Fic Entry #3: In My Dreams, Wolf and I
Author: caitlinlaurie
Title: In My Dreams, Wolf and I
Pairing: Benjen Stark/Meera Reed
Prompt: this image
Count: 7,653
Rating & Warnings: T
Summary: In a little cave in the Frostfangs, Meera Reed meets a hero from a story come to life, and comes full circle.
They came for her by moonlight. For weeks she had been kept in a small dank room, with plenty of food and water, but no way out. It was only too late that she realized the food the Children had been giving them had been drugged, dulling her senses and delaying her reaction time. Still, when they captured her, Meera managed to kill one of them, which was a small comfort.
Jojen was dead. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but it was there, racing through her blood with a certainty that beat like a drum in her heart. Her entire life, she had protected him, and now there was nothing left to protect. A sob burst out of her mouth, and she clutched her knees to her chest. Meera wished that she had never left the Neck. If she had been there now, her mother would be sitting behind her, brushing Meera’s long brown hair and singing her a Dornish lullaby. She was seventeen and a maiden flowered, but there were some things she had never grown out of. Only with her mother could she be weak, or feminine. Only with her mother could she relax.
From the moment her brother contracted grey water fever, Meera had been thrust into the role of heir to Greywater Watch. She had put away her dresses and bound her hair up in a knot, and with it her dreams of a lord husband had been discarded as well. Oh, she would marry, but she would be the Lady of Greywater, and she would be giving the commands. That had never been her dream. When she was a little girl, no taller than a lizard-lion, she had wanted to leave the bogs and travel all over Westeros. To see the Isle of Faces, or Dorne, or Winterfell-it didn’t much matter. She planned to become like the women of Bear Island, with a babe suckling in one arm and an axe in her hand. Or like the spearwives of the Wildlings, who it was rumored cut off one breast so that they could aim their arrows better.
Meera loved the Neck, but she had always wanted to be someplace else. Her brother, she knew, loved Greywater with a fierceness that all heirs had. He had tried to give that love to Meera, to show her why it was such a perfect place, but his sister had never quite felt it. Guilt filled her now for the resentment she had felt towards Jojen at times. She should have been a better sister.
The heavy iron door opened with a screech, and Meera moved onto the balls of her feet. Pretending to look defeated, she hung her head and watched Leaf enter through her eyelashes. The child looked at Meera with her guileless cat eyes, cocking her head to the side when she took in Meera’s state. “You should not fear for the Bran boy. He has reached a great state of being.”
Meera looked up, disgust etching her features. “We trusted you. We came with you in good faith, and you led my brother to his death, and my prince to-”
“The Bran boy will go down, into the stones, into the roots. He will become one with the trees, and they will sing his song forever. It is a great fate he has been chosen for,” Leaf said, her nut-brown skin shimmering in the reflected light. “My people are few, and soon they will be gone, but we had strength enough to endure until Brandon Stark could come.”
Bran’s words echoed in Meera’s head, the ones he had said to her late one night, when he was reflecting on what Leaf had said about her people’s time coming to an end. Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sings sad songs, where men would fight and kill. Men would survive. Meera felt as though she stood outside herself in that moment, as though she was watching another girl trapped in that dank cave.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, her voice sounding very far away.
“When the time is right, you too will be part of the trees and roots. Bran cannot let go of his mortal form until all his ties are severed.” Leaf’s cat eyes met hers. “You are the last tie he has.”
Men would not be sad.
The histories tell stories about the crannogmen, Papa. They say we grew close to the Children of the Forest. Is that true?
Men would be wroth.
Feel that wind, brother? Look how large the world has grown.
Men would survive.
I will be Father’s heir, Jojen. Worry not for the future of our house.
Later, Meera would never quite remember what happened next. She knew that she jumped up, rushing for the door, but how she made it up through the labyrinth of tunnels, clutching the sword she had taken from the crypts of Winterfell with the Children chasing after her, was a mystery. She only knew that one moment she was inside, and the next the crannogwoman was knee-deep in snow.
~*~
The wind was howling and whipping through the trees. Flurries rushed past her face, and a cold that Meera had forgotten in all the months she had been below ground, forcibly returned to her. Still, she pushed herself forward. If she was going to die, she would do it on her own terms. She would fight and run and survive for as long as she could, and pray that it was enough. The wind sliced through her clothes, making her feel as though she was standing naked in the snow. Tears rolled down her face, only to freeze on her cheeks. Down and down the hill she went, moving as quickly as possible. It took all her hunting experience to continue walking in a straight line, and she imagined that for anyone else, they would have been lost easily. Meera had no destination in mind, simply away.
She wandered for ten hours, until the sun was sinking in the sky. Once it got dark, and the temperature dropped, Meera would die. She felt almost calm about it. Was this how her brother had felt all those years? Was it worth it to die, if it was a death of your own choosing? An impotent cry welled up in her throat, as she realized what a waste her brother’s death had been. All that way only to realize that there were worse things that the ones who had been hunting them. She felt so betrayed by Leaf and the others, and wanted nothing more than to fall to her knees and rest in the snow. Her father had once told her that it was how the clansmen of the mountains often died. They simply left their homes, especially in bitter endless winters, and went for a walk in the snow. It was painless, he had told her.
Did you know, Father? Did Jojen tell you how I would die?
There was something almost elegant about it. Fitting in a way. She came north with Jojen, and she would die in the north with Jojen. Her beloved baby brother, who she should have told to forget his dreams and stay in Greywater.
Her fingers were getting numb, and her toes too, despite how much she used them. Soon. She felt her cares dissipating, and was resolved to just drop and fall forward when-there! Before her, like a mirage in the snow, she saw a sliver light from a cave. Meera suddenly had a burst of energy, and she rushed forward and up, hoping that this was not the cave of the Children. At the mouth of the entrance, she crept in, moving forward slowly. To her right, she noticed that there were some odd markings in the walls. They looked almost like runes, though they were not any ones that Meera knew. When she moved inside, almost immediately her skin broke out in painful tingling as it tried to get used to the warmth again. She wiggled her fingers, breathing a sigh of relief as feeling returned to all of them. No frostbite then. Tugging off her gloves, she crept forward, her fingers wrapping around the pommel of the sword she had once taken from the crypts of Winterfell.
The ground was hard under her feet, but not made of rock. It was a dark, rich dirt that had been firmly packed over time. Meera wondered if she wasn’t walking into yet another trap. One foot in front of another, my girl. That is the only way you will ever get any place. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, but Meera knew she had to go forward. To go back, would mean certain death. She took another step, when suddenly she was grabbed from behind.
The man, for he had to be a man being so tall, practically melted out of the shadows. For Meera, who had been a hunter most of her life, it was a rare person who could catch her off guard, but she knew that there must be lingering traces of the sedative the Children had given her in her body. The stranger’s arms wrapped around her like steel bands, lifting her off the ground. Her legs began to kick backwards, and he grunted when she made contact with his shin, but he did not let go. Her attacker ripped the sword from her hands, and pinned her to the ground. He threw the sword to the side, turning her over and putting a knife to her throat.
His eyes widened when he took her in, a soft light blue under his black cloak which shrouded his face in shadow. A scarf was wound around his mouth and neck, and he was dressed head to toe in black. Not even his hands were visible. Meera wondered if she had wandered into Cold Hands’ layer, but then she noticed the man’s chest heaving. She relaxed imperceptibly, looking up at him.
“A girl,” he murmured in awe, as if he had not seen her kind before. She tensed, knowing the danger Wildlings posed to unmarried maids, but he made no move to rape her. He simply looked at her for a long moment, his eyes tracing every feature on her face. The man looked at her in deep confusion, taking in her garb and noticing the broach on her cloak. He then looked over at the sword that he had moved out of her reach, and tensed. The man, who had been at the point of relaxing moments before, immediately pressed the knife back to her throat.
“Where did you get that sword?” he growled, his chest heaving.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she demurred, looking away. She might hate the Children, but she wasn’t going to lead Wildlings to Bran. If they found out a son of Eddard Stark was beyond the Wall, there was no telling what they might do.
He pressed the knife tight against her neck, the cold steel so close to ending her life. “Where. Did. You. Get. The. Sword?”
Meera glared at him, but said nothing.
“Grave robber,” he spat.
Her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
The man pulled back his hood, and unwound the scarf from his mouth. Once he revealed his face, Meera was instantly reminded of Eddard Stark, who had visited the Neck only once on the way home from fighting in the Greyjoy Rebellion, when she was seven. This man looked much like him, only his face was softer and his eyes blue. The indentations around his mouth told her he was easy with smiles, but there was nothing happy about his face now. “Because I know the crypts of Winterfell better than most,” he told her, “and that sword specifically. It was my father’s, and I was the one who placed it on his statue’s lap.”
“Benjen Stark?” Meera gasped out. “But, I thought you were dead!”
“And I thought my father’s shade was at rest,” he snarled, reminding her forcibly of his sigil. “It seems we were both wrong. Now, where did you get this?”
“Winterfell,” she stuttered out, afraid of the dark look in his eyes. “We all took them from the crypts. Prince Bran, Hodor…”
He released her then, and she allowed her head to drop to the ground. “Tell me everything,” he bit out. “Starting with why you call Brandon Stark ‘Prince Bran’.”
Meera opened her mouth to speak, her teeth chattering, but before she could, Benjen yanked her up from the ground and led her deep into the caves.
~*~
It felt as though they walked forever. They went through several twisting turns, passing by even more runic carvings in the walls, until she was led into a wide open cavern with ceilings as high as the Queenscrown, which opened out onto an underground lake. Tendrils of steam rose up above the lake, and Meera realized it was a hot springs. Benjen pushed her over to the large fire pit, sitting her down in front of it.
She wondered how it was that such a small fire had been a light leading her through the darkness.
“Here,” he said. “Your body is not yet acclimated, move all your extremities to get the blood flowing.” Benjen then handed her a wineskin. “And drink this.”
Meera began to shiver, as if by command. Nothing had ever tasted so good as the wine going down. For a good hours’ time, she sat before the fire, shivering and sipping warmed wine. When the shivering had abated, she began to speak. She told him of Lord Stark’s execution, of King Robb and Theon Greyjoy, and the sack of Winterfell. She told him about hiding in the crypts, and leaving on foot. She spoke about the trek north, and climbing up the ice stairs at the Nightfort and seeing from the top of the Wall. Then she told him about the opening below and Sam and Cold Hands and Leaf and Jojen. By the end of it, when she was describing how Bran was submerged in the tree and didn’t even recognize her anymore, and her subsequent imprisonment by the Children, she realized she was crying.
“When the chance came to escape, I took it,” she whispered. “I don’t even know what happened to Hodor. I just left him there,” she gasped out. To his death, most like.
“He’s dead,” Benjen said flatly, echoing her thoughts.
Meera sobbed, her breath coming in gasps. “How do you know that? He could still be alive. You could be wrong.”
“I’m not,” he said, shadows crossing over his face and darkening his blue eyes. “I know exactly what the Children are capable of; the extent of their cruelty.” Benjen Stark rolled up the left sleeve of his black tunic, revealing the pale skin of his arm. It was marked in a series of precise cuts, spaced evenly apart. “I was sent out on a ranging nearly three years ago now, into the heart of the Haunted Forest. My men and I were set upon by wights. They came out of nowhere, and I was certain that we all were dead. But then, I chanced to look up, and there was a light shining on the edge of the forest. It was too late for my men, but I ran. When I saw the Children, it was like something out of the tale of the Last Hero. They saved me, took me back to their caves and tended to my wounds. I thought they were my salvation, but they would not let me go. For years, nearly two and a half, I was locked away in their caves, while they took my blood and kept me weak. But then,” he said, his eyes lighting on hers. “They got excited. Something was coming.”
“Bran,” Meera sobbed out, thinking of the sweet little Prince who was now forever in their thrall. And I just left him there. “The last greenseer.”
Benjen nodded. “When they dispersed to prepare for him, I, not knowing who was coming, made my escape. The weather has been so horrible since then, I dare not leave the cave to go back to the Wall. This is one of their cave systems,” he said, looking around the vast cavern. “There were enough food stores in the lower levels to last for years. So I brought them up here and warded off this level.”
“Warded?” she repeated, wrinkling her nose.
“The Children of the Forest are creatures who thrive on magic,” Benjen told her, his voice softening the more he spoke. “Runes carved into the walls stop them more easily than you would believe.”
Meera shivered. “I don’t understand any of this. From the stories my father told me, the Children of the Forest were supposed to be a benevolent race. Why did they kill my brother? Why did they want you?”
He looked at into the flames of the fire, answering quietly. “The Children of the Forest live for thousands of years. The ones you see now? It was their grandparents and great-grandparents who fought with the First Men, and it was their grandparents and parents who gave the weapon to the Last Hero. For them, time means different things. Tell me, has your father ever been wronged? Or his father? Do you still feel the insult keenly?”
Meera’s mind drifted then to Harrenhal, and the squires who had beat her father. She would love to put a well-placed spear through Ser Harys Haigh, Ber Boros Blount, and Black Walder Frey. Her fingers almost itched for a net. Even the thought of it made her slightly giddy. Oh, revenge would be so sweet, were she given the chance.
He moved then, sitting back and letting his head fall back against the stone wall. His eyes were closed, and Meera wondered if he were imagining a million awful things happening to the abuser of some beloved relative. Sure enough, he opened his eyes, looking haunted, and when he spoke again, his voice was tortured. “What would you give for the chance to look that man in the eye, and run him through?”
A chill came over her then, and she shivered. “Anything,” she said quietly.
“Then we understand each other,” Benjen stated.
She nodded.
“What is your name?”
“Lady Meera, of House Reed.”
His eyes widened, and there was a long moment where their shared history was present in both their minds. Benjen sat forward, leaning towards her. “You are Howland’s daughter.”
Her chin tilted up. “I am.”
He nodded, swallowing once. “I haven’t much that I can give to you, my lady, but I swear this: I will get you back to the other side of the Wall.”
~*~
She slept for a long time.
In the underground cave system, there was not much else to do. Unlike with the caves of the Children, Meera could not go exploring for the runes only protected them so far, and without Jojen she didn’t have much of a desire to do anything. The numbness that had stolen over her while she was in captivity was gone now, and there was no dam left to stop her emotions. She often cried herself to sleep, or woke herself with her sobs. Benjen shook her awake every now and then, forcing her to drink a honeyed mixture before allowing her to sleep once more.
Her dreams were filled with images of her brother dying, things that she had never seen in life, but which dreaming allowed her to imagine in vivid detail. One time, the sight of her brother’s severed head was so wrenching, that she sat up screaming. Within a moment, she was pulled into strong arms that rocked her while she cried. “They cut off his head,” Meera told Benjen. “And they used his blood to make a paste, I saw it.”
“Where?”
“In my dreams,” Meera cried. “He was still so young, only fourteen, and they killed him. I do not know what to do without him. How can I go on?”
Benjen just held her for a long while, allowing her to relax her body against him. He was humming softly, and she could feel the vibration of his chest against her cheek. There was safety in his arms, and that was a better feeling than she had known in a long time. Meera instinctively eased into him, not even once considering the propriety of the situation. After she was comfortable, and on the verge of sleep, she heard him say lowly, “You go on because you must. There is no other choice.”
After that night, things got easier.
She took up sword practice again, and Benjen was more than willing to oblige. He taught her the quickest ways to hunt with a knife in beyond the Wall, though she wouldn’t have a chance to try it out until they were back below the snow line. They shared stories of their families, and told tales to while away the time. Meera was still too weak with exhaustion and grief to join Benjen on his hunts, but she had taken to looking around the caves she did have access too. Aside from the runes that Benjen had carved, there were several sets of elaborate cave paintings. She had also taken to swimming in the hot springs when he was gone.
One morning, about a month into her stay, Benjen had gone tracking after a pack of wights who had been howling outside their cave the night before. It made Meera deeply uncomfortable that he went, but Benjen had told her how wights seemed less than interested in him. He had no idea why, but it seemed that they shied away from him at times. He could not say the same for the White Walkers though, so Meera worried about him all the same.
Once he had been gone for a little while, she padded down to the water. Dipping her left foot in, she smiled. The water was as hot as a fresh bath, and it was easy to ignore the smell of rotten eggs and simply enjoy it. Pulling her vest up over her head, Meera slowly took off her clothing, piece by piece. When she got to her underthings and smallclothes, Meera carefully unwrapped the gauze she used to flatten her breasts, releasing them and her long hair, which fell down and brushed against the tops of her thighs. She waded out, submerging herself up to her thighs, and then diving out into the middle.
Again and again she stroked across the lake, losing track of time, of thoughts, of all things but her body being propelled through the water. She had learned to breathe mud and run through the trees of the Neck when she was very little, but it had never been quite enough. Being here, in this place so far from where she started-there was something that she savored about it, even knowing what it had cost her. My parents would not even recognize me, I am so changed in manner.
When her skin began to wrinkle, she realized that she had been in the water for several hours. She swam back to her little harbor, climbing out of the lake and walking back to her clothes. As she stood there, wringing out the water from her hair, Meera heard a muffled sound at the opening to the cave. Turning, she saw Benjen standing there, watching her. The crannogwoman knew she ought to cover up, but the heat in his eyes was fascinating to her. She felt something warm and exciting light in her belly, and could not bring herself to turn from his gaze. By the gods, his eyes… For one very long moment, his gaze traced over her body, much the way it had once traced over her face. Then, when she was certain he would speak, abruptly he turned and went back the way he came.
He did not return until she was already asleep.
~*~
For a week, Benjen would wake before her, and stay away until she was abed. Meera knew that he came back because sometimes she would start awake when her dreams were too much to bear, and she would see him sleeping before the fire. One night, when she woke with a muffled shout, Benjen sat up as well, watching her. They gazed at each other for a long moment, neither of them willing to speak first.
“What do you dream of?” he asked after a long while. “Your brother?”
“My brother,” she confirmed. “Always, always Jojen. Children are not plentiful among the crannogmen, so we only had each other to play with when we were growing up. He has never not been there waiting for me. I think some part of me refuses to believe that he never will again.”
Benjen’s eyes were hooded, but he nodded. “Well I know how that feels. My sister has been dead for seventeen years, and yet there are still days that I find myself turning to tell her something, only to remember that she is not there. I left Winterfell to escape her ghost, only to learn that I carry her with me always.”
“When we were walking from Winterfell,” Meera remembered suddenly, “I told the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree to Prince Bran. He did not know it.”
Benjen swallowed, his eyes glistening in the firelight. “I cannot speak for my brother, but I know that some things are simply too painful to speak of.”
“Your sister was a great woman,” Meera disagreed. “She deserves to be honored. To have her story told.”
He made a face. “It is more complicated than that.” Benjen sighed. “You should try to sleep.”
“Will you be here when I wake?” she countered.
“I will,” he said solemnly.
It was easier between them after that. There was a barrier that was gone now, one that Meera hadn’t even been aware of. They began speaking together over the fire, of more than just superficial things.
“It just wasn’t home any longer,” he said, poking the logs with a long stick, making them crack and burn. “Ned had his family, and once Sansa was born, there was more than one heir…” Benjen trailed off. “I needed something for myself. A life, a calling. The Wall seemed as good a place as any, especially when I had so much to atone for.”
“I always longed to escape the Neck,” Meera confided in return. “My father was so adventurous for a crannogman, and I think he must have passed it on to me as well.”
Their hopes and desires were no longer taboo things, but still Benjen never touched her in a manner that was not respectful. Meera wondered at it sometimes. Though she was a maid, the crannogmen were much looser in their sensibilities about romantic liaisons, and no child born in the Neck was ever called a bastard. The children were simply too few to not be cherished. Her father said they were like the Dornish in that way, but she knew the rest of the North was not like that. Though vows were sacred to the crannogmen too, it seemed wrong from Meera’s perspective to swear oneself to a life of penance, which was very much what Benjen had done.
When she finally got up the courage to mention it to Benjen, he looked away from her. “Maester Aemon once said something similar. He has a speech, one he likes to give to all the new recruits he is fond of when they begin to doubt their vows.” He cleared his throat. “During the Greyjoy Rebellion, it galled that I was sending my brother off to war without me, again. It was a rather long speech he gave me, all about honor, but I remember one part of it quite clearly. What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms…or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
“Do you think that’s true?” Meera asked him.
His eyes were heavy with unspoken words when he looked at her, but Meera could not decipher the meaning of them. “I do not know,” he replied.
~*~
They continued on in that manner for another two months, and might have stayed such a way indefinitely, but for yet another nightmare that woke Meera in the night. She came awake with a jarring jerk, her chest heaving and her breaths coming in short pants. Sweat was beading on her brow, and she could feel the hair near her scalp was drenched. She sat up quietly, not wanting to disturb Benjen, but he was wide awake and looking at her. Instead of asking her what she dreamt of, he rolled to his feet and walked around the fire to sit next to her on her furs.
“You said my name,” he said quietly.
“The White Walkers found you,” Meera said succinctly. “You died.”
He looked at her then, his blue eyes tortured, and his long, thin face looking as though it was in agony. “Would you mourn me if I died?”
“How can you ask me that?” Meera said, hurt suffusing her face. Is he really so blind?
“You would be alone,” Benjen said, nodding his head as if he was agreeing with himself. “You would be lonely.”
“Do you think I do not wish for your death because I am afraid of being lonely?” Meera asked, incredulously. “You stupid, stupid man.”
He reeled back as if she had slapped him.
“I love you, you fool!” she exclaimed. “Oh, all you men are the same. Never can you see right what is in front of your fa-”
Benjen stopped her mouth with a kiss. It was a soft and gentle caress, barely deserving of the name “kiss”, nearly over before it began. When he pulled back, one of his strong hands caressed her jaw, and Benjen whispered, “Were my life my own, let there be no doubt that I would return the sentiment in full.”
“Your life is your own,” Meera said.
Please, let me love you.
“I took vows,” Benjen countered. “Before the weirwood grove beyond the Wall, I swore to take no wife and father no children. The gods were listening.”
“Then why did the gods send me to you?” Meera asked. “I could have died that day in the snow, but I didn’t. I saw a light, one I shouldn’t have been able to see. I lived…I lived and made it to you. The gods do not make mistakes, Benjen, and I refuse to believe that my loving you is one of mine.”
His eyes darkened at her words, looking slightly desperate, but even so, he leaned in and kissed her once more. As they slowly stripped their clothes and lay back before the fire, touching everywhere they could, Meera was certain this was the moment she had been born for and, from the look in Benjen Stark’s eyes, she was confident he agreed.
~*~
Everything was different after that. Benjen and Meera took to patrolling the outside of their cave during the day, and the nights were reserved for something else entirely. There was nowhere that Benjen did not take her, from the walls and ledges, to the hot springs and before the fire. He did things to her with his tongue that she had never even heard of, and blushed later to think on. Meera had never been so happy, and it seemed to her that the other life she had one lived, the one that had been before she escaped from the Children, seemed very far away-almost as if it had happened to another woman entirely.
He told her of Dynah, the first girl he ever took to his bed. She was the daughter of an innkeeper in Winter Town, and she had bright brown eyes. They loved for an entire spring, until the blacksmith’s son made her an offer of marriage. Meera told him of Jordwyn, the first boy she ever kissed, and of Gwaine, whose heart she had broken unknowingly.
In their little slice of darkness and light, there was only them. They lived, they loved, and they survived. The winter winds beat across the land outside; there the wolves howled, and there the horns of war blew, but Benjen and Meera knew none of it. The intimacy that developed between them was built on nights of whispered secrets, and mornings of soft surrender.
So, perhaps she might be forgiven for failing to notice that she had missed her moon’s blood for two turns. Her realization came when she was bent over the fire pit one morning, expelling bile into the burned-out embers. Benjen came up behind her, rubbing her back and pulling her hair from her face. When she was finished, Meera looked up into his face, almost afraid to tell him what she suspected, but there was a look of serene calm where she expected panic and denial.
“A babe?” he asked, and she nodded.
He kissed her temple. “It will be a boy,” he said with perfect certainty.
Meera leaned into his arms, closing her eyes and refusing to think any further forward than she had to. It will come in time, as all things do.
~*~
It was an easy pregnancy, by and large. In the safety of their cave, Meera dreamed of a life that would never be. Benjen seemed happy, for the most part, to play along. They spoke of their son, of how brave and good he would be, and how they would raise him together, at Winterfell or Greywater Watch. The pretending almost made it real, and in that space between lies and truth, Meera happily stayed. Every now and then though, a shadow would cross over Benjen’s face, and he would spoil it all with one of his moods, but those spells were rare enough, and they passed quickly.
When she was seven months gone, Meera began restricting herself to the safety of the cave. She no longer accompanied Benjen on his patrols. Eventually, though, he stopped going as well.
“I haven’t seen any wights or White Walkers for weeks now,” he told her. “And I could swear that the weather is getting warmer. It hasn’t snowed for days.”
“Winter can’t be ending already, can it?” Meera asked. “Maester Luwin said he thought this winter would last for years, perhaps a full ten.”
“I doubt it is ending,” Benjen said, but there were shadows crossing over his face that told Meera he knew more than he was saying. She decided to ignore her misgivings for a time, and smiled at him.
“Here,” she said, extending her hand. “Your son is moving-come and feel.”
A shy smile lit up his face, and he crossed to her and knelt before her belly. Reaching out and touching her skin under her shirt, the babe kicked against Benjen’s hand. His eyes brightened, and he leaned in and kissed Meera.
“We’ll be all right, won’t we?” she asked. Say anything, my love. Tell me any sweet lie, and I shall believe it.
He smiled, and kissed her temple. “We shall be fine.”
Liar.
~*~
As promised, a boy was born to them a year after Meera had found Benjen’s cave. It was a difficult birth, Meera being so small and the babe so large, but Benjen helped her perform the crannog birthing techniques, and after two days, their son came screaming into the world. Though she was exhausted to the point of pain, there was nothing Meera would have traded to see the expression on her love’s face the first time he held his son. Awe did not begin to describe it, nothing could.
“I thought we could name him Brandon,” Meera said.
Benjen nodded. “Brandon Snow.”
“Brandon Reed,” Meera corrected softly. “He will rule the Neck one day from Greywater Watch. That will be his watch, just as his father’s was from the Wall.”
He smiled at her then, but it was a fleeting, sorrowful thing, and Meera felt her heart fill with foreboding. Savor this now, her heart whispered. Let this be enough.
Two months later, the snow melted and Benjen led his small family from their cave.
~*~
“A spirit summer,” Benjen said to her the first night out of their cave. “I doubt it will last more than six or nine months.”
Meera shivered, as it was still cool in the night. Brandon was swaddled and tucked in close to her body, sharing his mother’s warmth. They had stopped to sleep in a ring of weirwood trees, each with a face carved on them. They were all of varying emotions, from joyful to desolate, and it made her feel safe to rest in the comfort of the gods. Benjen seemed to feel the opposite, for he had been pacing walking around the circle from the moment they had stopped. He refused to split the watch, telling Meera to rest, but she couldn’t close her eyes.
When Brandon fussed, she offered him her breast and that settled him. “What is it?” she asked Benjen.
“Something is out there,” he replied, his eyes narrowing. There was a crunch of underbrush nearby, giving truth to his words, and suddenly a direwolf padded into the holy circle. Benjen’s hand immediately went to his sword, and he would have drawn it had Meera not cried out.
“Summer!” she exclaimed. The direwolf’s tongue waged out of its mouth, and it whined at her. She smiled at Benjen. “It’s Bran’s wolf.”
Benjen relaxed, coming to sit by her side. Summer came and lay down between their legs, allowing both of them to reach out and pet him. “The last time I saw this one,” Benjen said, “he was naught but a pup.”
“I wonder how he found us,” Meera said softly.
For a long moment, Benjen said nothing, but then he nodded to the babe at her breast. “You told me that Bran had stopped warging Summer, becoming one with the tree and skinchanging other animals. It would seem this wolf always needs a Bran.”
Meera looked down at her son, and then at Summer who was facing away from them, protecting the small family from any that might come at night and do them harm. She let out a little laugh and a silent prayer of thanks. Maybe just because Bran had gone into a tree…maybe that didn’t mean he had forgotten.
Thank you, my prince.
~*~
They travelled for days, and then weeks. The walk was long, but the weather wasn’t too cool, and the ground was hard. Without the snow, the way was easy, and Meera saw the wisdom in getting to the other side of the Wall now, rather than later. On the third week, Benjen came back from getting water from a stream, tugging the reins of a horse behind him. Meera smiled at the luck, and told him the gods must be watching over them. After that, they flew through the forest. Within four days, they made it to the Wall, ending up right outside the secret entrance into the Nightfort.
The opening was in a tree, a hundred feet from the Wall. The face on it was sleeping, a study in repose. Benjen walked up, just as Meera had told him to. He cleared his throat, and the tree opened its eyes.
The ranger stumbled backwards, looking shocked. Meera wondered if he hadn’t believed her words until he saw it with his own eyes.
“Who are you?” the tree asked.
“I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men,” Benjen said, the words rolling off his tongue with a quiet conviction that brought tears to Meera’s eyes.
“Then pass,” the tree said, opening its mouth until there was an opening so large that even the horse could fit though.
The path curved down at first, and then upwards as they passed through the second tree. Once there, they were in the well and it was an upward climb. The steps were flat enough that the horse made the journey easily, and in no time at all Meera, the babe, Summer, the horse, and Benjen emerged inside the Nightfort. The ruin was different than Meera remembered. It looked as though someone had taken a cache of wildfire to it, and set it ablaze. The whole of it made her shiver just to look at it, and she was relieved with Benjen wanted to leave right away. They had camped at the base of the Wall the night before, and it was still morning, so they left the Nightfort and began to ride.
~*~
It took half the day to find the King’s Road, but once there, Benjen stopped the horse, climbing off and reaching up to take down Meera and Brandon as well.
“What is it?” she asked him. They had paused for a rest only an hour before. “Why are we stopping here?”
Benjen shot her a mournful glance. “We are less than half a day’s walk from Castle Black.”
“What of it?” Meera asked, her brow furrowing. “We need to keep riding to reach Mole Town-No!” she exclaimed, startling the babe and causing him to fuss. Benjen took him from her arms, hushing him and rocking his son back and forth. “You can’t!” she cried. “It’s not safe to return. You said it yourself, this is just a spirit summer. The snow will come back, and then the White Walkers too. You have to come with me; you can hide in the Neck, no one will know you are there.” She was crying in earnest now. Benjen pulled her into his arms as well, resting their babe between them, and hushing her as well.
“I must to go back,” Benjen said after a long while. “The White Walkers will return when the spirit summer ends, and if they breach the Wall, no man will be safe. I know how to track them and how to kill them, and it is my duty to inform the Watch.”
“But they think you are dead,” Meera cried, tears rolling down her face. “At this moment, they are not looking for you. You could come with me, you could live. Once you return to Castle Black, I shall never see you again. Your son will never see you again.” That brought a pained look to his face, and Meera knew it was unfair, but in that moment she couldn’t bring herself to regret it, not if it meant he changed his mind.
“It is for the two of you that I am doing this,” he told her. “I may be a man of the Watch, but my duty is to you and our son first. I must protect you both, for winter is coming.”
She cried against his chest, and he held her while she did.
“When I return to the Wall,” Benjen continued, “I shall tell Maester Aemon that he was both right and wrong. There is nothing that compares to the love of a good woman, or the feeling of holding my son in my arms, but it is for them that I would happily serve, knowing it will keep them from harm.”
She pulled back then, and kissed him. Meera put into the kiss all the things she could not say, and Benjen reciprocated. She could feel all his sorrow, his regret, his determination, but most of all she felt his love. It was all encompassing, and it gave her the strength to let him go. When they broke apart, she took their son back from him. Benjen leaned in, pressing his lips against Brandon’s forehead, and then released him. He hoisted Meera up into the saddle of the horse, making sure their son was secure, and then handed her the reins.
“Watch over them both, Summer,” he said to Bran’s wolf. Benjen then looked up at Meera one last time. “They will ask you who fathered your son,” he said.
“They will,” she agreed.
“What will you say?”
Meera looked away from him. Her eyes swept out over the vast lands of the Gift, thinking of the last time she had walked these paths. So much had changed since then, and she had come so far from where she began. But Meera remembered that little girl she had once been still. The one who longed for adventure, who feared nothing. Who lived for stories of the Rebellion, and wanted nothing so much as to escape. That girl, who had dreamt of she-bears and Wildlings, who never could have begun to imagine wargs and White Walkers and Children of the Forest and living trees. She turned back to Benjen then and grinned. Meera wondered if all journeys brought people full circle.
“I will tell them he was fathered by a wolf.”
A smile split Benjen’s face, and his eyes had never looked bluer. Meera took a moment to memorize his features, lovingly tracing each one, before digging her heels into the flank of her horse.
With Rickard Stark’s blade at her hip, Brandon Stark’s direwolf running by her side, and Benjen Stark’s son at her breast, Meera Reed began the long journey home.
Title: In My Dreams, Wolf and I
Pairing: Benjen Stark/Meera Reed
Prompt: this image
Count: 7,653
Rating & Warnings: T
Summary: In a little cave in the Frostfangs, Meera Reed meets a hero from a story come to life, and comes full circle.
They came for her by moonlight. For weeks she had been kept in a small dank room, with plenty of food and water, but no way out. It was only too late that she realized the food the Children had been giving them had been drugged, dulling her senses and delaying her reaction time. Still, when they captured her, Meera managed to kill one of them, which was a small comfort.
Jojen was dead. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but it was there, racing through her blood with a certainty that beat like a drum in her heart. Her entire life, she had protected him, and now there was nothing left to protect. A sob burst out of her mouth, and she clutched her knees to her chest. Meera wished that she had never left the Neck. If she had been there now, her mother would be sitting behind her, brushing Meera’s long brown hair and singing her a Dornish lullaby. She was seventeen and a maiden flowered, but there were some things she had never grown out of. Only with her mother could she be weak, or feminine. Only with her mother could she relax.
From the moment her brother contracted grey water fever, Meera had been thrust into the role of heir to Greywater Watch. She had put away her dresses and bound her hair up in a knot, and with it her dreams of a lord husband had been discarded as well. Oh, she would marry, but she would be the Lady of Greywater, and she would be giving the commands. That had never been her dream. When she was a little girl, no taller than a lizard-lion, she had wanted to leave the bogs and travel all over Westeros. To see the Isle of Faces, or Dorne, or Winterfell-it didn’t much matter. She planned to become like the women of Bear Island, with a babe suckling in one arm and an axe in her hand. Or like the spearwives of the Wildlings, who it was rumored cut off one breast so that they could aim their arrows better.
Meera loved the Neck, but she had always wanted to be someplace else. Her brother, she knew, loved Greywater with a fierceness that all heirs had. He had tried to give that love to Meera, to show her why it was such a perfect place, but his sister had never quite felt it. Guilt filled her now for the resentment she had felt towards Jojen at times. She should have been a better sister.
The heavy iron door opened with a screech, and Meera moved onto the balls of her feet. Pretending to look defeated, she hung her head and watched Leaf enter through her eyelashes. The child looked at Meera with her guileless cat eyes, cocking her head to the side when she took in Meera’s state. “You should not fear for the Bran boy. He has reached a great state of being.”
Meera looked up, disgust etching her features. “We trusted you. We came with you in good faith, and you led my brother to his death, and my prince to-”
“The Bran boy will go down, into the stones, into the roots. He will become one with the trees, and they will sing his song forever. It is a great fate he has been chosen for,” Leaf said, her nut-brown skin shimmering in the reflected light. “My people are few, and soon they will be gone, but we had strength enough to endure until Brandon Stark could come.”
Bran’s words echoed in Meera’s head, the ones he had said to her late one night, when he was reflecting on what Leaf had said about her people’s time coming to an end. Men would not be sad. Men would be wroth. Men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance. The singers sings sad songs, where men would fight and kill. Men would survive. Meera felt as though she stood outside herself in that moment, as though she was watching another girl trapped in that dank cave.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, her voice sounding very far away.
“When the time is right, you too will be part of the trees and roots. Bran cannot let go of his mortal form until all his ties are severed.” Leaf’s cat eyes met hers. “You are the last tie he has.”
Men would not be sad.
The histories tell stories about the crannogmen, Papa. They say we grew close to the Children of the Forest. Is that true?
Men would be wroth.
Feel that wind, brother? Look how large the world has grown.
Men would survive.
I will be Father’s heir, Jojen. Worry not for the future of our house.
Later, Meera would never quite remember what happened next. She knew that she jumped up, rushing for the door, but how she made it up through the labyrinth of tunnels, clutching the sword she had taken from the crypts of Winterfell with the Children chasing after her, was a mystery. She only knew that one moment she was inside, and the next the crannogwoman was knee-deep in snow.
~*~
The wind was howling and whipping through the trees. Flurries rushed past her face, and a cold that Meera had forgotten in all the months she had been below ground, forcibly returned to her. Still, she pushed herself forward. If she was going to die, she would do it on her own terms. She would fight and run and survive for as long as she could, and pray that it was enough. The wind sliced through her clothes, making her feel as though she was standing naked in the snow. Tears rolled down her face, only to freeze on her cheeks. Down and down the hill she went, moving as quickly as possible. It took all her hunting experience to continue walking in a straight line, and she imagined that for anyone else, they would have been lost easily. Meera had no destination in mind, simply away.
She wandered for ten hours, until the sun was sinking in the sky. Once it got dark, and the temperature dropped, Meera would die. She felt almost calm about it. Was this how her brother had felt all those years? Was it worth it to die, if it was a death of your own choosing? An impotent cry welled up in her throat, as she realized what a waste her brother’s death had been. All that way only to realize that there were worse things that the ones who had been hunting them. She felt so betrayed by Leaf and the others, and wanted nothing more than to fall to her knees and rest in the snow. Her father had once told her that it was how the clansmen of the mountains often died. They simply left their homes, especially in bitter endless winters, and went for a walk in the snow. It was painless, he had told her.
Did you know, Father? Did Jojen tell you how I would die?
There was something almost elegant about it. Fitting in a way. She came north with Jojen, and she would die in the north with Jojen. Her beloved baby brother, who she should have told to forget his dreams and stay in Greywater.
Her fingers were getting numb, and her toes too, despite how much she used them. Soon. She felt her cares dissipating, and was resolved to just drop and fall forward when-there! Before her, like a mirage in the snow, she saw a sliver light from a cave. Meera suddenly had a burst of energy, and she rushed forward and up, hoping that this was not the cave of the Children. At the mouth of the entrance, she crept in, moving forward slowly. To her right, she noticed that there were some odd markings in the walls. They looked almost like runes, though they were not any ones that Meera knew. When she moved inside, almost immediately her skin broke out in painful tingling as it tried to get used to the warmth again. She wiggled her fingers, breathing a sigh of relief as feeling returned to all of them. No frostbite then. Tugging off her gloves, she crept forward, her fingers wrapping around the pommel of the sword she had once taken from the crypts of Winterfell.
The ground was hard under her feet, but not made of rock. It was a dark, rich dirt that had been firmly packed over time. Meera wondered if she wasn’t walking into yet another trap. One foot in front of another, my girl. That is the only way you will ever get any place. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, but Meera knew she had to go forward. To go back, would mean certain death. She took another step, when suddenly she was grabbed from behind.
The man, for he had to be a man being so tall, practically melted out of the shadows. For Meera, who had been a hunter most of her life, it was a rare person who could catch her off guard, but she knew that there must be lingering traces of the sedative the Children had given her in her body. The stranger’s arms wrapped around her like steel bands, lifting her off the ground. Her legs began to kick backwards, and he grunted when she made contact with his shin, but he did not let go. Her attacker ripped the sword from her hands, and pinned her to the ground. He threw the sword to the side, turning her over and putting a knife to her throat.
His eyes widened when he took her in, a soft light blue under his black cloak which shrouded his face in shadow. A scarf was wound around his mouth and neck, and he was dressed head to toe in black. Not even his hands were visible. Meera wondered if she had wandered into Cold Hands’ layer, but then she noticed the man’s chest heaving. She relaxed imperceptibly, looking up at him.
“A girl,” he murmured in awe, as if he had not seen her kind before. She tensed, knowing the danger Wildlings posed to unmarried maids, but he made no move to rape her. He simply looked at her for a long moment, his eyes tracing every feature on her face. The man looked at her in deep confusion, taking in her garb and noticing the broach on her cloak. He then looked over at the sword that he had moved out of her reach, and tensed. The man, who had been at the point of relaxing moments before, immediately pressed the knife back to her throat.
“Where did you get that sword?” he growled, his chest heaving.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she demurred, looking away. She might hate the Children, but she wasn’t going to lead Wildlings to Bran. If they found out a son of Eddard Stark was beyond the Wall, there was no telling what they might do.
He pressed the knife tight against her neck, the cold steel so close to ending her life. “Where. Did. You. Get. The. Sword?”
Meera glared at him, but said nothing.
“Grave robber,” he spat.
Her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
The man pulled back his hood, and unwound the scarf from his mouth. Once he revealed his face, Meera was instantly reminded of Eddard Stark, who had visited the Neck only once on the way home from fighting in the Greyjoy Rebellion, when she was seven. This man looked much like him, only his face was softer and his eyes blue. The indentations around his mouth told her he was easy with smiles, but there was nothing happy about his face now. “Because I know the crypts of Winterfell better than most,” he told her, “and that sword specifically. It was my father’s, and I was the one who placed it on his statue’s lap.”
“Benjen Stark?” Meera gasped out. “But, I thought you were dead!”
“And I thought my father’s shade was at rest,” he snarled, reminding her forcibly of his sigil. “It seems we were both wrong. Now, where did you get this?”
“Winterfell,” she stuttered out, afraid of the dark look in his eyes. “We all took them from the crypts. Prince Bran, Hodor…”
He released her then, and she allowed her head to drop to the ground. “Tell me everything,” he bit out. “Starting with why you call Brandon Stark ‘Prince Bran’.”
Meera opened her mouth to speak, her teeth chattering, but before she could, Benjen yanked her up from the ground and led her deep into the caves.
~*~
It felt as though they walked forever. They went through several twisting turns, passing by even more runic carvings in the walls, until she was led into a wide open cavern with ceilings as high as the Queenscrown, which opened out onto an underground lake. Tendrils of steam rose up above the lake, and Meera realized it was a hot springs. Benjen pushed her over to the large fire pit, sitting her down in front of it.
She wondered how it was that such a small fire had been a light leading her through the darkness.
“Here,” he said. “Your body is not yet acclimated, move all your extremities to get the blood flowing.” Benjen then handed her a wineskin. “And drink this.”
Meera began to shiver, as if by command. Nothing had ever tasted so good as the wine going down. For a good hours’ time, she sat before the fire, shivering and sipping warmed wine. When the shivering had abated, she began to speak. She told him of Lord Stark’s execution, of King Robb and Theon Greyjoy, and the sack of Winterfell. She told him about hiding in the crypts, and leaving on foot. She spoke about the trek north, and climbing up the ice stairs at the Nightfort and seeing from the top of the Wall. Then she told him about the opening below and Sam and Cold Hands and Leaf and Jojen. By the end of it, when she was describing how Bran was submerged in the tree and didn’t even recognize her anymore, and her subsequent imprisonment by the Children, she realized she was crying.
“When the chance came to escape, I took it,” she whispered. “I don’t even know what happened to Hodor. I just left him there,” she gasped out. To his death, most like.
“He’s dead,” Benjen said flatly, echoing her thoughts.
Meera sobbed, her breath coming in gasps. “How do you know that? He could still be alive. You could be wrong.”
“I’m not,” he said, shadows crossing over his face and darkening his blue eyes. “I know exactly what the Children are capable of; the extent of their cruelty.” Benjen Stark rolled up the left sleeve of his black tunic, revealing the pale skin of his arm. It was marked in a series of precise cuts, spaced evenly apart. “I was sent out on a ranging nearly three years ago now, into the heart of the Haunted Forest. My men and I were set upon by wights. They came out of nowhere, and I was certain that we all were dead. But then, I chanced to look up, and there was a light shining on the edge of the forest. It was too late for my men, but I ran. When I saw the Children, it was like something out of the tale of the Last Hero. They saved me, took me back to their caves and tended to my wounds. I thought they were my salvation, but they would not let me go. For years, nearly two and a half, I was locked away in their caves, while they took my blood and kept me weak. But then,” he said, his eyes lighting on hers. “They got excited. Something was coming.”
“Bran,” Meera sobbed out, thinking of the sweet little Prince who was now forever in their thrall. And I just left him there. “The last greenseer.”
Benjen nodded. “When they dispersed to prepare for him, I, not knowing who was coming, made my escape. The weather has been so horrible since then, I dare not leave the cave to go back to the Wall. This is one of their cave systems,” he said, looking around the vast cavern. “There were enough food stores in the lower levels to last for years. So I brought them up here and warded off this level.”
“Warded?” she repeated, wrinkling her nose.
“The Children of the Forest are creatures who thrive on magic,” Benjen told her, his voice softening the more he spoke. “Runes carved into the walls stop them more easily than you would believe.”
Meera shivered. “I don’t understand any of this. From the stories my father told me, the Children of the Forest were supposed to be a benevolent race. Why did they kill my brother? Why did they want you?”
He looked at into the flames of the fire, answering quietly. “The Children of the Forest live for thousands of years. The ones you see now? It was their grandparents and great-grandparents who fought with the First Men, and it was their grandparents and parents who gave the weapon to the Last Hero. For them, time means different things. Tell me, has your father ever been wronged? Or his father? Do you still feel the insult keenly?”
Meera’s mind drifted then to Harrenhal, and the squires who had beat her father. She would love to put a well-placed spear through Ser Harys Haigh, Ber Boros Blount, and Black Walder Frey. Her fingers almost itched for a net. Even the thought of it made her slightly giddy. Oh, revenge would be so sweet, were she given the chance.
He moved then, sitting back and letting his head fall back against the stone wall. His eyes were closed, and Meera wondered if he were imagining a million awful things happening to the abuser of some beloved relative. Sure enough, he opened his eyes, looking haunted, and when he spoke again, his voice was tortured. “What would you give for the chance to look that man in the eye, and run him through?”
A chill came over her then, and she shivered. “Anything,” she said quietly.
“Then we understand each other,” Benjen stated.
She nodded.
“What is your name?”
“Lady Meera, of House Reed.”
His eyes widened, and there was a long moment where their shared history was present in both their minds. Benjen sat forward, leaning towards her. “You are Howland’s daughter.”
Her chin tilted up. “I am.”
He nodded, swallowing once. “I haven’t much that I can give to you, my lady, but I swear this: I will get you back to the other side of the Wall.”
~*~
She slept for a long time.
In the underground cave system, there was not much else to do. Unlike with the caves of the Children, Meera could not go exploring for the runes only protected them so far, and without Jojen she didn’t have much of a desire to do anything. The numbness that had stolen over her while she was in captivity was gone now, and there was no dam left to stop her emotions. She often cried herself to sleep, or woke herself with her sobs. Benjen shook her awake every now and then, forcing her to drink a honeyed mixture before allowing her to sleep once more.
Her dreams were filled with images of her brother dying, things that she had never seen in life, but which dreaming allowed her to imagine in vivid detail. One time, the sight of her brother’s severed head was so wrenching, that she sat up screaming. Within a moment, she was pulled into strong arms that rocked her while she cried. “They cut off his head,” Meera told Benjen. “And they used his blood to make a paste, I saw it.”
“Where?”
“In my dreams,” Meera cried. “He was still so young, only fourteen, and they killed him. I do not know what to do without him. How can I go on?”
Benjen just held her for a long while, allowing her to relax her body against him. He was humming softly, and she could feel the vibration of his chest against her cheek. There was safety in his arms, and that was a better feeling than she had known in a long time. Meera instinctively eased into him, not even once considering the propriety of the situation. After she was comfortable, and on the verge of sleep, she heard him say lowly, “You go on because you must. There is no other choice.”
After that night, things got easier.
She took up sword practice again, and Benjen was more than willing to oblige. He taught her the quickest ways to hunt with a knife in beyond the Wall, though she wouldn’t have a chance to try it out until they were back below the snow line. They shared stories of their families, and told tales to while away the time. Meera was still too weak with exhaustion and grief to join Benjen on his hunts, but she had taken to looking around the caves she did have access too. Aside from the runes that Benjen had carved, there were several sets of elaborate cave paintings. She had also taken to swimming in the hot springs when he was gone.
One morning, about a month into her stay, Benjen had gone tracking after a pack of wights who had been howling outside their cave the night before. It made Meera deeply uncomfortable that he went, but Benjen had told her how wights seemed less than interested in him. He had no idea why, but it seemed that they shied away from him at times. He could not say the same for the White Walkers though, so Meera worried about him all the same.
Once he had been gone for a little while, she padded down to the water. Dipping her left foot in, she smiled. The water was as hot as a fresh bath, and it was easy to ignore the smell of rotten eggs and simply enjoy it. Pulling her vest up over her head, Meera slowly took off her clothing, piece by piece. When she got to her underthings and smallclothes, Meera carefully unwrapped the gauze she used to flatten her breasts, releasing them and her long hair, which fell down and brushed against the tops of her thighs. She waded out, submerging herself up to her thighs, and then diving out into the middle.
Again and again she stroked across the lake, losing track of time, of thoughts, of all things but her body being propelled through the water. She had learned to breathe mud and run through the trees of the Neck when she was very little, but it had never been quite enough. Being here, in this place so far from where she started-there was something that she savored about it, even knowing what it had cost her. My parents would not even recognize me, I am so changed in manner.
When her skin began to wrinkle, she realized that she had been in the water for several hours. She swam back to her little harbor, climbing out of the lake and walking back to her clothes. As she stood there, wringing out the water from her hair, Meera heard a muffled sound at the opening to the cave. Turning, she saw Benjen standing there, watching her. The crannogwoman knew she ought to cover up, but the heat in his eyes was fascinating to her. She felt something warm and exciting light in her belly, and could not bring herself to turn from his gaze. By the gods, his eyes… For one very long moment, his gaze traced over her body, much the way it had once traced over her face. Then, when she was certain he would speak, abruptly he turned and went back the way he came.
He did not return until she was already asleep.
~*~
For a week, Benjen would wake before her, and stay away until she was abed. Meera knew that he came back because sometimes she would start awake when her dreams were too much to bear, and she would see him sleeping before the fire. One night, when she woke with a muffled shout, Benjen sat up as well, watching her. They gazed at each other for a long moment, neither of them willing to speak first.
“What do you dream of?” he asked after a long while. “Your brother?”
“My brother,” she confirmed. “Always, always Jojen. Children are not plentiful among the crannogmen, so we only had each other to play with when we were growing up. He has never not been there waiting for me. I think some part of me refuses to believe that he never will again.”
Benjen’s eyes were hooded, but he nodded. “Well I know how that feels. My sister has been dead for seventeen years, and yet there are still days that I find myself turning to tell her something, only to remember that she is not there. I left Winterfell to escape her ghost, only to learn that I carry her with me always.”
“When we were walking from Winterfell,” Meera remembered suddenly, “I told the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree to Prince Bran. He did not know it.”
Benjen swallowed, his eyes glistening in the firelight. “I cannot speak for my brother, but I know that some things are simply too painful to speak of.”
“Your sister was a great woman,” Meera disagreed. “She deserves to be honored. To have her story told.”
He made a face. “It is more complicated than that.” Benjen sighed. “You should try to sleep.”
“Will you be here when I wake?” she countered.
“I will,” he said solemnly.
It was easier between them after that. There was a barrier that was gone now, one that Meera hadn’t even been aware of. They began speaking together over the fire, of more than just superficial things.
“It just wasn’t home any longer,” he said, poking the logs with a long stick, making them crack and burn. “Ned had his family, and once Sansa was born, there was more than one heir…” Benjen trailed off. “I needed something for myself. A life, a calling. The Wall seemed as good a place as any, especially when I had so much to atone for.”
“I always longed to escape the Neck,” Meera confided in return. “My father was so adventurous for a crannogman, and I think he must have passed it on to me as well.”
Their hopes and desires were no longer taboo things, but still Benjen never touched her in a manner that was not respectful. Meera wondered at it sometimes. Though she was a maid, the crannogmen were much looser in their sensibilities about romantic liaisons, and no child born in the Neck was ever called a bastard. The children were simply too few to not be cherished. Her father said they were like the Dornish in that way, but she knew the rest of the North was not like that. Though vows were sacred to the crannogmen too, it seemed wrong from Meera’s perspective to swear oneself to a life of penance, which was very much what Benjen had done.
When she finally got up the courage to mention it to Benjen, he looked away from her. “Maester Aemon once said something similar. He has a speech, one he likes to give to all the new recruits he is fond of when they begin to doubt their vows.” He cleared his throat. “During the Greyjoy Rebellion, it galled that I was sending my brother off to war without me, again. It was a rather long speech he gave me, all about honor, but I remember one part of it quite clearly. What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms…or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
“Do you think that’s true?” Meera asked him.
His eyes were heavy with unspoken words when he looked at her, but Meera could not decipher the meaning of them. “I do not know,” he replied.
~*~
They continued on in that manner for another two months, and might have stayed such a way indefinitely, but for yet another nightmare that woke Meera in the night. She came awake with a jarring jerk, her chest heaving and her breaths coming in short pants. Sweat was beading on her brow, and she could feel the hair near her scalp was drenched. She sat up quietly, not wanting to disturb Benjen, but he was wide awake and looking at her. Instead of asking her what she dreamt of, he rolled to his feet and walked around the fire to sit next to her on her furs.
“You said my name,” he said quietly.
“The White Walkers found you,” Meera said succinctly. “You died.”
He looked at her then, his blue eyes tortured, and his long, thin face looking as though it was in agony. “Would you mourn me if I died?”
“How can you ask me that?” Meera said, hurt suffusing her face. Is he really so blind?
“You would be alone,” Benjen said, nodding his head as if he was agreeing with himself. “You would be lonely.”
“Do you think I do not wish for your death because I am afraid of being lonely?” Meera asked, incredulously. “You stupid, stupid man.”
He reeled back as if she had slapped him.
“I love you, you fool!” she exclaimed. “Oh, all you men are the same. Never can you see right what is in front of your fa-”
Benjen stopped her mouth with a kiss. It was a soft and gentle caress, barely deserving of the name “kiss”, nearly over before it began. When he pulled back, one of his strong hands caressed her jaw, and Benjen whispered, “Were my life my own, let there be no doubt that I would return the sentiment in full.”
“Your life is your own,” Meera said.
Please, let me love you.
“I took vows,” Benjen countered. “Before the weirwood grove beyond the Wall, I swore to take no wife and father no children. The gods were listening.”
“Then why did the gods send me to you?” Meera asked. “I could have died that day in the snow, but I didn’t. I saw a light, one I shouldn’t have been able to see. I lived…I lived and made it to you. The gods do not make mistakes, Benjen, and I refuse to believe that my loving you is one of mine.”
His eyes darkened at her words, looking slightly desperate, but even so, he leaned in and kissed her once more. As they slowly stripped their clothes and lay back before the fire, touching everywhere they could, Meera was certain this was the moment she had been born for and, from the look in Benjen Stark’s eyes, she was confident he agreed.
~*~
Everything was different after that. Benjen and Meera took to patrolling the outside of their cave during the day, and the nights were reserved for something else entirely. There was nowhere that Benjen did not take her, from the walls and ledges, to the hot springs and before the fire. He did things to her with his tongue that she had never even heard of, and blushed later to think on. Meera had never been so happy, and it seemed to her that the other life she had one lived, the one that had been before she escaped from the Children, seemed very far away-almost as if it had happened to another woman entirely.
He told her of Dynah, the first girl he ever took to his bed. She was the daughter of an innkeeper in Winter Town, and she had bright brown eyes. They loved for an entire spring, until the blacksmith’s son made her an offer of marriage. Meera told him of Jordwyn, the first boy she ever kissed, and of Gwaine, whose heart she had broken unknowingly.
In their little slice of darkness and light, there was only them. They lived, they loved, and they survived. The winter winds beat across the land outside; there the wolves howled, and there the horns of war blew, but Benjen and Meera knew none of it. The intimacy that developed between them was built on nights of whispered secrets, and mornings of soft surrender.
So, perhaps she might be forgiven for failing to notice that she had missed her moon’s blood for two turns. Her realization came when she was bent over the fire pit one morning, expelling bile into the burned-out embers. Benjen came up behind her, rubbing her back and pulling her hair from her face. When she was finished, Meera looked up into his face, almost afraid to tell him what she suspected, but there was a look of serene calm where she expected panic and denial.
“A babe?” he asked, and she nodded.
He kissed her temple. “It will be a boy,” he said with perfect certainty.
Meera leaned into his arms, closing her eyes and refusing to think any further forward than she had to. It will come in time, as all things do.
~*~
It was an easy pregnancy, by and large. In the safety of their cave, Meera dreamed of a life that would never be. Benjen seemed happy, for the most part, to play along. They spoke of their son, of how brave and good he would be, and how they would raise him together, at Winterfell or Greywater Watch. The pretending almost made it real, and in that space between lies and truth, Meera happily stayed. Every now and then though, a shadow would cross over Benjen’s face, and he would spoil it all with one of his moods, but those spells were rare enough, and they passed quickly.
When she was seven months gone, Meera began restricting herself to the safety of the cave. She no longer accompanied Benjen on his patrols. Eventually, though, he stopped going as well.
“I haven’t seen any wights or White Walkers for weeks now,” he told her. “And I could swear that the weather is getting warmer. It hasn’t snowed for days.”
“Winter can’t be ending already, can it?” Meera asked. “Maester Luwin said he thought this winter would last for years, perhaps a full ten.”
“I doubt it is ending,” Benjen said, but there were shadows crossing over his face that told Meera he knew more than he was saying. She decided to ignore her misgivings for a time, and smiled at him.
“Here,” she said, extending her hand. “Your son is moving-come and feel.”
A shy smile lit up his face, and he crossed to her and knelt before her belly. Reaching out and touching her skin under her shirt, the babe kicked against Benjen’s hand. His eyes brightened, and he leaned in and kissed Meera.
“We’ll be all right, won’t we?” she asked. Say anything, my love. Tell me any sweet lie, and I shall believe it.
He smiled, and kissed her temple. “We shall be fine.”
Liar.
~*~
As promised, a boy was born to them a year after Meera had found Benjen’s cave. It was a difficult birth, Meera being so small and the babe so large, but Benjen helped her perform the crannog birthing techniques, and after two days, their son came screaming into the world. Though she was exhausted to the point of pain, there was nothing Meera would have traded to see the expression on her love’s face the first time he held his son. Awe did not begin to describe it, nothing could.
“I thought we could name him Brandon,” Meera said.
Benjen nodded. “Brandon Snow.”
“Brandon Reed,” Meera corrected softly. “He will rule the Neck one day from Greywater Watch. That will be his watch, just as his father’s was from the Wall.”
He smiled at her then, but it was a fleeting, sorrowful thing, and Meera felt her heart fill with foreboding. Savor this now, her heart whispered. Let this be enough.
Two months later, the snow melted and Benjen led his small family from their cave.
~*~
“A spirit summer,” Benjen said to her the first night out of their cave. “I doubt it will last more than six or nine months.”
Meera shivered, as it was still cool in the night. Brandon was swaddled and tucked in close to her body, sharing his mother’s warmth. They had stopped to sleep in a ring of weirwood trees, each with a face carved on them. They were all of varying emotions, from joyful to desolate, and it made her feel safe to rest in the comfort of the gods. Benjen seemed to feel the opposite, for he had been pacing walking around the circle from the moment they had stopped. He refused to split the watch, telling Meera to rest, but she couldn’t close her eyes.
When Brandon fussed, she offered him her breast and that settled him. “What is it?” she asked Benjen.
“Something is out there,” he replied, his eyes narrowing. There was a crunch of underbrush nearby, giving truth to his words, and suddenly a direwolf padded into the holy circle. Benjen’s hand immediately went to his sword, and he would have drawn it had Meera not cried out.
“Summer!” she exclaimed. The direwolf’s tongue waged out of its mouth, and it whined at her. She smiled at Benjen. “It’s Bran’s wolf.”
Benjen relaxed, coming to sit by her side. Summer came and lay down between their legs, allowing both of them to reach out and pet him. “The last time I saw this one,” Benjen said, “he was naught but a pup.”
“I wonder how he found us,” Meera said softly.
For a long moment, Benjen said nothing, but then he nodded to the babe at her breast. “You told me that Bran had stopped warging Summer, becoming one with the tree and skinchanging other animals. It would seem this wolf always needs a Bran.”
Meera looked down at her son, and then at Summer who was facing away from them, protecting the small family from any that might come at night and do them harm. She let out a little laugh and a silent prayer of thanks. Maybe just because Bran had gone into a tree…maybe that didn’t mean he had forgotten.
Thank you, my prince.
~*~
They travelled for days, and then weeks. The walk was long, but the weather wasn’t too cool, and the ground was hard. Without the snow, the way was easy, and Meera saw the wisdom in getting to the other side of the Wall now, rather than later. On the third week, Benjen came back from getting water from a stream, tugging the reins of a horse behind him. Meera smiled at the luck, and told him the gods must be watching over them. After that, they flew through the forest. Within four days, they made it to the Wall, ending up right outside the secret entrance into the Nightfort.
The opening was in a tree, a hundred feet from the Wall. The face on it was sleeping, a study in repose. Benjen walked up, just as Meera had told him to. He cleared his throat, and the tree opened its eyes.
The ranger stumbled backwards, looking shocked. Meera wondered if he hadn’t believed her words until he saw it with his own eyes.
“Who are you?” the tree asked.
“I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men,” Benjen said, the words rolling off his tongue with a quiet conviction that brought tears to Meera’s eyes.
“Then pass,” the tree said, opening its mouth until there was an opening so large that even the horse could fit though.
The path curved down at first, and then upwards as they passed through the second tree. Once there, they were in the well and it was an upward climb. The steps were flat enough that the horse made the journey easily, and in no time at all Meera, the babe, Summer, the horse, and Benjen emerged inside the Nightfort. The ruin was different than Meera remembered. It looked as though someone had taken a cache of wildfire to it, and set it ablaze. The whole of it made her shiver just to look at it, and she was relieved with Benjen wanted to leave right away. They had camped at the base of the Wall the night before, and it was still morning, so they left the Nightfort and began to ride.
~*~
It took half the day to find the King’s Road, but once there, Benjen stopped the horse, climbing off and reaching up to take down Meera and Brandon as well.
“What is it?” she asked him. They had paused for a rest only an hour before. “Why are we stopping here?”
Benjen shot her a mournful glance. “We are less than half a day’s walk from Castle Black.”
“What of it?” Meera asked, her brow furrowing. “We need to keep riding to reach Mole Town-No!” she exclaimed, startling the babe and causing him to fuss. Benjen took him from her arms, hushing him and rocking his son back and forth. “You can’t!” she cried. “It’s not safe to return. You said it yourself, this is just a spirit summer. The snow will come back, and then the White Walkers too. You have to come with me; you can hide in the Neck, no one will know you are there.” She was crying in earnest now. Benjen pulled her into his arms as well, resting their babe between them, and hushing her as well.
“I must to go back,” Benjen said after a long while. “The White Walkers will return when the spirit summer ends, and if they breach the Wall, no man will be safe. I know how to track them and how to kill them, and it is my duty to inform the Watch.”
“But they think you are dead,” Meera cried, tears rolling down her face. “At this moment, they are not looking for you. You could come with me, you could live. Once you return to Castle Black, I shall never see you again. Your son will never see you again.” That brought a pained look to his face, and Meera knew it was unfair, but in that moment she couldn’t bring herself to regret it, not if it meant he changed his mind.
“It is for the two of you that I am doing this,” he told her. “I may be a man of the Watch, but my duty is to you and our son first. I must protect you both, for winter is coming.”
She cried against his chest, and he held her while she did.
“When I return to the Wall,” Benjen continued, “I shall tell Maester Aemon that he was both right and wrong. There is nothing that compares to the love of a good woman, or the feeling of holding my son in my arms, but it is for them that I would happily serve, knowing it will keep them from harm.”
She pulled back then, and kissed him. Meera put into the kiss all the things she could not say, and Benjen reciprocated. She could feel all his sorrow, his regret, his determination, but most of all she felt his love. It was all encompassing, and it gave her the strength to let him go. When they broke apart, she took their son back from him. Benjen leaned in, pressing his lips against Brandon’s forehead, and then released him. He hoisted Meera up into the saddle of the horse, making sure their son was secure, and then handed her the reins.
“Watch over them both, Summer,” he said to Bran’s wolf. Benjen then looked up at Meera one last time. “They will ask you who fathered your son,” he said.
“They will,” she agreed.
“What will you say?”
Meera looked away from him. Her eyes swept out over the vast lands of the Gift, thinking of the last time she had walked these paths. So much had changed since then, and she had come so far from where she began. But Meera remembered that little girl she had once been still. The one who longed for adventure, who feared nothing. Who lived for stories of the Rebellion, and wanted nothing so much as to escape. That girl, who had dreamt of she-bears and Wildlings, who never could have begun to imagine wargs and White Walkers and Children of the Forest and living trees. She turned back to Benjen then and grinned. Meera wondered if all journeys brought people full circle.
“I will tell them he was fathered by a wolf.”
A smile split Benjen’s face, and his eyes had never looked bluer. Meera took a moment to memorize his features, lovingly tracing each one, before digging her heels into the flank of her horse.
With Rickard Stark’s blade at her hip, Brandon Stark’s direwolf running by her side, and Benjen Stark’s son at her breast, Meera Reed began the long journey home.