Chapter Text
Theon watched with his breath suspended as the gate opened in front of him, revealing the entrance to Castleblack.
It was cold - not the coldest weather he had ever seen, but still cold.
Surprisingly, he wasn’t used to it. Pain, sure… he could live with it. But not cold.
Ever since his closeness to death, with the Night King, he always felt like he would never get warm again, and hated every second of it. The only time he ever felt good was in the arms of his Queen.
And he was here for her.
The wall, a place that used to hold criminals, bastards and the worst men to walk the Earth, was now gone. Castleback and the buildings that once housed the watch were full of families, women and children.
When Sansa chose him to be her husband, he wanted to refuse. He did refuse, time and time again. Theon wasn’t worthy, he could never be. She was beautiful, strong, and a true goddess. And he was nothing but a survivor.
People called him a hero, Asha said it would be tactical to join their Kingdoms, and he loved Sansa. He married her because he loved her. His wife was the woman he loved the most in the world.
She gave him her name, made him a Stark as he had always dreamed, but he didn’t feel worthy of her. He wasn’t the man Lord Stark would have wanted for his beautiful daughter. Ned Stark would never have let a castrated man, full of fears, be with his oldest daughter.
Sansa deserved the best in the world, to have everything she dreamed of.
She deserved a family. Children to carry and raise, to love and hold dearly to her heart.
Everything he couldn’t give her.
A wilding man walked to his horse and looked at him with hard eyes.
“What is your business?”
He willed himself to speak like the prince - she wanted him to be a King, but he couldn’t - he was supposed to be.
“I need to speak with King Snow,” he declared.
He almost wanted to laugh. Jon Snow, the little bastard boy he had grown around, the only one under him in their hierarchy, was now a King. Years ago, if someone had told him Jon Snow was who he was - the son of Rhaegar Targaryen, the one who was supposed to be King of the Seven Kingdoms - and turned everything down to be king of the Wildlings, he would have spit in their face that that bastard was no king.
He was guided to Jon, and tried hard not to hide from the cold as the hunting party broke apart, and he left his men to go to him.
“Hello, Theon,” he spoke, simply.
“Hello,” he tried to keep his voice steady.
Jon looked different. Younger than the lady time he had seen him, somehow, with his hair grown into something almost like a mane, not hiding it with a bun anymore.
He looked like a king, even including the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“Is Sansa here?” he asked.
Theon shook his head.
“She is not,” he told him. “I’m alone.”
Jon’s face changed in concern.
“Alone?” he asked. “No party.”
“A few men a few miles back,” he assured him. Sansa had insisted. “I needed privacy. To speak to you as a friend.”
He nodded slowly.
“You are my brother,” Jon affirmed simply. “We grew up together.”
“I know,” Theon affirmed. “That’s why I’m here.”
Jon seemed more confused, and he cleared his throat.
“Maybe we can talk while hunting,” he offered. He hadn’t gone in a hint in years. “I’m still the best sharpshooter in the Seven Kingdoms.”
“I’m glad the years didn’t hurt your ego,” he declared. “Let me find you something warmer, and we can go.”
He wanted to say no, but Jon just walked away, grabbing extra furs to wrap around him.
“Is that how you treat all the ladies?” he asked jokingly.
Jon scoffed, walking away, not waiting for Theon to follow him - just like he did when they were young - and only turned to check if he was following him when they reached the spot where he had a bow and arrows.
“Test this one,” he told him and grabbed an arrow. “Just don’t shoot anyone.”
He chuckled, weighing it and simply shrugged.
“Not ironborn material, but it will do,” he decided.
Jon just nodded, and the other men quickly welcomed him before the group left.
The snow started to faintly fall as they did, and as he felt it on his face, Theon could remember the day he was standing on the wall of Winterfell with Sansa, with her fingers clenching his and their lives on the line. At the moment, he felt that jumping would be the end of their lives - on their own terms - and he was ready for it. And so was she.
When she kissed him before they fell, he thought it was to give him a sweet memory to cling to when death swallowed them.
When she kissed him again, after he said he wasn’t coming with her to Castleblack, he believed it was to show her gratitude, like the princesses in the songs always did to their knights.
But then, she kissed him again when he returned to fight for them, in front of everyone - of the Dragon Queen and her people, of the Northern Lords - and held him close, as if he was a lover she had been eager to welcome back home.
And she kissed him again after he awoke from his brush with death.
Just then, he realised there was more to it. It wasn’t gratitude or a way of survival.
He realised it was love.
Love that no one ever understood, not the North, not Asha and not Jon Snow.
Even when he treated him well, he could see it in his eyes.
The same hatred he had shown on their wedding day, when he thought no one was looking, of how Sansa had fallen for Theon, of all men.
He wanted to believe it was only the sins he had committed that weighted his opinion of their union, but he knew there was something more there. The same feeling Theon had grown up with, the same desire, except that Jon couldn’t voice it, even to himself. What man would admit to himself to wanting his own sister?
Now, she was his cousin.
“You can ask me about her, you know?” he spoke aloud, though not looking at Jon.
“I don’t want to know,” he mumbled.
Theon shook his head.
“Of course you want to know,” he called him out. “You love her.”
Jon turned to him so quickly Theon thought he could hurt his neck, but he didn’t give him any space to interrupt him. A childhood with Jon Snow made him an expert at pushing his buttons, especially when they were so obvious.
“And she loves you,” he spat. “More than you even think she does. She misses you every day, and sends you letters every week. When was the last time you even wrote to her?”
He clenched his jaw, bothered.
“I write to her,” he declared, and his eyes fell on some movement in front of them. “It’s just hard with the free folk, I have to help them settle in and get used to their new life.”
Theon scoffed.
“Why not take her help, then?” he asked.
“Sansa might be the smartest person alive when it comes to the Seven Kingdoms, but she knows nothing about the Free Folk,” he reminded him.
Theon ignored him, aiming at the rabbit just as it jumped, and Jon gasped, startled.
He chuckled, amused at his surprise, but sighed, annoyed with his damn stubbornness, something that apparently was carried in the Stark blood.
“Sansa is the reason why you were able to unite the Free Folk in the first place, the reason why we have Winterfell,” he reminded him, standing in front of him and dropping his bow while someone rushed to get the rabbit. “She is the reason I’m not a disgusting bastard’s pet, and you aren’t in a cross, flayed alive.”
Jon watched his face for a moment, scowling.
“What do you want, Greyjoy?” he asked, at last. “Why did you come after me?”
Theon grabbed another arrow, unable to say it while looking at his face.
“We need heirs and the three of us are some of the few who know I can’t give it to her,” he declared, keeping his eye open and following what seemed to be a stag.
“Sansa says she doesn’t care,” he nearly whispered. “But I know she wants children, that she wants a family.”
Jon inhaled sharply.
“I’m sure there are men loyal enough to help,” he spoke between teeth.
It was obvious from his tone that he was forcing himself into saying it.
“We tried,” he confessed. “We stop everything before they can figure out why she needed them. Sansa… can’t stop thinking about her wedding night anytime they even walk into our quarters.”
Theon remembered every single time they tried to have the conversation, how he always had to come up with a reason on the spot after Sansa escaped into her room, bursting into tears. How they had to cover the invitations with requests or gifts ‘for their loyalty’.
“They all judge her, Jon,” he shot his arrow. “Her scarred body, her nightmares…”
He turned to him.
“I won’t let her be humiliated for marrying a man who can give her children,” he affirmed. “I won’t let them think she is barren because of me.”
Jon’s nose flared up as he seemed to realise what he was asking of him.
“Have you gone mad?” he asked, looking confused and angry. “What are you suggesting?”
Theon clenched his hands in a fist.
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t the same way, but think of her,” he pleaded. “Just give this to her. A child. A family. It’s what she deserves after everything she has gone through, after all the years of suffering we both know she had to endure.”
He watched as his jaw shifted.
“I know well enough what she has gone through,” he grunted.
Theon just stared at him, trying to will the memories back into where he had hidden them, where he wouldn’t have to remember.
“Not unless you have seen it, you don’t,” he remarked. “Not enough.”
He would never forget her eyes staring at him, the way she cried and pleaded for his help before letting the pain numb her when he didn’t.
There was a long moment of silence before any of them said anything.
“Sansa can’t want me.”
Theon scoffed.
“Stop being stupid for a moment, will you?” he threw him an angry look. “She loves you. She loved you when you reunited and she still loved you when you bedded the Dragon Queen.”
“What are you talking about?”
Theon understood it quite well, how people can just feel love for more than one person at once - he had felt it himself at some point in his life, in a very distant time. Jon was the only man aside from Theon she could ever want.
“She told it to me herself,” he remarked.
It was his fault that he had cornered herself into saying it, that Jon was the only other man she could trust in her bed - a man she always thought she could never have. And he accepted it.
Theon would kill or die for Sansa. In any other situation, if he was any other man, he would have reacted differently.
But this wasn’t any other situation, and he wasn’t a different man.
He loved her, and he wanted her happy. If that meant begging another man to bed her and give her children, then so be it.
He already wasn’t fit to be her husband. What kind of man would he be to deny her this?
“Love and want are different,” he argued.
“Not to her,” Theon interrupted him. “Not when it comes to you or to me.”
Then watched the stag trying to race out of their sights, but took a quick shot, making it fall, and earning cheers from the wildlings.
The Free people moved to collect the large animal, and Jon looked at him.
“Is that even what she wants?” he asked. “What if the children are found out?”
Theon scoffed. The people of the North would have loved the children even more if they found out they were Jon’s and not his.
“And what would they say? Oh, this boy looks too much like Eddard Stark. This girl looks too much like Arya!” he mocked.
Jon rolled his eyes, and Theon scoffed.
“It won’t happen,” he promised. “Any child that comes from Sansa is my child, and princes and princesses anyway. She is the Queen.”
He could see the envy on Jon’s face as he watched him.
“Your child,” he mumbled. “Not mine.”
Theon couldn’t help but wonder what hurt more: not being able to give children to the woman you loved, or not being able to claim the children you gave her as his own.
Both positions felt terrible.
“We are not doing this for us, now,” he remarked. “We do it for her.”
Jon was the one man Theon knew loved Sansa was much as he did. The only one he trusted, too.
It didn’t matter how much it hurt him to do this, he would never let her know.
Sansa would never allow him to ask such a thing to Jon if she knew how much it hurt him, and would never accept to lay with Jon if she knew the consequences would hurt him too. For one, they would be putting her above themselves, and her happiness above everything.
“She deserves this,” Jon whispered.
“No one can know of my presence,” Jon looked away. “So they can’t trace the children back to my visits.”
Theon nodded, confirming.
It would hurt Sansa’s honour if they ever doubted her faithfulness to their marriage.
“I’ll leave at dawn, I’ll set things up until then,” he continued. “Meet me in the woods the night you arrive with your men.”
He nodded along. It was best that his men didn’t see Jon with him.
“We can sneak you in through the crypts. Brienne will lead you into our room.”
His friend snorted.
Silence fell between them, and Jon smirked.
“Do you wonder what Robb would think of this plan?” he asked. “Of his brothers going to impregnate his sister?”
Theon couldn’t keep himself from laughing.
“We would both be dead before we hit the floor.” he laughed.
Jon busted in a loud laugh and then turned to him with a smile on his lips that slowly turned sad.
“Can we… you…” he interrupted himself. “Name it after him? The boy.”
Theon smiled a little bit. He didn’t even need to suggest it.
“Sansa was going to do it without even asking us,” he assured him. “Don’t worry.”
There was an unsaid knowledge between them, one that Theon couldn’t ring himself to touch on.
That there would be others. Other nights, and other children.
As many children as she desired.