Chapter Text
• The Crow named as "Coldhands", it turns out, returned to The Cave after Bran & Meera had fled from it: the scene, as he found it, had disturbed the snow and revealed a perfectly preserved (albeit blooded and Crispy™) Jojen. Coldhands, whose heart was thawing as the makers of his undeath died themselves, recalled the long-ago days of Harrenhall and found himself carrying his friend's son to a more dignified place of rest.
• Benjen, who calls himself Coldhands no more, first investigates The Cave, seeking personal reassurance of his nephew and company's escape. He finds poor, dutiful Walder. How cruel, Benjen thought, that Old Nan's family should die, so far from home, and his valiance unhonoured. Was all of his childhood's Winterfell doomed to such despair? The babe proudly cradled as Old Nan presented her latest descendant, the young stableboy he'd left him as, a man grown tall and strong and brave and introduced as "Hodor". He ought be returned to Winterfell, set to rest among all Winterfell's non-Stark people in its lichyard, with his name and deeds writ for all to see. He pierced dragonglass through Walder's frozen chest, hopeful that his Commander Nephew would see both boys Beyond and Home.
• Young crannogman in arm, Benjen beholds a husk: all that remains of Him, who once was Brynden Rivers, that unnatural creature to which Coldhands was bound, in unanswering servitude. Benjen contemplates spitting on the mangled thing of man-and-tree. Benjen holds off. Bloodraven and his tree may have seemed dead but Benjen was, still, a Stark Of Winterfell: to feed these hungry roots, even with so petty an offering his cold could allow, was not a chance The Ranger would take. No, Brynden and his cult would take no more from House Stark.
• The Others have been and gone. To see That Cave gone in smoke would be an effort and, in the tradition of His Old Valyria, to guide His ghost to rest. Benjen left the place to the open frost, unmarked by cairn nor carving. He took the bodies of the stableboy and little Reed with him, on his elk, and walked, away, at its side without a word.