A.N.: It's time.

I will create new characters; save the ones I love; bitch-slap the ones who deserve it; and rewrite the story. If you want Game of Thrones, watch the show: this is what I wish had happened.

I've modelled Lyanna on Vikings' Lagertha, in personality as well as looks; she is an insanely real blend of an untiring warrior and a deeply maternal queen who rose from humble origins.

A Dance of Ice and Fire

Prologue

Lovely ribbons, scarlet ribbons. Scarlet ribbons for her hair…

The fine hairs at his nape stuck on end as the horses whinnied, prancing, tossing their heads and tramping the mushroom-strewn undergrowth as the forest echoed with growls and snarls, the direwolves working in coordination in a way they never had before, acting so peculiarly none of the boys could call them off – in a second, they had believed the direwolves had returned to the wild, heeded their instincts rather than the children they had bonded with as pups. But as the horses whickered in fear, rearing and snorting, they started to make sense of the wolves' actions.

Ned remembered what Jon Snow had said the crisp, foggy morning they had discovered the litter of pups born of their dead direwolf mother: they were meant to have them. Seven children; seven pups.

"They're herding us, Ned," Benjen said quietly, his tone calm, but he had his hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword, cunning eyes flitting over the woods, reading signs others would ignore, as only a seasoned First Ranger of the Night's Watch could.

And now Ghost, Jon Snow's albino direwolf, raised his head and gazed at him with red eyes that glowed, sending him back to the Trident, to the rubies flying from Prince Rhaegar's breastplate as Robert's great war-hammer broke him. Amid all the noise, Ned remembered the name the prince had whispered with his last breath… As Grey Wind howled, for some inexplicable reason Ned was reminded of the way his heart had cried as Lyanna lay dying, the rich, crisp scent of snow-strewn undergrowth overpowered by the memory of blood and rose-petals and the breathless Dornish sunlight. He stared at the white wolf, the wariness in Jon Snow's expression as he tried to control his mount, and he felt fear trickle down his spine like ice as Jon raised his dark eyes to Ned's.

His son Robb's direwolf, Grey Wind, joined Ghost as the wolf raised his head; his calls echoed off the mist-shrouded trees, one sounding like a half-dozen, sending the horses into a frenzy of panic, making the fine hairs on the back of their necks prick up. The men fidgeted, spooked by the direwolves.

"Something's wrong," Jon breathed. An ambush? Not this far North, not surrounded by so many of the King's men…but were they the King's men? Was Ned truly the last real friend Robert had?

He could believe it.

"Robert, back to Winterfell," Ned ordered sharply, his oldest, fat friend creaking in his saddle, wide-eyed, already a little drunk, alarmed by the wolves' behaviour but too tipsy to sense the atmosphere changing with each bay of the young direwolves. The trumpets blazed, calling the hunting-party to attention, soldiers flanking their king. They had left the castle behind in another pursuit of deer or boar, in an attempt to alleviate the tension that always built amongst active men forced into polite idleness.

The nastiness with Prince Joffrey in the godswood had only worsened things, and Ned was no fool to believe the Queen would allow anyone to get away with striking her favourite. He had been uneasy about leaving the castle, not while the Lannister woman still simmered with her quiet wrath, their constant companion these weeks Robert had been their guest. She was honeyed poison, the sadistic trap hidden amongst beguiling blossoms; but her smile never reached her eyes. For all her beauty, she was ugly.

Sansa, his naïve little lady, was besotted - was now furious with her "bastard half-sister" for embarrassing them, for striking the blonde prince whom Ned found something so unsettling about. Lady Shireen had corroborated Arya's story, that the younger prince had been in his wineskin before waving his sword about, attacking the butcher's boy Mycah whom Arya had coaxed to swordfight with fallen branches in the godswood, with Shireen and her book on the Dance of Dragons looking on.

He liked little Lady Shireen, so did Robert, whom she called 'Uncle King' so shyly - her marred face was unfortunate, but having spent a little time observing her, Ned could say honestly that she was by far the prettiest of the Southern ladies in the King's entourage. There was a genuine sweetness in her that seemed to coax out the best in wild Arya, who for the most part had been on her best behaviour with this new companion who shied away from pretty Sansa in shame at her scaled face.

The gods had mocked Shireen with her greyscale, and a sweet, clever disposition; few rarely saw beyond the physical to the beauty beneath. But the gods had graced the evil Queen Cersei with incomparable beauty, fading now in her age. Her son Joffrey had inherited his mother's golden looks and her poisonous character; he and his elder brother Tristram were as different as two brothers could possibly be, golden and vicious, dark and great. And the witch was slowly inching her claws into Sansa, who maintained a spiteful coolness toward her family she seemed ashamed of that troubled him greatly; Arya responded with viciousness, a young she-wolf made fierce by injustice.

He was sad to think it but Sansa had too much of her the Southern sense of false courtesies and entitlement, very little decency and no trace of the strong Northern backbone. Arya was all Stark, Northern to the iron that was the marrow in her bones, and a she-wolf like her ancestresses before her. The wolf-blood flowed thick in her veins.

Ned's mind went to the unforgiving Queen, and to his quarrelling daughters, as they flew over the snow-speckled peaks and endless moors shivering with heather, a hunting-party now thundering toward Winterfell as if they were an invading force, the head of the column led by direwolves swift as the winds they were named for and dangerous as the snow Ghost disappeared into.

The wolves did truly sense things men could not; perhaps it was their bond with the children, the fact they were no mere wolves at all but direwolves, true beasts from the unknowable North. Benjen had been especially interested in the story of how Ned had come to gift his own litter with a pack of direwolf pups – had smiled subtly when Ned told him how Jon had claimed the pups were meant for the Stark children, and agreed the world worked in strange ways. He'd been sorrowful the she-wolf had died, though, and concerned at all that a pregnant direwolf had found her way so far south. From what he had told Ned of his ranging for the Watch, disturbing things had been happening beyond the Wall. Things Old Nan would cluck her tongue at. And yet Benjen had been to her, asked to hear the old stories they'd heard how many times in their nursery years. Ned could still remember tiny Benjen sucking his fingers, head resting against Lyanna's legs as she gazed at wrinkled Old Nan, mesmerised, knitting on her fingers and oblivious to Brandon tying her braids in knots.

The sheer strength and lethal beauty of the direwolves could not be denied, yet Ned had never before truly appreciated their size, their power before now, watching them race ahead faster than a Dornish mare. Soon enough the great sprawling castle loomed above the mists, the rich sun dying the cloudy sky reddish-gold, and Ned spurred his horse faster as they raced up the road toward the gate, the sky reminding him of bloodstained linen, a rich sun setting red-gold against a crisp white sky. They were due snow this eve.

Under the raised portcullis, into the great courtyard, and into carnage.

Chaos assaulted his senses. The sound of weeping, of a young girl shrieking with rage, the wet sound of rending flesh and crunching bone that took Ned back to battlefields, a strange scream, the frantic barks of hunting-dogs terrified by the baying of wolves and scent of blood, echoing off the grey stone of the courtyard, still decorated for the royal visit with wildflowers and heather, the whickering and keening of horses, of steel being drawn.

In his absence, a flogging post had been erected in the centre of the courtyard, and as Ned's horse whickered, steaming in the light snow powdering everything, his heart clenched. He heard a shout, and saw Cat's stricken face as little Rickon dashed across the courtyard, in danger of being trampled underfoot; his little face was tearstained, pale, and he slipped on blood-slicked flagstones, colliding with long legs encased in familiar buckskin breeches, folded down from the waist and stained a glistening black. The victim's back was awash with red.

Chaos reigned.

Sir Ilyn, the Queen's industrious butcher, gave queer gurgling screams as Shaggydog feasted on his innards, torn apart, trying to fend off the youngest direwolf with the stump of an arm where once a hand had been, bloody fingers littering the flagstones. Arya was screaming herself hoarse, the wild, fierce she-wolf, at pretty Sansa, who cowered in the rose-pink silk frock Princess Myrcella had gifted her, three distinctive scratches bright red against her pale cheek. Tears streamed silently down Bran's bloodless face, his dark eyes on the figure in the centre of the courtyard, and though there was no love lost with Cat, her face was pale and cold as marble as she glared at the Queen. Little Brother howled his relief as Ghost joined him at the flogging-post, Lady cowering as Nymeria snarled and snapped at the terrified Queen and her pinched son in his soiled trews, Ser Jaime standing with his sword in hand, uncertain how to proceed as the Imp looked on, guarding his niece's legs and holding his little nephew's hand as he wept, his wineskin for once stoppered, his expression sorrowful but not at all surprised.

Sansa wept, flinging herself into her mother's arms as Grey Wind rounded up a bristling Nymeria, giving Lady's bleeding muzzle a tender lick. No-one tried to stop Shaggydog as he continued to chomp on Ser Ilyn's tender parts, the notorious executioner squealing and choking on his own blood. His bloody whip lay flung across the flagstones like a dead snake.

A gasp gusted from Jon as if winded by a blow, and he flung himself headlong from his horse to run for his twin.

Lyanna Snow remained upright only because of those shackles binding her to the flogging-post; her legs had collapsed from under her. She was unconscious, the muscles of her bare arms taut as the weight of her slack body pulled at them; her torso was bare, her breasts covered only by a riotous tumble of dark curls escaping two messy braids. Her back was unrecognisable as anything but a bloody, torn slab of meat. It was as if Little Brother had clawed at her, seeking her ribcage.

Blood soaked her breeches, splattering the flagstones at her feet; Rickon cried and raged as his small hands grabbed at the blood-soaked leather, shoving at her legs, trying to wake 'Lee-knee', a nickname he'd not yet outgrown calling her, carried on from Robb in the days when he couldn't pronounce 'Lyanna'. Little Brother, the largest, most cunning and wildest of the direwolf pups, already bigger than the others from a diet based on hunting with Lyanna, stood hulking beside Lyanna, enormous and black and more terrifying than the Hound in his blackened armour, tenderly licking the blood from Lyanna's ruined back, a whine becoming almost continuous, a pup seeking his mother. Jon had to nudge Little Brother out of his way with his knee, and Ned closed his eyes, praying to the old gods, before climbing off his horse.

Beside him, Tristram Baratheon, Robert's eldest son and the image of his younger self but for the emerald-green eyes that flashed with a dangerous white-hot rage, climbed off his great stallion, more Northman than any heir to the Iron Throne should be after fostering at Winterfell since his seventh name-day. He had been entrusted to Ned, when Robert feared for his son's safety, and Ned would never say he was ashamed to have raised the boy; the young-man before him was flawed as his own sons, but good. He had minded his lessons from Ned and Maester Luwin well, already a greater man than the inconstant boy Robert had been at the same age when they were fostered together at the Eyrie. Tristram was cleverer than Robert, steadier, without an ounce of his mother's malice, and instilled with the Northern sense of loyalty, justice and hard-work.

And Tristram loved Lyanna.

Like history repeating, Tristram had laid eyes on wild little Lyanna and been lost. But Tristram knew Lyanna, saw the wild ferocity and the iron-will in her, beyond the physical beauty now marred by those lash-wounds.

Ser Ilyn had punished Lyanna Snow on his Queen's orders; and he was dying a slow, gruesome death for her nastiness.

They had been trapped in Winterfell together too long, too many Houses that despised each other, brought together by mutual tragedy and distrust, old ties of friendship and a shared history of warring side by side. A disdainful, vivious queen; her arrogant brother; the drunk Imp; their entire wretched company of spoiled Southern ladies and entitled knights… Ned hated the lot of them, couldn't wait to be rid of them - and his heart seemed to feel the lash Lyanna had taken to the back as he remembered - he must travel with them back to King's Landing. Must leave behind this castle, his home that he loved, his wife, his sons; he had to give up his elder daughter to a royal marriage… The world would change for him; but also for sombre, deeply moral Jon, and for Lyanna, a bastard daughter as free and untamed as the North herself, who would never be welcome at Winterfell as long as Ned was removed from it, would never be content to marry simply for her own comfort.

It was never more apparent that Ned's life had been altered irrevocably because of Robert's hellish honour of naming him Hand, than in the mincemeat an executioner had made of Lyanna's back.

The next moments were a blur, much as he remembered the battlefield; screams, blood and the feeling of suffocation, blinded by too much going on at once. Robert had always been a strong soldier because he threw so much weight around that his path had always remained clear; he had slain Prince Rhaegar through sheer brute force, a rare strength he had passed down to Tristram, who now unleashed it, and his carefully handled temper. Robert raged, swinging his fists at men who could not raise their hands against their king; the Queen glared icily, all the colour and that smug sneer wiped clean of it; Cat tried to corral stricken children. As soon as Lyanna's shackles were unbound, her unconscious form draped carefully on a board and carried inside by Jon and Benjen under Maester Luwin's instruction, Little Brother howled once, deep and loud, harrowing to Ned's marrow, and his brothers and sisters tore after him, out of the castle, toward the wolfswood, even Lady and Shaggydog, with his muzzle shining red, his hunger sated by what had once been Ser Ilyn Payne.

Sansa's whimpering cries had eased off, marched inside by Catelyn with Rickon and Bran's arms held tight in white-knuckled fingers, Arya's shouts echoing off the ancient stone and mingling with Rickon's howls for Lee-knee and Shaggydog; and Robb and Theon Greyjoy had both taken hold of Tristram, throwing all their weight into trying to pull him away from the spoiled, nasty brother he despised. Prince Joffrey would not sleep for the pain of swollen eyes, a broken nose and possibly a fractured jaw.

Tristram had made an enemy of his mother the moment he struck Joffrey. But the brat would always remember, and fear his elder brother.

And Ned sensed the lethal danger in Queen Cersei as he saw a drop of blood well on her lip where Robert had struck her, just the once; he saw the sly look she gave her knighted twin-brother the Kingslayer. And he noticed that the Imp had seen it too, was frowning at his brother and sister, disapproving, sombre-faced, before leading a silently-weeping Princess Myrcella and little Prince Tommen away, Myrcella's golden hair still braided with the flowers Lyanna had plucked from her own garden for her.

Ned had always believed Robert had no sense of himself when he was in a rage. On the battlefield he had been unstoppable; but in a towering rage like this, he shouted things he'd never remember after, had often looked back hours later wondering what had angered him so.

But this time, they all knew what had sent Robert's famous temper flaring.

Ned's Lyanna. His bastard daughter. Free and fierce as the endless moors and snow-capped peaks and untameable wolfswood, strong, earnest. Sharp as Valyrian steel, ferocious, great-hearted and independent, joyous and kind.

And the image of Lyanna Stark reborn, in all her wild beauty.

Sent to haunt Robert, the ghost of the girl he had loved and lost, made flesh and blood, and more beautiful than her namesake because she was flesh and blood. Robert had taken one look at her and remembered what it felt to be young, to fancy himself in love, to remember the life he had imagined for himself.

She was a reminder of all he had ever wanted; and a reminder of instead, what he found himself with. Seven kingdoms he did not care for; and a wife he despised.

A wife who had brutalised Lyanna - just because she could.

Because Lyanna had struck Joffrey where Cersei Lannister had never disciplined her weak, cruel son in his life.

Because Lyanna had shown the boy for the fool he was, wounded the Queen's great pride, and didn't care a whit about having done so.

Because Lyanna was everything Robert had ever wanted, and everything Cersei Lannister, for all her physical beauty, could never be.

Lyanna was fierce, and clever, and her bravery and keen sense of justice was her undoing. She had had more accidents and broken limbs and close calls than all his children combined, in and out of Maester Luwin's care, her competitive spirit only matched by her curiosity. She was clever, and brave, and such people were not made to stand at the back and watch on while others suffered, least of all those who could not defend themselves. The butcher's boy Mycah had disappeared, but in his heart Ned knew Lyanna had secreted him away to safety, beyond the reach of the Queen and her butchered executioner.

As Jon and Benjen carried her into the castle, the board jostled Lyanna awake for a fleeting moment. Ned's heart lurched in his chest, Robert fell silent, his rage quieted by the image of Lyanna, bloody as he imagined her namesake on her deathbed, and Lyanna's uncanny eyes opened, gazing around unseeingly.

"What trouble've you gotten yourself into this time?" Ned sighed, the same thing he asked her every time she hobbled home. No matter where she went, or how long she was gone, or what had sent her forth from the safety of the castle, his wild girl always returned to Winterfell. To her twin-brother. To her lair.

She focused on Ned with some difficulty, sighing heavily, and her lips twitched as she murmured, "The Queen tickled me for ribbons."

A.N.: Joffrey was drunk in the godswood at Winterfell, rather than the Ruby Ford at the Trident, and there was more than just one witness.

Just finished watching Season 7. Quite a few kicks in the teeth we got in the last fifteen minutes, eh? When the ship's a rockin'… I should really have filmed my reactions to this episode. Yay for Jaime, whoa for Targaryincest! It was sweet between Brienne and the Hound, talking about their little Murder-Baby Arya. And what about Tormund? And Gendry?!

We finally got a glimpse of that naughty scallywag Rhaegar. Why all the secrecy, I ask you? If he'd been upfront about it, how many lives might've been saved? Then, I suppose Jon would never have gone to the Wall. He wouldn't be our Jon.

Thoughts on Sansa? Personally, I'm still not convinced Sansa is half as smart as she likes to think she is. She has always been cringe-worthily naïve, and self-absorbed. She's being an utter cow to Jon, refusing to see that he's earned what he's got for a reason; she sat chewing a wasp when Jon pardoned innocent children, refusing to rout them from their homes the way Bran and Rickon were from Winterfell. I don't know how Sansa can't see our boy's got game when it comes to politics: Alys Karstark probably wants to have his babies, and Ned Umber will hero-worship him forever. They'll always be loyal.

It is my opinion that Sansa should've gone with Sandor Clegane the night of the Blackwater; whatever happened to her after that is her own fault, she had the option to get out but she wouldn't have been comfortable, wearing fine silks. Clegane would've slaughtered all the Ironborn in Winterfell before they ever touched Bran and Rickon - and Maester Luwin (whom I adore). When Sansa tells Arya she never would have survived what Sansa survived - it falls flat with me, as it didn't happen to Sansa in the books, and Arya would've killed Ramsay with a chicken-bone before the wedding.

I'm trying to figure out how things might end on the show. I think Cersei's the greater danger than the Night King; they know the White Walkers' weakness now, and they have Bran (however helpful or not that will prove to be). So I do think the battle against the Army of the Dead will occur earlier on in the last series, with Jon/Daenerys/whoever survives marching South against King's Landing to drag Cersei from the Iron Throne by what little hair she's regrown. Or they'll get there, and Jaime will find Cersei in the Red Keep, dead, in a mess of her own blood, while a baby cries - and the baby's either normal, and she's dead anyway, or a dwarf, and it's gorgeous poetic justice, and Jaime will love the baby just as he has always loved Tyrion. Or the 'little brother' could be Jon - he's the 'little brother' not only of Robb, but of the butchered Rhaenys and Aegon, the children of Elia Martell. It could even be the Hound, turning on her after finishing his brother. Or it could be Gendry who kills her, one of Robert's twenty bastards, who kills her to avenge the father he never knew.

Gendry will be named a true Baratheon, he'll marry Arya and they'll have terrifying, strong, good-hearted children and live happily ever after, their children watching Mummy water-dance and Dada smith Valyrian steel, visited by their gruff but loveable Uncle Hound. And their children will marry the tremendous offspring of Tormund Giantsbane and Lady Brienne of Tarth.

Anyone who wants to chat GoT is welcome to message me!