“‘Tell them the North remembers. Tell them winter is here.’” Arya smirked. “You should have seen their dumb Frey faces,” she said as she propped her boots up on the table and gazed at her older sister and brother.
The fire in the Great Hall still crackled, but the candles burned low. The men and women of the Northern houses had returned to their own homes to gather their forces for the Great War to Come, and Winterfell was relatively quiet at the moment. As Sansa had predicted, Jon’s heart had almost stopped when he was reunited with his beloved youngest sister, long-presumed dead. (Almost, but not quite. Good thing, too, as Melisandre had not been seen slinking about the Seven Kingdoms in ages.) The three siblings, together for the first time since the events that shattered their family and destroyed their world, were talking long into the night. Shadows, far too many shadows, played around the empty room that was silent now, save for the high pitched wail of icy winds, now a permanent feature of this cold new world.
Jon looked a bit pained, his pretty brow furrowed, but Sansa smiled the same slow smile which graced her lips as she sauntered away from Ramsey Snow, listening to her sadistic monster of a husband being devoured by his own dogs.
“Yes, winter is here,” she echoed, enigmatically staring into her cup of ale.
“To Father and Robb and Rickon and your mother,” Jon intoned solemnly, raising his cup.
As the girls touched their cups to their brother’s, their three shadows merged on the cold stone wall, briefly becoming a single majestic figure towering over the room. The siblings drank deeply, and for a moment simply basked in each other’s presence.
Sansa looked from her younger sister to her older brother. “I never thought this day would come,” she marveled. “But,” she continued, “I could have never imagined all that’s happened, either. Jon, you battled an army of White Walkers! You faced the Night’s King. You forged an alliance between the Wildlings and the North. You were murdered by your own men and brought back from the dead!”
Jon reddened slightly and smiled at Sansa. “You are a fighter too, Sansa. You escaped King’s Landing, you survived that monster Ramsey…you…barely…saved our home with your knights of the Vale…” Jon and Sansa shared an awkward laugh.
“And you, Arya!” Jon proclaimed, beaming at his younger sister. “You have traveled the world, trained with the Faceless Men…”
“And become a skilled assassin,” finished Sansa, trying to look stern, but again betraying a small smile.
Arya, so hard and so tough for so long, softened a bit. “It all began with Needle, Jon,” she said quietly. “I guess we’ve all been through hell and back,” she finished simply.
“We’re all Starks. That means we’re all survivors,” Sansa observed in agreement.
“And here we all are, home at Winterfell, back together again,” declared Jon, beaming at the girls. “What was it Father always said? ‘When the snows fall and the white winds blow…’”
“’ the lone wolf dies…but the pack survives!” they finished triumphantly in unison.
Clack-creeeeaaak. Clack-creeeeaaak.
The three siblings froze as the eerie, lonely sound of wooden wheels scraping over stone suddenly echoed from beyond the Hall. Sansa pressed her finger to her lips and the three fell silent until the now familiar noise faded into the distance. They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment, until Arya broke the uncomfortable silence.
“So what’s the deal with Bran?”
“I know, right?!” exclaimed Sansa. “I tried to warn you. I was stuck with him basically on my own for weeks before you turned up, Arya. Imagine trying to make conversation with an angsty teenager who drones on and on about trees and time and doors…and why is he so creepy-cryptic all the time? He is scaring the servants.”
“He is certainly…much changed,” Jon conceded. He had been overcome with joy to learn that their little brother, Bran, had survived two attempts on his young life, adjusted to a crippling injury, escaped the sack of Winterfell, roamed farther North than anyone had in an age, and finally found his way back home.
Jon had expected Bran to be traumatized, hardened, even…as the Gods knew they all were. But Bran returned to his family deeply weird, even by Westerosi standards. The once warm, friendly boy was now vacant, cold, and detached. Sansa, Arya, and Jon had each swept him into their arms upon being reunited with him, and each was met with a motionless “stop-touching-me” stare.
Bran had dismissed Meera Reed with nothing but a grudging, mumbled “thank you” after the girl had accompanied him beyond the Wall, saved his life countless times, lost her brother to Bran’s quest, and literally dragged him all the way home to Winterfell. He rarely answered direct questions, and conversation was all but impossible. He spoke in riddles, often seemingly to himself. He talked of seeing a raven…or was it being a raven…no one could really keep track.
By far though, Bran’s most unsettling new trait was his apparent knowledge of things he had never witnessed, like the fear in Sansa’s eyes the night of her tragic wedding, and Arya’s clandestine overseas training.
Jon grimaced as he remembered his uncomfortable encounter with Bran earlier that day in the courtyard. Jon had asked Bran, very nicely, to prepare some ledgers to record their stores of grain. Sansa had actually been quite clever to think of consolidating the harvests; now they needed to track everything properly. Bran was confined to his rolling chair, but he could still do his part for the family and for the North. Plus, frankly, Jon wanted to give the boy a task to occupy his mind, keep him too busy to mope. Bran had balked, declaring, “The Three-Eyed Raven is not an accountant.”
“Seven hells, Bran, just do the bloody ledgers!” Jon had exploded. “I don’t know anything about any ‘Three-Eyed Raven, but I do know this grain isn’t goin’ to sort itself.”
Unperturbed, Bran had turned his long, pale face and trained his piercing brown eyes on his brother. “You know nothing, Jon Snow” he whispered. Throwing his head back, Bran had cackled wildly, rolled over Jon’s toes and went barreling down to the godswood.
“We’re all changed,” observed Sansa. “But Bran is…”
“Lost?”
“Broken?”
“Kind of a jerk?” Jon finished.
The three laughed uneasily.
“As you say, we’ve all changed,” mused Arya. “None of us can come through what’s happened the same as we went in. But maybe surviving is enough. Look at all we have overcome. Look at how we all had to be broken to be rebuilt.”
Clack-creeeeaaak. Clack-creeeeaaak.
“That reminds me of something a friend once said.”
Bran had suddenly appeared at the side door to the Great Hall. He surveyed them from his chair as he slowly rolled over to the table.
Arya dropped her feet and warily moved over to make room for him.
“We didn’t notice you there, Bran,” Sansa attempted brightly. “Um, how long were you in the doorway?”
“Does it matter? The Three-Eyed Raven sees all,” the boy muttered serenely as he poured himself a cup of ale.
“Gods help us,” Arya grunted, while Jon just slapped his head in his hands.
In the soft glow of the firelight, Bran’s features seemed, almost imperceptibly, to soften a bit. “As I was saying,” he intoned, “Arya’s words reminded me of something a friend once said.”
He lifted his cup. He looked at his brother and sisters with that inscrutable gaze, but perhaps tinged ever so softly with a trace of the old Bran’s warmth and mischief.
“To cripples, bastards, and broken things.”
Sansa, Jon, and Arya paused, then one by one, smiled and touched their cups to Bran’s.
“To cripples, bastards, and broken things” the Starks proclaimed together, their four shadows now joined as one, stretching up the stone wall and filling the light cast by the flames.
They drained their cups and the three older siblings regarded their strange little brother, who despite his crippled legs and repurposed mind, was now taller and wiser than all of them.
“You’ve become a cold, cryptic, creepy little pain in the neck, but you’re still our brother,” Arya assured him.
“Your brother? I am the wind in the trees. I am the roots in the earth. I am Past, Present and Future. I am the Three-Eyed…”
“SHUT UP BRAN!”