess,” Edd called. Not a moment later, Shireen had her feet repositioned so Bramble couldn’t knock her off-balance. She no longer donned a dress for practice; instead, Shireen wore thick trousers with a warm, knee-length skirt that opened in the front for movability. Her fitted coat fastened with toggles in the front. The whole outfit had hues of light gray and charcoal. On the breast of the coat, in small, black stitching, was the head of a stag. It wasn’t Robert Baratheon’s sigil, nor her father’s adapted sigil, but it was Baratheon. Shireen would not lose her lineage just yet.

Sansa, Brienne, and Podrick came to watch as well in the fading light. Shireen had improved even more since Bramble left Winterfell, meaning she probably bullied Grenn, Edd, and some other Crows into sword fighting with her—despite Bramble’s explicit instructions for her to stay out of the courtyard.

She couldn’t help but remember sword fighting with Olly.

Bramble would live with the pain of his memory for the rest of her days. She just wished…that she could have told him that she was sorry. And that he was loved.

-

Grenn spent one last night in Bramble’s room. He’d be leaving early tomorrow morning, and who knew when they’d see each other again. Bramble wasn’t sure where she would be going from this point on. Jon, sure, but herself?

She might die before they reunited. He might die.

So Bramble held onto Grenn long after he’d fallen asleep, her face pressed against his sturdy back with both an arm and a leg draped over him. She refused to cry. There was no point.

Instead, her mind drifted to long-gone fantasies. Taking Grenn to meet her parents, driving places, going to concerts, showing him home. Mom and Dad would have loved him. She wondered if he’d be able to handle Filipino cuisine. Probably not. Westerosi food was just dense and heavy. No flavor whatsoever.

Her thumb traced circles on Grenn’s skin, and she smiled a little. Dad would have taken him out to the backyard and shown him proper grilling etiquette while he stood there in his khaki shorts and New Balance sneakers. Mom, always the extrovert, would have kept the conversation going between everyone. Lulls never existed in the Aldana household.

Bramble closed her eyes. “I would take you to the movies,” she whispered in Tagalog. “I think you’d like the superhero ones. You could try soda and Snickers. Pizza. Tacos. We could go camping down by the Bay, and I’d roast us some marshmallows. You’d love plumbing. Who wouldn’t? Showers are great, and so are toilets and washing machines.”

She kissed Grenn’s back. “We’d go to the Philippines. I’d show you the beaches. They’re clear and white, and I think you’d suffocate in the humidity for a bit, but it gets better after a while. Oh, then we’d go to Hawaii. Finish what was started. The beaches there are warm, too, and we’d drink out of coconuts and do whatever it is tourists do. You’d sunburn like my dad. I’d get dark like my mom. But we’d lay out on that sand and be happy.”

Grenn made a sleepy noise and rolled over. “Mm,” he grunted, and that deep sound made her warmer. “You talkin’ different? Or am I just dreaming?”

His eyes stayed closed. Bramble tugged on Grenn’s thick beard. “I thought you were out,” she murmured.

“Yeah, no, the Night’s Watch made me a light sleeper. Gotta wake up in case, you know, it’s the end of the fucking world. Which it is, really.”

Bramble smiled a little more. “I was just…talking a little bit.”

“Mm. Was it good stuff?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

“Will you teach me? Never knew another language. I can be a scholar like Sam.”

One eye finally opened, blue and sleepy and gentle. Bramble kissed him on the lips, and when she drew back, she said, “Uwak.”

“Uwak.” The pronunciation, while slow, wasn’t too bad. “What’s that mean?”

“Crow.”

“Crow? Oi, that’s right fucking funny, yeah?” Grenn opened the other eye. “What’s the word for ‘fuck?’”

“Fuck.”

“Guess I can basically speak two languages already, then.”

Bramble laughed low in her throat. “You’re brilliant.”

“Ah, you’re brilliant, too, I s’pose.” Grenn wrapped Bramble up in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “Brilliant Bramb.”

She couldn’t bring herself to say that she would miss him.

As Grenn fell back asleep, Bramble did let a few tears soak into the pillow. Just this once.

-

The Night’s Watch left. They shared quick, meaningful goodbyes, and a few sad smiles. Bramble ignored the heavy ache in her chest. It’d be no use to get emotional, and besides, she would get teased by the Crows for going soft. Though, Grenn would finally have a girl to cry over him. She wondered if he cried over her or if he had grown too used to his own heartache to let it overcome him.

She watched them leave the courtyard with Shireen and Jon, the sound of blacksmithing and braying and cursing all around them.

Then…then it was over.

“You’ll see him again, I’m sure,” Shireen said quietly in the clamor of the castle’s work. She grabbed Bramble’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Bramble offered a stiff smile in return.

She got back to work. Running over ledgers, estimating finances, and deciding how to appropriate funds and goods to both the Free Folk and the Northerners with Sansa. The Lady of Winterfell always mentioned how she wasn’t smart to catch on with all the numbers and calculations, but her words contradicted her mind. If Sansa didn’t have a thousand other things to worry about, she probably could have run the books instead of Bramble.

When Shireen wasn’t watching and learning, she was reading. Winterfell didn’t have a large library, but it did have books she hadn’t consumed, yet. Balerion sat next to her on the table, paws tucked under his girth.

“He looks like a bread loaf,” Bramble commented, taking a break to go bother the cat.

Sansa, surprisingly, snorted out a laugh. “A bread loaf?” she repeated through that rare, beautiful smile of hers. Bramble didn’t draw attention to Sansa’s genuine display of amusement and poked at Balerion’s side. He murped, and his tail began to twitch back and forth.

“Doesn’t he, though?” Bramble ran two fingers down his spine, eliciting the cat motor. “Balerion the Bread Loaf. That’s what we should call him.”

Sansa covered her mouth to stifle her laughter. It wasn’t exactly that funny to Bramble, but the fact that her Earth-originated comment produced such a reaction made it hilarious.

Bramble went to say something else about Balerion, but there was a knock on the door, followed by Maester Wolkan entering. “Uh, excuse me, my ladies,” he spoke with a quick bow. “But Lord Baelish is here to see you.”

All warmth vanished from the room. Sansa instantly retreated to her guarded self that the cruel world and cruel people like Petyr Baelish had shaped her into. She lost her brightness Bramble got a spectacular glimpse of all because of a cat joke.

“Send him in.”

Maester Wolkan withdrew, and in his place came a smaller man with peppered black hair and cunning eyes. A silver mockingbird was pinned to his chest, and despite the cold climate, he still dressed like a southerner, though the colors were muted and dark.

In just an instant, Bramble hated him more than anyone.

“Lady Stark,” he spoke with a small, fluid bow.

“Lord Baelish.”

He shifted his gaze to Bramble. “Lady Bramble. I must say, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“I’d hardly call it a pleasure,” Bramble drawled mirthlessly. Baelish, however, took it in stride and smiled.

“In these circumstances? I cannot blame you.” His eyes went to Shireen, whose expression turned as stony as her marred greyscale. “Ah, Princess Baratheon. I served your uncle for many years. Your father was a respectable man.”

Whether Shireen picked up on Bramble’s own distrust or used her own instincts to see the bad man in front of her, she tilted her chin and coolly said, “My father hated you. He said you were a snake.”

Sansa didn’t betray any emotion. Baelish merely bowed once more and said in his smooth voice, “The Great Game is merciless. Unfortunately, decisions must be made. Some do not take them well.”

Shireen stayed silent.

Baelish turned back to Sansa. “I’ve come to perhaps offer aid in the world of finances. The Vale can offer monetary assistance. We are allies with the North, and with winter here, I do believe we can mutually benefit with each other’s help.”

“Thank you, Lord Baelish.” Sansa gestured to the ledgers sprawled out on the table, complete with Bramble’s scribbles on extra pieces of parchment. “Though I doubt we’ll require your…assistance…with such things, you may review.”

“Ah. Much appreciated, my lady.”

If Baelish bowed one more fucking time—

He bowed to Sansa, then started making his way to the table.

Bramble cut him off, and though he had advantage in stature and size, she did not feel an ounce of intimidation. Her chin jutted out, dark green eyes glaring. Heatedly, she said, “I don’t think you’re needed here.”

The room grew warm again, and a bead of sweat broke out on Baelish’s forehead with the abrupt rise in temperature. He cleared his throat. Baelish’s slimy personality came with the drawback of not being intimidated by her, either. “I apologize if I’ve somehow offended you, Lady Bramble. May I understand what it is I’ve done—”

“No. Now get the fuck outta here.” Bramble’s Ontario accent thickened with her rage.

Sansa watched from her desk, blue eyes darting between the two.

“My lady—”

The mere sound of his stupid fucking voice made Bramble nearly rip his head off right then. But she was a reformed person, now, with a better grip on her rage.

Instead of murdering Baelish and staining her freshly washed clothes with his blood, Bramble took a more diplomatic route. She picked him up by the collar of his stupid doublet and hauled him to the door. His feet scraped against the floorboards, but he couldn’t get his footing. Wire-thin tendrils of death wound around his polished leather boots. Bramble yanked the door open, tossed the man out against the wall—where he hit it with a grimace—and pointed a finger at him.

Bramble snarled, “Come near us again, and I’ll burn your fucking dick off.”

For extra effect, she ignited her hand. It pleased her beyond measure to see the genuine shock on Baelish’s stupid face, because he was definitely more awful than the show ever portrayed in his appearance alone.

The middle, fire-engulfed finger raised a second before she slammed the door shut.

Bramble took a breath, turned, and tried to return to a normal expression—but failed. Her scowl wouldn’t wipe off.

Sansa’s cool gaze quelled the rising flames in Bramble’s chest. Then she went back to curtly writing letters and responses. “He’s not going to forgive you for that.”

“Good.” With a huff, Bramble went and sat back down in front of her ledgers. “He’s not going to be around much longer, anyway. I’m not worried about what he could do to me.”

This time, Sansa snapped her head back up. “What?”

“Oh, yeah.” Bramble pursed her lips in an attempt to get her words in order. “Death is on its fucking way for dear Petyr Baelish.”

Sansa closed her eyes for a second, struggling to wrap her head around the notion. “N-no. That cannot be possible. It’s…Petyr Baelish. He plans to outlive us all.”

“Well. Guess he’s planned wrong, then.” Bramble returned to writing her financial summary that she’d give to both Jon and Sansa at the end of the day. “The only way I’ve seen Death disappear is if I’ve intervened. And I’m not gonna intervene with him.”

Instead of pressing Bramble further with questions, Sansa retreated into a tangible silence that she didn’t want to disturb too soon. The little piece of information Bramble impulsively gave left the Lady of Winterfell left her with a lot to think about.

Shireen, however, said to Bramble, “I want to do that to stupid men when I’m older.” Her smile was a glimpse into the future of a woman who would do great things because she didn’t need permission from her male counterparts to do it.

“You will, princess,” Bramble muttered with a wry smile of her own. It tugged on her scar. “We can’t leave it to the men to create a better world, after all. Look at where we are now because of them.”

The glint in Shireen’s eyes grew, and she straightened herself before returning to her reading.

-

“You can’t expect the Knights of the Vale to side with wildling invaders!”

Bramble kept her head tucked down and body hunched so she wouldn’t draw attention away from the convening. That already happened when she walked into the hall at the beginning. They already heard the tales, the stories of how Jon Snow had a conjurer, a witch, a woman who razed the Bolton army with her flames. Nobody spoke to her; the men were too distrustful, too fearful of the foreigner with fire. Only Lady Mormont gave Bramble an acknowledging nod.

She sat next to Davos and Shireen, and the three of them listened with keen ears as the talks went on.

“We didn’t invade,” Tormund reminded with a spark of impatience. “We were invited.”

Lord Royce didn’t even look at him. “Not. By. Me.” He sat down, and a spring of murmurs ensued.

“Ripe sons of bitches,” Davos mumbled under his breath. Bramble gave a soft snort of agreement.

Jon stood to address everyone with full intent. Sansa sat beside him, maintaining her distant and demure posture until it was the right time to speak her opinion. “The Free Folk, the Northerners, and the Knights of the Vale fought bravely, fought together, and we won.” His brown eyes swept across the hall.  “My father used to say we find our true friends on the battlefield.”

Another lord—Bramble couldn’t remember his name—rose to his feet before Jon could finish. “The Boltons are defeated. The war is over! Winter is come, and if the maesters are right, it’ll be the coldest one in a thousand years. We should ride home and wait out the coming storms.”

“The war is not over.”

Jon’s heavy tone brought a stillness over the chamber. For an instant, she thought she could feel a freezing hand gripping her throat. Bramble shifted a little in her seat.

“And I promise you, friend, the true enemy won’t wait out the storm. He brings the storm.”

As the lord who spoke hesitantly sat down, the hall devolved into clamor. Bramble caught bits and pieces of what they were saying. It couldn’t be true. The dead? Winter would them all if they didn’t do something. What could they do? It was impossible. But the tales! Just stories. No, not stories.

Bramble leaned over a little bit to catch Tormund’s reaction. He sat there with the other Free Folk in attendance, shaking his head in bitter disbelief. Karsi whispered something in his ear, and he just shrugged.

“This is getting nowhere,” Bramble said to Davos. He grunted in agreement.

“Aye. Best tell ‘em to shut the fuck up.”

Before he could stand and tell the Northern lords just that, a little, dark-haired, solemn figure beat him to it.

Bramble smiled a fraction. This was it. Fucking Lyanna Mormont. Right on. If anybody could get these bastards in line, it was her, harder and stronger than any lord in the hall.

She called all the men out on their bullshit. Their cowardice. Their broken loyalties. The room full of arguing and stubbornness was reduced to meekly turned gazes and bowed heads all from the words of a child wiser than them.

Sansa wore a faint smile as she listened. Jon remained unaware as to what was coming next.

“But House Mormont remembers. The North remembers! We know no king but the King in the North, whose name is Stark.”

Jon’s dark brown eyes sharpened onto Lady Mormont. His shoulders stiffened, and Bramble wished she could have prepared him. But knowing about his future calling most likely would have done more damage than good. Bramble already had a difficult enough time holding the information herself.

She continued to watch.

“I don’t care that he’s a bastard. Ned Stark’s blood runs through his veins!” Lyanna locked her gaze with Jon. “He’s my king, from this day until his last day.”

Tension—excited tension—made its way through the hall. After Lyanna sat back down, offering Jon an acknowledging almost-smile, he took a moment to look to Bramble. Though his expression remained firm and unafraid, it was his anxious eyes that sought help. Reassurance. Support.

She gave him the slightest of nods. Well. Jon knew now. He probably had an inkling that it was coming, anyway.

The other lords joined in with Lady Mormont’s statement, seeking forgiveness and renewing loyalty. Bramble found herself leaning on the edge of her seat. To watch this as a show was one thing; to watch it—feel it—happening right in front of her claimed her entire heart and soul. Bramble became part of the rising hope, and as each lord bent their knee with their swords pointed down in front of them, she found herself starting to smile.

“The King in the North! King in the North! King in the North!”

Bramble, Davos, and Shireen got to their feet with everyone in the hall, their own swords raised up to the ceiling. She chanted the phrase, over and over, and even though Sansa stayed seated and solemn, she wouldn’t let herself lose this parcel of pride.

Jon rose to meet the mantle, the title, the person he was going to be.

He rose as the King in the North.

-

Bramble made the trek down to the red-leaf tree alone.

She was being stupid, obviously. Nothing good would come of touching an ancient monument to the Old Gods. But Bramble’s curiosity superseded her logic. She could get answers about why she was here. Maybe more. Maybe less. She wouldn’t know until she did it.

The weirwood’s leaves were stark against a snowy canvas. Its trunk was wide and set, and some of the lowest, thickest branches nearly touched the ground before curving upward. The face carved into the weirwood was crude in nature, but something about it triggered an instinct in Bramble that made her…nervous. Magic similar to the Wall rolled off and hit her in waves.

Red sap still leaked from the face despite the wear of thousands of years. The wound to the tree should have healed, but instead it was part of it.

Bramble stared at the face. Eventually, a knee found its way to the snow-covered ground. Her breath came out in soft puffs of steam. This was where all the Starks had prayed for thousands of years. This was where Ned Stark came to seek solace and guidance.

And this was where Bramble knelt, only half a meter away from an Old God.

“I, uh, I’m not sure what I’m doing,” she spoke. Her voice sounded different for some reason. Perhaps speaking out loud to something by herself did that. “I’m…not from here. Maybe you’re already aware. I’m here, and I possess abilities that nobody should. I don’t know where they came from or who gave them to me. So—so I was, uh, wondering if you could show me? Something? Fuck, I’m not really good at this.”

The fire flared in Bramble, and she gritted her teeth to fight its effect. “I’m just—I’m already angry so much of the time. And—and this fire inside me makes it worse. But I think I can…do good.” She sighed and lifted her gaze to the Old God’s face, noting the etches in its bark, the darkness underneath its whitish surface.

Part of Bramble felt like she should say more. But all her words were lost to each passing second staring at the weirwood. Wind rustled the soft leaves. While it wasn’t warm, wasn’t frigid.

In almost a trance, Bramble reached out a hand. The pads of her fingers pressed against the ancient wood.

Nothing happened.

Then—

Bramble was ripped from her body.

Fire and ice consumed her, each battling the other, battling her for dominance, for possession. She sank under water, drowning, thrashing, grasping for the quickly fading surface. A hand plunged through the darkness to save her, but its fist closed around emptiness, and Bramble was dragged farther down. Her lungs filled with water—

A woman stood before her, violet eyes piercing and white hair gleaming. She spoke soundless words to Bramble before gesturing to an emerging figure. It was a young man, dark-skinned and grinning. He, too, talked to her without any noise. Ice then formed across his cheeks, and the grin snarled into a mask of death and vengeance. He latched onto her throat, and the cold once again swept in to kill, to slaughter the fire.

Bramble shoved her hand onto the man’s chest and burned him alive. She couldn’t hear the screams.

An army of the dead marched through the destroyed Wall. Bramble saw them approaching—and walked with them from behind.

Red leaves of the weirwood.

Shifting dragon scales.

Obsidian.

Golden hair.

The Iron Throne.

Slamming a sword into a chest.

Consuming ice.

Consuming fire.

Consuming death.

Light.

Bramble. Staring at herself. Fire flickering across her birthmark.

She disappeared, replaced by others. Jon, Sansa, Davos, Shireen. Tormund, Karsi, Mag Mar, Wun Wun. Grenn, Pyp, Edd. Faces she didn’t recognize but knew who they were.

They vanished.

A three-eyed raven peered at Bramble. It opened its beak, and a boy’s voice whispered to her.

They have found you.

-

“…Bramble! Bramble!”

The cold snow melted against her cheek. Blood thickly trickled from her nose. Bramble cracked her eyes open, vision blurred.

Red leaves of the weirwood sheltered her from the view of the gray sky. Vivid auburn hair hung down, brushing against her bare hands.

Sansa came into focus, her blue eyes filled with worry and fright. “Are you alright?” She had knelt next to Bramble and cupped her face. A thumb attempted to brush away a trail of blood but instead smeared it across her discolored cheek. “Bramble? Are you alright?”

Bramble’s gaze shifted past Sansa’s shoulder. Her body locked.

A shadowed, half-formed figure towered over them. No eyes, no mouth. Nothing but a vacuum of darkness. Two more appeared beside it, and they stretched their elongated, inhuman appendages out to Bramble. The fire screeched in frenzy, instantly shattering the ice in Bramble’s veins that had paralyzed her.

She yanked Sansa down to the ground with one hand, and with the other, she blasted the shadows in a spray of flame. Sansa screamed as heat seared her skin, and Bramble was so sorry, but she couldn’t see these monstrous creations like Bramble.

When the fire dissipated, leaving patches of dying orange and red spattered in the snow, Bramble rushed to her feet. Her chest heaved, and she wildly searched the area for any more figures. Nothing stood out against the white. Bramble’s gaze continued to the tree line a few hundred meters off, where she spotted a leaning shadow curled behind one of the pines.

Bramble clenched her fists and let out a hoarse yell. She twisted clumps of short black hair, pulling on them until pain throbbed on her scalp. “Fuck! Shit! Fuck!”

 

 

 

Not them. Not again.

Notes:

Bramble wouldn't put up with Baelish's crap, so why pretend?

Chapter 32

Summary:

Revised 7/1/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

What had Melisandre said?

She was the one keeping the shadows at bay?

Bramble hated her even more for being right.

“They…they have been with me since the beginning,” she said. Charcoal furiously scrubbed over parchment. “Even if I left one place, they’d eventually catch up. Didn’t matter that I crossed the ocean. They would find me.”

Jon, Sansa, Davos, and Tormund watched her make a rough drawing of the dark creatures. Bramble occasionally glanced up at the corner of the small chambers they gathered in. Though she knew their shape and form by heart, the one hunched in the room made for a good model.

“After I, uh, went on my Lannister soldier killing spree, I moved so many places that I stopped seeing them. Then I got caught, convicted as a boy, and sent to the Wall. Melisandre, in all her fucking infinite wisdom, told us—told me—that they had always been pushing me to Castle Black. To the Night King. So when I got there, they quit their stalking. I just thought it was the Wall’s magic. Kind of repelled them, right? But apparently not.”

Bramble finished filling in the shadow’s head. With charcoal-blackened fingers, she held up the parchment to the actual thing. “Then when I managed to escape the Night King at Hardhome, Melisandre was already there to do her witchy shit to dispel the things.

“Now that she’s gone, though, I guess it was just a matter of time before they popped back up to terrorize me.”

“Is there one here right now?” asked Tormund. Bramble tipped her head to the corner where she was staring. They all looked that way. He shuddered.

“They haven’t ever touched me. Just kinda…stood there, being creepy and whatnot.” Bramble set the parchment down. “But at the weirwood tree, they were reaching out like they planned on finally doing it.”

She raised up her hand and touched her middle finger together with her thumb. Aiming with one eye shut, Bramble flicked her finger outward and sent a tiny spark of flame at the shadow. Once it impacted, the thing dissipated into nothing.

Bramble took a breath.

“Fire works on getting rid of them, thank fuck. But I imagine it’s only temporarily.”

“The…the fire,” Davos uttered. “It didn’t hit the wall or nothing. Just disappeared. Like it was swallowed up.”

A silence glazed over the room as the revelations sunk in for them. Something so close, something so dark, was still unseen by them. They were blind to the shadow. To the Night King’s power.

Jon finally cleared his throat. “What, er, what were you doing at the weirwood, Bramb?”

She sighed and shrugged. “Honestly? I wasn’t sure. At most, to get answers. At least, to get solace.”

“And what did you get?”

Bramble met Jon’s brown eyes. Her mouth formed into a grim line. “Visions.”

Tormund made a noise and downed the rest of his ale. Sansa remained quiet. Her red hair struck a contrast with the dimness of the room and her ivory skin.

“What kind of visions?”

She knew the follow-up was coming, but it still made her grimace. Bramble laced fingers behind her head and leaned back to stare up at the ceiling. Another shadow clung to the stone, head bent at an inhuman angle to view her. Bramble flicked more fire at it. What if the shadows heard conversations and relayed them back to the Night King? And if Bramble wasn’t constantly there, they could potentially glean information from Jon—and, eventually, Daenerys.

Piss.

“I saw…a lot of things. They all blurred together.” Bramble left out her drowning in icy water. The recurring theme didn’t settle well with her, and she wasn’t sure she could explain it, anyway. “I saw Daenerys Targaryen. You two are going to meet. I saw…another man? Maybe my age? I’ve never seen him before, so I’m not certain about his deal. But he choked me out. Had ice on him, too, so that’s probably prophetic or something.”

She tapped her foot against the floor, producing an off-rhythm beat. “The dead marching through the Wall—”

“What?” Tormund cut in. Bramble couldn’t look at any of them. She’d known for so long that it was just a matter of fact to her. But to them…no, to them it wasn’t.

Bramble shut her eyes for a few moments. “Yeah,” she spoke, voice turning hoarse. “It might change. I’m not a hundred percent on that. But as of right now, the dead are inevitably going to get through.”

“But how? The Wall—it’s massive!” Davos exclaimed. “And you’re telling me that the Night King is just going to fucking walk right through?”

“Not walk.”

They all looked to Jon, whose graveness aged him far beyond his years.

“He’s going to burn it down.”

The lack of response from Bramble gave them their answer. Tormund groaned and buried his face in both hands.

“It might be me burning it down. It might be a dragon. It might be something—or someone—else entirely. At this point, I’m more uncertain of things than I was at the beginning.” Bramble reached over and grabbed her untouched mug of ale to drain it considerably. Everything was so fucked up.

“And how would the Night King get you or a dragon?” asked Sansa. She was the only one who managed to maintain a steel visage.

“Now that…that is a funny story.” Bramble looked about the room again to make sure there were no shadow fucks. “And I don’t want to terrify all of you with the dark future ahead of us. So ima just decline to answer that for now.”

Davos folded his arms and furrowed his brows even more. “Are our odds truly that dismal?”

“If I say the wrong things, it could be.” Bramble tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears. She wanted to be done with conversation. Talking about her so-called foresight made her uncomfortable. “We already have enough to worry about. I know it might make you upset, but I’m not going to overburden any of you with what will—what could be.”

“Little Crow’s right,” Tormund grunted. He, too, had grown older in the chamber’s firelight. “We’re getting fucked up the ass as it is. Don’t need a cock in our mouth, either.”

Bramble snorted. It felt both strange and nice to smile, as faint as it was.

Sansa steered the conversation in another direction. “How will we meet Daenerys Targaryen? And what are her intentions for the kingdom?”

“Eh, I think…” Bramble scrunched up her face as she tried to recall. “She’s going to ask for Jon to meet her in Dragonstone. She wants him to, you know, do the whole knee-bend thing because she’s coming for the Iron Throne.”

“Dragonstone is a long way from Winterfell.”

“It is. But Jon will be safe. Daenerys isn’t…she’s not Cersei. She’s not going to kill him when he says that he won’t. Earning trust and all that.” I turn my head to Jon. “And you’re going to want to mine the shit ton of dragonglass the entire island sits on. And ask for her help in the war against the undead. It’s gonna get complicated. I think even more so with me being there. But it’ll work out.”

She hoped.

“Oh, so you’re going to come with me?” Jon inquired, making sure to show his bemusement. Bramble mirthlessly smirked and drank more ale.

“Of course I’m fucking going with you. I want to see the dragons. And I think I may meet the guy I saw in my vision.”

“The one who tried to kill you?”

“Yeah. That…that could be another problem I have no fucking clue about. But anyway. Also, since I’m going, I want us to take Shireen.”

Davos shook his head and made a disagreeing noise. “No. It’s a terrible idea to take Shireen back there. I know you planned on sending her there if things went sideways, but she’s safe here.”

“Wait, I’m confused,” said Tormund, glancing between the two of us. “I thought she was a Baratheon or some shit? But she’s a Targaryen?”

“Stannis Baratheon held Dragonstone for quite some time after his brother won the war for the throne,” Jon explained. Bramble knew Shireen wished she were a Targaryen. Then she could have an actual dragon, and not just a fat orange lump. “But, with his defeat against the Boltons, it left Dragonstone unguarded and vacant. And since there are technically no more Baratheons left to claim it, nobody could stop Daenerys from taking back her ancestral home.”

“Meaning,” Bramble continued, “that Daenerys could see Shireen as a threat. Which I don’t think she will.”

“You don’t sound so certain,” said Davos. Bramble dropped her jaw and scoffed.

“Uh, hello? This whole thing has been about me knowing more than anyone else here! And besides, I’m guessing you’ll go with Jon and me, too, since you’re the unofficial Hand. Meaning that Shireen won’t have either of us here.”

“You make it sound like the lass can’t take care of herself,” huffed Tormund, raising an amused eyebrow. “Just leave her with Karsi! She’ll get a taste of what life is like with the Free Folk.”

Davos flatly stared at Tormund, then said, “No.”

“I’ll make sure she’s safely watched over,” Sansa spoke. “She spends a lot of her time with the two of us as it is.”

Bramble sucked in air between her teeth, Doubtful. Sansa frowned.

“What.”

“I’m just going to reiterate that Shireen should come with us.” Bramble lightly slapped her hand on the time-worn table, diverting the topic of what would happen at Winterfell while they were gone. “And do you honestly believe that she’d ever forgive us if we left her again? While we went off and looked at dragons?”

“That’s not the reason why we’re going,” said Jon. Bramble lifted her mug of ale to him.

“Yeah, okay, buddy.”

She tossed the rest of the piss-poor drink back. Bramble missed Red Bull.

It would have been nice to have it for this long night.

-

Soldiers at the northern entrance of Winterfell dipped their heads to Bramble. They never met her gaze, and once she passed, they began to whisper. Everybody who wasn’t close to Bramble did. Basically, it meant that save for seven people, the entire castle gossiped and steered clear of the foreigner who shot fire out of her ass.

Bramble got back from the Free Folk settlement, looking like a real nerd with parchment bound in a protective leather wrap. She had to take inventory and do some more financial estimates for their needs. But the Free Folk were a hardy people, and they lived on less in harsher winters. They wouldn’t need much, but they’d be able to give a lot in return with trade and labor support.

Mag Mar called her a “scratchy bird” as she scribbled numbers down with a quill. It got a good laugh from Wun Wun and the others. As Karsi so humorously put it, calling someone a scratchy bird meant they were fonder of poems and idle fantasies rather than hunting and providing. Scratchy birds always died.

So ha ha. Even here, after all Bramble had done with her strength and fire and impulsiveness, she still got called the Free Folk equivalent of a nerd.

In the courtyard, Bramble spotted the greyscale-scarred face amidst other young teenagers, boys and girls alike. When Jon made the announcement two days ago about having men and women fight in the war against the dead, Shireen nearly rocketed through the ceiling. Bramble didn’t have the heart to tell her that she probably wouldn’t be fighting. But, all things considered, Shireen was able to do what she wanted, which was knock boys off their feet and properly swing a sword.

Jon also gave the Karstark and Umber house back to the families. Bramble forgot about that. The last living descendants were no more than children. And yet they would be among the first to stand against the undead when they broke through the Wall.

Bramble saw both Alys and Ned off on the far end of the courtyard, holding tentatively nocked bows. All these children preparing for war…it made her think of Olly.

Brienne stood tall amidst the clanging of training swords being whacked and the soft thuds of arrows hitting their targets. Her sharp eyes watched the kids’ every move, and when they made a mistake or didn’t know how to do something, she was sure to correct and help them with firm and steady guidance. Bramble smirked. She had never been that kind to Podrick.

The same squire bumped into Bramble on her way to dropping off the papers in Jon and Sansa’s office. Ever since she spilled the tea about Daenerys, the dead breaking down the Wall, and other depressing things, the two worked tirelessly in a joint room. Bramble and Davos joined them, as well as Tormund when he could. But the red-headed bastard would be leaving to man the Wall with a contingent of the Free Folk, even though they all knew its demise was inevitable. Better that there was some kind of defense rather than none.

But maybe something would change.

Or maybe Bramble could change something.

“Hey, Podrick,” Bramble said. She figured he was near her age, but they hadn’t talked enough for her to ask.

In fact, they hadn’t talked at all. Podrick wasn’t the type of person to speak freely and often.

“Good afternoon, my lady.” He paused to bow to her, then started off again, clutching small rolls of parchment in his hands to deliver to the maester. Podrick had looked Bramble in the eyes for less than a second.

That was how he was with everybody when he didn’t have to, so she didn’t feel too bad about it. But he probably didn’t have any friends. Bramble had seen first-hand what a friendship with Brienne entailed: getting knocked down into the muck with a heavy practice sword.

Had she even seen him without his head ducked down? Freely talking? Actually smiling?

Damn her selfless, tender, utterly thoughtful nature.

“Podrick,” Bramble called, half-turning to the departing squire. He stopped again, immediately responding to the sound of his name being called.

“Yes, my lady?”

“Brienne training with you today?”

“N-no, my lady. She will be busy.”

“Hm. You and I should spar.”

Heat rose to Podrick’s cheeks. He bowed out of habit and haltingly said, “I—begging your pardon, my lady, but…”

“Come on, it’ll be fun, eh?” Bramble started walking, again. “Meet me in that small courtyard in the east wing. The one with that weird bloodstain on the wall.”

“I—my lady—”

“I shouldn’t be too long with these reports. Better deliver those messages quick. See you then.”

Bramble left Podrick stammering in the hall. She knocked on the door to Jon and Sansa’s office.

“Enter.”

Sansa sat at her desk, too consumed with the writing in front of her to notice Bramble walk into the room. Jon and Davos conversed grimly over the map spread out on the table. The newly-not-crowned king tried offering her a smile, but it wasn’t completely successful.

“What do you have for us today?” Davos asked. Bramble handed him the protected parchment.

“Nothing much has changed. I’m going to go over the numbers again later tonight and try making a variable cost model to see how things will fluctuate with a bulk of the Free Folk moving to man the Wall. Test my statistics and high-school level economics abilities again. Then we’ll have to worry about divvying up more funds to them while there fucking about in Freeze Land.”

Davos worked his jaw, fixing Bramble with a gaze, and said, “Alright, I understood about half of what you said.” He raised the sheaves of parchment aloft. “But cheers.”

Bramble cracked a grin. Her eyes darted to the small, frost-crusted window. Beneath it squatted a shadow. She flicked it out of existence with a spark of flame. “I used to be terrified of them,” Bramble admitted when that got the attention of the others. “But now they’re just fucking annoying.”

“Heard you gave your chambermaid a fright this morning,” Jon said. Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Walked in with you sprawled naked on the floor.”

“Yeah, I slept in a little later than I wanted.” She walked over to the small table and picked up a cold slice of bread. “Usually I’m dressed before she comes in.”

“So it’s working, then? Your…method?” Davos laid thick into his brogue with the last word.

“I think so.” Bramble tore the bread in half and shoved a piece in. “Stupid shadows can’t touch me if I’m on fire the whole night.”

“And you haven’t burned anything down. That’s good, I suppose.”

“It is. But the maids probably won’t be able to get the massive scorch marks I’ve left on the stone floor. So I feel bad about that.”

Davos snorted, and Jon finally broke into a real smile. Even Sansa softly chuckled from her desk. Bramble finished her bread and started treading back to the door. “O-kay. If there’s nothing else you need from me right now, I’m gonna go.”

“Go? Where to?” asked Jon.

“I told Podrick he had to do some sword practice with me.”

“Podrick?” Sansa repeated. She held a quizzical expression. “Why in the world would you ask Podrick to do that with you? He gets beaten enough by Brienne as it is.”

“Because I don’t think he has any friends?”

Jon leaned on the map table. “Do you honestly believe that now is the time to be making friends with squires? When we’re preparing for war against an army of dead?”

Bramble half-scowled. “Trick question. It’s the best time to be making friends because we could die at any second. Being lonely as you’re getting mauled by a corpse is a horrible way to go.”

The three of them paused. Then Davos said, “I hate it when you say odd shit like that.”

“Then don’t say stupid shit.”

Jon, realizing he was the one being referred to, drew himself up to full height. “You do know I’m king, now, Bramb,” he said in an ultra-grave tone. “And words like that cannot abide here.”

This was Jon, right? The Jon, who didn’t know how to joke to save his life.

Bramble drew herself up to full height, as well, and she craned her neck a little to try and get a few centimeters on Snow. “And you know I’m from another world, so I’m technically not under your rule. I’m a free bitch, babe!”

She bowed deeply and started backing away again, making sure that her boots scraped loudly against the floor. “My lady, my liege, my onion, I bid thee a farewell.” Bramble’s butt hit the door. She straightened, fumbled to open it, and slipped through.

Her middle finger shot out at Jon right before the door closed. Bramble heard a rare chuckle from the other side.

 

 

 

Notes:

I told myself that I'd get this chapter finished by the end of February, but then I forgot that February has only 28 DAYS and not 30 or 31, bc I am, how you say, stupid. So I busted my butt getting it done.

Also, who's with me that Podrick doesn't get the love and attention he deserves?? When he's been nothing but the bestest boy in the whole show?

Now for a bit of self-promotion on my part. I'm such "modern girl in..." trash that I finally broke down and began writing one for The Hobbit/LotR world. It's the reason why I've neglected this fic and my others lol. But if any of you want to check it out, please do: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17689715/chapters/41726621?view_adult=true

Chapter 33

Summary:

Revised 7/1/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Sansa shifted in her seat for the millionth time with a small grimace.

“What’s gotcha?” Bramble asked her. She held Balerion’s front and back paws while the cat draped over her warm shoulders. He purred and his tail twitched lazily.

“Oh,” Sansa muttered, placing a hand on her lower abdomen. “It’s simply my womanly time.”

Bramble perked up. “No way. I got mine last night.”

“How unfortunate for the both of us,” Sansa said dryly. Bramble smirked.

“Yeah. Means we can be miserable together.” She shoved her hand under tunic and heated up her swollen tummy. “Ahh. You know, I have all these super fucking awesome powers, and still I’m forced to have my period.”

“Period?”

“That’s what we call it in my world. We also have much better products for bleeding. I hate these…these strips of cloth.” Bramble shimmied for good effect, and Sansa giggled.

“And, pray tell, what do you have in its place?”

She explained pads, tampons, cups, and the wonderful miracle of birth control that could lessen or stop periods entirely. Sansa liked the thought of all of them. Especially the birth control. “Though,” she said, after a moment of contemplation, “if Ramsay Bolton had found out I’d been on it, he would have choked the life out of me, seeing as I was unwilling to give him an heir.” She raised her manicured red eyebrows resignedly, as if her trauma had been separated by a veil. “I suppose the gods showed mercy. No pregnancy meant no killing a newborn babe.”

Bramble paused and looked up from her ledgers. Her brows rose, too, but barely a fraction. “You would have killed his baby?”

“If it’d been a son. Then perhaps.”

The scribble of Sansa’s quill on parchment filled the otherwise silent room. Bramble said nothing. Thought nothing. Who was she to judge Sansa Stark?

So they quietly did their work for another half hour until a message was delivered to Bramble by a courier. She unrolled it and read its contents. A smile dusted her lips.

“If I may ask, what does the message say?”

Bramble rerolled it and set the parchment to flame within her fist. Not that it was too important to be kept secret; she just liked to be cool.

“Oh, a while ago I went down to the brothel in Winter town asking how things were.” Bramble let the ash drizzle smoothly from her fingers but wound up getting it on her lap. She frowned and stood to pat it off. Sansa poorly hid her smile at Bramble’s failed attempt. “Since I was once a whore myself, I wanted to make sure the girls in our area were being taken care of. Lots of guards tend to turn a blind eye to what abuses go on there, and lots of girls don’t come forward for fear of violent retribution. Or worse.”

“And? Are there any problems currently?”

Bramble began to pack up her ledgers for the day. She doubted she’d want to come back to them once the situation was dealt with. Balerion jumped off her with a huff. “Yeah. One of the Winterfell soldiers has been…aggressive with a couple of the girls. It’s one thing to have favorites. It’s another to follow them home, rape, and beat them within an inch of their life, then threaten them with death if they don’t continue giving them his way.”

Sansa scoffed. She, too, stacked her work neat on the desk. “And why has this man not been arrested and brought before Jon?”

“Soldiers tend to overlook their friend’s behavior when he’s nephew to the Captain of the Guard.”

“And with a war looming, I doubt they’d particularly concern themselves with the issues of whores,” Sansa remarked. “Will you be leaving right now?”

“Yeah.”

An idea struck Bramble, and she tilted her chin up. “Do you…would you like to come with me, Lady Stark?”

She seemed much less hesitant about the offer than Bramble would have expected. Sansa nodded once and delicately said, “I do believe I would. Long has it been since I’ve visited Winter town.”

“I probably don’t have to remind you that this is a brothel we’ll be visiting. It’s different from the lavish lifestyle you fancy ladies live.” But Bramble was smirking, and Sansa rolled her eyes.

“No, you do not need to remind me. I am very much aware.”

They headed out the door together and into the hall. Sansa linked their arms together. “The girls will be beyond happy to meet the Lady of Winterfell. They’ll be mad at me for not warning them earlier since they won’t have time to get their best dresses on.”

“I’ll vehemently assure them that they need no forgiveness for an error they did not commit.”

“You can try.”

-

The walk to Winter town was nice with Sansa there. She preoccupied Bramble with light conversation, who usually had to make the trek by herself. Also, it didn’t hurt that Bramble was a portable heater, so Sansa stuck close to stave off the cold.

The constant fall of snowflakes didn’t even touch Bramble before they melted, and her footprints were more prominent than Sansa’s. But by the time they passed into Winter town, the snow regressed into mud from the town’s traffic. People milled about, soldiers patrolled, and at least two carts almost ran them over. If they recognized Bramble, they didn’t care. And if they had recognized Sansa even with the hood of her cloak up, they wouldn’t have been rampaging through the streets in the first place.

Winter town’s brothel was, much like everywhere else in the vicinity, run-down and plain. But if Sansa was nervous about entering such an establishment, she didn’t show it. The Lady of Winterfell had an exceptional poker face.

Bramble held the door open for her, then followed behind to the interior of the brothel. Since it was the early afternoon on a weekday when soldiers and citizens alike prepared for war, the brothel was blessedly vacant, save for its workers.

Marys—known as Tulip during working hours—ate porridge at the table with Gemma and Hollis. They all beamed when they saw Bramble and her extra guest.

“Look who it is!” Marys wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and embraced Bramble. She was a curvy woman and a couple inches taller than Bramble, and her brown hair was bound in a loose braid that slung over her shoulder. “How are you, love?”

“I’m well. And you?”

“Good, good!” Marys let go and took in Sansa. “And who’s your friend? Not another lass looking for work, I hope?”

Gemma and Hollis laughed along with Bramble and Marys.

“No, no,” Sansa said with a smile, then lowered her hood. The laughter in the room vanished except for Bramble’s fading chuckles. “Forgive the intrusion, my ladies. I wished to come and visit with Bramble.”

Marys turned a shade of deep red. She curtseyed deeply, teetering a bit on her feet, and gasped out an apology. “F-forgive me, milady—your highness! I—I did not know—I would never suggest that you should—”

Sansa’s smile turned amused. She lifted Marys out of her curtsey, then gestured for Gemma and Hollis to raise, as well. “There is nothing that needs forgiveness. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. May I know your names?”

“Marys, milady.” She then hastily gestured for Gemma and Hollis to approach so they could introduce themselves. Sansa clasped each of their hands with sincerity, leaving the women blushing and grinning even more.

Bramble folded her arms. “Where’s Elayna?”

“In her office,” Marys replied, leading them over to the table to sit.

“And Copper and Lily?”

Marys grimaced. “Staying in the extra room, resting. Apothecary visited them yesterday. Said they’d be alright. Lily’s got a couple of cracked ribs, so she’ll be out of work until she’s healed a bit more. Copper’s face is busted up something bad, but the lads don’t mind bruises when all they’re concerned about is what’s between the legs.”

Bramble snorted, fully aware of how the truth of her words. She had a large birthmark on her own face, after all, and that never stopped them. “Hollis, why don’t you go fetch the mistress?” Marys patted the younger girl’s leg. She nodded, her loose strands of straw blonde hair swaying, and left to get Elayna. “Would either of you like food or drink?”

As per custom, both Bramble and Sansa accepted. Hollis brought them a tray of bread and simple cheese slices with two mugs of tame ale. Bramble immediately went for the bread, and Sansa stifled a noise.

“What?”

“Nothing.” The corner of Sansa’s lip curled as she spoke. She lifted the mug up to drink. “You just love your bread, that’s all.”

Marys chuckled. “Aye, she does, doesn’t she? Have to have extra prepared whenever she comes around.”

Bramble shot glares at the two of them and stuffed a piece into her mouth. “Yeah, I like bread. It’s good shit. Fuel for the fire.”

“Fuel for your hips, that’s what I say.” Marys raised her brows for extra effect.

Elayna came down with Gemma behind her. She was the mistress of the Winter town brothel, and her hard demeanor reflected all the shit she had gone through—and survived. But despite it all, Elayna cared for her girls. She told Bramble which ones were spies for Baelish, spies for Varys, spies for the crown, and everyone in between. Of course, some overlapped, including the ones who gave information to Bramble. Copper and Lily were two of those girls.

“Ah, Lady Bramble.” Elayna’s stone gray eyes moved to Sansa, and her thin lips pursed tighter. “I see you’ve brought an extra guest.”

Sansa stood and dipped her head. “A pleasure, my lady.” Elayna scoffed and waved for Sansa to sit back down.

“I highly doubt that. But nonetheless…” Elayna groaned as she seated her weary body into a chair across from Bramble. “Your mother visited this place from time to time. Brought the girls gifts and food. The Men of the North may only remember the other men who died, but we women here? We remember Lady Catelyn Stark, and all the other lowly women who’d the men would prefer to be forgotten simply because of who they are.”

Bramble sat in a rather stunned silence. She had only ever heard Elyana speak frankly and brusquely, but she hadn’t expected her to be so blunt but honest with Sansa, especially concerning her dead mother. In the old woman’s gray, weathered eyes, however, a kind of gleam shone through the layers of hardness. Grief, perhaps? Or anger. Maybe both. The two often went hand-in-hand when it came to injustice.

Sansa accepted Elayna’s words with a single nod. “Thank you. It is a blessing to hear of my mother’s kind deeds from others.”

Elayna shifted her attention back to Bramble. “Quit eating bread, girl. You’re going to get fat.”

“A good reason to get fat,” Bramble said back. She chased her food down with a gulp of ale. Elayna told Hollis and Gemma to make themselves busy elsewhere, but Marys stayed since she was just underneath Elayna in authority. She’d be the one to take over the brothel once Elayna was gone.

And if Winter town still stood by the time this whole war was over.

“Alright, tell me more about this fucker who assaulted Copper and Lily.”

Even with a noblewoman in the midst, Elayna spared nothing. She shot a couple of sympathetic glances to Sansa at some of the harsher details but didn’t slow. Some of the girls had extra jobs in the castle, and many were taken to work when the Boltons reigned since so many servants had been killed or fled. They’d seen what Ramsay did to Sansa during their marriage.

And they gleefully told tales to each other about how she fed Ramsay to his own dogs in the end.

The soldier’s name was Remald. Tiny dick, big mouth, and thought he was hot shit since his uncle got him a position as a soldier. He’d been stalking Copper and Lily for a few weeks but hadn’t actually done anything until last night. The two girls were cousins and lived in a shack on the outskirts of Winter town. He and a friend, Unlan, went to that shack and broke in. That was how both got assaulted in the same night.

“He’ll keep coming after them,” Elayna spat. “Usually I pay the tougher fucks off to stop harassing my girls, but this Remald is too stupid to see that if he doesn’t take the gold I offer, he’s going to have to be dealt in another way.”

“And Copper and Lily can’t be kept safe from him forever.” Bramble rubbed her stomach to assuage the new wave of cramps. “Have you spoken to his uncle?”

Elayna snorted. “In spite of my better judgement, yes. He basically said that in perilous times like these, the men need to have relief. How that relief is achieved is no concern of his. And besides, many are likely to perish soon. Two whores are nothing to be counted for.”

“Seems like a new Captain of the Guard may be required,” said Sansa, almost blithely, to Bramble. She betrayed nothing else.

“Perhaps so.” Elayna allowed a wry smile to briefly surface. “But that is beyond my control.”

“We’ll see to it.” Bramble straightened in her chair as an exchange was made between her and Elayna. “Can we go check on Copper and Lily?”

“Ho, they’ll be upset that the Lady of Winterfell greeted them in naught but their shifts, but they’ll likely talk of it for the rest of their lives.” All the women stood. “Marys will show you their room.”

“Come, loves.” Marys led Sansa and Bramble the creaking, narrow stairs and to the second level. She knocked on the fourth door to the left and said, “Copper? Lily? You have a couple guests.”

“Come in,” came the hoarse reply.

Two girls lay in a bed large enough to fit them. Both were awake. Both had light brown hair. Both had splotches of bruises around their faces and necks.

Both widened their eyes when they saw who entered with Marys and Bramble.

Sansa was ready for their reaction. “Please, stay in bed,” she implored, her long legs carrying her to the side of the room where they were at. “Save your strength. My name is Sansa. It’s wonderful to meet you.”

Both Copper and Lily beamed. Sansa returned with a kind smile of her own.

Neither would ever know that the light shining in Sansa’s eyes was a rare thing indeed, and that they were the cause of it.

-

Bramble escorted the Stark back to Winterfell. The snow had picked up, and a harsher wind blew from the North.

It drowned out their short conversation from the rest of the world.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you and Shireen for dinner tonight,” said Bramble. The fire danced inside her.

“Pity. Where will you be?”

“There’s a matter I must attend to in Winter town. Something about sorting out some finances with local merchants and changing their distribution routes.”

“Will it be a difficult matter? I could send assistance.”

“No, I think I can handle it on my own. But thank you.”

“Will you show them leniency? These…merchants?”

Bramble paused for the slightest moment. Then, “Absolutely not.”

She felt Sansa bare the faintest of smiles underneath the dark hood of her cloak.

Winterfell rose above them, and they passed through the castle’s gate. Night hastily approached in this forlorn season. Bramble had work to do in its darkness.

She bid Sansa a good evening once they were in the office, turned on her heels, and stalked back to Winter town alone.

-

The soldier, Remald, found himself being thrown out of the tavern and into the freezing muck, yelling and spitting as he went. The other soldier, Unlan, was not far behind, and the two drunkenly helped each other up while the back door slammed in their faces.

“What the fuck?” Remald kicked at the door. “Bastards! Can’t a fella want a few extra coins in times like these?”

He was too busy shouting to hear Unlan drop to the ground. It was only when the distinct crunch of stone hitting skull got his attention that he turned.

Remald didn’t have the chance to beg for his life. A figure with a cowl covering most of their face stepped over Unlan’s fresh corpse, raised the heavy rock glistening with his mate’s blood, and struck him in the temple with it. He cried out as he fell, but it was lost in the howling wind.

The last thing Remald saw before death swallowed him up was the rock coming for his head.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

Then it was done. Copper and Lily were safe again. A message to the soldiers who turned a blind eye to their deeds had also been sent.

Bramble dropped the rock next to Remald’s caved-in skull. It was too dark to see any brain matter in the mud, but the ground did shine unnaturally in the back-alley’s torchlight.

She left the two soldiers to be found in the morning, frozen stiff in the cold and blood turned to ice.

-

Jon went through the reports three days later with Bramble, Sansa, and Davos in the room. He glossed over one. “Two soldiers were murdered outside the tavern. Been cheating in a card game, so somebody must’ve gotten ‘em back for it. One of them was Henlas’ nephew who, just this morning, turned in his resignation.”

“Think he might’ve had something to do with it?” asked Davos. Bramble, meanwhile, added up sums in her ledgers.

“Possibly. The guard is looking into it, but with so much else going on, I fear it won’t get resolved.” Jon signed and set the report into his read file. “Shame to lose two soldiers, though, with what we’re going to have to face.”

“Many are likely to perish soon,” Sansa said flatly while she wrote messages. “Two cheating soldiers are nothing to be counted for.”

Davos and Jon—nor any men in any world—would catch the shared look between Sansa and Bramble. The look only women give to other women, with sharp eyes and fragments of smiles.

Then the connection separated, and the room filled with the sound of shuffling papers, ink scratching on parchment, and the wind rattling glass panes. A shadow crawled past one, but Bramble paid it no mind. After she killed about thirty of them, they began to keep their distance.

“Seven hells.”

All three looked up from their work to Davos, who had an unrolled message between his fingers. He read its contents again, then once more, before saying, “This is…it’s Tyrion Lannister. Now hand of the Queen Daenerys Targaryen, requesting that we bend the knee and join her in the fight against Cersei.”

Jon strode over and took the message to read for himself. Bramble and Sansa stood, though she didn’t go to look at the message’s contents like Sansa did. She had a pretty good idea about what it said already.

And what it officially meant for them.

Bramble closed her ledger book. The loud snap of it shutting drew the other pairs of eyes in the chamber back to her. She placed both hands on her hips and breathed out.

“So it is true?” Jon softly inquired. His mild look of bewilderment reminded Bramble of how young he—they—really were. “We must go to Dragonstone and meet her. Pledge fealty.”

“If we wanna stand a chance? Yeah.”

When nobody dared to say anything else as they let the revelation sink in, Bramble came around the table and headed for the door.

“I’ll go find Shireen. Tell her the news. You guys better start preparing. We’ve got a queen to meet.”

As Bramble exited the chambers, she finally let her mask fall from her marred face and gave in to the worry. Heading to Dragonstone meant they were nearing the end. The end of Bramble’s future sight. She’d be left blind to the fate of this world.

Soon, only trails of death would lead her.

 

 

 

Notes:

A short filler chapter before the big stuff starts happening again. But yeah, Sansa has finally got an actual friend, and her name is Bramble. They like to have men killed/be the one who kills men who hurt other women. Bramble stopped having reservations about murdering people a long time ago.

And who is freaking ready for the next season of Game of Thrones?

Additional revision: fuck the last season of Game of Thrones

Chapter 34

Summary:

Revised 7/1/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble headed back from the wildling encampment. She had to say goodbye to Karsi, Wun Wun, Mag Mar, and a few others. They told her to be safe—and be cautious. The last time she and Jon sailed a boat to make peace and offer alliances, the dead attacked.

A true point.

She caught Brienne and Podrick in the middle of one of their one-on-one training sessions since it was still early in the morning. Bramble, Jon, Shireen, Davos, and a small troop of soldiers would be leaving for White Harbor by midday, and by the time they’d get there, one of Stannis Baratheon’s old, repurposed ships would be waiting for them.

Podrick didn’t see Bramble enter the sectioned-off space. He was stumbling to get up from being knocked on the ground by Brienne, who stood a few paces off, training sword at the ready. Her gaze landed on Bramble.

“Ah. My lady.” She dipped her head and put the sword down at her side. Podrick spun to see who the knight spoke to. His cheeks were already red from the cold and exercise, but the tips of his ears turned the same color. He bowed and mumbled an echo of Brienne’s greeting.

“Thought I’d just stop and say goodbye to you two.” Bramble walked up and clasped Brienne’s strong arm. “And to be careful.”

“I should say the same to you,” Brienne said. “Winterfell will miss your presence as much as the king’s.”

“Oh, I don’t know ‘bout that.” Bramble let herself smirk a little. “I’m sure once I’m out of sight, the whole place will breathe a collective sigh of relief. Everybody’s on edge enough as it is; they don’t need to be wondering if Winterfell will burn to the ground because I sneezed a little too hard.”

Brienne chuckled, and Podrick had the decency to smile at her dumb ass.

The smile faded, and Brienne bit her lower lip. A breath, then, “May I be frank with you, Lady Bramble?”

“Of course.”

“Is Lady Stark in danger?”

When Bramble was reluctant to reply, Brienne doubled down on her intense gaze. “I swore an oath to protect her. If you have any information—anything at all—please. I would like to know so I may serve to the best of my abilities.”

Bramble hissed through her teeth. Brienne frowned.

“Is. She. In danger.”

The fire involuntarily rose because a nearly two-meter tall woman loomed above her. “Sansa is…she’ll be able to manage herself, Brienne,” Bramble said firmly. “I think you already know what to look out for. Who to look out for.”

Brienne’s lip sneered. “Baelish.” She spoke the name like a curse. And, really, it was.

After glancing around the courtyard—more specifically to the entrance—Bramble dropped her voice. “Look. Baelish is doing his own fucking around. He’s going to try and isolate Sansa from—from—from people that he shouldn’t.” She winced at her poor attempt to veil the truth but went on. “But he’s not going to get away with it. Sansa will figure it out.”

And Baelish’s blood will have to be scrubbed from the feast hall’s floor.

Though she didn’t seem too pleased with what Bramble said, Brienne nodded once. “Very well. I have no reason to doubt you.”

Bramble loved Brienne’s bluntness. With nothing else to say, she bent her head to Brienne, waved farewell to Podrick, and left the private courtyard. She still had to pack since she wasn’t like the men in this dumb place who thought packing was the same as dressing in one (1) pair of clothes for the entire trip.

Shireen, excited to leave and see her home again—as well as the dragons that now lived there—had packed the night before. She waited in Bramble’s room with Balerion, reading on the bed. The cat scratched his claws on the post.

“Hey, don’t let him do that,” Bramble complained. “Balerion, no!”

Balerion ignored her. “He’s just making sure that his claws are sharpened for battle,” Shireen said absently. Bramble snorted, grabbed her empty bag, and began stuffing it with underwear, shirts, and trousers. Shireen hummed a faint song as she flipped through the pages of her book. A low fire crackled, and snow collected on the windowsill outside.

It had been so long since Bramble traveled, and yet not very long at all.

Maybe the difference was that she hadn’t traveled far from a new place she called home.

The farmhouse had been the first place in Westeros that Bramble truly felt happy. Then Lannister soldiers ripped that away in their red and gold armor, so Bramble ripped them up until their armor was only red. After the blood had long since dried on her hands, she was sent to Castle Black, which…which soon became a home in its own right. But she was a girl, Jon had died, and their displacement brought them back to his old home—and her new one.

Bramble didn’t want to watch Winterfell crumble around her. Not like all her other homes had.

She prayed to whoever listened in this cold, cruel world that she could do what was right. That she could protect those who made Winterfell a home, because if they were gone then this castle would be nothing to Bramble but old stone and empty hearths.

There was a polite knock on the door. “Come in,” Bramble called, and a moment later Sansa was in the room.

“I’ve come to bid you farewell,” she said, the heels of her shoes clacking against the floor as she walked further in. The bed frame creaked a little when she sat down by Shireen. Balerion took it upon himself to rub orange cat hair on the hem of her black dress. Instead of shooing him away, though, Sansa leaned down and petted his head.

“I do wish you could come with us,” Shireen sighed. Sansa did show a hint of remorse.

“As do I. But Winterfell must be maintained. We have much coming our way, after all.”

Shireen huffed, but then said, “I suppose so. And if you were gone, that Petyr Baelish would have his own banner waving in the wind by the time we got back.”

Sansa smiled, but it was not a happy one. “Yes,” she softly spoke, and her blue eyes turned toward Bramble. “I imagine he would.”

They had not discussed Baelish’s fate since Bramble told them only a few weeks ago. She was almost afraid that if she uttered it again, everything would become undone. Just let it all play out, Bramble told herself. It’ll be alright.

But Sansa asked, “How will he die?”

Bramble paused folding her last pair of pants. They were the fancy ones Sansa made that she planned to wear when meeting Daenerys. “He…well, that’s a spoiler, isn’t it?”

“A spoiler? What does that mean?”

“It means,” Bramble said, trying her best not to sound like an idiot or give too much away, “that if I spoil it, things could change, because then you know how it’s going to happen, and then it could obstruct a series of important events that’ll ultimately make you a better, more dimensional person. So best to let it stay a surprise, right?”

“Me? It will make me a better person?” Sansa pressed, leaning forward. Bramble snapped her head up and grimaced. “So I will be involved in it, somehow?”

“I’m just going to fucking shut up. Ask me any more questions, and I’ll punch you in the titty.”

“But—”

Bramble raised her fist threateningly. Sansa lifted a brow. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I legit will if you ask anything else about it. I’m not about to go messing up the entire fate of this world because you wanna play twenty-fucking-questions about that skeevy bastard man.”

Shireen stifled a giggle, which broke the growing tension between the two women. Sansa picked Balerion up and primly put him in her lap. “Fine,” she breathed. “But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” said Bramble, unable to stop a wry smile from twisting the corner of her lip.

Neither she nor Sansa said it aloud, but they were going to miss each other. It went unspoken because Bramble knew that Sansa knew—and vice versa. They had formed something deep during their time at both Castle Black and Winterfell. The two women, both scarred by what this world and the people in it had done to them, braided a bond. A bond that made them laugh despite the odds weighing heavy on their shoulders, a bond that made them stronger when the other was near, a bond that they had been without for so very long.

When it was time to go, Bramble hugged Sansa tight in the courtyard. The Stark hugged back.

She’d return, soon. Then she could keep scribbling in her ledgers and, if—no, when—Winterfell withstood the Army of the Dead, it could hopefully sustain itself because of her financial magic.

Jon strode out of the crypts. He wore a dourer expression than usual. Bramble quickly realized why when about a minute later, Petyr Baelish came slinking out of the same door, looking a little ruffled by whatever transpired between him and Jon. Oh, right. Didn’t Jon choke him out?

Shoulda just finished the job.

Ghost got up from his usual lounging spot in the courtyard and padded up to their small group. Bramble leaned down and gave his big head a scratch as he passed. When she straightened, her dark green eyes fell upon Baelish, who watched their departure from afar. Unlike all the times they made fleeting contact, he did not dip his head to her in faux-acknowledgement.

Bramble despised his fucking guts, and she wished she could be here to see him bleed out on the Winterfell stone.

But, to get some sort of pleasure, Bramble pointed a finger at Baelish while she still held his gaze. That finger then retreated to slowly draw a line across her bare throat.

His jaw visibly clenched, and the platitudes that created Baelish’s demeanor pulled back to reveal—for a moment—the visceral hatred he held for her. But that was what she wanted to see. The rawness of his reality, a weakness now irrevocably ingrained in his system that he could not remove no matter how hard he tried. He hated her just as she hated him; he was not above her in that way, in feeling such a primal emotion that made him as vulnerable as all the others he had used to exploit with the very same thing. And it infuriated him.

Baelish realized that he was exposed, and he slipped back the demure veil he covered himself with. Those eyes, though, remained furious. Bramble smirked and looked straight ahead.

They rode through Winterfell’s gates and began their journey to meet the Dragon Queen. Shadows lurked from the tree lines, waiting for Bramble to let her guard down so they could rove their creepy hands over her and do whatever the fuck they wanted.

“How will I light myself on fire at night if I’m on a boat?” Bramble asked Jon the night before. His cheeks puffed as he let out a long exhale. Between the two of them, they had drained an entire pitcher of strong Northern ale, and while he looked drowsy from it, Bramble didn’t feel a thing. She was like Captain America in that sense.

“Hell if I know, Bramb.”

And that was the entire conversation on the matter.

-

The shadows, it seemed, couldn’t keep up with a ship swiftly sailing on the sea. Bramble saw them crawling on dock posts and crouching behind crates as they left White Harbor, watching her with eyeless gazes. But so far, she was in the clear.

Ironically, they sailed on the same ship that carried them from Eastwatch by the Sea to Hardhome. The same ship that Bramble had found her voice again, that long-kept truths had been revealed, and when she told Jon that Shireen was in danger of being sacrificed—resulting in a broken table and two scorched handprints on either side of the porthole in her room.

So, naturally, Bramble had to choose the very same cabin.

It hadn’t changed much. There was still no replacement table, but the small bed was made, and the candlesticks were new. Bramble tossed her pack on the floor and shut the door behind her. The porthole had been closed, making the room both cold and stuffy at once. She went and opened it, then smirked and covered the faded—but still present—scorches with her palms.

Good thing Jon had gotten better at listening to Bramble. Otherwise, these hot hands would have been wrapped around his thick neck a long time ago. It still could happen; Jon had moments of complete and utter idiocy that completely negated all the good and wise things he had said and done. But Sansa told Bramble that was just how men were, and boy did she believe it.

The reason for Bramble’s fiery outburst those few months ago knocked on the cabin door. “Come the fuck in,” she called. Jon stepped through with a bemused expression.

“Is that how your people really talk to each other back where you’re from?”

“No.” Bramble began rolling her sleeves up and let the wintry sea breeze cool her hot face. “I was actually a nice little girl. I never swore.” She smiled dryly. “Let my word usage be a testament to how much of a shithole this world is.”

Jon tilted his head and raised both brows in agreement. “Well—I was wonderin’ if you wanted to join me up on deck; Shireen is practicing with the new sword the blacksmith made her. Could use better advice than the stuff Davos is making up.”

“I’ve got financials—”

He grinned, and it was genuine and boyish. “Come on, Bramb. Don’t be such a scratchy bird.”

Jon’s attractiveness honestly wasn’t fair. But Bramble could combat what it tempted her to think just by reminding herself that he and his aunt would it on.

She still had no idea if she should tell him or not.

And besides, there was somebody with a sweeter smile that she longed to see, to kiss, to hold again.

Bramble scowled at Jon. “Who fucking told you to call me that? Was it Mag Mar? Karsi? One of those fuckers from the Gray Cave clan?”

But Jon was already retreating back out the door. “The winds are good, but it’ll still be a few days’ journey to Dragonstone. You’ll have plenty of time to lock yourself up in the cabin with your funny numbers.”

“They’re your numbers, asshole. For your kingdom. Which I’m going over for free.”

“Yes, yes. Now are you gonna move your feet or not?”

A pause, then with a loud groan, Bramble trudged behind Jon, moving down the narrow hallway and up the stairs. Salt-ridden wind hit her face, soothing the fire’s burn and tousling the loose hair she hadn’t bothered to pull back from her face. They were still close enough to shore that the cry of gulls circled lazily around their ship.

Bramble tilted her head up and watched the birds coast on the breeze. Above them was a gray sky laden with snow.

“What can you seeeeeee,” Bramble and Dad sang, their loud voices off-key and trapped in the car, “On the horizzzzonnnn! Why do the white gulls callllll?”

Dad would have liked it if Bramble wound up in a different fantasy world. Their fantasy world. It might have been kinder to her. Gandalf would have been kind, at least. She knew an ass ton more about Middle-Earth, too, so she could have been shooting out facts left and right instead of stumbling through one event to the next like she did here.

But all she could do, now, was stare up at not-white gulls, traveling to black shores instead of white, and finding more death in life rather than life after death.

Then again, this was her life after death, wasn’t it?

Shireen moved on the deck, holding her sword as if she’d been born with it, striking a cursing Davos left and right as he poorly blocked her swings. The few former Baratheon soldiers who found work in White Harbor as sailors and enlisted as the crew once they heard their princess would be on board occasionally shouted advice to the two—more so for Davos, and they laughed cheerfully while they did. Jon easily joined. Shireen knocked Davos’ sword out of his hand as he drew Longclaw, and when she turned to face the King in the North, tendrils of mouse brown hair curled around her half-marred face. She was fearless.

Eh. This life given to Bramble could have been worse.

It could have been worse.

Jon quickly overpowered Shireen in a series of swift strikes, but not enough so she instantly lost. He instructed her in a brisk but patient tone. Bramble walked up next to Davos and watched.

“I just got symbolically killed by a princess,” he uttered while they watched. Bramble’s lip tugged up, stretching her scar.

“Isn’t it great?”

He let out a quiet laugh, and when Bramble glanced at Davos, she saw nothing but pride and love in him as their princess danced a rugged dance with steel and a king.

“It is.”

Jon tripped Shireen up with a more complex technique. The soldiers booed and complained, but Shireen pressed on, her hair now sticking to the cool sweat on her forehead. She didn’t have her footing right, or her positioning, and she knew it, but she had no time to defend herself from another strike, so she readied her sword and waited for the next blow—

When Jon’s sword came down, it didn’t meet Shireen’s.

The fire laughed at Jon’s shock, then evolved into coursing flames when he pulled back an instant later, readjusting to the new enemy. Shireen got out of the way, grinning, and Bramble pushed back against Longclaw enough to put distance between her and Jon.

They had actually never sparred, before. Back at Castle Black, it’d always been Grenn or Edd or another one of the Rangers. Jon instructed, of course, but Bramble was gifted with fair enough fighting technique to not have to go over the basics with him and the rest of the Stewards.

There was a moment of calculation on Jon’s end. He’d seen Bramble’s swordsmanship. It was more brutal and faster to make up for her lack of trained skill, but she could do some serious shit in sudden moments when her opponent least expected it.

And she was…strong.

Valyrian steel sang on the ship as it hit Bramble’s Winterfell-forged weapon. Eager fire licked up the hilt of her sword.

Jon was surprisingly quick, though, and he had over a decade of experience over Bramble’s jumbled months. If she wanted to come out a winner—and she did—she needed to end it before he caught some flaw or hole in her defense.

They both learned dirty tricks from the Free Folk, too, so that didn’t help.

They fell into the footwork, leaning with the sway of the ship, letting the shouts from the spectators simultaneously fall away and spur them on. This wasn’t life or death—this was competition. Bramble had learned from her patient teaching parents to keep the competitiveness locked down until it was the right time to unleash it. Like swim tournaments, for example. It was that tempered but unquenched fire that got Bramble first place.

Maybe the fire stayed with her. Maybe it was just more…tangible, now. Physical.

Jon narrowly blocked a fierce blow from Bramble, grunting with the force that went behind it, but he did not yield and expertly used the momentum to retaliate. “Sweep the leg!” Davos called to either one of them. The fucker knew what he was doing. Bramble shouted the phrase at both him and Shireen on the regular when they trained with someone other than herself. Just because she was an asshole who had to supply jokes from her own world so she could giggle at them.

She and Jon lost a bit of their flow when they both succumbed to a bit of laughter. Then Bramble huffed out a scratchy, “Hah!” and dove back in.

It went on for a few minutes, the back-and-forth. Bramble was sweating, as was Jon, and the wintry sea air on the deck turned to a hearth-fire heat that centralized around her.

“The warmth is nice,” Jon said as they both retreated for a moment to try and find weaknesses in the other. While he panted a little, Bramble stayed easy. Her stamina far surpassed his. But Jon gave a cheeky smile. “Is that why Grenn wants to cozy up to you?”

“I didn’t think you were smart enough for shit talk,” Bramble said back. Another strike, another block. “Figured that was Sansa’s job.”

He couldn’t come up with a reply, so Bramble grinned and continued fighting. A sudden jolt of the sea made her feet slide across the wood. Jon took the opportunity of her split-second imbalance and lunged to knock her sword from her hand. They were using real weapons, but it didn’t stop him from worrying about potentially severing an appendage.

The blow was hard, and Bramble felt it rattle up her arm. A sudden shove from Jon’s shoulder sent her down to one knee on the damp deck. She grunted the same time Shireen let out a displeased cry. Jon went in for another hit with the flat end of his sword to mimic winning the battle on Bramble’s left side, where she’d have a difficult time deflecting it in what little time she had.

Instead, her left hand lashed out and caught Jon’s wrist, halting the swing so abruptly that he conveyed genuine shock for a moment.

Bramble didn’t flaunt her shit all the time, but when she did, she wanted to go hard.

Her squeeze tightened, and she rose back up. Jon fought the hold, but when he found he couldn’t release himself, he swung his free fist right to her face. Bramble dropped her sword and caught it with her other hand.

She smiled, vicious and victorious compared to Jon’s realization that he was now on the losing side of the situation. “Oof,” she exhaled. Bramble considered headbutting him, but he probably wouldn’t make the best impression on Daenerys Targaryen with a big fucking bruise on his face.

The fight could go on. Bramble could grip Jon’s wrist so tightly that he’d be forced to drop his sword. She could shove him so hard that he’d go flying backwards onto the ground. She could scorch his calloused skin. She could do a lot of things for the sake of making the win absolute.

Her fire tried spurring Bramble enough to get her to do it. She almost listened.

But Jon was her friend, and she would not let her hardened spirit turn something fun into something reckless, something mean, something fearsome. Not to him. Not with Shireen and Davos and the sailors around.

Not when she had a choice to not do, rather than having no choice at all to be violent and raging.

Jon might have seen the brief reflection of Bramble’s thoughts in her dark green eyes, for his face fell a little, becoming a precipice on whether or not to brace himself for worse conflict. But it was his unease that jolted Bramble more than the strike of steel could.

This whole loyalty thing would be the real death of her, wouldn’t it?

Her smile slipped into something smaller, something softer, and the heat of the fight—the heat of her fire—faded. She released Jon and casually punched him in the chest. He let out a light chuckle, and the spectators on deck cheered and exchanged whatever wagers they may have taken. From the corner of her eye, Bramble saw Davos pocket a few coins. What a cheater.

“Have you ever actually been beaten, Bramb?” Jon asked her as they sheathed their swords. She tapped the deep scar that paved through her dark ruddy birthmark.

“A few times. Brienne also kicked my ass about a week ago. I think she was a little upset that her squire was bopping swords with me instead of her.” Bramble smirked, and Jon chuckled. “Don’t tell her I said that, though. She’ll probably kick my ass to grass again.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

The bosun barked for the crew to get back to work. As they dispersed, Shireen strode up to them with brimming eagerness.

“Alright,” she said, her breath invisible because of the heat Bramble still radiated, “teach me how to do all of that.”

-

Bramble wished she could draw. That way, the edges of her memory wouldn’t blur the face she saw in the vision given to her by the Old Gods. The boy with Daenerys. The one who tried to kill her—or at least that was how she interpreted it. In any case, she remembered how the fire burned him to nothing but ash before the images shifted.

But she still saw him clear enough. A weird kind of excitement hopped in her stomach; if she saw him in Dragonstone, it meant that something was different. Something the show—and maybe the book series—hadn’t managed to catch. The excitement was concocted from part nervousness, part hope.

Because late last night, as she blearily went over ledgers in her scratchy quill handwriting, the memory of him floated to the surface of her distracted mind, and in that state of distraction, a question arose:

What if he’s like me?

That in itself should have made Bramble more scared than she was; if he had…similarities…to Bramble, that could mean bad business. The vision certainly made it seem so. It threw her knowledge of the basic future off-kilter. The things she already told Jon and Sansa and others could become lies.

Well. Whoever he was, whatever he meant, Bramble was going to find out soon.

Dragonstone rose high in the distance, as jagged and grim as the formidable cliffs that it rested on, worn into even grimmer versions by the merciless waves that threw themselves upon the rocks. The wind, a bit warmer than the icy northern hellhole they’d sailed from, seemed to buffet Bramble from both sides. She wished she had tied her hair back before settling into the rowboat that ferried them from the ship to the shore.

Figures dotted the coastline, waiting for the King in the North and his entourage to arrive. As they got closer, Bramble picked out at least a dozen who wore heavier furs and carried scythe-like weapons signature of the Dothraki. One figure, however, was a woman, clad in regal black fabric. Her coiffed afro ruffled in the wind. Another beside her was a man, small and dwarfish, also wearing black.

Bramble remembered his blond hair. It was longer, how, and curlier, but still the same as when she last saw it.

“Are those Dothraki?” Shireen asked her. Balerion’s cage sat on her lap. Bramble tried suggesting keeping him on the ship with Ghost until introductions were officially made, but she refused to part with him. Not that she could blame Shireen. He was Balerion the Orange Dread, after all, and she was Princess Shireen Baratheon, and the cat from Castle Black went wherever the greyscale girl did.

“Yeah,” Bramble replied. She tried keeping the excitement from welling. This was it. The big moment.

She looked to Jon. He wore his Serious Face, and rightly so. Despite all the assurances and information Bramble had given him, it seemed objective to reality—until reality lay before them, right down to who she described would greet them on the shore.

The grinning boy who had been on her mind since she glimpsed him in the godswood was not there.

“They certainly look frightening.”

“They are.” Bramble paused, and to ease the tangible tension hanging over the rowboat, she said, “You know, the girls at the brothel thought I was Dothraki.”

Jon glanced at her sidelong. The crinkled corners of his eyes belied an almost-smile. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. They wanted me to show them how Dothraki screamed when going into battle, and how to do their hair like one of the women would. But I didn’t know squat shit.”

“Why did they think you were Dothraki?” questioned Davos. The tightness in his shoulders relaxed an ounce with the distraction.

“Half because they had no idea where else I could have come from. Half because I’m brown.” Bramble allowed herself a smirk. “And if you’re not in Dorne, brown people are automatically exotic. But I’m just glad they didn’t distrust me as much as you northern sons of bitches do, eh?” She playfully elbowed one of the rowing soldiers, who laughed at both the teasing jab and its truthfulness.

Davos huffed with amusement. “Can’t argue with you on that.”

The last of their short conversation died as soon as the rowboat was close enough for the soldiers to pile out and bring it to shore. Jon, Bramble, Davos, and Shireen stayed inside it until the foamy waves receded enough for them to step down on charcoal-colored sand. She wore all black for the occasion; her newly broken-in boots, sleek trousers, fitted vest, and a side-cape that draped over her left shoulder and clasped with a silver wolf pin would hopefully make an impression. The absence of a tunic left her toned arms bare. Her skin didn’t prickle with the cold.

Bramble did not speak it outright, but she felt magic emanating in the air and earth, ancient like the Wall. Then again, all magic was old, and it all left a haunting sensation in her bones.

Tyrion Lannister stepped forward, smiling in a clever kind of way that, for some reason, made Bramble a little pissy. The charm of meeting fabled fictional characters lost its effect after a while, and especially since this technically wasn’t her first time encountering the Lannister. She’d been taught time and time again that they were all human here, just as riddled with flaws and evils as anyone else.

His eyes—one black and one green—moved over each of them, and they lingered a fraction of a second longer on Bramble. If his smile made her irritated, then his eyes made her unnerved. They were too perceptive.

This is Tyrion Lannister, Bramble reminded herself. Her hands clenched tightly against the other as they settled behind her back in a formal posture. The fire whined to get out. He’s good. He’s good. Don’t be shitty.

But being shitty was really easy for her to do here, which didn’t help.

“The Bastard of Winterfell,” Tyrion greeted, sincere fondness in his voice.

“The dwarf of Casterly Rock,” Jon responded, and he full-smiled this time. He was happy to see Tyrion, given the circumstances.

They shook hands. “I believe we last saw each other on top of the Wall,” said Tyrion.

“You were pissing off the edge, if I remember right.” Jon slightly jerked his chin. “Picked up some scars along the road.”

An unexpected heaviness settled on Tyrion, and Bramble wished she still had her Sight. It could have been useful right now, spilling all the tea on Tyrion and those around him with its helpful visuals. “It’s been a long road. But we’re both still here.”

Jon nodded a fraction. Tyrion turned to the rest of them, extending a hand out to Davos. “Tyrion Lannister.”

“Davos Seaworth.” A brusque shake, then a retreated step.

“Ah. The Onion Knight. We fought on opposite sides on the Battle of Blackwater Bay.”

“Unluckily for me.” Bramble didn’t like it when Davos’ voice got as calm as it was.

Apparently, neither did Tyrion. He noted the tone and moved to Shireen, bowing. “And you must be Lady Baratheon. I’m sorry to hear of your father, but I glad to see that the Baratheon line still holds true.”

Shireen bowed back, though it was significantly less. She put on her aura of nobility, and even holding Balerion’s cage did not retract from it. “Lord Snow and Lady Stark avenged my father’s death and brought me under their protection. I am indebted to them.” She tilted her head to Dragonstone and said, “You haven’t completely ruined my home, have you?”

Tyrion had enough dignity to sheepishly smile. “No, it has been kept in good condition, my lady. I would like to offer apologies for the…awkward circumstances of the return to your home. I can only hope that you may find its new inhabitants worthy of residing here.”

“You speak sweet words, Lord Tyrion,” said Shireen. She smiled back, but it was the political smile, the guarded smile that Bramble had seen on Sansa countless times. “Thank you.”

He came to Bramble and knew to shake her hand rather than bow. “And you must be Lady Bramble. Tales of your powers have spread throughout Westeros. It is a pleasure to be able to meet you in person.”

The fuck. Really?

But she barely paused. “And you as well, Lord Tyrion.” Bramble saw him squint a fraction at the newness of her accent.

“I…can’t help but believe that I’ve seen you from somewhere before, my lady.”

Wow. So he did have a good memory.

Bramble’s eyebrows bumped up, and she tried not to sound too shitty as she spoke. “I danced for you and a friend a long time ago, my lord, at a brothel in King’s Landing. The Golden Rose.”

Davos coughed, and Missandei suddenly found interest in the sky. Bramble took a little delight in the fact that Tyrion looked rightly stupefied, even if it was for a mere second.

Then he cleared his throat. “Ah. Right. Well,” he bowed to her this time, if just to break eye contact, “life leads strange roads. I cannot say that this is the worst destination for either of us.”

“No. It isn’t.”

She remembered the night. Another hot southern summer, where the breeze was humid, but the brothel’s stone retained some coolness. Tyrion’s friend, Ser Bronn of the Blackwater, heard of the girl at The Golden Rose and how she danced in a particular way that gained interest and admiration around the Street of Steel and Cobbler’s Square. Wanting to pull his impish friend away from politics, family, and other husbandly problems for one night, he requested a private session with the dancer along with a fat sack of gold.

So Bramble danced, ignoring heart palpitations and sweaty, nervous feet as she danced. He’s blond, she kept thinking. Bronn watched the display unfold with the music, as well as the clothing that dropped to the floor. By the end of it, Bramble wore nothing more than a silken waistband with sheer fabric hanging down both the front and back to further tease the temptation of her womanhood. She didn’t wear any covering over her face like she had back in Ashford; here in King’s Landing, they had makeup to reduce the appearance of her birthmark.

Tyrion occasionally glanced up. For the most part, he seemed distracted, and his wine was a more interesting companion than Bramble’s lusty dancing. Once she was done, he told Bronn he was leaving, and that he could stay longer if he wanted. But Bronn, after some complaining, said he didn’t want Tyrion getting his throat cut this late at night and opted to go back with him. Whether that was his true reason, something else, or a bit of both, Bramble couldn’t be sure.

She liked to think Bronn was just being a friend, as much as he wanted to deny the existence of such a thing.

Tyrion pecked a kiss on Bramble’s hand, and Bronn followed up with a longer one. “I’ll be back,” he promised with a wink and a charming grin.

But that was the last she saw of either of them.

The gold they gave to her in payment of the session, however, was what got her on a boat to Pentos with the rest of her earnings and away from the life.

She’d thank Tyrion later when her boots weren’t getting soaked with sand-water and her hair didn’t flip in her face every five seconds.

“Missandei, here, is the queen’s most trusted advisor,” he said, shifting the attention away from him.

She took her cue and smiled. “Welcome to Dragonstone.” Her pleasant voice contrasted against the wet and windy setting they stood in. Missandei purposefully addressed Shireen and Davos. “And welcome back to Dragonstone. Our queen knows it is a long journey, and she appreciates the efforts she has made on your behalf. Now, if you wouldn’t mind handing over your weapons.”

Jon turned to Bramble, and she gave a single nod back. He refrained from sighing or cursing or whatever a disgruntled Northerner would do when asked to relinquish their swords to foreigners. His response set the example, though, and the soldiers didn’t protest like they could have when the Dothraki took their weapons.

She gave her sword to a Dothraki, who was probably over two meters tall. He grabbed her sword with a grunt and moved on. Others behind her took the rowboat. But Bramble didn’t feel vulnerable or isolated. Not when the fire whispered for her to just burn something, anything, even if it was just a piece of fabric, please, please.

The magic riddled in the sand and distantly sweeping across the sky in three enormous forms made it more alive.

Bramble leaned down to whisper to Shireen, “There are dragons nearby. I can feel it.”

It got her a suppressed grin. Shireen didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to.

A Dothraki tried to take Balerion, but Missandei spoke to him in their language, and he backed off. She smiled at Bramble and said, “I told him that the lady’s pet isn’t a threat to our safety.”

“That’s what we want you to think,” Bramble said back. While Tyrion made her instinctively prickle, Missandei was a surprising balm in comparison. “He’s named after one of the most dangerous dragons alive, after all.”

Missandei’s brow piqued. “Oh?”

Shireen, recognizing Bramble’s comfortability talking to Daenerys’ advisor, lifted up his finely-crafted cage. It was no secret that the princess had the entire Winterfell smithy wrapped around her finger. “Meet Balerion.”

Hearing his name, the cat mrrped.

“The Orange Dread,” Bramble added. Missandei managed to look graceful even when amused.

“I imagine that it is a fitting name.” She took a few steps backward so she could address Davos and Jon nearby. “Please, this way.”

Dragonstone beckoned, and within it resided Queen Daenerys Targaryen.

Bramble hoped she would like her cape.

 

 

 

Notes:

I should have waited to post this tomorrow, but it's still May 2nd right now, and the last chapter I posted was on April 2nd, so I wasn't about to go longer than a month without posting. I'm starting up school now, so my writing opportunities for this fic and others is slimming down, but I'll still try posting at least monthly.

The LotR reference is definitely a shoutout to my OTHER fic about a modern girl in middle earth, so if you haven't checked that out yet but are interested, go ahead. And thanks to all those who have done so already! I love you all so much, and thank you for the support with that fic and this one.

But yeah. Bramb has already met Tyrion. If there's any incongruities about her meeting main characters for the first time at Castle Black, I'm gonna go and fix it. Though he's not as mangled as the book version in this fic, I still wanted him to have that mysterious Targaryen-colored hair and the super cool mismatched eyes. BTW, Bramb doesn't warm up to him right away because she knows how flippantly observant he is about everything. But don't worry, it's not gonna last.

Chapter 35

Summary:

Revised 7/2/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“This,” Bramble declared, “is a fucking hike.”

The path from the shore to the castle was a long one—and sometimes steep—but at least the view was spectacular for both the sea and Dragonstone itself. Mist sprayed up on Bramble’s face, and she thought of Hawaii and her parents, and what could have been and never would be.

“Mother never allowed me to come out here,” Shireen said. She surveyed the landscape as if actually taking it in for the first time. “It was too much of a public place. I could have scared people.” She exhaled and tucked back a loose string of hair to stop it from whipping in the wind. “But all the people I could have scared are dead, now. Including my mother.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Bramble. Her gaze flitted to Jon and Tyrion, who conversed in front of them. “There’ll be plenty of more people to scare. And they’ll come to find that your greyscale scars are the least of their concerns.”

“I say let it be a distraction,” Davos added from behind them. He walked beside Missandei. “Then they won’t realize they’ve been stuck with your little sword until it’s already in them.”

The girls both smirked. Bramble glanced back at Missandei, who listened to the conversation but remained silent. Her gaze slid to the advisor’s feet again. Nothing.

“You’re not afraid of Shireen, are you, Lady Missandei?” Bramble inquired, making sure her voice was loud enough to not be sucked away by the wind. Why she was asking the question, she didn’t particularly know, but she liked Missandei after .5 seconds of meeting her and wanted to be inclusive.

“No,” came her polite reply. “I see it as a sign of hope, actually. That being cured of the disease is not impossible.”

Oh, shit. That was right. Jorah Mormont had greyscale. He hadn’t yet returned from the…was it the Citadel? Sam—fuck, she missed Sam—would cure him soon, though, right?

Bramble really needed to write things down.

But she heard Missandei tell Davos where she was from, which brought up another topic. “Naath, I hear, has butterflies that carry a disease which’ll make a man’s flesh fall right off his bone. Like a tender roast.”

Shireen stifled a giggle at Bramble’s morbid description. “Yes, it is true,” Missandei said. “But the people of Naath are immune to the paruhaliki. The butterfly fever, as outsiders call it.”

Bramble’s shoulders tensed. The word that rolled off Missandei’s tongue sounded…almost Tagalog?

“What do they—”

Three embodiments of sheer, overwhelming magic suddenly pressed down upon Bramble, and she sucked in a gasp and whirled around. Her jaw dropped childishly. The fire combusted, drawn so wholly and passionately to the sources, and Missandei took a startled step back as the birthmark on her face ignited into flames.

Dragons swooped low, shattering the air with their roars. Shireen gaped at them with a wide, brilliant grin. The hurricane of their wing beats turned Bramble’s hair into whips that lashed across her face. Davos and Jon ducked against the ground, but the very presence of these living, fire-breathing creatures the size of commercial airplanes almost lifted Bramble off her feet with the magnetism of their magic. She could taste it in the heat of the fire, feel it fissuring through her bones, and she hadn’t felt this alive since…since…

Bramble slammed her hands against the low wall of the path and watched the dragons soar back up into the sky. Their scales rippled in red, orange, and green iridescence. Shireen was right at her side, as enthralled as Bramble. Could she feel the magic? Could they all feel the magic? It was power, it was life, it was savage energy that had the capacity to rip the world apart.

So consumed by the sight, the presence of three real live dragons (REAL LIVE DRAGONS!), Bramble forgot all propriety and what was at stake. She threw her head back up to the sky and screamed, “WHOOOO!” at the top her lungs. Shireen joined her, and Bramble put her arm around the princess’ shoulders while they both raucously cheered.

The green dragon screeched back in response. Bramble gasped and shook Shireen. “He said hi!” she exclaimed. “He said hi to us!”

Of course, she had no idea if that was true or not, but Bramble was going to take it how she wanted if simply for the joy.

Once the three dragons spiraled further away in the sky and the magic no longer consumed Bramble’s existence, she calmed down and let go of Shireen. They struggled to overcome the aftershocks with their delighted giggles.

But Bramble didn’t miss the strange look Missandei gave her as she and Shireen hooped and hollered at the dragons, like the advisor had just seen something familiar. Those features quickly smoothed back into guarded calm, but she couldn’t save herself from smiling.

Jon and Davos were rightly embarrassed since they were the only two laid out on the cobblestone path. “I’d say that you get used to it,” Tyrion consoled as he helped Jon up. “But you never really do.” He slid those mismatched eyes to Bramble and Shireen, and a cheeky smile appeared. “Most are not as brave as these two. I do believe they may be the first in history to cheer at the sight of a dragon.”

Shireen helped Davos up with her free hand. Balerion had curled up in the back of his cage, still puffy and growling from the great beasts above. “Thank you, princess,” Davos grunted, and he huffed when he saw Bramble’s shit-eating smirk. “Oh, shut it. I’ve been alive this long for a reason, I’ll have you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the oldest fart in the Seven Kingdoms, I’ll give you a medal,” said Bramble. Davos narrowed his eyes at her, but they then shared fond, wry looks. She lightly punched him in the shoulder and started walking again. The fire still danced in her chest, and she was almost sure that if she opened herself up, her ribcage would be blackened from the flames. Like that one time when Dad forgot beef ribs in the grill and when he lifted up the lid, there was nothing but smoke and crispy meat.

Bramble missed barbeque, and she was fucking hungry.

Shireen recounted draconic information to Missandei that the advisor probably already knew. If she was trying to keep herself at a distance from the Stark entourage, it was too late. Once Shireen got talking about dragon wingspans and the fluid held in some chamber for fire breathing, she wouldn’t stop until interrupted. And Missandei, too nice to interrupt a technical “guest,” demurely listened.

When Bramble glanced back and caught Missandei’s attention, she quirked her brows up in a half-apologetic, half-playful kind of way. Missandei responded with a twinkle—as reluctant as it was—in her dark gold eyes.

Maybe it was the magic and dragons, but Bramble had been put in an exceptionally good mood.

She’d have to wait and see if it would last.

-

Dragonstone was…dark. Like, light some fucking torches or something. Bramble would have made a snide comment about the dimness, but Missandei and Tyrion had taken up the front with Jon and Davos behind them. The two entered Serious Mode, leaving Bramble behind with Shireen. Even the princess turned solemn, with her shoulders thrust back and expression hardened to match the greyscale. Balerion had been taken to her quarters, because for some reason, the presence of an orange cat retracted from the importance of a situation.

Bramble straightened herself, too, and swept her hair behind her ears one last time before the doors to the great hall opened up before them.

Like the rest of the fortress, the hall was made of dark rock. Carved windows near the top of the vaulted ceilings let some blessed daylight in, and more torches dotted the walls to illuminate an already hard-to-brighten chamber.

The brightest ray of light cast down in the far end of the room, where a throne made from beautiful, jagged, diagonal turbidite stood. Another triangular window that framed the throne loomed behind it, and the metal framework inlaid into the window’s glass was…odd. Old. Bramble had caught glimpses of similar styles in Essos, where remnants of Valyrian décor still speckled the architecture.

But the throne wouldn’t be as imposing as it was without the figure seated in it. White tresses of hair, long and in some parts braided, framed the face of a fair-skinned woman who held the command of kingdoms in her eyes. Her dress, dark like the rest of everyone else’s clothing, had deep red hues to it, and a single iron chain imitating dragon scales looped across her front like a war-ready sash. It connected with the three crafted dragon heads near the top of her shoulder. A maroon cape hung from the pin.

Bramble felt old, old magic imbued in Dragonstone, but here, in this hall, she felt something she never had before.

The presence of a queen.

 Missandei and Tyrion took their respective places by the throne. Other than a Dothraki guard and an older man with short, snow-white hair, there were no others.

Where is he? Or are you just going crazy at this point?

Wait a fucking minute—who the hell was the old guy? He wore Westerosi-style armor, and he took up a stance like the chief guardsman. Jorah? No. No? No. Jorah had greyscale. Then who?

Jon and Davos came to a stop about five meters away from the throne. Bramble flanked Jon’s empty side and Shireen stood beside Davos. She clasped her hands loosely behind her back. The faint scuffle of shoes against the stone echoed in the hall.

But Missandei’s voice rang clear when she spoke.

“You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, rightful queen of the Andals and the First Men, protector of the Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains.”

Missandei’s tone turned strong at the last title. Daenerys had broken her chains a long time ago. And, if Bramble hadn’t escaped those trappers in Braavos one humid night, she might have broken her chains, as well.

The thought sent goosebumps down Bramble’s neck. How different things could have been.

Jon half-glanced at Davos, who then remembered his position and cleared his throat.

“This is Jon Snow,” he stated, and Bramble wondered why he had cleared his throat at all since it was such a short introduction. “He’s King in the North.”

Bramble allowed a small smile.

Daenerys’ gaze swept over them all. And, like Tyrion, it lingered on Bramble for a fraction of a moment.

“Thank you for traveling so far, my lord,” she said. “I hope the seas weren’t too rough.”

“The winds were kind, your grace.” Jon replied, managing not to sound too strained, and Bramble felt him briefly look at her. Right. She had basically talked Daenerys up so Jon and Sansa and the entire North wouldn’t feel so guarded and hostile toward her. Now it was all in Daenerys’ court to actually make it true. Hell, Bramble planned on sending Shireen right to her if Ramsay had won the Battle of the Bastards because she inherently trusted Daenerys’ character that much.

“Apologies,” Davos said. “I have a Flea Bottom accent, I know, but Jon Snow is King in the North, your grace. He’s not a lord.”

Bramble kept herself from grimacing.

So did Daenerys if she even wanted to grimace at all. “Forgive me…”

“Your grace, this is Ser Davos Seaworth,” Tyrion informed.

“Forgive me, Ser Davos, I never did receive a formal education, but I could have sworn I read that the last King in the North was Torrhen Stark, who bent the knee to my ancestor Aegon Targaryen in exchange for his life, and the lives of Northmen.” Daenerys adjusted her position ever-so-slightly, but it was enough to reinforce her next statement. “Torrhen Stark swore fealty to House Targaryen in perpetuity.” Her sculpted brows drew together a fraction. “Or do I have my facts wrong?”

“I wasn’t there, your grace.”

“No, of course not.” She showed the faintest of smiles, but it was not kind. “But still, an oath is an oath. ‘In perpetuity’ means…what does perpetuity mean, Lord Tyrion?”

“Forever.”

Daenerys fixed her gaze on Jon, making Bramble glad that she wasn’t in his place. How he was able not to squirm under such intensity was beyond her. “Forever.”

She went on. “So I assume, my lord, you’re here to bend the knee.”

A pause. Then, “I am not, your grace.” There was another, longer moment of silence as Jon braced himself for what he was about to say next. “Not yet, anyway.”

There was a shift in Daenerys’ demeanor. Same with Tyrion and the old man. Missandei remained ever-solemn.

The Dragon Queen simply uttered, “Oh?”

“I have every right to be wary of you, your grace. My grandfather and uncle were burned alive by your grandfather. Fealty between House Stark and House Targaryen ended that day.” This time, Jon looked to Bramble again purposefully, and she returned it. Bramble dared to give the slightest of nods, just as she always had for him.

He returned his attention to Daenerys, who observed the exchange with razor sharpness. “I don’t know you, your grace, and I don’t particularly care for long speeches and fancy words.” Jon’s Northern brogue started to stand out with the rise in emotion. “So let me say this: we need your help, and you need ours.”

The entire Targaryen-allied side stiffened, as if Jon’s words carried profoundness—and not insult.

If Davos saw it too, he kept going for Jon. “Not to defeat Cersei. You could storm King’s Landing tomorrow with your three dragons and two armies, and the city would fall. Hell, we almost took it and we didn’t even have dragons.”

“Almost,” Tyrion said softly, and Bramble and Shireen simultaneously glared at the Hand. He swallowed and dropped his gaze. At least he had some decency.

“But you haven’t stormed King’s Landing,” Jon continued. “Because you don’t want to lay waste to thousands of lives, even if it meant winning the war in the fastest way possible. So, at least, that means you’re better than Cersei.”

Daenerys spoke more softly than she ever had before when she said, “Go on.”

“This war with Cersei—it will not matter unless the real threat is dealt with. Because you, and me, and Cersei, and everyone else…we’re just children. Screaming and vulnerable and ignorant to the death looming upon us.

“Your grace, everyone you know will die before winter is over if we don’t defeat the enemy to the North.” Jon took a breath, preparing himself, but Bramble watched Daenerys take one herself, as if she might have expected what he was about to tell them.

“The dead are the enemy. And they are on the march from the North, from beyond the Wall, with numbers over a hundred thousand. The White Walkers are real. The Night King is real. I’ve seen it. If they get past the Wall and we’re squabbling amongst ourselves…we’re finished.”

The fire fueled Bramble’s own suspicions, making her hot, making her nervous, making her excited.

Before Jon or Davos or Daenerys or Tyrion could say anything, she heard her semi-scratchy voice echo in the hall.

“You already know, don’t you?”

The world snapped to Bramble. She stared back at Daenerys, who betrayed nothing.

“Know what.”

Though Bramble had no confidence in speaking to a queen, the fire gave it to her. She unclasped her hands and took half a step forward.

“You should be baffled, by now, unbelieving. You should be questioning Lord Snow. I’ve done my part to prepare your case for him, but when we’re talking about an army of the dead, nobody in their right mind would accept it if they aren’t from the North. If they haven’t seen for it themselves or felt the winter in their bones.

“Unless somebody has told you about it. Before our arrival.”

The lack of any uncomfortable shift, of any confused glances on the Targaryen side confirmed it for Bramble. Beside her, Jon’s breath quickened.

Her teeth bared. “Who is here.”

Tyrion tried to calm them. “Now, let us all be rational—” he said, taking a step forward with a placating gesture. “No need to get suspicious—”

The fire roiled under Bramble’s skin. It was so very close to connecting with the old magic in the air. “Shut up,” she hissed at him. Tyrion froze, wide-eyed.

“What is the meaning of this?” Jon demanded, and Bramble hated it when he raised his voice, so he must have been as angry as she was. Maybe just as freaked out, too.

Where is he? Where is he? The question beat in Bramble’s chaotic mind like drums.

Just when Daenerys looked like she was going to command her Dothraki guards and the old man to restrain them, a loud crash from the far left end of the hall interrupted the unraveling situation.

A large, standing sconce had been knocked over, spraying fire and ash and smoke across the dark stone. Next to it, hunched and wincing, was a young black man. He wore similar Essosi clothes, layered appropriately for the weather, and despite his current position, appeared to be quite tall.

But Bramble didn’t care about any of that.

She just cared that it was him. In the dying firelight of the sconce, shadows pooled at his feet. But then they were gone as soon as he moved, and Bramble wondered if she had seen anything at all.

Besides, she was much more preoccupied with the man himself, who straightened and made an awkward, self-conscious face. “Yeah, sorry!” he called, accent distinctly British. Tyrion had closed his eyes and fought off second-hand embarrassment.

Jon detected Bramble’s invisible hackles rise at the sight of the man and stiffened. He had no time to ask if it was who she saw in her vision, though, because the man stepped over the fallen sconce and let out a gush of words that matched the quick pace of his footsteps.

Footsteps that marched right toward Bramble.

“Oh my gosh!” he grinned, and it was the same eager grin that she had glimpsed in the godswood—until it turned nightmarish. The tension of the hall didn’t match his bright demeanor. “It’s—it’s you! I mean, of course it’s you, why wouldn’t it be? I mean it’s you, as in You-from-Another-World, from my world, right? Right? You have to be because you got an American accent! Or Canadian? I’ve honestly never met a Canadian! And wow, it’s so nice to finally meet—”

He came too close.

Bramble punched him in the face.

The man fell flat on his back and clutched a bleeding nose. “Ohhh, ow,” he cried, squirming on the floor. Daenerys sprung from her throne, visibly upset, and she descended the steps with the older man to reach him.

Her good mood had decidedly vanished.

“Who the fuck are you?” Bramble spat. The man propped himself up on an elbow and, though frustration mixed with his pain, there was no apparent anger toward her.

“I—I’m Callum!” The words hurt to speak, and he let out another pitiful, “Ow!”

As Bramble stood over him, she couldn’t help but feel like a wild animal, and Callum was the injured prey. The fire, however, was surprisingly docile. Alive, just as it always was, but not vicious. Could it possibly have been…confused?

Its strange behavior caught Bramble off-guard. Usually she was the one who had to temper its ferocity when her emotions rose. She took a step back, shock freezing her system, as Daenerys and the man knelt beside Callum.

He was from her world. He was from Earth.

Bramble stared. Her fists, so close to igniting, shook. He was from Earth. This guy, groaning and pinching hit nose shut while Daenerys worried over him with unshielded love, was from Earth. Home. Home.

Home.

“Bramb,” Jon spoke, gripping her shoulder, and it ripped her from the yawning spiral. She struggled to breathe, struggled to think, but she would not let reality slip from her fingers so easily. Bramble could think of her parents, of their house and backyard, of the apple tree, of a life she could never get back later.

But right now. Right now, there was Callum, who she had seen in her vision, who tried to kill her, who…whose eyes glistened with tears from the pain of being punched in the nose.

“You’re alright, lad,” the man said, sounding similarly gruff but caring like when Davos spoke to those he was close to. He helped Callum sit up more fully, and his long legs stretched out in a V.

Daenerys looked up at Bramble, and she was struck with the imminent, pale violet storm. “You would dare harm one of my own?” she questioned with a barely-restrained snarl. Callum touched her arm and shook his head.

“No, Dany—it’s alright. It’s alright.” He sounded nasally but assuring. “Barristan, could you help me up?”

Bramble’s lips parted. “Barristan?” she repeated. The name brought back a flood of vague memories. Old man, basically mic-dropped in front of Joffrey, went to Daenerys, and subsequently died at some point in Essos.

The old man—Barristan—raised a brow at her. “Aye, that’s my name.”

Blood dripped loudly onto the stonework. Callum lamely jerked a thumb at Barristan and managed to still smile at Bramble. She refused to feel shame about hitting him. Her reasons were still valid. “Barristan Selmy. Ought to not be here, yeah?”

Bramble cautiously dipped her chin down. Callum then pointed a finger at Shireen. “Princess Baratheon. Ought to not be here, either.”

Shireen stood bold to him but said nothing.

Callum let out a shaky laugh. His free hand placed itself on his hip. “Looks like we’ve both been meddling.”

She hadn’t been a mute for a long time, but it was still a struggle to speak. “So you…you already told her? About the Night King?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. Gotta make sure things are all smoothed over, right?” Callum tested his nose and, once he found that it no longer bled, released the pinch. Blood smeared across his chin and cheek, red and glistening. Did he have abilities like Bramble? Could he see death? Could he command fire? “Daenerys still wanted to have the conversation. See if Jon Snow would pledge fealty and all that good stuff, even though I told her he wouldn’t right away. But! As it turns out, he’s had some talking to beforehand as well.”

Callum’s expression turned mischievous. “I thought something was off when I heard that there was a straight-up firebender with Jon Snow. I’m jealous.”

“Can you…” Bramble swallowed. “Can you do what I can?”

“What? No! I mean, I wish.” Callum scratched the back of his closely-shaved head. “Nah, all I got was a bit of strength. Nothing cool like you. But then again, we’re gonna need it, right?”

He tossed his head back and laughed like it was the funniest joke in the world. Bramble didn’t hide her disdain. “We are,” she reiterated flatly. Callum heard her tone and reigned in his laughter back to a grimace.

“Yeah. Probably shouldn’t be laughing about it. I’m sorry—I’m just nervous. I mean, you’re the first person I met from Earth! I thought…I thought I was alone.”

Bramble’s jaw clenched at the familiar ache his words struck in her chest. Callum swallowed hard and frowned, trying to stifle the sudden wave of emotions that he couldn’t conceal as well as Bramble could. He let out a small cry, then flung his arms around her.

She instantly went rigid. Since Callum was a lot taller than Bramble, he had to stoop a little, but it didn’t lessen the force of the hug. He sniffled, and the blood still in his nose made the noise thick. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered to her. “I really am.”

Not knowing what else to do (because throwing Callum off her would be rude, and she had already punched him), Bramble gave Callum’s back two pats. She tilted her head to Jon for some kind of help, but the King in the North was just as baffled as she was—and just as awkward when it came to such sudden affections.

The pats were enough for Callum. He let go, grinning brightly despite being decked by Bramble not three minutes ago. Daenerys watched their interaction, dissecting every millimeter of their movement.

“Well,” Tyrion declared, saving the hall from an uncomfortable silence on everyone’s part but Callum’s. “What a lovely reunion.”

Daenerys looked to continue the conversation, but a bald man dressed in dark, heavy robes with his hands concealed in the sleeves glided across the floor. Bramble followed his every movement. Varys. The Spider. He gave Bramble a passing glance in return.

Varys came up beside Daenerys and whispered something inaudible in her ear. She listened with a neutral expression. Callum, however, quickly proved to be a person who showed everything on his sleeve, and his demeanor turned distraught. What had happened? What was Bramble forgetting?

“Forgive me, my lords, my ladies. Another matter has come to my attention. We will have to continue this…” A glimmer of Daenerys’ own shock at what went down briefly surfaced before disappearing again, “discussion at a later time. You all must be tired from your long journey. As guests of Dragonstone, you will have baths drawn and suppers sent to your rooms.”

She said something to a Dothraki guard, who began walking to lead them out. Callum gave Bramble a small, sad wave and a wistful smile. She lifted her fingers back and departed with Jon, Davos, and Shireen.

The great hall’s doors soundly shut behind them, cutting off light and thrusting them into a dim solitude once more.

Bramble lost grip on her guard. She roughly rubbed her face and took deep, uneven breaths.

“What…” she muttered. The magic in the air compressed her into a suffocating box.

“What the absolute fuck?”

 

 

 

Notes:

So there were about a million ways which the conversation could have gone (Bramble directly speaking to Dany, Shireen addressing Dany's presence in Dragonstone, which formerly belonged to the Baratheons, etc.), but this is just where it wound up taking me to. And hoo, once I started typing, I didn't want to stop. That's why this next chapter has been posted so soon after the last one.

But don't worry--there's going to be more personal interaction with the characters. And wow! We saw dragons! We got Barristan back! We have my boy Callum! Finally! Tell me what you guys think/some things that you'd love seeing. I love all of your guys' comments.

Chapter 36

Summary:

Revised 7/2/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Shireen took the news in stride. Bramble shouldn’t have expected otherwise. The bath chamber they had been taken to held small, separated pools that were naturally heated like the one at Castle Black, and she poured out the details while scrubbing and scrubbing some more. Bramble should have enjoyed it, but the water’s heat did nothing to help her high internal temperature.

The princess listened to Bramble’s entire story. Being from another world, crashing in an airplane, waking up on Dorne, shadows chasing her, killing Lannister soldiers and winding up at Castle Black, the vision in the godswood—mostly everything. Still no, “Hey, this world was made up purely for entertainment!” Bramble couldn’t bring herself to torture them like that.

But hey, Callum might’ve. She decided to worry about that prospect later.

“I’m upset that you didn’t tell me sooner,” Shireen said after her questions had been answered and Bramble came to a shaky end of how things played out. While Shireen still sat in the bathwater, Bramble had to sprawl her naked body out onto the stone floor in an attempt to cool down. Steam rose from her in gauzy spirals. “Especially considering how amazing of a fact it is that you came from another world.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Bramble grimaced. “I always intended to tell you. But things got so busy, and I didn’t have a right way to approach it, and then this—this fucking thing happened, which don’t even get me started on.”

Shireen hummed tunelessly. “Where to even begin with that?”

“I have no idea.”

“Obviously. You punched him for trying to hug you.”

“Hey, he was coming in too fast. And this is the same guy who I saw murder me in the vision,” Bramble shot back. Shireen shifted her folded elbows on the stone. Her mousy brown hair was draped over one shoulder, and Bramble had to say, “You look like a mermaid.”

“Do they have mermaids in your world?”

“They’re only legends. Not real. I have more cause to believe that they’re very real here, though. Dragons and the undead and magic—why not mermaids?”

“Ser Davos swore he saw a mermaid, once. Her hair was a silvery pale in the moonlight, and she sat on the rocks with her tail dipped into the water.”

“I’d be inclined to believe him, though we do know how bad his eyesight is.” Bramble and Shireen both shared a laugh. Then she waved her steamy hand in the air. “Anyway. Back to the point. For a split second there, I saw…shadows under Callum. And then they were gone.”

“Shadows like death? Or shadows like the things?”

“Both? I’m not sure. But it was there. I didn’t feel any magic on him, though. Maybe he can hide it. Maybe he doesn’t have it.”

“Maybe your vision showed him killing you because you punched him in the face.”

“Okay, sis, drop it with the punching. He should have read my body language, which clearly indicated that I was not ready for a hug.”

Shireen snickered. Bramble rolled onto her stomach and pressed the birthmark side of her face to the damp stone, making an “aah” sound as fresh steam rose up. Shireen watched it for a few moments. Then she said, “Daenerys Targaryen called me a guest. She may have more title to Dragonstone, but it was my home far longer than it ever was hers.”

Bramble grunted. “Yeah. I noticed that. I think she was just distracted by whatever it was Varys told her. But if she says it again, don’t be afraid to correct her.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I…think so? Yara Greyjoy’s ships were attacked by her uncle, who’s allied himself with Cersei Lannister. He captures her, the Martell woman, her daughter, and kills a couple of the other Dornish women. I can’t remember their names. Theon Greyjoy escapes. But it’s a massive blow to Daenerys’ forces.” Bramble sighed and stood, padding over to the towels set out for them. “Or at least that’s what supposed to happen without interference. Callum changes everything I’ve seen.”

“How do you know that he’s seen the exact same events as you have?” Shireen questioned, getting out of the bath as well. Bramble paused. “They could be different.”

“I just…do,” Bramble responded lamely. She handed Shireen a towel.

“But how?”

We watched the show.

A knock on the chamber’s door mercifully interrupted Bramble from pulling out some half-assed lie. “Enter,” she called, and a maid slipped in.

She bowed to them and spoke with what Bramble believed was a Meereenese accent. “Dinner will be brought to the common room shortly, my ladies. Do you need assistance with dressing?”

“No, thank you,” Bramble said, dipping her head in reply. “We can manage.”

The maid bowed again and left as quietly as she came. Bramble and Shireen dried off, slipped their robes on, and walked to the same door the maid had come in. It led to Bramble’s room, but the two doors flanking either side of hers were also private entrances from other rooms, one of which was Shireen’s.

They got dressed back into the same clothes they wore from earlier, since the rest of their wardrobe—and Ghost—were still being sent for back on the ship. Bramble found this neat trick to dry her hair by heating up her hands and then running fingers through the strands. Shireen asked for the same treatment, and Bramble used it to add little curls on the end before braiding half of her mousy brown hair back. They both smelled of Essosi fragrances from the soaps they used.

Bramble steered the conversation away from the question Shireen posed so she wouldn’t have to answer. She didn’t doubt that the princess had forgotten it, but Bramble had so much to tell her about her world, and Shireen couldn’t resist getting caught up in learning about modern transportation methods, her father’s job as a teacher, and her mother’s job as a dance instructor.

When they were both ready, they walked out into the common area they shared with Jon and Davos. Turned out, Targaryens took their incestuous polygamy very seriously, and a lot of the chambers were made with easy accessibility to sisters and family kept in mind. Jon and Davos were waiting for them, seated at the table and conversing lowly, both looking clean. Like Shireen and Bramble’s bath chambers, they had their own on the opposite side. 

“It’s about bloody time,” Davos huffed. “Thought we were gonna have to start without you.”

“Um, aren’t the men supposed to stand for the ladies while they sit?” Bramble shot back, pointing a finger between him and Jon. They exchanged unamused glances but wearily stood. Jon made sure his chair scraped extra loud against the floor. He stiffly bowed to them.

“My ladies. Welcome.”

“That’s better,” Shireen said, and she sat in an open chair. Bramble plopped down beside her.

“So, you told her?” questioned Davos. Bramble nodded.

“Yeah. She took it better than you guys.”

“Well,” Jon put in grimly, “she didn’t have the same experience we did.”

“I wish I had been there,” Shireen longed. “Then I would have been able to see a glimpse of your world.”

Bramble shrugged. “It could happen again. Mag Mar and I exchanged something similar when I caught his punch during the Battle of Castle Black. Melisandre used magic; Mag used force. So maybe we just need to run into each other really hard, and something will happen.”

“I’d be willing to test it,” said Shireen. Davos made an opposing noise.

“Bramble can run faster than a fucking horse, my lady. I’d rather you not charge headfirst into her.”

Dinner came soon. Unlike yucky Northern food, this was Essosi food—specifically, combination of Meereenese, Astapori, and Dothraki. Bramble had only tasted cuisine native to the Free Cities. She dug into the citrusy rice, the flavorful curry, and the flat pieces of warm bread. Each bite was followed with a pleased hum, then an, “Oh, man, this is so good.”

The other three weren’t as eager as Bramble. “It’s hot,” Jon panted, after he had considerably drained his goblet of wine. “Seven hells, it’s hot.” He was red in the face, and a sheen of sweat stuck to his forehead.

“Aye, it’ll make your nose run, that’s for sure,” said Davos. He ate mostly rice and a little bit of curry. “Never been a fan of Essosi food.”

“Weak,” Bramble muttered, scooping up some onto her plate. “Stick to the fruits if you can’t handle it.”

“I don’t even recognize most of them, honestly,” Shireen said, staring down the platter of assorted fruit near her.

Bramble swallowed her food. “Figs. Dried apricots—I think. Dried mangoes. Kiwi. Oranges. Dried dragon fruit. At least that’s what they call it on Earth. Then I think those are a bowl of shelled sunflower seeds, which is very kind of them. So eat up.”

She growled as she tore into a new piece of flatbread. The half that wasn’t currently being chewed up got almost violently dunked in the curry.

Jon stared at her. “You’re an animal, Bramb.”

He almost got to hear whatever rugged comeback Bramble was about to shout at him, but the quick knock on the door followed by it swinging open interrupted them.

“Uh, hi! Hi.” Callum awkwardly waved as he stepped in. Man, he was tall. Or maybe Bramble just hadn’t seen many tall people in this world—they were, after all, concerningly malnourished for the most part. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

Davos spoke for the table. “No,” he coughed. “No, not at all.”

Bramble tried sensing any abnormality in Callum. But there were no shadows at his feet, no magic in his bones. So, not knowing what else to do, she scowled.

It didn’t faze Callum. He grinned in contrast and stepped further into the chamber, hands clasping together. “Are all of you enjoying your meal?” Before anyone could answer, he started laughing and pointed to Bramble. “Aw, mate, you get it, yeah? Are you enjoying your meal? Like a waiter?”

Her scowl slipped into an awkward grimace. She had no idea how to act around…this guy. “Yeah,” Bramble drawled. “Waiter. Funny. Felt like I was at Olive Garden.”

Callum groaned and took up an extra seat. Bramble tried not to squirm away. She would have gotten dagger glares from everyone else at the table if she did. “Ugh, don’t remind me about Olive Garden! That shit was delicious. Also, who knew that I would ever miss McDonalds?” He held out his hand for Bramble to shake. “Anyway, we never got a proper introduction. I’m Callum Jones.”

She took it. Still no evil sense of anything. “Bramble Aldana.”

“Nice, nice. And where’re you from?”

“Thunder Bay, Ontario.”

Callum grinned and held his fist close to his chest in triumph. “Yes! Called it. Canada. Amazing. I’m from London. Came here, oh, seven years ago? Landed right in the slums of Qarth. Had to wait another six months before Daenerys came.”

Qarth. Right. Daenerys stopped there. Seven years ago? And here she thought three years was an eternity in Westeros.  “That was with the wizards and shit, right?” Bramble resumed eating. She wasn’t about to let Callum stop her.

He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. I almost went to them, but since they’re, like, the bad guys, I stayed the hell away. Worked as a servant until she showed up.”

“And…you’ve been with her ever since.”

Another grin. “Yep! It’s been a helluva ride. Where’d you end up?”

Bramble took a sip of wine before responding. “Dorne. Three years ago. It took me a while before I found my way to Jon and Castle Black.”

Callum glanced at the King in the North. “So I’ve been with Dany, and you’re with Jon. It’s fucking perfect, innit?”

“How is it perfect?” Jon inquired.

“Well, I mean, you’ve got the whole Ice and Fire thing, with two people who know how it’s all gonna—”

Bramble roughly lifted Callum by his arm and hauled him out of the room. He cried out in surprise. “Alright, buddy, you and I are gonna have a conversation,” she snapped. “Everybody excuse us!”

She slammed the door behind them, leaving Jon, Davos, and Shireen to sit there in stunned silence.

“Well,” Davos eventually huffed. “Wouldn’t want to be him.”

But Jon was left grim, and he could no longer eat even if he wanted to.

-

“Okay, okay, ow,” Callum winced. Bramble finally let him go. She should have just brought him to her room, but the situation made her panic, and she just wanted to get him as far away from everyone as possible.

Which was how they found themselves on the Dragonstone path illuminated by torches battling the nighttime wind. But they grew strong simply from Bramble’s presence, and their light danced across Callum’s semi-frightened expression.

“How much have you seen?” Bramble firstly asked him. “And how much have you told her?”

Callum folded his arms and hunched against the cold Bramble didn’t feel. “I’ve seen it until the end,” he replied. “And I’ve told her…well, quite a bit because why wouldn’t I? And why’re you freaking the fuck out?”

“Because I don’t want you blabbing things to Jon that you shouldn’t! He doesn’t know he’s a main character! He doesn’t know we know things because it’s a show!”

“Neither does Daenerys! I’m not fucking stupid!” Callum sat against the path’s low stone wall and sighed. “How could you tell someone that for us, their lives and deaths weren’t meant to be real. And that they’ve been watched for a very long time at all. I…I can’t do that to Dany.”

With the fire simmering, Bramble leaned up beside him. She only came up to below his shoulder. “Okay,” she mumbled. “And…sorry for punching you. And dragging you out of the room. I don’t…I turn sort of volatile when I panic.”

Callum, thankfully, chuckled. “It’s alright. I heal up fast. Do you?”

“Yeah. Guess we should sort everything out. Get our stories straight. See how we can help each other—and help them.”

“Preferably somewhere warmer? I’m freezing my ass off.”

“You’ve spent too much time in Essos. Isn’t this, like, typical London weather?”

“Never said I liked it.”

They both shared small laughs for the first time since meeting each other. Bramble puffed her cheeks out, ignoring how her hair was swept up in the constant breeze. She considered telling him that she’d already seen his face, before, in a vision that depicted her death in multiple ways, but that sounded like a bad idea. So instead, Bramble went with, “Did you die and then wind up here?”

“Oh, yeah. Horrible, isn’t it, remembering how you died? There I was, in the middle of a dance rehearsal at my studio, when bam! Heart attack. Straight-up flatlined in the middle of the room.”

Bramble’s brows shot up. “No way? But you’re so young!”

“Surprised me too! But hey, what a random way to go.” Callum nudged her. “So how’d you bite it?”

“Plane crash over the ocean. My family and I were going to Hawaii. Never got there.”

Callum hissed between his teeth. “That’s horrible.”

“Yeah. I remember drowning in the dark. Not fun.” Bramble shifted toward Callum. “But we can wallow in our deaths later. I never got to watch the final season.” Fuck, it sounded so weird saying that out loud. “And you did? How’d it end?”

“Brilliantly.” Callum broke out into another grin. “Basically, Daenerys takes the throne, Cersei dies, the Night King is killed by Jon.”

“And Jon? What happens to him?”

“Oh, he lives. So don’t worry about that.”

“Does Daenerys know that she gets the throne?” Bramble wanted to distrust Callum’s words, but he was so earnest and eager to tell her the ending that she couldn’t help but listen.

“I told her right after we kept the Masters from taking Meereen back. She would have stayed if I didn’t.”

Bramble tilted her head. “She wanted to stay?”

Callum nodded once. He shivered, then said, “Dany loved it there. I don’t blame her. But if she didn’t come here, then the Night King would win everybody would die. And we can’t have that, can we?” He breathed a laugh. “No matter how shitty this world is.”

“True. It is pretty shitty, isn’t it?”

Bramble was definitely feeling less…prickly toward Callum. She wasn’t used to his type of enthusiasm, but really, she just hadn’t been exposed to it in three years. Callum might have been stronger than Bramble because he had been able to keep such a bright personality while hers twisted into bitterness and caution.

“Yeah,” Callum shrugged, “but it’s ours now, I guess. Better make sure it doesn’t crash and burn. Or crash and freeze, in this case.”

She snorted and patted his arm. “Come on. Let’s go back inside. We can talk more.”

“Oh, thank god,” Callum exhaled, and they made their way back into the palace. Bramble felt eyes on her from above, but they weren’t hostile. Most likely making sure that she didn’t pitch Callum into the ocean.

“So,” he said, opening the heavy door for her with ease, “you ever heard of Fullmetal Alchemist?”

“It was one of my favorite shows.” Bramble flexed and did a poor Alex Louis Armstrong imitation with her scratchy voice. “Incredible valor! Respectable muscles!”

She felt like a dumbass a half-second after doing it, but Callum’s boisterous laugh bounced off the walls. “Holy shit! That’s beautiful to hear!” He put an arm around Bramble’s shoulders, and she didn’t slap it away. “Oh, man. I’m so fucking happy, right now.”

Bramble didn’t say anything, but maybe she was, as well?

“Alright, Flame Alchemist, can you stay up all night?” Callum asked her.

“Uh huh. You?”

“Yes. Wanna pull a session and go over everything? Then we can prepare for tomorrow’s meeting Dany wants to have with all of you and her allies. And talk about home, of course.”

“Let’s do it.”

-

Callum had his heart attack October 2019, five months after the Game of Thrones finale, three years after he had graduated from Kingston University with a degree in dance, and two-and-a-half years after he began working for the London Dance Academy. He remembered how the floor felt on his back as the world faded, then how searing hot sand replaced it. He realized he was in Qarth—in a fictional world—when he overheard people talking about Essos and Westeros and the Dothraki. Then Daenerys came with her three tiny dragons and the remnants of her Dothraki followers, and he could no longer deny it.

He convinced Daenerys of his foreknowledge when he told her that the baby dragons would be stolen. He wasn’t believed until they were. Daenerys allowed him to leave Qarth with them, and he quickly gained her trust. Callum didn’t wait long to tell her about his otherworldly heritage and lengthy information about future events. She was prepared for Barristan Selmy to meet her, for the Unsullied to become hers with the trade of Drogon—and the burning of the Masters. Callum was careful to reveal things in a timely manner. He didn’t say so much that Daenerys never learned lessons or grew, but enough to keep her from deeper hurts, betrayals, and attacks.

The whole strength thing was found out when Callum ran to help one of the newly-freed slaves from Astapor stuck under a cart. They were four days from Yunkai. He was surprised when he found that it was so easy to lift. “Very Les Mis-y,” Callum described it. “But without the Jean Valjean struggle.”

Jorah and Barristan instructed him how to sword fight, but it was Daario Naharis that taught him to use his dancer’s footwork and skill to be deadly. The first man Callum ever killed was an assassin sent to Dany’s camp in the middle of the night. He was in the tent with her, going over plans to take Meereen after the success of freeing slaves in Astapor, when the assassin came. Callum used his bare hands to kill them and snapped his neck so thoroughly that the assassin was partially beheaded. He threw up afterward.

Callum snuck into Meereen with Grey Worm and the Unsullied. The revolt, as he told Daenerys, would be successful this way. And it was. She wasn’t pleased with Callum when they found out that Yunkai and Astapor had both been retaken by slavers—Callum forgot that they were, and it was a rough night for him. Daenerys’ ire was not a sweet thing to taste. So, to make up for it, he retook Astapor with a contingent of Unsullied and Second Sons. The second man Callum killed was Cleon the Butcher, who called himself “His Imperial Majesty” in Astapor. He had Cleon’s head sent to the Masters who had reestablished their rule in Yunkai.

He recalled what he had seen in Astapor like revisiting a nightmare. People rotting in the streets, children kidnapped to be made Unsullied, and all the good Daenerys had brought to the city undone. When Callum oversaw the reinstatement of a free council, he wanted to stay for the sake of the people, but Dany called him back to Meereen to be at her side in the uneasy rulership.

So Callum went back.

Barristan approached him with news of Jorah’s deception upon his return, demanding to know if he always knew—and if he purposefully kept the information from them. Callum said yes. He stood beside Jorah when the man confessed everything to Daenerys. “It was not my secret to tell,” he said to her when she asked why he had abstained from revealing Jorah’s initial reason for seeking Daenerys. Callum said he felt like part lawyer, part witness for Jorah. In the end, Jorah was still exiled because Callum knew it was important for him to be, but before he left, Callum told him that there was a way to restore his relationship with Dany. It was a long road, and an unhappy one, but Jorah replied that he would do it a thousand times if it meant he could return to her.

Callum didn’t let Viserion and Rhaegal be chained. Kept in the catacombs, yes, but they were more obedient to their mother than Drogon, and they would stay if she wanted. Daenerys didn’t weep as she left them there, but they did drink considerable amounts of wine that night.

The fighting pits were reopened. Callum hated it as much as Daenerys, but she trusted him when he said it was a vital factor for future events. After helping finalize plans for it with Missandei, he went with Grey Worm and Barristan to patrol after being unable to stop either of them from leaving. Callum had a bad feeling when he saw them leaving with the squadron.

And something bad did happen. In saving Barristan, Callum took the spear for him and nearly died. He figured that it was only because of the same strange capabilities given to both him and Bramble that he survived at all. But the wound was so grievous that he was bed-ridden through Tyrion Lannister and Jorah’s arrival in the fighting pits, as well as when the Sons of Harpy attacked in the tournament. They were told of this, however, and so when it came, Unsullied were prepared, and Daenerys and her entourage managed to escape through one of the side entrances—until Sons of Harpy ambushed them in the street.

But Drogon was there. He always would have been there, Callum said, and Daenerys always would have flown on his back out of the city to escape death.

When Callum awoke from his wounds, he was a different man. Once he was able to properly move again, he set out to do something drastic. “I just had a…a drive.” He placed a fist over his heart. “Hell, maybe it was the Lord of Light telling me what to do. I have no idea.” But Daenerys would need allies for Westeros, and allies who already supported her for the aid she freely gave.

So, after briefly meeting with Tyrion Lannister and Varys to exchange pleasantries and loop them in on the Masters’ future attack on Slaver’s Bay, he bought passage to King’s Landing. The High Sparrow had taken control of the city by then, and Callum had to be careful. He considered just killing Cersei, but he wanted to “stay the fuck away from the Mountain.” Bramble didn’t blame him. Instead, Callum mugged a Sparrow and dressed up in his robes. He then made his way down to the Sept of Baelor. It was highly unguarded once he made it in; the Sparrows were not prepared for infiltration.

“But what about the…the…” Bramble drew a star on her forehead with a finger.

“I just pulled the hood down really far. Looked like Evil Kermit,” Callum grinned. They both laughed.

Callum found the cell he was searching for because of the two guards around the door. Daario Naharis had gifted him with sleeping darts used by Braavosi assassins when they first took Meereen; Callum jammed them into the Sparrows. He hoped they didn’t have an expiration date, but the effect was good enough to unlock the door and enter the cell.

“You were a real Ezio Auditore,” Bramble commented. She lounged on the chaise in Callum’s chamber.

“I know, right? I was an assassin.”

Huddled in the corner of the cell was Loras Tyrell of Highgarden. Callum removed his hood and said that he was a future friend of the Tyrell family. When Loras would not move, too afraid of the Sparrows’ retribution if they were found him trying to escape, Callum lifted him up and packed him through one of the sept’s secret tunnels Tyrion had told him of beforehand. Callum didn’t use it because he wouldn’t have been able to find its exit coming into King’s Landing, but he passed leaky barrels of wildfire traveling through it.

Loras begged for him to go back for Margaery. Callum said he would once he got him to a safehouse Varys had for compromised informants on the outskirts of King’s Landing. But that afternoon, green fire billowed through the sky, and the rumblings of the explosion shook the safehouse. Callum felt deep shame at his failure, and Loras cried for the entire week.

A child came knocking on the door soon after, whispering into Callum’s ear that they were to sail to Dorne and meet Varys. Callum got Loras on a ship, where he was reunited with Olenna Tyrell. She had feared that her grandson had died in the sept’s destruction—it was never clear if he was in there or not. All the witnesses died.

Callum met the Martell women. He said they were scary in a good way.

“I saw Oberyn once,” said Bramble. “He passed through the streets of the city I was at in Dorne. Hot guy.”

The Martells and Tyrells pledged their allegiance to Daenerys Targaryen. Varys and Callum sailed back to Meereen and saw that while there was some destruction in the bay, the city as a whole remained untouched. Never making an alliance with the Masters better prepared them for an assault, and Daenerys crushed their attempt to retake power with her dragons. Rhaegal and Viserion, Callum noted, were much bigger than in the shows. They were now only slightly smaller than Drogon.

Callum and Daenerys’ reunion were much awaited. She thanked him for securing an alliance with the Tyrells. Now, Olenna did not ally because she had nothing left to lose; she allied because she had something to lose, and that made it all the stronger. But Daenerys did not want to leave the slave-cities. They were so young, and she feared that without her ruling hand, they would not survive in the years to come—even after this victory. She asked Callum what was to come of them, and he said that he didn’t know. His lack of information gave her all the more cause to want to stay. So Callum told her of Jon Snow, the Night King, and the fate of the world without her and her dragons.

Daenerys wept the night before they departed Essos. Callum cried with her. While she shed no tears for Daario Naharis, she left a piece of her heart with the cities they loved.

Tyrion was made Hand of the Queen because Callum didn’t want to interfere with the storyline in that way. Instead, he wore the mantle of advisor and confidant. He loved Daenerys like a sister, first, then a queen.

Callum cautioned the Greyjoys and Martells of the ambush Euron would set on them on their way to gather Dornish forces for Daenerys. He said that his contradictions to Tyrion’s plans made the Lannister frustrated, but more so at his own self for not outsmarting Cersei and having to rely on the Callum’s insight for correction. While Yara distracted the Iron Fleet with a few ships, Ellaria and the Sand Snakes were smuggled to Dorne by Theon Greyjoy in a small ship a week ago. Yara’s fleet was, unfortunately, attacked, and Callum thought he took preventative measures to keep her from being captured at all, but she was taken. Despite that, Daenerys still had a large bulk of her ships, and there were far less casualties than otherwise.

“That was what the secret whispery-whispers were about.” Callum plucked an errant dried apricot from their mostly-empty platter. The wine was gone, too, but neither of them were affected by it. It had been the good stuff, too. Dornish red. “Varys came to confirm Euron Greyjoy’s assault and Yara’s capture.”

“Some things can’t be changed.” Both Bramble and Callum echoed the phrase throughout the night. Dawn now kissed the blackened, oceanside sky. She had told Callum her story, as well. About being haunted by shadows (which Callum wasn’t), being mute, working in the brothels, disguising herself as a boy, watching the farm family she loved get murdered by Lannister soldiers, then going on a killing spree against them and turning into a real Criminal Minds freak there for a while. Then she went to the Wall, met Jojen Reed, fought against wildlings, saved Grenn and Pyp and Mag Mar and Karsi and Wun Wun, discovered her fire at Hardhome, saved Shireen, couldn’t save Olly, and fought in the Battle of the Bastards.

In between, they talked about home. London and Thunder Bay, families and friends and school, restaurants and ice cream, showers and Netflix. Neither of them cried. Too much time had passed. Now all that remained was nostalgia and the unspoken acceptance that they were never going back.

Bramble didn’t tell Callum that she saw death. The fire closed her throat before she could, and so she listened to it. Its confusion toward Callum was growing more apparent, like there should have been something bad but there wasn’t, and it made Bramble feel like she had faint heartburn.

But if it wouldn’t make up its mind about Callum, then she would. He was great. The part of herself that had been born from Earth reemerged with the topic of memes, Queer Eye, Childish Gambino, and makeup.

“I’ll ask Missandei to have some delivered to you,” Callum said to Bramble when she confessed how much she missed mascara and foundation and eyeliner. “Makeup has always been a big thing back there—for both men and women.”

“I know. It’s a thing in King’s Landing, too, for whores and highborn.” Bramble touched her birthmark. “For homecoming, I highlighted this with a shimmer. Looked really cool.”

“I can’t believe you were still in high school. I mean, even though I still feel like a baby boy sometimes, you actually were a baby girl. Seventeen! Fuck. That’s so young.”

“I don’t feel young, anymore,” Bramble admitted. She sat up and crossed her legs. “I don’t think anybody in this world feels young.”

“You’re right about that.” Callum got up from his spot at the table and stretched. He thought it was cool that Bramble’s mom ran a dance academy, and even cooler that she danced since she was a kid up until sophomore year of high school. But Bramble loved swimming more, and when it was time to choose which to focus on entirely, she took the pool over the studio. Mom never complained. She was proud of Bramble no matter what. “Ugh, I wish I could stay up like this back in college.”

“For studying?”

“Nope! For bingeing shows.”

They laughed, Callum’s lively and Bramble’s scratchy. The fire coiled in trepidation.

 

 

 

Notes:

Info-dump! Sorry it's so long; I just wanted more of Callum to be explained, as I'm sure all of you wanted also.

And guys, don't worry. This fic is gonna fix all the terrible shit that went down in the final season. I've already got some plans.

Chapter 37

Summary:

Revised 7/2/2020

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Ghost greeted Bramble in the common area when she stepped out of her room. She hadn’t heard Jon sit down at the table early in the morning, but the King in the North went over some report while he absently drank tea.

“Hey, buddy,” Bramble spoke to Ghost, not Jon, and cupped the direwolf’s massive snowy head in her hands. He panted heavily. “Is it too hot for you? Huh?”

Ghost snuck in a sloppy kiss. Bramble sputtered, closed the door behind her, and then rolled down onto the floor to play with the big boy. “Boof for me, Ghost,” Bramble instructed as he stood on her with his front paws. Any other person would have had their bones and muscles groaning under his pressure, but she barely felt a thing. “Boof. Boof.”

He snuffed his wet black nose against her cheek, then tossed his head back and gave a low “Boof!” Bramble laughed and used her strength to lazily roll him onto his back and give belly scratches. The floor almost shook with his thump of a landing; Ghost was, after all, the size of a small horse. He grunted happily, and Bramble ignored the fact that her grim-colored clothes now had thick white wolf hair on them.

“Good morning to you too, Bramb,” Jon muttered with a smile.

“How’d you sleep?” she asked.

“Not well. You?”

“Not at all. But that was more by choice. Too much on your mind?”

“You could say that.” Jon lifted the report up. “There’s an adequate spot to mine dragonglass. We’ll start today.”

She nodded. “It’s nice of Daenerys, isn’t it? Letting us mine free-of-charge?”

“Would she have made us pay if it hadn’t been for Callum?”

“I have no clue.”

Bramble stared back down at Ghost and his albino-red eyes. She moved her hand up to scratch behind his ear. A thought occurred to her, a memory. “You know I saw you pick out Ghost, right?”

Jon stilled. Bramble’s scratches turned to soft pets. Ghost’s eyelids drooped.

“No.”

“The mother had been killed by a stag, leaving the puppies. You weren’t about to get one, but then Ghost was found at the very last second.” She paused, then said, “It was symbolic. A stag, House Baratheon. A direwolf, House Stark. Both dead. Robert Baratheon and your father. Both dead. The pups, the children of House Stark. Ghost, you.” Bramble touched one of Ghost’s massive paws. “It was always meant to be.”

Jon was silent for a good while. When he spoke, his voice was low and purposefully void of emotion. “Did you see my father die, as well?”

Bramble nodded once. “Yes.”

“And was that always meant to be?”

She finally looked at him, unsure of what she was feeling. But Bramble, though she had told many lies and omitted many truths, did not deny Jon this time. “I think so.” Then, quietly, she added, “If I had been there, though, I might have…I would have tried to save him.”

Because a world with Ned Stark still in it might have been a better one. Prophecies and gods be damned; she would have tried. She couldn’t watch a father killed. Not when she knew what the loss of a father felt like.

It was a scary thought, being so willing to turn the fate of a world upside down for one man. Bramble had done it before, though, with others; it came as no surprise that she’d choose to do it again.

Jon almost smiled. “Aye, you would have.”

Just as their soft conversation ended, the door to Davos’ room opened, and the older man walked out, complaining about the beds being too soft for his old back. Shireen shortly followed, emerging from her own room with a book tucked under her arm. She read at the breakfast table, Jon and Davos conversed about the dragonglass mine, and Bramble played on the floor with Ghost, her hand occasionally sneaking up to grab food off the table for herself and the direwolf.

Eventually Balerion sauntered out of Shireen’s room, looking plump as usual. He meandered over to Bramble and Ghost to rub himself between Ghosts’ legs and then plop down on Bramble’s stomach. Ghost licked Balerion’s head a couple times before he settled.

Bramble suddenly longed for a lint roller.

About forty-five minutes later, a servant knocked on the door to their chamber and announced that Queen Daenerys and her council would see them. Bramble got to her feet and followed everyone else out. Ghost padded behind them, silent and lithe. She spent the entire journey from their room to Daenerys’ Chamber of the Painted Table trying to brush off the mixture of white direwolf and orange cat hair from her clothes.

“I was never allowed in the Chamber,” Shireen said to her while they walked.

“Were you really ever allowed anywhere?” Bramble asked back. Shireen quietly snorted.

“No, not really.”

“Well…I guess now’s a good of time as any to start exploring.”

“Perhaps so.”

The servant opened the chamber door for them. She tensed as Ghost walked past her, ducking her gaze down so as not to anger the direwolf. He didn’t even notice her.

Instead, Ghost noticed, along with Bramble, Jon, Shireen, and Davos, the assortment of people in the Chamber. There was Daenerys, of course, and Callum, who grinned and waved at Bramble despite the solemn air. She feebly waved back at him.

Tyrion, Missandei, Barristan, and Varys were also present. A grim Essosi man stood next to Missandei, dressed in Unsullied armor. Grey Worm.

Then there was a handsome man, curly-haired and dressed nicely, if a little gaunt. He stood next to the only person in the room who was sitting down. She wore all black, and probably beat out Barristan and Davos for the rank of oldest in Dragonstone.

“Bah!” Lady Olenna Tyrell scoffed. “Leave it to a Stark to bring a damn wolf into a castle!”

Bramble stared at Callum in eager disbelief. Callum, catching her expression, nodded affirmatively with his lips pushed out.

“Welcome, friends,” said Tyrion, ignoring the Queen of Thorns. He stepped forward to address them. “Let this meeting be quick, so you can set to work on mining.”

Ghost, in retaliation of Olenna’s words, went and sat down right beside her. Who Bramble also expected was Loras stiffened just as the servant did, but Olenna found Ghost’s actions amusing. She laughed dryly at his presence, patting his big head with a wrinkly but firm hand. “Hush, now, Lord Tyrion. I have yet to meet this…illustrious Northern band of misfits.” She lifted her hand off Ghost and waved them to the group. “Humor an old woman and her grandson!”

Tyrion glanced back at Daenerys, who smiled and dipped her head to him permissively.

Jon was brave enough to introduce himself first. “Jon Snow, my lady.” He stepped forward and pecked a kiss to her hand. Olenna chuckled.

“A bastard as King. I do expect your father would be delighted about your mantle. You’re honorable like him, I hear.” Olenna raised a serious brow. “And honor was what got him and your brother killed.”

Stepping back, Jon said with a humorless smile, “That is what my sister tells me. I shall try not to repeat their mistakes.”

“Ah! Sansa! Tell me, has the little girl turned into a fierce wolf?”

“She has, my lady.”

Olenna, appeased with Jon’s words, turned her attention to Shireen. “And who do we have here?” she pretended to squint. “A Baratheon? Alive and well?”

Shireen curtsied. “’Tis a surprise to many, Lady Olenna.”

“So you do remember me, eh?” Olenna shifted in her plush seat. “You were but a small child when we last met, and none would come close to you for fear of being infected.”

“My greyscale has thwarted many people, my lady. Potential suitors included.” Shireen offered a hint of a smirk. “So it has served its purpose.”

Olenna laughed, and Bramble didn’t miss the other smiles in the room. Callum whispered something in Daenerys’ ear, and her smile broadened.

Davos was regarded with Olenna’s sharp eyes. “Looks like there’s another member to the Elder Society, then. We should be pedestalized simply from the fact that we’ve lived this long.”

“Aye, my lady. And yet nobody seems to listen to the reason why we’ve lived so long,” Davos replied smoothly. She hmphed.

“I daresay I’ve never heard a truer statement, ser.”

Davos bowed slightly in acknowledgement. Bramble refrained from snorting. Leave it to the old people to whine about everything.

Her own self-amusing thoughts were cut off as she became to object of attention. The room bore down on her, and at the center of it was Olenna, who seemed to hold a fire of her own, one ready to whip and lash and bite—ready to win, no matter the cost.

Bramble’s mouth went dry.

“And then we have the fire wielder,” Olenna declared, placing her hands firmly in her lap. “I’ve seen dragons and Dothraki, and now a direwolf. But I must confess that I’ve been most excited to meet you. The stories say you fell from the heavens of the gods, then burned a thousand men to ash in an instant. That you won the battle for the Northerners.”

She swallowed, then spoke. “Not a thousand men. More like a hundred. I got catapulted by a giant—I didn’t descend from heaven. And it was Sansa’s strategic maneuvering that won us the battle.”

“Us, eh? You don’t seem to be Northern. You’re a tad too…dark. And yet you still lay your loyalty with those bearded bastards?”

“Gotta put it somewhere,” Bramble simply replied. Olenna scoffed.

“Yes, I can see from that, with all the fur on you.” She waved her hand impatiently. “Well? Show us your fire! We’ve all been eager to see it in action.”

Tyrion coughed, then said, “Perhaps it’s ill-mannered to request such a thing from our visitor.”

“I don’t mind. It’s not a secret I’ve tried to keep.”

Bramble lifted both hands and ignited them. The fire danced, proud to have an audience to perform for. Olenna gasped, then clapped her hands enthusiastically. Loras looked away, and Callum watched his reaction to Bramble’s flames with a worried brow. Tyrion was particularly entranced, as if he were already forming plans that put Bramble to use.

From beyond the castle walls, in the sky above, a dragon roared.

The fire crawled up her bare arms, then sparked across her birthmark. “Your clothes do not set aflame, I see,” Daenerys commented, speaking for the first time since they entered.

“Oh—yeah. I guess I just…don’t want it to? So it doesn’t.”

“Hm. I’ve never had that luxury.”

But Bramble caught Daenerys’ wryness, so she nodded and shook the fire out. She had half a mind to pretend that the fire wouldn’t go away no matter how hard she waved her arms around, but it was something that only made Sansa laugh, and she figured that it was in poor taste to attempt such a joke in the room. “It’d be a hassle to end up naked every time I set myself on fire. I’m hot all the time, though. So the North is actually really nice for me, temperature-wise; I’m comfortable there.”

Olenna hmphed. “That makes one bloody person in that frozen hell.” She piqued her brow. “And tell me: can you burn away the supposed Army of the Dead that is marching to lay waste to Westeros as we speak?”

A tension stretched the room’s air thin.

“Perhaps,” Bramble uttered. She tilted her head a fraction. “Though I am but one torch compared to hundreds of thousands of blue-eyed corpses.”

“Well. I gather you’ll be able to see how many you can burn to a crisp before they snuff you out come here soon.”

Soon, indeed.

“That brings us to the reason why we’re all gathered here,” Tyrion said before Olenna could go on. But the older woman looked appeased with the information she’d been given and settled back into her chair, preparing herself for the next round of wit and bite—whenever that might be. “Dragonglass, the dead, and the fate of the living world.”

He stepped forward, placing a hand on the table and glancing back at Callum. “And so it seems that we…we in this room are the few who will stand against them. I have it on trusted authority that we will win.” Another glance at Callum, and then at Bramble. “But the terror still approaches. We must face it, lest we be consumed by an endless darkness.”

“Your men will be given proper tools and supplies to mine the dragonglass,” Daenerys continued, speaking directly to Jon. “And you may have boats to ferry them to the ships.”

“Ships?” Jon repeated neutrally.

“Yes.” Daenerys lifted her chin a fraction. Her deep violet eyes gleamed. “Let us put an end to this silly dance of allegiances and loyalties. You may use my ships to transport dragonglass because that is where the Dothraki and Unsullied will board. We, as well as the Dornish army marching across the desert as we speak, House Tyrell and other houses loyal to it, will sail to the North and prepare to fight the dead with you.”

Bramble blinked.

Daenerys half-turned away and gazed out into the gray expanse of the ocean sprawling out before them from the view of the chamber. It gave Bramble a chance to see her intricately-braided silver hair that swung down her back. She allowed the information to sink into Jon and the others before saying, “In order for Westeros to be restored, first it must be saved.”

Callum gave Bramble a knowing, smug yet sincerely excited look, and in his perfect British voice, she could imagine him saying, “I know, right? She’s even fucking cooler in real life.”

“And first,” Olenna put in, “Highgarden must prepare for a siege from the lovely Lannister army, supported by that damn bastard Randall Tarly. Thought I might mention it before our hopes got too high, gods forbid.”

“Another matter, Lady Olenna,” said Tyrion with a tight-lipped smile. “One that we may discuss at a later time.”

But Jon picked up on the family name the same moment as Bramble, and he repeated, “Randall Tarly?”

“Oh, do you know him, Lord Snow?” she retorted with no small amount of sarcasm. Jon took its force as best he could.

“His son, Samwell Tarly, is my friend.”

“And will he be on the battlefield?” Barristan asked.

“No, thankfully,” Varys responded before Jon or Bramble could. “Samwell Tarly, eldest son of our dear friend Randall Tarly, has spent the last five years of his life serving for the Night’s Watch. Currently, he is spending his days at the Citadel, training to be a maester.” Varys took a breath and continued his spymaster flexing. “And I imagine he has been rudely awakened from romanticized dreams of books and libraries and scholarly debates. New initiates are the ones who replace and clean chamber pots from diseased patients and watch as the maesters show them how to lance boils.”

Bramble grimaced lightly for her friend. “He’s a gagger, that’s for sure, but he has a stronger stomach than you’d think. And Sam’s loyalty is to the Night’s Watch.” She glanced at her king, then added, “As well as to Jon. Randall Tarly sent him to the Wall because he did not want Sam being the head of their house. Because Sam is good and kind and smart, but he has no taste for violence.”

“Still plump?” Olenna interjected. Bramble reluctantly answered.

“Still plump, yes, but he’s the one who found that dragonglass kills White Walkers, and had it not been for Callum’s and my…foreknowledge…he would have been the one to discover its abundance here.”

“Nevertheless,” said Daenerys, “his father broke faith with House Tyrell, whom they’ve been loyal to for generations. There will be consequences for their betrayal.”

“Then I ask that, if it is possible, you imprison Randall Tarly, and not kill him,” Jon said. He showed enough honest pleading that it got Daenerys’ attention.

“You wish for me to show mercy to my enemies? All for the sake of one…friend?”

“For the sake of my friend, yes, but also for the sake of establishing a powerful presence in Westeros.”

“Is my presence not powerful enough? Three dragons, a Dothraki horde, and an Unsullied army?”

“Military power, your grace, is not the same as influential power,” Barristan expounded. “Establishing your presence as a merciful ruler will win love from the people—and from powerful houses.”

Tyrion stepped in to join Jon and Barristan’s side. The Hand’s pin glinted on his breast. “They have a point, your grace. I do believe there is an appropriate time and place to enact justice. Randall Tarly will receive it. But executing him right after defeat will only solidify what Cersei is making you out to be— ruthless tyrant wishing to burn Westeros to ash.”

Daenerys’ brow twitched, expressing a small amount of frustration—or she was highly frustrated, and the fact that it was outwardly expressed meant she was about to blow the place up.

Coolly, she said, “And yet is that not exactly what Cersei would do?”

“Yeah, it is what Cersei would do,” said Callum, moving around the table. “Which is exactly the problem. You cannot be like Cersei. Otherwise you will give her what she wants, which is to be feared by the people so they will flock to her for protection. So they won’t join you to rise up against her.”

Callum’s words settled Daenerys, though she didn’t appear pleased. Bramble couldn’t exactly tell if it was because of them or herself.

“I might have missed something,” Davos said, voice gruff but prompt, “but we’re talking as if we’ve already beaten the Lannisters and Tarlys at Highgarden.”

“Because we have,” Callum grinned, then flitted his eyes up to the ceiling while he backtracked. “Well—we will win. I’m pretty sure. Right, Bramble?”

She was suddenly on the spot again. Bramble puffed her cheeks out and pretended to know what the fuck she was doing by moving forward to the war table and examining the detailed map of Westeros and all the little chess-like pieces on it. “Well. I mean. Yeah, probably. If Casterly Rock is given up and all the Targaryen and Tyrell forces are redirected at Highgarden, then the Lannisters won’t expect a thing until it’s too late.”

Callum beamed and came around beside Bramble. “See? She’s said exactly what we’re planning! Told you she’s smart,” he said to Tyrion and Varys. Bramble scowled.

“You didn’t think I was smart?”

Tyrion made a noise and several placating gestures. “No—no, we did not—you were merely—”

“Merely volatile,” Varys finished for Tyrion much more smoothly, giving the Hand a flat side-eye. “You did, after all, strike Ser Callum, told Lord Tyrion to shut up—”

“—Something not nearly enough people do,” Olenna interjected.

“—and before you were sent to the Wall, you hunted down Lannister soldiers and killed them in several heinous ways.”

Bramble’s shoulders stiffened. Varys went on without a care in the world, as if he observed the weather. “You started multiple fights with clients at both brothels you worked at, which eventually resulted in your relocation to Essos. Where, disguised as a boy, you mugged and beat your way through the wealthy until an attempted kidnapping gone wrong left you surrounded by seven dead slavers. And let us not forget the powerful fire you wield. Why, at any moment, you could burn us all to a crisp—”

“That is enough.”

Jon commanded the entire room in one powerful statement. He glared at Varys, brown eyes intense, brogue thick. “You will not speak to my advisor that way. You know nothing of her.”

“Thank you, Jon. It’s alright,” Bramble sighed, choosing to keep the peace rather than be who Varys had constructed in his mind. Like Daenerys, acting a certain way would only solidify opinions and set her at a disadvantage. She looked Varys in the eyes. He kept his expression placid, hands hidden within his long sleeves. “He’s not entirely wrong. I’ve done violent things. I’m a murderer.”

Something dangerous sharpened her tongue, and she chose to speak it. “But Lord Varys, you don’t need to be afraid of my fire.”

This time, it was his shoulders that stiffened. Imperceptibly, but it was there. Tyrion’s gaze shifted between them, and it dawned on Bramble just how much he truly fretted. “As far as I know, it is not the Lord of Light’s. The Red Woman said it was so. He has not spoken to me.”

She made sure he heard what she did not say explicitly. He has not spoken to me like he has spoken to you.

The hands under Varys’ robes fidgeted. He attempted to conceal his discomfort.

“You don’t like magic. I understand. Hopefully, I may prove my worth and the control I have over the fire. Do not, however, assume that I’m only violent and simple.”

To push on before things could get awkward, Bramble took another breath and put her attention back on the map. “I don’t know what your plans are exactly, but since you were willing to mention them in front of us, I’d like to know what will change. As far as I remember, Highgarden is supposed to be…what’s the word? Sacked?”

“Yup, sacked,” Callum repeated, nodding his head a little too vigorously. He was eager to get past the simmering tension. “Jaime Lannister abandons Casterly Rock, surprising everyone and using it to a tactical advantage.”

“But Daenerys…” Bramble slowed and corrected herself. “Queen Daenerys attacks the army on their way back to King’s Landing. She, Drogon, and the Dothraki completely obliterate them.”

“And let us not forget my death,” said Olenna, completely unphased by the exchange that just occurred. “Or is that a minor detail?”

“No,” Bramble replied firmly, remembering how sad she was when Olenna died on the show. “It is not.”

Jon, Davos, and Shireen gathered around the table as well, fully setting off the secondary, impromptu meeting. Olenna, Missandei, Grey Worm, Barristan, and Daenerys also congregated. Loras stepped beside his grandmother more reluctantly. Bramble had almost forgotten he was even here in the room. He drifted like a ghost haunted by its own trauma. Even if she still had her Sight (may it rest in peace), Bramble wouldn’t need it to get a glimpse at what the Sparrows had done to his soul.

Loras caught Bramble watching him. He faltered and ducked his head down. Without pause, Olenna slipped her wrinkled hand into his. Her expression didn’t change, but some strength returned to Loras.

Bramble removed herself from their tender exchange.

“So how is it to be prevented?” Jon inquired. Bramble suspected he didn’t want to be as intrigued as he actually was.

“That,” Tyrion said, his tone turning clever again, “is an excellent question, Lord Snow. Let me begin.”

-

Bramble, Jon, Davos, Shireen, Tyrion, and Callum stood before the mine’s entrance. Ghost trotted along the crashing gray shoreline, a speck of ethereal white against a dark canvas. The sounds of picks hitting obsidian rang from within the mine. The Northern soldiers that accompanied them worked with people who came with Daenerys across the Narrow Sea. Bramble didn’t miss the scars on their necks left behind from collars. Tyrion told her that though Daenerys required many ships for her armies, nearly half of the fleet was originally packed with former slaves and peasants willing to leave the Slave Cities and make a new life on Dragonstone.

The land was hard to cultivate, Shireen said, but it was possible. Bramble enjoyed the princess’ enthusiasm about people inhabiting the island. Just as she wished for a life without loneliness, she wished the same for the land.

They still had not discussed what claim Shireen had to Dragonstone. The princess herself did not bring it up. Technically, she wasn’t a princess at all, anymore, especially if they pledged their loyalty to Daenerys.

But it was Princess Baratheon who had first graced Bramble’s life, and so it would remain Princess Baratheon for the rest of her days, no matter how long or short they might be.

“My lady, if it does not trouble you,” said Davos, holding an unlit torch out to her. “I seem to have lost my flint.”

“Ha ha, it wasn’t funny then, it’s not funny now.” But Bramble still snapped her fingers close to the torch’s oilcloth, and a half-second later it ignited with flames.

“It must be quite convenient to possess such a power,” Tyrion commented lightly. A group of men passed by them with a load of dragonglass ready to be ferried to the ships. Bramble shrugged.

“It keeps me warm at night.”

“And sweaty,” Shireen said. Tyrion’s amusement was so unexpected that he couldn’t cover his smile. Callum, however, laughed unashamedly.

“I’m going to punt you and your fat cat right into the sea.” Bramble palmed Shireen’s head and gave it a few playful shakes. Shireen giggled, the damp sand throwing her even more off-balance.

“That would be very rude of you,” she snipped back once Bramble had let go of her, “as I cannot swim.”

Bramble paused. “Wait, you can’t swim? How come I didn’t know about this?”

“Yeah, right, aren’t you like a swimming master?” Callum asked Bramble.

“I mean, well, I swam competitively, so yes, I’m good at swimming. But I’m no Olympic swimmer.”

Jon went ahead and ventured into the mine, knowing that if nobody started moving, they’d all be stuck out in the wind talking about everything but the matter at hand.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re telling me that you swam purely for fun?” questioned Davos. They entered the mouth of the mine, and the torch’s light stuck to the glassy black walls.

“Yep.”

“What in the seven hells?”

“We’re not swimming in the ocean, Davos. It’s in a pool with clean water.”

“Sounds even worse.”

“It honestly can be,” Callum chimed in. “Kids piss in the pool all the time.”

Bramble rolled her eyes. “Oh, and dancers are so great? Miss me with that shade.”

“Speaking of dancing,” he said as they walked through the mine, “we should put on a show for everyone.”

“No.”

“What? Come on. You were a dancer—are a dancer, because once a dancer, always a dancer.”

“I’m never gonna dance again,” Bramble spoke flatly. They twisted down the mine tunnel, and Jon, Tyrion, and Davos began speaking with one of the supervisors. She needed to join them. “These guilty feet have got no rhythm.”

“Aw, come on! There’s this nice room with a big mirror across the wall…”

Something pricked at the back of Bramble’s senses. Dragonstone emanated a constant, ancient source of magic, and anytime the dragons flew near, they made the fire swell in her chest like the rise of a rollercoaster.

But something else thrummed in the mine. While Callum still talked, Bramble wandered farther in, letting herself being drawn by whatever beckoned.

Distantly, Shireen and Callum called her name.

She passed miners and carts until the clamor of work faded, as well as the torchlight. Bramble ignited a hand and held it aloft beside her. The thrumming grew stronger. She hoped it wasn’t a Jumanji board game, then wished that she could watch the new one with Dwayne Johnson and Jack Black in it, because her dad loved Dwayne Johnson. Who didn’t? Her mom loved him in Moana.

Okay, you’re thinking too much about Dwayne Johnson, she thought

“Bramble, wait!” Shireen’s exasperated call caused her to stop. The magic bore down on her in its own, unique way, but it reminded her of the godswood and its aura for some reason.

The princess and Callum joined her in the mine shaft. “Where’re you going?”

Bramble glanced to Callum. “You can’t hear that?”

“Hear what?”

She pushed her lips to the side and spun back around to continue her search. “The magic.”

“You can hear magic?” Shireen asked after her. They followed Bramble into a small branch of the mine, naturally carved like most of the tunnel. She slunk through, the fire still alight.

“In this case, yeah. I can feel it, as well. It’s old. Old-old old.”

“I think—ouch—I think I know where we’re going.” Callum pressed himself between the slimming crevice to keep up. Bramble and Shireen had to turn sideways to keep going, as well.

Bramble was too distracted to reply. She too had a thought nagging in the back of her mind of the destination ahead of them. But it was consumed by the magic, the yearning—and the slight tremor of fear.

The fissure opened up into a giant cave. The magic pressed itself down upon Bramble. She hardly felt it, however, as she gawked upon the carvings on the cave’s crude, shiny black walls.

“What…is this place?” Shireen whispered as quietly as she could. Bramble heightened the fire’s intensity to reveal more of its secrets.

“The Children of the Forest,” Bramble absently spoke, finally recalling where and when she had seen this place. From behind a flat screen, where Jon and Daenerys fueled both their sexual and political tension. Now, she stood just a few feet away from one of the spiral carvings, close enough to touch it, feeling its power permeate through her.

“They existed?”

“Yes.”

Bramble slowly moved along the cave walls. She took in the drawings, too afraid to lay a finger on them. If the magic here was similar to the godswood, it might try to suck her into another memory-vision-thing, and she didn’t want to have that with Shireen and Callum here.

So she simply enjoyed it as the magic washed over. There was the same type of awe that came with wandering through a museum exhibit filled with ancient and long-forgotten artifacts, pieces of history found again, still intact and whole despite the passing of epochs. It was one of those moments that reminded Bramble that she actually lived here.

And Sam would have loved this.

The three grew quiet in the cave. It deserved reverence for the sacred place it was.

Because she was so lost in the art, the story of Children and Men coming together to protect the living, Bramble didn’t notice something odd until she had already passed it, then had to backpedal to see it again. Amidst all of the spirals and circles and indecipherable language, the Children had drawn a crude, open doorway. Through the door came a figure, genderless and faceless.

And next to the figure was the undeniable, irrefutable Triforce symbol.

Bramble inhaled. She reached out nearly grazed her thumb against it, then stopped herself. Her fire shifted as if a breeze passed through, even though they were far from the entrance of the mine. It brought an unusual chill with it, and Bramble’s skin prickled with the foreign cold.

Either the being the Children drew was Link from the fucking video actual video game, or someone who loved Legend of Zelda used the symbol as their own. She was inclined to believe the second option more, but nothing was entirely impossible. But that meant somebody from their world was here long before them, which posed the question: just how many had come here?

Just how many had died here?

She twisted, opening her mouth to call to Callum—

But the words never came out.

Another cold breeze touched Bramble’s fire and skin. Callum stood on the far end of the cave that the flame’s light barely grasped. His back was turned to her. She saw the drawing that he was looking at, though, despite the dimness. They were figures of White Walkers, of the Night King and his generals clutching ice spears, looming over the cave as the enemy of Men, Children, and all that lived in this world.

In the darkness, his tall, lean figure became strikingly familiar. The shadows underneath his feet that the fire created moved discordantly with the flame’s flickers.

Grimness set. That sharp, bitter taste of denial fighting realization filled Bramble’s mouth, which formed a distinct scowl. She would not submit to the doubt. She would not be consumed by it. Callum was from her world. Callum was a good person, and together they would make sure this world wouldn’t be destroyed by its own inhabitants.

But if not?

Callum half-turned and grinned at her, bright and sure. “The Children did a pretty good job at drawing these guys, yeah? Got their hips all bony.”

She was mute all over again, voiceless and powerless against the enemy—Callum is not the enemy. No, no. They were from the same Earth, loved the same Fullmetal Alchemist, cited the same memes. He saved Barristan Selmy and Loras Tyrell and prevented countless deaths.

“Bramble? You good?”

He was staring at her inquisitively. She cleared her aching throat and muttered hoarsely, “Yep. I’m good.”

She was good. He was good.

The cold breeze dissipated.

 

 

 

Notes:

Olenna Tyrell! The One and Only! Roaster Supreme! I've been so excited to write her, and I hope I didn't disappoint. Since she and Loras are alive, and everyone knows that Jaime is planning a surprise attack on Highgarden, it means that the siege there is going to go VERY differently. And, as my husband knows very well, I am PUMPED to write the new and improved battle.

And hey, shout-out to the Legend of Zelda fans.

Chapter 38

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble had gotten lost in the labyrinth that was Dragonstone after running an errand for Davos, since he was old and she didn’t want him walking all the way down the fortress’ stairs to the beach then across heavy sand to the mine. But for all her cursing and scowling, it ended up in her favor.

Because she found the kitchen.

Some of the servants hung out in the area, prepping for dinner tonight and hiding from superiors who would tell them to go out and do other things. They stilled when Bramble entered, their voices hushing and laughter quelling. “May we be of service, my lady?” one of the women spoke up as she rose to her feet to give a quick bow.

“What—oh, no. I’m good.” Bramble slunk further into the kitchen area, sniffing the air. It smelled…this place smelled like…

Like home.

The servants watched her awkwardly. Bramble paid them no mind. She moved about the kitchen, eliciting soft gasps whenever she found something familiar, like fish sauce, ginger, rice, saffron, and chili powder.  When she picked up a sealed jar, the servant woman who originally spoke to Bramble hurried forward.

“Oh, no, my lady, you wouldn’t want to smell—”

Bramble popped the lid off. A pungent scent filled her nostrils.

She broke out into a beaming grin. “Bagoong!” Bramble cried, causing the servant to stop. “Bagoong! Oh, fuck, I’ve missed bagoong.”

“You…care for it, my lady?” the servant asked hesitantly. Bramble turned to her, jar in hand.

“Yeah. It’s…it’s from home.”

“That is the Lady Missandei’s jar. Only she eats it.”

Missandei. Interesting. Similar language, similar food…it made Bramble wonder about things.

She lifted the jar up a little. “Hey, you mind if I cook my own dinner tonight? You won’t have to bring me any.”

The servants glanced at each other, uncertain. One of the men said something in Valyrian, and another one of the women nodded in agreement. Finally, the servant facing Bramble sighed and gave a single nod. “Of course, my lady. The kitchen is yours.”

Bramble bowed back out of courtesy, making the servant smile in surprise before she hid it again. “Thank you. Alright! I’m gonna get to work. See if I can make my mother proud by remembering what the fuck to do.”

She got by mostly on her own, and she wished she could show her mom that she really did learn and remember some stuff. That way, her mom would have to worry about her when she went to college. But college was a lifetime away, so she settled for being a fire-wielding advisor to Jon Snow. The fire in the oven and under the cooking pot listened to her, so she maintained the right temperatures. Bramble kept it simple. Chicken adobo, vegetable-filled lumpia, and garlic rice. The same servant who spoke to Bramble helped with simple things, like boiling eggs, cutting fruits, and wrapping bananas to make turon. Her name was Saire. She didn’t know what ube was, but Bramble’s hope had been slim, anyway. A lot of people on Earth didn’t, either.

Bramble asked for someone to send Missandei to her room. Then she went back to the common chamber with her trays of food and a bottle of wine and waited. The area was empty; Jon, Davos, and Shireen were off doing important stuff. Bramble should have been doing important stuff with them, but cooking took precedence. They’d probably understand—and if not, then she’d make them understand. Their palates were so pitiful.

Balerion kept her company while she waited, sipping on some wine. “B,” she mused to the cat, “nobody actually tells you that wine is garbage. But the water here is worse.”

He just cried for food. Bramble sighed. She kept telling Shireen not to give him any off her plate, but the princess ignored her. Now Balerion would try to climb on her lap if he was ignored for much longer. And he was girthy, too, so when he sunk his claws into Bramble’s clothes and skin, there was a lot of mass weighed down by gravity.

She wound up giving the large cat a piece of food to keep him appeased. As Balerion noisily chewed on his Filipino cuisine, the chamber door creaked open.

Missandei demurely entered. “My lady,” she spoke with a small bow. “I was informed that you requested my…presence…”

Her voice trailed off as soon as she began to smell the food laid out on the table. Bramble rose from her seat, a nervous, strained smile flitting across her lips.

“I had a hunch…” she started. “I had a hunch that you might…we might…”

Unsatisfied with her words, Bramble huffed and switched languages. “I thought you might enjoy the food I made.”

Missandei’s eyes widened unguardedly, and her chest fluttered. “How do you speak my mother tongue?” she questioned in Naathi. Or, to Bramble, Tagalog.

“How do you?” Bramble questioned back, eyebrows raising. Missandei slowly took a few steps forward. Her guard was up, but she was undoubtedly intrigued enough not to wall Bramble off entirely.

“A wonderful question. I fear I may not know the answer.”

Bramble bowed her head for a second and let out a snicker. Then she shrugged and plopped back down in her seat. Missandei at least trusted her enough to sit in the seat opposite of Bramble. She tentatively grabbed a lumpia and set it on her empty plate.

“I thought it was just some weird, mystical coincidence that everyone here spoke English. It’s Common to you. Maybe whatever deity or universal force that brought me here turned my brain so the language sounded the same.” Bramble dug into her adobo much less graciously than Missandei did with her lumpia. She pointed her fork at the queen’s advisor. “Then I heard you saying that butterfly disease in your language, and I found bagoong in the kitchen, so here we are.”

Missandei smiled. “It is strange, indeed. Even our food is similar. I have not smelled nor tasted such things since when I was a child.”

Bramble shoveled in more food as she voiced her thought process. “Which I’m really happy about. When we save the world, we can protect your people next.” Missandei gave Bramble a peculiar look; it wasn’t necessarily bad, but it was strange, as though she had never actually heard a single soul state the sentiment out loud. “But anyway. I’m not saying all the languages here are the same—maybe only a few. But ours is one of them. Or, at least they’re similar enough. Like Quebecois French and European French. Not that you know what that means. All I’m trying to get at is how strange it is that we speak the same language.”

“Well, you are here, are you not? As well as Callum?”

Bramble remembered that fucking Triforce symbol in the caves, and she frowned as best she could through the food in her mouth. “True. Somebody else speaking Tagalog could have come here.”

“Or somebody else from Naath was sent to your world.”

She tilted her head, considering Missandei’s perspective for the first time. “Very true. That’d be possible. Either way, it opens up a whole bunch of questions I’m not sure I want to know the answers to. I already have too much responsibility. Too much weird shit going on.”

“Hm. Yes, indeed.” Missandei took another bite of her food and switched back to the Common Tongue. “I am finding, as of late, that the world becomes more peculiar as it becomes more dangerous. Why is that?”

Bramble grunted and wiped her greasy hands on a napkin just to dive back into more greasy food. “No idea. Probably because as the world we know unravels, we find more truths that we wouldn’t have looked for otherwise. Those truths, though, raise only more questions, and so everything begins again. They leave us feeling like we’ve just rolled down a hill: shitty and disoriented.”

“Your words lead me to believe that you do have an idea.”

She glanced at Missandei and almost smiled. “That’s the problem. Once I get an idea of what doesn’t make sense, everything gets harder to try and make sense of it.”

A moment of silence passed between the two, broken only by the tearing, dipping, and chewing of food. Then Bramble took a breath and said, “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yes?”

“What is Callum like?”

Missandei looked at Bramble like she knew she’d get asked the question. “Where do I begin? He is incredibly kind. He saved Daenerys time and time again, and it is because of him that we are where we are. You have seen his enthusiasm and compassion; it is a rare thing to find in this world, let alone in a place like this.” She turned her gaze to the window that pallid light washed in through. “Callum smiles when nobody else can, when he himself is hurting. At first, I thought him to be dim in the head. I had not known of anyone who could accomplish such a feat with their wits about them. But soon, I realized he does it for the benefit of others. So we may become stronger.

“He is a light. A light to Daenerys, a light to me, a light to the Unsullied, a light to everyone. Sooner or later, he attracts all to the cause.”

Bramble only nodded. She figured she’d get a response like that. Callum was an O.G. of this whole thing, save for Jorah himself.

She moved onto the next topic before Missandei got more suspicious about her inquiry of a person she could just go and talk to herself since, ya know, they were from the same world.

“So. Makeup. I want some. Callum said you could hook me up with that shit.”

She smiled, and some ease returned to Bramble. Balerion used her leg to stretch himself on, and his claws dug mercilessly into her leg. Bramble winced and shook him off. “Ow, you bastard. Here, get off my ass.” She tore a piece of lumpia off and threw it on the ground. Balerion snatched it up and noisily began to eat.

“Callum calls it the same thing. I do have kohl and other items of the like. You would like some?”

“Hell yeah. Let’s finish eating, first.” Teasingly, Bramble added, “I can’t cook all the time for you, Missandei.”

“Of course not, my lady. So let us enjoy this small moment, yes?”

Bramble lifted up her goblet of wine, and Missandei did the same. A small moment, indeed. A small moment of comfort between two people displaced from their cultures and reconnecting over food. Their ancestors, no matter the world, would be proud.

She didn’t say anything when Missandei began silently crying while she ate.

-

“Ah, Lady Bramble. I was wondering if you had a moment?”

She stopped and held back a sigh. She’d been trying to avoid Tyrion for the past few days while she did work for both Jon and Daenerys in tallying up the weight of dragonglass each ship could hold, as well as what needed to be mined to adequately arm a few armies. Callum had also wrangled her into choreographing a small dance for this twelve-person court residing at Dragonstone. She couldn’t decide whether or not to keep him at a distance until she found herself with him in front of the mirror he told her about.

Missandei was right about one thing; Callum had a magnetic personality that Bramble couldn’t help but love.

Still. The fire warned, and the fire did not lie. Neither did the Old Gods. He would try to kill her.

While Tyrion had been an awesome fictional character, in person he was…Bramble didn’t quite know how to put it. He seemed to tip-toe around her, speaking to her like she was ready to blow the fuck up at any second. Bramble didn’t blame him for it, but she also didn’t want him being all placating smiles and soothing tones to her. Just speak like a normal fucking person.

“Sure.” Bramble turned back around to Tyrion and watched him catch up to her in the hall. While he wore heavier clothes due to the cold, she was one brisk walk away from breaking out into a sweat. She wore a vest with no shirt underneath. Her breast band was visible, and the vest’s arm openings were low enough that they showed some of her ribs underneath. Her sharp leather trousers sunk down into her sturdy and slim leather boots. Sansa had said that she shouldn’t have heels on them because then she’d be taller than Jon, and there were already enough women that were taller than him; he didn’t need one of his advisors to be towering over the king. Bramble knew herself, too, and she’d definitely prop an elbow up on his shoulder and ask him how the weather was down there or something.

Tyrion smiled that too-amicable smile at her. “You look well. I envy your warmth. I am almost certain that I shall lose a few fingers and toes here before much longer.” When he got closer, he saw the sharp winged eyeliner on Bramble’s upper eyelids, the small smudged eyeliner on her bottom lids, and the kohl that amplified her eyelashes. Her brows had also been shaped and filled in more. “Ah. I see you have found Essosi products. They have merchants who sell the stuff in King’s Landing, too. Callum attempted to draw on me with it, to, er, what did he say? Bring out my eyes? But I did not allow it.”

She smirked. “Sounds like him.” Bramble readjusted the scrolls filled with an organized amount of math and reports explaining the math. She needed to deliver one to Varys, three to Missandei, three to Jon, and—

“Oh. Here. Since you’re here, this is for you.” Bramble pulled a scroll out and handed it Tyrion. He took it like she was giving him a precious gift instead of the costs of building a new sewer system that mirrored the design of the ones in Essos. Only the poorest pooped in chamber pots over there. Whether it was for Dragonstone or King’s Landing, Bramble didn’t bother to ask. She just gave him a base outline of the money it would take.

“Thank you. That was fast, wasn’t it? You have an exceptional mind for math.”

Bramble shrugged. “It’s easy enough for me.” She used her other hand to tuck her short loose strands of black hair behind an ear. “So. What do you want?”

Tyrion cleared his throat. “Ah. Yes. I assume you are aware that Queen Daenerys is planning to entrap the Tarly and Lannister army at Highgarden quite soon.”

“I mean, the ships they’re loading up with food and horses kinda gives it away.”

“Yes. Lady Olenna and Loras will leave tomorrow morning with the Dothraki army and Queen Daenerys.”

“Are you going as well?”

“I am.”

Bramble’s now-sculpted brow piqued. “So you’re going to see your brother?”

He smiled again, but it was tight. “Perhaps. Though I doubt under the right circumstances.”

She hummed. “Yeah. Probably not.”

“I was wondering, however, if you would like to accompany us to Highgarden,” Tyrion spoke lightly. Bramble frowned, but he went on before she could straight-up murder him like he expected her to at the slightest facial change. “Lady Olenna could use extra protection in the castle. It would be a precaution, of course, but you of all people could keep her safe. She specifically requested for you, as well. I do believe she wishes to see you burn a few of her enemies.”

“There will be plenty of burning without my fire,” Bramble remarked dryly.

Tyrion’s gaze grew heavy and sad, reminding Bramble of how much he cared about other people’s lives. “Yes. There will be.”

She picked up the conversation before either of them could linger too long on the battle ahead, the wars ahead. “Have you spoken to Jon about it? He’s really the one who decides where I go.”

“No, not yet. I just received word of your…invitation, and I thought I would tell you so it would not come as a surprise.”

“Cool, thanks. I’m on my way to deliver some stuff to him like some errand girl,” Bramble said, lightly patting the scrolls under her arm. “You can talk to him right now.”

“Right.” Tyrion gestured for her to continue walking. “Shall we?”

They began making their way down the grand, dark hall together. Bramble was content with not talking. Uncomfortable with even a short silence, however, Tyrion jumped on a random topic. “So, ah, how did you come by that scar?”

“I thought Varys would have already told you about it. He knows everything about me, apparently.”

Tyrion chuckled. “No. He likes to make sure he looks like he knows more than he does. But I will apologize for him on his behalf; he has…he has not had kind experiences with magic.”

“I know.”

“…Right. Of course.” Tyrion cleared his throat. “So?”

She held back another sigh. “Got it trying to save a family from Lannister soldiers. Didn’t work out. Your house has the best of the best, after all. The best at killing, the best at being bad. Great people, really.”

Bramble didn’t mean for bite to slip into her words, but she only realized she had after she spoke. This time she did sigh and said, “Sorry. I know it’s not…those men weren’t yours.”

“No, but the blame is still mine to take,” Tyrion said. “Even though it will not bring them back or, really, do any good, I am sorry. Sorry that you had to go through that.”

“We all go through rough things here,” Bramble replied as she looked straight ahead. “But not all your people are bad, I suppose. Podrick served you, and he’s, like, the best there is.”

Tyrion slowed for a moment. “Pod?” he repeated softly. “Podrick is alive?”

“Uh…” Bramble herself shortened her steps so Tyrion could catch up. “Nobody told you? Not Callum?”

“It must have slipped his mind,” Tyrion said, and it was the first time Bramble had heard true sarcasm rolling off his tongue in front of her.

“Well—I mean—I can’t speak for him, but Pod is alive and well in Winterfell. I’m sure he’s currently getting his ass beat by Brienne during their training. He’s pretty good at sword fighting, actually. Brienne is just a monster.”

Tyrion chuckled. “I do not doubt it. Thank you for telling me. Podrick was…Podrick is the best squire to have graced Westeros. Possibly the best human being.”

“Oh true.”

“He saved my life, actually. It’s quite the harrowing story. The Battle of Blackwater—”

“I know. Joffrey tried to off-rey you during the fight or something like that. Got cut across your face. Podrick stabbed the Kingsguard through the head, though. You were supposed to lose your nose. I like that it stayed intact.”

“Ah. Right. You already know the story, which sounds much less harrowing when you sum it up so frankly.”

“Sorry.”

Tyrion forcefully coughed to get himself back on track, then asked, “I heard that Podrick is quite…capable in bed. Are the two of you…?”

“Nope.”

“Pity. Is there someone else, then?”

“Yep.”

“May I inquire as to—”

“Grenn. Came to Castle Black with Jon. Has a nice ass.”

“…I am afraid I did not take into consideration the quality of asses the recruits had. But yes. I do remember a large young man by that name.” Tyrion let out an amused huff. “I must say, I am surprised to hear that he still lives. The fate of the Crows has not been kind these past few years.”

“I saved him.” Like most moments of war and death and darkness, Bramble could remember it clearly. The tunnel, the ice, the dead, the giant, the single Crow beside her. How her knee drove so hard into the ice that it cracked under the pressure of Mag Mar’s punch. The vision. How she couldn’t scream.

Tyrion hummed. “Your knowledge.”

“Yeah.”

She didn’t regret saving Grenn’s life, saving Pyp’s life, saving all their lives. She only regretted not being able to save more.

Not being able to save Olly.

The thought of him causes Bramble’s arm to involuntarily tighten around the scrolls. They made crinkling noises.

Tyrion and Bramble caught Jon while he was going over more shipment details with Shireen and Davos. The proposition happened swiftly. Jon agreed, but he did not want Bramble fighting on the front lines if she did not need to. He knew more than enough about her nightmares. They often shared the same ones. Mountains of dead bodies, rivers of blue-eyed wights, war, war, war.

Shireen wanted to come. “I have always wanted to see Highgarden,” she argued. “I hear that it is warm! And that they have one of the greatest gardens in the Seven Kingdoms. I have never seen a true garden.”

“And you have never seen true war,” Davos said back, echoing Bramble’s sentiments. “Nor would I have you see it just yet.”

“If war is coming, why can I not prepare for it? I know how to use a sword. I know how to defend myself.”

“I know you do,” Bramble said. “And I know you are fully capable of handling yourself should the need arise.” She stepped close to Shireen and brushed a tuft of her mousy brown hair back behind her ear. It most likely came loose during Shireen’s training with Ser Loras. Ser Loras, who had not been able to pick up a sword since the sept blew up. But he could not say no to Shireen, who had a sword in her hand when there wasn’t a book.

Bramble hoped that Shireen was helping him heal. Her spirit alone was a kind of medicine for the souls of others. And though Bramble had only spoken a handful of words in Loras’ direction—not even at him—she knew he needed the most healing in this place.

“So why can’t I go?”

“Because you are loved, Shireen, and we don’t want to see you hurt in any way.”

Shireen flushed at Bramble’s tender words. The princess wasn’t used to being spoken to so kindly. “There is…there is a lot of war ahead, sis, and even though I know you want to see dragons burn shit up, I don’t want you to have to hear men screaming as they get burned to ash just yet. Stay here, make sure Jon doesn’t fuck things up, and keep training.”

“I will need a capable advisor in Brambles’s absence,” Jon said. It wasn’t without a playful glare in her direction. “I trust you to fulfill many of her duties.”

“Well, I can’t do as much mathematics as she can,” Shireen eventually huffed. “Nor can I galivant around Dragonstone carrying a hundred messages each day.”

“Whoa, hey, I’m not just some messenger carrier,” Bramble snapped. She then remembered the remaining scrolls under her arm. “Present circumstance excluded.”

-

“Bah, why does that beast have to come?” Olenna complained.

Bramble chucked the large piece of driftwood across the black-sand shore. Ghost, a specter of white against it, raced to retrieve a stick no normal dog could carry.

“He’s just going to be another one of your bodyguards,” Bramble flatly replied. “Also, being outdoors for a long stretch will be good for him.”

She scoffed and clung to her coat more fiercely. “How long does it take to prepare rowboats? I’m sure I will perish if I have to stand in this bitterness a moment longer.”

“Calm down, Olenna,” Callum laughed as he approached the two. Bramble pretended not to notice his soft-spoken conversation with Loras while the armies prepared for transport on the ships. “The cold isn’t going to kill you. Just have Bramble stand closer to you; she’s a furnace all on her own.”

“It’s true.” Bramble moved toward Olenna and rubbed her hands together for extra effect. She was wearing something similar to yesterday, but she had her side-cloak on. She amplified the fire inside her just enough that she radiated warmth but not so much that she burst into flames.

Olenna stuck her hands out like she was warming them by a fireplace. “Ah,” she sighed. “That’s a good girl. So you do have some uses, after all.”

Bramble rolled with her barb. Callum gave her a brief but meaningful hug and said, “We’ll all be here when you get back. Try not to have too much fun without me—and be sure to memorize all the juicy details for me, please.”

“I’ll try.”

When Bramble learned that Callum would be staying at Dragonstone to keep tabs on everything with Missandei and Varys, she went to Shireen’s room and whispered in the princess’ ear, “Be careful. Stay away from him, if you can.”

He smiled and nodded, then left to continue helping with transport. Ghost came bounding back. He dropped the driftwood at Bramble’s feet. His pink tongue lolled out of his mouth, and his bushy tail wagged.

“Lady Olenna, Lady Bramble,” a soldier called about fifteen minutes later, “the boats are ready for you.”

She helped Olenna into the boat that held her, Loras, Daenerys, Tyrion, and Grey Worm. Ghost piled in, and Bramble wrapped an arm around the direwolf to keep him secure while the boat was pushed out.

A somewhat awkward silence ensued for the first bit. Bramble and Ghost weren’t part of the squad.

Then Daenerys of all people, whose gaze was still fixed on Dragonstone, said, “There were babies in jars when we first arrived. Varys told me that they were Shireen Baratheon’s brothers. That her mother kept them…preserved. Is that true?”

Woof. What a pleasant topic to begin with.

Bramble scratched Ghost’s thick chest. “Yeah. Shireen’s mom was a crazy bitch. She loved her deformities in a jar more than she loved her real daughter.” After a pause, Bramble said, “But…but I think she might have been glad that I saved Shireen. She was going to be sacrificed by the Red Woman otherwise. She would have watched her daughter burn at the stake. Then she would have hung herself the next morning.”

Without missing a beat, Daenerys followed up with, “Do you know what happened to her?”

“Melisandre burned her at the stake with five other soldiers in Shireen’s place. She said Selyse went willingly. Don’t know about the soldiers.”

“And Shireen? What did she say on the matter?”

“She was about to be burned at the stake by her dad. Any love she had is tainted. She…she isn’t ready to talk about it. I’ve tried a couple times, but she shuts me down.”

A spray of seawater hit Bramble’s face. It sizzled and turned to steam. Above, Drogon circled the coastline; Bramble was constantly aware of his presence, like he was a magnetic pole and she was a compass. The same went for Viserion and Rhaegal, although they were on the other side of the island and thus fainter.

“Love is complicated when those we love are also the ones who hurt us,” Tyrion said. With a sigh, he added, “Especially when it comes to parents.”

Not with Bramble. She loved her parents. She loved them so much. Missed them so much.

And now she was sitting five feet across from Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons.

The queen happened to look to Bramble. Neither dropped their gazes. Bramble’s black hair shifted in the breeze. Daenerys’ violet eyes shone in the sun.

Then, without breaking eye contact, Bramble drew Ghost close to her and smooched him on the head. A soft smile cracked through Daenerys’ neutral demeanor.

“Well,” said Tyrion, his discomfort of silence knowing no bounds, “this shall be fun.”

Bramble scratched Ghost’s chest. They were going to war. She muttered, “No, it won’t.”

 

 

 

Notes:

Sorry for such a long wait! I kept saying, "I'm gonna get this chapter posted soon" for, like, a long time. I've been busy with my other fics, but I'm super excited to get back into the game with this one. It's been neglected for too long.

And I know this chapter isn't full of action and drama, but don't worry, the next couple ones will be. Highgarden is coming up. And y'all know things are about to get even more canon-divergent (but really, who's gonna complain about that?)

Hope everyone is having a good start to their new year and a new decade 💖

Chapter 39

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble kicked the Dothraki onto the salt-soaked deck of the ship. His name was Jaero, and he managed to get a good enough hit in near Bramble’s mouth that she spat out blood. Her body was hot, and the fire urged her to burn this whole ship down because it wanted to get out.

It couldn’t, though, so it had to settle for the feel of her fists and feet connecting with flesh.

To be fair, the Dothraki were the ones who started it. A week at sea made them restless, so they started up brawls to pass the time. Then, well, one of the Dothraki made a comment about Loras, Bramble punched him, another challenged Bramble, and…here they were.

She’d fought six Dothraki back-to-back. Jaero groaned and rolled up, but like most of his kin, he had a grin on his blood-soaked face. “Fight well,” he said in his broken Common. Bramble smirked and gave him a slight bow. She was done for today.

“Thanks. You too.”

The Dothraki jeered when they saw that she was finishing up. She had several more contenders calling for her to take them on, but she ignored them and stalked up to the forecastle where the big names had watched the whole ordeal.

Tyrion, naturally, was the first one to talk about it. “What, pray tell, brought on the desire to fight Dothraki screamers?” He offered her a water skin while he spoke.

“Talk shit get hit,” she simply replied, and it took Tyrion off-guard enough to let out a light laugh.

“About you?”

“No.”

“Somebody else, then?”

“Yep.”

“Lady Bramble, your eloquence with words never ceases to astound me.”

She handed the water back to Tyrion. “You’re welcome.”

The cold ocean breeze was meant to be bitter, but it felt relieving on Bramble’s skin. She walked over to the edge of the ship and propped her elbows up. Ghost trotted over to her, and he shoved his head under her arm to get attention. “Ooh,” she muttered as she went to scratch him, “what’s happened to the big ol’ wolf everybody was afraid of, huh? You’re just a puppy now. A big puppy, that’s what you are. A puppy with big ears and big feet and a bigger heart—”

“You fought in the defense of Ser Loras.”

Bramble looked over and saw Daenerys standing beside her. She was taller than the queen by a few inches, but the sheer regality and might Daenerys bore made her feel larger.

She still hadn’t gotten used to Daenerys’ personal presence, but she did her best to remain indifferent. “Something like that.”

Daenerys did not place her hands on the railing like Bramble. Instead, they remained loosely clasped in front of her. “It was only reported to me that something offensive had been said about the lord. What did you hear?”

After a moment of consideration, Bramble replied, “One of the Dothraki said Loras would have been better off killing himself than live a shameful, weaker life. It was his mistake for saying it in Common.”

“Do you now Ser Loras well?”

“Nah. But nobody deserves to be spoken about like that, especially after what he’s gone through.” Bramble took a breath and leaned more on the railing. She stared at the dark waters, the same kind of water that rushed into her lungs, the same kind of water that she dreamed would take her once more. One of her fingers fumbled to undo her vest’s buttons. When it came loose, fresh air hit her abdomen.

“Well. You gave the Dothraki good sport. Word will spread of how you beat some capable fighters with ease. Many more will challenge you. Be prepared to either accept or decline their challenges.”

“What would you have me do?” Bramble inquired.

Daenerys was silent for a few moments before answering. “I would have you ensure that the Dothraki respect Stark soldiers. There are few ways accomplish such a task, however.”

Bramble smirked. “I’m resourceful, don’t worry.”

The boat creaked, and its sails caught the wind. “There is another matter I wish to discuss with you.”

“Of course.” Bramble turned away from the water and propped her elbows on the railing, leaning back. Her open vest shifted. She could still taste stale blood in her mouth from that punch earlier. “Well,” she gestured with a small amount of impatience. “Spit it out. Don’t need to keep me waiting in suspense.”

If Daenerys was annoyed at Bramble, she didn’t show it. Even if she was, Bramble doubted she’d stop being annoying. Too many people spoke so deferentially to Daenerys, Jon, Sansa, and all the others who came from noble houses. Bramble didn’t need to be one of them.

“It was agreed upon that you should not fight in the upcoming battle. You shall remain with Lady Tyrell as protection.”

“Whoo, I’m hearing a ‘but’ coming.”

“…But,” Daenerys continued, pointedly saying the word to confirm Bramble’s suspicions, “if it is necessary, I would ask that you fight alongside us.”

“‘If it is necessary,’” Bramble mused. “Huh. And what constitutes as necessary?” She swept an arm out across the ocean and the dozens of ships that bore her Targaryen flag. “I mean, looks like you’ve got it covered.” She then pointed a finger to the sky. Drogon flew above, a dot of black against the winter light. It was getting warmer, but they’d have to reach land before the temperature became substantially different. “Not to mention you have that. I can assure you that he’s a lot more powerful than I am.”

“That may be true, but nothing is ever certain. You may be needed on the battlefield.”

Bramble sighed and leveled Daenerys with a deadpan stare. “Yeah, okay, whatever. I’ll do what you need me to do—if the time comes for it. Everybody wants a piece of me. I’m used to it. Can I ask you a question, though?”

“You may.”

“Don’t…don’t you get tired of burning shit? Of the smell of melting skin? The sound of screaming horses?” Bramble frowned. The motion tugged at her scar. “I hate the sound of screaming horses.”

“So do I.” Daenerys unclasped her gloved hands and placed them on the railing. Bramble examined the queen’s features and saw that she was, at least, displaying some inner-conflict. “I will burn my enemies when I must. That is the way of war. But know that I do not do it with pleasure. I know as well as you do the smell of burning flesh and the screams of both beast and men alike. I know the taste of smoke in my mouth. That is why we must end this war as swiftly as possible; Cersei cannot be allowed to use her men as fire fodder while she sits safely in her castle.”

She turned her attention to the Dothraki mingling on the lower deck. Though Death acted like a trick of the light, it was there, readying, waiting. She wouldn’t see it come to full fruition for another few days.

“Cersei legit does not matter. Just send an assassin to kill her. Boom. Dead and done. Arya will probably want to do it.”

“There is no honor in assassination.”

Bramble looked back to Daenerys, scowling. “But there’s honor in letting thousands of men die because you don’t want it to be that easy? Fuck that.”

“And if the assassination fails?”

“Then you fucking try again! Boom. Still dead. Come on, it’s not that hard.”

Daenerys huffed, but Bramble had the feeling that she had already thought about such a path before. “Nothing in this world is as simple as that,” she eventually said, “especially when one is dealing with a human life. Especially when that human life is Cersei Lannister.”

 Bramble shrugged. “You’re right ‘bout that.”

A silence fell between the two women. Bramble was okay with letting it snuff out completely so she could be left alone, but Daenerys’ chest rose beneath her black winter dress and continued the conversation.

“Callum has told me much about his home on your world, but I have heard little from yours.”

The queen got an instinctively suspicious side-eye. Why would she want to know more about Bramble? “Probably because we’ve never had an informal conversation for more than five minutes,” she replied. Daenerys took her dryness in stride.

“I must admit,” she breathed out, “I am envious of the life Callum had, and I will most likely be envious of the life you lived. It sounds…nice, over there.”

“By nice, you mean that there are no kings and queens trying to overthrow each other, and there are no dead bringing impending doom upon the world. So yeah. It’s nice.” Bramble tilted her head up and closed her eyes. “You would have liked it there, that’s for sure. I liked it there.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Every single day.”

When she opened her eyes again, she saw a pensive look fall upon Daenerys’ face. “I find myself missing a life I have never held. A life of peace, a life where I could be held by those who love me. Is that…usual?”

“I mean, I don’t see why not. Everybody…everybody deserves that kind of life. Sometimes it doesn’t happen, though.” Bramble glanced away from Daenerys when she asked her next question. “Are you happy? Happy doing this? Happy being this?”

“I will be happy when I am returned to my rightful place as queen of Westeros.”

Bramble sighed and abruptly turned to Daenerys. Still leaning on the rail with one elbow, she used her other arm to gesticulate. “I don’t mean to be rude, but that just sounds like something you’ve been repeating to yourself without actually realizing what it means.”

She was returned with a sharp gaze. “Oh?” Daenerys’ tone hinted at a kind of heat Bramble had in her own blood, so it didn’t bother her that much.

“You say I will be happy or whatever, I will be happy when this happens. But will you really be? Let’s say you sit down on that throne and look over your kingdom, and you ask yourself, ‘Does this make me happy?’ And what if it doesn’t? What’ll you do then?”

“Then as long as I bring happiness and peace to those I rule, that will be enough.”

Softly, Bramble said, “Is it?”

-

It felt good to be on land again. Although Bramble would miss watching Drogon dive into the ocean water like some missile and come back up with a shark or octopus or whatever giant fish he could find in the depths, she liked the feel of solidness beneath her feet. It meant that she wouldn’t have to die again by drowning if something were to happen to their ships.

“It’s been a hot minute since I’ve been this far south,” Bramble said to Tyrion, who happened to be, like, the only one she wound up talking to the most? Daenerys and her had some conversations, and Olenna liked to try and tempt her to light something on fire, but other than that, Bramble only either talked to Ghost or Tyrion. Tyrion, after all, liked talking in general, so he was perfectly happy to indulge her—mostly because it meant he could indulge himself by hearing the sound of his own voice, too. He had gotten over his caution around her, as well, though sometimes it did come back up whenever she shot him a glare or a scowl. Most of the time, she did it just to get a reaction from him.

“Ah, yes, it has, hasn’t it?” He shivered and not-so-subtly inched closer to Bramble to get into her bubble of warmth. “Not much better here than it is on Dragonstone, sadly.”

While the army unloaded, they took the time to look at the abandoned castle seemingly built into the cliff in the distance. “Storm’s End,” Tyrion commented, knowing full well that Bramble already had an idea of the castle’s name. “A shrine to what the Baratheons once were. I thought that the line had ended completely with Stannis’ death, but just a few months later, his daughter stood before me. I have hope for the family yet.”

“Shireen’s strong. She’s going to be a good ruler, if she chooses to be one,” said Bramble. “And if Daenerys chooses to give Storm’s End back to her.”

“The girl has Targaryen blood in her. The notion is not impossible.”

The sea savagely crashed against the cliff. They had to dock farther from the castle due to its terrible protection by the very thing it had been built to stand against. Bramble would forever remember how it sounded like the ocean was still trying to rip the walls of Storm’s End down, even after all these centuries.

“There’s magic in those walls,” she said to Tyrion while they began to trek up the shoreline with the army. “I can feel it.”

“Oh? I heard tales that magic was woven into it long ago, that the Children of the Forest assisted Durran Godsgrief in building it. Bran the Builder himself may have helped the construction.”

“Mm. It feels…kinda like the magic imbued in the Wall. Different but similar. So you’re probably right about that. Congratulations. You’re still a smart man.”

Tyrion chuckled. “What a relief. I was beginning to worry I had lost my edge.”

“Don’t be too sure of yourself just yet.”

Daenerys and her army would be passing between Grandview and Felwood. They would stop near Summerhall, then onto Highgarden. They would have sailed all the way down into Dorne to find shorter land passage, but the Iron Fleet was lurking around the Sea of Dorne, so they braved the shore of Shipbreaker Bay. Either route would get them to Highgarden at relatively the same time. They’d be also skirting along Ashford. She hadn’t been back there in a very long time.

While a bulk of the horde would be racing along to their next campsite with Grey Worm accompanying them, Bramble and Tyrion would ride at a slower pace with Olenna and Loras. Daenerys ditched out on everyone; she hopped on Drogon the first chance she got. Luckily, she hooked them up with Essosi chariots that could travel at faster speeds than a regular wagon.

Bramble stretched out while they got settled in the chariots. “It’s going to be a cold ride,” Loras said, speaking for the first time today. “The wind will not be kind.”

“Better hold those cloaks tightly, then,” said Bramble. She brought a knee up to her chest to loosen up the muscles. “It’ll be a few hours before we stop, and these Dothraki horses are monsters; even if we want them to stop, they might not until they see the rest of the horde.”

“How comforting,” Olenna said. She had already seated herself down and was making herself look prominently miserable. “You will join me in the chariot, won’t you, my dear? I will be frozen stiff without you by my side, and you are scrawny enough not to weigh it down.”

“I might join you in a little bit,” Bramble replied. “I promised Ghost I would run with him. He’s been missing our morning jogs around Dragonstone.”

Loras leaned on his chariot. “You…are going to run?”

Bramble smirked at him. “Yeah.”

The army farther up the way ahead a growing darkness forming under them. It wasn’t horrifyingly large like it was at Hardhome and during the Battle of the Bastards, but it was there, like a nebulous black lake filling with water that could not be drunk.

She scanned the area for any shadowy figures. There were none, but she needed to keep an eye out.

The horde took off, and the chariots soon followed. Daenerys and Drogon circled high above where the gray clouds covered them. Bramble and Ghost sprinted alongside the chariots. The wind whipped through her hair and cooled her bare arms. She could hear Ghost’s deep, rhythmic pants as he galloped.

For some reason, Bramble found herself growing angry. She was racing straight toward a battle. She didn’t want to see one again so soon. She didn’t want to see guts strewn about and smell the rancor of bowels and blood and terror. She didn’t want to see boys her age dying on the battlefield and crying for their mothers, their gods, only to be swallowed in flame by the only mother and god there that day.

Olenna never got her chariot companion. Bramble kept running, hoping that exhaustion would overcome her ember of rage, but it did not. She ran until they made camp in the warmer terrain miles off the coastline. Then she stalked off into the darkness with the wolf and came back when golden morning rays streaked the sky.

“Where did you go off to?” Tyrion inquired when he caught her shoveling rations into her mouth. Ghost was beside her, eating a rabbit he had caught before they made it back. His white maw was stained red.

“Exploring,” Bramble curtly replied.

“Well, we became quite worried for your well-being.” Bramble raised her eyebrows at Tyrion. Even she knew he was reaching. He coughed and went on. “Next time, do tell someone where you are going; it will allow us to focus our concerns in other areas.”

“Sure.” She ducked her head back down and kept eating. So fucking annoying.

The ember burned hotter and hotter until it scorched all her insides, and as the days passed, she managed to find some rational part in her rage. It told her that these feelings weren’t normal. They shouldn’t have lasted this long, especially when she had green grass under her feet and a blue sky above her. The fire was…agitated, and it made Bramble want to blow the whole fucking world up.

Then the army reached the ruins of Summerhall, and Bramble knew.

Tyrion jumped a little when she forcefully sat next to him. The army settled down for camp away from the ruin, but Summerhall’s jagged black silhouette tore through the otherwise calm evening dusk.

“Er—yes?” Tyrion asked as delicately as he could. He’d nearly gotten his head bit off by her ever since they started land travel.

“Sorry for being a bitch,” she muttered, not taking her eyes off Summerhall. With a grimace, she made a gesture toward the ruin “I—it’s the magic. I didn’t realize it at first, but it’s so…ugly…that it started eating away at me the moment we got off the ships. Made me so fucking angry—and I’m already an angry enough person, so it really doesn’t help.”

Tyrion looked to Summerhall and pondered the information for some time. Bramble swallowed, trying not to snap at him for being so slow to respond.

“It does not wholly surprise me that Summerhall continues to permeate with magic. It was built by the Targaryens, and it was eventually burned down by the Targaryens.”

“It clings to the memory of death,” Bramble said. Her grimace twisted further, and she could feel it pull at her scar. “There was…there was a battle, right? With Robert Baratheon.”

“Yes, during his rebellion. He won three battles around here in a single day, which solidified his grip on the Reach.”

Bramble inhaled the cool evening air. Smoke from the campfire mingled with echoes of blood and battle, like incense. “I can feel the rage, the terror,” she whispered. She finally dipped her head and kneaded it with a palm. “Fuck. Fuck. I can’t…this isn’t normal. Fuck. I hate magic.”

“Come now, that can’t entirely be true.” Tyrion went to pat her shoulder, but felt the heat radiating off her and thought better of it. He awkwardly let his hand drop. “We shall be on our way at first light. Then, hopefully, you won’t continue to feel so…”

“Volatile,” Bramble finished with a huff.

“Yes. Volatile. Which,” he lightly chuckled, “I believe is an apt description for you.”

Despite the wrath inside her, Bramble managed to glance at Tyrion and give him a small smile in return. “Yeah, and then we’ll head straight into battle.”

“A battle which you aren’t going to fight in.”

“Bullshit.” Bramble went back to staring at the ground in a mixture of anger and despondency. “I’m gonna fight. Somehow.”

Her foot dug into the ground. A torrent of emotions struggled to rise through the flames and reach her tongue. “Tyrion…”

“Hm?”

He peered at Bramble inquisitively, but he did not hide his concern for her, either. He…he saw her as a friend, didn’t he?

The fire reached the words before they escaped, however, and they burned away before she could ever dream of getting them out.

Bramble stood and whistled for Ghost. “Nothing,” she said lamely, and even somebody far stupider than Tyrion could see that it was a lie. “I’m going to Summerhall.”

His brows furrowed. “Are you certain? It has not been kind to you, my lady.”

“It’s better than seeing all the death around me.”

The reminder sent Tyrion into silence. Bramble stalked off, fists clenched, and when Ghost joined her side, she broke into a steady jog.

Summerhall beckoned.

Magic broken by man seeped into the very ground itself. The last vestiges of dusk clung to the sky on their journey over, but by the time Bramble directly faced the ruins of Summerhall, there was barely any light left at all. She raised a hand and let it be consumed by flames. They longed for escape, anyway. Ghost padded beside her, his white fur reflecting orange.

This close, Summerhall’s magic turned from lashing, spitting rage that stretched out into the land like a caged animal to tragic, tragic sorrow. Memories of death etched into its twisted ruins, and the spells that thrived in the walls of the palace for so long couldn’t find their way back to each other. They reached out into the void only to find emptiness.

Bramble knew the feeling.

Tendrils of the severed links brushed against her skin. Ghost whined. His ears laid back against his skull. They crossed underneath an archway where the gate may have once existed.

“So you feel it, too,” Bramble mumbled to him. “Don’t be scared. It’s just…sad. After everything, after all the hate and war and bloodshed, sadness is always what’s left over.”

He sniffed contemplatively at the ground.

“It sinks deeper than the roots, doesn’t it? Even the magic has been corrupted by despair.” She let out a breath. “But I suppose that’s what happens to everything here, magic or no.”

“Do you often monologue under a pale moon?”

Both Bramble and Ghost jumped at the sudden voice and spun in the direction where it came from. Ghost snarled and snapped, hackles raised, and Bramble’s fire burned brighter to cast more light. It fell upon the wall of a vine-covered ruin, and at the base of the wall sat Ser Loras Tyrell. One arm propped up on a bent knee, and he returned both the snarls of Bramble and Ghost with a wan smile.

Loras already didn’t look well in the daylight; the shadows her flames caused only worsened the dark circles under his eyes, the pale color of his skin, and the unkempt limpness of his curls.

Bramble’s snarl sank back into a comfortable scowl, but she had to force some of it. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Ghost gave one more growl in the back of his throat, more embarrassed that he hadn’t initially noticed Loras, and lumbered a way off to search more of the ruin. Bramble came a few steps closer to shine more light on Loras.

Instead of answering her question, he said with a purposefully blithe tongue, “You have such a lovely physique. I think you know that, which is why you refuse to have sleeves.”

“I refuse to have sleeves because I’m one warm day away from internally combusting,” Bramble dryly replied. “I’m hot all the time.”

“…And you like intimidating those around you with your strong arms.”

Bramble snorted. “I asked you a question, remember? What’re you doing all alone in a ruin in the middle of the fucking night?”

“It’s not quite the middle of the night, technically. I came during the evening. Now it is dark, however, making it the beginning of the night.”

Tilting her chin, Bramble took a moment to refrain from spitting out the first shitheaded things that came to mind and formed something more coherent. “You, what, came because you don’t like the company of the army?”

This time, Loras snorted. He glanced away, and the motion highlighted his gaunt cheeks. “As pleasant as a Dothraki horde is, I took the opportunity to be alone.”

“Alone and sulking.”

“Yes. Something like that.”

“What about your grandma? She’s not all that bad.”

Loras gave Bramble a wry, pained enough look that she got the picture. Nodding, she lowered her hand and walked over to slump beside Loras. Once her back hit the vined wall, she let out a relaxed sigh. “Oh, damn, that feels nice. I’m hot.”

“So you’ve mentioned.”

The ignited hand moved to the center of her lap, and there she held it with cupped palms instead of like a torch. They sat in silence for a while, listening to the breeze move through the ruins and the occasional shout from the horde. Even with the light, Bramble could see the mass multitude of stars above them. Veins of whatever galaxy she had been thrust into wound like a river of purple, gold, and blue.

Then, Loras spoke. “You are right, you know. About everything here being tainted with sadness.”

She remained quiet. He let out a mirthless chuckle. “Sometimes, I think everyone would be better off if the dead killed them all. Then at least they’d be released from this misery.”

“True,” Bramble eventually muttered. “But don’t you want to save at least one person?”

“I…”

“You’d want to save your grandma.”

“…Yes.”

Bramble’s fingers waggled under her fire. “Aaaand Callum?”

Loras sharply turned his head toward her. Bramble smirked. “Dude, chill. I don’t care who you like. And I may be kind of a dumbass in the social department, but I know when two people have a thing for each other.”

“Please, don’t tell anyone—”

“I won’t, I won’t. I’m just saying, if you care about at least a couple people, then you have to care about creating a better, safer world for them. Doing that includes saving everyone else, too, so the world can keep going.”

Loras scoffed. “Poetic and philosophic.”

“Nah. That’s just…” Bramble shifted. “Look. It’s taken me a long while to care about anybody in this place. And when I finally did, something bad happened. Either they died or I had to leave or a culmination of both. But now…now I have people that I can make sure don’t die. People I love. And I want them to have a good world to live in where they can be happy.”

“And these people are…?”

“Shireen, for one. And Grenn.”

“Who’s Grenn?”

“My guy.”

“Ah. Who else?”

“Pyp, Edd, Sam. Jon, too, and Sansa. Davos, Podrick, Brienne, the girls in Winter town. All the Free Folk. Even you, as well as your grandma. Tyrion—reluctantly—and Missandei and Callum and everyone at Dragonstone.”

“And Daenerys?”

“And Daenerys, no matter how hard I tried to resist it.”

“Sounds like you have stacked up quite the number of people you care for. That is dangerous.”

“It means I’ve just gotta work harder to make sure they’re safe.”

“An easy task, considering you wield that.” He gestured to the fire Bramble cradled in her palms. Bramble wiggled her fingers and made the flames dance a bit. Loras might have breathed a laugh.

“Yeah,” said softly. “You’re not wrong.”

“Now, I am but a broken man, crumbled like these ruins. I cannot protect those I love. Perhaps, it is better for me to simply…”

Bramble shook her head. “Nah, bud, that’s not true. I can’t…” She swallowed, struggling to say the right thing. “I can’t stop you from feeling like this. I get it. Life is shit, and it takes every chance it can get to shit on us. But I go back and forth trying to decide if I’m here for a reason, or if I’m here because I made it my reason.”

“I am here by chance.” Loras’ voice turned wretched. “I should have died in the sept with my sister and father.”

He finally made Bramble turn to him. Legs still crossed, she leaned forward enough to edge into his space. Loras barely had it in him to meet her gaze with red-rimmed eyes. He struggled to keep his lip from quavering. “I should have died in another world. If I think hard enough, I can feel water in my lungs. And then I should have died within the first year of being here because I didn’t know shit. After that, I should have died when slavers tried to take me, and I fought back. Then I should have died when Lannister soldiers gave me this extra bit of smile on my mouth.” She grinned flatly for emphasis to make her scar move. “Then? Then I should have died by getting punched in the ground by a giant. And oof, I should have died when one of those fucking White Walker generals tried to choke the life out of me and take the fire I have. And the most recent time I should have died was when we retook Winterfell, and I got a couple arrows in my beautiful fucking back.”

The whole time, she forced Loras to keep looking at her. And, by the end of it, she got him to smile a little. “How fucking insane does all of that sound?” she hissed. “Because it is! So fucking what if we’re both here by chance? We’re still here. If you can’t figure out why it is that we’re alive when others aren’t, then make a reason and stick to it. Me? I didn’t want to have anything to do with this place until I realized that I’d be making the world worse if I didn’t step in. And Loras, even though I barely know you, bud, I think you’re a good person. So find something good to stick in your mind and just…just—go with it.”

Okay, she ended kinda lamely. But she had gone on long enough to find a place to chop the whole rant off.

Bramble puffed her cheeks out and went back to slouching against the wall. “Even if that thing is just making it until tomorrow, that’s good enough.”

After a few moments, Loras let out something like a strangled sigh. “Seven hells, why couldn’t you let me keep thinking you were just some foul-mouthed, fiery brute?”

“Still foul-mouthed,” Bramble laughed. “And still fiery. Make sure people keep thinking that, though.”

He laughed a little more. “I will, my lady.”

Bramble got up and stretched, both flaming palms facing upward in the night sky. “Well—I think you can do a lot better than being all creepy in this ruin. Let’s go exploring, pretend like we’re young.”

“As my lady commands.” Loras bowed as best he could in his position and got to his feet. Bramble gave him a once-over.

“You need a bath, my dude.”

“Don’t we all.”

With Bramble’s light, they made their way into Summerhall. The magic thrummed with its old and new sadness, but it liked to try and cling to her fire. It still sought something powerful enough to make it unbroken.

Everyone here was trying to do the same thing.

“It is said that Prince Rhaegar would come to Summerhall and sleep under the stars,” Loras said while they walked. The green vines that had consumed the stonework seemed black in the firelight. “He was drawn here, as he was born the day of the tragedy that burned this whole place down.”

“He sounds like a freak,” Bramble commented. “Then again, all Targaryens are freaks.”

“Freaks,” Loras repeated, musing over the word. “Callum has said this before. It is somebody who is…strange, yes? Somebody who does not appear normal.”

“Yeah.” Bramble hopped over a fallen pillar, and Loras followed. “Coming to the place where a bunch of his family died—that’s a freaky thing. Then there’s that whole Lyanna stuff.”

“Yes. To think if he had not done so, then a whole war could have been avoided, and he would have eventually become king. He was a champion of the smallfolk, too. He’d have been adored.”

“Not really a champion if you think about your own self-interest rather than what your actions could do to the smallfolk.”

Loras pondered her words. The shadows from the flame crawled high onto the walls around them, dancing like silhouettes and reminding her of the figures that would soon find her again. Bramble glanced at Loras sidelong; his presence inevitably reminded her of Callum, and more specifically, what Callum meant. She was self-aware enough, though, not to ask, “Hey, Loras, do you think your potential boyfriend is actually evil?”

“Nobles, in the end, do not think of the smallfolk,” Loras said. “They—we—will put our own wants and agendas first, sooner or later.”

“Do you care about normal people?”

“I…” He swallowed. “No. Not at first. I had no reason to. My life did not mingle with theirs. Then, when the Sparrows took me in broad daylight, I found that nobody on the street cared for me in return. I heard—I heard what they did to Cersei Lannister, too. Not…not that she didn’t deserve every bit, but I realized they’d do the same to me because they hate every single one of us.”

“And I mean, can you really blame them?” Bramble twisted her light to the left and saw Ghost slinking behind some staircase that led to nowhere. She began following him and found that the ozone of magic enhanced, like peculiar humidity on her skin. Her brow twitched. The fire faintly urged her on to find the center.

“I cannot.”

“Like I said,” Bramble huffed as she ducked under some rotted, blackened beams, “well, I’m not sure I said it exactly like this, but if you wanna live in a better world, gotta care about others to make it. But that’s hard to do, too.”

Loras didn’t reply. Bramble let her words shamble on, half-distracted by the pull of magic. The closer she got, the more she found that it felt different from the rest of Summerhall. It felt…well, everything here felt old as balls, but his had a different old to it. And it had something she—she couldn’t place her finger on. “I basically had to have a few prophetic dreams and legit fire given to me to give a major shit—not in that way, but you get it. And I could already see when people were about to die, too! And I, like, used to see glimpses of people’s pasts and futures. That was neat. I miss it. But nah, whoever shoved this fire in me was like, ‘Upgrade, bitch!’ Oh, also, I got my voice back.”

She suddenly paused, hearing Ghost whine nearby to call out to her, and adjusted her direction. Loras almost ran into her back, but he caught himself by putting a hand on her hot shoulder. “You—used to not have your voice?” he said with a slight wince as he shook his hand. “I did not know.”

“Nobody really does. I mean, I don’t bring it up anyway.”

Bramble took a slower pause, and she gazed back up at the fragment of a galaxy above her. “I think,” she said, low and neutral, “that this voice, this fire, is only temporary. When it will have served its purpose, they’ll both be gone again.”

Ghost made another noise, and she started walking again. Loras followed.

“You may have to give your life,” he spoke. She appreciated his plainness.

“Yeah, yeah, this world is all about sacrifice this and sacrifice that. But wouldn’t…” The unique magic washed over Bramble, which caused her to stumble and take another erratic turn. “Wouldn’t living through everything just stick it to all the dusty old gods, eh?”

“For a harbinger, you blaspheme every other sentence, it seems.”

“Who the fuck is calling me a…”

Bramble sputtered and stopped.

“…Harbinger?”

Ghost sat on his haunches, ears perked forward, appearing from the dark like a spirit. Bramble amplified the fire so its light could flicker and ebb against the ruin’s walls. They were taller, here, and more ominous. The shadows twisted so it almost made the walls curl slightly inward around Bramble and Loras, as if they were giant, jagged deities leaning forward to observe the mortals under their gazes.

Beneath their feet, grass had burst through the cracked foundations, sprouting and curling in thick, uneven patches. Was this where Rhaegar had once sung? Was this where he had once lie, gazing at the same galaxy, questioning his own tragic existence?

Had he felt the magic, too?

Bramble grimaced. The magic practically swirled in her mouth, her blood. The fire swayed as if a breeze moved it, but the night was calm.

Loras shifted on his feet. His ease vanished, replaced by taut worry. The circles under his eyes deepened tenfold. “I do not like it here,” he murmured. “’Tis wrong.”

“That’s the idea,” Bramble replied. A clammy sweat broke out on the back of her neck, unlike the usual what-the-hell-why-was-she-so-hot kind of sweat. For all of Summerhall’s rage and despair, it all circled around this point, transforming into an entirely new sensation, an entirely new—yet not new—magic.

Ghost, who had not turned around to watch them approach, finally lifted off his haunches and walked silently to the large pile of old, burned wreckage near the center of the sacrificial stones. On cautious feet, Bramble echoed in his wake. Loras stayed where he was, curling in on the folded arms pressed tightly to his stomach.

When Bramble couldn’t walk without having to step and trip over the mottled rubble, she crouched down and pushed a hunk of heavy wood out of the way. When it landed, it sent a splintered cry into the night.

The scene before Bramble reminded her of how she saw what she did in the Battle of the Bastards. The men and horses who had not immediately been incinerated were killed writhing in agony, contorting into blackened atrocities.

She gritted her teeth and dug further. What she could not toss, she kicked, and what she could not kick, she punched. The fire didn’t take to the remaining wood and stone; they had been embraced long enough by flames to never be scorched by the touch again.

“My—my lady Bramble!” Loras tried to call quietly while she plowed through. “Come, let us leave! Our companions may begin to worry.”

Though Bramble heard his strained pleas, she was compelled more powerfully to keep searching for the source, the source, the source. It beat in her eardrums, now, chanting in a wordless rhythm, reaching out to her hands—and the fire in her hands.

With the same fire, Bramble reached back.

The last thick beam of wood came loose and gave way. It revealed a dark mound of black earth.

Bramble fell to her knees. The fire grew faint, almost reverent. “Here,” she whispered to herself, to nobody. “It was here.”

In the distance, something shook the ground.

With fingers stained from soot and dirt, she wiped away at the earth until she grazed a cool, hard object. Bramble inhaled. The fire whispered the truth.

She took her hand away, growing fearful of what she could potentially do with the power she had.

The deities of Summerhall watched with hungry gazes as Bramble stared down at a single egg.

When Loras was brave enough to join her, he stopped short and let out a small, awed gasp. Neither of them could imagine what to say, and so they lived in silence.

What have you done?

The thought came without words; it engraved itself into her skull, forever there, forever haunting.

The egg pulsed with the magic that goaded her to this exact point. Ghost most likely felt it, too, and so he tracked it with his own strange sense. Loras, immune to the brunt of its effects, had the innate human instinct bred into him by his ancestors to run when magic hung in the air.

Ghost’s short snarl snapped both of them from their trance. The direwolf backed up, fangs bared, as he gave way to the other presence that made itself known in Summerhall.

Bramble, too distracted by the blue shell so dark that it could have been black, lifted her head and came face-to-face with a shadow pierced by two golden eyes split by reptilian irises, a shadow not of her fire’s own making. It radiated an immense heat that made hers pale in comparison. Its maw drew back just enough for Bramble’s low light to glisten off its massive rows of spearheaded teeth.

For all the might of the old powers of Summerhall that surrounded them, they bowed before the new god, the new magic, that could not be ignored.

Drogon paralyzed Bramble. A low, grating hiss rumbled at the base of his throat, which was still hidden by the night. The magic rolling off both him and the egg twined together with such intensity that it made her head spin and muscles weaken. He smelled of charred bones—the same type of smell that haunted Bramble’s dreams, the same type that urged her fire to burn and burn and burn.

His hiss became a growl. It reverberated off the standing walls and stones, like a rhythmic string being pulled in one last melody for the ghosts that still wandered Summerhall. He did not, however, carry his mother on his spiked back.

Bramble forced her hands to go up by her shoulders. She breathed once, twice, trying to regain some control over her own body again. Drogon’s intensity increased at her movement, but he did not lash out.

One knee lifted from the ground, then another.

The fire faded from her palms, plunging Summerhall into darkness, save from the simmering heat behind Drogon’s teeth. Then, it reemerged on the birthmark staining her face, strong and bright and unrelenting.

Bramble lowered her hands. Her heart still beat wildly, but she didn’t shake, and a scowl fit comfortably across her mouth. Drogon waited.

She slid her foot across the dirt so it covered some of the egg back up again. The growl receded.

Voice scratchy but unwavering, Bramble said to the dragon, “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

He glared at her for quite a while longer. She could do nothing but glare back, half her vision lit up by the fire flickering on one side of her face.

Drogon sent a blast of hot air through his nostrils and raised his head. He towered over the ruins, over Bramble, over the egg. She tracked the movement, neck slowly craning back to maintain a line of sight. Drogon bared his teeth one last time in warning, but he didn’t try to burn them into ash with the rest of Summerhall. He agreed upon the terms.

Unnaturally quiet for a creature of his size, Drogon slunk back into the shadows, allowing the ambient magic of Summerhall to resettle back into its natural state. Bramble held her breath until she heard the flapping of leathery wings and the shaking of the earth.

Not a moment after, she doubled forward, bracing herself on her knees. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Fucking holy shit.”

Loras collapsed onto the ground. He violently shook.

“I told you…” he barely got out, “I told you we should have left.”

They both regarded the half-covered egg. Bramble uttered one last, “Shit,” before staggering over and packing dirt back on it. The magic from the egg tried calling out to her a final time. Its shell pulsated in an old, melancholic longing.

“I know,” Bramble whispered to it. “I know. But just wait a little longer. Just a little longer. Then we’ll come back. I promise.”

Like covering a child with a blanket, she moved the last of the disturbed earth back over the egg. “I promise,” Bramble echoed softly.

She made quick work of putting pieces of the wreckage back over it, as if what had been destroyed continued to provide shelter for life. When she was done, Bramble turned back to Loras and helped him up. Though he was taller, he hunched enough to make them almost eye-level. He was probably one rough jostle away from being sick.

Bramble gripped him on both arms. The fire thrived on her face, still, giving him somewhere to look while she talked. “Do not tell a soul,” she said. Her fingers tightened. “Not a single one.”

It took some time, but Loras nodded so faintly that he might not have moved at all. “Agreed.”

The lingering shock numbed Loras’ reaction to Bramble taking his hand. It was the least she could do after dragging him into a shattering revelation and a close encounter with a dragon. Bramble began to lead them back through the ruin. She came here with an anger not of her own; now, she left with a sadness that she couldn’t deny belonged to anything else but her.

They returned to camp quiet and hallowed by secret.

 

 

 

Notes:

Summerhall most likely burned down due to an attempt to hatch a dragon egg. Now, Bramble has a new secret to keep.

Next chapter - Highgarden.

Chapter 40

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Highgarden sat atop a hill that sloped beautifully for an easy access of a large army. A thick smattering of trees grew along both sides of the grassy incline, providing coverage for a flanked, surprise attack. Though the main entrance of Highgarden came as a wide, open path, the other sides of the palace dropped off into craggy rock, making it hard to attack anywhere but the front.

The army arrived without Lannisters and Tarly soldiers to greet them, but scouts reported that the opposing forces would be here by early afternoon tomorrow. A fine time, Bramble thought, to have a battle. The sun would still be high in the sky by the time it was all over, and its remaining warmth in the Reach would make the blood and shit especially fragrant. A pity, she also thought, that such a green, peaceful place would be marked by war and fire.

But hey, at least the trees probably wouldn’t get burned down. The army was going to place itself exactly in a spot with nothing but a wide open plain.

Bramble fought a couple more Dothraki just for the hell of it, beat them, and then retired to her guest bedroom to take a much-needed bath and change into evening clothes. The Highgarden servants provided a fine top with a high front but virtually no back. Capped sleeves glided across her shoulders. The patterning had, of course, delicate gold floral patterns against forest green cloth. In the same color, the pants hung deliciously loose from Bramble’s form in a palazzo cut. They had pockets, too, so she sauntered from her room and down where dinner would be held with her hands tucked in them, enjoying the sound of her ankle-cut black leather boots clack against the polished stone floor.

Despite a battle the next day, Olenna Tyrell had the audacity to bring musicians to quietly play in the garden, which added an extra ambiance to their meal. Very bougiee.

“Good evening, Lady Bramble,” Tyrion greeted. He lounged at the table, drinking a glass of wine. “You look stunning.”

“Evening, and I know.”

Bramble sat between Tyrion and Loras. The knight stared down at his empty plate. Though he wore clothes more suited to his house, they were now slightly too large. He hadn’t let anybody cut his hair upon arriving, either.

“What you wear belonged to my sister,” Loras quietly said to Bramble. She stilled. He tilted his head to her and flashed a small but sincere smile. “I picked them from her closet for the servants to deliver. She would have adored you, I think. You have an eye for fashion, and you have a foul mouth. I can picture Margaery being delighted to no end.”

With a similar smile to his, Bramble said, “I would have liked to meet her, too.”

When Queen Daenerys arrived with Grey Worm, dinner was served. Bramble had to eat delicately because of Tyrion’s sharp side-eye on her. He was just waiting to watch her make a faux-pas and haughtily point it out to the table. The bastard.

Bramble scowled at him and took a dainty bite of venison. After which, she dabbed the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin and neatly set it back on the table.

Tyrion hid his smirk behind a wine goblet. Bramble reached for her own drink, and, making sure Tyrion watched, casually flexed her forearm when she brought it to her lips. She had what he could only wish for. Like, her back muscles were freaking insane. The cut of her outfit showed them off nicely, too, and Bramble imagined Grenn’s expression if he saw her in this clothing.

The thought of him drew her fingers to the small stone pendant settled against the fabric. Was he safe? Were they all safe?

Did Grenn think of her? They still had so much to learn about each other, so much to fall in love with. Bramble could almost feel his arms around her in the night, drawing upon the memory of their too-short time together at Winterfell. The feel of his bearded jawline tingled under her fingertips, different from the fire.

Even if he didn’t think of her, she thought of him, and a hollow sadness ebbed from the stone. It was almost enough to distract her from talks of battle preparations at the table, but Bramble couldn’t afford to let memories of the farm boy cloud her mind. She had to watch farm boys and city boys and old boys and young boys die tomorrow, anyway. Because, as nice as it would have been to believe that all Lannisters were like the ones she murdered, it wouldn’t have been the truth. They had mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, spouses, children. Would they see the faces of their loved ones amidst the flames and metal and hooves?

Bramble hoped so. It would be a small mercy.

She pictured the face of the man who stared up at Bramble descending upon the Bolton army.

And so they talked of war and death and strategy, the dark, distant topics ironically juxtaposed by the sweet tarts served for dessert. Its red cherry sauce spilled out from the golden crust and pooled on the white plate. Bramble scraped it up with the edge of her spoon.

After dinner, when night descended on Highgarden, cool and unaware that battle would be upon them tomorrow, Daenerys found Bramble in one of the courtyards that overlooked the sloping area below. The queen approached quietly, her bare feet hardly making a sound on the old, smooth stone. She wore a nightgown and a robe. Her unbound hair caught the light of the moon, and it spilled over her shoulders and down her back like water.

Of course, Bramble was nowhere as ethereal.

The two stood in silence, seeing as they were both good at it. A wordless conversation ensued. Neither could sleep because of what awaited. Daenerys didn’t need to be spoken to, anyway. She had Tyrion for that, and Grey Worm, and Olenna.

She just didn’t want to be alone while she thought about the possibilities and consequences of her actions when the next day came.

When Daenerys lightly shivered, Bramble inched closer to her so the ambient warmth could stave off the cold.

-

Both times Bramble fought in large-scale battles, both conditions aptly reflected the looming destruction and decay. It had been cold, gray, and snowy at Hardhome and Winterfell. The weather at Highgarden, however, promised a beautiful day and cloudless skies.

It meant the bodies would start to stink faster.

The rhythmic march of the approaching army reached Highgarden long before any bodies actually did. Bramble waited in Olenna’s private chambers with Tyrion and Loras, watching from the terrace as the Tarly and Lannister soldiers snaked their way up the hill. They were compartmentalized in neat legions, and horse-drawn carriages primarily tailed behind them. One in particular, though, hovered in the middle.

Bramble’s eyes narrowed.

“That would be the Scorpion, I presume?” Tyrion inquired, gesturing with the goblet in his hand. The two of them leaned against the open window. The stone was cool on Bramble’s skin. She wore a typical black jerkin with a Stark wolf pin above her breast. Her trousers were also black and tucked into boots. The kohl lining her dark green eyes matched the color of her outfit. Her short hair had been pulled back halfway to stay out of her face. If anything went wrong, she couldn’t be spitting strands out of her mouth in the middle of a fight.

“Probably,” Bramble replied, placing a hand on one of the two iron swords strapped to each hip. “But we’ve warned Daenerys about it. All she has to do is make sure it’s either destroyed or avoided.”

“If anything were that simple, my lady, then I doubt we’d even be at war.”

Bramble folded her arms. It felt…wrong to be up here, as much as she hated to admit it. Watching the blackened snake of death weave its way underneath the soldier’s feet like a spectator disturbed her more than it would have if she stood on the front lines.

Drogon’s presence settled on the other side of the castle, lying in wait. The Dothraki hid in the tree lines early this morning. They had covered their light-colored horses in mud to camouflage them. Ghost, who joined their ranks, received the same treatment. Instead of being fearful and anxious, the horde was eager for bloodshed. They could hardly wait to sink their weapons into Westerosi flesh.

The fire boiled under Bramble’s skin, wanting to do something too similar for comfort.

“You’re so wise,” Bramble sighed. “How do you manage to support such a big head filled with philosophy and facts?”

“It is a secret—one I doubt you will ever have to concern yourself with, seeing as you are more unburdened than I.”

“Mm, wow, fancy way of calling me stupid.”

“Not fancy. Merely…wise.”

When Tyrion went to take another drink of his wine—which was way too damn early to be consuming—Bramble snatched it from him and chucked the entire thing out the window. Tyrion made a sad, choked noise as he watched the liquid fly into the air, arcing and glistening. The goblet fell into the gathered trees below. It bounced between branches before finally getting lodged among green leaves.

Bramble lowly whistled. “That’s a long way down, eh?”

“You ruined my dramatic plans of calmly sipping alcohol while the carnage unfolded.”

She snorted. “Yeah, whatever, okay Cersei. And like you could act fucking calm.” Bramble’s solemnity returned as the army turned from dots to actual bodies. “Your brother is somewhere down there.”

“Yes,” Tyrion sighed, “and probably on some majestic white horse, I imagine.”

“Are you worried about him?”

Tyrion looked up to Bramble, the crease lines in his forehead ever-present, mismatched eyes forlorn. She only gazed back, neutral and focused.

“Is it wrong that I am?” he whispered.

After a moment, Bramble put a hot hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Tyrion let out a small, shaky breath, but he turned to unflinchingly face the approach. Bramble did the same, though she didn’t let her touch drop. Tyrion let it stay.

Loras and Olenna joined them. The Lady of Highgarden donned her typical mourning garb. “I haven’t watched a play in a bloody long time,” Olenna remarked. “I suppose this entertainment will have to do.” She gave Bramble a once-over. “And you look positively deathly today, my dear.”

“That’s literally the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me, so thank you.”

She dryly chuckled. Loras, in much lower spirits and especially gaunt, quietly said, “I already want all of this to be over.”

“You don’t have to watch,” said Bramble. “I wouldn’t blame you for just chilling in the gardens. They’re much prettier than what we’re about to see.”

Death congealed underneath the army, turning into a cancerous mass.

“As much as I wish to do so, I do not think I can.”

Loras didn’t expand further on what he meant, but Bramble understood.

If she were smarter or retained all the poems she learned in her English lit classes, she would have spouted a few lines of some fitting poem. But she didn’t remember a single fucking thing back then, and she definitely did not remember it over three years later, so she uttered the second most appropriate statement.

“This is gonna be a fucking shitshow.”

Poetic enough.

Underneath a bright sun that made the grass gleam, the armor gleam, the Lannister army unknowingly marched into defeat.

A draconic roar broke through the blue sky, full of magic and fury and excitement. The hairs on the back of Bramble’s neck stood on end. The castle rumbled as Daenerys and Drogon pushed off the craggy rocks and took flight. The beat of his wings shuddered through the air, bringing the promise of death underneath reddish black leather. Bramble and the others on the terrace craned their heads back just as a shadow passed over them. It blotted out the sun like an eclipse. Heat trailed in its wake.

The Lannister army scrambled to prepare their forces for the sudden frontal assault, but in the midst of scrambling to reform, Dothraki screams erupted from both tree lines, followed by the thunderous beat of hooves against the fertile earth.

Bramble watched with teeth clenched so tightly that her jaw ached. Fire blasted down upon the front contingent of soldiers, who futilely tried to shield themselves from their fates. The roar of the flame was too loud to hear their screams, but once it stopped, she heard the cacophony, and she thought of the Bolton soldier that turned his head to watch her descend upon him.

Magic spread itself thick across the massacre. Death writhed like it sizzled in the heat, collecting its fiery, waxen-skinned dues.

The Dothraki surged into the flanks of the army, which trapped them in an alley primed for Daenerys to unleash her wrath. The contingents that took up the rear were the least affected, so while their brothers were roasted to the inside of their armor, they split and hurried to at least weaken the Dothraki swarming on the sides. It wouldn’t do them any good, but Bramble commended their quick reaction despite the surprise attack.

They couldn’t quite prepare themselves for the dire wolf barreling into their forces.

The shield wall did little good against a cavalry, however, as the Battle of the Bastards proved. Bramble could feel the life being squeezed from her as the bodies of men, both dead and alive, pressed together. The scar hidden in her hairline burned like it’d been freshly cut, and the stench of fire and war wafted up to the terrace on hot, muggy breezes. Bramble remembered what it felt like to tumble down the hill of corpses just to add another to the pile.

Karsi once commented that when they threw the bodies of Bolton soldiers in a mass grave, they could often pick out which ones Bramble had murdered. They had scorched handprints on their skulls, their chests, their arms.

She thought of the man staring up at her, wide-eyed as snowflakes melted on his reddened skin.

Bramble blinked and grimaced. “Ugh, this is making my PTSD flare up,” she lowly said. “Fucking sucks dick.”

“PTSD?” Tyrion restated. Another goblet of wine had somehow made its way into his ownership.

“Means traumatic flashbacks,” Bramble replied. “Though in this fucking ass-suck world, that’s considered completely normal, baby!” Her voice went flat. “But it definitely is not.”

Horses shrieked and wailed from below. Bramble’s fists clenched, knuckles turning white. “And I fucking hate that sound.”

War made seconds draw out longer, as relativity stretched itself to accompany the horror that threw itself before Bramble. But between one second and another, between jettisoned fire from the dragon and the clash of metal, Loras hesitantly brought his arm around Bramble’s and linked them at his bony elbow. He trembled. Bramble leaned into him ever-so-slightly, trying to breathe evenly through her nostrils. Though her body burned, Loras didn’t shy away from its temperature.

The green grass of Highgarden became marred and blackened by swaths of dragon fire. Smoke rose in acrid billows, and the beat of Drogon’s wings pushed it outward across the plains. It stoked larger patches of fire that surviving soldiers managed to avoid. The unfortunate ones would be nothing but ash by the end of it, like the soldier Bramble came down upon in the field beyond Winterfell, fire in her fists, fire in her mouth.

“This will be over, soon,” said Tyrion.

“Ah, yes, the master strategist weighs in,” said Olenna. “So sure of himself that he does not believe the gods will curse him for making such astute predictions.”

Bramble searched for wood to knock on. There was none.

A drawn carriage burst from the ranks on the right side of the army, steered by desperate war horses that raced from the destruction. Bramble tensed. “Whoa, whoa, what the fuck is that?” she hissed. While the horses sprinted across the now-empty field, adjacent to the battle, the carriage’s canvas unfolded on down the middle. Before each side could fully fall, Tyrion swore. All of them were dreadfully aware of what awaited after the unveiling.

“You just had to say something, didn’t you?” Bramble seethed. Tyrion downed the rest of his wine.

Several Dothraki chased after the Scorpion, but archers—about five in total—positioned themselves on the carriage bed beside the contraption and next to the driver. A Lannister rider on a white horse broke free from the bulk of the army, avoiding the wild cavalry, and joined the moving Scorpion.

“Ah,” Tyrion breathed out, “there’s the fucking idiot.”

Jamie Lannister ambushed one of the Dothraki with his own solo charge. He swung his sword right into the rider’s side and moved to the next before the Dothraki could fall from his own saddle. Archers on the carriage loosed their arrows into the rest, taking down four more at such close range. Three remained, and as they closed in, the driver manning the carriage let go of the reins and jumped to the Scorpion. He brought it up to point in the air and released an iron bolt. It whistled through the sky, and in abject horror, Bramble watched it narrowly miss Drogon and Daenerys.

The dragon slanted upward from the sudden attack and circled high into the air. One of the Dothraki managed to leap from his horse and onto the moving carriage. He threw one of the archers off and cut down another before the driver drove his sword into the Dothraki’s chest. Another archer got a dagger to the gut from a rider, toppled off, and got trampled underfoot.

Magic swelled in the sky. Bramble struggled to divide her attention between the Scorpion and Daenerys. The queen, now extremely focused on the lethal threat, brought Drogon around to destroy the ballista before it could make another attack. The two riders pulled back, sensing their queen’s approach, and Jaime Lannister followed to pursue them.

That was Bronn manning the Scorpion, and Bramble disjointedly acknowledged that he was about to die.

Then the Scorpion veered to Drogon and launched another bolt, which found itself lodging into the crook of Drogon’s wing. The gathering magic abruptly unwound, replaced by bellowing shrieks. The dragon fell from the hazy sky with Daenerys clinging to his back. The four on the terrace found themselves braced against the railing.

“Come on,” Loras chanted, “come on, you great big beast.”

He’d recover, Bramble told herself, he’d recover and the Scorpion had pulled to a stop now and that’d be the end of it—

Another bolt impaled itself into Drogon’s leg, which brought him crashing to the ground in a great shuddering heap.

No. No. This wasn’t—it wasn’t—not—

Bramble pounded her fist against the stone rail and began backing up. “Shit! Fuck! Shit, shit, shitshitshit—”

She spent only a moment in the middle of Olenna’s gaudy chambers before yelling, “Everybody get the FUCK OUTTA THE WAY!”

Loras, Tyrion, and Olenna scrambled to the sides of the terrace. Bramble sprinted forward, leaped onto the railing, and used the momentum to launch herself into the air. The stone underneath her feet crumbled behind her, unable to withstand the force against it, but by the time the first chunk broke away, Bramble was already soaring through the sky.

She wouldn’t make it to the Scorpion on power alone, but Bronn made the wise decision in bringing it to a halt. He severed the carriage from the horses in order to get a better hit on Drogon. It sat between the castle and the dragon, pointed away from the incoming Pilipino missile and just far enough from the fighting armies to not immediately receive support.

Bramble still didn’t know how to land.

If the fire could shout in glee, it would have been right now. Bramble descended in rapid free-fall, and she wrestled to keep it contained inside her until an exact moment. Just a little longer, just wait a little longer, wait a little longer, wait, wait!

The ground met Bramble in an unforgiving embrace. Earth sprayed all around her as she rolled unceremoniously with the landing, but her bones remained strong and unbroken. The impact sounded like rock from a trebuchet plummeting into the ground. It caused the strap that her swords hung from to break. She didn’t bother trying to pick them up; a greater weapon already pleaded to be used.

Bramble pushed herself up from the vicious tumble and found her footing. In the next heartbeat, she broke into a furious sprint.

Smoke—real, battlefield smoke mingled with blood and death—filled Bramble’s lungs, and instead of sending her into a state of fear, it refreshed, refocused her mind. Her pace doubled, and she barely felt the earth under her feet. The fire craved violence: it spanned the birthmark on her face, orange tendrils snapping in the wind like its own banner.

Arrows whizzed near Bramble, and a glance told her that the archers who were on the Scorpion’s carriage had positioned themselves away from it for better ranged cover. It didn’t matter. She was already upon the ballista, and she could see the leather-clad figure manning it.

Bramble’s mouth twisted into a raging snarl. The fire knotted in her chest and pushed itself into her arms, hands, fingertips, everywhere, broiling with the intent to destroy.

“HEY!”

Bronn whirled around to the grating shout. At the sight of the flaming girl charging right for the Scorpion with no intention of slowing, his eyes bulged in bewildered, panicked shock. Death circled under his feet, tempting the fire, tempting Bramble.

She bitterly resisted.

“MOVE IT, ASSHOLE!”

For a man his age, Bronn reacted instantly upon Bramble’s words, and he leapt haphazardly from the raised ballista. An instant later, Bramble slammed her entire body into the Scorpion and its carriage, vision consumed with sweet, familiar, eager fire. Wood and metal exploded around her, splintering and twisting and burning with the suffocating heat. Flames licked at whatever punctured and scraped her skin, relieving the pain until it was nothing at all. Parts of the carriage went flying, and what resisted her force found itself within her smoldering grasp.

Bramble took the remnants of the ballista, and with a roar, she threw it from her and to the side. It spun in a fiery, mangled mess. When it hit the grass, it carved gouges into the dirt. Charring wood popped, and the thick ropes that pulled the bolts back snapped and curled upon breaking. In its position, with metal jutting upward, it stood like a pyre, a monument. Ablaze with Bramble’s fire, the ballista became a beacon to the Lannister defeat.

The entropy freed from Bramble and thriving on her body was the most refreshing sensation she had felt in a long time. Smoke had become sweet incense. Rage and bliss wove together, binding her blood to the exaltation of battle. She belonged here. She’d always belong here.

Several feet away, Bronn regained his wits and heaved himself upright. A dagger glinted in his hand, and though he did not brandish it, he stared Bramble down, ready to fight to keep himself alive. “Come on, ye wee bitch!”

She had to give him credit; Bronn was willing to throw down with a person literally on fire who just destroyed a ballista meant to kill dragons.

But Bramble’s attention turned from the aging mercenary to farther down the plains, where the injured dragon tossed its massive head back and screeched from its injuries. She hoped, she hoped that she wouldn’t see what she did, but here they were, and Jamie Lannister proved to be an actual fucking idiot.

Still atop his horse, Jamie galloped toward what he thought to be the vulnerable Dragon Queen, spear at his side.

Bramble groaned. She’d have to catch up to him—for Tyrion’s sake more than anything else. He looked downright pitiful when he worried. She could envision the exact look on his face as he watched his brother dive headlong into the worst possible decision ever made in the course of all Westerosi history.

Wisps of death clung to the red and gold of Jamie’s armor.

But…he was so far away, and Bronn just stood there watching with her, doing not at all what he was supposed to. If he had just gotten on a horse or some shit instead of being useless after he jumped from the Scorpion, he could have been the one to do all the saving.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Bramble spat. She was the only one who could reach him with such little time. Shit.

The fire renewed her stamina, and she broke out into a jog.

The jog transitioned into a sprint. Battle blurred in Bramble’s periphery, a mixture of brown and red and black. Jamie had no idea he was being trailed; he hefted his spear aloft when he neared Daenerys and Drogon enough to throw it. The queen had her back turned to both of them. She was too preoccupied trying to dislodge the bolts from Drogon’s hide. But out of the three of them converging, she didn’t need to be the one to worry.

Drogon let out another pained screech, high-pitched and trembling, distracted for just a moment longer.

Jamie closed in on them, Bramble closed in on Jamie, death coated the grass, and if he died, she knew she would be livid with herself for allowing a person who was supposed to survive get the Targaryen barbecue treatment.

The reptilian head turned, yellow-orange eyes falling onto Jamie’s one-way approach, and his cries silenced. Bared rows of slick, glistening teeth took their place.

A flame-coated hand latched onto Jamie’s fancy leather gambeson, replacing death with heat and a scowl, and before he could wholly comprehend what was happening, Bramble harshly ripped him from the saddle. The sudden change caused the horse to jump and veer, which was good, because Bramble definitely would have tried to save it from the fire that spewed from Drogon’s maw a moment after Jamie hit the ground.

In the second that passed from when the dragon’s flames burst from his smoldering throat to when it consumed Jamie Lannister and Bramble, she realized that this magic was not her own, that this fire would not so easily be told what to do. The magic imbued within it carried a much older, stronger force that could not be so easily swayed from its hunger for destruction. Fuck, even her own power was hard to control.

But if she did nothing, she would find herself standing beside a shriveled-up corpse, and Tyrion would be very sad.

Bramble planted her feet, bellowed, and raised both hands up to combat the dragon fire raging against her and Jamie. It snapped at his boots, but he couldn’t cry out, couldn’t move; the suffocation was too great, perhaps greater than the fire itself, for it ate all that it could. Bramble fought, fought, fought against its sheer intensity, and through her half-shut green eyes, she caught glimpses of deeper magic, not-colors that swirled within the vortex.

Beneath the deafening silence brought by the void of dragon fire, Bramble’s own whispered for her to take it, to use it. If she did, she would not have to bear the overwhelming strain of being a single rock trying to redirect an entire river. The other part of her, the one with too-strange insight, warned that if she allowed it in, if she tried to eat the beast itself, she would find herself turned to ash. Bramble would be unable to contain the input; it’d be the ending at Hardhome she narrowly avoided.

Wait, she said to herself, foretelling something she did not yet know, just wait.

And so she screamed back at the fire, her own teeth viciously bared. It billowed past her in great, awful, endless clouds. Unrelenting power beat against her body, clawing into muscles and bones and her will. Blood leaked from her nose and curled into her mouth. Bramble screamed some more. She could lose the fight if she only stayed a contestant long enough until it finally ended.

Then the eternity receded into the present. The fire that streamed from Drogon’s chest in an apathetically murderous torrent came to a stop. When the dragon saw that two people still remained in the spot he targeted, his head tilted in mild surprise.

A scratchy, shaky chuckle slinked up Bramble’s throat. She fell backward on her butt and gasped for that sour, smoky air her lungs panged for. Daenerys, whose expression briefly contained extreme worry, flashed back to cool surety when she saw Bramble hadn’t quite expired. Her violet eyes glanced to Jamie, lips tugging into a frown, and Bramble followed them.

Next to her, Jamie Lannister coughed and wheezed. He looked thoroughly singed but altogether unharmed. Bramble tiredly stared at him, and then said, “You are such a jackass.”

Jamie readied himself to say something in reply despite his bewildered, half-choked condition. Whatever he planned to say never got out, though, because a scorching fist collided with his stupidly attractive face and knocked him out cold.

 They both sat on a green patch of grass islanded by charcoal with blooms of embers. The battle beyond them waned; soldiers were surrendering to Dothraki and being rounded up, while others still writhed on the ground from irreparable, lethal burns.

Bramble wanted to lie back on her tiny haven and go to sleep for three fucking days, but duty demanded she get off her ass. “I’m coming, hold on,” she grunted, and pushed herself upright. Bramble arched her back, wincing, and said, “Holy shit, D-money, that really packed a punch.”

The queen and the dragon paid her no mind. Daenerys resumed trying to pull the bolts from Drogon. His pitching shrieks thrummed in Bramble’s ears. She staggered over and wiped her hands on sooty trousers. The stench of dragon blood smelled like sizzling, metallic oil, and if war hadn’t seeped into her skin and hair, this certainly would.

“Here,” Bramble said. She put her hands on the bolt. “Let me help. I can probably get it out.”

Daenerys nodded once and let go. “Get ready!” Bramble shouted. “One—two—three!”

She pulled harder than necessary just to make sure that the bolt came out in a single go. Drogon wailed, but it was deeper than the previous ones, and he gnashed his teeth approvingly. Dark blood spurted out onto her boots.  Bramble tossed the iron out of the way, and it let out a clang. Daenerys pointed to the one embedded in his leg. It had pierced the haunch and drove deep into muscle. She grimaced. Just by the sight of it, she could tell that his one was going to hurt.

“I assume that man who tried to get himself incinerated is none other than Jaime Lannister?” Daenerys inquired while they made their way to the other end of the dragon.

“Unfortunately,” Bramble responded. She swished what spit she had in her mouth to wash out some blood and hawked it off to her side. Then she noisily sniffed and wiped at her bloodied nose with the back of her bare arm. “Bronn was meant to save him. But when one thing changes, everything fucking changes.”

Daenerys hummed. Bramble gazed at her sidelong. “Hey, you good? Had kind of a crash landing.”

“I am well.” She curled her hands and moved them in circular motions. “My wrists hurt a bit, as does my back, but it is nothing unmanageable.”

“That’s good. At least you didn’t get skewered by this piece of shit right here.” Bramble gestured to the bolt. “Ugh, your dragon is going to try and rip my head off for this.”

“Which you will surely wrest from his mouth,” Daenerys remarked wryly.

“You bet your damn queeny tits I would.”

Bramble gripped the iron shaft and called, “Here we go! Same as last time! One—two—three!”

A meaty squelch followed the bolt’s exit, and Bramble had to shift back in order to get it all the way out as smoothly as she could. Drogon’s leg trembled upon the removal. He snapped his head around until it was centimeters from Bramble’s. He roared furiously at her, but she simply returned it with her own, albeit hoarser. “Don’t you fucking get mad at me!” She waved the bolt in front of Drogon. “Or I’ll stick this back in you!”

He snorted indignantly, and his reptilian, smoky breath rolled down Bramble. Only her hair reacted by shifting. She drove the bolt into the ground. “Such a damn baby!”

Drogon blinked at Bramble, growled reverberatingly, and huffed much more tenderly onto Daenerys. “He only needs a mother’s comfort,” she said, bringing up a gloved hand to pat his rough, spiked jaw.

Bramble scoffed and looked back over to Jaime Lannister. He was stirring, which was good. She would have hated to bring him all brain-damaged back to Tyrion.

Her grim nature returned. Burning flesh carried on the breeze. “If Randall and Dickon Tarly are alive, send them to the cells,” she said to Daenerys. “Same with the one who was taking those shots at you and your baby.” Her chin jutted out to the Lannister. “I’ve got him.”

“And why shouldn’t I simply execute the man who attempted to kill my dragon?”

She shrugged and made an I-don’t-know noise. “’Cause he’s funny? And punishing him with what I’m about to force him and Jaime into will be much more ironically poetic than lighting him on fire.”

Daenerys placidly raised her brows at Bramble. “Oh? And what are your plans?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“All of history has shown that surprising a monarch has never ended well.”

“Let it be a nice relief after all the massacre you have to clean up.” Bramble gestured to the sprawl of carnage before them. “Because lemme tell ya, that ain’t pretty.”

The queen didn’t sigh, although it seemed as though she wanted to. She steeled herself for the work ahead. “Very well.”

Bramble rolled her shoulders, stretched her sore body again, and began to trudge back to Jaime. Before she walked too far away, Daenerys said, “And thank you, Lady Bramble.”

She only lifted a hand and splayed her fingers in a short wave.

Jaime groaned in dazed protest when he found himself being dragged by the collar of his stupid breastplate. “Come on, oh Oathless One,” Bramble drawled. Soot and grime streaked every inch of her body, and especially her face. She tossed him a glance over her shoulder, where he caught the flash of a sharp white smirk. Or was it?

“If…if you are to kill me,” Jaime said after a dry, ragged cough, “then get on with it.”

“Kill you? Nah, that’s not how it’s gonna work, bud. Got something better planned.” Bramble hauled Jaime alongside the aftermath of the ambush. She ignored the discordant array of men still dying, still burning, calling for their mothers and creators. She heard it all before. In the distance, the remnants of the ballista continued to burn. Highgarden stood untouched, as did Olenna Tyrell and her house.

As expected, Jaime abruptly twisted to try and free himself from his captor. Bramble only lifted him up and roughly threw him back down into the upturned dirt. It was enough to knock the freshly-returned wind out of Jaime. She took a little pleasure seeing him convulse with a stunned diaphragm.

“What, don’t wanna see your brother?” Bramble asked in a nonchalant voice. “Or Brienne?”

Jaime managed to darkly glare at Bramble with his face half-smothered in the ground.

A Dothraki came up on horseback with another in tow. He barked at Bramble in his language, but she got the gist of his offering. First, she tied him so his arms were snug and unmoving against his waist with the rope hanging off the saddle pack. Then she threw the Lannister over the front of the saddle—in the extra uncomfortable spot—and hopped on. One hand clung to the rope so Jaime wouldn’t flop off the moment she began to move, and the other steered the reins.

Out from the calming carnage, a muddied, bloodied dire wolf loped up to her. Ghost’s pink tongue lolled out to one side. He appeared uninjured. “Well, hello,” Bramble said to him. “Did you have fun?”

A scoff came from Jaime. “Are you serious—”

Bramble kicked the stirrups of the horse, who sprung into a gallop, and Jaime never got to finish his remark.

The finished battle grew farther behind them. The fire, simmering underneath Bramble’s skin, longed for her to return. She ignored it, and she ignored the lingering doubt that the fire was the one who felt that way.

 

 

 

Notes:

Another chapter after a long wait. I hope all of you like it, though, and more importantly, I hope all of you are staying safe and healthy.

Chapter 41

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

All in all, the battle only lasted ten minutes, tops. Maybe even less, considering time outside that grassy plain warped differently than the time within. Healers from the castle tended to imprisoned soldiers; the Dothraki looted the dead and retold their goriest and most glorious kills; Loras Tyrell sat alone in the gardens; Olenna Tyrell took lunch; Daenerys and Drogon circled low in the sky, a reminder to the soldiers just who said they could return to their families in peace should they choose not to join her.

Tyrion Lannister and Bramble walked down to the dungeons.

“Yeesh,” Bramble scoffed, and not for the first time, “I can’t believe how nice the cells are. I’ve been in some inns shittier than this.”

“The Tyrells were never known for their torture methods,” said Tyrion, “nor the Gardeners before them.”

Smooth, sandy, gray-brown stone made up the cell walls, which nicely grabbed the natural light filtering in from barred windows that sat under the ceiling. Bramble pointed to one. “Wouldn’t this place flood if there was a bad storm?”

“The Reach rarely ever has true ill weather,” Tyrion answered. He continued talking to distract himself from their destination. “And if it does, these cells sit at just the right downward angle that any water is washed out to the cliff face below.”

Bramble tested the floor by giving her legs deeper bends when she walked for a few steps. “Oh, yeah, you’re right, it does have a slope to it.”

“It is said that Garth Greenhand led the First Men through the Arm of Dorne.” Tyrion latched onto the topic and kept going. “Others argue that he actually predated the First Men in the land, and that he was more akin to a god, for he taught humans to farm and harvest. Green sprouted wherever he went, the ground suddenly fertile, and the women, too. He wore a crown of flowers on his head, which may have been made from everlasting vines with antlers emerging from them.”

“The Northerners say it was the First King who brought humans across the Arm,” Bramble said, pleased that she remembered folklore from her time in Castle Black’s library. Also just Sam. “Maybe they were the same guy.”

“Perhaps. Or Garth Greenhand was none of the things which the legends recall, and time has given him his mythos.”

“I don’t know,” Bramble said. “Turns out, the legends here aren’t to be fucked with. Maybe Garth Greenhand was even more.”

“And you, my lady? What shall the legends say about you?” Tyrion smoothly transitioned. Bramble snorted.

“They’ll probably say that I was a beautiful woman with massive tits who could burn down the entire countryside and armies like a dragon. Maybe, maybe it’ll be mentioned that I’m not exactly from around here, but that’ll be interpreted like I was a gift from the gods or some shit.”

“Not an implausible conclusion.”

“Still.” Bramble shrugged. “Or I’ll be completely forgotten. That’s not such a bad thing, though.”

“Is it? To have no memory of you despite all you did?”

She made a noise and tried to come up with the right words. “I think…I think that if I do enough good, if it somehow makes this world better and safer, that’s where my memory will be, and it’ll be good enough.”

Tyrion’s ensuing quiet made Bramble uncomfortable. Two Tyrell soldiers stood at the entrance of the right wing a way off, marking their destination. Good. Then she’d be able to forget how stupid her words sounded and shrug off the rising embarrassment that came with the Hand’s lack of a response.

They turned into the wing and passed the soldiers. Tyrion’s fist unconsciously flexed as they approached the imprisoned. “I should be drunker for this,” he murmured to her.

“Want me to book it upstairs and grab you a bottle?” she quietly joked back. “I’m fast like that, in case you didn’t see earlier.”

When Tyrion actually hesitated a moment too long, Bramble gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine. If worst comes to worst, let me do the talking.” She haughtily smirked and splayed fingers against her ash-coated chest. “I am, after all, a renowned diplomat.”

“You are renowned, alright,” Tyrion huffed, dropping his voice even lower so they wouldn’t be heard, “and many have felt the impact of your diplomacy.”

“Word play. Nice. Love it.”

Upon seeing Jaime Lannister comfortably seated against the back wall of his cell, Bramble wanted to give him another taste of her ambassadorial skills. For being bone-crushingly defeated, he sure looked quite composed and nonchalant. His eyes did widen a fraction when Tyrion came to stand in front of his cell, but Jamie quickly slid back into casualness before he gave himself away too much.

“Well,” Jaime drawled. His golden hand rested upon a peaked knee. “I heard you made company with the Targaryen girl after your escape. How fitting.”

“An escape you helped orchestrate,” Tyrion reminded.

Jaime tilted his head. “If I hadn’t, would my men still be alive?” His lip curled, but he did it in a way like this was all one big joke. Only his cold, unforgiving eyes betrayed him. “Nasty thing, being burned up like that.”

“Sadly, no,” replied Tyrion. “As it so happens, I am not the only wise advisor to the queen.”

“A pity. And a greater pity that you serve no true queen.”

Tyrion and Bramble stayed placid. Jaime nodded to her—more specifically the war-blemished wolf pin on her breast. “Though it seems you do have the North on your side. Traitors do back traitors, after all.”

“Traitors to a tyrant is no traitor at all,” said Tyrion. Emotion finally struck his voice. Frustration, maybe? Care? Or both. “And that is exactly what Cersei is, Jaime. You know it. I know it. The entire country knows it. Their ruler is a monster, and her reign must be taken from her as swiftly as she stole it.”

“To be replaced by a Targaryen who’d light fire to her enemies the moment they question her?” Jaime scoffed.

“I mean, Cersei already blew up the Sept of Baelor with wildfire to kill all the enemies who questioned her in one go,” Bramble said. “So they’re not that different in that area.”

“Ah,” said Jaime. He slightly repositioned himself and readied a sharpened tongue. “And I’m sure you are quite aware of burning enemies, aren’t you? A pity you found yourself in the North. No matter how much you do for their sake, they will never trust you. Not completely. You’re too…” Jaime used his real hand to gesture toward his face. “Dark. But at least you can find yourself in the company of women just as beautiful as you are.” He said the last part with a sneer to make Bramble aware that he didn’t mean it as a glowing compliment.

A moment of tense silence passed, then Bramble let out a chuckle. It scratched against her throat. At the present, her “darkness” was masked by a dense layer of dirt, soot, and blood. The smear left behind from her nosebleed swept up her unmarred cheek like a sloppy paintbrush stroke. Strands of her black hair had come loose and framed her blunt face. “For the guy being imprisoned in a cell, you sure talk like you’re not in one.”

“Oh, I’m actually quite comfortable.” Jaime leaned back. “It is not the black cells at the Red Keep, and my fingernails aren’t getting plucked out, so at least I have the Targaryen to thank for that.”

“I believe you owe it to somebody else that you are even enjoying this present conversation,” said Tyrion. Bramble folded her arms and smirked. Jaime stared at her for a moment, contemplating his response, then visibly—sardonically—conceded.

“Why, yes, I do have the mighty Wolf’s Fire to thank for shielding me against my death. You looked very heroic. Very savage.”

“Wait—hold up, hold up.” Bramble’s change in tone lost all the momentum for the back-and-forth. Her nose scrunched. “What the hell did you just call me? The Wolf’s Fire?”

“It’s a very obvious title, isn’t it? Not much to explain.”

Bramble looked from Tyrion to Jaime, torn between anger and amusement. “That is the dumbest fucking name I’ve ever heard.”

Tyrion shrugged in feigned helplessness.

Jaime hummed, smirking. “I rather like it. Very dramatic. Very…Northern. And, as it appears…” He exaggeratedly looked Bramble up and down. “Very fitting.”

She turned to Tyrion. “Alright, just have him executed. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”

“He’ll grow on you,” Tyrion promised. He patted her on the arm. “Why don’t you inform my dear brother exactly why doesn’t find himself staring at the mouth of a dragon yet again?”

“Alright, alright.” Bramble motioned for a soldier and instructed him to open the cell next to Jaime’s. “Throw that jabroni in with this one. It concerns them both.”

“Why me?” Bronn whined. “Execute that gold-handed shite and let me go.”

“Um, sorry, but you’re probably higher on the execution list,” Bramble informed. She and Tyrion backed up to watch Bronn roughly get taken from his cell and thrown beside Jaime. The cell door slammed shut again. “You injured the queen’s dragon. Kinda like attempted murder on her child. Luckily for you both, I have some sweet redemptive plans that will keep you in our sight while making you better people who’re concerned with the threat on this world.”

Bronn seated himself on the ground. “’M afraid to say it, but the lordling is already fucking the threat on this world. Won’t be easy to sway him.”

That got a smirk from Bramble. “Surprisingly enough, there’s something worse than Cersei Lannister. Means that it’s real bad.”

“What’s worse than Cersei fucking Lannister?”

“An army of the dead.”

Bronn and Jaime plummeted into stupefied silence. “The Army of the Dead, to be specific,” she continued. “The ones they’d tell you as a kid to scare you. Turns out, they’re real, and they wanna plunge the world into eternal winter. Kill all the living, too. We’ve got to fight them, and we’ve gotta prove to Westeros that they’re real—and a very, very dangerous threat to the living. They’ll come for Winterfell first, and if the North falls, then the rest of the continent needs to be prepared to face them.”

A scowl mixed in with the grime on Bramble’s face. “We know Cersei isn’t going to help us. That’s fine. But you two are.”

The weight of the world shifted.

Bronn was the first to recover. He made an indignant noise. “You think we’re gonna fucking believe that?”

“No, not yet. But you will.”

“And pray tell…” Jaime got to his feet and took a few steps forward, sizing Bramble up. The light from the cell window above caught his golden hair and turned it molten. “How you are going to turn us into believers.”

“Uh, do I really have to spell it out for you? You’re gonna come with us across the Wall to snag a White Walker.”

“Oi, oi,” Bronn interjected, hastily rising back up to his feet. “That ain’t really gonna work out for me, lass, I don’t do too well with the cold an’ all—don’t to too well chasing fairy tales, either, but that’s beside the point.”

“Nah, that’s exactly the point.” Bramble flashed her best grin, incisors sharp against her blood-crusted lower lip. Bronn glared at her. “Don’t worry. We’ll dress you up extra warm.”

Jaime did appear outright incredulous, which pleased her to no end. “You would let me, your prized prisoner, go free to help you? Are you insane?”

Deadpan, Bramble replied, “You’re not as prized as you think you are.”

Tyrion coughed to poorly hide his humor. Even though Bronn was still pissed, he said, “She’s got a fair point, lordling.”

Jaime’s jaw clenched, and his good hand curled into a white-knuckled fist. Despite his visible anger, however, his eyes searched as if he could find a way out of this prison cell, this predicament. They eventually fell on the person Bramble expected them to: Tyrion.

“This will be good refinement for you, Jaime,” the Hand said with a false air of humility and wisdom. “It can give you insight on the enemy you will be fighting. Which is, after all, what our dear father would have wanted—for you to be nothing but prepared on the battlefield.”

With a growing rage, Jaime stepped up to the cell bars and gripped one. “And why,” he seethed, “would you even expect me to be willing to help you?”

“Because even you’re not a shitty enough person to ignore this danger,” said Bramble. Jaime froze at the words, not any less angry but not more. Her seriousness then lightened a touch. “Also, what would you prefer? Stinking here in this cell or getting out there and doing some good? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To do good? Protect people?” She, too, stepped closer to Jaime, the bars of the cell between them. “That’s why you killed the Mad King. That’s why you saved Brienne.”

Upon saying Brienne’s name, something flickered in Jaime.

To hide it, he made an indecisive face, tilted his head back so he could look down on Bramble some more, and said, “Don’t know. It’s cold in the North. This cell, however, is quite warm.”

“You have a choice,” said Tyrion, backing up Bramble and expressing his frustrations toward his brother. “Either be a bargaining chip—and a poor, forgettable one at that—for the near future, or take this chance to prove that you are willing to stand for something greater than all of us.”

“And what about me?” Bronn put in. “Don’t I get the same choice?”

Bramble clicked her tongue sympathetically. “Oh, you go wherever Jaime goes. His fate will be yours.”

He took a moment to let it sink in, then scraped an irritated heel on the ground. “You better fucking choose right, lordling. You still owe me a castle.”

“Bronn, buddy,” said Bramble, both brows raised, “I don’t think you’re ever gonna get anything.”

Sourly, Bronn spat to both Tyrion and Jaime, “I shoulda just done the world a damn favor and killed the two of you fucking Lannisters when I had the chance.”

“You’re still gonna do the world a favor,” Bramble pointed out.

“By dying?”

“Eh. Maybe. Depends on how well you can fight the undead.” Lowly, like sharing a secret, Bramble said, “They like to swarm.”

Bronn looked to Jaime, Jaime looked to Bramble and Tyrion, Tyrion looked to Jaime, and Bramble looked to the massive splinter stuck in her fingertip.

“…Fine,” Jaime eventually uttered, tone heavy and reluctant. “You shall have us. For now. But we will go as your captives, not as your allies.”

“Great, that’s great,” Bramble said. Tyrion audibly exhaled through his nostrils. Bronn groaned and let out a nice string of colorful expletives. “Does anybody have tweezers?”

“Left them in my chambers, I’m afraid,” Tyrion airily replied.

“That’s okay. I think I got it.”

“You’re not even going to be grateful?” Jaime questioned. “After all your begging?”

Bramble dug into her fingertip with her nails, pinched down on the tip of the splinter, and yanked it out. The piece of wood was covered in slick crimson, and the small hole left behind started to bleed. Bramble flicked the splinter on the floor like a discarded cigarette, where it ticked off the stone.

When she lifted her gaze back to Jaime, he balked. Low flames glossed over her birthmark, and her eyes seared into him. “Careful with those words, Ser Jaime,” Bramble warned gently, which contrasted her expression. “Or I might do you to what I did to a few nice Lannister soldiers a little while ago. The one I wiped honey on in the alleyway screamed the most.”

Bronn sharply regarded her like he did when they stood on the plains of Highgarden: not as a girl, but as an enemy, smirk not matching his eyes. Though it took a few seconds, a small, fragmented memory of some glanced at report surfaced in Jaime’s mind. Lannister soldiers hunted down and nightmarishly butchered, and the culprit, a boy whose Northern sympathizing family had been executed by them, caught and sent to the Wall.

“So it was you,” Jaime muttered. He turned rueful. “The Lannister’s Bane, the soldiers called you. Quite a popular campfire story for some time. Put the fear of the Seven into them.”

“Now that,” Bramble said, “is a much better nickname.”

She turned on her heels and sauntered farther into the wing. Cells lined both sides of the wall, and once she got past the cell that held Bronn, she faced the opposing cells and the prisoners within.

Randall Tarly sat in one, and next to his cell on the far side was Dickon Tarly.

“I wondered if you two would survive,” drawled Bramble. “The vision I saw of the battle was much different, but you lived through it then, so I hoped you’d live in this one, too.”

“Hold your tongue, witch,” Randall snarled. He was cold and severe, no love in him, no love for her friend and his eldest son. Bramble’s anger heightened. “You shall have to kill me before I surrender.”

“Yeah, you did eventually die in my vision. You and your shit son right over here.” She jerked her head toward Dickon. Bramble stood far enough back that she could see both men in their respective cells at once, and they could see her. “Got burned alive because you wouldn’t bend the knee.”

Dickon swallowed but stayed stoic. Randall did not change.

“It’s only because of my friend that you’re alive and festering in a prison cell instead of having your ashes tossed about in the wind. It’s only because of Sam that we pleaded for the queen to spare you.”

Scorn and disgust filled Randall. “Then it would have been better to perish.”

“You’re right—it would have. But Sam would have been sad, even though you do not deserve his love or his grief.” Bramble leaned forward, her scowl holding a good amount of gloat. “I just want you to know that you owe your very life to the son you threatened to murder if he didn’t go to the Wall.”

Dickon pressed himself to the iron bars. “You lie,” he argued heatedly. “Father would not do such a thing. Have you no honor?”

“Oh?” Bramble’s brows climbed high up her dirty forehead. “You wanna ask him yourself, you little prick? Huh? Go ahead.”

Although Dickon didn’t say anything outright, the silence that followed when Randall didn’t defend himself was an answer on its own. Bramble made a sympathetic noise as reality sunk in for the younger brother. “Rough, isn’t it? Realizing that your father is a massive pile of shit.”

“I would sacrifice everything for my house,” Randall snapped. “Duty outweighs all.”

“Ya know, I’m sure you would have been thinking that if you and Dickie over here got roasted alive, but what would have happened then? You’d just leave your wife and daughter all alone in this big bad world, and the only person left behind to take care of them and your house is Sam.”

Whether or not Sam would have done that with his oaths already in place was beyond Bramble. Didn’t matter. It wasn’t like Randall Tarly knew any different. “So, in a way, a person a thousand times better than you would still lead your house. Because while you’ve been concerning yourself over Cersei fucking Lannister, Sam’s gone on—with his rightful sword, don’t forget—to cure greyscale, learn how to defend against the Army of the Dead, all that good stuff. How fucking awesome is that? And when he comes back, I’m sure he’ll be with us again to defend the living. He’s already killed a White Walker before. He will do it again and again to be a hero concerned with protecting the world. He’s a much better person than you.”

Bramble just loved Sam, okay? And since she wasn’t nearly nice enough to him at Castle Black, she’d help make up for it by boasting about him in front of his dad and brother.

Upon her last words, Randall snapped and strode up to the front of his cell. “If you think that fat pig could ever amount to anything,” he snapped, red in the face, spittle flying from his mouth, “then this—”

Randall couldn’t avoid the hot hand snatching the front of his collar and viciously pulling him forward. His head collided with an iron bar. Blood spurted from his nose, and a ringing sound echoed through the dungeon. Bramble lifted him a couple inches off the ground. A snarl pulled back her lips. “I’m not as fucking nice as Sam. Keep on talking, and I’ll make sure you’re the one who dies in an accident.”

Bramble shoved Randall Tarly back onto the ground where he belonged. He clutched his nose and writhed; his boots discordantly scraped against the sandstone amid the occasional hiss of pain.

Dickon, who clung to the cell bars, made the mistake of not backing up as Bramble stalked past. Her fist lashed out and clocked him quick in the eye. He jolted backward and let out a yelp. “And that’s for being a fucking asshole brother!” Bramble shouted over her shoulder.

Tyrion waited with all the patience of a maester for her to return. Jaime and Bronn were leaning up against their shared cell to watch the spectacle unfold, but they both quickly backtracked to avoid being within arm’s length.

“Are you ready to depart, my lady?” Tyrion politely inquired.

Flames curled up the side of Bramble’s vision.

“What does it look like to you?”

Knowing what was best for his physical health, Tyrion remained quiet and followed Bramble out. He lifted a few fingers as a parting gesture to Jaime and Bronn before taking his leave.

At some point, Bramble paused to kick a permanent hole in the ancient stone of the dungeon that Garth the Gardener probably placed himself.

-

A soft but distinct rap on the door jolted Bramble from her light sleep.

When she lifted her head, she found her cheek and the pillow beneath to be soaked with drool. She groaned, sat up, and wiped away the spit as best she could while blinking the exhaustion away. The stone floor had been warmed by her naked body, but she allowed herself the luxury of something to rest her head on. If the pillow caught fire, it probably wouldn’t burn the whole room down.

Bramble grabbed the robe draped over the back of a wooden chair and threw it on. She knotted it and padded across the room, running fingers through her disheveled black hair to look a little more proper before greeting whoever stood on the other side of the door with a scowl.

Unlatching the bolt, Bramble warily cracked the door open enough to see the person on the other side. As soon as she did, her scowl mixed with mild surprise.

“Grey Worm,” Bramble breathed, “What the fuck are you doing up? Is everything alright?” She widened the crack more to get a better view of the queen’s serious advisor.

The low light of the braziers in the hall dimly illuminated one side of Grey Worm’s face. He regarded Bramble with that honest suspicion he always had. She got used to it a long time ago. As long as they could talk of strategies and shipments and soldiers, they maintained a distant respect for each other.

“Everything is fine,” he said. Bramble couldn’t be sure if he spoke slowly because of the language or because he didn’t want to be heard by anyone else. She leaned into the latter notion and took one small, solid step back to allow him into her room.

Grey Worm hesitated only a moment, then entered. Everything he did, everything he said, was purposeful. His shoulders were set back, hands crisply clasped behind him, footsteps precise. While Grey Worm looked so put-together, however, Bramble closed the door behind her, yawning and slouching. She shuffled behind and followed where his line of sight pointed toward.

Night bled through the open window they stared out of. The muggy breeze carried scents of smoke and death. Bonfires dotted the withered remains of the hillside. Tyrell soldiers and Dothraki threw corpses atop them, like firewood instead of human beings. If the Night King’s power reached this far, they’d only crawl back up if they got buried. It was simply precaution.

The bonfires reminded Bramble of how her own fire coursed through her on the battlefield. How the smoke was sweet, and sweeter was the rage. The striking realization that she wanted to feel it again scared her.

When nothing sarcastic enough could come to Bramble, she simply said, “Why are you here?”

Grey Worm did not glance at her. He kept his gaze fixed on the bonfires outside. The two of them were plunged into almost complete darkness.

“Callum Jones is my brother,” Grey Worm lowly, reverently spoke.

The mention of Callum’s name put Bramble on edge. The fire in her coiled, prepared for whatever could come next.

She stayed silent and waited for Grey Worm to continue.

“He saved my life and the life of Ser Barristan Selmy. He has saved the life of the queen, the life of Missandei, and the lives of many underneath oppressive rule.

“However.”

Grey Worm’s jaw clenched, shadows shifting. Bramble watched him. A cold dread mingled with the flames. He appeared young in the dark, young like the rest of them, too young to be burdened with this world.

She figured that was why Tyrion stared so sadly at them when he didn’t think anybody noticed.

“After he took injury for Ser Barristan Selmy and myself, I visited him alone one night. His body burned with fever. When he spoke, it was in delirium. I could not make most of it, as my language was still poor.

“But I understand the language of a man afraid. It is the first language I was taught.”

Grey Worm did not move. The gleam of the distant bonfires shone in his brown eyes. Eyes that had seen too much.  

“A coldness washed over the room. A cold I had not ever felt before. It sunk deep into my bones and weakened both my body and soul. Callum did not stir after that. I have not fled my entire life, but I tasted what would make a man flee in that room.”

His recount stirred a nightmarish truth Bramble had so far avoided admitting. A helpless, angry despair gnawed at her scarred heart. She did not want it to be injured more.

But, if Grey Worm sensed her pain, it did not stop him from continuing.

“Memory of the words spoken from Callum’s mouth became distant from my mind, passed off as broken ravings of infection. The cold that creeps on my skin from the winter air tugs at me, though. It will not let go, so I cannot truly forget. I then must remember.”

“…And?”

The pause settled between them broke with Grey Worm’s steady voice.

“‘I cannot do this. I cannot do this. I love them too much.’”

He finally turned his head in a precise manner to examine Bramble’s expression. When he saw worn, weary dread painted more distinctly on her than the birthmark itself, he cast his gaze back to the night.

“I shall inform Queen Daenerys of Callum Jones’ treachery in the morning. We will deal with him upon our return to Dragonstone.”

“Wait.”

Though Grey Worm did not physically react to Bramble’s soft but firm protest, she could almost sense him holding his breath, waiting for an alternative that did not carry the same consequence of his action.

“Let me see to Callum. If I fail, then you will do what you must.”

“In what regard is your failure?”

“No idea. Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“You sound resigned,” Grey Worm remarked.

“I am.”

“What do you know?”

“Too little. But it’s been a long time coming.”

Bramble and Grey Worm left the rest unsaid. He curtly nodded to her, turned sharply on his heels, and departed from her room.

Alone with her thoughts, Bramble stared out at the bonfires, holding the small stone hanging around her neck to downturned lips.

 

 

 

Notes:

I've been waiting to write the scene between Tyrion, Bramble, Jaime, and Bronn for ages. Also the scene between her and Sam's father.

Chapter 42

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Indulge me, oh mighty Lannister’s Bane, as to why we are riding aside you and not walking behind you in bondage like true prisoners?” Jaime inquired atop his horse. Bramble leaned back on her own mount, stretching her back. She blinked up at the pale blue sky. She needed to soak the sight of the azure into her brain before it was gone again.

“Why, Jaime Lannister, I am so, so happy you asked me that,” Bramble said once she straightened. She put the reins down and pressed her palms together. “I have literally been waiting for this question all morning. I even dreamed about it last night, I wanted to answer it so badly.”

From the open-windowed carriage next to her, Tyrion smirked and glanced their way. Olenna began chuckling.

“Like, my happiness is overflowing right now, Jaime Lannister, and if you can make me this happy with just one question, I can only imagine just how happy you’re going to make other people.”

Jaime rolled his head back in exhaustion. Bramble sucked a lungful of crisp air for prompt and intricate explication.

“We trust you and Bronn to be smart enough not to make a run for it, that’s all. If you did, you’d be hunted down by about fifty Dothraki who, as you have seen, just love a good chase. The manner of how they offed you varies, you see. They could do a long-ranged attack—arrows. But that would probably be too boring, so they might choose spears. It’s much more satisfying to see the spearhead jut through your chest. But! What if they want to get up close and personal? Because they totally could—they’re much better riders than either of you, so they’d catch up to you in no time.”

“Alright, I get your point,” Jaime sighed. “Seven hells, your voice is like splintering wood. How does anyone stand it without throttling you?”

“Once the Dothraki caught up to you, they’d maybe throw a rope around your neck and snap it once you got pulled from your horse. If it didn’t snap, they’d drag you along the ground for a good while until they got bored. Then they’d get the bright idea of drawing and quartering you. Have you ever seen that happen to anyone, Jaime Lannister?”

“Of course—”

“Lots of cracking, right? Then tearing, and screaming, and pop! You’d go like a little bug!”

“I get your fucking point—”

“The Dothraki can have a great imagination when it comes to killing, though, so you could get disemboweled. Not enough to kill you, but enough for you to see your own guts spilling out of you while you got dragged behind a horse, dirt getting all up in your innards—super unsanitary.”

Jaime sighed loudly.

“They do like waving heads on spears, but you probably wouldn’t get beheaded until after you died a long, miserable, deserving death. If we had a lion head on hand, they might sew it on top of your decapitated shoulders.”

Bramble kept her voice light, but Jaime’s sidelong glare pierced her. “It’d be poetic justice if you asked me. Except, Robb Stark had been invited into a home and betrayed. It’s the greatest sin to be committed by the old gods.”

“And you believe in that horseshit?”

“Oh, for sure. The tree in Winterfell gave me a vision. Very personalized, very spooky. But!” Bramble flashed a dazzling grin at Jaime, and he realized just how white her teeth were, like a highborn. “The Lannisters and Freys were punished for their sins in the end, right? Your three children dead, Joffrey choking until he turned blue and bloody-eyed—” Bramble glanced at Olenna, who listened with a severe, proud expression. “Your father dead, and many of your relatives gone because of Cersei blowing up the Sept of fucking Baelor.”

A quiet had fallen upon their group. Up ahead, a few Dothraki laughed at some joke. The carriage holding Olenna, Loras, and Tyrion creaked and swayed over the uneven earth.

“And, well, winter came for the Freys,” Bramble blithely said. “To think, Walder Frey being fed his own sons, like how the Rat Cook fed the king at the Nightfort his own son. Except, it was Walder Frey who betrayed his guests, and it was Walder Frey who was punished. Then, whaddya know? His whole family gets wiped out in one go from some poisoned wine!” Bramble barked a laugh. “Love it, love it.”

Lowly, Jaime said, “You know who did it.”

“Of course I do. It’s honestly not hard to guess, really. Arya Stark was never accounted for after your son had her father executed. She lived this whole time. She’s getting her vengeance, slowly but surely, and I honestly cannot wait to meet her. She’s a complete badass.”

To Jaime, Bramble said sidelong, “And I’m sure she’s very excited to meet you and your sister.”

After a solemn pause that Bramble completely ignored, Tyrion asked from the carriage, “And will she? Meet our dear, loving sister.”

Bramble shrugged. “No idea. Ask Callum. He knows more than I do. But I bet she will. She might kill Jaime while none of us are looking, put on his face and do a little magic, then waltz right up to Cersei in perfect disguise. She’ll die thinking her own brother killed her.” Flatly, Bramble added, “Kingslayer and Queenslayer. What a fucking title.”

Jaime’s helpless anger radiated off him. “I don’t believe you,” he spat, and he managed to keep his voice from shaking.

“Mm.” Bramble tilted her head, considering her memory, and said, “I think that’s what you say to Cersei, actually, when she commands the Mountain to kill you. But you don’t believe her, and you leave King’s Landing to help the North fight the Army of the Dead.”

He paused, staring at her. Sensing that her audience still listened, Bramble went on. “In another lifetime that’s far removed from this current one, we take the captured wight to King’s Landing to prove to Cersei that the dead are real, and they’re coming. She initially pledges fealty to protect the realms of men, setting aside this current war for the throne. But, later, when you bring up moving forces to the North, she says something along the lines, ‘You always were the stupidest one’ or some shit like that. Very hurtful. Then, oh no! You find out that your backstabbing sister is going to backstab the living! It’s too much for poor Jaime Lannister. You say you’re going to leave. She says she’ll kill you.” In her best Jaime Lannister voice, Bramble mimics, “‘I don’t believe you.’ Then you sweep out of the room and head to Winterfell all by your lonesome self.”

Bramble twisted in her saddle and popped her back. “So—you see, Jaime Lannister? You would have been in our embrace no matter what. You’re just getting right up in there a bit earlier. Bronn, too. I’m not sure if he left with you, but he definitely is with you now. Woo hoo.”

At the mention of his name, Bronn derisively snorted. “Just had to go and open your big fucking mouth, didn’t you, lordling?”

-

Ghost let himself be used as a soft cushion for Bramble to prop herself up on. She sat away from the fire, not wanting to get too hot. While everyone else bundled up to stay warm against the chill, she had the front of her vest unbuttoned, revealing the black bindings that covered her chest and the outline of abs on her stomach. She’d been assigned as babysitters for the two fuckheads. Jaime hadn’t spoken to her since she bomb dropped everyone. She should have felt bad about it, but she didn’t. He was a dick, and he deserved to get kicked in the balls every once in a while—metaphorically if not physically.

She whittled away at a hunk of wood. She hadn’t carved anything up except bodies for a while, so it relaxed her tense muscles to concentrate on something not about war and death and fire and shadows. Maybe she’d carve a wiener? But who would she give it to? Or a nice butt. A wolf? She had the perfect muse beside her.

If Bramble belonged had her own House, what would her banner be? What would her fancy phrase be?

A simple flame would do, red on a black backdrop perhaps. Or was that too Targaryen? A flame against a white or blue or gray backdrop? To represent winter and all that. Or maybe it’d just be her on fire for the banner. Then again, that was the equivalent of using a selfie for her phone wallpaper.

House Aldana, though, didn’t sound too bad.

Maybe the saying could be something like: We come to fuck shit up.

“Ah, so the stench of wolf did lead me to you.” Tyrion strode up to the secluded fire, which staved off the night. Ghost and Bramble staved off any Dothraki looking for fun. Loras walked beside the Hand, and both carried bowls of stew and bread.  Bramble didn’t miss the leather-wrapped sheaves of parchment tucked under his arm with a white plume sticking from the wrapping. “Would you mind terribly if we joined?”

She barely gave them a glance. “If you don’t mind the stench of wolf, no. I’m not sure why you even want to be out here instead of in a nice tent.”

“I’d happily trade,” Bronn said. “Did you bring some more of that bread? It ain’t too bad.”

“Unfortunately, I did not,” Tyrion replied. He settled down between Bramble and Jaime—but not too close to either that he’d be seen taking a side. Loras, however, sat beside Bramble without permission or comment. “Are you free, Lady Bramble?”

She stuck her lower lip out in faux-contemplation. “I am currently deciding what to carve. It’s taking up all the capacity of my fire-burned brain. If you’re going to ask me to do something important, either wait until I’ve come up with an idea or give me a suggestion.”

“Have you tried carving a cock?” Bronn immediately posed before Tyrion could say anything.

“Yeah, but that’s a little expected of me, isn’t it?”

“Nah. Cocks are funny.”

“They are funny, aren’t they?”

“Seven hells,” Jaime muttered under his breath.

“I would say that you should carve a wolf, but that’s a little too obvious,” said Tyrion. He set the leather wrapping down and started working on his meal. “And besides, if you had thought about that, you wouldn’t need my input.”

“Astute observation, Tyrion. Astute.”

“I try.”

“Carve a dragon egg,” Loras said to her, his mouth nearly hidden behind the rim of his bowl.

Bramble resisted sending him a sharp glance at the last second. It was better that she did not look at him at all. Tyrion had a keen eye for facial expressions, and if he saw some deeper meaning behind Loras’ words, he would find cause for curiosity—and suspicion.

“Too easy,” Bramble replied. “It’s just a little oval.”

“Well,” Tyrion mused, “Shireen Baratheon does enjoy her cat. Perhaps you could attempt to mimic Balerion the Orange Dread’s likeness?”

“I could never attempt that. He’s too magnificent.” Bramble smirked, then said, “But I think I could get a simple cat down. Shireen would like that. She likes odd little things.”

Tyrion hummed enthusiastically. “Well! There you have it. A decision. Since you do—” He picked up the leather and held it aloft toward Bramble. “These came from Dragonstone today. Jon Snow wishes you to look over them to send back to the North. It seems that though you and Lady Sansa are separated, she still values your counsel on coins.”

Bronn looked back and forth between them, amused. “Fire and financing? What can’t you do, lass?”

“Good question,” Bramble grunted as she hefted herself up and strode to Tyrion. She snatched the leather from him, pretending to scowl. He had come to realize the difference between a fake one and a true one, so he smiled saccharinely back.

“You know,” Bronn went on. He pointed a finger at her while she walked back to her original spot. “You look oddly familiar. Have I seen you somewhere before? Other than almost killing me on the battlefield.”

Tyrion made a noise somewhere between a choke and a laugh. Bramble paused, sighed, then decided to just go with it. She found her free arm lifting to the sky and a bit back, moving with her bending body. Her legs splayed out enough to give her balance, and when she found herself steady, she pointed a foot outward to level it with her outstretched arm. Bramble dipped her head back to elongate her neck, eyes fluttering shut, face falling into practiced serenity.

“I danced for you once,” she said, her scratchy voice deeper with her craned neck. “A long time ago in King’s Landing.”

Bramble lowered her leg and stood upright again. She gestured to her bound breasts. “But, honestly, you’d probably recognize me more if you saw my tits. Always on full display, them tits.”

She plopped back down on the ground with the papers in front of her. She took the quill out and uncorked the vial of travel-sized ink. Bronn slapped his hands together when the memory came to him.

“That’s right! The dancer at the, what was it, The Golden Rose? You were the one all the soldiers talked about! Flexible, you were, with your fancy spins and bends.” Bronn then looked to Tyrion and laughed. “And you didn’t even pay any attention to her! Too worried about your little strategies and games. Bet you’re paying attention, now, aren’t ya?”

“One, my strategies are never little,” Tyrion corrected. “I may be, but they are not. Two, I was married. It may have been a sham marriage, but it was a marriage, nonetheless.”

Bronn waved him off. To Bramble, he asked, “We never did fuck, did we? I promised I’d come back, but the little lordling kept me away until I forgot.”

“True,” Bramble said, already focusing half her concentration on the reports. She pushed them out so she could lie flat on her stomach. Once she got comfortable, she twitched her fingers and sent a little ball of flame floating above her. She needed to see if she was going to make adjustments and sign off her recommendations. “But your big ass sack of gold got me to Pentos, so thanks for that.”

“You didn’t have a birthmark on your face then. Or a scar.”

“Makeup—face paint—covered up the birthmark. The scar came later.”

“Huh.” Bronn leaned back, pleased with himself. “Well, it’s a really fucking small world, innit?”

“I have a question,” Jaime suddenly said. It sounded like he’d been holding it in for a while, and now there was a pause in the conversation, he decided to jump.

“Ask away,” Tyrion said, though from his tone, Bramble could hear a fissure of tension. She focused on the reports, scribbling here and there. “Though, I’ll have you know, Lady Bramble and I never resumed our time at the brothel.”

“I’d crush him in bed,” Bramble absently added. “But I think it’d be the best way for him to go.”

“She has a valid point.”

Jaime chuckled, but it held no humor. “This is less about crushing and more about…stabbing. Specifically, running a sword through the Mad King, Daenerys Targaryen’s father. I should be executed for my crimes. I shouldn’t be in her camp, alive and unchained, forced to fight alongside hers and the North’s armies against a dark, terrible threat.”

“Ah, so it’s finally come to you,” Tyrion said. He stared into his bowl of stew. “I am a caring brother in case you’ve forgotten. I would not see you punished for protecting King’s Landing. I told Daenerys a while back why you did what you did.” He mirthlessly chuckled. “Kingslayer, they call you. They should be calling you a hero.”

“And is that what you’re trying to give me now? A title of a hero, defending the world from the undead? How thoughtful of you.”

“I am giving you the chance to be the good man, the good knight, you have always been.”

Jaime fell into a small silence, then he said, “I am not the good man you think me to be.”

Tyrion hummed. “Perhaps not. But…” He gestured to Bramble, who studiously flipped through the parchment paper. She’d been working during their conversation. “She does. She argued for you and Ser Bronn after Highgarden. I had eased Queen Daenerys to the notion of your true intentions that night. Lady Bramble, however, took it upon herself to vocally support your character and how you will benefit not only her reign, but the chances of the living defeating the dead.”

Tyrion made it seem like the conversation was short and brief. Daenerys was not an easy woman to convince, but Bramble did not easily let go of things. She would explain her more intricate plans to the queen and Jon and the rest later when it came to Jaime.

As of late, Bramble had been getting wicked, dangerous ideas in her head. She dared not utter them out loud until she was sure they’d have merit.

“Oh?” Bramble felt Jaime’s gaze fix on her. “And why is that, exactly?”

“Didn’t I explain it in the fucking cells?” Bramble huffed. Her tiny flame floating above her grew marginally brighter. “I basically repeated what I said to you to Daenerys. She listens when the evidence is sound—and the strategy has a way of benefitting her.”

“And what are those benefits?”

“Either a Lannister dies for her cause, making it seem like she is just in allying herself with the families of Westeros for the greater good, or a Lannister lives for her cause, and once it is over, he will give his support to rebuild Westeros after a terrible war and winter. He will not have any other choice, as his sister will most likely be dead by the end of all this. The queen will need to appear merciful when it comes to Westerosi sins, too, if she wants more widespread allegiance.”

Tyrion’s own eloquence translated Bramble’s partially inarticulate explanation in Daenerys’ chamber. She only could speak about it so smoothly because Tyrion had already brought the words into existence earlier. She didn’t parrot him, but she did take bits and pieces to tie things together.

The men fell into a short silence. Ghost licked noisily at his paw. Bramble’s quill scratched across the parchment. She never lifted her head up. “And what of myself?” Jaime inquired more softly.

“What about you? You don’t like doing nothing when people need help. You’re not going to stand by and watch. You didn’t let the Mad King burn King’s Landing, and you’re not going to let the Night King slaughter every man, woman, and child from Winterfell to Sunspear. You may hold grudges against those who rule the lands, but you understand that those who live regular lives are innocent of their lords’ and ladies’ crimes.”

“You speak as though you know my very soul,” Jaime said bitterly. “Do you? Does your mighty fire lay me bare?”

“Nah. I don’t know you that well. You’re a real cock, actually. I honestly don’t know how Brienne could stand you. But I get the important parts. The parts that make you redeemable.”

“And going North to fetch a wight? To defend against the Army of the Dead? That is what redeems me?”

Bramble sighed. She didn’t like how Jaime was dragging things on. She just wanted to concentrate on her finances. “I don’t fucking know, Jaime. That’s up to you, isn’t it? I’m giving you the chance. People have always given you chances. Maybe you don’t think you deserve it. Maybe you’ve already been redeemed, but you refuse to accept. But what the fuck is even redemption? What is honor? At the end of the day, when people are screaming for you to save them, you don’t think about redemption or honor or oaths. You think about doing the right thing. I think you’ve done the right thing more than the wrong thing.”

She let out a dry laugh. Being distracted by her work took away her inhibitors on talking, so it became really easy to ramble. “And you’ve done a lot of wrong things, so it must be something if you’ve outnumbered those.”

Jaime finally fell quiet, thank fuck, but Bronn had the courage to pipe up. “And what about me, lass? Have you peered into my soul?”

“Not that there’d be much,” Tyrion loudly muttered. Loras suppressed a laugh by exhaling through his nose.

Bramble briefly paused as she considered the question, even though she should have told him to fuck off. Her quill plume stilled before picking back up again. “You wouldn’t kill babies, I think, even if you did only say that you’d do it for a very, very high price. And you’ve stuck around with Tyrion and Jaime for long enough. You complain all the way—which is pretty fucking natural being with them. But complaining and leaving are two different things.”

“How’d you know about the babies?” Bronn asked.

“I saw a lot of things. Never did see you getting a castle, though.”

He huffed. “Fucking seven hells.”

“If you had sacked Highgarden, though, Daenerys and her army would have attacked you anyway. You had a choice between finally taking a sack of gold and deserting or sticking around and saving Jaime Lannister. You saved Jaime Lannister.”

“How touching,” Jaime said wryly.

“You tackled him off his horse, too, because Jaime Lannister got the same fucking grand idea to charge Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon with nothing but a dinky spear.” Bramble lifted her quill up for a second. “Luckily, I saved the horse and the Lannister.”

“Oh, so he still woulda been the same stupid fucker?” Bronn laughed.

“I could have your head, you know,” said Jaime.

“Aye, you could, but you won’t. And besides, I’m under the protection of the fucking Dragon Queen. Can’t take me head if you don’t have any power.”

“Give me a sword, and we’ll see.”

Jaime, Bronn, and Tyrion dissolved into bickering and banter, leaving Bramble to work in peace while Loras watched the spectacle. Once she finished her revisions and signed off on them, she wrapped the parchment back up again and handed the leather to Tyrion. He thanked her, too busy arguing with Bronn about the merits of some wine over another to give her a hard time, and she settled beside Ghost once more. Loras had long finished his meal; he relaxed beside her and Ghost, half-asleep. The sky above them was smeared with rivers of stars.

“You should go to bed,” Bramble said to him. She took up carving again. “Better to sleep on a cot than on the hard ground.”

“I will,” Loras said quietly. He used his arm to rest his head on. “We will be passing Summerhall soon.”

“Yeah,” Bramble sighed. “We will.”

They did not speak more on the subject.

-

Knowing the magic that radiated from the ruins would affect Bramble, she kept her distance from everyone. That way, she wouldn’t bite anybody’s head off. She didn’t fucking go near Summerhall, either. It only reminded her of what she found, what she promised she would not say, what it meant for this world.

She didn’t want to consider if her fire could make it hatch.

When they made it back to the ships that would deliver them to Dragonstone, Bramble let out a warm breath she felt like she’d been holding in for days.

Then it came to passing time—and entertaining.

“Do I look like a fucking jester to you?” Bramble scowled when Bronn prompted to spar with her. “I’m busy.”

Then Bramble flicked a piece of salted fish off the side of the boat and watched it get snatched up by a gull.

“Aye, real busy,” Bronn deadpanned. “Come on, lass, I never fought anybody who used two swords at once—or, if I did, I was too drunk to remember.”

“You’ll have plenty opportunities if you survive the North,” Bramble said. “Free Folk fight with two weapons all the time. Ask one of them.”

“But there ain’t any of the Free Folk around, eh? And I don’t think you’re one of them.” Bronn sidled up to Bramble, propping an arm on the ship’s wooden railing. “Where you from anyway?”

“Far.”

“How far?”

She tossed a piece of fish up. In a flash of white wings, it was gone. Bramble took another bit and popped it into her mouth. “Too far for you to know. Why do you even care?”

He shrugged. “’Cause I’m bored, honestly.”

“Well, go be bored somewhere else.”

“Alright, alright, no need to burn the fucking ship down,” Bronn said, raising his hands defensively. Bramble scoffed. “I’ll leave you alone—if you answer one question for me.”

“Depends on the question.”

“Fair enough. What’s it like with all that fire in ya?”

“Hot.”

“Can you cook an egg on yourself?”

Bramble intended to snap at Bronn for asking a second question, but she wound up seriously considering it. Eating the rest of her dried fish, she tilted her head to the side and said, “I’ve never tried it out before, actually.”

That was how Tyrion found her, Bronn, Loras, and Ghost huddled together in a corner of the ship with her lying flat on her back, an egg cooking on her stomach. “Careful, now, or you’re gonna burn it!” Bronn chastised.

“Dude, if you make me move, this egg is going to slide right off, and I’m going to be really pissed.”

“Tell that to the ship,” Loras said. Upon his words, a particularly rolling wave hitched the ship, and Bramble hissed, moving to keep the egg from slipping either off her side or into her belly button. When the wave passed and Bramble still had the egg cooking on her, they all let out a sigh of relief.

Tyrion shook his head, but his curiosity got the best of him, and he crouched down to see how it would turn out.

Bronn volunteered to eat the egg once it looked done. He said it needed salt and butter, but it wasn’t the most awful thing he’d ever put in his belly.

Okay, so she didn’t have the…worst time on the way back to Dragonstone.

The sight of the island and its fortress, however, made Bramble equal parts excited and terrified. Shireen and Jon and Davos waited for them on the shores. Missandei and Ser Barristan Selmy stood beside the Northern company. Rhaegal and Viserion trumpeted in the skies as their brother returned to them.

Callum also waited, tall and lean on the sand, waving enthusiastically.

Grey Worm and Bramble exchanged a single glance with each other on their bobbing rowboat.

She said she’d deal with him. But how? What if he did something first? Bramble had little time to face Callum, and if she did, she might lose to him. The entire journey back, she wracked her brain to figure out a proper confrontation, but she didn’t get anywhere.

She’d just have to deal with it, then. Deal with him, whatever that entailed.

Ghost leaped from the rowboat when the water was shallow enough and loped to Jon, sopping and hairy. He laughed and wrapped his direwolf’s big head in his arms. Bramble helped haul the rowboat out with Grey Worm, and once she had assisted Lady Olenna, Loras, and Tyrion with getting out, she rushed to Shireen and picked the princess up in her embrace. Shireen laughed, feet kicking backward, and buried her head in the crook of Bramble’s shoulder.

“Oh, I’ve missed you,” Shireen said, voice muffled. “You and your smoky smell.”

“Shoulda smelled me after Highgarden,” Bramble chuckled. “I smelled like jerky.”

“It’s true,” said Tyrion, overhearing their conversation. He clasped Jon’s and Davos’ hands in greeting. Bramble set Shireen down, hugged Davos, who gruffly laughed and patted her on the back, and then hugged Jon.

“Good to see you, Bramb,” he smiled, his brown eyes warm.

“It’s good to see you too, my lord,” Bramble said, cheekily grinning.

“Heard you got into some trouble to Highgarden.”

“I wouldn’t say trouble,” Bramble said. She quoted the air. “More like my assistance was desperately needed to ensure that we could defeat the Night King’s army via dragons.”

He shook his head and sighed. “Not a minute on the island, and you’re already talking like some fancy fucker.”

“I’ve spent too much time with Tyrion,” Bramble said, pointing to the Hand. “Blame him.”

“Aye, I had a bad feeling about sending you with him.”

Tyrion gasped, affronted. “Why, I have been nothing but delightful to Lady Bramble! She has been the one constantly terrorizing me with threat of spilling wine and accidental scorching.”

A second rowboat scraped onto shore.  Their good-natured laughter faded as they watched Jaime Lannister and Bronn step out. Bramble stole a look at Callum. He seemed surprised but not nervous. She couldn’t be sure if that was good or bad.

Clearing his throat, Tyrion addressed those who had not met the two esteemed idiots. “As you may have heard, we have two new persons being forced into our cause. Ser Bronn of the Blackwater and…” A flash of emotion crossed Tyrion’s face, but he smiled and said, “my brother, Jaime Lannister.”

The men didn’t look so grand on the black shores of Dragonstone. Bronn hunched over to fight off the biting chill, and Jaime’s short golden hair spiked one way from the constant gust of wind. He rubbed at an eye to get sand out, grimacing.

“Consider them wards,” Daenerys spoke, and Bramble saw her almost smile at the terminology. “They are under my protection, so long as they do not decide to try anything rash until we are victors of the Great War.”

Up above, Drogon shook the gray sky with a roar, and Rhaegal and Viserion amplified the thunder with their own calls. Bronn and Jaime lifted their heads to watch the circling dragons. Bramble figured they probably didn’t feel too protected.

“Is this a good idea?” Jon lowly asked Bramble. He didn’t tear his eyes away from Jaime. “Having a Lannister here…the moment he gets his chance, he may run right back to Cersei.”

“He may,” Bramble drawled, saying nothing else. Jon studied her expression. He frowned, and if she had not been so used to it by now, she would have wilted under his unyielding gaze.

“What have you got planned?”

“Something shitbrained,” Bramble said back, “as always. I’ll let you know when I have more figured out.”

“Will you?” Jon said dryly. “You never have before.”

She only smirked at him, turned on her heels, and gestured for Shireen to come closer to her. The princess linked arms with her, and together, they began the trek back to Dragonstone.

Bramble had matters to attend to there.

 

 

 

Notes:

I just wanted to write conversations between Jaime, Bronn, and Bramble this chapter because they all share a single braincell. I'd also be very happy to hear your thoughts on what Bramble's house saying would be.

I also completely revised this entire fic up to a few chapters ago. My writing has changed drastically since I first began writing, and while it's cool to see my style and skills change, it also made me hardcore cringe, so I went back and polished almost all the chapters up.

Chapter 43

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Watch this!”

Bramble hefted up a massive, mangled trunk of driftwood, drug it across the sand, then spun on her heels a few times to get momentum. When the trunk finally lifted off the ground, she released it in one giant throw. Sand sprayed everywhere, but as the trunk whirled through the gray sky, gleeful shrieks split the air. Rhaegal and Viserion raced to snatch the trunk before the other could. In a burst of speed, Viserion caught the trunk in his mouth, warranting a displeased trumpet from Rhaegal.

Daenerys laughed at the sight. “They are still children at heart,” she said. Bramble noted that it was the first time she saw genuine joy on the queen’s face. Viserion flew down low and dropped the trunk several meters away from her. She shielded her eyes from the explosion of dark sand. Viserion and Rhaegal crooned. Mirthfully, Daenerys added, “And they do not have anyone else besides themselves strong or big enough to play with. Callum used to be able to, but they outgrew his abilities.”

“Well, I ain’t big,” Bramble said, jogging to pick up the trunk while Daenerys trailed behind. “But I pack some muscle.”

Using the same method, she threw the trunk again. Since it had been covered in dragon slobber, the throw sent a gob of drool ribboning across her arm. “Blegh! Gross.” Bramble attempted to wipe it off onto her clothes as best she could. Rhaegal beat his brother to it, this time, but he was the type of dragon to fly off with the trunk while Viserion chased him instead of giving it back to Bramble.

The queen came up beside her, and a glance showed a mixture of happiness and grief on Daenerys’ face while she watched her dragons. “I locked them up in Mereen,” she said. “I was afraid of what they would do, but…it has not been the same since they found their freedom again. I caused them misery, and for that, I can never forgive myself.”

Bramble crossed her arms, keeping her gaze fixed on the two. Drogon was probably too big and too cool to play with them. “Well, guess you can’t be a true parent unless you fuck up your kids in some way. I’m sure they love you all the same.”

“They do, and I love them. It is because of love that I have scarred them, and I have scarred myself over my actions.” Daenerys’ violet eyes fell upon Bramble. “And you? What did your parents enact upon you that has irreparably changed your nature?”

“Well,” Bramble huffed, rubbing the last of the drool off her arm, “I wouldn’t put it so gloomily, but…hm. My parents were actually pretty good parents. I miss them every single day, and not an hour goes by that I don’t think of them. But, one time, my mom found out I had been talking to this boy after bedtime, and she—did Callum explain to you what cellphones are?”

“Yes.”

“She went through my text messages with this boy. We weren’t even saying anything bad to each other, but the invasion of privacy made me so fucking mad. I didn’t talk to her for over a week. I think she knew she messed up, though, because she never did anything like that again.”

“I see. I am glad you had a happy childhood.”

“Me, too—even though I have to compare my happy life with the life I was given here.” Bramble dryly laughed. “Not a great matchup, I’ll tell you that.”

“I imagine not.”

Viserion cried out in a definite, “Not fair!” kind of tone toward Rhaegal, who had dropped the trunk from his mouth to carry it in his foot. Daenerys smirked.

“And did you have any siblings?”

“Ah, no. Only child. My mom struggled to have kids, and when she finally got pregnant with me, there were a ton of complications. She nearly lost me a few times, and when she gave birth, she almost died, too. There are several medicines where I’m from to keep from getting pregnant, so she took stuff after I was born.” After a pause, Bramble added, “I think they wanted to adopt a baby, but it never panned out, so I got all their love for seventeen years.”

“It sounds nice, their love.”

Bramble hummed. “It was. They would have loved you, too.”

“Oh?” Daenerys chuckled.

“Obviously.” Bramble stretched both arms over her heads. “I actually like to imagine my parents coming here instead of me. They would literally say to each other, ‘Honey, we need to love all these kids here because they really need it.’ I think they’d just save the world by sitting everyone down and having heartfelt conversations. Even with Cersei, my dad would say, ‘I’m not angry with you. I’m just disappointed. But we’ll work through this.’ And because all Cersei has ever truly wanted was recognition from her dad, she’d get it from mine.”

“Would they even defeat the Night King through parental concern?”

Bramble laughed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t put it past them. Instead, you got me, all angry and fiery and stupid.”

“You are not stupid,” Daenerys spoke. “Angry and fiery? Yes. But not stupid. You have proven most helpful for House Stark, Targaryen, Tyrell, Martell, and multiple bannermen loyal to those houses. What you have done improves our ability to survive the oncoming winter with coin and food. You are not just the shield that guards the realms of men, Bramble Aldana.” Her nose scrunched, and she lightly said, “Although I must admit, I cannot come up with a good metaphor for your financial prowess.”

“The quill that guards the realms of men? The parchment? Being the coin purse that guards the realms of men just sounds arrogant.”

That got another laugh from Daenerys. “Yes, it does. Nevertheless, you have my utmost thanks. Not only for saving my life and the life of my dragon at Highgarden, but for securing hopes for a stable future.”

“I do what it can. Hopefully, one day, when all the snow and ash has settled, you’ll be able to rule with methods other than…”

Bramble gestured a sarcastic hand at the dragons.

“That is the hope.”

“Make it more than a hope. I’ve lived in this shitty world long enough; I’d like to see this place become something.” Bramble tilted her chin up. “But you’re lucky I haven’t gotten annoyed by this idle chit-chat.”

“You would become annoyed by your queen?” Daenerys posed with that neutral, inquisitive tone of hers.

“Um, what? I don’t recall pledging my allegiance to you,” Bramble scoffed.

“Your king has all but sworn his fealty to me. If he is my servant, so are you,” she said.

“I’m not part of the North, technically. Means I’m voluntarily offering my services to Jon. I’m loyal to him, but that’s by my own agency. I don’t do the whole oaths and alliances that bind me. It’s gotten this whole world into a bunch of trouble. So yes, it means I can be annoyed by you, and it means I can tell it to your face. And guess what? You can’t burn me!” Bramble dabbed for effect. Daenerys made a noise close to a snort, but it was much more dignified.

“I am many things, Lady Bramble, but just as stupid is not one of your traits, annoyance is not one of mine,” she quipped. Bramble laughed.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. So what is it you want to talk to me about? No bodyguards, no advisers, just the two of us. I could kill you, you know.”

“You could.” Daenerys was not fazed by the rhetorical threat. “But you will not. You may not burn, but I doubt you’d survive being eaten.”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Haven’t tried it, yet. I bet I’d be really spicy, though.”

“I do not wish to see what you’d taste like. You are valuable. You are clever, too, or at least you’re trying to be.”

“But I’m sure you see right through it.”

“Tyrion, Varys, and Ser Barristan have voiced their concerns, but it was up to me to decide whether or not to question you about it.”

“And Callum? What did he have to say?”

“Callum has been busy overseeing the shipments of dragonglass. He is not aware of this conversation.”

Daenerys probably didn’t want Callum interfering because he would have voiced blind support for Bramble. Tyrion would have been optimistic but wary, Varys wary and concerned, and Barristan suspicious but uncertain.

“Well, go on, tell me about these concerns.”

“Jaime Lannister is not here simply for alliance and heroics against the Night King, is he? You look beyond that use.”

Bramble squinted and took a breath. “I’m trying. I’m not good at this stuff—trying to change things. Not at this level, at least. Callum sounds much more qualified, but…”

“But you do not trust him.”

“Not with this course, at least,” she honestly replied, though her trust issues ran deeper than that. “It might not even work. Jaime is…volatile. He struggles to make the right choice. But I think he understands what must be done with Cersei should Westeros survive the winter—and survive in general. He cares about his army, the people in King’s Landing, people. He’ll never admit it, though. He’s seen what just one of your dragons can do. I doubt he’ll ever want to see it again. He’ll want to make peace.”

“Cersei does not want peace.”

“No, but Cersei will talk to him if he sets up a negotiation—a private one, obviously.”

“You doubt it will work.”

“The bitch is crazy. I want Jaime to see that she is willing to watch the world burn. I’ve told him that she does, anyway, but I don’t think he wants to believe me.”

Daenerys hummed. “Will you urge him to kill her?”

“He won’t be able to. If not as her lover, then as her brother. But while he’s pleading with her, he’ll be distracting her.”

“Will he know that?”

“Probably not. I don’t trust his face. He can’t lie. Cersei will recognize his fear and desperation. She’ll surround herself with the Mountain and other guards, making it near impossible for her to be assassinated.”

“Assassinated?”

“I told you it’d be easiest,” Bramble smirked, but it was bitter. “But really, I didn’t start thinking about it until we neared Highgarden and captured Jaime.”

“And what about the Night King and his army? They are the true threat.”

“They are, but this shouldn’t take long. And besides, he’s still being held back by the Wall. It’s only when it comes down that we have a problem.”

Bramble may be the one to bring it down. She hadn’t had any dreams or visions since the godswood. She needed to visit another one. She probably wouldn’t like what she saw, but this place hardly gave her things she’d like.

So, she’d do her fucking hardest to protect who she had.

“Varys tells me that Cersei has invited the smallfolk into the walls of the Red Keep for protection from the winter nights. It is more than that. She attempts to dissuade me from taking my dragons and burning the city down.”

“I mean, you should already be dissuaded from burning down an entire city full of innocent people, but…”

Daenerys did not hide her irritation toward Bramble, who pointedly ignored it. “An assault is illogical and dangerous. It would breed soldiers for the Night King’s army should he reach the South. I do not want to be the queen of ruin and ice. I will rule and be loved by those who fear Cersei.”

“Good. Let me help your kingdom before the Night King comes, then.” Bramble stopped, and so did Daenerys. Violet met dark green on the black sands of Dragonstone with no one to hear their words except the gods and the gulls.

“I sent a letter to Sansa,” Bramble said, and Daenerys Targaryen listened.

-

Bramble would have been surprised at Shireen bursting through the door of the chamber she, Davos, Varys, and Tyrion had their meeting in, but she had heard the princess’ sprinting footfalls long beforehand.

Shireen could barely get words out past her ragged breaths. “Boat—row—rowboat—with—with—”

Davos, the concerned father he was, stood up and came to her side. “Easy, easy, take your time, lest you turn blue.”

“No—time,” Shireen corrected. She forced herself upright and swiped a stray, sweaty strand of hair from her forehead. For a brief moment, Shireen composed herself like royalty long enough for her to say, “Boat. Samwell and Gilly and Jorah Mormont.”

Then she doubled forward again, coughing.

It took roughly three seconds for the information to process.

Bramble uttered, “Holy shit.”

She bolted from her chair and snatched Shireen’s wrist to drag her along. “They—came from the southern shore!” she said. “I was…training with Ser Barristan and Ser Loras…when we, we saw them!”

If she had run all the way from the southern grounds, through the palace, and to Bramble, it meant Shireen had been running for a long time. Bramble paused and crouched. Shireen didn’t hesitate; she jumped on Bramble’s back, just like she had when they fled her father’s army and the Red Woman. Except now, Shireen’s legs had begun to grow into that Baratheon height, and she had put on weight from eating healthy and exercising regularly with sword training.

Still, Shireen let out an excited breath of air when Bramble sprinted back down the hall the princess came from. As they lunged down staircases and skidded around corners, they eventually caught up to Jon, Daenerys, Missandei, Callum, and Grey Worm, all of whom had urgency in their steps. Shireen must have alerted them to the same news before she made her way up to Bramble.

“Move, bitch, get out the way!” Bramble shouted. The hall was wide enough that she didn’t knock them down like bowling pins, but Grey Worm had the audacity to take up a defensive stance to protect Daenerys and Missandei from any blunt force trauma.

“Aw, not fair!” Callum exclaimed while Bramble and Shireen put more distance between them. “Jon—King Stark—hop on my back! We’ll beat them!”

“No.”

“Dany?”

“I am not a child.”

“Come on! They’re getting away…!”

Callum’s voice cut off when Bramble leaped down a set of stairs. Shireen clung to her, laughing madly. The Unsullied guarding the southern entrance barely had time to swing the doors open for them. Bramble surged through and came into the gray, bitter air of the island.

Shireen pointed to the winding stone path leading up to the landing where they stood. About a third of the way down the trail walked several figures. Bramble picked out Ser Barristan and Loras leading the other three, two of which she also recognized. Ghost, of course, trotted behind them, excited to greet his friends.

Even the dragons circled low in the sky to welcome a member of their family back. Their high-pitched roars connoted triumph and celebration. For such a grim and humorless island, Dragonstone had suddenly become bright.

Slipping off Bramble’s back, Shireen adjusted her jerkin and said, “I think my own feet can carry myself again.” Wryly, she added, “And I am a tad too old to be doing that.”

“Yeah, right,” Bramble snorted with a grin. “You loved it.”

She held out a hand for the princess to take. Shireen gave her a scrunched-up look from the comment, but she took it. Together, they strode down the path, verging on a jog but just managing to keep themselves back.

It didn’t take long to reach the people converging on the trail. Once Sam spotted Bramble’s black hair, brown skin, and birthmark, he beamed and let out a happy laugh. The sound of it sung in her ears. Bramble grinned back, and she embraced Sam, her brother, tightly. The familiarity of him almost brought tears to her eyes, but the heat scorched any excess moisture away before she could make an embarrassment of herself.

Sam, of course, did not have the same reservations. He had already started crying by the time they let go. “It’s good to see you, Bramb,” he said thickly.

She lightly punched him on the arm. “You, too.”

With baby Sam propped on a hip, Gilly hugged Bramble as best she could. She had come far from the skinny wildling girl when they first met. Guess Bramble had come far as well. “I always knew you were a girl,” she said immediately. “You were too nice to have been a boy. When Sam told me right when we left Castle Black, I said, ‘Sam, I told you!’”

“Aye, aye,” he said, a humorous tone in his concession. “And you haven’t let me forget it since.”

Loras, listening to the conversation, chuckled.

Shireen gave Sam and Gilly hugs of her own. “Jon is on his way,” Bramble said, and Sam’s excitement tripled. They began to walk up the path again. Wind whipped at Sam’s and Gilly’s cloaks. “They’re…all coming, actually. We just beat them because we’re winners.”

Bramble held up her hand, and Shireen slapped it.

She finally turned her gaze to Jorah Mormont, who moved on ahead in front of them. He kept his attention fixed on Dragonstone and exchanged words with Ser Barristan she couldn’t discern. Like so many others, Jorah’s loyalty led him back to his queen.

Drogon let out a particularly loud roar, which reverberated in the sky. Gilly and Sam jerked their heads up in fright. “You’ll get used to it,” Bramble promised. She clasped both hands behind her back. Shireen fell in stride with Loras. “That’s Drogon, the black one. Rhaegal is the bronze-ish green one, and reddish orange one is Viserion.”

“Right,” Sam laughed. “Dragons. Never…never thought I’d see one. But here we are!” Softly, he added, “They’re quite amazing, aren’t they?”

“They are.”

“We just missed Daenerys’ defense of Highgarden by about three weeks,” Sam went on, still watching the dragons. Gilly offered a hand to steer him up the path. “We…saw what just one of them did.”

“No shit? Wow. We would have been able to see each other. I was at Highgarden. So was Ghost.”

“Really? What was it like? The battle?”

Grimly, Bramble said, “It stunk like burning flesh. We captured Jaime Lannister, though. He’s at the castle as an honored guest, whining, complaining, being an overall pain in the ass.”

“Oh? Um, ah, I…I heard my father and brother survived the battle fighting for Queen Cersei and the Lannister army. Queen Daenerys showed them mercy, however, and imprisoned them instead of using…alternative methods.”

“Mm. Yeah. Randall wasn’t too happy to be in a cell instead of dying gloriously for his honor.”

Sam started. “You—spoke to him? My father?”

“Just for a bit. Ended with me breaking his nose against the iron bar of his cell.” She triumphantly smiled at the last part. “Told him he could never, ever compare to you.”

The chill had turned Sam’s entire face a rosy color like it had at Castle Black prior to Bramble’s factual statement, but from his sudden stammering and Gilly’s delighted expression, she had done something right.

A white-haired figure soon exited the palace and stood regally on the landing, watching, waiting for her knight to return.  

“What are you even doing here?” Bramble asked Sam. “I mean, not that I’m unhappy to see you, but aren’t you supposed to be shuffling around in maester robes, snorting dust from ancient tomes?”

“Well…” Sam gestured to Jorah up ahead. “We, er, sort of happened by each other. He was infected with greyscale. The maesters said it was incurable, but I told them I knew a certain princess who had been cured of it.” He leaned Shireen’s way as he spoke. She smiled proudly. “They, of course, refuted it by the fact that hers had been caught immediately, and his was…ex-extensive.”

“But you showed those fuckers, didn’t you?”

“The method worked, yes.” Sam then paled underneath his wind-reddened face. “It was arduous and gruesome, but it worked.”

“Did you throw up?” Bramble smirked.

“I did not, no, thank you very much.”

She barked a laugh.

When Jon appeared at the entrance alongside Daenerys, Bramble didn’t bother trying to hold Sam’s attention. He picked up his pace, leaving her and Shireen to walk beside Gilly.

“So, that’s the queen,” Gilly remarked softly, breath almost taken by the wind.

“Mm hm.”

“She’s got white hair.”

“Yep.”

“And she’s a bit shorter than I imagined her to be.”

“She compensates with the dragons.”

Reunions ensued. Jorah Mormont’s intent remained solely on Daenerys—and Sam’s remained solely on Jon. It was only until after he and Jon had a few heartfelt moments that Sam realized oh, he stood right next to the Dragon Queen herself, and so he had the decency to bow and ask permission to reside at Dragonstone.

“I could not deny the person who saved the life of Ser Mormont,” Daenerys replied, which left Sam even more of a blushing, stammering mess. “And it will be good to have a maester in our midst. You have my permission to remain here for as long as you desire, Samwell Tarly.”

The fact that she spoke with his whole name nearly made Sam faint. Later, he whispered to Jon and Bramble, “The Dragon Queen? Knew me? By name?” Then, to Jon’s and Bramble’s amusement, he couldn’t stop giggling at the thought.

They’d tell him later that they had invoked Sam’s name as a reason to spare his father and brother on the battlefield. He didn’t need such dour family subjects to be brought up so soon.

Bramble kept her introduction to Jorah short and factual. He regarded her with little more than suspicion and concern, but he did ease up when Callum gave Bramble his seal of approval. “She’s like me,” Callum whispered very unsubtly with a wink and a grin.

Jorah reevaluated Bramble. “Is that so?” he asked, voice gruff and low, wearied by time but renewed by his return to Daenerys.

“Unfortunately,” Bramble huffed.

“No, not unfortunately,” Callum corrected. “Amazingly. Terrifically. Spectacularly.”

Yeah. Well. She’d see about that.

“I…see,” was all Jorah said in response. “You are the one who wields fire.”

“And many stupid names that others have given me because of it,” she said back. He snorted, which confirmed to Bramble that yes, he had also heard of the shitty titles she had no say in approving or rejecting. Mostly rejecting.

“Hey, hey,” said Callum when the castle burst into commotion to prepare a small yet welcoming feast for its newest guests. He pulled Bramble aside with a cold hand. “Want to premiere our dance this evening? Provide a little entertainment?”

Bramble tried not to show too much of her instinctive grimace, but Callum spotted it and moved to put both hands on her shoulders. “Come on! What good is practicing a dance when we have nobody to dance for?”

“Callum, I…”

“Callum, I don’t really have any good excuse not to,” he finished in a slightly higher voice to mimic her.

Truth be told, Callum was slick as stone, impossible to climb, impossible to take apart. He had a sincere disarming attitude about him, and no matter how many times Bramble tried to get anything from him, he’d always slip away.

Perhaps he knew her intentions. Her suspicions.

No. He absolutely did know.

Why didn’t he do anything about it then?

I cannot do this. I cannot do this. I love them too much.

Grey Worm had also not spoken to Bramble since their exchange in the late night of Highgarden, but her promise to him—to herself, to all of them—remained. Callum was bound to a dark force, and though he had most likely fought it with the love that had grown in him over time, an oath could not be broken so easily here.

But Bramble nodded reluctantly to Callum’s suggestion, and seeing him celebrate such a small and stupid endeavor did strange, painful things to her already burning heart.

She did not want to see him harmed. Bound. Killed. She did not want any of it.

And so, she decided they would dance.

-

Dinner had been filled with talk of the nation, war, undead, strategy, politics, and rumors. Bramble slunk into the background for most of it unless she was called upon to provide input or answers.

Then, after dinner finished, Missandei announced that Bramble Aldana and Callum Jones would perform for them. Bramble slunk off to get changed and warmed up before Jon, Davos, and Shireen could catch her with their amused gazes and comments. Bramble? Dancing? What, was she gonna kill a man at the end of it? Light some curtains on fire mid-show? Do some arithmetic while she was at it? Ha ha ha, fart fart fart. She could just hear them saying an endless stream of that kind of shit, so she avoided them at all costs and even dressed in Callum’s chambers to ensure it.

Sam simply thought it would be a delightful treat.

Dragonstone had not been built with the intent for entertaining guests. The chambers tended to be severe in both color and architecture, leaving little to spruce up. In the midst of one war and on the brink of another, Bramble made sure that any funds set aside for decorations and unneeded clothes and overall lavishness stayed at a bare—bare—minimum.

But the chamber that she and Callum practiced their routines in whenever they had the chance was the prettiest room in the keep. It had some space to it, and the music Missandei played on her lute for them reverberated nicely.

Whatever Targaryen of ages past had used this room for dancing, just as Bramble and Callum did now. Why else would there have been a mirror that spanned from one side of the wall to the other?

Bramble refused to glimpse her reflection as she entered hand-in-hand with Callum. When she was forced to for the sake of following Callum’s directions as the superior dancer, she fixated on the movement of her body, not her face.

Because the evening hour left little to illuminate the chamber, numerous candles had been lit in advance to provide warm light. They stood in sconces and hung from the three long-unused chandeliers, and each table that the audience members sat at had one or two.

“Jeez,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth, “Did you have to raid the entire castle for these candles? There’s so many.”

“Hush, now,” Callum replied through his pearly grin. “Don’t get distracted by the little things, you cheapskate. I can see the math numbers floating around your head right now.”

Bramble reluctantly dragged her gaze over to those seated. All were familiar faces—including Jaime and Bronn, both of whom Tyrion had probably weaseled in because he wanted his brother and buddy to be with him. Bramble couldn’t blame Tyrion for attempting to retrieve some semblance of a life he once had with them, a life he could never get back but could reminisce in sparse moments like this.

Many shifted in their chairs seconds before applause broke out, surprised to see a trudging character like Bramble wearing dancer’s clothes and walking light on her feet.

She wondered if Mom sensed her daughter getting ready to dance in all the afterlives that separated their world and this one. She hoped so.

Callum and Bramble both wore black wool hose because it was the stretchiest fabric Westeros could offer. While he had a long maroon doublet thrown over his upper body, Bramble had on little more than a similar-colored bralette. It was Essosi in nature and not meant to be worn in freezing temperatures, but she was a special case. The garment didn’t do a whole lot in the support area, except Bramble’s tits didn’t need much supporting anyway. The bralette’s over-the-shoulder style also ensured that it wouldn’t pop off in the middle of dancing and transport her back to her brothel days.

“Yes, yes, take us in,” Callum proclaimed, his voice naturally filling the chamber. “We may look silly to you, but where we’re from, this is completely normal, you prudes.”

Bramble tried not to look too constipated, but the twist of her expression tugged at the sleeked-back strands of her hairline. She could do little else with her short black hair other than pull it into a stumpy half-ponytail, much like she wore it during the Battle of Highgarden.

Callum guided Bramble to her spot, and she slid into a starting pose. He took up his own and said, “Friends, guests, we hope you enjoy our performance. Hopefully, it can give you a little taste of our home.”

Missandei began the music, and the familiar tune cued Bramble’s muscle memory. Her feet spun across the ground to meet Callum’s well-coordinated embrace, heart racing with sudden excitement.

As the two of them spun in a seamless glide, Bramble caught the blur of their reflections.

In the mirrored world, a figure of fire danced with a figure of shadow.

 

 

 

Notes:

I just graduated college, so attention to this fic dropped drastically the past few months. And in general, this story can be hard to write. It's already kind of difficult plot-wise, but I also know that it's one of my least popular fics, which can be disheartening because it doesn't get much attention or comments. However! I do plan on completing it, however long it may take.

Chapter 44

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Jon Snow had seen fear in many faces. He had seen it in those he loved, those he despised, those he never knew—and in himself.

The boy who came to Castle Black had been full of fear, fear masked in biting, soundless fury. He had survived too long to not be fearful and wary, suspicious, distrustful. Jon understood the boy to a degree, this hateful mute, ready to bolt at a glance.

Really, Jon half expected him to flee into the North when they crossed the Wall to avenge Lord Commander Mormont and dispose of the mutineers. But in the blazing remains of Craster’s Keep, the boy returned to them, ever-scowling and bloodied, and Jon thought, Seven hells, this was just a boy before them, nothing more than a boy who had to face death in the freezing black.

But he carried his crimsoned sword with surety, that large birthmark of his almost the same color of blood in the firelight.

Bramble took the Black when they returned and had been assigned to the Rangers, as Jon predicted. The boy had a fierceness to him that he could only communicate through his actions and the gaze in his eyes, and he’d do well on the front lines of defending Castle Black when the wildlings came.

This boy would have to fight again so soon, and Jon feared that he might have had too much delight in it.

But then Bramble wrote the strangest things. Now, of course, the prophecies and veiled forewarnings made much more sense. Back then, however, when Bramble had still been a boy and Jon still lived his first life, his notes simply gave cause for mild suspicion.

The notes also proved that Bramble held a care for life unlike Jon presumed. He did not want to go to war with the Free Folk. He also saw the detriments to it, the greater threat that loomed behind this battle. It was odd to see such clarity in a figure who also radiated rage.

The boy saved Pyp. He saved Grenn, too, as well as Mag Mar, and lived himself.

He also saved Ygritte’s body from a mass pyre, allowing Jon to give her a proper funeral.

It became well-known among Jon’s group of friends and the rest of the men in Castle Black that Bramble carried a strangeness about him. But although he became better adjusted and less outwardly afraid of his fate with the Crows, the boy still maintained a wary fear of the world and the people. It was as though he detested the future forming around him—and because of him.

When Bramble thought nobody was looking at him, he showed his fear for Olly. For the Princess Shireen. For Ser Davos. For Grenn and Edd and Pyp and Sam.

For Jon.

His care for all of them strengthened Jon and his comrades’ efforts to dispel any rumors that Bramble’s strangeness started and ended at his personality, not…anything else.

Pyp spoke the most adamantly about the possibility, however, and what they should do if the truth ever came out.

“Well, then why don’t we just pull down his fucking pants and get it over with?” Edd had griped. “It’s not as if we haven’t pissed beside him or anything. Know a woman who can do that, eh?”

Nobody, and not Pyp, had been brave enough to face Bramble’s wrath if they tried such a thing. They had seen him nearly beat two men to death over a fucking cat, and they knew what atrocities had put him at Castle Black in the first place. What murderous tendencies would they be victim to?

Come time to depart for Hardhome, the boy looked more scared than ever, no matter how much he tried to mask it behind scowls and the hands that cupped his bloody nose, which never seemed to stop during their sail.

That fear peaked in the hut where the Crows and the Free Folk convened for peace talks, and as he clutched his bleeding nose and scrawled a foreboding omen into the cold dirt with a shaky finger, Jon realized that the missing parts of the boy had been far greater than he could ever expect.

Then, then he feared for Bramble.

Jon Snow had seen few things that stunned him to the point where he forgot the cold on his face, the pains in his body, and the weariness in his bones. Dire wolves, the Wall, giants, and White Walkers—they all made him question the ways of the world.

To see Bramble, Bramble, burn an undead general with his bare hands and nearly consume himself with flame took the wintry breath from Jon’s lungs.

In the absence of fear, there was fire.

-

And he was a she.

Seven fucking hells.

Jon couldn’t contain his outburst. All the secrets he—she—had kept this entire time baffled him to the point of anger.

Bramble attempted to hide her hurt with a scowl, her fear. Fear of him.

The thought that he’d be capable of causing such an emotion in her turned his stomach. But he did his duty. He told her the truth about the details of her approaching fate—something she had trouble doing.

When she uttered his name, the first word that tumbled from her lips, it came hoarse and small and tentative. It should not have pierced him as it did. Even in her speech, however loud or soft, Bramble spoke with some kind of force behind it.

Perhaps the fire made the force. Jon doubted it, though. That same force resided in her gaze, her shoulders, her steps.

As he stared at her, alone in the creaking cabin, he chained himself to that gaze, not to Bramble’s bare shoulders, defined by work and weaponry, not to the wraps that wound around her front to flatten her chest, not to the patch of skin beneath the wraps that dipped from muscle. He had too many issues to deal with to blush like a damn boy.

Was this betrayal? These secrets spilled in the room to Crows and Free Folk? Or was it protection from the burden she carried herself?

She had feared the consequences.

Jon feared the consequences, too. He feared what his duty bade him do to a liar like Bramble in the Night’s Watch. Bramble with the fierce scowl and the dark green eyes and the scar that tugged at her lip. Bramble with the stubbornness and fire and foul mouth. Jon had never heard a woman swear like she did who wasn’t Free Folk. It would have been funny had it not been for the darkness upon them both.

So, to hide his own fear, he refused to meet that force of her gaze, which would certainly unearth the terror in his heart.

Briefly, he wanted to chastise Bramble for being a woman and putting herself in harm’s way. But then Jon remembered Ygritte and her similar fierceness, her might as a warrior, and he extinguished the thought before it could linger. Boy or girl, Bramble had killed who she killed and fought how she fought. Her might could not be denied.

Nor could her fear. Jon saw it when she spoke of Shireen’s demise, and he knew she would not wait for trial or permission to save the princess.

He did not deny how he hoped she would not return. Then, she could avoid whatever judgement Jon would be bound to pass.

But Bramble’s loyalty and goodness brought her back to Jon, back to tragedy.

And, as he lay fading from the world among blood and snow and mud, he wondered if she had seen his death.

He wondered if she feared.

-

Bramble’s scarred and marred face greeted Jon when he awoke from the black.

She was warm in the cold room. Jon did not shiver.

-

She knew what it meant to die and return.

How did that saying go? Valar morghulis? All men must die.

What did that make them?

-

Grief settled in place of Bramble’s fear. When Olly hung by a rope, blue and swaying and glassy-eyed, Jon looked to Bramble and saw nothing but his own despair, his own helplessness.

Grenn was the only one brave enough to follow her, prepared to face wrath and rage and fire and going anyway. He did not come back burned.

-

Sansa liked Bramble.

“Aye,” Jon said to his sister, whose bruises from Ramsay Bolton still shone on her pale skin, “she’s good folk.”

And he would ask her to go to war with him once more, to have that renewed fear hidden behind her scowl.

Bramble told Jon she had accidentally lit her blanket on fire in the middle of the night, and it made him chuckle. She smirked, that scar tugging at her lip for a brief moment before it receded with talk of war and her fire and death.

She would go with them. She had nowhere else to go but with Jon. He wished he could have advocated for another way.

Grenn, the brave fuck, mustered up the courage to kiss her, and when she first spoke of him, of them, she did it with uncorrupted joy.

Terrible timing, they agreed.

“Still,” she said, her brows furrowed, mouth pursed, and voice forever hoarse, “we hope that it will all work out in the end.”

Atop the Wall, Jon gazed at the frozen beauty of the North, protected from the brunt of its cold by Bramble’s ambient warmth. Grim thoughts churned in his head.

“And if it doesn’t?” he asked, uncertain if he wanted to hear an answer from the seer beside him.

“Then at least it happened at all.”

Her words clung to Jon long after they had departed, though he was not quite sure what to do with them.

-

Jon asked too much of Bramble. This he knew. He asked her to murder, to maim, to burn, and so she did, even though the fear lay bright in her dark eyes at the thought of it.

This war, she also understood, was inevitable. She would do her part without complaint. She would not leave Jon and Sansa to fight fate on their own.

Bramble confided in Jon that she remembered the face of the Bolton soldier she fell upon in the midst of battle, descending from the snowy sky like some god to unleash a swell of fierce and barely controlled flame.

In those few moments of fire and heat and the ash of the enemies on the battlefield, Jon’s chest filled with awe.

It was not awe for Bramble. All she remembered was that soldier’s face. Did he stare up at her in wonder? Did he fear? Did he utter a single-worded prayer before his body and soul became black nothing?

Bramble remembered. She never described the soldier’s expression, but she saw it in her nightmares, awaking mid-scream.

She always cursed after coming from her nightmares in that flat, foreign accent of hers.

Jon dreamt of her, too. He dreamt of drowning underneath a sea of bodies. Boots crushed his chest, his stomach, his skull, and he could not shout or whisper. He could not breathe, and each time, he swore he was dying. He smelled the stench of battle and waste. Corpses cushioned underneath him, ready to engulf Jon once his life had been stamped from him—for good. He would return to that dark nothing where he belonged, and he could rest.

Just when the heaviness clouded Jon’s vision, a hand would reach down from the formless veil of armored men, grab him, and pull him up with that indisputable, unbreakable force.

And then he’d see the face he could never forget from that battle.

Bramble held him tight, full of fear but full of fire, refusing to allow Jon to do anything but live.

When he saw her lying face-down in the muck of Winterfell, still and stuck with burning arrows in her back, something crumpled in Jon Snow, something he did not know he had. To imagine facing the future without her, without that scowl and harsh words and blunt kindness, put a numb fear into him.

“Ha! She lives!” Tormund barked when he went to Bramble’s side. He snapped the burning arrows from her back and hoisted her limp body into his arms. “The mad Little Crow! Fire’s strong!”

Void of glower or grin, Bramble seemed so very…

Jon did not dare put it into words.

-

And she was from another world.

Seven fucking hells.

In the visions the Red Woman brought about, Jon had seen a girl who wore Bramble’s body but was not who he knew. She was the Bramble before him, fearful of the words he’d say to her in response to this monumental truth, sharpened and hardened, short black hair whipping in the wind on the Winterfell ramparts.

Had this world really done that much to her? Dragged her from a life of happiness and love to death and despair? She did not laugh or grin like she had in the visions. She did not carry herself without guard, she wore her long hair down, she had parents who loved her that strange realm.

Now it was simply the two of them, parentless, trying to spare Westeros from winter and darkness, and Bramble’s smiles too often came with bitterness.

However, she brought Sansa joy that Jon feared his sister would never again find. She did it simply by being Bramble, never deferential and always deprecating.

Sansa believed that nobody could protect her. Nobody could protect anyone. Jon found merit in her sentiment. But Bramble would protect both of them with fire and fury to the very end of this world and the beginning of the next. She never said the promise aloud; it shone in her actions, her veiled care, her constant presence.

Jon swore to himself to do the same. Though, he could never speak such things to either women. He’d get a punch from Bramble for even considering that she needed protection, and he’d get a glare just as gutting from Sansa.

He did not like the old, resigned fear that encompassed Bramble when she spoke of shadows. Jon could not fight what he failed to see, which made his oath difficult to manage. He would do his best, however, and keep Bramble on the move in an attempt to avoid them.

It also eased him to have her by his side, trusted as an advisor and friend, on their journey to Dragonstone.

“Okay,” Bramble said late one night when they went over strategies on how to approach the Dragon Queen in the ship’s candlelit cabin, “she’s, like, super pretty. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Don’t get all googly-eyed over her.”

“Googly-eyed?” Jon repeated with a laugh. “What’s that?”

“Like…” Bramble sighed and propped her chin on a fist, batting her eyelashes at Jon. “Ooh, ahh, lovey love this and lovey love that.” Then she dropped her voice and spoke in a bad Northern accent. “‘Daenerys, you’re beautiful with your white hair and nice tits. Let me ravage you.’”

It took a moment, but when Jon realized who Bramble imitated, he made a noise. “I don’t sound like that,” he scoffed, though he became acutely aware of how he talked.

“‘Winter is coming.’”

“Aye, it is!”

She dropped the accent and pounded a fist on the table. “So don’t be getting distracted by Daenerys Targaryen, Mister King in the North! We can’t afford to have ooey gooey love complicate things! And if I catch a whiff of those googly eyes, Jon Snow, guess what I’ll do?”

“Beat the living shit out of me?” he inquired, unable to stop his smirk.

“Fuck yes I will!”

Jon wished he could have warned the lad who tried to hug Bramble. He saw the punch building up in her body, her clenched jaw, her shock and fear and anger wrapped up into a signature scowl. No matter the nice clothes she dressed up in (the clothes she and Sansa would coo and argue over in idle discussion, ensuring that Jon had no part in the subject—not that he understood it anyway), Bramble still swung with force.

It sparked a small amount of pride in Jon, he’d admit.

Callum Jones came from the same realm as Bramble, yet his accent aligned more with a southern noble’s. His skin was darker than hers, and he easily stood tallest in any room. From a place called London—supposedly far, far away from Bramble’s Thunder Bay—he arrived earlier than she had, and instead of finding himself in Dorne like Bramble, he wound up on one of the farthest points of the known map: Qarth. Callum Jones exuded such compassion, sincerity, and good humor that it made Jon almost suspicious.

He recognized Bramble’s suspicion, too. It was more than her usual guard; she doubted him because she feared, though even she could not identify what to fear, what to fight. To make matters more difficult, Bramble cared deeply for Callum, and she could not resist the bond they formed due to their otherworldly circumstances.

When she left with Daenerys Targaryen and the Dothraki army to defend Highgarden, she passed Jon a small note. Once he was alone, he unrolled it next to the fireplace of his quarters.

In the sharp, occasionally hard-to-read scrawl of Bramble’s writing, she wrote:

He may be with the shadows. Somethingone worse. Be careful. Be watchful. Be patient. I’ll be back soon, so DO NOT FUCK ANYTHING UP.

Jon read the note once more before he cast it into the hot flames.

Callum proved to be an exceptionally honest and kind man, however, making it so Jon could not act or do something unwise even if he tried.

“We’re from different countries,” Callum explained to Jon when they had a break from a meeting. Unlike Bramble, he had little fear speaking of their home, and Jon wondered if Bramble remained silent to protect herself—or if the suppression ultimately hurt her. “Although Canada is part of the British Commonwealth, which I won’t even get into, it’s independent from mine. And Canada is huge, mate. Definitely bigger than Westeros. It leads up into the tundra like the North here. If you walk and walk and walk and try not to freeze to death or get eaten by a bear, you’ll come to the very tip-top of the Earth.”

Chuckling at Jon’s astonishment, Callum said, “Yeah, it’s wild! Nothing special, course. Just a whole lotta ice. It’s called the North Pole. And because the world is round—get that in your head, Jon Snow, that worlds are round ‘cause we’ve studied other planets and have seen our own from up in the stars—you can go all the way to the other tip of the Earth. It’s name? The South Pole. Also an icy tundra.”

Jon, astounded, leaned back and motioned for Callum to go on.

That caused Callum to grin, and he stood to better move about the room while he talked. “Alright. Space. Prepare to have your mind blown, Jon Snow, and contend with what it means to be a miniscule mortal against the endlessness of space.”

Word came that Daenerys successfully protected Highgarden. She, her dragon, the Dothraki, Ghost, and even Bramble herself defeated Lannister and Tarly forces. They captured Jaime Lannister and intended to bring him back as a “guest” as well. Randall Tarly and his son, Dickon, had also been spared, although they would not be released from Highgarden’s cells for quite some time.

It didn’t matter to Bramble if Sam’s father and brother burned. But it mattered to Sam, and Sam mattered to Bramble, so she ensured their lives.

Bramble returned to Dragonstone with Ghost, looking grim and scornful as ever until her gaze landed on Jon, Davos, and Shireen. She clasped Jon’s arm firmly. Warmth seeped into his leathers. He noticed how her hair had grown, straight black lashing against the shore’s chilly breeze.

“Anything?” Bramble inquired when they had a moment alone, a breath between one meeting and the next to prepare for calamity.

“No,” he replied.

Then the next question stumbled from his lips before he could stop himself. “Why haven’t you said anything about…space?”

Bramble’s brows furrowed and promptly raised. She scoffed with a humorous note. Her expression made Jon redden and shift away, pretending to be interested in reports on the table, some of which bore Bramble’s scribbled handwriting (handwriting Ser Barristan referred to as “bird scratch,” though Jon would never tell her outright because she already had a sore spot with being called a scratchy bird and all by the Free Folk).

“What, Callum told you about space and shit?”

“Er. Yes.”

“I don’t talk about it because it’s fucking scary. Didn’t want to have to make you cope with even more incomprehensible topics.” Bramble paused, and when she spoke again, her voice drawled. “What, you’re interested in it?”

He sighed but did not answer.

She punched his shoulder. “Look over here, Major Tom.”

Standing next to him, Bramble put her quill on parchment and began to draw. “I don’t know shit about this world’s solar system, and I doubt the maesters have a firm grasp on it either. I’d have to check out libraries or ask the great wise Tyrion Lannister about it—and I absolutely refuse to the latter. So.”

Bramble drew more circles around the big one in the center, some more distant than others and varying in size. One had an odd ring around it. “This is my solar system. Right? That thing in the center it the sun.”

“The planets revolve around the sun. Yeah. Callum told me that.”

“It’s very large. Much larger than I’ve drawn.” Bramble labeled it Sun. “The closest one to it is Mercury, then Venus, then Earth. My planet.” She tapped the quill against the circle, which was the only one of the planets that had smaller drawings of the land inside it. “About one million Earths can fit into the sun, that’s how big it is, and it’s…” Her eyes fluttered upward for a moment to draw from the multitude of numbers in her head. “About ninety-one million miles from Earth. Isn’t that insane? It’s so far away, and still we can feel its heat on our skin and see it light up our skies, day after day.”

Bramble went on. “Next we have Mars. People on my planet want to travel to this planet, but it will be a difficult and long journey.”

“Callum said you’ve sent people to your moon. Walked on it.” Jon’s words came out somewhat breathless.

She smirked. “That’s right. We want to live there, too. We want to live everywhere, though, so it’s not surprising. If people can live their lives up in the freezing North where legitimate dead crawl around, it isn’t impossible to believe that people can live on the moon and Mars. We just have to figure out how.”

She tapped on the next planet. “Jupiter is a big boy. From what I remember, it has about seventy or eighty moons because of this thing we call gravity—it’s the thing that keeps our feet planted on the ground, right? So we don’t go floating off into space? But Jupiter has so much of it because of its size that it attracts all these rocks from outer space, drags them into its orbit, and keeps them there.”

Jon had never considered why he stuck to the ground. He just did. To think an active force kept his feet where they were made his head spin in another direction.

“Saturn has rings around it, but they kind of merge to look like just one. And if you were on Saturn, you’d be able to see the rings. It’s very cool.”

“What’re the rings made of?”

Her shoulder shrugged. “Rocks and dust and ice, I think. I can’t really remember.”

“Ah.”

“We have…Uranus next.”

Bramble paused with a lopsided grin, expectant of something from Jon.

Confused, he stared back at her.

She then frowned. “Ugh, never mind. It’s a joke you wouldn’t get. Anyway. This planet is super cold and far away. After it is a planet named Neptune. Then the last one is even farther away, and it’s called Pluto. It’s technically a ‘dwarf’ planet, and there are some others floating out there beyond it, but I can’t remember their names. But yeah. These are my sun’s planets. Your sun has some, too, otherwise you wouldn’t exist. And other suns have other planets presumably with life on one or two of them, and so on and so forth into the eternal and expanding space.”

Bramble finished writing Pluto underneath the smallest circle. She blew on the ink to help it dry faster.

“Maybe once this war is over, you can tap into your scholarly interests. Research your celestial backyard, that kind of stuff.”

The small yet assured smile Bramble gave Jon made him believe, however briefly, that he would survive the darkness ahead.

She folded the parchment up into a small square and held it out to Jon. “Here. In case you need to have an existential moment.”

He took it from Bramble and tucked the parchment away. They returned to their work, and Jon did not ask her any more to speak of home for fear of ruining the absence of fear in them both.

“I think I quite like this Bramble,” Sam stated to Jon after his friend made a miraculous journey to Dragonstone. “She’s…less sharp. Not as frightening. Still frightening, course. Oh, I don’t know, I probably shouldn’t be talking about her at all. It’s just—” Sam ducked his head a little, sheepish when he said, “it’s just good to see her…happier.”

Jon had no proper response, so he simply nodded while Sam went on. “And who knew she could dance?”

“Trust me,” Jon said gruffly, “it’s not the kind of dancing you’re expecting, Sam.”

“What do you mean by that?”

From his pink cheeks, Sam understood Jon’s words in frankness as Bramble glided into the room with Callum Jones. Both of them walked on the balls of their feet with matching steps and matching colors, and while Callum brought attention to himself with his tall stature and excited grin, Jon looked to Bramble.

Though she would never again be the girl he saw in her intruded memories, the woman before them carried some semblance of that person.

Lady Missandei struck up a tune, and Callum and Bramble began to dance in their strange and sinuous movements. Callum drew her close, spinning both of them across the room, footsteps too fast for Jon to make out. The enraptured thrall they cast on those watching amplified, but he stopped watching the performance almost immediately after it had begun.

His hand strayed to the pommel of Longclaw.

In the midst of the intimate, whirling dance with Callum Jones, recognizable fear etched itself into Bramble.

Her dark green gaze found Jon for less than an instant, but her call was clear.

Yes. Jon Snow had seen fear in many faces.

He would not abide it in hers.

 

 

 

Notes:

An interlude chapter, as a treat.

Chapter 45

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Bramble’s feet moved without the need for concentration. Enough practice allowed for muscle memory to take over. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Callum’s hands were frigid in her own, and when he touched the areas on her waist to move into a spin, the shock was so much that she would have shivered and lost her breath had it not been for the fire within her. It roiled and raged, discordant with the dance, for it knew what touched her, what powers seeped underneath her skin in its cold terror.

She could not forget when she felt it at Hardhome—at the peak of her fear, powers awakening with the scourge of a twisted, tainted power of death around them.

The world blurred around Bramble as they danced. Missandei’s music, while lovely and rhythmic, turned muted in Bramble’s ears, like she heard the melodies beneath black, freezing water as her hands beat against the unforgiving plastic interior of a plane that dragged every ounce of her soul with it to the depths.

“Callum.” Her voice was hoarse and quiet and small. “What have you done.”

He hummed, a performer’s smile on his face, present yet empty. His hand supported her as she bent back to a near ninety-degree angle. Her leg kicked up in the air with a pointed foot. When Callum lifted her up into a straightened position, the two of them spun away from each other in synchronized grace.

The small audience attentively watched Bramble’s moves. They enjoyed the strange performance, unaware of the danger, the cold, the enemy that danced with her and Callum.

All except Jon. He saw. He may not have seen or felt exactly what Bramble did, but he saw, nonetheless. From the way she glimpsed his hand on the hilt of his sword, he was prepared to end the dance early with the swing of Longclaw if need be. But he stayed, waiting, waiting for Bramble’s assurance or call for assistance.

She wasn’t sure what signal to give yet, so she looked away from Jon and hoped he understood that even she didn’t have a good idea of what to do.

Bramble returned to Callum’s arms after eight beats. He lifted her up in the air for two more beats, but it felt like an hour. His hands were so cold.

“I’m sure you figured it out a long time ago,” Callum whispered in her ear as they moved together. His entire body danced elegantly, so natural that Bramble couldn’t compare despite her practice and his own instruction. He held no aggression in his touches, his guides, his steps, and he still wore that same smile. It frightened Bramble more than a plain outburst would have. Outbursts were expected. But this? A continued dance with Callum speaking so resignedly, so peacefully to her about what she still could not say out loud? All she could do was continue with him, hope that this, this, this ending would not be anything at all.

It was a distant hope. But she loved Callum, so she hoped in spite of it all.

“I can help you,” Bramble said, sure to move her lips as little as possible. “I…I can.”

“It’s done. I’m sorry. The only way you could help me at all is by helping the rest of them.”

“And what about you?”

“You already know, Bramb. If you don’t, he will. But he’ll do it long after he’s used me to destroy all of them.”

Bramble turned her back to Callum’s chest. She leapt, legs stretching into a split for Callum to catch her thighs and spin both of them twice around while Bramble leaned back over his shoulder. “Shut up,” she hissed, though her tone had little anger and a lot of desperation. “We can figure something out.”

“I lied to you,” Callum went on, and by now, the audience must have picked up on the fact that the two of them were having a conversation in the middle of the performance. “Things end badly for Daenerys. For many of them. But it doesn’t matter now. I’ve done all I can to change it despite his charge over me, and I hope it’s enough for you to be able to do something better. I think it is. You’re…wonderful, Bramble. You can save everyone. That’s why he’s so afraid of you. He simply wanted your power at first, but now…if he fails to attain you, he’s in for a reckoning that goes beyond the fire.”

“You’re talking out of your ass.”

“I’m not.”

“Let me help you. Let me fix this.”

Callum’s smile finally saddened. His dark brown eyes glistened, and all Bramble saw was her friend. She knew it from the very beginning, this dark thrall upon him, and he was still such a great person that she grew to deeply care for him despite her best efforts.

“I wanted to do one last thing with you. One last thing that…made me happy, too. We’re Earth buddies, after all.”

“Stop fucking talking like that.”

The scores of candle flames that illuminate the chamber grew stronger. Bramble lost her brittle mask and returned to a glaring scowl that was offset by tears forming. She refused to let them fall. Not yet. Not when she also refused to accept this.

“What about Daenerys? Barristan? Grey Worm? Loras? They still need you. You can’t just fucking give up.”

“I’m not giving up. I’m finally doing what I should have done. For me. For all of them.”

The strings of Missandei’s lute reached a peak, weaving together the music to transition them into their final series of moves.

Callum placed his large hand on Bramble’s cheek, right on her birthmark and scar. It was not part of what they memorized. “I’m sorry,” he said underneath the music, underneath the cold, underneath the black water and the weight of death in Bramble’s lungs.

“Wait—”

His hand slipped down to wrap his fingers around her throat.

Blue eyes. Blue eyes and icy skin and the scent of evil magic and the vacuum of nothing to take her, take the fire, take the world.

The Night King watched through Callum. Watched and waited to finally lay his claim on her furious soul.

He did not know that this was what Callum wanted. He thought Bramble could free him from the Night King’s grasp. He wanted Bramble to fight, even though he was her friend, even though he was the only one who understood the misery and joy of this world compared to the misery and joy of their own.

What the hell gave him the right to burden Bramble with his own fucking execution?

The music stopped on a shrill, off-key note.

Bramble stared back into the withering blue, afraid but resolute and not going fucking anywhere.

The candles dimmed in the cold and shadows.

Her choked breath billowed out from her, but she took her burning hands to grip Callum’s wrists, to anchor herself to him, not to the abomination that had captured him. She had no plan—just pure, unyielding intent.

She drew back her lips into a heated snarl and screamed with absolute fury.

The candles burst with jets of fire arcing upward and outward, thwarting the darkness like a shield. With the mirror on one side of the chamber, it reflected the light of the powerful flames to scourge the shadows. Bramble looked back to Callum in the harsh furnace the chamber had become, bare toes scraping against the floor, and saw a man, a friend, in need of some good old-fashioned ass whooping.

Her fist swung into the side of his head, hard enough for Callum to loosen his grip around her throat. She ripped free and kicked him backward to give herself a few seconds of space between them. Chest heaving and throat raw, Bramble ignited herself with a coat of fire.

The chamber, fortunately, was so under-decorated that the roiling plumes around them had little to consume. With the awakening of Bramble’s own fire, the flames climbed higher up the walls, scorching the stone black and turning the air unbreathable. However, while some people fled to escape the heat, others stayed. Daenerys, Jon, Grey Worm, Jorah Mormont, Barristan Selmy, Loras, Davos, Shireen—they watched shadows bleed out from the floor beneath Callum, like too much ink on parchment, and attempt to strike Bramble. She swiped her hand with a scythe of fire to keep them at bay. He’d given her a lot of practice on the technique.

“We’re going to sort this out,” Bramble called over the crackle and sizzle of fire. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Bramb!” Jon shouted. Longclaw gleamed next to him, prepared to cut Callum down.

“I got this!” She didn’t take her eyes off Callum as she replied. He stood tall and beautiful in the light, brown skin beading with sweat from the heat.

“It has to be done,” he said, firm and solemn. “There’s no other way.”

“Callum!” Daenerys cried out. It physically pained him to hear her from the twisted expression on his face when he heard her voice. “What are you doing? What is happening?”

“I’m the true traitor,” Callum said, also unwilling to tear his gaze away from Bramble. He did not find much comfort in her own visage of snarling heartbreak. “I’m so sorry, Dany. I’m sorry I lied. That I’m not the friend you deserved. But I love you. That was never in question. That was always real. I love you. I love you.”

“Shut up!” Bramble grated. The fire dipped and rolled with her words. Her stomach clenched, body buzzing. The tears she meant to weep dried before they could fall. “Shut! Up! I’m about to knock some sense into your stupid fucking ass, and I’m gonna knock that stupid fucking popsicle outta ya at the same time!”

Callum had less than a second to prepare himself for Bramble barreling into him. Shadows whipped up to grab at her ankles, but she tore free of them with the help of a surge of fire around her legs. They slammed into the far wall, and she heard a definitive crack with the blow. Old magic seeped from the stone like egg yolk with the break, and both Callum and Bramble instinctively clawed at it with their senses as they grappled one another. The shadows became more resilient to the fire, and the fire more violent to the shadows. Callum was much taller, but she had more strength and more rage, and she would not lose. Not this fight, not him, not herself.

“Run!” Bramble shouted to those behind her. “Get—out of here! It’s about to get hotter!”

She could not see if they obeyed. She just trusted they did, trusted that they trusted her even though she hardly deserved any of it.

Bramble pushed Callum into the wall again. The fire that swam on the sides of the chamber rushed to her when she beckoned it and its entropic desire to burn and burn and burn until it could not anymore. Strands of her hair fell around the sides of her face, sticking to sweat. Blood trickled from both her nostrils, staining her teeth and sinking onto her tongue.

The fire smashed into Bramble’s body with a vengeance, and her bones strained under the force she had been poorly ready to take in. Creating her fire, controlling her fire—it was nothing compared to fresh, eager flame that wanted to crawl back out her throat and take her whole soul with it.

Prepare, prepare, prepare, the fire, the other voice in her head chanted with the thunder of scorching blood in her ears. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

“You think—” she panted to Callum while the arced and raced around her, too new to know to avoid clothes, so fabric warped and burnt away on their bodies. “You think—you get to do this? To me? Fuck that!”

“It’s how—it has to be!”

Protected from the worst of the heat by his shadows, Callum twisted Bramble so they rolled against the wall and switched places. He engulfed her head with his shadow-gauntleted hand and, with a wordless shout, shoved the back of her skull into the wall. Fire ruptured behind her. Her screams were muffled behind his palm, where the razor ice cold threatened to slice through her skin and into her brain, into her mind, her memory, her will.

Blue. Blue. Blue.

The freezing depths of nothing.

No!

Bramble opened her eyes to stare at Callum between his long fingers engulfing her face, irises dark green and stubborn and gleaming with the light of the fire surrounding her, within her. She then bit down and into his thumb with the fangs that the North had sharpened for her, jaw merciless. It felt as though Bramble put her teeth on a block of dry ice, like the block her dad would use in his freshman science class every year, and oh, god, Dad, why did this have to be her? Why couldn’t it have been anyone else?

But it is you, the other voice replied, hissing in the fire, loud and silent. So it must be done.

Fire poured from Bramble’s mouth as her scream grew to a pitching point. It cracked the shadow armor, cracked as all ice cracked underneath the inevitable heat of the sun. Callum yelled in pain when her teeth met flesh. When she saw that some lucidity had returned to him, she thrust her own hand out to try and slap him across the face.

It worked…in a sense. Callum got slapped, but he didn’t just project into shadows; he could also solidify them onto him like a shield layer. Whether or not he did it entirely of his own volition, she couldn’t tell. It could have also been a defense mechanism, instinctive and sudden no matter what he wanted.

Her friend became sinister when the dark crept around the rest of him. The shadow itself. The figure that crept in the corner of her eyes, the silhouette she could never escape.

“Bramble,” Callum said as black curled into his mouth. She stared at him in terror. All the fire that once illuminated the room with its blistering light had been taken in by her, leaving nothing but a dark and smoky backdrop behind him. The yawning space made Bramble feel small and helpless, and the freeze still wanted to consume her entirely. “You need to do something. Please.”

In a desperate frenzy, Bramble did do something. She jerked her head as much as she could with the pressure of his hand to get the first digit of his bone-numbingly cold thumb into her mouth. Blue, blue, blue, blue—

Bramble bit off the digit of the thumb with a crunch.

Callum screamed.

Suddenly she stumbled forward, both his blood and hers in her mouth. It sizzled and cracked with the heat of her maw, but she spat out what she could in the moment she had to stand up. Bramble thrust her shoulders back and scowled. She couldn’t afford to be paralyzed by fear again. Not if she intended to save both of them.

If Callum got to wear armor, then so could she.

Fire embodied Bramble from head to toe in a swirling fury. Should she pause, should she hesitate, the fire would go out of her in all directions, regardless of her strength. It did not like being held yet being free, and so it desired to return to its natural state of destruction outside of her body. She had to move with command and purpose—otherwise, she was nothing but a loose cannon, an ill-timed bomb.

Callum stumbled back into the side of the darkness, but before he got too far out of reach, Bramble grabbed him by the wrist, roared, and spun on her heels to pick him up and throw him against the wall again.

The ancient build of Dragonstone gave way more to the power of their magic within them and less than her sheer strength. Outside, baleful wind howled like a mad prisoner. Dragons bellowed and screeched, unseen in the wintry night but so very present in Bramble’s mind, like moving targets on a black map.

“Let’s take this outside,” Bramble huffed, and she felt like a complete dumbass saying that in the midst of the most dangerous fucking thing she would ever have to do. She kicked Callum in the stomach to send him backward. He caught himself at the last instant on the broken stones with those nine long shadow-covered fingers, so Bramble launched a flaming fist right to his head.

He fell. She followed.

Like a comet cutting through the empty night, Bramble plummeted with a trail of fire behind her. She did not see the ground until she was upon it, and then she rolled and tumbled and cracked against the rough stone. Fire spat across the rocks in her wake. Had neither of them possessed the powers that they did, they would have splattered instead of bounced.

There was no light from the moon or stars. A heavy doom of clouds covered Dragonstone, roiling in its winter cold. Once her dizzy and painful descent came to a stop, Bramble staggered upright in the pitch black surrounding them. For a moment, it felt like her flames were the only light in the entire world. A singular light against the immeasurable dark.

It was terrifying. Empty. A nightmare made living. She had come to the end of eternity and life, and nothingness stretched before her. Why hope at all when this was the inevitable? Why fight it? Why not embrace it all and rest? Why not—

Bramble hit herself in the face to jolt her from the thrall of winter’s bite. Fuck that! Fuck that! She hadn’t come all this way to give up now! She wasn’t a motherfucking pussy!

“CALLUM!” Bramble roared in the dark. The fire that consumed her spun and spiraled in the relentless wind, but it only grew brighter to battle the void. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

She would not lose sight of him. Never!

The fire amplified to cast a wider range of vision before this deceitful, vile dark found purchase to rip it away. Bramble sought him out with what little time she had through the veil of flame over her eyes. The magic that swarmed in the air like locusts made it difficult to detect him through sensing, but—there!

Bramble dove to the figure before he disappeared back into the shroud, and she wrapped her arms around Callum’s waist to drag him to the ground with her. This close, she saw that his shadow armor broke away in several places, including the right portion of his face. In the armor’s absence, Bramble took in whites of his eye and a bit of brown skin that welcomed the light of her fire when the rest of the armor deflected it.

Callum fought back, urged on by the miasma of magic that clouded over such an ancient and sacred foothold. It had no right to be here, and she would banish it, just as she would banish—the force—in him.

They shouted and cursed. Fire reared against shadow. Callum broke one of Bramble’s ribs. Bramble shattered more of the armor on his face. They performed a much more vicious dance than before, but gone was the dread and fear that swept up with each move and spin of her body. Now, now she swept and spun with malicious intent against the one who held Callum captive. She would return the sweet gaze in his eyes, his large smile, and his driven purpose to make the world a safer, kinder place.

Bramble should not have spent so long being suspicious and angry with Callum. She should have embraced their connection and rid what did not belong with swift prejudice. But she’d do it now. She’d do it, and they would continue to live and fight together for the sake of the living.

She delivered a punch that Callum could not counter in time, and when he was thrown off-balance, she thrust her fist right to his heart—right to the infection—right to the center.

Callum wailed in agony and despair.

Dragons sang.

Snow fell from the black above.

-

Seven years ago, Callum Jones found his mouth full of sour grit and warm sandstone on his back.

When he opened his eyes, the silhouettes of unfamiliar buildings greeted him. Past them, a horrifyingly beautiful tapestry of countless stars and the pale vein of a galaxy swallowed his vision.

Before Callum acknowledged it, the sight of the night sky whispered to him that he was far from home. Far from anything he knew.

He clutched at his chest and breathed in, breathed out. It was going to be alright, he told himself, even as he remembered that he had died on the worn floor of a dance studio with his friends shouting to call an ambulance, to hang in there.

It was going to be alright.

Callum found that it was not alright.

Qarth, the city called itself. Qarth, which sat at an entrance of the Jade Sea at the very edge of Essos. It decreed itself the greatest city in the world, a most ancient seat of power. The people adorned themselves in rich and colorful fabrics. Many fashionable women wore their gowns and blouses with a breast exposed, and children ran painted and naked in the streets as they played. They were a tall and proud people. Wealthy. Intelligent. Happy. Bountiful.

Slavers.

Slavers.

Callum stole clothes from a basket of laundry to cover his nakedness and wandered about the city’s gilded, beautiful streets. He drank from clean communal fountains only reserved for drinking. The days were blistering, so Callum found shade on the outskirts of the city near the massive, decorated walls. He kept himself from starving by eating the fruits that grew on the trees, but he only ate them after he saw children eating them with each other or their parents. At night, Callum slept in an alleyway, and strange, short-haired cats with large ears and tall hind legs with bobbed tails occasionally curled up with him. They would only move when his soft sobs disturbed them.

Qarth had little tolerance for the unsightly. Slaves, which Callum discovered worth simple but still fine clothes adherent to their masters’ colors, were well-washed and polite. They wore fine collars and bands to signify their status. The nicer the slaves looked, the wealthier the master. Like flaunting wealth through the nature of their property.

A dirty slave was a beaten slave. Callum’s stomach sickened the first time he saw a master take a baton to a slave’s back for touching him with dirt underneath their fingernails.

So, Callum kept himself scrubbed clean. He stole a bucket he could fill with water each night that he kept in the alleyway. The cats liked to drink from it, but he didn’t mind. He washed his clothes as best he could and sat naked against the warm stone while they dried.

The House of the Undying would not answer Callum when he knocked on their giant, ornate door. “Please,” he had tried and failed to call. “Please, I need help.”

It was for the best, in the end. The warlocks would have sacrificed Callum or locked him away if he divulged his origins to them.

But Callum could not speak at all. He had a chest full of fear and hatred and revulsion, but his throat was empty of sound.

The shadows sensed his despair as he lay curled up in the alleyway, contemplating if he could stick his head in the bucket of tepid water and drown himself. A much easier solution would be to jump in the bay and let the strange sea claim him. Because Callum would rather die starved or drowned or both than with a pretty collar around his neck and a will no longer his own.

He was so desperate of avoiding one kind of enslavement that he unknowingly entered the contract of another.

At first, the shadows terrified Callum to the point of fainting. But the cats did not seem to mind the presence of its formless creeping. They came the next night. He ignored them, yet he did not sleep out of fear.

The third night, Callum extended his fingers out to them, and when he touched the formless entity, he was greeted with something soft, something sure. They possessed no evil, no good. Just shapeless, endless existence.

Qarth stood still as a red comet streaked across the sky, like a break in the fabric of reality.

The shadows danced at Callum’s feet.

Magic swelled in the world, and what could not have been achieved for thousands of years became attainable once more.

Then, as crimson swept across the foreign stars, the shadows twisted and fled in terror. A new darkness overcame Callum, freezing him, freezing him, freezing him.

There was no whisper or word. Just cold. Just an invitation. Just a promise bound in ice.

Blue eyes of twisted death.

He offered Callum the chance to speak, the chance to have power, the chance to live, the chance to go home.

If. If the Night King claimed the world as he was bade to do, magic would be returned in full, and he could send him back to his family, his life. Didn’t Callum want that? Didn’t he want that more than anything?

Yes, Callum said. Yes.

He loved his family—more than he could ever describe—and what was one cruel, fictional world compared his real one? What did it matter?

Didn’t he enjoy the taste of the gift he had been given? The embrace of the shadows? Imagine what more he could do for himself when he had it in full?

Lie, Bramble said, distant and hoarse but clear in this course of memory. Lie.

With this power and more, Callum would bring the dragons. Bring the dragons. Bring the dragons.

He stretched out his will and accepted.

The hot climate of Qarth returned, and the comet continued its heraldic course.

Callum hummed, and his quiet chuckles echoed sweetly in his ears, his bones. He felt good. Good. Purposeful. This was not right, but it was right for him, and so it would be done.

Daenerys Targaryen came to Qarth with her three infant dragons and a broken khalasar behind her. She was dirtied and small, no more than a girl, just a girl, but she bore herself like a queen.

When Callum snuck into her presence, he took her hand and warned her, without pretense, that the warlocks intended to steal her dragons.

Ser Jorah nearly took his hand off that touched Daenerys without permission.

Callum fled back to the streets before he could be apprehended, where it’d be discovered that he had no master to return to. Hidden away, he practiced the art of the shadows. They danced with him when he called upon them—a willing partner.

The cats no longer slept with Callum, and whenever he neared them, they hissed and spat.

One night, the shadows spied that Daenerys Targaryen entered the House of the Undying. The shadows whispered of the tainted magic within the halls, the desecration of death.

They whispered that Callum had been desecrated as well. Why was this so? Why was this so? They whispered.

The Dragon Queen left with all three of her children and ships to sail upon. Callum once again approached her, and this time when he took her hand, she allowed it.

“What is your name?” Daenerys inquired. She had to tilt her head up to Callum, but he had never seen such power and resolve in a gaze like hers before.

“C-Callum. Callum Jones. And, and I have much more to tell you, i-if you’ll have me.”

Daenerys nodded once and welcomed Callum into her circle.

She was kind and just and brave and hopeful. She respected Callum and his advice. She took his counsel and his company as a friend and not just an associate. Drogon, Viserion, and Rhaegal hated Callum at first, reacting to him much like the feral cats did, but he fed them food to get to their better sides.

They grew to love him. Perhaps they discerned the curse upon him. A promise that would never be fulfilled. Perhaps they pitied him because of this, and so they gave their sympathies in the form of a relationship. But he didn’t know any better. He just missed home.

Ordeal after ordeal, loss after victory, victory after loss, Callum soon found himself forgetting the Night King’s deal—or at least he pretended he had not taken it unto himself. During that time, he told Daenerys of more events and more parts of his true origins. She was enthralled by the thought of another world, of a world with more freedom and justice and an abhorrence of slavery.

Callum grew to love Daenerys.

Daenerys, in return, loved Callum. Both of them had so much love to give in spite of their lives of grief.

And all went well, for a few years.

Then came Bramble.

Bramble, a child, washed up on the shores of Drone, naked and mute and vulnerable. Seemingly delivered by the Drowned God himself, a black cloak of death hung from her trembling shoulders, darker than Callum’s shadows, darker than night. Yet death coincided with something hot, something fervent, something wild and untamed.

Something powerful.

And Callum was called to do his master’s bidding, just as much a slave as those they fought to free and keep free, just as much a traitor as Jorah Mormont. No. Worse.

Why, why, why did she have to come? Why did she have to be here with such strength? Strength she had no idea how to wield? Strength she was undeserving of?

(Strength, Callum thought bitterly to himself, strength she did not need to swear her life and soul to have, and this made him hate her.)

And to make matters worse, she saw the shadows.

Animals mostly noticed them, as did the occasional child or those touched by magic. Because Bramble left magic in her steps like sweet honey, she saw them everywhere they followed her, and she responded in her feral way by bolting until he had to replenish his well of magic to find her again. This made it all but impossible to corral or herd her to the jaws and claws of ice.

Whenever Callum contemplated letting Bramble go to get lost or murdered or broken by this cruel, cruel world, a cold hand settled upon his heart and squeezed. It reminded him of his deal, his contract, his collar and chain. If he strayed too much, defied too strongly, then he would be embraced by eternal winter and watch as the same death that clung to her swallowed him up.

He was a pitiful, selfish boy. He wanted to stay alive so he could make this wretched world better. Give it a happier ending, give Dany a happier ending, give Missandei a happier ending, give Barristan and Jorah a happier ending—give himself a happier ending.

King’s Landing burned, burned at the behest of the Dragon Queen, Missandei’s headless body fell limp, Jorah’s blood black in the night-fallen snow, dead swelled upon Winterfell’s walls—

The world did break Bramble. Snapped her in half and half again. Sliced up her face and her soul.

Callum prayed she would not get up from the packed dirt on the farm that the Lannister soldiers desecrated. Hoped she would drown in the blood that pooled around her face. Then she would be gone, gone, no longer a disruption, no longer a threat.

But Bramble stood, mad with grief and rage, and hunted down the soldiers with the vicious hunger of a fire.

Her untamed wildness earned her in chains and on a cart to the Wall.

Callum rejoiced. His joy was wrong and vile, but the fire that had not yet fully sparked in Bramble spurred her right to the enemy, right where she should have stayed furthest from.

(But she was alone and just a girl with nobody to protect her, nobody to care for her, nobody to teach her, and so she did not know any better.)

He thought he could be free. Bramble was close enough to the Night King and his thrall; let him deal with her, the ancient defenses of the Wall, and the Red Woman’s own protective magic that dispelled Callum’s ice-tainted shadows.

In a way, Callum thought Bramble would take the deal the Night King offered. He saw her hatred for this world and these people consume her over the years. The untempered flame turned her violent and vengeful. He could direct it, use it to scour this land and its living so nothing unjust and unfair could ever again reign.

Callum did not think of what it’d mean for him, his freedom, and the world if the Night King ever truly claimed Bramble. He should have feared far more.

But his fear came only after the fact. Everything came after the fact, after, after…

After Bramble resisted the shackles, resisted the death that dripped off her. Resisted the bleak and cold to fight.

The heat of her flames brushed Callum’s face all the way in Meereen. A beacon, a call, a sign.

Fire seared at his heart, and the Night King’s grip lessened.

That night, dragons sang.

And Callum hated Bramble more for being able to fight back. But above all, he hated himself for succumbing so soon, so readily. The guilt almost made him succumb to his wounds after saving Barristan. Callum couldn’t think of a better way to die. And besides, Bramble was here. She could do more than he. She was not bound. Not beholden. Not traitorous.

I need you. I need you here with me.

But the Night King caught him before he could slip into the cool waters of death. Using Callum’s state of unconscious vulnerability, the Night King impressed his mind with instructions that he was bound to follow.

Go to Westeros. Claim Bramble. Claim the dragons. All would be theirs, united under a peaceful and unending winter night.

Callum had different intentions. If he could not be free, then—

-

Shadow shattered underneath Bramble’s power. One arm kept Callum locked to her, as though she led the dance rather than he in this event.

He could not escape from the fire, from her hand that pressed to his heart, burning, burning!

Over his wails of the incomprehensible pain of fire, Bramble forced Callum to look at her, unrepentant of the agony she caused him. “You think you can just leave me here alone?” she demanded, voice so hoarse over the battle flame that it could only be heard because she yelled at the top of her boiling lungs. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU’RE NOT GETTING OUT OF THIS THAT EASILY!”

Bramble’s gaze snapped beyond Callum to his master, his imprisoner, watching the turn of events with his blue-eyed otherworldliness—just as unnatural, if not more, than Callum and Bramble.

“And you,” Bramble spat. Her lips pulled back into a wolfish snarl. “I’ve had enough of you!”

She shoved her palm deeper against Callum’s chest to scour the infection. Fire melted ice. Flames fought cold. That was what it always did. Always. Thus was the way of the world.

In spite of the fire’s eagerness, its rush to fulfill one of its fundamental purposes in existence, the power over Callum was ancient and relentless. It would not be defeated so easily. It would not give up what belonged to it.

But Bramble was a stubborn, stupid bitch. She refused the worser pain of grief that would come with killing Callum, with losing him to the enemy.

The fire burned so brightly that she could not see any death that might have surrounded them. If it did, she cared not.

Cold bit at Bramble’s fingers, and although Callum’s flesh burned and melted where her hand lay, it was like touching ice. Like there was no fire at all.

He clung to her rather than fought her. Bramble believed he hoped he would die anyway from the sheer amount of pressure and pain and panic coursing through his body.

The fire, she realized, would not be enough. For all its rage and power that always simmered underneath her skin, threatening to turn her to ash from the inside out if it was not properly controlled and channeled, it could not burn away the seed of the Night King’s power in full. Whenever she felt as though she took the advantage, the cold redoubled its efforts.

He reminded her who held the truer, stronger power.

Ice would melt to fire? Her fire?

Bramble almost heard the sound of ice shattering like laughter.

“Shut—the—fuck—UP!”

With the last bellowed syllable, Bramble threw her head back up to the black sky that signaled the enemy’s presence.

Then she roared.

It was terribly human and embarrassingly hoarse. But it was loud.

Loud enough to call for help.

This might kill her, the voice impressed upon Bramble. It might all be for nothing.

But it had to be for something. And if she failed, then she at least died with the fury of trying, didn’t she?

Mom? Dad? Would you be proud? Or would this just break your heart?

The laughter of winter faded with the returning roars of the true children of fire, the true masters of flame, the true embodiments of ancient and powerful magic.

A chorus of three came.

Viserion, shrill and resplendent.

Rhaegal, jagged and wild.

Drogon, mighty and resolute.

The howling storm bowed to the beat of dragon wings, and the burning earth shuddered beneath their weight. From the corners of her eyes, Bramble saw Rhaegal and Viserion positioned on either side of her, close, necks craned up and heads pointed down, their maws opened and mustering vibrant-colored fire, fire whose Bramble’s own seemed but a flickering candle.

In front of her, over Callum’s shoulder, Drogon’s gold reptilian eyes glowed in the darkness.

She nodded once to him, to his siblings, then looked to Callum with reassurance. Looked to his master with reproach.

Her fire extinguished in an instant, save for the light on her birthmark. She could still see the whites of Callum’s eyes and the blue behind them.

This time, Bramble barked a laugh. It was an ugly laugh. A triumphant one.

Drogon wrenched his jaw open and bathed them in dragonfire. Viserion and Rhaegal followed.

Bramble’s vision went white. A stillness in the entropic chaos.

She wanted to float away with it. Burn away.

But no.

When her vision returned, it did not amount to much. A firestorm blinded her to everything but bits and pieces of Callum, who, only by the grit of her will, remained unharmed and whole. She did not dare glance down to test the presence of death. If it lay at their feet, then she would force it to drag them both down fighting with flame and passion.

Bramble’s bones turned molten as dragonfire coursed through her body and soul. Her and Callum’s screams became a sacrifice to the primeval and enraged and scorching, which sought out its opposite, the creature of winter and darkness and ice.

She was a thin reed of a conduit, and she barely clung to herself to keep from the fate of those she charred and burned outside of Winterfell. But Bramble thrust herself into sheer spite and stubbornness and rage—it had kept her alive this entire time, kept the fire alive, and in turn, the fire fed her the same. She could not keep the fire, not fight it back like she did when she saved a stupid man with stupid golden hair from a blazing fate; she let it flow through her, as surely as water flowed down a churning river, directed on a great and long and painful path.

So Bramble screamed more, even though it would never be enough to articulate this agony. Yet she did not regret it. She asked for it. She asked for the dragons to fly to her, to help her, and they did, and she would not let their offered flame be wasted because she was too fucking weak!

Bramble felt like her hand would press through Callum’s chest and crush his heart before she ever had the chance to save him. She had to be careful, focused, controlled—none of her best traits, but what she must fulfill if she were to bring him from the depths.

In this, Bramble thought of their dance. Callum’s graceful movements, his guidance, his good-natured teaching. His tempered dedication to the art, and underneath, joyful and bone-worn passion. The way he coincided everything within him at the perfect second to turn a gesture into an expression, a masterpiece.

He stared at Bramble with terror and trust in the swirling flames. His own hand lifted to fall atop Bramble’s to concentrate her where she swayed.

His terror was the terror of hope. The terror of thinking that there could be light instead of dark.

Bramble would not see it go out of him.

Together, they directed the gnashing, thrashing torrent to the true enemy. The fire, eager to destroy what it was always meant to, rushed to meet its opposite and swallow its reign whole.

A ringing swelled in Bramble’s ears. It sang in her boiling blood. It sang throughout their whole world.

A song of promise. A song of vengeance. A song of warmth.

Ice shattered like a splintering lake that gave way to the heat of the spring sun. Callum’s body spasmed. His screams cut short in lieu of a wide-eyed, soundless mask that bore defiance and wrath.

The sword of flame Bramble envisioned it to be cut through the ice, ringing as it pierced through the bonds. Ice yielded, just as it would always yield, as sure as time moved and blood flowed.

Freedom.

Callum breathed like he had never breathed in sweeter air, though the true air was almost nonexistent in the vacuum of the great fire. What little remained was acrid and hot. Bramble grinned a wolfish grin through the blood that melted to her face.

She lifted her hand. It fell limp. A bone white imprint where she had directed the fire’s intent into Callum splayed on his chest. A symbol of what was to come.

Then they fell onto smooth ground that reflected the moonlight. Above them, stars shone. Dragons took flight once more. Viserion trumpeted with triumph.

Bramble burned like the sun, and when her eyes fell shut, all she saw was light.

-

Those who watched the battle and the astonishment of the dragons lending their aid thought it over when the dragonfire ceased pouring and dousing Callum and Bramble. They feared they would see nothing but charred bodies or a pile of ash when the fire dissipated, but two bodies, whole, slumped onto the ember red, glassy-burning surface that warped beneath the power of fire and magic and will.

The storm that once fell upon Dragonstone only minutes ago vanished, as if it had never been there. A warm breeze stirred. The sea crashed white under the full moon.

Then a power burst from the center of the altar that the cliffside had transformed into—power from Bramble.

It was from Bramble, Jon knew with every ounce of his being. It smelled like sweet smoke and felt like a warm hearth that sheltered him from the blistering cold. It was present, unwilling to be unnoticed. And for all its brutal force that pushed everyone off their feet save for Jon and Daenerys, it was kind.

Daenerys and Jon spared but a fearful glance at each other, the only two still standing as the force radiated onward and outward in all directions, before they sprinted down to the cliffside.

-

The force snapped the sails of the ships on the sea, and it tipped the boat Yara and Theon Greyjoy stood upon. The siblings looked to the direction where it had come from, as did the entire fleet of Dornish ships behind them.

The warmth steeled Yara’s stomach, and she stepped over her dead uncle’s corpse. “Someone clean up the filth,” she commanded, voice sharp and sure. “He’s getting blood all over my deck.”

She walked to the bow of the ship and blew a horn to signal to the rest of the Ironborn fleet who came with Euron under Queen Cersei’s bidding that they were now hers, and they followed the true queen who would give them back their kingdom.

A chorus of cheers echoed across the sea.

“Yara! Yara! Yara!”

-

The force swept through King’s Landing, a warning of what would come for the Iron Throne. Those who were in the lower levels of the Red Keep swore that the dragon bones sang.

Cersei Lannister clenched her fist so it did not shake.

In the Street of Steel, blacksmiths who enjoyed the brisk winter air as a pleasant break from the swelter of the forge, stood still and uncertain when a not dissimilar heat washed over them.

Gendry paused as well.

The forges within glowed with life that had been breathed into them.

-

The force came over a girl who sat alone beside a fire. She watched the flames that kept the cold at bay roar with unnatural vigor. She sensed powerful, hot magic in the air, and her hand strayed to Needle’s hilt.

The wolves around her howled, Nymeria the loudest.

-

The force rocked a merchant boat that skirted the ruins of Old Valyria, far enough out of range to catch its curse and be lost forever. The captain of the ship and his crew uttered prayers to their gods when, in the distance, tiny pinpricks of light flicked into existence within the ruin’s domain.

-

The force ceased all idle conversation in the cave the Brotherhood without Banners sought shelter in.

Once it passed, Thoros of Myr drawled a slow smile. “Smells like fire, brothers. Old and new fire, old and new magic. It seems the Lord of Light has bid us where to go. Isn’t that right, my lady?”

A red hood pulled over her head, Melisandre settled with giving Thoros a cool stare. The hollows of her cheeks were gaunt, and she did not look enlivened with the decision.

“They will not welcome my arrival. Especially not the one whose essence of flame we felt.”

Thoros shrugged and did not reply. Instead, he looked to the hulking figure who kept his distance from the fire, which now climbed a foot higher than it once did. “Best get ready to meet your hero, Clegane. I hear she near-matched the dragon’s power at Highgarden.”

“Fuck off,” came the only reply, low and biting.

-

The force quivered the weirwood leaves. Sansa tilted her head up toward them. The scent that washed over them caused her to faintly smile. Her bones warmed with renewed strength, and she did not feel so tired, so strained. She was reminded of who would return to her side, all blunt wit and true friendship.

“Interesting,” Bran said beside Sansa. “He will be much displeased with this.”

“With what?” Sansa inquired, though she knew she would not get a straight answer from the being who wore her brother’s face.

He looked to her. Ravens cawed in the night. Snow stopped falling.

“She has stolen what was once his, and she has stolen his plan. If he cannot have a dragon, if he cannot have her, then he will find another way past the Wall. He cannot feel the heat of rage, but he will come close. And what does rage do, Sansa?”

“It makes us do what we would not do otherwise.”

“Yes. We have little time.”

In front of them, the weirwood face wept red.

-

The force rushed over the Wall and continued on, shaking snow from the forest below. Its warmth and familiarity startled those who stood atop the Wall so much that they buckled and braced themselves.

“What the fuck was that?” Edd spat. Tormund barked a single laugh. Pyp stayed on the frozen ground, muttering curses. Karsi’s gaze focused on the North, mouth grim as it had ever been.

Grenn straightened, eyes to the South.

Any responses were delayed, for the Wall began to hum. Ancient and low and vibrating, as though it had come from a deep slumber and now stretched and groaned. The brazier they huddled around leapt and danced like its fire had never known the anything but summer and dry wood.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Grenn spoke above the Wall’s song anew. He grinned. The warmth settled deep in his body. He could practically feel her beside him.

The warmth chased away his longing, his sadness.

“Bramb,” Grenn said, uncaring if anyone else listened to him or not. “I know it. With all my heart.”

“Punched me like it was her, alright,” Pyp groaned.

Tormund laughed again. “Little Crow!” he shouted like she could hear him.

“Whatever she did,” said Karsi, loud enough to draw their attention North again, “it rightly pissed someone off.”

A storm gathered far, far in the distance. It was only visible thanks to the fresh moonlight that none of them had seen in months.

That, and the icy blue wisps of light which emanated within the storm. It was beautiful in a terrible, dreadful sense.

“Gather the men,” Edd declared. He did not look away from the enemy’s stirring. “Send ravens to the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Tell them to prepare to retreat. What’s coming isn’t gonna sit around and wait anymore. We won’t let them slaughter us.”

“What do you think h-they’re going to do?” Pyp questioned, fear jittering his voice.

Nobody answered for a moment. Then Grenn said, “At Hardhome, when…when we watched the Night King raise all those dead, I…I feared for a moment that he’d freeze over the sea to come kill us. He didn’t, though.”

Grenn’s implication left them silent, but not unhopeful. Because if her power could reach them all the way up here, then…

Then as long as there was fire in the dark, they would fight to protect the realms of men.

 

 

 

Notes:

I really love this fic, but it's super difficult to write--which is why it takes forever to update! So if I have two to three chapters out per year, I'll finish in, what, 2040? Easy.

Just kidding (I think). From this last chapter, we're entering the final arc.

In all honesty, I planned to make Callum a real villain early on, but I made him so nice and I loved him so much that I figured anybody else in their right mind would have to save him rather than leave him to his fate. If anybody was confused, Callum wanted Bramble to kill him because he didn't see another way out, and he wanted to make it look like he failed to trap or enthrall her as he went.

And I hope the dragon scene was as cool for you written down as it was pictured in my head.