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Chapter Text

The sound of an explosion reverberates throughout the whole of Winterfell, nearly shaking its stones off their place, and if it weren’t for the past years teaching her to think on her feet no matter the madness happening around her, Sansa would have lost her wits. As it is, she just places the embroidery she’s working on down on the table with barely shaking hands.

An earthquake, she surmises, though it sounds far-fetched still. Winterfell has not suffered earthquakes even once, in all the years she’s lived here. Earthquakes in Westeros are a rare occurrence, in general, except perhaps in Dragonstone where sometimes Dragonmont turns restless. 

She exchanges a glance with Theon, who looks rather more cowed than usual. He’s as confused as she feels, shifting on his feet, torn between asking her if she’s alright and bolting beneath her table to hide. 

She’s about to say something, anything, to calm his rising panic. But then the faint smell of smoke begins permeating the air, and she fears a fire has started somewhere. 

I will curse them all a thousand times over if they manage to burn down my home, she thinks darkly.

She gathers her skirts and looks out the window, and she sees servants and men-at-arms scuttling about like terrified ants. Someone shouts, guards running across the courtyard and towards the godswood.

And there, right where she knows the pool of the heart tree is, a tower of water reaches into the sky.

“Gods,” Sansa whispers, staring at the phenomenon never before seen, awed and perplexed alike.

She doesn’t know how long she’s spent staring at that tower before it slowly falls. Several hours, at least; the sun has nearly set. 

And then her doors are opening, and in strides the Bolton bastard, a distracted look on his loathsome face. “Come, wife,” he says, and Sansa fights the goosebumps that want to erupt on her skin, “there has been a development.”

Sansa follows the bastard along the hallowed corridors of her ancestors’ keep. It chafes against everything she is to watch him and his ilk rule Winterfell as if they were its rightful lords, and the wolf within Sansa—for she is ice, winter, a wolf —howls in righteous fury. What she wouldn’t give to rip out his throat and paint the floors red with his blood.

(It surprised her at first, how vicious her thoughts have turned once she stepped foot in Winterfell again. It’s like something within her awakened, something buried with Lady all those years ago, something feral and thirsty for the blood of traitors to her house—Northern fury so strong it would have made the Baratheons’ look tame in comparison.

Now though, she embraces this, the savage anger that threatens to swallow everything in its path. It keeps her warm in the cold of night, here in what should have been safety and shelter and hearth. It keeps her going, giving her flickering hope that she could stand against these monsters who dare taint the realm of Winter Kings.

In the dark, when she’s left to her devices, she bares her teeth, imagines them as fangs, and wishes for a chance to sharpen them in the flesh of traitors.)

She allows his nonsensical words to wash over her, long used to tuning out the useless information from men’s drivel whilst managing to retain the actual useful pieces they unwittingly give. 

(The bastard is too self-absorbed to even realise how twitchy the servants scurrying around are.

Well, Sansa thinks, rather uncharitably, the whole lot of them has always been twitchy with the Boltons blackening these halls. But there’s something in their eyes now that makes Sansa’s fingers clench, wishing to grasp the blade hidden in the folds of her dress: beneath the fear, there’s resignation.

As if death, ever present, has finally come to collect its due.

Sansa doesn’t know what to make of that.)

The bastard is now talking about some foreigner who apparently appeared out of nowhere.

“Well,” he amends, “not out of ‘nowhere’. They were saying the pool in front of the heart tree heated up, bubbling like a hot spring. And when the steam thickened, the waters burst like a geyser and out came a man. Hah! There was a geyser, true enough, as you no doubt have seen, but the rest is bullshit. And they said he looks too pretty to be Westerosi! But that doesn’t matter, does it? No matter how pretty, men are all flesh and blood, aren’t they, darling wife?”

“Of course, my lord,” Sansa says. I will kill you, and your bones will be toys for the dogs you so adore.

“Just so.” The bastard grins. Sansa wants to scoop out his eyes and feed them to his hounds. “Anyway, we’ll get to the bottom of this matter now. The man’s in the courtyard, apparently. Can’t trust these peasants to handle one man, but oh well. We’ll see how he fares.”

Then they’re exiting into the courtyard, where a cluster of Bolton men are waiting. 

Sansa finally takes her first look at this mysterious man who has managed to turn the keep on its head, and she feels her breath catch in her throat.

Sansa has seen beautiful men before—the Kingslayer in all his golden glory, the lithe and graceful Knight of Flowers, the sweetly charismatic Renly. And yet all of them pale in comparison to this man who stands before them as if he owns the place, not even shivering despite wearing only a thin dark coat over his shirt and trousers, which are obviously of foreign make. He’s barefoot too, and yet he seems to not even notice it.

He’s ethereally beautiful, almost painfully so. Sansa notes that his features speak of Valyrian descent; he has thick silver hair that spikes around his head, with the front hanging low over his eyes. She has never met any Targaryens before, but she believes they are as beautiful as him, with a fine bone structure and full lips that form a natural pout. Slim though he may be, he’s also tall, towering over all of them, and Sansa thinks he’s just a few inches shy of the Mountain himself. 

But the most arresting feature the man has is his eyes; unlike the famed Targaryen violets, his are shining turquoise, how Sansa imagines the seas in the Summer Isles are. Or perhaps the glacial lakes in Old Nan’s stories, found beyond the Wall. His eyes observe them with casual indifference, as if he couldn’t be bothered to actually see these men as threats. 

As if these men are mere prey, and he the wolf that shall end them.

He wears danger like a cloak, and the bastard knows it too.

“Now what do we have here?” the bastard says. “A Targaryen so far up North? Forgotten in the Fat King’s purge, are you?”

The man simply raises an eyebrow. 

She feels the bastard shift, so obviously offended in the blatant show of disrespect. “You’re acting too brave for someone found loitering in my keep.”

Sansa resists the urge to snarl, This is not your keep! To bury her knife in his guts. To feel the life leave his body. To make him beg the same way he made countless people beg. 

She wants to say, Winterfell is not yours to claim, bastard, as she kills him with her own hands.

The man takes a step forward, and the guards around him flinch though they don’t make any other movement. Sansa finds that odd, but then all other thoughts leave her as he sneers, shrugging, and says the words that sound like divine judgment in her ears. “As I understand it, this keep is not yours to claim.”

Sansa feels more than hears the bastard’s anger, but before he can say a word of command—or any word at all—a bolt of blue flame shoots towards him. It doesn’t touch him but instead wraps around like a coil around his neck. The flame crackles, hissing so close to his skin, and the bastard is frozen in his tracks.

“W-What are you!” An edge of desperation enters his voice, and Sansa delights in it.

The man tilts his head, and the coil around the bastard’s neck shrinks closer to his skin. “I’d rather you keep your mouth shut, since you’re not mine to kill.” Then his turquoise eyes find and hold Sansa’s. “He’s yours, is he not?”

And Sansa—the wolf Sansa, the icy Sansa, the winter princess Sansa—Sansa smiles.

Chapter Text

The path to villainy will always lead to an early death. Dabi has no delusions that the choices he’s made, all the way from that fateful day when he shed his name and took on another, would ever end in anything other than a shallow grave—or if he’s unluckier than he thinks, which is very much likely, given everything—perhaps no grave at all.

Just dust in the wind.

Ha. How ironic. 

He watches Shigaraki’s eyes widen with surprise—glint with betrayal, disbelief, rage, before settling on hateful comprehension.

“I see you’ve chosen to crawl back to the heroes,” Shigaraki murmurs. “I suppose blood does run deep, huh, Touya?”

The name doesn’t burn as it used to, so Dabi just shrugs, the movement easy despite the burden of understanding what’s coming next. “I didn’t actually crawl,” he replies, glib. “That’s more of your style, isn’t it, Tenko?”

Unlike him, Shigaraki flinches violently at the sound of his old name, a hiss escaping his chapped lips. “I’m gonna kill you,” his (former) ally says, his words dripping with dark promise.

Dabi smiles, shrugging again. 

“I know.” 

Dabi sees the tendrils of All for One preparing to stab him. As expected; for all his cleverness, Shigaraki has always been predictable to those who know him best. Instead of trying to escape, though, Dabi just stays still, and his Quirk burns hot deep within his veins. As soon as the tendrils touch his skin, he bursts into blue flames, and his grin is manic, unreserved, feral as that day he confronted his father.

“Come on, Tenko,” he taunts, “don’t hold back.” 

“Shut up!” Shigaraki screams, his face contorted in all his anger. “Don’t call me that, traitor!”

“I’m not a traitor,” Dabi refutes, as blood gushes from all his wounds, his fire licking a burning path all over and all around him, “I can’t be a traitor when I never actually swore an oath to you.”

There’s dark satisfaction that blooms in him when Shigaraki falters, and Dabi’s flames burn ever hotter. 

“This is the end, Tenko,” he says, and then there’s an explosion, screaming, pain against his chest. 

(That’s new, he thinks. It’s been years since he felt anything close to pain, and he welcomes the sensation. It’s going to be one of the last he’d ever feel.)

Something warm bursts out of his mouth, and his eyes flick around before finding and locking gazes with his youngest brother.

Shouto—young, pathetic, wonderful Shouto—looks so distraught, Dabi’s blue flames and his own crimson throwing his scarred face into sharp relief. He’s never looked more like Dabi than right now, with the hopelessness in his eyes and the anguish in the curve of his mouth. He shouts something, but Dabi can’t hear him through the roar of fire and blood in his ears. His turquoise eye shines with desperation but it’s his grey eye—their mother’s eye—that Dabi looks at intently. 

In this light, it almost looks like weary acceptance. 

It’s your turn now, baby brother, Dabi thinks. You and the rest of the hero brats have to end this.

With his mother’s smile his last thought and his brother’s face the last thing he sees, Dabi closes his eyes and succumbs to death. 

Young soul, old soul, tortured soul, healed soul

Son of Ice, Son of Fire, wake up and heed our call.

Dabi drifts. 

His lungs are full of water but he doesn’t choke. His skin is all scars and blisters but there is no pain. His veins are ash and his body is dust but his heart follows a fast tempo, with the sound of a thousand hooves thudding and the sound of a thousand drums thumping and the sound of a thousand wings beating and the sound of a thousand voices singing, thrumming, humming . . .

Dabi drifts.

“Wake up, hero, our Azure Prince.”

“We bid thee, Arrow of Light, to help us.”

“Come, Lord of the All-Consuming Flames, and unleash your wrath.”

Dabi drifts.

His bones are sewn anew, his veins woven fresh. Blood restarts its flow, his heart restarts its rhythm. 

A flame—harsher, gentler, crueler, softer than he’d ever known—ignites within him, and all that he was, is, and will be burns away only to be reborn into something both ancient and new. 

Dabi dies. But the thing is—and this is the part that makes his head spin—he doesn’t stay dead. Instead, he finds himself stranded in some freezing corner of hell, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the rage-grief-despair burning in his heart.

When he closed his eyes that last time, he thought he’d wake up in the fiery underworld, or whatever the true afterlife is for someone as depraved as him. 

But instead he bursts out of a pool of dark water, falling on his feet, crunching the snow underneath, and stands face-to- . . . face with a . . . stupid, spooky tree.

Seriously, what the fuck? 

The tree has a legit face carved into the bark, and there’s red sap flowing from the eyes and mouth, making it look like it’s fucking bleeding, and it’s honestly creeping him out.

(But also. It feels so, so familiar . . . like a lullaby, or a really good burger. There’s something niggling at the back of his mind, a loose thread that he itches to pick at—)

He’d love to continue his stare-off with the spooky tree, but his battle-honed senses are pinging like a bell at him to do something with his unwanted audience. So he sighs, turns around, and stares at the weirdly dressed men surrounding him and the pool. 

This is so fucking bizarre.

The men around him look American? European?—something Western, for sure—and they’re wearing honest-to-Stain medieval armour. So big plus for the European thing; they’re probably English. And he knows it’s somewhere between medieval and renaissance, because he made it a point in his early years to study those periods just to rebel against his old man’s traditional Japanese aesthetic. 

They’re also holding actual swords and axes, but even if Dabi were a bit less skilled with his Quirk he wouldn’t find them threatening in the least. They’re all shaking in their fur boots, for one, and if he weren’t so fucking confused he would have laughed at the image of grown bearded men acting so scared of a guy in a thin coat. 

(Really, he’s glad he still has his coat. Yes, sure, his mom’s genes made him resistant to extreme cold, but still, he’d feel naked without it. He’d call it a security blanket, but he’s not a child, so he’ll just say it’s a personal comfort thing.)

The men are staring at him as if he’s the weird one, which is pretty fucking terrible and downright offensive coming from the wackos dressed like it’s a cosplay convention centred around an era centuries before the first Quirk ever appeared. 

. . .  Wait, speaking of Quirks . . .

Dabi squints his eyes, studying the people more intently, and the pinging of alarm bells in his brain reaches a crescendo as he comes to three conclusions.

One: For all that these people are dressed so weirdly, Dabi can’t find anything to even suggest that they have Quirks. No oddities, no mutations, not even the wisp of any Meta Ability.

Honestly, the spooky tree behind him emits more superhuman energy than these people. It’s faint, yes, and markedly different from what he’s known, but it’s there. It’s like a different song in the same album; even though the tune varies from track to track, it still sings of the same narrative. 

. . . Anyway, the point is this: these people are Quirkless.

Two: He’s not in Japan. Which, yeah, that would have been a given with all the European faces around him, but like, he first assumed that they’re just really into their cosplay. But there’s no Japanese face amongst this crowd at all, whether it’s a tour guide or something, so. Either there’s a convention in Japan that bars Japanese people from attending (unlikely), or he somehow ended up far away. Super far. (Also unlikely, but like, less unlikely than the alternative. He might have been hit with a teleportation Quirk far more powerful than Kurogiri’s, going by the distance covered. Cool, but also concerning. And again, weird, because if Shigaraki had a Quirk like that then Kurogiri would have been dusted long ago.)

Three: Dabi would never in a thousand years admit that this came to him too late. But to be fair to himself, the situation he’s in is very confusing. So, it takes him a while to realise that he has to look down on these people. 

They’re either too short, or Dabi suddenly has his second growth spurt. 

Again, the second option is much more likely, since he still can measure the people he’s seeing, and yep. 

Dabi’s pretty sure he’s around the old man’s height now. Ha! Take that, Natsuo!

Okay. So: Either he’s finally completely lost his marbles (very likely), or he really has been teleported to a frozen wasteland instead of dying via getting Decayed (less likely). And it’s not even just to the next city or prefecture; nope, someone’s dumped his ass on what seems to be a completely different country. He’s betting it’s a completely different era, too. Honestly, with how fast Quirks are evolving, he’s not gonna be surprised if one somehow has reached the peak of Quirk Singularity, gone haywire, and decided to play with the laws of time and space, with Dabi as the unwilling guinea pig. You know, just for the giggles, because the universe likes shitting on the Todoroki family in general and Dabi in particular. 

There are holes in that theory, he admits; the biggest of all is the fact that again, were Shigaraki in possession of such a powerful Quirk, the war would have been over and the world would have ended before anyone could had even exclaimed “Plus Ultra!”. 

So back to option one, which is that he’s lost his marbles. And he’s not Mr. Compress, so he doesn’t really want to accept that. 

In times like this, Dabi figures it’s best to just try and communicate with these people. Information gathering and all that. He’d fry them instead, but. He’s trying not to be that person anymore. 

If it turns out he’s in hell, after all, then he’d deal with that too. It’s true that it doesn’t make sense for his hellscape to be a European winterland, with smelly men in leather and armour, but that won’t be the craziest shit he’s been subjected to. So for now he kinda wants to see this through. He’s never heard of a hell with spooky trees before, and he’s honestly intrigued.

He goes for the thing he does best: he smirks.

And that alone is apparently enough for these people to startle, before falling to their goddamn knees.

Huh.

These weird men speak English, at least. And Dabi was part of his old man’s training enough to be educated in the language as well; no Todoroki would ever be lacking in something that All Might’s fluent in. So he can understand them, which is nice, and with their heavy accents he gets confirmation that he’s somewhere in Europe, which is less nice, because that’s far as fuck.

They call him prince, which just gets on Dabi’s nerves. First of all, if anyone’s to be a prince, it’s gonna be Shouto; he’s heard that enough from the tasteless UA brats. Second of all, how the fuck can Dabi be a prince in godforsaken Europe? 

Well.

The answer to that question is this: 

Aside from shooting up in height—he figures he could have always been this tall, really, Fuyumi, shut the fuck up, if not for the premature birth thing and the intense regimen that further stunted his growth—he also somehow managed to lose his scars and staples. And it’s really annoying that he didn’t notice that earlier, but again: the whole situation is one big ball of confusion. So, that, along with his now-silver hair, makes him look like a proper guy and not someone roasted in an open fire (which he was, by the way) and according to the people here, there’s some deposed royal family whose members looked like him. 

Pro: Royalty. That has perks, no matter the country.

Con: Deposed. Because nothing can ever be easy for him, of course.

But that’s not all. The pool from which he emerged is apparently some kind of holy place; he’s in a godswood, where people of “the North” pray to their “old gods”, and the spooky tree behind him is “a weirwood heart tree, m’lord”. 

Hm. “The North?”

“Yes, m’lord. We’re in the North.”

He can practically hear the capital letter in that. Who names a place like a compass? It’s like calling Japan the East. But. It’s a hellscape, probably, so whatever. “And where in the North is this?”

The man who’s been appointed their spokesperson looks at him askance. “Y-You’re in Winterfell, m’lord. It’s the ancestral seat of the Warden of the North.”

Winterfell of the North. Not anywhere in Germany or Finland or Iceland. Not even anywhere in Greenland, if he’s going the unlikely American continent route. 

But it’s not Europe. 

So.

Where the fuck is he then?

Going by them saying the North has a “Warden” (and who even chose these titles, the fuck, it sounds like a fucking prison), and that there’s royalty, he thinks it’s fair to conclude that there’s some form of large-scale government here, with the North being part of a larger kingdom or something. If he’s gonna be stuck here for some time, Dabi has to meet this “Warden” and get to the bottom of this . . . whatever it is. 

“Who’s the ruling family here?” he asks, which is just a translated version of what the Deku brat would have asked: Who’s in charge of this operation? (See, Shouto, I do pay attention to your friends!)

“The Starks are the Wardens, m’lord.”

“Shut up!” The man beside Spokesperson hissed, paling far too rapidly to be healthy. “It’s Bolton land now!”

Spokesperson flinches, and hastily corrects himself. “Beggin’ your pardon, m’lord. I-It’s the Boltons who rule the North.” 

Dabi can almost taste the fear in that sentence. Talk about statements under duress. He watches as the rest of the men grip their weapons harder, sharing odd looks that make him wonder who these Boltons are.

“You said it’s Bolton land ‘now’,” Dabi says. “What happened to the . . . Starks, is it? The former ruling family.”

“They’re gone,” Spokesperson answers. “Betrayed and killed off.” 

Ah. There it is, the undercurrent of anger—at himself, at these betrayers, at the whole situation.

How fascinating.

“You fucking shut your mouth, ya cunt!” shouts another man. He’s got a big mean ax, and he looks to have not washed himself for weeks. “And you!” He turns to glare at Dabi, almost frothing at the mouth. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are, fucking Targaryen bastard, but our lord’s gonna cut off your cock and kill you!”

And with his uncouth declaration made, he makes the stupid mistake of rushing towards Dabi to attack.

The moment he does, something flares within Dabi’s heart. It’s unlike anything he’s ever known, a reservoir of energy so deep and wide and endless that his fire bursts out of him without conscious thought.

A rope of blue flame erupts from him and shoots straight into the man’s chest, through his back, and then he burns .

It hardly takes a second. 

Honestly, Dabi’s surprised. His Quirk’s never done that before, but it feels natural now. Nothing made sense since the moment he got out of the dark pool, but it’s in his best interest to act as if everything’s alright and the murder that just happened is part of this plan.

Yeah, he excels in bullshitting his way out of situations as much as he excels in bullshitting his way into them. 

Anyway, yep. One crisis at a time.

“So,” Dabi says, staring at the shocked men who look torn between screaming and downright peeing their pants, “does anyone have similar thoughts they want to make known?”

When the men who surrounded him suddenly drew their weapons after he asked his question, Dabi expected it. What he didn’t expect was for them to turn their weapons against each other.

Each man clearly had chosen their side; from what Dabi could surmise, one faction’s loyal to the Boltons and another to the Starks. There’s lots of screaming and yelling, so he’s not really clear on the specifics, but there’s time for that later. 

For now, though, he’s gonna side with the Starks just because one of the Bolton men dared to threaten and attack him. 

So, to make things fair, he’s gonna attack them.

He likes getting even, after all.

His Quirk is near purring beneath his skin, ready to go the moment he decides to. And it’s like he just knows, intrinsically, who to attack; when he lets his fire out, it immediately flares to those who he’s sure are Bolton men, for some reason. 

(It’s like a voice is slithering in his ears, Kill the traitors, kill them, kill them, reclaim the winter realm, and his fire answers true.)

And when the last of the wretched men is nothing but ash, he hears the rest murmur, “sent by the old gods”, “prince of flames”, “a saviour mage”, and things along those lines. Dabi would be embarrassed if he weren’t already nearing his limit of suffering from the universe. 

So he just sighs and says, “Can we have a civilised conversation now?”

Fucking Boltons. Flaying men? Yeah, Dabi’s ruthless, but he’s got standards. Who the fuck would follow such sick heathens? He thought Shigaraki’s got issues, but Dabi would rather his quick Decay than the slow process of peeling the skin off people’s flesh. 

Ugh, how disgusting.

Now he really wants to meet this Bolton guy and end his puny miserable life. Preferably by slow burning, just to mix things up. That’s still better than the flaying though, in Dabi’s cultured opinion. 

Someone says that some Bolton men managed to run, so they’re for sure going to meet “their cunt bastard of a lord”, anyway. 

Spokesperson—whose name is Cley—winces at this, saying, “It’s going to be a mess, from here.”

Dabi raises an eyebrow at him. “And this”—he gestures to the ashes slowly melting into the snow—“isn’t messy?”

The poor guy goes red, but before he can sputter out a response, another says, “What do we do now, m’lord?” 

And the others turn to Dabi as well, expectant looks on their faces, determination glinting hard in their eyes.

Dabi kind of wants to set them on fire too. Since when is he the one they take orders from?

But he resists, and thinks instead: What would Shouto do?

Answer: Shouto would not do anything Dabi would consider logical. 

Hmm.

Next question: What would Shigaraki do?

Answer: Dust everyone, because everyone sucks.

Again, not preferable. 

So: What would the Deku brat do?

Okay, now he’s getting somewhere.

Point one: Gather information. 

Status: Ongoing, but with enough data for the moment.

Point two: Assess the situation. 

Findings: Fucked. 

Point three: Devise a plan of action.

Well, that’s the tricky part, isn’t it?

Dabi decides to let the men take him to Winterfell’s courtyard.

“Don’t worry, I won’t die.”

Which is a statement that shouldn’t really be uttered because that’s just asking for trouble, but then again, Dabi already died so that ship has sailed.

When they still hesitate, Dabi straightens up and says in his best impression of Shigaraki trying to sound leader-y: “Just do as I say.”

(And wow, that really worked, huh.)

The moment he sees the apparent Bolton lord, Dabi wants to claw out his eyes. There’s something in that smug smirk and deep eyes that’s just so unsettlingly vile, he just knows he’d be doing the world a huge favour by getting rid of it. 

But then he sees the woman behind him, and Dabi—

No.

Touya sees fucking red.

The woman’s long auburn hair is done in a simple braid, pulled back tight, highlighting a face like carved marble. Skin pale but cheeks high and rosy, a strong aquiline nose. Beautiful, like a painting. Her jaw is clenched, tension in its lines, and her eyes—

Her eyes make Touya want to scream.

A vivid blue, like perhaps the sky during the sunniest day of summer in Tokyo. And yet—and yet—they remind Touya of another pair of eyes—grey like iron, grey like steel—and they hold the same vulnerability, the same tiredness, the same story. 

Dragged through hell, made to suffer ill treatment at the hands of stupid fucking abusers—

The fire within Touya burns.

Oh, he’s going to enjoy dragging out the bastard’s death.

The bastard taunts him but his words slide off Touya. He’s so inconsequential, this little guy, thinking his power is absolute.

Touya’s gonna show him what true power means. 

So Touya baits him without even uttering a word, and like the idiot that he is, he takes it without so much as a thought. And it would be so easy to just end it here, like this, but Touya catches the unexpected ferocity lurking in the woman’s blue eyes.

Just for a second, they seem like the eyes of a wolf.

So he drawls, “This keep is not yours to claim,” and when the woman smiles, bright and sharp and beautiful, Touya finds himself smiling back.

Maybe this hell will be a lot more fun than he thought.

Chapter Text

The Valyrian man is a conundrum. 

Sansa watches as he stands in her family’s hall as if he belongs there. Or, more accurately, as if it belongs to him. Yet there is no threat that she can feel from him, despite knowing how dangerous he is. 

(And she has long been trained in identifying threats to her person; it’s a natural result of everything that she has endured, ever since that fateful day when her father was deemed a traitor to the realm.)

Instead she feels warmed as she never has been for such a long time. The man is like a hearth, steady and comfortable, bringing the first sliver of light back to Winterfell with his fantastical blue flames. She’d call him a mage, or perhaps kin to the followers of the Lord of Light same as Stannis’s red priestess, but she just knows he isn’t either. 

Nothing about the man lets her believe he would ever be a mere follower. 

He dealt with the Bolton bastard so swiftly, his flames doing his will seemingly without a thought. The sight of the bastard with a flame collar nearly had Sansa laughing maniacally, but she thankfully managed to restrain herself. The men who were with the Valyrian weren’t at all surprised by his flames, but they did shrink back, and Sansa realised belatedly that they were all formerly Stark men, made to kneel at swordpoint by the traitors. 

A riddle piece snapped into place. So this was why they didn’t even try to stop him earlier, when he was provoking the bastard; this particular group was already purged of traitors amongst their ranks.

And then the rest of the Bolton men were attacking, but they were handled just as swiftly; the man merely sighed, and tendrils of blue flame shot to collar them the same way their bastard lord was. 

The courtyard was silent, with only the crackling of the flames heard.

“Prince of flames,” someone murmured, and then the people in the courtyard—at least those Sansa knew were beholden (loyal, waiting for the wolves to come back, like that old woman in the tower that Sansa forced herself to forget about lest she drown in her guilt and regret) to her family before the traitors drove the blade behind their back—knelt. 

It’s no wonder they easily showed deference to him, with his effortless goading of the bastard and then his equally effortless putdown of all who tried to attack him. It’s a simple but effective show of immense power, and Sansa would have knelt along with her people if not for his turquoise eyes practically freezing her in place.

“What’s your name?” asked the man, his voice full and rich, in an accent Sansa couldn’t place.

She didn’t question how the man could have dealt with her enemies without even knowing who she was. She merely curtsied, with all the manners beaten into her bones since she was but a child. “Sansa of House Stark,” she answered, “my lord.”

He hummed. “House Stark. The Wardens of the North, Lords of Winterfell, isn’t that right?”

Fierce love for her family—of her blood, of her pack—flared within her. “Yes, my lord.”

“She’s my wife,” snarled the bastard, “a Bolton! I will kill you, you fu— AH!”

The coil of flame around the bastard’s neck sharpened into thorns. Another bolt appeared before him, twisted into the shape of an arrow, its tip singing his forehead. The scent of burning flesh permeated the air before the arrow disappeared, and a fresh scar—perfectly round, still bubbling from heat—was left behind. 

“I don’t appreciate people butting into my conversations,” said the man lazily, not even looking at the bastard. “The next one who dares will be kindling to my flames where they stand.”

“What the f—” 

And true to form, a Bolton man, trying to get away—or perhaps to attack, Sansa wasn’t sure—suddenly caught fire, engulfing his entire being. 

Then along the ramparts, men screamed as they also burned. 

Hidden archers, Sansa thought in disgust. Of course they will resort to such tricks.

When the flames faded out, the wind blew away their leftover ashes. 

All of it took but a moment.

“Is there anyone else?” the man asked, tone bored. He didn’t even move, didn’t even twitch as he burned dozens of men alive. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his dark trousers. 

(He’s barefoot, Sansa noticed. That detail seemed important, somehow.)

No one answered, not even the Bolton bastard. He’s shivering, lips trembling, so dwarfed by this man in more ways than one.

(A spoiled child who finally came across someone much, much more formidable than he could ever hope to be.)

Across the courtyard, a soldier retched.

The Valyrian man turned to his direction. 

The soldier panicked, fearing that he’d be next. (It’s not an unfounded fear.) He threw himself to the ground. “M-My lord! I-I-I’m s-sorry, I-I didn’t m-mean to— I just— The sme—”

“Hey,” the man cut him off. The soldier visibly swallowed his next words. “Just shut up. You,” he said, motioning to a woman beside the poor soldier, “take him to the doctor.”

“A d-doctor, m-my lord?”

A beat. “Someone who takes care of sickness and injuries? A . . . healer or something?”

“Oh,” the woman said. “A maester, my lord. I-I’d take him to the maester, b-but h-he is here.”

“A ‘maester’. Huh.” He eyed the rest of the kneeling people critically. “Whoever this maester is, come out.”

She watched Maester Wolkan struggling to get up. Then he cleared his throat, raising his hand as he hesitantly stepped forward. “T-That’s me, my lord.”

“Help her get that man out of here before he hurls out his intestines. I don’t like seeing puke around. There’s something for settling the stomach here, right?”

He bowed. “Of course, my lord. I’ll take him now to the maester’s turret.” 

The man waved his hand. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

The maester was quick enough to take that as dismissal. He grabbed the soldier’s arm, with the woman on the other side, and they none too gently steered the trembling soldier away.  

The man then turned back to Sansa. “Anyway. Where was I? Ah, House Stark.”

Sansa swallowed the lump in her throat. “Yes, my lord.”

“These men, and that one”—he tipped his chin at the still silent, though still fuming Bolton bastard, as if he’s nothing but dirt—“gotta face justice, right? That’s a thing here?” 

Sansa was tempted to tell him that no, my lord, there is no justice here. There hasn’t been anything like justice in Westeros in a long, long time. Instead she just nodded, wary. 

The man’s turquoise eyes glint in amusement, as if he knew just what she’s thinking. “Right. Well. Better bring them to your dungeons or something. I’m not sure of the protocol here, but someone’s gotta make sure they’re ready for the execution, if that’s what you’re going for. Sort out the loyal from the traitors and shit.”

Sansa, to her shame, just stared at him numbly. Was he turning back the authority of Winterfell to her? 

The question must have been plain on her face, for the man just smiles again—this one softer than before, somehow, yet still incredibly amused. “Sansa Stark,” he intoned, and for some reason the sound of her name in the strange lilt of his voice made Sansa want to shiver, “Winterfell is yours.”

The people devoted to House Stark have immediately taken steps to set things to rights. There are plenty of issues to resolve, ledgers to review, messages to write and send out—but Sansa is, for the first time since watching his father get beheaded, genuinely hopeful of what’s to come.

Winterfell is mine. There is a Stark in Winterfell, now, and it is me.

For I am not a little bird, not a little dove. Not a Lannister, not a Stone, not a Bolton.

I am a Stark of Winterfell, and this is my home.

The Bolton men have been marched and locked in the dungeons, with the bastard specifically taken to the kennels, along with his hounds. Sansa will face him later, when she has a firmer grasp of the situation at hand.

For now she faces the Valyrian man who delivered them from their usurpers without breaking a sweat.

“I thank you, my lord, for helping my family take back what is ours,” she says. Theon is an anchor behind her, with Brienne and Podrick, who had managed to sneak in during the chaos that followed the bastard’s defeat. 

He shrugs, an elegant movement of his shoulders. His silver hair sways ever gently. “The man’s scum,” he says simply. “Keeping him alive is out of the question.”

“Even still,” says Sansa, “your aid is something we cannot repay. If there is anything at all that you require or want, we will—”

The man raises a hand, halting Sansa’s words. It would have been a rude gesture to make to the Lady of Winterfell, but when the one who makes it is also the one who has handed Winterfell back to her, then there’s really nothing else to say. “I’m sorry, I think you’re misunderstanding something. I didn’t do it for repayment or whatever. I just don’t like scum, and really, the bastard’s asking for it.”

Sansa studies the man. He doesn’t seem to be lying, but then neither did Cersei, Littlefinger, and the Tyrells, before. “If you’re not here for anything,” she starts, carefully, “then what brings you to Winterfell’s halls?”

“I’m not really sure,” is the unexpected answer. “One moment I wasn’t here, and the next I was standing in your godswood.” 

Ah. The soldiers from earlier have corroborated the story that this man indeed came from the dark pool. 

“You did not . . . intend to arrive here?” Sansa asks.

“No.” He frowns thoughtfully. “I’m pretty sure I was summoned by the spooky tree, actually.”

“The . . . heart tree summoned you,” Sansa murmurs faintly. Theon squeaks behind her, and Brienne’s armour clangs as she shifts on her feet. The gathered people also break out in awed whispers. “A blessing from the old gods, then.”

She’s startled when the man barks out a laugh. “Ha! A blessing? That’s the first time I heard that,” he says, mirth dancing in his eyes. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but ‘blessing’ isn’t one of them.”

“And,” Sansa says, heart pounding in her chest, because this affair with gods and divine blessings isn’t something she has ever thought to prepare for, “what are you called?”

“Ah, I knew I was forgetting something. Haven’t introduced myself, have I?” The man’s mouth sharpens into a grin. 

Then the flames in all their sconces turn blue, washing the Great Hall in their eerie light. The crowd flinches, and Brienne steps beside Sansa, hand on the hilt of her sword, ready to shield her if need be.

(Distantly, Sansa thinks that it’s a futile gesture, though touching all the same. Brienne’s sword would never reach this man, no matter how skilled she is, but Sansa feels thankful that the swordswoman seems prepared enough to risk it to protect her.

She swore to be kinder to her, if they survive this.)

“I’m called Dabi, meaning ‘cremation’. Though the name I was given is Touya.” The blue flames stretch taller, and Sansa can feel their heat beneath her clothes. “It means ‘arrow of light’.”

“And your House, my lord?” He looks so much like a Targaryen, except for the eyes. If so then House Stark would be harbouring an actual prince, no matter from which branch of the family he hails. Mayhaps a Blackfyre, mayhaps even a lost descendant of Shiera Seastar herself; he’s assuredly beautiful enough to claim it.

In any case, it’s a delicate situation, a sudden void in power notwithstanding. With this, it’s so easy to declare House Stark as once again the centre of a rebellion, this time in support of the House they once overthrew.

Sansa doesn’t want to think of the implications in that.

Dabi— Touya ?—shrugs again. “A name I’d rather not claim. Though I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am no Targaryen.” He hums. “Not a Valyrian either.”

That surprises Sansa, and it must have shown, for Touya smirks.

“I’m not from around here,” he says. “Not from this planet, as far as I know. But the spooky tree did bring me here, for reasons unknown, and I intend to get the answers I deserve.”

There’s a lot to unpack there—another planet? What does that even mean?—but Sansa is unsure if further probing would be welcomed or rebuked. So instead she just tells him, “Then Winterfell’s hospitality is yours, for however long you require it.” It’s the least she could do, after all. 

The blue flames turn small and back to the colour of sunset. He inclines his head in a small bow, and his grin softens into a smile. 

And if that makes Sansa’s heart stutter for a moment?

Well.

That’s no one’s business but her own.

Chapter Text

The North makes Dabi feel like he’s on a vacation in Hokkaido. The snow, the cold, the gentle breeze—it reminds him of a long-buried memory of a trip with his mom and old man. It was before Natsuo and Shouto were born, with Fuyumi a cute little three-year-old toddler and himself having just turned four, safe in the knowledge that it would be 11 more months before his little sister caught up in age again. That trip was one of the old man’s early attempts to seem like a likeable public figure (not that the streak lasted long) but Touya wasn’t jaded enough at that time to understand that.

All he remembers is that he was laughing a lot, chasing Fuyumi on the snowy landscape, both pink-cheeked, with Mom watching over them and the old man a big grumpy figure beside her.

Well, now, Dabi’s the big grumpy figure on the scene. Little children seem to both admire and fear him, and even the soldiers look like they wanna cry when he’s close. It’s funny, yeah, but also annoying, and the worst part is that it reminds him of how people reacted to his old man. And he hates that parallel, so he’s been trying his best to be as amiable as possible.

He’s not sure it’s working though.

In his defence, it’s not even his fault. It’s just that these people of the North—and he maintains that it’s a ridiculous name for a kingdom—seem to view him as a god. Or something close enough to it that they call him “Your Holy Grace,” which sounds really pompous and pretentious that he almost made the first person to call him that combust on the spot.

But then that person’s Cley, and Dabi can admit that the snivelling guy—not so snivelling anymore, now that he’s free from his tormentors—has grown on him. Sure, by this he means “grown like a fungi in one of Toga’s sad attempts at cooking a meal,” but still. It’s something to consider, at least. Cley and the rest of that group he met when he first got here look at him like he’s their yakuza boss. Or whatever the equivalent is in this hell—world. And yeah, his criminal life would have gone a lot smoother if the Vanguard Action Squad respected him even half as much as these guys do, but it still throws him off balance whenever they wait for him to say it’s okay or not to do something.

Clearly these people are placing him on some sort of pedestal. “Holy” is obviously a reference to his coming here through the sacred pool with the spooky tree. “Your Grace” is what they call a member of the ruling family, from the king to the princes and princesses. Dabi has repeatedly pointed out that he’s not actually a Targaryen or a royal in any sense of the word, but it’s clearly not sticking.

The broad divide they put between the divine and the mortal planes makes it all sorts of difficult for Dabi to establish himself as just “some guy you could talk to.” Or a similar persona that won’t grate against his criminal sensibilities. 

Seriously, it’s such a huge leap, going from a wanted villain to a holy prince.

He’s been given large rooms in what he assumes is a wing dedicated to the esteemed guests of House Stark. Cley has been selected as the manservant who will attend exclusively to him, though Dabi’s tried to refuse. 

(“It will behove us to appoint someone who can freely assist you in whatever you need to do, my lord,” said the Lady Stark. “Please do us the honour of accepting this offer.”

Looking into her bright blue eyes, Dabi found himself unable to say no.

He just sighed and gave in, trying not to notice Cley puffing out his chest in some sort of smug pride, his buddies clapping him on the shoulders in congratulations.)

He’s been given leather boots lined with fur as well, and a thick cloak to supplement his coat. He’s not really feeling the cold, but he figures it does look weird for a guest to walk around barefoot, regardless of his powers.

It’s been three days since he emerged from the dark pool and dismantled the Bolton hold in Winterfell. He still doesn’t know why exactly he ended up here, but he’s been talking to his manservant (damn, if the League could see him now, they’d be rolling on their asses laughing their heads off), asking questions and what-not, just to have something to work with.

The bright side in this whole thing is that Cley’s a very useful source of information, and Dabi’s learning a lot from him.

Firstly, he was right about this society he found himself in: there’s indeed a large-scale government that rules over the land. Westeros is divided into Seven Kingdoms, though there’s technically nine administrative regions, with the absolute power held by the royal family that resides in the Crownlands. He infers that it follows a feudal system; the king sits at the top, and then the four major directional wardens and the lords of the Great Houses rule their respective regions on behalf of the Iron Throne.

Secondly, the Iron Throne, Dabi thinks, is a stinking piece of furniture that should have been melted to a puddle ages ago. A thousand swords? That’s just asking for a slashing. It’s not ergonomic at all, and Dabi’s bones are creaking just imagining how uncomfortable sitting on it would be.

Anyway.

The conquering Targaryens—to whom Dabi is very much not related at all, no matter what anyone says—are apparently an incestuous bunch who married brother to sister, uncle to niece, all in the name of keeping their “blood of the dragon” pure. 

Their obsession with the purity of their blood and the power of their fire strikes too close to home, and Dabi becomes even more adamant in his denial of being one of them.

(What is it with power-hungry, fire-obsessed maniacs in any world he finds himself in? Maybe he’s right that this is indeed his hell, too.)

To be fair, they do have dragons. Or, well, did, hundreds of years ago. Those were their most famous weapons, though when they went extinct, the Targaryen influence started to wane too. 

See, this is why you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The Targaryens were so secure in the power of their dragons that they never thought they’d have to deal with a dragonless world, and that led to their ultimate undoing.

Cley tells him all about the fall of the Targaryens, the Rebellion led by House Stark and House Baratheon, and how the latter seized the throne with support from House Lannister. Then there’s House Stark being plunged into chaos starting from when Lady Stark’s own father was accused of treason and later executed. Her eldest brother started a war to avenge him, but then he and their mother were betrayed and killed at a wedding, after her younger brothers were killed by the Greyjoy ward, and her sister was presumed dead, lost in the wind. 

With every tragedy the Lady Stark suffered that he learns about, the more his flame itches to burn the rest of Westeros to the ground.

The only reason he’s not toasting Theon to a crisp right now is because he’s no more than an empty shell of a man, and Sansa herself seems to find his presence soothing. Perhaps it’s the familiarity; they did grow up together, and Dabi knows how important it is to have something or someone familiar nearby in the wake of such trauma.

He’s also severely tempted to deal with the Bolton bastard languishing in the kennels himself. He wants to kill him so bad, but he does acknowledge that it’s not his decision to make. Oh, yeah, the guy’s still gonna die, no doubt about that, but how it’s gonna happen is out of Dabi’s hands. But then he remembers Sansa’s glare, that feral light peeking in her eyes when looking at the bastard, so he’s at least certain that she will be able to pick out the best way to resolve that particular mess.

Every second that the scum breathes the same air as everyone in Winterfell is a second too many, though. 

It’s a good thing that the tall warrior woman appears to be wholly dedicated to keeping Sansa safe. She looks fierce enough to run through ill-intentioned men with her sword. He remembers her shifting to shield Sansa from him, so he’s sure she’s also faithful enough to sacrifice herself should it be needed. 

Still, he hones his senses, and his flames pinpoint where Sansa is in the large keep.

Her presence is like candlelight, flickering ever gently as she goes through sheafs of parchment for the running of her household.

. . . Yeah. That’s another thing that Dabi has discovered. His powers have grown exponentially since getting here. He’s not sure if that’s a result of dying and being resurrected, or if the spooky tree that summoned him here has had a hand in that too. 

He’s betting it’s 20% the former and 80% the latter. 

Before dying, he can call forth his blue flames and execute mid- to long-range attacks. But now, he can do not only that but also control all flames in the vicinity, changing their temperature and even their shapes. He can perceive the warmth of each human body, and so he knows where anyone is currently in Winterfell. He’s pretty sure if he really tries, he can even map out the veins in Winterfell’s walls that allow it to remain cosy with the heat from the hot springs.

It’s insane, how his Quirk has evolved and continues to flex itself out towards its limit—if there is such a thing, here and now. Every day he discovers something new with his flames, so the jury's still out for that one. Ha. His old man would have frothed at the mouth. It’s amusing to think about.

What’s more, Dabi has also become resistant to his own flames! No matter how hot they get, they don’t leave him scarred and smoking anymore. It’s honestly such a novel experience; he can let loose in the courtyard and create a huge-ass bonfire using high-temperature flames that would have injured him before, but now his skin remains smooth. It doesn’t even turn pink from the heat or anything!

(And yeah, Dabi does light up bonfires in Winterfell’s courtyard. He’s not sure what’s with the wood from the North’s forests, but when he burns them, they can sustain the heat of Blueflame and last through the night. It’s very efficient, and it helps warm up the servants and the guards, for which they’re very thankful.)

There’s a lot of development in his Quirk, and there’s really only one thing that can give him answers on what the fuck is going on.

So here he is, once again standing in front of the stupid spooky tree—the ground zero of all the crazy shit he’s experienced since dying.

Cley and the rest of his group stand several metres away from him, on guard. Not that he needs that, but he’s not gonna burst their bubbles as long as they don’t cross the line. And they act as a sort of deterrent to the busybodies who’re curiously bustling about, keeping them from coming too close.

(Dabi knows himself and his flames enough to ensure there's a wide berth between him and other people, especially Quirkless ones who have no way to defend themselves.)

The spooky tree is as, well, spooky as ever. It still has that superhuman energy he felt that first day, but tamer, somehow. Calmer, as if it feels his agitation and wants to soothe it. And it’s effective, for the most part. Dabi’s impulse to blast the Bolton prisoners to pieces has simmered down. 

He doesn’t know what’s the protocol for talking to trees, old gods or otherwise, but he does know how to talk shit to people of authority, so this is a piece of cake. Really.

“Hey,” he starts, with all the angst of a prodigal son, “what the fuck do you want from me?”

He feels the people’s terror before he hears their hitched breaths and horrified gasps. But Dabi pays them no mind, his eyes intent on the heart tree’s face. The red sap has dried on its bark, but now it’s flowing again, just like that day too. He watches as it slowly drips to the ground, inching its way to the pool.

Once it reaches the pool, the water starts to bubble, earning shouts of alarm. Dabi stares at the rapidly steaming surface.

Come, Son of Ice, Son of Fire, the winds seem to whisper.

That, or maybe Dabi has totally, officially lost it.

But seemingly fatal missions aren’t really new to him, so he just sighs and steps into the pool.

He expected to sink into the inky depths of the stupid pool, but just like when he’s dying, his expectations meet a different reality.

The water surges up to him, boiling hot yet not hot enough at the same time. He closes his eyes as it engulfs him, and when he opens them again, he’s floating in nothingness.

It’s dark, but he can see enough to notice that he has his scars back. This, more than anything, makes him believe that he really didn’t die during that confrontation with Shigaraki. It doesn’t make sense that hell—and that’s really the only place he could conceivably go to when he finally kicks the bucket—would have him looking like the prime version of himself, with his old man’s height and his mom’s precious hair, free from being constantly dyed, and with no battle scars, no injuries, and no peeling skin.

In that case, here in this mindscape or whatever—with the version of him that he knows—is probably the closest he has been to actual death.

The moment he thinks that, the landscape shifts—this time to a blue world: calm blue waters as far as he can see, so still that it perfectly reflects the clouds dotting the clear blue skies. 

A peaceful world. 

His hands are unscarred again, but when looks at his reflection on the water’s surface, it’s the him from before that stares back. 

It doesn’t surprise him at all when someone behind him speaks. “Welcome, Arrow of Light, from the House of the Roaring Thunderstorm.”

When he turns around, he sees a strange little being. Well, ‘strange’ for a Westerosi, at least; if Dabi were back in his world, this would have been as normal as his own face. It almost cheers him up, the sight of something that could be considered mundane by his standards.

The creature is small, almost like an adolescent human, but their face is ageless in that Dabi can’t tell if they’re old or young at all. Their skin is like a deer’s, a soft dappled brown, and their hands only have three fingers and a thumb each, growing wicked sharp claws instead of fingernails. Their ears are large and eyes slitted blood red.

“That’s not my House,” he says. 

The creature shrugs. “Not by choice,” they agree. “But by blood.”

“Blood doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything to you. It holds power, nonetheless.”

He scoffs. “Is that why you brought me here? Because of the power in my blood?”

“No,” they answer. “We had no hand in that. The old gods did, and we Children are but their speakers.”

“And why did they bring me here?”

“This world needs your help,” they reply, red eyes stark against the blue of this world, “to bring the Dawn.” 

Dabi has always known that life is cruel and unfair. He’s faced the worst of humanity; no, he’s been part of the worst of humanity. He has no delusions of his own cold-bloodedness, and he’s never been arrogant enough to claim to be on some moral high ground. He knows what he is, and in a world such as his, where heroism becomes synonymous to justified brutality, he’s embraced the role of villain, embodying the word with all the gusto his old man would have been proud of were he a hero instead. 

But this new world he landed in makes Dabi question whether he knew true evil at all.

The Child—it’s what the First Men and the Andals call their race, they claim—shows him the reality of Westeros through fragments and visions in the water, and Dabi is hard-pressed to think of anything harsher and bleaker. Sure, he knows bits and pieces from Cley’s stories, but those are more abstract to him, like reading the pages of a particularly depressing history book.

Those certainly didn’t prepare him for seeing the actual extent of this world’s depravity, making Dabi feel positively nauseous and murderous in equal measure. 

It’s a world All for One and Shigaraki would have thrived in, yes, agents of chaos that they are. And even then Dabi recoils from the level of barbarism these people are capable of, the variety of atrocities they commit to satisfy their greed for a throne that was never theirs to covet. 

It’s humanity at its rawest, basest form, where suffering is constant and death the only salvation. Corruption seeps in every corner of the land, making the HSPC seem practically angelic. 

Then the Child shows him the Wall, and the gathering darkness beyond it—and Dabi sees them.

Creatures made of ice, reeking of an unnaturalness that makes Dabi’s hair stand on end. They remind him of Nomu—dead and yet not—but these are worse, because they can think for themselves. They need no command to wreak havoc, which they do at a magnitude that’s honestly fucking terrifying. And they can raise the dead, their army a hundred thousand strong and growing with every body they encounter. 

They stink of blood, of utter desolation, of decay.

(And yeah, he would know. It’s a familiar scent; he last smelled it when he was preparing himself to die.) 

Ah, Dabi thinks, past the point of hysterics, it’s a mess of apocalyptic proportions.

When the last of the putrid stench and horrific visions fade away, Dabi glares at the Child. He doesn’t say anything for quite some time, ruminating over what he saw and what the Child meant.

“Past the Wall, the dead gather,” the Child says. Which makes Dabi huff, because no shit. “They bring with them the might of winter, and herald the Long Night.” Their gaze is knowing, a shiver runs down Dabi’s spine.

The Long Night.

Bring the Dawn, the Child said earlier.

“And so,” he says, slowly, “I’m to help end this Long Night.”

The Child nods. 

“Why me?” he can’t help but ask. “If you need saving, there’s plenty of other choices that would have made a lot more sense. I’m pretty sure I’m the last choice anyone should pick when it comes to something as important as the fucking end of all life.”

The Child simply stares at him, and for the first time since meeting them, Dabi is unnerved. It’s like he’s being weighed, and he doesn’t know whether or not he wants to hear what they decide. 

Before he can say anything else, though, the Child begins to fade. The edges of this blue world are folding in on itself, and Dabi can see the horizons drawing closer.

“It’s the old gods who brought you here,” they tell him again. “We speak their will, but we don’t know the reasons for it. What we do know is this: You are needed in this world, Touya of the Blueflame, and for better or for worse, you shall have a hand in changing it.”

And then they completely vanish from sight, leaving Dabi standing alone. It isn’t until he’s engulfed, once again, in darkness, that Dabi realises he was speaking with the Child in his mother tongue this entire time.

When Dabi steps out of the water, he’s greeted by what seems to be the entire population of Winterfell, all looking at him with awe and a healthy amount of reverence. 

And when he catches a glimpse of his reflection on the pool, he understands why. The shitty old gods of the stupid spooky tree are apparently going to pull out all the stops to turn him into their goddamn messiah. 

Around his head is a crown and on his back are wings, both made of his blue flames. It makes him look like the godly being these people have begun seeing him as, and he’s sure this would just make it all the more difficult to convince them that he’s not.

“By the gods,” someone expectedly says, and once again they’re kneeling to him, their foreheads near touching the ground. 

Even Sansa—and since when was she here, anyway?—seems shaken, before she murmurs, “Your Holy Grace,” curtseying low, eyes not raising past Dabi’s feet.

It’s the first time she’s called him that, and Dabi bites back a groan.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

The past three days have been a whirlwind of activity in Winterfell. If not for Brienne, Podrick, and Theon, Sansa would have probably forsaken sleeping and eating altogether, caught as she is in all the minutiae of running her keep and ensuring no Bolton stain remains. 

But Lady of Winterfell or not, she’s also still merely human, and so she reluctantly takes breaks when food is set before her, and when Brienne reminds her, with polite words but a firm tone, to “sleep, please, my lady,” she follows.

The good thing that her tiredness brings is that she doesn’t dream. Her nights, for the first time since she’s but a girl in the Red Keep, caught in the maws of the lions and their greed, are peaceful, with no nightmares making for a fitful sleep. There’s still fear, of course, lingering in the corners of her mind—for, oh, she knows reclaiming Winterfell is not the end of her worries, far from it—but for now she’s at least secure in the knowledge that no one would dare infringe upon her space. 

Winterfell is hers.

Brienne is a stalwart protector, her hand ready on the hilt of her sword as she stands guard outside Sansa’s rooms. Pod is a calm presence, with his sincere eyes and easy-going smile, and though Brienne often says he’s better off a courtier than a squire, he’s also not too terrible at wielding a blade. 

And Theon—and she keeps telling him he is Theon, no matter what anyone says—is a reminder of better times, before the Stag King went North to upend their lives; he’s jumpy, yes, and he keeps denying his name still, but Sansa is starting to see glimpses of the boy he used to be, a kraken raised by the wolves of Winterfell.

The people she currently trusts can be counted on one hand, with a finger to spare. The fourth, of course, is her older brother who exiled himself to the Wall. She’s not sure what has happened to him, how he is, and whether he’d come if she called, but she’s willing to try.

She needs her family, and for all that she constantly hurt him with her immaturity and harsh words when they were children, she knows without a doubt that Stark blood runs hot in him, same as hers, same as her trueborn siblings. Jon is family—the only one that remains.

And yes, Theon told her that he didn’t actually kill Bran and Rickon, but Sansa has been through far too much to have much hope that they’ve survived. They were but two little boys with one Wildling woman and two wolves between them; the odds were never in their favour. It’s a harsh truth, sending spikes through her heart, yet truth all the same. 

It makes it hard to breathe, some days, when she thinks of how young they were—how old they could have been. How old they should be, were the gods a little bit more merciful. 

Sansa remembers praying to the gods every single day for some form of deliverance: for someone to lift their hand and help her, for the sake of herself, not just of her family. 

To whisk her away from the heat and the stench and the poisonous stares of the capital. 

To save her. 

But her call for justice to the Father remained unanswered and her pleas for mercy to the Mother were met with more cruelty. The Warrior had sent her no swords but those which struck her, nor did the Smith ever try to mend her hurts. The Maiden never kept her safe, and the only guidance provided by the Crone was towards more grief. Even her invocations to the Stranger, whom she called in her more desperate moments, were all for nought.

For each sliver of hope dangled before eyes, tantalising her with soft promises of safety, fate withdrew its hands, leaving her grasping for what-ifs that would never come to be. Each time she set herself up with idealistic expectations, a piece of her would be held ransom and then left unpaid, left to dust.

Left for dead.

And so she has learned to abandon that faith and leave the dreaming and the songs to the children who know no better. The Seven never heeded her; why would she continue to waste her breath with ignored words and desperate wishes?

Instead she turned to her father’s old gods, them who asked for no septs and demanded no grand offerings.

She never prayed to them as a child; her mother’s southron sensibilities would never allow it, and she was moulded to be the same since the day she was born. But she remembers her father sitting on the stone by the heart tree, cleaning his greatsword, and how peaceful he always looked after going to the godswood.

“The old gods always listen, Sansa,” he would say, “and their answers are in the air we breathe, in the winds of winter.”

She never understood that before. 

She understands it now.

When the Targaryen—who was not a Targaryen—appeared before Sansa, she didn’t think until it was too late that he had brought with him power beyond even the greatest of dragonlords. 

His flames burned away the Bolton grasp in Winterfell in under an hour, giving her back her childhood home as if it’s such an easy thing to do. His words were taken as commands, as he wielded authority as if it were a birthright.

Mayhaps it was.

So when he said he was summoned by the heart tree, Sansa accepted it easily. She already saw his flames, after all, and felt their intense heat, same as every other person in that courtyard. It’s so easy to see him as a being sent by the old gods—her father’s gods, the North’s gods—for there surely wasn’t anything ordinary about him.

He called himself Dabi. “Cremation,” he said, was what this name meant, and it was undoubtedly an apt name. Fitting for the Targaryen he claimed himself not to be. And he might be no Targaryen, but Sansa could easily believe him to be a descendant of one of the other dragonlord families. A remnant of Old Valyria, though he said it’s not that either.

He said his House was something he’d rather not claim, and the more imaginative of the servants had even begun speculating that he’s a half-god, with a deity for a mother and a mortal for a father. It would make sense, they claimed, that he’d renounce a mortal father’s name, a blemish in his blood that could have been fully divine. 

She heard the people’s whispers, after; they started calling him “Your Holy Grace,” and with his silver looks and his azure flames, it’s not surprising at all that they thought him a prince. 

“Which mortal could tempt a goddess to bear his seed?” they asked. “Why, none but a king!”

Sansa left them to their conjectures and idle talk; it was doing no harm, and according to Pod, who was always welcome in the kitchens, the thought of such an otherworldly being taking them under his protection was lifting everyone’s spirits.

“They say that it’s a good omen for House Stark,” Pod said. “That the old gods may rarely answer, but when they do, they leave no room for doubt.”

It’s amusing to think about, if not downright terrifying. The blood of gods walking in the realm of men was a thing of songs, of myths dating back to the Age of Heroes. Sansa wasn’t quite sure whether she’d rather he be a man of the dragonlords’ line, with gifts of sorcery and power over flames, or an actual descendant of the gods who had always been something removed from their lives.

She thought that it would be something she’d have to address later, rather than sooner.  

(But oh, how wrong she turned out to be.)

The second explosion in three days sounds throughout the keep, and Sansa drops her quill in surprise. Ink splatters across parchment, her half-written letter to her brother soaking in black. People are yelling below, and Brienne warily watches the door to the lord’s solar that Sansa has commandeered for herself, waiting for an attack.

Sansa exchanges a glance with Theon, who tips his head towards the window. 

There, she sees a familiar geyser of dark water, soaring into the sky. 

She swallows. “Do you know what brought this on?”

“His Holy Grace had been planning to talk to the heart tree, my lady,” Pod answers, staring at the geyser with wonder. “I didn’t know he would choose today.”

Talking to the heart tree, Sansa thinks blankly. As if it’s something natural.

Given the person involved, mayhaps it is natural. 

“And did he share the reason?”

Pod turns to her, looking abashed. “His Holy Grace doesn’t really answer questions like that, my lady.”

Of course not.

Sansa wants to sigh, but it’s not Pod’s fault. He’s hardly someone who can demand answers from a being such as that. Sansa is quite certain no one in the Seven Kingdoms, nor in Essos besides, could challenge that person’s authority, especially if the speculations about him turn out to be true.

Going against a prince is treason. Going against a god is sacrilege. 

And if Lord Touya happens to be both . . .

Well.

It’s not something she’d gamble her people—her home—for. 

But either way, her presence is owed, as she realises the noise is growing louder. A large crowd is unmistakably forming to witness whatever Lord Touya’s doing, and as the Lady Stark, Sansa is obliged to ensure no other issues arise as he talks with the old gods, who may or may not be his actual family.

So Sansa gathers her courage as she gathers her skirts, stands up, and says, “Come on, then. Let’s see if any questions will be deemed worthy of answers, now.”

The people make way for her as soon as they see her approaching, and so she easily reaches the geyser, her three shadows behind her. 

“My lady.” Lord Touya’s manservant Cley bows to her in respect, as do the rest of their group. Lord Touya’s men, Sansa muses, the first ones who met him when he arrived in the North. “His Holy Grace has started speaking with the old gods.” His voice trembles, but there’s obvious astonishment and reverence there too. It’s the voice of a man who has chosen his lot and believes it is the right choice.

It hasn’t been long since she’s met Lord Touya, so she can’t rightly say she has an accurate measure of him. But she does know enough to conclude that he could have burned them all along with the Bolton men if he so wanted.

But he didn’t. And that made all the difference. 

She’s well aware of the whispers around her, of the people believing the gods have finally bestowed their blessing by sending her—and them, in turn—Lord Touya and his flames. She knows what they want to hear. 

“Then we have the honour of being the first people to have witnessed a divine commune in thousands of years.” She projects her voice clearly, and she can feel their pride swelling with her words. 

For it is not a lie. Witches and priestesses with strange magicks may be known in many lands, but in all the histories there has never been a true record of divine blood walking the world. To have such a thing happening in the North—and in the heart of Winterfell, no less—is a balm to her people’s souls.

They have long thought Winterfell deserted by the grace of their gods, but here before their eyes is proof that it is not so.

Sansa doesn’t know how long she’s stood there, staring at the swirling dark waters along with her people. It’s mesmerising, the flow of water, rivulets dancing in the air, a sight beyond any imaginings she had as a child. The very air seems to hum, singing a hymn with the rustling red leaves and the beating of their hearts.

And then.

Well.

Her world, once again, is changed.

She’s not quite sure if there are words to accurately describe what happens next. It cannot be a dream, for the details are too sharp, too clear. It cannot be a mummer’s show, for the winds follow an unseen master and the crows descend in synchronised flocks, a feat that cannot be mimicked by any human skill. 

Whatever the truth was, however, the fact remains: she and everyone else get another display, another indubitable proof, that the man who has dined with them, talked with them, walked with them the past several days is a thousand times more powerful than they could have first thought. 

The centre of the geyser begins to glow—a familiar blue light igniting deep within. The air begins to feel weighted and then grows warmer, warmer, warmer, until it becomes hot. The layers of snow that cover the ground slowly turn to puddles of water that then simply vanish into steam, leaving them standing in thick warm mist.

The blue light burns brighter, bathing everyone in their effervescence, and dark clouds gather above, with blue lightning streaking. 

Thunder booms, and the trees, the winds, the water stand still. 

Son of ice, comes the slithering voice—from above, from below, from all directions yet—and Sansa feels the breath leave her as it does everyone else. Son of fire.

Cley seems to choke on nothing. Not that Sansa notices, standing as she is, transfixed, her body refusing to move.

The Azure Prince, comes another whisper, loud in the silence that has descended upon them all. Spheres of blue flames burst out of the geyser, moving and then stopping until they have formed a circle, the spaces between them even.

Arrow of Light. The geyser itself starts to look more like a tower of flames than water, reaching ever higher, its top sharpening to an arrow-like point.

Lord of the All-Consuming Flames. The geyser turns thinner, as if a shedding snake, drifting back down to the dark pool beneath it until all that remains is a pillar just tall enough to encase a man.

. . . Or a god, as it turns out, and Sansa watches as Lord—no, after everything, can Sansa still call him a mere lord? The title is so lacking that it could have been even called an insult—His Holy Grace languidly steps out of the pillar as a man would step through a door.

This is no man, Sansa thinks, this is no man at all.

His black coat, of a material no one knows, flaps in the wind. He has forgone his thin white undershirt, and instead has donned a simple tunic of Stark grey, as well as thicker Northern breeches and fur-lined boots. 

And upon his head is a crown of fire. Tongues of flame dart to and fro, a deadly circlet contrasting so bewitchingly against his spun-silver hair, delicate filaments gently swaying. Behind him are twin wings of the same blue flames, spread out wide, grand and glorious.

Sansa can feel the terror of the crowd along with their renewed devotion. And when they kneel, in another reflection of that first day, Sansa curtseys again, this time greeting him as she should have before. 

“Your Holy Grace,” she says, proud of the way she doesn’t waver.

She feels rather than hears him sigh. “Right,” he says, “stand up straight, you lot.”

They do, though the servants and guards still have their heads bowed. Too intimidated, too wonderstruck, and rightly so. When she looks back up at his face, she sees he’s frowning ever slightly, his mouth in a displeased line. Sansa forces her fears back to her lungs. It wouldn’t do, would it, to look so weak and scared before a being such as him.

But he seems rather preoccupied instead of mad at them, and Sansa lets herself feel relieved.

However, the relief does not last long. 

All the blood drains from her face and panic grips her bones when he meets her gaze, serious as can be, and says without preamble, “Send your letter to your brother in the Wall as soon as you’re able, Lady Stark.” His eyes are filled with grim determination. “We’ve much to discuss for the North.” He glances at the people who are listening with rapt attention, not even hiding their curiosity, and his lips quirk up in a smile that really shouldn’t look half as dangerous as it does. “And for the rest of the world,” he adds.

And with a tilt of his head in acknowledgement of her, he sweeps back towards the keep, his wings disappearing into smoke.

His crown remains, reminding Sansa so suddenly and viscerally of blue winter roses.

Chapter Text

Dabi makes his way to his room, pointedly ignoring everyone he sees along the way. He can hear their murmurs of awe, can feel their worship as a near tangible thing, and it sets him on edge. Cley and the guys are following him—their footsteps are loud as fuck, he’s gonna need to teach them stealth or something if they insist on being like ducklings who imprinted—keeping a healthy distance, either out of respect or out of fear. Dabi doesn’t care which it is, really.

As he approaches the door to his room, a bolt of flame shoots out and opens it for him.

Yeah.

What the fuck. 

The people who see it happen stop in their tracks. 

Dabi does not react, and instead just enters his room without a word. The door closes behind him, and he doesn’t need to check to see that no one’s touching it then either.

He sighs, flops back on the biggest bed he’s ever slept on, and tries his best not to scream.

He would like to state for the record that being dropped in a completely different world sucks balls. He could have worked with a different country, and even a different era. At least then he’s got some kind of stock knowledge that could help him fake it until he makes it or whatever. 

But this time karma’s really got his ass beat, making him pay for all the shit he’s pulled as a rebellious kid and as a villain, with a fucking massive interest to boot. 

He’s put his processing on hold since, well, basically dying, and he’s been going with the flow since then. He hasn’t quite grasped his actual situation, partly because it’s a pretty fucking ludicrous situation but mostly because frankly, he doesn’t wanna grasp it at all. Sure, he might have believed what’s happening is real in an out-of-body-experience kind of way, suspended in a reality-altering coma or something.

But the fucking conversation he just had with that Child thing really drives the point home that yeah, Sherlock, you’re not in fucking Kansas anymore, and it’s time to actually understand what that means.

And what that means, unfortunately, is that Dabi’s legit in a world that needs his help for a goddamn apocalypse event.

What can’t it be Shouto? He’s the golden child! Or even that green brat. His bleeding fucking heart won’t let these people die.

Even Hawks would be a fucking better choice. 

But it’s Dabi instead, because he’s apparently fate’s punching bag. And no, he’s not being overly dramatic, what makes you say that, Spinner? Dabi thinks he’s being a reasonable level of dramatic, actually, given the proportion of the problem that’s just been dumped on his lap.

It’s not enough that he’s in an alternate universe—and yo, wow, he just got confirmation that the multiverse is real, which would have blown his mind if the proof weren’t practically shoved in his face in the worst way possible—no, no, he must also be assigned the hero role, and Dabi really, seriously, wants to set that fucking spooky tree on fire. 

Why the old gods of this world didn’t call in the actual heroes of his world, he’d never know. It’s not like it’s an easy mistake to make; he literally looked like the poster kid for arson gone wrong, and he wasn’t shy about proclaiming his villainy. He even had his father-son duel televised and shit! 

“Bring the Dawn,” they said. “It will be fun,” they said.

. . . Well, no, they didn’t say that. They said he’s gonna change the world, which is fun—by which he means it’s going to end terribly, and everyone’s gonna die because of his bad decisions if the ice zombies didn’t finish the job first. 

And to put icing on the worst cake in history, Dabi forgot to ask if there’s a chance that he could return to his world. He’d turn around and jump back into the damn pool but he’s pretty sure the Child won’t meet with him again, at least not so soon.

It’s not that Dabi wants to be back on earth, either. There’s barely anything there for him as it is, except perhaps Mom and his siblings. Their relationship with each other may be a tragedy of errors, but they’re trying. 

(If Dabi had one regret, it would be that he tried too late.)

It would have been nice to be given a choice on whether or not he’s going back. Yeah, sure, he’s fully prepared to die and be cast into hell that day, so it shouldn’t be that much of a difference from being catapulted to another reality, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. Free will is a thing he very much believes in, so suddenly having that removed from his hands is like, uh, removing knives from Toga or something equally terrible.

And now he’s gone and gotten himself fucking isekai’ed, like a shounen protagonist in a crappy manga, stuck in an unfamiliar world with no Quirks, no soba, and no technology. He just hopes that when he died with a bang (more like a volcanic eruption, really, with his flames and Shouto’s and then Shigaraki’s . . . everything), it wasn’t in vain. 

He swears he’s gonna kill off all the gods here if he’s suffering through this and he finds out Shigaraki still lives. If anyone’s tailor-made to be sent to a medieval hellscape, it’s him. Imagining the little shit stuck here without his precious video games brings a smile to Dabi’s face. Shigaraki would have thrown a tantrum and then carried on with his purpose, which is to destroy—and yeah, that is counterproductive, given that the Child said the world must be saved, but eh, not Dabi’s problem.

Except it is my problem now.  

Ugh.

And then the spectacle with the spooky heart tree has made everything more complicated, and Dabi didn’t think that’s even possible at all! He thought his old man’s fire beard and fire mask were bad, but then Dabi gets saddled with a crown of fire and given wings more annoyingly flashy than Hawks’, and he knows it’s not just worse—it’s fucking overkill.

Now these people are gonna be more determined to declare him their god—and a princely one at that! He’s barely gotten used to the bowing and the sparkly-eyed stares; he’s not sure he can survive through more of that, with groveling and weird-ass titles thrown in as a bonus. For fuck’s sake, they call him “Your Holy Grace” already. The light show earlier would have bumped up the grandiosity of his powers in their eyes for sure.

The amount of headache and mortification that’s gonna cause is so not a fair trade to what he got in return. 

He went searching for answers, and okay, he got them, but he also has more questions now. And he’s pretty sure his entire being has been remade when he first emerged from the dark pool; that explains a lot, with his non-scars and the improvements in his Quirk. The transformation must have been completed when he dipped into it willingly; he can feel the changes in his flames as an almost physical thing, churning and boiling and moving beneath his skin, like magma shifting along the cracks of the earth. 

He’s not against getting stronger, especially now that he knows the enemies he must face, but he admits it’s a bit disconcerting to feel the surge of new power deep within him. His flames have always been a wild and volatile thing, but now it’s more than that; the cavernous well of energy has become a bottomless ocean, and he can feel every cell in his body straining against the pressure. It’s both easy and difficult to balance; easy in that calling forth his flames is as natural to him as breathing, like always, difficult in that he has to be more careful in how much he does release.

And it’s not just the strength of his flames itself that has changed; even their essence has evolved. An instinctual feeling prods at him, and he can sense his flames flowing through his veins, charting a path to something different from any Todoroki-patented fire from before. 

He doesn’t know what that something is just yet, but in time, he’s sure he will. 

That seems to be par for the course for him here in this goddamn world, after all. 

Dabi spends a couple of hours in his rooms, trying to organise his thoughts. 

(And there are a lot of thoughts running in his mind, including but not limited to: the logistics of using his flames to make volcanoes all around the world erupt, possibly taking all life but hopefully also all the dead along the ride; the achievability of forfeiting his life and freeing himself from the mortal coil once and for all if he dives back into the damn dark pool and refuse to leave until at least one of the gods face him and accept his challenge to a fistfight, no holds barred; and the steps involved in dragging the North towards the modern ideas of sanitation and hygiene because if he has to see a man eat with his bare unwashed hands one more time he’s going to torch someone—possibly himself.)

The visions the Child showed him has been imprinted on his subconscious or something, allowing his flames to recreate them perfectly. It’s a nifty trick if not slightly disturbing, but he’s really not in a position to complain; it allows him to review the scenes, giving him ample chances to study them and pick up new information that would help him in a fucking war. 

Fucking army of the dead.

It’s a good thing he’s got some brain cells to spare, because he’s gonna need a lot of thinking to handle this shit. He likes challenges, yeah, but suddenly having to plan out a wide-scale war is admittedly way out of his field of expertise. He’s more of a ‘burn first, think later’ kinda guy, but he understands enough about the North to conclude that that strategy isn’t gonna work for what’s coming.

First of all, he’s re-installed a former ruling family back to their rightful position. However, that’s not how it’s going to look to the rest of Westeros, which is still under the golden thumb of an incest baby. 

Second of all, he looks too much like another incest baby; House Targaryen may be overthrown, but there are enough loyalists around that his sudden appearance may tempt out of the woodwork. It’s a risky thing, and even with his limited knowledge of this place’s history he knows that’s just courting an all-out war amongst the living—something that the North is not equipped for. 

Third of all, though the whole “hey, there are undead beings made of ice that are gathering beyond the Wall” thing is obviously the most important thing to prepare for, he’s not so naive as to think he can handle that alone. If he’s really doing this—and he’s beginning to accept that he has no choice here—he needs the full cooperation of the people he’s going to save. Or else more of them are going to die, which means more meat for the undead army, and more enemies for him to deal with.

So.

Tl;dr: He needs a unified living force to deal with the unified dead force. Unifying people isn’t something he knows what to do. Fortunately for him—and this world, really—he has plenty of experience doing things he’s not knowledgeable about. He’s got this in the bag.

Probably.

And also! He’s got his secret weapon: he’s been generously exposed to the ramblings of Shouto’s green friend! For all that the Deku brat annoys Dabi greatly, he is All Might’s successor for a reason, and as the new Symbol of Peace, he just has the needed intuition to sway people to his side. 

Dabi can work with that.  

He’s thinking of how he can incorporate a Vanguard Action Squad into the fight against the dead when someone knocks. 

“Your Holy Grace.”

Dabi sighs. That’s Cley. “Come in.”

Cley does, immediately giving him a bow. “I have a message from Lady Stark.”

“Yeah?”

“She invites you to her solar for tea if it pleases Your Holy Grace. She is there now, though of course, you are free to come by whenever it suits you.”

He hides a wince. That just means Sansa would not be eating at all if Dabi chooses not to go, and it won’t be taken against him. It makes him mad, reminding him of the day he met her: under the rule of a beast of a man, trapped by the laws that govern them.

Well, time to set some laws on fire, Dabi supposes. He’s never put much stock in laws, anyway.

But first.

“Alright,” Dabi says, getting up. “Lead the way.”

So now here he sits, with the Lady Stark, tea and some bread served before them. Brienne stands behind Lady Stark, an ever-faithful warrior, and Dabi is suitably impressed. Cley is waiting outside as a dedicated manservant would, keeping Pod the squire and Theon the backstabbing kraken (who has gotten his just desserts, Dabi thinks) company.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation,” Sansa says. Her voice is so politely blank. A mask. “You honour us with your presence.”

“Not at all,” Dabi says, burying his—what? unease? discontent? or disgust at himself?—under his trademark cockiness. “I should be the one thanking you, for setting this up quickly. Time is of the essence, and all that.”

Sansa blinks, probably processing his words. Oops. Modern phrasing, Dabi. “Right.” She’s so good at that—hiding the chinks in her armour with an easy shift. “You mentioned something about the North, and the rest of the world.”

“I did.” Dabi takes a sip of tea. 

“I’m afraid I do not know how the fate of the North is related to the rest of the world.”

“It’s pretty closely related, actually,” Dabi says. He smiles wryly. “Your brother knows it too.”

Sansa’s hand reflexively clenches. “Jon. You told me to write to him,” she murmurs. “Why?”

“I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just go the blunt way.” He sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Your world’s ancient enemies are waking. The dead gather for the Long Night, and your old gods summoned me from my world to help you.”

Sansa gasps, horror and disbelief clear in her blue eyes. Brienne is frozen on her feet, obviously uncertain if she’s heard him right.

Dabi’s crown blooms into existence, a fiery reminder that things beyond the thoughts of men are now walking this world, and his words are ones that must be heeded.

He leans on his elbow, ignoring the pang within him when Sansa twitches. Instead he forges on, “The North stands as the greatest defence in the war between the living and the dead, Sansa Stark.” His voice leaves no room for doubt, and he can see the dawning comprehension in her gaze. “Should the North fall,” he continues, “the rest of the world will follow.”

He leans back on his chair as Sansa seems to reboot, staring unseeing at the table. A very valid reaction, if he does say so himself. A much more respectable reaction than his, in any case, which consisted mostly of swearing at the old gods (and also his old man, just because).

He watches as she seemingly rallies herself—there’s a calculative glint in her eyes, sharpening the sapphire to steel (reminding him of his mom), and her jaw is tight with tension (just like Fuyumi when preparing to rip him a new one). 

“Then we are under your care, Your Holy Grace.” She stares at him, her spine straight, resolve unwavering and unyielding. She would have made a fine hero, of that he has no doubt. Would have probably given his old man a run for his money, and the thought makes his flames flare higher. “Let us win ourselves this war.”

Dabi grins.

Chapter Text

Easier said than done, all things considered.

When His Holy Grace told her to send her letter to Jon quickly, Sansa didn’t even question how he knew about it. After seeing what he’s capable of—and she’d be an idiot if she thought that that’s the extent of his powers—him knowing her intentions did not seem that much of a surprise.

Gods are gods, after all.

But then he said he would be discussing with her the North and the rest of the world, and Sansa didn’t know what to think. 

Sitting here before him, his crown of flames painting her solar in its blessed blue light that has become a familiar sight in Winterfell, she still doesn’t know what to think. As someone who has honed her mind and sharpened her wits, learning that her brain is the greatest weapon she can wield, that fact rankles, nipping bitterly at her pride. 

She’s only ever heard about the Long Night from Old Nan’s stories, when she was but a child toddling after her brothers. Stories of monsters beyond the Wall, of ice spiders and giants and all sorts of magical beasts, were used to scare her and her siblings on nights when they were proving too unruly. 

“Let the pups hear tales of the North,” their Uncle Benjen would say, eyes glinting with mischief, so rarely seen on him. “Might prove more effective in curbing their wolf’s blood than the Seven-Pointed Star.”

His words rang true, at least for Sansa; whenever Old Nan would start with her tales, she’d run straight to her mother in tears and pray, willing her imagination to calm down. Her mother would soothe her fears—sending dirty glares at her lord husband while doing so, Sansa’s sure—and then the stories would just be stories, and the monsters were nothing but tricks of her mind.

(It would be years later that she’d find those stories a source of comfort, a taste of home, for by then she’d have smiled and dined with real monsters—made of flesh and blood, stinking of sweet perfumes, teeth piercing like golden swords, their threats more real than any child’s imagination.)

Wights and the Children of the Forest, wargs and the Age of Heroes, a terrible winter that lasted an entire generation—merely old wives’ tales, myths told to rowdy children, or to poke fun at green boys on their first guard duty. 

And yet.

Sansa has been made well aware that all stories have a grain of truth to them. Gods are indeed real and they are indeed involved in the affairs of the world, no matter how distant they might seem. What’s to say then that the other stories aren’t true as well?

Still, to know that something is true is markedly different from facing evidence that gives credence to it as truth. And there’s nothing quite as credible as word from a divine being that has already many a time demonstrated abilities way beyond the realms of men. 

So the only way forward, really, is to accept the quite frightening truth that the Long Night is once again upon the world, and its first stirrings have apparently already begun.

And it seems that Jon himself can vouch for it—and the thought that her brother has faced monsters straight from their childhood nightmares is horrifying enough that Sansa doesn’t want to even speculate about how he came to be in that situation. She’s sure he’ll tell her, if she asks.

When she asks.

(Immediately after this meeting with His Holy Grace, Sansa will take a moment to herself in this solar, rallying her remaining wits and summoning her father’s courage before rewriting her ruined letter with barely a tremble as she buried her apprehensions to be dealt with later. The ink will be given only enough time to dry before she summons Maester Wolkan to bid him send the raven post-haste to Castle Black. 

Hopefully, it will reach Jon within two days, and he’ll heed her words and come back home to Winterfell where he belongs. 

He can be here in a fortnight, mayhaps sooner with hard riding. 

Then Sansa will once again have kin beside her.

Her heart aches with hope.)

Before all that, however, she has to face the rest of this conversation that would be shaking the very foundations of Westeros to its core.

The Azure Prince, the voices from before called him—the Holy Prince Touya remains as beautiful as when she first saw him, his silver hair dancing with his flames. His turquoise eyes, heavily lidded and with such long eyelashes, miss nothing; Sansa can feel him keenly inspecting every minute expression on her face, tracking Brienne’s movements behind her, taking note of the sparse decorations in this room.

The scrutiny would prickle at her skin, but she finds it comforting instead.

It means there’s no need for pretence, here and now. 

Gods have no use for lies.

“I can burn every single wight in existence, but an attack of that scale may prove too bothersome,” His Holy Grace says nonchalantly, as if talking about simple snowfall and not something of the magnitude of legends. “More probable than not, I will be burning the very ground itself with them, and then where would the living be?” He tilts his head, stares right at her, and she fights the urge to twitch. “Maybe ashes too, adrift in the wind.”

Sansa ignores the thrum of fear that runs down her spine at the matter-of-fact tone. The prince—godling, god—speaks of the end of all life as a possibility right at the tips of his fingers, worth nary a thought, and Sansa knows it to be so in sooth. 

Lord of the All-Consuming Flames, that weirtree voice proclaimed. And consume the world in flames he can do if the fancy ever struck him; Sansa has no trouble believing that should their world displease him enough, His Holy Grace will let loose his flames and surviving them would be naught but a wish.

Given the previously demonstrated speed at which he could smite those who earned his ire, mayhaps they wouldn’t even be granted a moment to make their wish at all. 

Such is his power, and such is the danger he wields.

But instead of damnation, his crown of flames has become salvation to her people—to her. 

Their Northern sensibilities had been chafing against the ropes with which the traitors and oathbreakers bound them, and Sansa knew it was only a matter of time before they collectively would decide that enough is enough and take back their home.

Or die trying. 

Flayed men within their very keeps, fickle lions prowling in the south, vicious krakens waiting to strike again—they’re surrounded by enemies, no matter where they looked, but their stubborn pride wouldn’t last long in their subjugation and they would rather rush headlong towards certain doom than remain kneeling to turncoats and the worst curs of Westeros.

Good thing, then, that the gods decided to step in.

Divine burning does sound a quicker and more palatable end than the other choices laid for them. 

Yet they weren’t burned, no; instead they were saved, their enemies turned to ash, their seat of power restored. 

Now, here their saviour is, telling Sansa of a war far greater than anything they’d ever known and that he is to help them with it.

It’s . . . more than what they could have asked for.

“Quite a bleak outcome,” she says.

“It is what it is. Though it is not the outcome I prefer, no.” His Holy Grace looks at her with dry amusement. “You can take that off your list of problems to prepare for.”

Sansa blinks, before slowly exhaling. She wills her voice not to quiver. “What is it you seek to achieve, then?” 

“Aside from winning, like you said? Well, nothing much, really.” He huffs. “I’m not really sure whether your old gods would be sending me back to where I’m from once I win their stupid war for them, but that’s an issue I will be bringing up to them personally, so don’t worry.” 

That just makes Sansa worry all the more, which he must have read from her face—or from Brienne’s sudden shifting behind her, her armour loud in the stillness—for then he adds, “I’m serious. I may not be from around here, but causing mayhem isn’t half as fun if I’m alone to do it, and there’s no satisfaction to be had in winning against people who can’t fight back.” He taps a finger on the table. “You’re all so weak, do you know that?”

He doesn’t say it as an offence, and Sansa doesn’t take it as one. It is a fact, pure and simple; to him, they must be like fireflies, small and fleeting. There is no need to feign strength in front of someone who can incinerate them with a single snap. 

“And I don’t mean just physically, though that’s kind of a given,” he continues. “The very fabric of your society is fraying at the edges, and the people living here are either too feeble or too stupid to realise it, never mind do anything about it. The system is rotten, and there’s barely any technological progress because your civilisation relies so heavily on silly little men with their silly little chains in their silly little towers, but those same men are so stuck in their ways that any new idea is practically spat upon.” 

He sighs, irritated, and his flames flicker hotter and higher, before catching himself. “The point is Westeros is fundamentally flawed. Even just the North is divided—caught in a realm warring with itself. As it is, it cannot withstand the coming winter, much less the army that marches with it.”

“The North may be divided now,” Sansa says, “but with your help in restoring Winterfell, the lesser houses will start following House Stark again. They have done so for thousands of years.” 

“Maybe,” he allows, but he does not try to hide his dubiety of the subject, “but you cannot afford to rely on tradition for something like this. Your lords and their soldiers may promise one thing and do another.” He picks up his cup. The tea has grown cold. Before she can offer to have it replaced, however, steam begins to rise from his cup and from her own. The casual display of power is equal parts remarkable and unnerving. She shoves it aside to focus on what he is saying. “Actions speak louder than words, or so I’m told.”

Sansa doesn’t fully understand what he means, but she can infer enough. “Words are wind,” she murmurs, remembering broken oaths and abandoned vows. 

“Right.” He sips his tea, humming at the taste. Sansa takes note to remind the kitchen staff later that the black tea shall always be kept on hand. “You, as apparently the only remaining trueborn Stark, have the responsibility of building up this kingdom from ruin and make it strong enough to stand against the Long Night.” He looks at her over his cup. “Though I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.”

Sansa clenches her jaw. It is both a challenge and an offer; though the gods have sent them aid and protection, House Stark must still prove itself worthy of such. “House Stark will unite the North and lead it as it has for thousands of years,” she says, with far more bravery and confidence than she thinks she has. “It will be difficult, I admit, especially with the Iron Throne looming over us, but the North remembers its loyalties, especially in the face of winter.”

“The Iron Throne,” he says musingly. There’s a hint of mockery in his voice, though Sansa doesn’t know him enough to reliably pick up the nuances in his speech. Still. “I wanna burn that damn shitty chair down.”

Sansa blanches. Brienne steps closer, her silent sentinel. “Your Holy Grace?” 

He shakes his head, waving a hand. “Nah, don’t mind me. I’m not gonna do it now,” he reassures them, though Sansa doesn’t feel reassured at all. What does he mean, ‘not now’? “I just think that the throne shouldn’t have been made in the first place, and the Seven Kingdoms—or nine, whatever—should have been left on their own devices.”

She tries to slow down her heartbeat. “You wish for the kingdoms to be independent once again?”

“Yeah,” he answers easily, and the air near escapes Sansa’s lungs. Independence. He wants independence for the kingdoms—for the North. “Having a single monarch ruling over such a vast land, with so many people depending on the decisions that one person makes, is a huge reason why your realm’s crumbling to pieces. No one person’s meant to hold that much power over others. That’s just asking for trouble.”

Sansa’s mouth feels dry at the implications—judgement from a god regarding power in the realm. Is it his personal viewpoint, or one shared with the other gods? Do they deem the creation of the Iron Throne an act against their divine authority, men reaching for a rule that isn’t theirs to enforce? Do they think Aegon the Conqueror an upstart for hoarding power to himself, thinking himself one of the gods? (Is this why His Holy Grace keeps saying he’s not a Targaryen—?) 

She must have been wordlessly staring for a while, for it is Brienne who has plucked up the courage to ask, “What do you mean, Your Holy Grace?”

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” he replies, his words practised, as if quoting someone. “The more power one has, the more it will erase one’s morality. And the power of the throne is too unrestrained that it’s no wonder anyone who’d ever sat on it had ended up either insane, deposed, or dead. Or maybe all three.”

“A wise outlook.”

“It’s a common philosophy, back in my world. Great men are almost always bad men, because they end up doing a lot of bad things to achieve greatness and then to maintain it.” He hums thoughtfully. “There were exceptions, sure, but those were rare.”

Brienne—righteous, honourable, fair-minded Brienne—then prods, “Why were they rare?”

“Because they tend to die young,” he answers, “and for many that is understandably a wretched end. It’s far easier to accept becoming evil than have their own power wane.” He shrugs. “I suppose for them it’s better to be a monumental piece of shit than have themselves fade to obscurity.”

There’s a harsh edge to his voice—as if he’s been personally affronted and not quite forgiving about it—and Sansa doesn’t know where she gets her boldness for saying, “It must have been especially vexing to know such a man.”

For a moment His Holy Grace stares at her in surprise, before smiling both coldly and heatedly, his turquoise eyes near shining. “Oh, definitely,” he agrees. “Though with Father, I skipped ‘vexing’ and went straight to murderous rage.” 

His flames sway more wildly, and oh.

Mayhaps those whispers about his distaste for his mortal father are also true, after all.

Chapter Text

Prince Doran Nymeros Martell, Lord of Sunspear,

Summer ends and so does the reign of the pride. Fire rekindles from the deserts of the east and from the embers burst crimson rivers. 

Fair winds blow, and once it reaches the shores, they shall turn into a storm. 

Ensconce yourselves in your shelters to weather the coming storm, my prince. Mayhaps in its eyes you will get the repayment from a debt incurred way back in the Spring.

Faithfully,

Your friend who weaves

To the Lords of the Seven Kingdoms, 

The Crown summons you to King’s Landing to bend the knee and swear your oaths to Her Grace Cersei of House Lannister, First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. 

Maester Qyburn, Hand of the Queen

From the journal of Wolkan of the Order of Maesters:

It has been a full week since the god-made-flesh emerged from the pool in Winterfell’s weirwood, and I have found myself still trembling in both awe and fear. I do not know if the tremors shall ever cease. Mayhaps they never will. 

As a learned man, and a dedicated follower of the Faith, I have always believed in the Mother’s mercy and the Father’s justice, the Crone’s wisdom and the Smith’s strength. For decades of my life I have remained true to the tenets of the Seven, despite the trials and tribulations they have sent to the realm, with its people stricken with war and starvation. I have said my daily prayers, have observed the utmost courtesy, and have followed my orders without fail.

And yet, in a single day, all my years of devotion have been shaken with the might of the Holy Prince.

I have heard stories of the Valyrian Freehold, before the Doom. The dragonlords with their fire beasts and their magicks. I have known, intellectually, that they existed, that their scions then went to Westeros and built up a legacy that lasted centuries. But with the death of the last dragons, we men of the Citadel had started to forget that part of history.

The emergence of His Holy Grace is not something that can be so easily forgotten, especially for those who have witnessed it. His crown and wings are fashioned from blue flames, and the heavens themselves called him their Son of Ice and Son of Fire, the Azure Prince, the Arrow of Light, the Lord of the All-Consuming Flames. His very presence is heavy with his divinity—something I have not felt in even the grandest of septs. 

Admitting this much, I know, is enough to accuse me of heresy and faithlessness. But I saw what I saw, and I heard what I heard. I know not whether His Holy Grace is of the Valyrian pantheon or an envoy of the old gods of the First Men. I know not whether he is here to pass judgement on all living or simply to pass the time. I do not presume to understand what it is that gods want or think. They are, after all, gods, and as such are not bound by the laws of men.

What I do know, however, is this:

The old gods, it appears, have at last interceded in Winterfell’s fate. 

The first day His Holy Grace came here, he proclaimed the Lady Sansa as the Lady of Winterfell. He showed her a great deal of respect, allowing her to exercise justice as she sees fit, for those traitors to her house. Even now, he grants blessings to Winterfell’s people, lighting sconces and bonfires with holy flames as if it’s a trifling matter. He allows them to attend to him, dines with them and talks with them as if he were just another man.

All that he does points to one fact: as of now, Winterfell is under his divine protection.

May the gods have mercy on those who shall dare threaten its peace.

Jon, Son of House Stark,

House Bolton has fallen. 

After Roose Bolton, his wife, and newborn heir were killed by Ramsay Snow, control of Winterfell went to him, and he darkened its halls with his cruelty and callous whims. For several moons I thought all hope lost, that the North had been abandoned by our gods, but they proved that untrue in the most spectacular way possible. 

Jon, the gods walk amongst us. They sent one of theirs to us, and he had cleansed Winterfell of Bolton men within an hour, with the bastard now in our kennels, waiting for Northern justice. Slowly light is beginning to return to our people’s eyes, their burdens lightened by the absence of traitors that trampled on our honour. 

Now I hold Winterfell by the grace of the gods, Jon. A Stark fortress once more, the way it should be. 

But there is yet work to be done, as winter deepens and the snow falls, and I know I cannot do it alone. Even more now that I was made aware of the threat we are facing beyond the Wall—threats that I know you have already faced. 

I fear you need to once again meet them in battle, sometime in the future, but I will endeavour that you not do so alone.

And if we work together—as Starks, as pack, as family, bringing back the might of the North—mayhaps there is even hope that we prevail in this war. 

I have a lot of things to tell you still—as I’m sure you do as well—but I hope you will grant me the gift of doing so with you right in front of me, within my arm’s reach. Please come home, brother. I need your help to face the coming storm. 

Your sister,

Sansa Stark

Lady of Winterfell

He wraps his cloak tighter around him as he walks to his horse, which has already been saddled. Tormund is there, waiting. Around him are scores of Free Folk, watchful and expectant.

Jon sighs. “I am not asking you to come with me,” he says.

“We know,” Tormund tells him easily. “But I have talked to them, and they want to put as much distance as possible between themselves and those dead fuckers. That means south, and though they don’t like southerners one bit, they don’t like the Others more.”

Jon doesn’t bother correcting him about Winterfell being in the south. After all, anywhere past the Wall is south enough for the Free Folk. Instead he just sighs again and nods his acceptance. “As long as some of the fighting men are left to man Castle Black and help fill in the dwindling numbers.”

“Aye.” Tormund gets on his horse as Jon does on his. “Left a couple of wargs to keep watch as well. Don’t ya worry yer pretty little head, Lord Crow.” He urges his horse forward and yells, and the Free Folk start to move out. Most are women and children, all armed as best as they can be. 

Jon manages a smile. He stares one last time at Castle Black, catches Edd’s eyes, and nods.

He turns around, taps his chest where his sister’s letter is safely tucked, and starts his journey home.

He doesn’t look back.

Chapter Text

Dabi used to exist in a state of permanent anger, always simmering beneath the surface, on the edge of bubbling over at the slightest provocation. It is as familiar to him as his father’s disappointment—the kind of acidic anger that spread throughout his chest, blood boiling with rage that suffused his every breath, until his fingers ignited and his flames dealt with whatever happened to be on his path. 

(That anger, unfortunately, led him down a path of mistakes that he couldn’t ever hope to correct. Led him to make a lifetime of wrong choices that gave him nothing but death—of his allies, of his ideals, of himself. 

Well. It didn’t matter, really; in the end, he managed to get back a piece of him that he thought he’d lost forever—a tongue of flame in his heart that he thought had been extinguished along with his old name. 

A purpose he managed to grasp with his burnt fingers, refusing to let go a second time.

It was that purpose, that drive, that desperation that pushed him that fateful day to face Shigaraki. He knew it would kill him, but Dabi never cared for something so piffling as his own mortality in the first place. 

Touya cared for his mom and siblings, however, and that more than anything gave him the strength—for the first time since he burned on Sekoto Peak—to call forth Blueflame not to destroy but instead to protect.)

Anyway.

The point is, Dabi—Touya—is no stranger to anger. It is as familiar to him as his own eyes, seeing their sharp glint every time he looked at the mirror back in his world. And that familiarity is why he’s learned to recognise its signs, map out the cracks it leaves on people’s masks, and distinguish its edges hidden beneath polite smiles. 

It’s also why he knows—as surely as he knows how powerful Blueflame is—that the Lady of Winterfell has her own potent mix of cold fury lingering deep in the marrow of her bones. 

It is just as expected, Dabi thinks. After all, everything she’s been through would have made a lesser person crumble to dust long ago. But she persisted, and here she is. And he knows that comes with a price—as all things do, he’s learned—and Sansa Stark seemed to have paid it in full with blood and tears and the innocence of youth. 

There’s no telling how deep Lady Stark’s fury runs, but Dabi has no doubt that it would swallow up the entire Red Keep if she let it. 

And it’s not like she wouldn’t be justified in doing so. That place was a prison to her in all but name, a crucible for her unwilling spirit to be forged into her own blade and her own shield—she’s a survivor, this Lady of Winterfell, icy and hardened and razor-sharp. The more the world fanned the heat, the colder she became, until all that’s left of the girl she used to be is a woman that gleams in glacial glory. 

It would be terrific to behold, Dabi knows, should Lady Stark ever decide to unleash that ice in her blood. She’s got no Quirk, sure, but she doesn’t need one; with eyes like hers, she could manage to freeze anyone where they stood. He remembers that glister in her gaze, that very first time he saw her, devastatingly ferocious and proud. 

And so it really doesn’t surprise Dabi, when he senses Sansa Stark heading to the kennels of Winterfell with her ever-loyal guard accompanying her. No, it isn’t surprising; if anything, what surprises Dabi is that Lady Stark has managed to wait this long before taking matters into her own hands. He’s reasonably certain, after all, that no one who still breathes within her family’s halls would ever begrudge her taking her pound of flesh from that piece of filth. 

He’d have thought she would have dealt with him immediately after securing the rest of her keep, but maybe Dabi underestimated how much work it took to wrangle a household into order after years of treason and abuse.

(To be fair to himself, he knows jackshit about managing a household, much less a noble one.)

Given what he’s observed about Lady Stark, Dabi thinks something must have triggered her decision to deal with the scum now. 

Something, say, like receiving credible warning about the threat to the North and the whole of their known world. 

He should have expected as much in the wake of their discussion two days ago; the North is a wild country, ruled by brute force and strength of will. Its lords would rather mete out their own brand of justice than wait for the pageantry of a trial—not that the scum deserves one, in the first place.

Dabi sighs from where he’s sprawled on the bed. On one hand, he just wants to go to sleep, but on the other, Sansa Stark has just continued down the bowels of Winterfell, leaving her guard by the gate. And Dabi knows the woman can handle herself, but still the fact that she’s planning to face that piece of shit alone irks him for some reason.

He’s debating the merits of letting her plan play out from the comfort of his bed versus witnessing it with his own eyes when the decision is then made for him.

He feels Sansa stop right before the Bolton bastard, and he feels the cold of her heart snap against the wind.

Damn it.

He’s out the window and down the courtyard at the next second, his feet silent on the snow-covered ground.

With most of Winterfell’s people safely ensconced within its walls for the night, it’s easier to get around without being seen by anyone. Dabi carefully picks his way to avoid prying eyes, though fortunately, the guards are sparse. Probably by their lady’s leave.

Brienne’s eyes widen when she sees him emerging from the dark. “Your Holy Grace.”

“I’d like to go to the kennels,” Dabi informs her of the obvious, because honestly, where else could he be headed, standing as he is before her now? 

She flinches, shifting on her feet, her loyalty to her liege lady obviously warring with her sensibility of letting him do what he wants. “My lady—”

“I know,” he interrupts, scowling internally at his own impatience. Why am I so agitated? “And though I respect her authority, I would also rather ensure that nothing will go wrong while she’s dealing with him.” He meets her gaze, and it kinda annoys and impresses him in equal measure that she’s still got an inch over him. What kinda genes does this woman have anyways? “Something that I’m sure you’d appreciate as well.”

She really has nothing else to say to that—he can see the agreement in her eyes, though reluctance still mars her expression—and he doesn’t wait for a response either, briskly continuing on his way.

What use is his status here as a god if he couldn’t use it to do what he wants, after all?

Dabi watches in the shadows as Lady Stark confronts the scum, his flames hot in his veins, at the ready should the need arise. 

Or should his temper get the better of him, because the asshole’s words are grating and Dabi can’t wait to burn him up from the inside out. 

“You can’t kill me, I’m part of you,” he has the audacity to say, and Dabi nearly reveals himself with the rage that suddenly boils up his throat. 

But Sansa Stark unknowingly stops him in his tracks. “Your words will disappear,” she says, calm as can be. “Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear.” The cadence of her voice is almost hypnotising, and Dabi is in awe of how controlled she is, a wolf in her natural element. “All memory of you will disappear.”

Then low growls resound, echoing in the chamber as the iron gates creak. Big, hulking dogs—Hunting hounds? Is that what they’re called?—enter the bastard’s cell, their steps slow and threatening as they snarl and grumble.  

“My hounds will never harm me,” the bastard says, and Dabi almost laughs. He can taste it in the air—the bastard’s terror, the uncertainty. 

“You haven’t fed them in seven days, you said it yourself.”

“They’re loyal beasts.”

“They were,” Sansa agrees. “Now they’re starving.”

And so she gets her first taste of revenge.

To her credit, Lady Stark never wavers in watching the spectacle. She keeps her eyes on the bastard until she’s sure he’s nothing but food to his own hounds, his blood wetting their snouts and his gore splattering across the floor. Only when she’s satisfied does she turn around, and Dabi sees her smile—small but there—amidst the screams and sounds of gnawing meat.

Dabi has learned that before the Conquest, House Stark used to be Kings of Winters, with a millennia-long history—conquerors on their own merit who reduced to vassalage their rival kings through their might. They only lost their kingship in the face of dragons, when Torrhen bent the knee to Aegon I to prevent another Field of Fire. 

Seeing Sansa Stark now, with her ice-blue eyes and fire-coloured hair, triumph in the shape of her smile, Dabi has no trouble believing at all that she’s descended from that unbroken royal line. The regality of her ancestors permeates her every move, and hidden behind her polished courtesies is their wintry strength.

Even as she catches sight of him waiting for her, she manages to not appear nonplussed, her stride not faltering. The only sign that he’s caught her off guard is the slight hitch of her breath that has been drowned by the enthusiastic feast happening behind her.

“Your Holy Grace,” she greets, casual if not for the slight twitch of her hands.

He pushes himself off the wall he’s been leaning on. “Lady Stark.” His eyes glance behind her once more before turning to her, and he tips his head, nimbly matching her steps and following her lead out these kennels. 

They walk in silence for a few moments, Dabi content in listening to the fading grisly refrain and only stopping once the gates are visible, Brienne’s stalwart form standing guard. 

Sansa turns to him, then. “Is there a reason for you coming to see me?” she asks, cautiously polite.

Dabi hums. “Not really,” he replies. He isn’t even really lying; there is no reason because seeing to her safety was just an excuse, but even he doesn’t know exactly why followed her as he did. “I was just curious.”

“Curious about what?”

“Your brand of justice, for one.” He shrugs. “Why you chose tonight to exact it, for another.”

“Ah.”

“No judgement,” Dabi says. “He deserved worse, honestly.”

Her lips quirk up. “Do I have divine approval, then?” Her tone is light.

It pleases him, somehow, that she finds it in herself to joke around with him, now. He grins. “Sure, you got it.”

She hums. “As for the second thing,” she starts, and her eyes near glow in the low wall light, “I have discovered something while perusing letters to the bastard’s father.” 

“And that is?”

“My youngest brother lives.” Sansa sighs, and it sounds like a warcry. “He’s been captured in Skagos by traitors who intend to present him to the usurpers of Winterfell.” If Dabi could still feel the cold, he would have shivered. “And I intend to get him back.”

“You will,” Dabi says, and it’s not empty words. Nothing could have stopped that raw determination in her eyes. 

She nods. “In order to do so, I need to demonstrate House Stark’s strength. Retaking Winterfell is one thing, but the order of our succession is another. And as we established in our earlier conversation, we need a united North.” She starts walking again, and so he does as well. “Getting rid of him”—and there’s poison dripping in that one syllable—“is the first step to that. I will not have my brother breathe the same air he did.”

And it is breathtaking—how she stands firm with her purpose. He almost envies her staunch devotion to her siblings. “You remind me of my sister,” he says, before his brain catches up with his mouth.

That, more than anything, seems to visibly stun Lady Stark; she stops walking again. They have reached Brienne by the gates, and even she stares at him agape. 

And so does Cley, because the little shit has apparently already discovered that Dabi has left his rooms and has successfully tracked him down.

Ah, well.

He clears his throat, inclines his head in subtle invitation to the godswood. Lady Stark hesitates for a single beat, but she acquiesces just the same. He ignores how Brienne and his manservant follow them a couple of paces behind, no doubt listening to every word exchanged.

Is he actually doing this? Yes.

Is he sure about it? Hell no.

Dabi knows how important narratives are, knows how people can be easily manipulated by well-crafted stories. Knows how small truths can be used as garnish for big lies, how small lies can discredit ugly truths.

He knows his words have weight here, in this other world where he has been claimed by old gods as theirs, and knows he needs to control the stories that surround him before they destabilise an already unstable nation even further. 

He understands, but he still swears to punch some old gods in the face when all this is over. 

Whatever he divulges right now will find its way to the rest of Winterfell, unless he has these three take oaths to secrecy. And sure, he can do that—and they won’t say another word, in fear of godly retribution, no doubt—but Dabi doesn’t want to use his influence that way. 

And if that means he’s practically writing his own gospel for the people here, then so be it.

That seems like a smaller headache than allowing them to run wild with their own version, after all.

“I am the eldest of four,” he begins, just as the godswood comes into view. “After me came Fuyumi, then Natsuo, and then our youngest Shouto. When I left”—here he falters, swallowing a lump in his throat, the word tasting like ash in his mouth—“it fell to Fuyumi to act as the oldest. To guide Natsuo and nurture Shouto, when Mother was . . . otherwise indisposed. She’s not combative nor battle-trained at all, but she’s . . . tough. Protective.” He smiles at Sansa then. “As all older sisters are, it turns out.”

Lady Stark blinks. She looks to the ground as she murmurs, “You honour me, Your Holy Grace.”

He shrugs. “Fuyumi would like it here as well, I think,” he says as they come to a stop by the heart tree’s pool. “She can’t handle hot weather—or any heat, really—so all this snow would have made her comfortable.”

Sansa tilts her head. “She doesn’t have power over flames, then?”

“No.” He stares at the carved face, which is still as spooky as ever. The air hums, however, as if listening to what he’s saying as well. “She takes after our mother, with the power over ice.”

“Oh.” Sansa shifts, and she meets his questioning gaze. “Earlier, during your divine commune, the skies called you their Son of Ice and Son of Fire.”

He just about avoids wincing. Cley has told him about that, and ah, forget about a fistfight—he’s going to stab those old gods were they to ever show themselves to him. “Yeah,” is all he manages to say, like a fool.

Sansa smoothly takes over, feeling his awkwardness. Or, more likely, dreading his wrath should they stumble upon an uneasy subject. “Your siblings share that power as well?”

“Natsuo does, to a degree, while Shouto has both fire and ice.” He looks at the tree again, raising an eyebrow. “I told your gods he’d be a much better fit to be summoned here, but, well, I was overruled.”

A soft breeze blows, rustling the leaves. It could count as a giggle, Dabi supposes, and he wants to send these old gods another middle finger. “Just as well, to be fair. Shouto would make a much bigger mess. So would Natsuo, dumb brute that he is. But Fuyumi would have flourished here, I’m sure.” His sister’s got a mad streak a mile wide and, combined with the unbending competence that manifested in her alone amongst them four, she surely would have gotten this place up to modern standards of clean by at most a week. 

“She sounds lovely.”

“A pain in the ass once you get a drink in her though,” Dabi says, and Sansa chuckles. “Screamed herself hoarse when I returned. She even froze my feet and hands so I couldn’t defend myself when she was punching me. Wasn’t even given the chance to run.”

“It sounds like you deserved it,” Sansa gently quips. “Your Holy Grace,” she tacks on, but her eyes are laughing too.

Dabi makes a face, but he’s grinning, playing along. “I’d rather not say. Otherwise, knowing my sister, she’d find a way to come here just to twist my ear.” 

Sansa’s smile is broad, bright like the sun. “As all older sisters are wont to do in the face of incorrigible siblings.”

At that Dabi cracks up. “Just so,” he says, and his flames hum, content, within his blood.

Chapter Text

Grief. Hope. Disbelief. Relief. Sansa can barely understand the mix of emotions brewing in her chest the moment her eyes set upon her brother, for the first time in what felt like centuries. 

Jon, son of House Stark, looks the same as he ever had yet also irrevocably changed—as they all have been, she thinks wearily—with a deep melancholy in his bearing and grim resignation in the set of his mouth. Yet he is still his brother, and the second their gazes meet his eyes seem to light up, his lips twitching into a small smile she remembers well from her childhood, and he reminds her so desperately of their father that Sansa feels a sob catch in her throat.

And so Sansa eschews all propriety, heedless of the dozens of eyes watching them, and runs to her brother, her blood, her arms helpless to wrap themselves around him, and her chest tightens at the easy way he catches her. 

There’s shared desperation in the way they clutch at each other, as she knows they feel the same way—trying to ascertain whether this is reality or just another cruel dream. His ragged breath and unwillingness to part from her feels familiar; there is still a voice in her head trying to convince her to wake up and see bleakness return, and it isn’t too hard to imagine him struggling with that as well. 

But his warmth, his grip, it all feels blessedly, achingly real. He smells of horseback and traveling but also of snow and home, his beard scratching at her cheek as she hides the dampness in her eyes. His curls tickle her nose the same way she remembers Robb’s doing, when he was not yet old enough to think of hugging his sister as unlordly. Or Bran’s, when he was old enough to annoy her with his roughhousing together with Arya.

(Now, they are all gone, all as old as they could be, only existing in her memories.)

She doesn’t know how long she stays in that embrace, trying to memorise every detail, far too afraid of once again being alone. But soon enough she knows she has to let go, for unfortunately for her, the world will not wait for her emotions to settle. 

She gives herself another second, tightening her arms around her brother once more, before reluctantly stepping back. She studies his face, the lines of his jaw and the planes of his cheeks, and is both delighted and heartsick at seeing Ned Stark’s solemn shadow in the man he has become. 

The weight pressing on her ribs seems to lighten, if ever so slightly, her lungs burning with rekindled hope. She smiles. “Welcome home, brother.”

She relishes in his answering grin.

Jon has brought with him scores of Wildlings, all looking at her with distrustful eyes. Sansa would have been alarmed if not for Jon himself, for she knows her dutiful brother would never even think to bring enemies into their lord father’s keep. 

It is easy enough to arrange for their comfort; they need not the rooms she could have offered as they are used to living in tents out in the cold. Sansa tries to insist that they take the unused guard tower at least, for she is still a noblewoman whose upbringing demands her to treat her guests well. 

Jon merely grunts, and he shrugs at her raised eyebrows. “It will take a while for them to warm up to you,” he says wryly. “Let them do as they are used to until they’re comfortable with living amongst us kneelers.”

“Not me, though, my lady,” says the man who rode beside Jon earlier. “I could use a real bed.”

Jon chuckles. “This one is Ser Davos Seaworth,” he says by way of introduction. “Davos, this is my sister.”

“Well met, ser.”

And so Sansa grants the Wildlings leave to set up camp in Winterfell’s godswood, and Davos rooms in the keep, but not before asking the servants to bring all guests some bread and salt. 

“We want no part of your southern customs,” protests Tormund, a tall red-haired man who rode on her brother’s other side. His demeanour lets Sansa think him to be these people’s leader, or at least someone respected enough to act the role. 

“I know you do not want to, my lord,” replies Sansa, evenly. “However, I would be remiss not to offer these all the same, and it would put my people at ease to observe this tradition. After everything our House has gone through, it is something we do not take lightly.” 

Tormund opens his mouth to complain some more, but Ser Davos elbows him none too subtly, and with a glance at her brother, he seems to think better of it. “Fine,” he says, tearing a piece of bread and dunking it into a small dish of salt that a poor servant has been holding up, “it seems stubbornness runs in the family.” 

After everyone has partaken in the rites, Sansa asks Edwyle, who has been acting steward, to guide their guests to the godswood. “Just take heed of the area around the heart tree,” she tells Tormund. “As respect to the gods.”

It is her turn to shrug at Jon’s questioning look. “I did mention they’ve heeded our prayers,” she murmurs. She turns towards the keep. “Come,” she says, gesturing for him to follow, “we have much to talk about.”

“You’re not speaking in riddles,” says Jon, staring at her in what she could only describe as hesitant awe. “You’re saying a literal god has appeared? Here, in Winterfell?”

Sansa looks at the fire of the hearth, beside which Ghost is lounging contentedly, her hands around a bowl of soup. “He appeared right in the godswood,” she confirms. “And the heart tree itself has shown us his divinity.”

“There was no way it could have been a mummer’s work?”

She recalls the blue crown and those dangerously beautiful wings. The tower of water, and the spheres of flame. The way the winds quieted. The echoes of a thousand voices. “No,” she says. “It was real, and everyone in the keep can attest to it.” She meets her brother’s gaze. “He said his name is Touya, though he calls himself Dabi. The godswood, however, called him their Azure Prince, Lord of the All-Consuming Flames.”

At that Jon starts, his brows furrowing the same way Father’s did whenever he came across a particularly vexing petition at court. He gives a slow nod. “‘When I gaze into the flames . . . I can speak to kings long dead’,” he says, forming the words slowly, as if quoting someone else.

“What?”

“I met a red priestess,” he says with a grimace, as if tasting something odd. “Their religion worships the Lord of Light, and many of their rituals involve flames.”

“A red priestess,” Sansa repeats. “Like the one the rumours said Stannis had in his retinue?”

“Exactly like the one Stannis had in his retinue.” His grimace deepens, if that were even possible. “Her name is Melisandre.”

Sansa inhales sharply. “You’re jesting.”

“I am not.”

“You cavorted with Stannis’s red priestess?”

“It was not my choice!” he defends.

“Then how did it come to be?” 

He sighs, setting his own bowl of soup on the table. She does the same. “I,” he begins, and swallows hard. “I died.”

Sansa stills. 

“I died,” he says again, and there’s ringing in her ears. “Stabbed by my own men, my supposed allies. Just as Robb had been. I died, and it was cold, and silent, and dark, and then I was lying on a table, Ghost hovering over me.” The direwolf in question perks up upon hearing his name. 

She lifts a hand, beckoning to Ghost, and he happily trots to her and sits by her feet, placing his head on her lap. She pets him, hiding how her fingers are trembling in his fur.

Her brother died.

Her brother died at the Wall, and if circumstances were any different, she never would have known. 

“‘I shall live and die at my post’,” she recites, almost numb. “That is how the oaths go, is it not?”

“It is.” Jon sighs again. “I died at my post, and then Melisandre brought me back.”

“You died,” says Sansa, “and so now you are free of your oaths.”

“Aye.”

“And what did the red priestess ask in return for bringing you back?”

“Nothing,” he says. “She just said she does as her lord bids her.”

“Nothing ever comes for free, especially life,” she points out.

“I know that, but right now no answers are forthcoming. You can ask her later.”

“You brought her here?”

“She went of her own free will.” Jon clears his throat. “Davos knows her better, so you may ask him as well.”

A pause, and Sansa groans. “How many of Stannis’s people did you manage to bring to your side?”

“I swear it was not intentional,” he says. “I don’t even know why they followed me. But it’s not like I can just turn them away.”

Sansa has nothing to say to that, because he’s right. And with this Melisandre’s role in bringing her brother back from the dead, she finds herself rather inclined to grant her a boon, once she has her household set to rights. As it is, there are still things to organise, damages to repair, people to assuage, their godly resident notwithstanding. “You think Melisandre has something to do with a god appearing in Winterfell?” she asks instead.

“I don’t know what to think,” he answers honestly. “This talk of gods is beyond whatever I have thought to prepare for, but it seems not too much of a leap to take, that gods awakening is somewhat involved with the dead coming back to life.” He takes a deep breath, and looks into her eyes. “You mentioned something, in your letter. You are aware of the threat we face, beyond the Wall.”

It is only by years of practice controlling her expressions at Joffrey’s court that Sansa avoids flinching. “I did. I am.” She licks her suddenly dry lips. “Our ancient enemies are waking. The Long Night is upon us.”

Jon closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he looks anguished. “How do you know this, Sansa?” 

“His Holy Grace told me.” Sansa fights the urge to twist her fingers together like some inexperienced child, full of nerves. “He said the old gods summoned him here to help with the war against the dead.”

Jon lets out a long exhale, and it’s like the sun has reappeared beneath his eyes. “We have divine support?”

“So long as we can prove House Stark can hold the North,” Sansa tells him, “His Holy Grace will provide his help.”

“And how do we prove that?”

“We need to unite the North, as the Winter Kings of old did. We lead this land just as our ancestors have done for a thousand years, and prepare our people to get through the longest winter in millennia.”

Jon blinks at her, and then huffs out a laugh. “Just like that, huh?” 

“Just like that.” They hold each other’s gazes for a beat, before laughing in earnest.  

“Gods, Robb should have been here,” Jon says, once they have gotten hold of themselves. 

“They all should have been here.”

“We never should have left.”

“Father knew that bad things happen when Starks go south, and he still went.” She confesses, in a voice wracked with sadness and guilt, “Sometimes I resent him for that.”

Jon’s eyes hold painful understanding. He wraps an arm around her, and she leans on his shoulder. Solid, warm, safe—her brother. “The day we parted,” he says, his voice but a whisper, “he promised me the next time we met he’d tell me about my mother.” Sansa snaps her head to look up at him, aghast, her heart cracking at the sorrow etched on his face. “I held onto that, those first few moons alone in the Wall, away from everyone I’ve ever known. I held onto that, even as I said my vows, knowing I was renouncing all familial ties I could ever claim.” 

He held onto that, and yet Ned Stark went and died before ever fulfilling his promise, taking away Jon’s last link to his mother. Gods. She understands why he’s telling her this, but still it aches. “Jon . . .”

“It’s not a sin, feeling that way, Sansa,” he says anyway. “If anything, Father would understand.”

“I know,” she admits. “That’s what makes it worse.”

And if that doesn’t describe their family’s entire history, she doesn’t know what will.

“This god,” he says, after a while, “you trust him to keep his word?”

“I do not know him well enough to say for sure, but his actions so far have shown he at least intends to fight the dead.”

Jon nods, bone-deep exhaustion in his mien. “Then that should be enough for now. I will request for an audience tomorrow, and I will officially ask for aid as someone who has fought against the wights.”

Sansa breathes out, the mantle of the head of House Stark settling more firmly on her shoulders. 

There is a war coming, and the North is ill-prepared. There are Houses to subdue, noblemen to court and control. A thousand things besides to handle and manage if she wants to give her people a fighting chance against winter. 

But for now, here with her brother in their father’s old solar, Sansa lets herself enjoy a moment of peace. 

(Who knows when this will come again.

Knowing her family’s propensity for chaos, well.

She doesn’t have high hopes for that, at all.)