Work Text:
Bran feels cold lips brushing at his ear and the prickly discomfort of something long, thin, and smooth wrapping easily around his throat.
He isn’t the wolf now. He can feel Summer inside him, howling for freedom, howling for light, but right now Bran’s eyes are closed and everything is dark and he cannot move. The wolf’s senses or the boy’s senses it makes no matter, for all Bran can feel is the cold and the dark.
Please, he is whispering without whispering. He tries to move his lips but struggles to open his mouth. It’s as if the whole of his body is broken, not just his legs. The wind rushes past his ears even as he feels something else, something larger and cold and ragged holding him still, wrapping itself not just around his neck, its fingers imprisoning him, but also around his torso, around the whole of his body, manipulating and moving him until he feels no more than a boy-puppet, someone else pulling the strings of his body made useless.
Do you see yourself? A voice is asking, the sound of it reverberating through his body in all the places where that hard thing touches him. He shudders with the ghost of gooseflesh, and thinks suddenly that, maybe, he can open his eyes, but he does not want to see whatever is in front of him, whatever it is holding him. He does not want to see himself.
See yourself, the voice says again. It is not a command even as it commands him, the softness in it comforting and alluring where Bran wishes it was not. In his sleep, or not sleep, half sleep, he whimpers, and even though in the midst of it he cannot move his body, in his mind he knows his true form is fretting, turning and twisting and sweating in his bed where he can. Open all your eyes and see what you are.
I’m just a boy! Bran is screaming inside, although by now he knows it to be a false, strange lie; how he loved to be the wolf, not just a boy, never just a boy, how he loved to run and to hunt, how much he loved the kill, the taste of blood, almost as much as he wants to be able to fly, to truly fly, as the crow said he would. He does not feel as scared as a wolf as he does when the crow was there, for the wolf could always eat the crow and shut up its murmuring, what Bran still thinks, sometimes, is lies, though he desperately wants them to be true. But he’s doing some sort of falling now, not flying, feeling like he can’t control himself, and he doesn’t hear the flap of wings or feel feathers against his cheeks; and still all Bran feels is the coldness holding onto him, surrounding him like a mother might, like his mother might, if she were here.
The thought of his mother shames him. He cannot say why. But it is that shame that drives him to open his eyes, to see what might be seen. Only a small part of him thinks he'll wake in his bedroom, safe and warm in Winterfell. The rest of him hopes he will not, even as the fear is tight around him.
The Wolf Prince knows he is not at Winterfell, can feel deep in his bones that he is far from there, but does not know just where he is. Somewhere high up, he knows that for sure—where he had been cloaked in blackness, whiteness now surrounds, white and gray, and that cold, it’s worse than the cold of the dream, worse than any cold he’s ever known, even at Winterfell. Somewhere far away large mountains rise out of the Earth, uneven and threatening, white tipped and looming, though about the mountains he feels none of the fear. But the state of it is not real, the reflection not true. Bran blinks his eyes and the vision flutters away, lost like the ripples in a pool of water. The voice in his ear, so close there’s something–skin, Bran thinks, it’s skin, though that's only something he knows in his heart, though against his own soft flesh it feels hard, aged, worn, inhuman—caressing the edge of his ear, and in the midst of the coldness he feels brief warmth as it speaks to him, truly speaks to him.
"See yourself, Bran. See me."
Water now in the air around them, the waters of reality rippling in front of his eyes and then turning still and settling again until Bran can make out the image again, until his eyes adjust and he can see what is finally in front of him, so that he can see himself. But that's not me, he thinks, although even as he says the words he doubts himself. That's not me, it's…
"It is," the tree says. "It is you as much as it is me. Look, Bran."
He looks. It is:
A great weirwood, old and twisted with limbs yet standing so high Bran cannot see the crimson top of it, and a red-tinted darkness reigns under its top. But under, where the shadows rest, the limbs come together in a horrific chorus. Flesh upon bark, white as bone, red veins like blood leaking through it all around. Arms and legs stark white and twisted like branches, twisted into branches, into roots—and that thin thing, like a tendril, like a finger, wrapped around his neck. A body is there, lost in it. Bran can see the mouth now, too, lingering at his ear, and a single red eye, sunken into the white of the tree's trunk. His back is to the wide trunk but he can see himself still, he can see himself as if he were staring into a looking glass, and behind him that pale, weathered face, ancient and youthful all the same, a face that, next to his own, could be his own.
"See?" the tree says. Bran now realizes though he didn't feel the pecking of the beak on his nose or feel feathers against his arms, it is the crow's voice all the same. "There you are."
Here he is, entangled in the roots of this great ancient. It isn't where he wants to be, is worse than being unable to walk, for he cannot move at all, and the strain against the thin branch wrapping around his throat pains him when he moves—distantly, he wonders whether he will wake with these scratches and bruises around his throat, whether he will have to suffer questions about what is doing, of where he was. Bran wonders whether Jojen will know just by seeing him, even if he doesn't have the scars to prove it.
He wonders, too, whether he is here truly, whether this is the dream at all. It feels funny like a dream, and nothing makes sense like a dream—in the looking glass before him, where he sees that long pale face up against his own, tendrils of branch-hair moving about in a wind that comes from nowhere, time ripples again and he is no longer the boy stuck in the branches but the tree itself, his body sunken and coiled deep into its roots, his limbs spread out and made into smooth white bark even where it is twisted. Where he had been unable to feel his legs only moment ago, feeling now explodes throughout every bit of his body, including there, the life-veins of the tree ripping through his skin, flaying him alive and remaking him until they are inside him, deep inside him, so deep he can feel them wrapping around his heart.
And entangled in his arms, in his limbs and in his branches, is a boy just the same as himself, but Bran knows it isn't himself, knows that even as he feels so strongly to be the same—they are not each other's mirrors but opposites, a boy as small as he but as pale as the bark of the weirwood, with two red eyes and a red stain across his face. Bran hadn't noticed his own nakedness before, but he notices it on this body, as small and willowy as he is. A thought passes through Bran's mind to be embarrassed, but he does not feel the embarrassment.
The boy turns his head up towards where Bran's face rests in the tree's body. His eyes and the mark on his face are the only color in him, his hair just as white as bone. "Dont't you see?" Bran is looking down at him, down at him from the place in the tree, but he is also looking out at them, looking out at the two of them from his place stuck between dreaming and waking, in his body and without it, in his body and in the tree, in the tree but entangled in its branches, becoming its branches, becoming its roots.
He sees him through the tree's eyes. The youth of his face where Bran's has now aged to match the soil and wood around him. The softness of his speech Bran has come to know.
The boy, the crow, the other piece of Bran, places a small hand on what is left of Bran's cheek. "We are the same, Bran. Don't you see? A hundred years I waited for you to be born, and now here you are, and I feel whole." He rubs small fingers over the cracks that were Bran's lips. Bran feels it, feels it entirely, the whole of it, and a sudden runs through his body, and its met again by a shame welling up in his chest, a shame he can't put words to, the same of being here but the shame of it feeling so right, to be complicated where it might be simple. To challenge him.
To become one with this other, to feel, to really feel his flesh upon him, brings peace before the shame.
All the way in Winterfell, he feels it, the peace. The other boy, the crow, does not seem to be so bound by the arms of the trees, and twists even within its embrace, so that he is facing Bran, the face of the trees. From wherever else he is, Bran sees the back of the boy's shining white hair, and sees himself, his mouth hanging open in the way of the trees, the boy's fingers at his bottom lip.
Yes, Bran thinks from that other place, because he cannot make his tree-mouth work. I do see.
And then he is himself again, though he is twisted in the arms of the trees the way the crow-boy had been, facing the tree instead of facing out to look at the shimmering opening of the cave and its rippling looking glass of time.
You're meant for this, the tree says. Bran can still feel it, but he also feels the discomfort now, he feels the hard, prickling edges pressing deep into his skin. He is nervous, more nervous than he was before, when he understood less, when he didn't know that the tree and the boy and the crow were all one, all one with him. The peace is a quiver in his chest, fleeting. He hadn't wanted to be the tree, had been scared; but now that the feeling his lost, he is even more afraid.
His stomach feels queer, sensitive. A whimper he doesn't mean to let escape from his mouth does, and his lips quiver. "I'm scared," he says with his real mouth.
No fear, the tree whispers back. Without thinking, Bran raises a hand to the face the way the boy had raised his hand to him. About the face most of the skin is gone or stretched tight and aged, but in the cold of the cave it feels warm under Bran's fingertips. "I don't want to be a tree," he whispers, unsure even of that, a flicker of that goodness still in his chest. "I just want to walk again. Or to fly."
You will be everything, little wolf. In everything, a part of everything. Do you know how sweet it is to truly be connected? To see all? To be all? All of spectrum of life, yours. Every bit of plesure to bring it to the light. Let me show you, let me show you how sweet…
The limbs hug Bran tighter and by instinct he tries to fight against them. The smaller, thinner ones wrap themselves around his arms, around his thighs where he cannot feel it, and then further up where the feeling slowly starts to return, up and up his thighs until they are wrapping themselves around his cock.
"No, no, wait—" But he feels the touches from the branches, smoother than they should be against him, just as he feels himself in his own hand, his own hand wrapping around his body, but from somewhere far away, from wherever his body truly is, angry and ill and frustated and matching the touch, matching the feeling even as he sleeps, even as he half sleeps.
Pleasure hits him like a blow, unexpected and unfamiliar and intense, too intense.
"Wait…" The word slips from his lips and is lost; then, Bran is flying.
Out of the cave and out of his body, Bran flies truly, feeling the air under his wings as he glides against the crisp air, with nothing but snow covered rock under him, not a single human in sight for miles, nor the cave, nor the tree. Bran knows he is not alone, knows in his heart, because the pleasure makes him rise further, the pleasure forces a rush of air under his wings, but still he feels the power of his lonesomeness, the power of this sort of freedom, if it is a sort of freedom.
For so long I was alone, alone but for the birds and the trees, alone but for the ones who came before, but no one, no one….
Bran knows that his lonesomeness is not his own, that this freedom is not free. But for cost, the pleasure, he is not alone in either. Still faraway, still not quite his body, whatever part of him is left in that cave does feel the lips of the tree on his skin, and never stopped feeling the branches rubbing his cock, squeezing him, and what he feels scares him; how good it feels, how with every stroke he moves higher, higher, until he cannot see the ground at all through the clouds, one whiteness replacing another. And the peace returns.
A discomfort is pooling in his stomach, pulling him back towards the ground even as the pleasure rises further. Please, Bran is thinking. I don't want to go down, not yet…But he's already falling again, not so hard as the first time, gliding down through the clouds, losing his connection to the bird of freedom but even more feeling that queerness in his stomach, even more feeling the sensation of branches—no, fingers, they're his fingers now, his own sleeping fingers wrapping around himself—touching him so much more tenderly than he has ever been touched before. Not light touches, not careless touches, meaning filling him to the brim. He can feel, too, the tears prickling in his eyes.
You can control it, the tree says. Bran doesn't feel that he can, feels that the tree is controling him, that he can been so close to that freedom only to have it snatched away. He tries to think hard, to pull away from it, but even then knows the harder that he fights the more entangled he will become. Something rough is pressing against his chest. Wanting to struggle, he does not know what he is struggling for.
Something wet and unfamiliar on the skin of his face, he is no longer the bird, no longer high in the air, but still asleep, but still asleep and back in the cave, and the wet thing on his face is a tongue, reaching out from the open mouth of the face and lapping at his tears.
So sweet, it says. So sweet if you will listen, if you will let the freedom come to you. Let the pleasure come to you, and you'll never feel so helpless…
Bran does feel helpless, yet he is in his own hands, in his own mind. The branches—his fingers—are moving faster around himself, and he feels the pleasure mounting, growing more, and he doesn't understand it, doesn't understand what he's doing to himself but he knows that he must finish it, knows the truth of it even where he doesn't understand, and thinks that maybe if he keeps going, maybe if he keeps trying, he can become that bird again, he can left himself up from the ground and glide and glide and glide….
Bran spills on his hand, on the branches, and that's what he sees: in the entanglement he sees seed against the pale bark, and heat rises into his cheeks, but still the embarassment is lost on him, as is the point of it all.
This lesson…
"What of it? I don't understand!" He begins to struggle again, wanting no more than to be free of the branches, knowing that he won't fly again, that the bird is now far away from him, lost to him, and that this crow or this raven or this tree or whatever he is, whatever it is stuck in his mind, has only been toying with him, playing with him; it is better, at least, to believe that, where his mind otherwise cannot understand.
No fear, it says again. But Bran is still scared. The light and his mind and his true body, his broken body, are so close in his mind he does feel afraid, as afraid as a boy who knows that another nightmare is soon to begin, when he opens his eyes and nothing has changed, when he opens his eyes and he is still a broken boy, not a bird, not a tree.
"Please, just tell me, tell me what I need to do, tell me…" Snot runs down Bran's face and in front of him time ripples and tears until he can see himself again, he can see himself from afar, trapped in the tree, a face in the tree, and the other boy with the stain on his face is entangled in the roots and branches instead of him, and he's turned towards Bran with wide, young, knowing eyes. He reaches a hand back up to place on Bran's tree-cheek. Even through the bark, Bran can feel the softness of the boy's skin, his real skin, not the bark that had become his skin, that he had traded for his skin.
"Oh Brandon," the boy says. His voice is sad, and becoming distant. The dream, it's beginning to fade. "You'll understand, you'll understand sometime, like I did. You'll come back to me, in your dreams. We'll come back to each other until you understand. Until you can see it." He pauses. "I'm sorry, Bran. I'm sorry you're scared."
Before he fades away completely, before Bran melts into the tree and opens his eyes back in Winterfell, the boy leans over—Bran can feel him straining just slightly to reach, up on his toes—and places a kiss on Bran's tree-mouth. It doesn't feel like anything just as it feels like everything, and for a brief moment Bran thinks he is traveling again, thinks he is going up high, high like the bird.
But he isn't. His eyes are filled with crust, blurring his vision as he tries to open them. In his bed he's twisted himself amoung his heavy covers, his legs in a strained and uncomfortable position. As he moves to untangle himself, he feels the sticky wetness against his palm, and notices the damp soaking into his mattress that smells suspiciously like piss.
He doesn't remember the dream, not most of it. He remembers flying, though not how he got there, and he remembers the tree, the cave, though not quite what happened inside, or what was said to him. Trying to remember is a struggle, fighting against the darkness, and after a moment of trying Bran gives up, content to lay there in his mess, not wanting to call any of the servants to his room so late, not wanting to answer any questions.
Bringing his wet hand to his throat, he feels for tenderness, bruises, and finds nothing. But as the tips of his fingers brush against the skin of his throat, he does remember—
Bran closes his eyes, letting his hand fall back between his legs, wanting to feel that again. He thinks, Maybe I'll fly again. He thinks, Maybe I should know this. But, mostly, he thinks of the other boy, the other boy who was himself but also something else completely, the boy that had been a tree and also a crow and also a raven and deep inside Bran's mind, making him over into something new, their secret, and helping him glide up, up, up, with the feeling of every stroke.