{The} ~Deepest~ {Roots} ~Bran Wolfe-only, please!

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~Bran Wolfe

He felt so tired, but found he was unable to sleep. Sleep was too blood-soaked, too choking, like his hands no matter how much he washed them in the muddy water. Everything felt dark and dreary, but his eyes were wide open, painting the songs of fallen tributes. He slumped over the river further, swirling his exhausted fingers in the mud. Make it go away, make it go away. He felt as if he were stumbling, dragging, in darkness, a darkness familiar.

Mother had called out to him when he quivered and fell, teasing her with the prospect of his awakening. “Bran, Bran, come home,” she begged and pleaded, but he sank, his reaching arms, clawing fingers, aching. The cavern whispered his name, but he refused. Mother whispered his name, sobbed his name, screamed it, but she was so far away, so high and all he had to do was climb…

The most frustrating thing about losing all feeling in his legs was the temptation. He stared at the wall with its perfectly placed depressions, just enough for his fingers to squeeze into, his toes to grip. He wanted it so badly, too badly that his entire being shook and hot tears pooled in his stubborn eyes. His toes couldn’t even twitch as his fingers scratched at the brick. His siblings were patient. “It’ll be okay, Bran.” They told him stories and jokes, sang to him, read to him, and when it was his worst and he was screaming and they had to duck away from his flailing fists, they held him and they didn’t speak. But, sometimes, silence was the worst response.

Scrubbing at his legs, Bran recalled the river of Aria’s stories. A river that could remove all wrong. It soaked away stains and anointed away sins. It cleansed one of all pain, all torture, all mistakes and Bran scrubbed, willing it to be true. His hands were red, raw and chafed, but he scrubbed until he bled. Bleed it out. That’s what his tutor used to believe. “Bleed it out,” he’d inform Bran, “that’s the old way. Bleed out all the bad-” and fill it with water? But, no matter how hard he scrubbed, no matter how hard he bled, the awful was still there.

One time, some boys attacked him on the playground. “Cripple! Cripple!” they chanted and they circled him. One dumped him out of his wheelchair and he lay crumpled on the sand, sobbing, his throat seizing up, his hands trembling. “Cripple! Cripple!” They threw stones and he bled, but Rajas chased them away, shouting, with larger stones than they could carry. Later, as his brother carried him, Bran realized, as blood seeped in between the fingers of his brother, the fingers wrapped around his legs, that he couldn’t feel a thing. Not the blood, not the pain. Not in his legs anyway.

In his ears. In his throat. In his soul.

Never had Bran gotten a straight answer. The Games was “the Wall” when he was young, before he stood with the other animals for slaughter in the pen. Father wasn’t coming home. Father had gone far away, but Bran, with a terrible jolt in his stomach, had glimpsed the damage done when Mother knelt over his remains in the Justice Building, sobbing into her black clothing. He knew why he fell, but why did he have to be pushed?

“He saw.”

He knew what he saw, but he blocked it far away, pushed it into that darkness and the price he paid was his legs. Why was it so high? Was this how the hero felt? And he never got the real answer. How did the hero die?

Bran’s fingers swirled and swirled, so rhythmically and for the first time in a week, he was calm, relaxing his tense shoulders, settling against the muddy, soft ground. The hero died, he knew, but all heroes die. In his sleep. Aria had lied, hadn’t she?

It wouldn’t be the first time someone had lied to him.

“It’ll be okay, Bran.” “You’re safe now, Bran.” “You’ll be able to do other things.”

“You’re still the same Bran.”

That one was the worst. He wasn’t the same. Bran climbed, Bran flew, Bran was the hero. Bran was different. Bran couldn’t climb, Bran couldn’t fly. Bran couldn’t be the hero now. The hero knew when he was defeated.

The hero tensed on Hodor. His trusty stead, but even the horse could sense it and he reared back, neighing. The hero didn’t move. His eyes were staring straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge those who would kill him without a blink of the eye. He was strong and powerful, but he was tired, drenched in what used to be his: his blood, his pride, his title. His cracked lips didn’t speak, but his heart was thumping so wildly. He’d always scoffed at the notion of the death, but the cold hands were on him now and he trembled, so cold, the chill reaching down into his very bones, staunching the flow of his blood to his heart.

He didn’t beg, he didn’t cry, but rather, he accepted. He fell-

Bran jerked awake, away from the hands that had taken the hero, the hands that expected his skin too. He was drenched in a cold sweat, not blood, a sweat, caught up in chills. “No.” He was breathing heavily, staring up into more darkness created by his terrified eyes. “No, no,” he whispered and choking down saliva, he cried out the truth, the truth the hero had faced as well when crippled, when torn away from all he had, “I’m scared.”

But the person he wanted to reply the most didn’t. And all the breath caught in his throat and for one moment, all that fear climaxed and he felt as though his stomach had been turned inside out.

Then

His hands tightened into fists and his blood began to boil.

Then

Fury.