Chapter Text
When he was a person, Uncle Bran used to climb. He climbed and climbed and then he fell and never climbed again. Now, though, he’s a dragon. Now he flies.
She looks like him, they say: the same long, freckled nose and the same sparkling, brown eyes and the same ever-smiling mouth. (The hair is Uncle Robb’s, though, all auburn and curly and wild.) And now she’s the one climbing, always scaling walls or trees--like she did just now, to perch on the thick branch of an old oak in the godswood and look down at her family, who’s gathered around the pond to cool off from the heat of the summer sun.
But Bryanna flies as well.
(Well, all right. She flew once, but she’s determined she will again.)
Aunt Arya, Gendry, and Uncle Bran only visit a few times per year, around Bryanna’s and Aemon’s namedays. The rest of the year they fly all over the world to protect those who need protecting and do other extraordinary things Bryanna dreams of doing herself one day. But on her fifth nameday, when Mother and Father were distracted, she sneaked off and climbed atop Uncle Bran and flew! She flew for ages!
She flew over the Wolfswood, where the enormous bones of Drogon lie. She flew over Bear Island, and the Bay of Ice, and even saw the Wall and waved at the wildling children playing there before returning to Winterfell. Her family waited for them on Bran’s Hill, and after she climbed down to the ground, Father hugged her so hard she had to wriggle out of his arms so she could breathe, while Mother scolded Bran for so long he curled into a ball and hid his face beneath his wing. Aemon, who was only a toddler then (and was guarded by Ghost, as if to make sure he wouldn’t take off as well), sat very very still, watching the spectacle with wide, lavender eyes and a quiet mouth.
His mouth is always quiet. No one knows why. Well, not always. Mostly. Aemon’s mostly quiet. Bryanna’s heard him say things like Mother and Father and help and no. And sometimes he whispers with his best friend Lynne and giggles. Sometimes he rides on Ghost’s back and laughs and whoops.
Sometimes Bryanna finds it annoying.
His hearing is fine! He can talk with his mouth! But you shouldn’t force someone to talk, Mother says. You shouldn’t force someone to do anything. So Aemon talks with his hands instead, and he likes it when others talk with their hands as well. That was Aunt Arya’s idea; she learned it on her travels. She’s great at it, Arya is. Mother and Father are all right, Lyra is decent, and most of the people at Winterfell know at least a few signs. But Aemon and Bryanna and Lynne are all fantastic hand-talkers--and so will the twins be, once Mother gets to push them out.
She’s been round as the moon for ages.
Bryanna swings down from the tree and lands on the soft grass with a thud. Tomorrow’s her nameday--she’ll be eight!--and she’s going to ask the gods to give her at least one baby sister. One she’ll be as good friends with as Mother is with Arya. One she’ll teach how to climb trees and ride horses and run as fast as the wind.
Bryanna would rather have direwolf puppies, of course, but that’s apparently not how it works. Sometimes when she’s jealous of the bond Ghost and Aemon share, she prays that Nymeria will return to Winterfell and be all hers. She knows in her heart that Nymeria would love her.
(Sometimes she prays that Bran would lay her an egg so she could have a dragon all of her own.)
Mother sits on a slab of stone by the heart-tree, cooling off her swollen feet in the pond. She’s wearing a sleeveless gown in the loveliest shade of river blue, with a silk ribbon tied beneath the breast and fish embroidered on the skirts with silver thread. On her pale arms run a thousand scars. Perhaps even a million. She was once married to a bad man she never ever mentions in front of the children, but Bryanna is very good at making herself small and invisible. She’s very good at hearing things not meant for her ears. (Which is how she knows that once upon a time Aunt Arya was even better at it, and could even wear other people’s faces, but she never does that any more.)
As Bryanna kneels by the tree, Mother smiles at her but leaves her be to pray. Praying is hard, though, with so many people around on whom Bryanna likes to keep an eye and ear. Father and ser Jaime sit on the other side of the pond, as always talking about something very important with ser Davos, while watching chubby little Selwyn, Lynne’s baby brother, who splashes his feet delightedly in the cold water. The tone of their voices tells her they’re discussing the realm, and that’s boring. She likes it better when they talk about the past and all the wars they fought, or when they talk about Mother and lady Brienne.
Lady Brienne’s out in the courtyard, sparring with Steffon, and she's the fiercest warrior in all the Seven Kingdoms. Probably the tallest and strongest as well. She’s even stronger than Father, and he’s incredibly strong. Bryanna is named for her, because she saved Mother from that bad man. She and someone called Theon and someone called Pod. They’re both dead, now, but Theon’s sister and her Dornish paramour visit now and then, and last time Bryanna got to stay up late and taste a spicy snake dish and listen to all the stories about Theon. In some stories he was terrible, in others he was sweet. Mother only cried at the sweet ones.
With a sigh, Bryanna gives up on praying and settles down next to Mother, who wraps her arm around her shoulders and tugs her close. While Mother picks leaves and twigs (and an acorn or two) out of Bryanna’s hair, she watches her brother and Lynne binding a garland of flowers and twigs by the hollowed tree.
They’re always doing something boring like that, something that requires sitting still: binding wreaths or practicing stitches or sketching charcoal drawings. Elner, the bard, is even teaching them how to play the harp, and says Aemon’s a rare talent. And he’s not saying so because Aemon’s a prince; Bryanna can tell the difference between truth and flattery. He’s good at his letters too, her brother. Better than Bryanna. Better than Shireen and even Little Sam, they realized last time the Tarlys visited, even though Aemon is so much younger. Lynne is good at numbers and knitting and other boring things, and sometimes Bryanna wants to put her hands on her hips and scream so that the walls of Winterfell rumble, because why don’t they ever want to do something fun?
Sometimes she feels just like that tree, gaping and hollow, and then she likes to hide in its maw and sulk and sulk until Father finds her and pulls her out and hugs her until it feels better.
Well, unless she finds that the tree is already occupied, that is. Not by sulkers but by kissers. If you step into that hollow with the one you love, you’ll be together forever, they say. So, servants and Wintertown folk sneak in there for a kiss, and those who are wed by the heart-tree like to pop inside first, for good luck. There’s even a song called The Gaping Tree, and Bryanna knows it’s about Mother and Father, who once stood in there in the midst of winter and fell in love.
Ser Jaime nudges Father in the side and nods at Aemon and Lynne, who are trying to attach the garland so that it hangs across the entrance to the hollow. He grins widely, but Father only shakes his head in exasperation while ser Davos chuckles to himself.
Lynne’s not even seven and Aemon’s only a touch older than six, and yet everyone already thinks they’ll marry one day. At least once every moon, ser Jaime asks Mother and Father to just arrange the betrothal already and announce to the world that Lady Catelyn Tarth and Prince Aemon Stark are intended to marry once they’re grown, but Mother and Father only laugh and refuse while lady Brienne frowns at her husband.
It’s stupid. Aemon wants to be a Maester, not a husband, just like that great great granduncle whose name he shares. But then Sam Tarly’s a Maester, and he has a wife and three children. And Aemon does go very still and very quiet--even his hands still--whenever someone mentions that Lynne one day will have to leave them, for her grandfather won’t live forever and one day she’ll be Lady of Evenfall.
That’s not yet, though. Not yet for years, if the gods are good, and Bryanna reckons they are.
(And she’s not just thinking that because she wants a baby sister. Honestly, she’s not.)
“What did you pray for?” Mother asks, absentmindedly stroking her belly.
“A sister. If I get one, can I name her?”
“I suppose that depends on what you’d name her.”
Humming thoughtfully, Bryanna looks at their surroundings for inspiration, looks at the dragonflies darting across the pond, quick and light.
“I like Jenny,” she says. “From the song.”
Mother smiles and brings her fingers to the dragonfly pendant around her neck. She’s worn it for as long as Bryanna can remember. When she was little, whenever she sat in Mother’s lap, she used to fidget with it and watch the sunlight gleam in its pretty eyes. Sometimes, after Father kisses Mother, his eyes drop to the pendant, and then they share a look, one Bryanna doesn’t understand. She just knows it means luck, that pendant. That it protects you. She knows she’s wanted one just like it all her life.
“Jenny is nice,“ Mother says. “Or perhaps Jeyne…”
She smiles, but it’s one those sad smiles that means she’s thinking about all the people she’s lost, people Bryanna never got to meet. She hates it when Mother is sad. It makes her chest ache and eyes burn, so she jumps to her feet and cartwheels around the pond so that Mother’s laughing and clapping her hands.
The horns sound. Arya’s here! Bryanna puts her foot down all wrong and stumbles. Mother gasps, but Father catches Bryanna easily before she falls into the water, and puts her back on the ground, dry and safe.
“There you go,” he says and kisses the top of her head. “All right?”
A curtain of locks has fallen over her eyes, and she combs it back and gives him a wide grin. Smiling, Father strokes his knuckles over her cheek before moving over to Mother and pulling her to her feet. It’s quite the chore. She pants and huffs and groans and mutters under her breath that those bleeding babies should come already and how terrible it is to be pregnant during summer and she feels as if she’s boiling and why won’t winter just come? Father only strokes her belly and kisses her lips and her cheeks and her nose, too, which has freckled under the sun, until she’s smiling again. That’s what he does. He makes her smile, just like Bryanna does, only in a different way.
“I’m never letting you near me again.” Mother narrows her eyes at him. “Ever.”
“You say that every time, Sansa, and yet…”
He gives her a weird look that makes Mother giggle and swat at his chest. They’re so strange sometimes, but it doesn’t matter. Aunt Arya’s coming!
Whenever she visits, she’s wearing something new, something she bought in a faraway place, and Bryanna always makes Mother sew something similar for her. Last time it was knee breeches with a leather vest over a beautiful tunic with puffy sleeves and floral embroidery on the chest, and it’s what Bryanna is wearing today. When Arya sees her clothes, she’ll beam and say, “Look at you!” because she always does, and Bryanna will feel like she could be a hero one day too, one who rides dragons and saves the smallfolk from bandits and swings her very own Needle.
“I hope they’ll stay for a long while this time. I hope they stay forever and ever.”
“As do I,” Mother says.
Father hums in agreement and offers her his arm to lean on, but Mother doesn’t notice. She’s gaping at something farther ahead, and they all follow her eyes to see what’s surprising her so.
Aunt Arya and Gendry are already in the godswood! Bryanna runs forward, two, three steps, before she notices the babe in Arya’s arms.
Aunt Arya has a babe. A babe! Now everyone’s gaping. And everyone’s talking all at once--even lady Brienne is there, all red and sweaty from sparring--and they’re showering the new parents with so many questions Arya finally barks at them to calm down. She settles down in the dappled shade of the heart-tree and, with Father’s help, Mother sinks down next to her. And there they sit, looking as different as the sun and the moon, grinning at one another like two children.
Bryanna sneaks closer to get a good look at the babe.
It’s a boy with black hair and blue eyes, all small and wrinkly. Three days old, born on a ship right as it arrived at White Harbor. Arya’s mad for traveling while pregnant, everyone says, but she only laughs at them and tells them she at least travelled by boat and carriage. She’s not been able to ride on Bran’s back for ages.
“His name is Robb,” Arya says, carefully, and looks at Mother with worried eyes. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not.”
Mother smiles that sad smile again. She rarely talks about the baby they lost. He was born a moon before Bryanna’s fifth nameday and they called him Robb. He was barely a day old when he stopped breathing. Bryanna never even got to see him. Father never talks about him at all and if someone else mentions him, he leaves the room.
Maester Wolkan says it happens in all families, and Bryanna knows ser Jaime and lady Brienne lost one in the womb before they had Selwyn, but for some reason Father blames himself. Bryanna has no idea why. She asked Mother, once, and she just said Father’s a brooding sort of man, which made little sense. Father’s the happiest person Bryanna knows.
But then everyone says Bryanna is the happiest little girl, and sometimes she’s not happy at all. Sometimes she feels like that tree.
(Perhaps she gets that from him.)
There’s pain in his eyes now, too. But he smiles through that pain and, with his finger, lifts baby Robb’s tiny hand and gives it a kiss.
“A beautiful name for a beautiful boy,” he says and Arya breathes out in relief.
“How long will you stay, this time?” Mother asks. “Please tell me you’ll at least stay for a moon.”
“Well”--Arya glances at Gendry--”we were hoping we could stay for even longer. Now that Robb’s here… We want to be around family. If you have room for us.”
Mother nods, her eyes filled with happy tears, and they share an awkward hug around her huge belly and the bundle of baby Robb in Arya’s arms.
Bryanna’s prayers already got answered--they’ll stay!--and yet she feels oddly disappointed. Everyone has eyes only for baby Robb--even little Selwyn has toddled close to see what all the hubbub’s about--while Bryanna and the pretty clothes she took such care in choosing this morning are all forgotten.
But then she feels a warm little hand in hers. Aemon. He looks up at her with wide eyes beneath a mop of thick almost-black hair, and tugs her with him to the hollowed tree where he sits down on the mossy ground. A pile of flowers lies by his left knee, a pile of twigs by his right, and he hands Bryanna a bunch from each.
She’s not good at this. Her fingers are too clumsy and it’s hard to sit still and focus when her legs tell her to run and climb. But she tries, and when she struggles, Aemon leans in close and guides her stupid fingers.
Most of the time her little brother is annoying and strange, but sometimes he’s all right.
-----
After a good night’s sleep, Bryanna feels a bit better. Today is her day. She skips out of her chambers, her pretty emerald-green dress swishing so satisfyingly with each step, and follows her family to the godswood. There, by the pond, beneath a ceiling of garlands running between the trees, stands a table full of all her favorite foods! Applecakes and honey-glazed rabbit and buttered carrots and boiled eggs and purple olives and crumbled cheese and oatbread baked with plums. She eats and eats until she fears the seams of her dress will burst.
Aunt Arya’s barely touched her food. Robb’s a fussy baby who wants the breast all the time. But Aemon was fussy too, and Mother learned a trick from the Free Folk, who use a sort of sling tied around the chest where the baby can lie. It’ll free Arya’s arms. So now Mother’s sitting beside her sister, curled over a swath of linen, weaving a needle through the fabric while Arya watches.
She’s not even given Bryanna a nameday gift.
Bryanna can’t help but stare grumpily at them and the stupid baby.
Father catches her eye across the table and smiles warmly at her. He leaves his seat and picks her up off the chair, as if she were a small child when she’s eight, but it’s all right. Just this once, it’s all right, and she snuggles her face into the crook of his neck.
“Babies are so boring,” Father says and yawns widely.
“They don’t even do anything,” Bryanna mutters.
“No, they really don’t. You know what’s not boring?”
“What?”
“Flying.”
-----
Clad in breeches and a tunic, now, she climbs up Bran’s Hill with Father trailing behind her. Bran lifts his head when Bryanna approaches and does a little bow that means hello. She bows her head too and does her best to hug his enormous body. He’s always so warm, Uncle Bran, like sitting by the hearth or lying on a sun-baked cliff or jumping into the hot springs. She likes that.
She looks at Father to ask him whether Bran can lay eggs, but finds him watching her with his eyebrows tugged together, like when something’s troubling him, and she thinks about the story of the Night King, when Father fell and fell and fell.
“I won’t fall,” she says, scratching Bran’s scales. “I promise.”
“I know.” Father drops to his haunches in front of her and strokes her hair tenderly. “You’re a good girl, Bryanna. You’ll be a good queen, one day.”
“I don’t know if I want to be queen,” she murmurs, looking at him through her lashes, because she’s never before said it out loud. “Perhaps I want to do something else.”
To her relief, Father only smiles. “Then you’ll do something else.” Patting Uncle Bran, he looks up at the dragon. “Can I fly with you? I only did fly that once. Well, twice but...”
“Of course you can, Father!”
“Not just yet,” someone pants behind them.
It’s a very winded Mother, her cheeks deep pink and glowing from sweat. Father rushes to her side and winds an arm around her back, gently chiding her for making the climb, but she dismisses him with a wave of her hand.
“I wanted to give you something, sweetling.” Mother removes her dragonfly pendant and hangs it around Bryanna’s neck. “This pendant is lucky. It will protect you and make sure you come back to me.”
“It’s only flying, Mother. Honestly,” Bryanna says, all but rolling her eyes, but she does tuck the pendant underneath the tunic before thanking her mother with a kiss on the cheek.
And once she and Father are seated, his strong arm around her waist, she does close her eyes and touch the pendant for luck. But then Bran starts moving, and clutching his ridges with both hands, she leans forward and shouts her joy into the the wind as they take off.
-----
When they return, the sun stands high in the sky and Mother has left, but Arya and Gendry waits for them instead. Baby Robb lies in his sling, but it’s tied around Gendry, and Arya’s empty arms are stretched out and welcoming. Bryanna scrambles down to the ground and runs and runs and throws herself into Arya’s embrace.
“Look at you!” Arya spins her around and it’s almost as good as flying. Almost. “My little dragon-riding princess. I have a gift for you.”
“You do?”
“What, did you think I’d forgotten?”
“No, of course not,” Bryanna says, casually, but she can tell by the quirk of Arya’s mouth that she sees through the lie.
(She always does.)
Aunt Arya lifts a roll of fabric from the grass behind her and Bryanna’s heart sinks in her chest. Fabric.
It’s pretty, granted, and Father always gives Mother fabric and she loves it. Whenever he leaves Winterfell to do whatever it is kings do (even though he once swore he’d never leave again, which Mother reminds him of each time before kissing him for so long it’s embarrassing), he returns with silks and lace and ribbons and buttons and pearls and whatever else Mother wants. Then she spends a week or two sewing something for herself, and once it’s done and she swans around Winterfell in a dreamy creation in rosy pink or ocean blue or periwinkle purple, Father looks at her as if she’s the most beautiful star in all the sky.
Bryanna can’t sew, though. But she can pout. She’s terrific at pouting.
When Aunt Arya sees her expression she laughs and opens the fabric to reveal a skinny little scabbard. Out of it, she pulls an ever skinnier sword. At first Bryanna thinks it’s Needle, but then she sees that the hilt is different. The grip is wrapped with black leather, not brown, and the pommel is carved from weirwood.
“A quick sword for a quick girl,” she says and offers it gingerly to Bryanna. “Gendry made it for you.”
Bryanna glances at Father, who nods, and she takes the sword from her aunt’s hands. Sunlight bounces off the blade, dazzling her; it’s the most beautiful thing Bryanna’s ever seen.
“What’s its name?” she whispers.
“You decide.” Arya smiles at her. “And then, when Robb gets a little older, I’ll train with you. I’ll teach you how to water dance. Would you like that?”
Bryanna’s so happy her eyes sting. All she can do is nod and beam and blink away the tears.
“Jon,” Arya says, looking up at Father. “Sansa’s water broke. She’s at...”
But Father doesn’t hear the rest of that sentence. He’s already rushing down the hill as though she told him Winterfell was on fire.
-----
That night, when Bryanna lies down to sleep, she puts the sword on her nightstand so that she can admire it in the soft candlelight. Direwolves run along the length of scabbard, and she counts them until her eyelids feel heavy. The next day, after she’s dressed in knee breeches and a simple tunic, she ties it to her hip immediately and marches about in her room to feel its weight, to get used to it. She’s admiring herself in the looking glass when someone knocks on the door. Father peers inside. From the proud and tired look on his face, she already knows what he’s going to say.
“The twins are here?”
He nods. “The twins are here. Would you like to meet them?”
Mother and Father’s chambers are dimly lit. She lies in bed, a babe on each arm, completely still and pale like death. Her white lips are slightly parted and Lyra’s dabbing her forehead with a damp cloth. Bryanna can’t breathe. Her hand moves to the pendant still hanging around her neck. She forgot to give it back and now...
But Father looks so calm. He wouldn’t look calm if-- Bryanna can’t even think it. But, just to be safe, she removes the dragonfly pendant and lays it on Mother’s chest. Her eyes flutter open and she breathes in deeply through her nose, focusing her gaze on Bryanna.
“Hi, sweetling,” she says, voice as frail as butterfly wings.
“Mother, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m tired, that’s all. It was…” She sighs, but it’s through gently curved lips. “The toughest one yet. You got your wish, though. A brother and a sister.”
“A sister?” Bryanna peers at the babies. Their eyes are closed, but one is silver-blond of hair and the other is as dark as Father and Aemon. “Which one?”
Mother nods at the black-haired baby, and then she notices the pendant lying on her breast and tugs her eyebrows together. “I thought you wanted that?”
“You should keep your dragonfly,” Bryanna says. “I have my own.”
When Mother looks at her with a puzzled expression, Bryanna pulls the sword from the scabbard at her hip and holds it out in front of her. The candlelight catches in its slender blade. She can so easily picture it dancing before her, sunlight bouncing off the steel as the blade darts to and fro, quick and light, and she knows she’s found its name.
“Aunt Arya gave me this sword. I’ve named it Dragonfly. It will keep me safe.”
Part of her expects Mother to laugh, they way she does sometimes when Bryanna’s being very serious, but now Mother only gives a solemn nod and says, “A good name. Do you have names for your sister and brother as well?”
“Honestly, Mother. I can’t name everything.”
Mother does laugh then, a small laugh behind closed lips, eyes already drifting shut. Bryanna feels Father’s warm hands on her shoulders. She sheaths the sword and lets him usher her out of the chambers so that Mother can get her rest.
-----
When she was a little girl, Aunt Arya was fierce and headstrong and full of adventure. She was swift as a deer and quiet as a shadow and learned how to fight from the First Sword of Braavos.
Bryanna’s just like her, they say, and now she’s the one balancing on a thick oak branch, practicing her water dancing, Dragonfly whipping through the air just like its namesakes who are hovering over the godswood pond, where her family has gathered to cool off from the heat of the summer sun.
Aemon and Lynne play hand-clapping games, while Selwyn naps between his parents on a blanket in the shade of the heart-tree. Mother’s there as well, on her favorite slab of stone, reading important documents, while Father’s keeping an eye on the twins. Eddara and Calen have just learned how to crawl and they’re always off in opposite directions, as if they're intent on driving Father mad. Plump little Robb, though, merely gnaws contentedly on his fingers without caring in the least that he’s five days older and should crawl as well. At least if you ask his impatient mother.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Father says and turns Eddara around before she tumbles into the pond. “Once he starts moving, you won’t get a moment of rest.”
“Good!” Arya folds her arms across her chest with a grumpy frown. “I don’t want rest! It’s boring.”
Gendry laughs at his wife and kisses her hair. He always does that when she’s angry, as though he loves her a little bit more than usual when she scowls and snaps. Ser Jaime only ever kisses lady Brienne when they think no one’s watching, because Brienne likes that best, while Father kisses Mother as often as he can.
No one has a happier marriage than the King and Queen in the North, they say, and joke about how the King’s lips rarely go an hour without touching the Queen’s skin. But Bryanna knows other marriages are equally happy, even if they look a bit different. She knows it because of Aunt Arya and Gendry, who even though they tease each other and argue all the time, still make each other laugh the way no one else can. And she knows it because of Lady Brienne and ser Jaime.
He gave up Casterly Rock, they say, because he was hoping she’d one day whisk him away to Tarth and make him hers. She did, in a way. She whisked him away to Winterfell, so that their children could grow up with Bryanna and her siblings and finally heal the wounds between the Starks and the Lannisters.
They say Mother asked them to in a letter once.
The end.