Chapter Text
o. prologue
He had dreamt this dream before. Many times before. It always started with the oak and bronze doors opening, as if pulled by invisible chains. He would walk into a cavernous great hall, many times the size of the one at Winterfell that he knew. High, narrow windows on the eastern and western walls let in the bright sunlight that illuminated the dragon skulls lining the way. Some of them were taller than ten men. The further he walked, the smaller they became, until he could look at them in their empty eyes without raising his chin. And all of them watched from black-bone empty sockets as he passed, their gaze knowing and piercing and unloving.
A carpet led to a raised iron dais, to what he knew was the Iron Throne. He’d never seen it, but did not need to have done, to know it. And in his dreams it was a living thing. A hulking beast with narrow steps leading to a gaping mouth and a spine made of steel thorns. They poked out in all directions and moved with true breath. Bran could feel fanning on his face, flapping his clothes. It made him feel hot, as if he was standing at the mouth of the stove in Winterfell’s kitchen. Only worse.
There were people in the hall too, in every one of his dreams. All around him and in the galleries upstairs lining balustrades, watching him. And though he could hear whispering in the air, none of their mouths moved, and their eyes were unblinking. They followed him, heads turning, bodies not moving. He was not welcome here; he knew. But there was someone he had to find. It was the reason he kept having this dream – he knew that too. No one had told him this. No one could have. But he knew it as surely as he knew where to put his feet and grip his hands climbing the stone walls of Winterfell; he knew it as he knew his own name, as clearly as hearing her call that name with every beat of his heart. He knew. Yet he never managed to find her. The moment he caught a glimpse of the red of her hair, the profile of a face that might have been hers, the crowd would set upon him and tear him limb from limb the way he’d seen wolfhounds tear a fox apart in the winter snows of the Wolfswood. Yet every time, when the great oaken doors opened, he would walk in anyway, despite the fear, despite the knowing. Because she was here. She was here and she called to him; he must find her. And this time… this time he would. The awareness of this grew in him in that strange way of dreams, as if it was a story he was making up himself even as he experienced the truth of it unfolding. When he caught a glimpse of red among the bodies if the hall, he froze, bracing for the attack- but it did not come.
The surprise of the change made his heart beat faster. It made him afraid.
It was true. It would be true. He would find her this time.
His heart was almost in his throat.
He pushed forward between the bodies of the crowd, their hungry eyes scraping at his skin like claws. The whispers were growing louder. Like the sound of the sea waves breaking against the cliffs of the White Knife, they were incessant and as she passed close to the Iron Throne, they were almost screaming. Bran started running, passing so close beneath the Iron Throne that when the great beast heaved, its fire-hot breath almost knocked him backwards. He scrambled up into his feet as the great thorned beast seemed to stretch, as if waking from a deep sleep. The noise of metal scratching against metal grated on Bran’s ears and made his skin break out in gooseflesh. He started running just as he screaming started behind, the sounds of countless bodies heaving cross the hall in his direction. There was a door behind the hulking mass of the throne, almost hidden by its dark shadow. He only saw it because she went through it. Bran hurled himself after her - and then almost fell down the winding narrow staircases that the passage had led him to. The door closed, smacking against his shoulders, pushing him forward. He had to brace himself against the cold wet walls, as all light was sucked out from around him.
All sound was gone too. There was no one there. Nothing. No throne of swords that breathed fire, no more empty eyes watching him nor pale red stones trapping him. It was black as night there, and cold. He could not see an inch in front of him, but with every step he descended he knew it not to matter.
Bran would know this place by touch alone. As he knew he should not be here either, because she could not be here. No living Stark belonged here.
He came across the kings and queens of old, wolves at their feet, iron swords across their laps. The faint glow of a torch flickered further in, throwing their long faces into relief in the unsteady, dancing light. In the half-dark, he heard the scrape of stone against stone. It made the hair at the back of his neck prickle, the danger so palpable could not swallow his heart down, so hard was it beating in his throat. What are you doing here, he wanted to ask as he put one foot after the other. You should not be here. You cannot be here. It’s not your time. It cannot be. But he dared not utter a word. Here too the eyes of the winter kings and queens followed him, and the granite wolves turned their heads as he passed, but he did not fear them. What waited for him closer to the light was going to be worse.
And there she was there. In front of father’s empty crypt, she was there. Torchlight bathing her in an unsteady glow, hiding half of her in the dark, with her shadow flickering against the granite walls, dancing, while she kept stone still. Taller – that was the first thought he had. She was taller than he remembered. Her face sharper, her hair longer, her eyes sad. She was there. And the lid of father’s crypt was opened.
Bran meant to call her name, he did. He meant to run to her, hug her as he had before she’d left. Ask her why she’d led him here, what she wanted from him. But he could not speak. He was frightened of her. And even in a dream that was to him unnatural and strange.
She looked at him then, and Bran shivered. It seemed as if she meant to say something, but though her lips moved, she did not make a sound. The fact seemed to distress her. She brought her hand up, as if to touch him, and that was he saw it. It was not a torch she was holding. The fire was in her hand. A red coal clutched tight between her fingers. Blood dripped from her fist.
Bran did not scream. He could not. He could not move. Could not reach for her, could not speak. Could not understand what he was seeing.
The flame started licking up her arm, as if his understanding had made it come alive. It licked the bodice of her dress, snagging there, scorching her long hair. Sansa’s eyes slowly rolled back into her head, until he could see only the whites of her eyes, shot with the red of bursting vessels. Tears of blood swelled and fell down her cheeks, thick rivulets burning their way down her skin, which had become waxen, grey. Dead. Her mouth dropped open, as far as it could go and then lower, impossibly, the sound coming from her throat like a scream coming from very far away, until it became deafening. It shattered through him and he finally flinched back, tripped and fell hard on the ground through it, falling, falling then rising, rising up on his bed, gasping for air, sobbing from the echo of a pain so sharp that it brought tears to his eyes even while knowing it was not his. He was drenched in sweat, heart hammering in his chest, shaking like a leaf in the wind. He looked around with wide, terrified eyes, afraid she’d be there still. She was not, and that was more terrible still.
He pressed his face into his pillow and let himself cry with great heaving sobs.
some random pics i collected based on vibes alone, for this chapter