Chapter Text
Ned watched his youngest daughter disappear from the statue of Baylor and closed his eyes against the crowd. He wished he could close his ears to the sounds of Sansa’s screams. He never wanted this for his girls. His whole family deserved better and he failed them. This was his last thought as the blade touched against his neck and all went black. His conscious self seemed to no longer exist as the blackness engulfed him completely. Time contracted and expanded all at once and Ned no longer felt or thought as he once did. He did not exist as he once did, yet he was not gone completely. Ned couldn’t have said how long the blackness lasted. Was it minutes? Hours? Years?
All at once the blackness seemed to lessen. It was still dark, but rather than a void of nothingness, this darkness was more familiar, more like one would experience waking from a dream on a moonless night. Ned’s consciousness returned and with it came a realization that he hadn’t breathed in far too long. His eyes snapped open at the same time his lungs sputtered to life causing Ned to gasp for breath. He stared above him at a patchwork of red and blue. Slowly his eyes focused and Ned realized he was laying underneath a weirwood tree. He willed his arms to move and turned over his hands to feel the ground beneath him. Cold and wet. Patches of snow and ice. What is happening? Is this the afterlife? Ned turned his head and there laying to his right was his wife Catelyn. Ned’s heart surged as he sat up for the first time and looked down at his lady wife.
Is she dead too? Are we in the afterlife together?
“C—Catelyn?”
His voice sounded rough to his own ears. He cleared his throat and tried again, this time reaching out and taking Catelyn by the shoulder, “Catelyn. Catelyn, wake up my love.”
Catelyn’s eyelids fluttered and opened slowly. They settled on Ned staring down at her from above and then quickly widened in shock. Catelyn gasped and sat up in one swift motion. “Ned? Ned is it you? But— but, you’re dead!” She reached up and grasped her throat, fear and confusion making her blue eyes flare. She began looking around frantically. “Robb! Robb, where are you?” Uncertain at his wife’s obvious distress and fear, Ned attempted to take her into his arms and settle her. Suddenly they heard someone running through the godswood toward them. “Mother!” The voice came moments before Ned’s eldest son emerged from behind a tree. Robb took one look at his mother and father and skidded to a halt. “Father?” Robb’s confusion mirrored his mother’s. Ned took the opportunity to take stock of his boy. No. Not a boy any longer. Before him stood a man, years older than he was the last time Ned had the pleasure of laying eyes on his son. This Robb was taller and more filled out, his hair longer. Robb’s innocence and youthfulness were replaced by a maturity and the look of a man who had lived through more in his few years than many men experience in a lifetime. Ned’s heart lurched for his son and he rose to his feet and hurled himself into Robb’s arms.
“Robb my boy. I thought never to see you again.”
“And you father,” Robb replied as he pulled out of the embrace, “what is happening? Why are we here? Is this the afterlife?”
Ned again grew confused and looked between his wife and his son. “Joffrey sentenced me to die at the Sept of Baylor. I know I must be dead. I felt the blade against my neck.” He subconsciously reached back and rubbed the skin at the base of his neck. “But why are you here? Surely you are still living? Robb? You’re much too young to be here with me in the afterlife.”
“Oh Ned!” Catelyn cried out and threw her arms about Ned’s shoulders. “But we did die.”
Catelyn did not have a chance to elaborate. The three of them looked to their left at the sound of more footsteps heading their direction. Two boys were walking toward them. One was clearly Bran, looking just as he did the day he fell from the tower wall. But that can’t be right, thought Ned. Bran survived his fall. Unable to reconcile the information he knew to be true with the image of his young son standing before him in what must be the afterlife, Ned turned his attention to the boy standing to Bran’s left. This boy was unfamiliar. He appeared to be about twelve years old and had the same ruddy colored curls as Robb did at that age. He was tall and lanky and had a haunted look about him. Could this be… but no. Surely little Rickon had gone on to lead a much longer life than this?
Catelyn experienced no hesitation. “Bran! Rickon? My boys!” she exclaimed as she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around her youngest sons.
“Rickon?” Robb moved forward, looking at Rickon like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “But— I thought— Theon...”
At this, Bran spoke. “Theon did not kill us. He killed two farmer boys and passed the burnt bodies off as me and Rickon. With the help of Hodor, Maester Luwin, and the wildling woman Osha, we were able to escape Theon’s raid on Winterfell.”
Ned’s mind was spinning at this new information. Theon? Raiding Winterfell and killing two small boys? Passing their deaths off as Ned’s own sons? What became of his family after he died? How long had they lived and what had they endured after that fateful day of Ned’s execution?
As if sensing Ned’s questions Bran once again spoke.
“There is much to discuss but let me first answer this… we are not in the afterlife. We have been brought back. I brought us back to life using old magic. It has been many years since you all died. It has been over five years since the Long Night, since life in Westeros as we knew it almost stopped existing. I’ve sent a raven and someone should be coming to find us any moment now. Let’s reunite with those who are still living and then we can each tell our tales of life and death.”
As if summoned by Bran’s very own words, a knight emerged from the shadows.
Ned, still reeling from Bran’s pronouncement that not only had they been brought back to life, but that Bran himself had done the deed using old magic, was scarcely prepared for the knight to not only be a woman, but one his wife apparently knew.
“Brienne!” Ned watched as his lady wife propelled herself toward the strange female knight and embraced her as if she were an old friend.
“My Lady” the knight, looking exceedingly uncomfortable with Catelyn’s show of affection, removed herself from the embrace and knelt in front of Catelyn.
“It is true,” the knight breathed, looking up at Catelyn and the others with wonder. “I read the raven from the King and thought someone must be playing a cruel jest.”
Ned watched as Bran stepped forward. “It was not a jest Ser and I am grateful you chose to heed my words and come to retrieve us.”
My words? Did not that lady knight say the message was from the King? Is Bran claiming himself to be King?
Ned was clearly not the only one wondering these questions.
“King? Bran? Are you saying you are the King?” Robb turned toward young Bran and voiced the question all were thinking.
“I am not anymore.”
Ned had had enough. His mind was spinning with the onslaught of information and the knowledge that mere minutes ago he had been dead and now he was alive and surrounded by family he had never dreamed to see again. He needed some time to process his new reality.
“My Lady,” he began, unsure how to address the large knight before him.
“Brienne is a knight in her own right, father” Bran cut in.
Ned blinked. On top of everything else he had learned these last few minutes, discovering that a woman had been made a knight came as the least surprise.
“Forgive me. Ser Brienne. If you would please escort my family and I to a private chamber within the castle I would be most appreciative. It seems we have much to discuss and I would prefer to do that somewhere safe and comfortable.”
Ser Brienne bowed, “yes My Lord.” She swept a hesitant gaze at the resurrected members of the Stark family and gestured towards the castle. “If you’ll please follow me.”