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“I really hope you’re real,” the boy admits. Jojen tilts his head in musing.
The forest crackles with life around them, everything looks a shade brighter, a shade lighter.
“I am,” Jojen says. The boy doesn’t seem to be reassured and instead, slumps his shoulders, his bow and arrow lowering to point at the ground beneath Jojen’s feet.
“That’s what everyone say in dreams,” he sounds frustrated, brows of brown knitting in a furrowed expression. “To fool you into thinking it’s real when it’s really not. When it’s just a dream.”
“You know this isn’t just a dream, right Bran?” The boy shoots him an uncertain look, bow arm rising once more. But Jojen isn’t scared; this is not the end for him. They still have a very long way to go before it is the end for him. “You know that your dreams aren’t like other people’s dreams, right?”
“What about your dreams?” Bran demands and Jojen can see the direwolf in him, beyond him, waking to the sound of Bran’s voice.
“Of course,” he replies. “I would not be here with you if I were awake.”
“Then you have these dreams as well? You’ve seen the three-eyed crow and the things that will happen?” The boy’s face was so hopeful, like a flickering candle in the depths of an abandoned keep. It keeps Jojen warm from the inside out.
“I’ve seen those, and a lot more.”
“Do you know how to make them stop then?” The question wounds Jojen, a deep hurt that makes his chest feel empty of his heart. When Bran looks at him with defiant eyes, he aches. “Everyone I speak to about them tells me to stop. But every time I close my eyes, that is all I see. I don’t want them. I didn’t ask for them!”
In the distance, a direwolf howls long and mournful for the things to come.
Jojen swallows, closing his eyes for a moment to remember his father’s face, both young and old at the same time, speaking patient words of wisdom. Those dreams would be as close as he got to aging himself, as close as he got to living long enough to see the things to come that he’s dreamt of.
“That’s right,” he says, levelling his gaze with the Stark boy’s. The woods seem to shift around them, an unfocused emerald green haze pushing him out. Suddenly, Jojen feels as if he is moving deep underwater. He tries not to struggle. “They were given to you for a reason, Bran.”
“Was I given dead legs for a reason as well? Did I end up a broken cripple for a reason? Am I never to walk, to climb, to ride for a reason too?” Bran snarls, a vicious snap of teeth and suddenly it is Summer, lips pulled back and sharp teeth that are spit-shiny. His growl is a low rumble and Jojen can feel it travelling through the ground and up his feet.
His knees shake with the tremor of the earth. He will not be afraid.
Summer stares at him with cold eyes, pieces of coal left in an abandoned hearth at the centre of an abandoned keep. For a moment, all he can see is Summer ripping into the throats of two wildlings.
When Jojen looks again, it is Bran once more, his body cradled in the branches of a tree. The forest looks dead now, the trees like skinny white ghosts, anchored to the ground like grave markers.
“What sort of reason would the gods have to make me useless?”
Jojen does not speak, he can’t when he has no answers and he would never lie, not to this boy. He knows only of his own purpose and when that would end.
But he tries nonetheless, for this boy he will always try.
“You are not useless, Bran,” Jojen says slowly. He needs Bran to understand, to accept. “It’s not about what you can do with this body, not anymore.”
“Tell that to the wildlings with the knives and spears. Say that to them when they’re pointing them at your throat.” He speaks bitterly and Jojen saw that, too.
“You told them yourself, through Summer,”
Bran raises his head, eyes wide with surprise. The leaves crackle overhead, a cacophony of noise that sounds as if a thousand crows have taken off all at once.
“How do you know of that? Of Summer?”
“Like I’ve said before,” Jojen explains patiently. He may not be wise, may not have the opportunity to grow wise, but he has always had the patience of a man who has lived for a thousand years. “I’ve seen that, and a lot more. I’ve seen things beyond where I am at the moment, in time and place.” He pauses, waits for Bran to accept his words. “Like I’m here now, with you, even though I’m actually far away when I’m awake.”
“Where are you then?” Bran’s eyes flicker back and forth between boy and wolf, winter and summer. “Where are you when you’re awake?”
A gentle wind blows through their forest and Jojen smiles, his body half gone with the breeze.
“Closer,” he says, voice lost among the stirring leaves. “When I awake, I will be one step closer."