A Man Must Die...Repeatedly

[SoftBoy]

AN: This is a bad idea...
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Head pulsing, throat dry and parched, feet aching from the day. What I wouldn't do for a drink of vodka, for even a sip, just to scratch the itch. "I wonder how far the nearest open bar would be?" I asked myself, shuffling from one foot to the other, trying not to bump anyone in line.

"Regretting the fur coat now, right?" I heard Liam snigger behind me.

I admit, in the summer heat of California, with all these warm bodies, I was regretting my costume choice. Sure, maybe it would have been boring going to comic con as Mad Max a second time, but at least it wouldn't have been boiling. Still, with the beads of sweat rolling down my back and the slight tingle of heat stroke tickling my skull, I was proud of what I had made.

A full imitation fur cape, it would do. I had researched wolf pelts, the texture of them, how they felt, the smell. I had almost gotten it right, if only I had a few more months. I was far more pleased with the sword. Leather sheath with inlaid studs, high impact plastic for the blade, steel crossguard, I had even used it in a few HEMA spars. But by far my pride and joy was the breastplate. Over three weeks overtime to afford the forging but it fit like a glove. This was my passion, I took every single detail I could find and made myself into Jon Snow. I was happy to do it, happy to have something to sink my teeth into. More time on this, less time thinking about getting high.

But damn it was hot.

Not that I'd ever admit it to a bastard like Liam though, he would never let it go.

"Love you to jackass. Dock Brown really suits your graying hair." I replied with as much snark as I could. It was sweet of him to try, but man was I pissed when he told be the flask at his hip was full of water.

"It's Rick and you know it, you Sean Bean looking mother fu-" Liam began to yell back in false anger before being corralled by his girlfriend, pack leader, and my best friend.

"I swear, one more peep from either of you and I'm kicking both your asses." Nat growled, elbowing Liam in the ribs and giving me the death stare. We were all tired, it didn't stop her from being right, but I was mad as hell. I was always mad. I'd been clean for close to a year now, yet the longer I stayed sober the harder it was. Every second the itch grew no matter what that life had cost me.

No matter the friends it pushed away.

I didn't blame them for leaving me, for deciding to choose a better life, but man did it hurt. I was surprised when they said they'd meet me in San Francisco and it only drove home how much I missed them. How much time I had wasted.

I was never a man for crowds and this was certainly a crowd. I don't know why I allowed Nat to drag me in line for G. R. R. Martin's signature of all people. With how irritable I felt, manners, or even decency was far from my mind. Not a good place to meet someone you admire. But Nat wanted it, and what she wanted she got. "The hole place is dying anyway." She promised.

She wasn't wrong.

Most of the banners had been removed, the popcorn smell was starting to wear thin, and the number of truly interesting costumes had gone by the wayside. It was a good con, a high note for a hard year. All of us baked in our sweat, feet sore, hungover and satisfied. It had been quite a while since Pre-med and we were all drowning in work. But right now, all I really wanted was a bottle of booze, to get out of this cape, and get reacquainted with my hotel bed.

"We'll probably have to say our farewells soon." I said to myself, tasting the words, finding them wanting. It was bitter, thinking of goodbyes. That sting of realization was quickly obscured however as my head took the time to remind me it was splitting open.

Looking toward the line, I saw the sheer size of the crowd, scores of people talking and gyrating, scraping together like rusty gears. It was agony even at a distance, my body seemingly agreed, heart thumping along, face flush, and the infernal pinpricks in my skull resting momentarily only to burst forth again. I needed to get out, get away. I wanted a drink. Shutting down I ducked under the tape used to corral the line of people and strode to the nearest hallway.

"Johnny, where are you going?" Nat asked confused, her good-natured concern apparent even behind the face paint. She had taken her responsibility well, always perfect, always caring. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't envious.

"I... I just need to step away for a bit, catch you later." I choked out as I waved goodbye and began to walk down the halls. Life had gone too quickly, late nights, days out, and adventures had been absorbed into the daily grind, the stress of living, the drugs. All of us had been worn down but it was always me that cracked under the pressure.

Sabotage, especially self-sabotage, had always been my forte.

"Too scared to do anything more than half-way." I said, scolding myself. Overlooking the convention grounds, it became a constant battle, stamping out the fear in my gut, breathing as deeply as I could. The panic still seemed inevitable. "So many people, too many, need to get out, need to- "

"So scared of being. Pity, you're capable of more," I heard a womanly voice whisper from my left, far too close for comfort. Quickly jerking my head, I searched for the voice. I was greeted with an empty hallway.

Shaking off my paranoia, I went back to walking, looking out the window. "It's just the heat." I told myself.

The sun was warm as it streaked across my skin, the stuffy air filled my lungs, and for a moment calm came. Then the tingling started to worsen. Shaking the feeling off I started my walk farther down the hall. Slowly meandering, looking to the sky, marveling at the blue and white. "I wonder if I could convince Liam to…" I mumbled to myself before freezing in shock as I saw what was out the window.

The birds…whole flocks of them were petrified, their wings and bodies unmoving and dead. That alone would have been enough to give me pause, they had been a constant, evermoving swarm throughout the day, scavenging the refuse left by the crowds. But what truly shocked me was the fact they were floating in midair, their bodies fixed into a stationary snapshot, a single moment in time.

Looking up to the sky again, this time much closer, I noticed thin…strands, lines, and tendrils lining the air.

"You fear summers end Johnathan. You fear the winter." Again, that soft, sultry voice brushed against my ear with no apparent owner.

"What the fuck," I whispered, unsettled as time and space seemed to warp around me. It took less than a second before that feeling was magnified exponentially as the tendrils of darkness began creeping at the edge of my vision, coming from the walls and ceilings, all of which started growing, slinking and inching there way toward me.

"You don't need that fear anymore." The voice said, this time seeming to echo through my head, magnifying the pinpricks in my skull and causing them to burn.

I ran, I'm not even ashamed to admit it, I ran as far and as fast as my legs could carry me. Past the booths and stands, over the gray toned floor, and straight out the nearest door. I booked it until my muscles burned and my chest heaved and then I kept running.

Once I had escaped the building I again looked to the sky for some clue to the madness. A sickly white sun stared back at me, clouds grey and looming, and more of those hair-thin tendrils leaking through every corner of the world, seemingly leaching the color, life, and time around them.

"If it comforts you, run, but it makes no difference." My tormentor stated with an amused tone, her words reverberating in my skull. Heatstroke, it had to be heatstroke. Heaving as many breaths as I could I watched, eyes wide, as millions upon millions of threads interwove into tight knots and angular lines inches from my face, groaning and straining with untold strength behind them.

It was like considering a mirror, or a polarized print. Strands coalescing into an onyx form, strong jaw, long nose slightly broken and tilted, inky black teeth and eyes and even a small divot right above the brow in a facsimile of a scar. This was my face, it was smiling.

Before I knew it, the thing was talking again, coming closer as I backed away, inching to within a hairs breath of me before speaking. "Summer has ended, but there is still so much more for you…if you were brave enough to see, to look." This thing, whatever it was, let out no breath when it spoke, no sound, just raw meaning seared into my mind with a motherly tone coming from a mannish face. The reverberation echoing through my head and wrapping around my lungs like warm velvet, euphoric, and in some ways even comforting.

"What do you mean summer has ended? Are you telling me…a-am I dead?" I asked, the shaking of my voice growing with every moment, my mind racing for some logical explanation to the petrifying thing before me. The coiling wires of shadow had encircled me now, winding up, down, and over my feet and climbing higher still. Even as I thrashed and yelled I knew it was no use. Ether this was a hallucination beyond anything Psilocybin had given me, or I was, honest to god, dying

"Not yet, not truly. And if you make the choice, the right choice, perhaps not ever. But you must choose." The face said insistently, showing a smile as its lips nearly touched mine.

"What if I chose to stay?" I asked, my eyes narrowing as my heart attempted to break away from my ribcage.

We stood there a long while, silent, resolute. After some time however, the stinging in my head returned with a vengeance as needles seemed to bury themselves within my skull. The face of threads moved away, shifting and creaking as the knots rewound themselves into a different mask, one I knew well.

"This one shall show." It said triumphantly, now wearing the face of Nat. The thing…whatever this was had gotten her almost perfect. The robust, strong features of a woman that was handsome but not pretty, smooth jaw, round cheeks, and a full head of hair.

The threads had traveled higher now, worming there way over me. As I felt the cords enter my earholes, nose, mouth, and eyes I was shown something, a vision.

We were back in the line, the threads and me. Only this time we overlooked not only Liam and Nat but a version of myself as well, happy, laughing, and oblivious even as I stood mere feet from them.

"If you choose to let this one…take you…you shall leave, "this" form," The face said, explaining itself with a controlled caution. "this self shall die, and be reborn."

My heart stopped the moment the words touched my mind, my eyes widened, my mouth had gone dry. I had to know, had to see.

"How?" I asked, my voice unrecognizably small.

"An aneurysm, your occipital lobe," The mask of strands said, and as if on command "fake" me fell backwards, "you strike the floor, but you are dead before you even touch the ground." My body slammed into the floor and I felt the impact on my back and head, the thud creating an echo that seemed deafening. And, within seconds, just as I had watched my body fall I saw it rise again, time bending and shifting as it rewound and played repeatedly like a defective record.

"T-that's If I…If I go with you. What h-happens If I stayed, would you just kill me all the same?" I sputtered out.

"No. This one is thread maker, it weaves the strands, ties them. But it is you, small thing, that plucks or severs them. I can no more play the song than you can see the weave." The newly named thread maker said in a condescending tone as if I had missed an obvious conclusion.

"And if I decided to stay?" I insisted, both unable and unwilling to make the implied connection that the thread maker suggested.

The mask of the creature suddenly rushed forward, stopping mere centimeters from my face. The black, pupilless pools that served as the creature's eyes stared at me for a long while, my breathing the only sound between us. Slowly however, a single thin strand started to glow a bluish white light, spreading from the corner of the woven face to the center of its forehead. I was about to ask again before the glowing thread jutted from the mask and punctured my skull, showing me exactly what would happen If I stayed.

"A strand, one of many, the thickest speaks. You would drift," And just as the thread maker said, Nat, Liam, and I slowly separated, arguing, ignoring each other, lots of yelling. It all flashed before my eyes. "Then, you turn back, regress," I was shown my apartment, cluttered, ravaged. Without even looking at the burned spoons and used needles I knew what the thing was implying. "A flash, loud, distraught, your smaller one takes it the worst. Neither holds the shovel when you meet the ground."

"So, I die either way." I muttered softly, more than a little traumatized by the implications of what I had seen.

"No, you may yet live…in a new way. This one can show you, this one can help." The mask of strings said as the vision faded, its voice infuriatingly hopeful and undesirably eager despite the morbidity it had shown me.

"Where would I go?" I asked in quiet desperation as my vision began to slowly fade away.

"A place of long summers, longer winters, and songs yet untold. You can pluck the strings, change the harmony, weave a greater thread." The voice said excitedly. In truth I couldn't see it anymore, the tendrils and vines of black had wrapped around my eyes and refused to show me anything. It was so hard to think now, to breathe.

"I'll go, but only if…" I whispered out with all my strength before being interrupted by the thread makers chittering.

"Joy of joys! You are the first this one has ever…" It began to squee before I cut it off with my demands.

"I want to live. If your taking me, I want everything you can give me. Power, money, everything." I growled, desperate to feel like I had some level of control.

As I said the words the enfolding and crushing grip of the wires slowed momentarily. Nothing happened, I floated in the dark. I was sure I had pushed too far, but before I could say anything else the thing responded.

"This one… the path can be placed but…it is painful, and you must be the one to walk it. But if you do? You shall never see me again." The Spinner said, conflict lacing its words.

"Do it." I whispered lightly.

Suddenly I was among the crowds again, the shuffling and conversation a deafening crash compared to the former silence. Looking around I caught sight of Liam and Nat walking up to me, in their hands signed copies of A Dance with Dragons, three of them. "Hey man, saw you run off so I wanted to get you a pick-me-up." Liam said smiling as he squeezed Nat's hand.

The pressure in my head built, greater and greater until it burst, causing a wave of pain. "I love you guys." I choked out before falling backward, my vision fading. As the wind pushed through my hair I felt the pull of the strings, digging through my skin, past flesh and bone, pulling my spirit somewhere else. The creature was right, I never felt the impact of the floor.

"The thread has been plucked and a pact is made. Sweet dreams small thing."


AN: I was having a conversation with a friend of mine discussing how long we might survive in asoiaf. Both of us concluded that we would die almost immediately. Thats the basis of this story. What if a man is plopped Into the asoiaf world and dies...again and again. Move over Phil Connors.

Posted this on QQ, clean stuff goes here.