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AFTER much too long of a time, Bran Stark had awoken.
Freya had been helping some of the small folk tend to the castle's grounds, carrying large stacks of straw to and from the barn, which had almost been burnt down, but they found it easy to repair. Although, the barn still smelt of ash.
An energetic Rickon Stark followed behind her. She let him carry small packets of straw for his tiny arms. Sometimes when she set down her straw, Rickon would just throw his in the air. Freya sincerely loved children, though she didn't look like a mother-type to some. She liked treating Rickon like her own child.
"FREYA!"
Her head spun in the direction of her name being called. Running through the mud was her brother, Theon, and before he could reach her, he ended up slipping in a pile. Freya chuckled as he continued to get up anyways. "Bran is awake!" He exclaimed.
Freya immediately picked Rickon up in her arms and followed Theon to the other young Stark's chambers. It hadn't been a long run; they arrived in a matter of minutes. Theon stopped short in front of Little Bran's room, allowing Freya inside as Rickon clutched onto her neck in her hold. Bran still lay in his small bed, furs cuddling his body. But he did not move, and Freya suspected that he never would again.
Robb was already in the room, speaking with Bran and sitting on the side of his bed. His eyes met Freya's in disgust, but she couldn't blame him. They hadn't spoken a word to each other since his outburst after Bran's murder attempt. She didn't exactly want to say anything to him either. Apparently, he was now in command of Winterfell, and the thought of following his orders left a gross taste in her mouth.
"We heard Little Bran had awoken," Theon said, approaching the inside of the room.
Rickon giggled on Freya's side as her muscled arms bounced him upward. "Rickon wanted to say hello too," she laughed.
Robb smiled toward only Theon before turning back to Bran. "How do you feel? You still don't remember anything?" Bran shook his head in response. "I've seen you climb a thousand times. In the wind, in the rain ... A thousand times. You never fall."
"I did though," Bran whispered. "It's true, isn't it? What Maester Luwin says about my legs?"
Bran looked to his brother, who nodded. He then stared at the Greyjoy siblings. Theon made no movement, while Freya looked at her feet.
Bran watched flames lick at the edge of the hearth in his chambers. "I'd rather be dead," he muttered.
"Don't ever say that," Robb commanded.
Bran stared at his older sibling. "I'd rather be dead."
Robb's jaw set. His brother's eyes spoke the words for him. He wished for death now more than ever.
•••
Maester Luwin requested to see Freya that evening. She had gotten hurt many times before, so now the maester wished for her to visit for a monthly examination.
The maester regularly checked her blood during each inspection. Freya had somewhat of a disease in her blood when she was younger, and her father's only solution was to have leeches "suck out" the disease. In a sense, it nearly worked, but Maester Luwin cured her fully when she arrived at Winterfell. The disease hadn't been deadly, thankfully, but Luwin still found it just to check her blood each month.
Freya knocked her fist against the maester's door and he opened it for her in seconds. "I feel as if this visit came around quicker than usual," she thought out loud.
Maester Luwin shut the door quickly as Freya sat on the other stool in his room. The maester looked at her oddly, muttering, "That's because this is not one of your usual monthly visits, Lady Freya."
"I do not understand," Freya uttered, quirking a brow upward.
The maester sat down in the chair across from her. "I've been looking at your blood sample this past month very thoroughly. I have come to notice something within it that I have not realized was in your past samples before."
Freya asked, "Has my infection returned?"
"No, nothing of the sort," he dismissed her response, looking at his aged hands. "I've been searching through all my books on this matter, but they all say the same. I even questioned Old Nan and her tales, and though I do not trust her logic on a number of occasions, she said my hypothesis was true.
"Your cell shape is abnormal." He paused. "I never truly thought of it before, but now I've fully come to realize how important this factor is. You've told me since you grew up in Winterfell that your flowering is particularly irregular in length and heaviness. I've also recorded during these times that your temperature is oddly lower than normal, when it should be up slightly. Combining both that and your past disease, I've come to a conclusion."
"What is wrong?"
Maester Luwin sighed, looking up at the Greyjoy girl. "You are barren, Freya."
Freya stared at the wooden roof above her before looking to the shelves upon shelves of substances and herbs. Was she going to faint? That seemed likely. Everything felt like it was spinning. Something was wrong with her – again. "So," she gulped, "that means –"
"You will never be able to have children." The maester grabbed her hand. "I am so sorry."
She'd rather be dead.
•••
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter! I just really wanted to set up Bran waking up and a scene explaining Freya's big secret. Surprisingly, she is a person who loves children and always dreamed of having her own someday, but she now realizes that it can never happen because she is not able to have children :( This will also be an obstacle for her since she is of age to be married, so we'll see what comes of this!
I was researching medical practices in Westeros for hours, and I found out that maesters really do know a lot of procedures. Maester Luwin would have had to practice knowing how a woman is barren when he was training to be a maester. GRRM said that he wanted to have people in Westeros know more about medical procedures than the real people from the Middle Ages, because every GOT character would've been dead by 20 without this knowledge.
Okay that was a long fun fact, but I thought it was interesting!
