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What Theon remembers most of when the old tower fell was the sound that his mother made.

Maron was down there, Theon recalls thinking, dully. He is probably dead, now. Rodrik was dead, too, but he had died a while ago and that no longer shocked him. His mother was crying. Asha wasn’t.

They all three were sequestered in the safest chamber of the Sea Tower, huddled around the window, watching his father lose the war. His mother picked him up, then, boy of ten though he was, and he pressed his hot and teary face into the familiar skin of her neck. Mother held out her hand to Asha, maybe to include her in the embrace, but Asha only held onto her axe and put her other hand on Mother’s shoulder.

The axe was petite, made in miniature for a young daughter of Pyke. How old had Asha been, then, if Theon was only ten? Not yet even four and ten? In the halls of his memory, she seems a woman grown, but she had only been a few years older in truth. His memory lies to him, then, with everyone else.

Before the battle, when his brother had led the three weakest Greyjoys to the Sea Tower and locked the door behind them, Maron had leaned down to look at Theon’s face. His fingers dug into Theon’s arm. His breath smelled like ale, and sour.

“Once I’m dead, you’ll be the heir. You’ll like that, won’t you?” Theon tried to pull away, but those fingers were as iron as the rest of him. Maron hadn’t been right, since Rodrik died.

“What is dead may never die,” stuttered Theon, for lack of anything better to say. Since the start of the war, it seemed to be the only thing anyone ever said to one another. Sometimes it felt like those were the only words he knew. Maron’s face twisted, and so did his fingers, and Theon made a little whimpering noise against his will.

“Maron!”

Their mother’s voice was sharp, but not as cutting as it once might have been. She hadn’t been right since Rodrik died, either.

Asha got in between them, and pulled Theon out of those clawing hands. “Leave the baby be, Maron. Go off and fight for Father, this one is no sport for you.” Theon might have protested at being called the baby, but Asha did not make a habit of defending him, and he was too surprised to retaliate.

“Maron,” their mother said, faltering now, “come back to me. Sweet Maron, my strong boy. Don’t go with Rodrik. Come home.”

She tried to put her arms around him, but he firmly caught her hands and held them away from him. “I must go,” he told her sharply. “My lord father is waiting for me.”

The door closed with a bang behind him. They heard the heavy sound of a bar being slid across the outside of the door, and Asha rose to go slide another one along the inside. She came back to perch by the window, and Mother put her arms around Theon, and they all sat in silence for a while.

Until the battle joined.

They had no candle, nor a fire in the hearth, so as not to draw attention to their hiding place with light from the window. It wouldn’t have mattered if they did, Theon discovered, for the fires down below were bright enough to eclipse any small flame they might have had. Half of their room in Sea Tower was in deep, deep shadow, and the other half was illuminated by the swollen and angry red light of the fighting, pouring in through their tiny square-shaped view of the outside world.

War was loud. Theon had heard reaving songs speak of the din of fighting since he was small, but that had always sounded glorious and surreal to him, an adventure flat on a page. The screaming coming from down below, the muffled booming sounds of the old tower being bludgeoned, the cries of dying men, none of the sounds he heard now felt like adventure.

His mother was rocking back and forth slightly, her hands digging in like claws on his shoulders, the knee that she held him upon jiggling up and down frantically. Any other time, Theon would have protested being bounced on his mother’s lap like the baby he hated being, but now he was too frightened, and her arms around him felt too safe. Asha was perched on the windowsill, her gaze constantly swiveling between the fighting down below and Theon with Mother. Her hand never left her axe.

When the old tower fell, his mother made a rattling groaning sound deep in her throat, and clutched at Theon with harpies’ talons. “My baby,” she breathed, “my Maron, my baby, oh, no, not my babies.” Asha’s face had grown very pale. “It’s to be over soon,” she said, sounding wretched. “Father’s lost the war.” And Maron was dead, almost certainly.

The ale-smell on his breath, the meanness in his face. You’ll be the heir. You’ll like that, won’t you? Theon began to cry, like the big stupid baby he was. His mother clutched him tighter, and Asha turned her face away. In the red light from the window, he saw the tracks of tears on her cheeks, lit up brightly scarlet like blood.

It would seem nightmarish long to Theon later, that night huddled around the window watching the destruction of his father’s rebellion, but it could not have been more than a scant few hours. The sky was still dark, after all, when the men broke down the door.

When they were taken, the hands that held Theon dug into the bruises that his mother’s nails had left on his shoulders. Two men had to hold his mother back; she was fighting them, kicking and screaming, scratching and biting and spitting. “My baby,” she was shrieking, “my last babies, I’ll kill you, you greenland bastards, you wretched sons of whores, not my babies, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you.”

Mother had a dagger, but she had given it to Theon when they entered the tower. To be my protector, she had told him, to help your sister. He had felt so mature then, so responsible. Theon knows now that his mother had known if the dagger were to become useful to them, it was already too late. Children are not so wise.

They took the dagger from him, easily and immediately. They had taken Asha’s axe, too, and her dirk, and even the spiked pin that she had bound up her braids in. Her hair hung wild about her face as she thrashed in the hold of the men with stags on their breasts. King Robert had sent his own retinue to retrieve the spare Greyjoys.

One man, indistinguishable from the rest, had a long smear of blood tracing upwards along his neck. It did not look to be his. “My lady,” he said, grave, “Lord Balon has submitted to His Grace the King Robert. You would do well to obey; neither you nor your children will be harmed.”

The fight seemed to go out of Theon’s mother, then, and she sagged against her captors, sobbing. “My babies, my Maron, my Rodrik. You can’t take any more, no more of my children, I’ll kill you, I will.” She was listing heavily, the men restraining her less holding her in check and more propping her up.

“Your daughter the lady Asha will be allowed to remain with you, if it please my lady.” Theon remembers how surreal the man’s politeness was, even all of these years later. He remembers thinking, dully, I wonder if the blood on him is Maron’s. A stupid thought; the tower collapse had killed his brother, not any one soldier.

Your daughter the lady Asha, the man had said. His mother seemed to understand at the same time Asha did, because they both heaved against the men holding them. Asha gasped, “Not Theon, you can’t take him, you fucking greenlander dogs, he’s only a baby!” The anger at being called a baby again briefly eclipsed Theon’s understanding of the situation, until he was being steadily dragged backwards towards the splintered door.

He thrashed. He wailed. He did as Mother had done, he bit and kicked and scratched the arms that held him. “Mother,” he wailed, “Asha!”

The man holding him jostled his arm roughly, and snapped, “Don’t make this difficult, boy.” Theon bit him. The man cursed, but did not relinquish his hold. These were good soldiers, a picked few, easily able to restrain two women and an undergrown heir.

They were almost out of the room now; Theon writhed about until he gained handholds on either side of the doorframe and held himself there, against the sucking force of his captors. He met Asha’s eyes, from where two men were holding her ably.

“Theon,” she called, desperate, “What is dead may never—”

And then his fingers were being pried from the wood, and his nail was tearing off, and the big soldier with blood on his neck was throwing Theon over his shoulder and dragging him from the room, and his mother was sobbing, sobbing.

And then he was gone.

There was a first time that you were flayed.

It would be sweeter to say that you forgot that singular time, that it bled together with all of your nightmarish days spent under the knife. Life is not sweet, though, not to you.

You remember it all.

First, though, there is the journey to the Dreadfort, which you begin aching and groggy in the back of a wooden cart. You are so confused, so afraid. You lay curled on your side, manacled by foot and hand, whimpering in pain and delirium.

Someone kicks you, more to jostle you than hurt you, and your skin rubs up against the unfinished wood floor of the cart. You earn a forest’s worth of splinters.

“You awake?” The voice is nasally, cruel.

For a brief, debilitating moment, you think that it’s Asha, come to save you after all. You vividly imagine falling to your knees in front of her, professing your gratitude, apologizing for all of your idiocy. It still chafes at something deep within you, but you tell yourself to tamp it down. You are not so stupid. You know when you’ve been beaten.

You know that it isn’t Asha when the boot catches you in your ribs.

The wheeze you hear must be yours, as well as the coughing. And the bile that you retch. That must be yours too. It tastes like smoke as it leaves you, and you remember. Winterfell, afire. Smiler, burning. The Bastard, laughing.

You scrabble against the heaving floor of the cart, your first foolish bid for freedom, but the same boot that kicked you comes down squarely upon your shoulderblades and presses you into the wooden slats roughly. There is a deep, deep ache in your sternum. Some of your ribs must already be broken, but you don’t remember that happening. Have they been at you while you were asleep? You want to retch again, but you don’t have any spare breath with which to do so.

“My lord,” that same voice says again, “the Prince of Winterfell is awake.” His tone twists cruelly when he says the words; he sounds very close to laughing. Horse’s hooves make a dull thudding sound against the dirt road that your wagon is trundling along upon. You can see nothing; you are still being held down by a foot like a ship’s anchor. 

A thick, sickeningly familiar voice tells the man who kicked you: “Halt the nags, Alyn. I’d like a still word with our friend from the Islands.” 

Rough hands haul you up. Your vision spins in a dizzy, nauseating rush. The day is grey, and cool, and oppressive; a forest canopy writhes in dark green splendor above you. The Bastard, who sits atop a fine red stallion, is smiling.

“I was beginning to worry that you’d never wake. What a shame that would have been! And with us never having gotten to properly know one another.”

“No,” you moan, “no, no no.” Winterfell, you think, and, my father, and, Asha.

Those putrid glistening lips stretch obscenely into a smile. “Oh, yes. I know this must be upsetting for you, my prince. Never fear. We are taking you someplace safe.” You had been half-kneeling, half-squatting in the belly of the cart, but someone pushes you suddenly on the shoulder from behind and you fall from it so hard the breath is knocked out of you, the side of your head that collides with the ground starry with pain. 

You are still chained by hand and foot, so you cannot even push yourself up like a man. You lay there like a worm, while the Bastard dismounts his horse slowly and then comes to crouch over you. He reaches down to touch the side of your face, and then grabs your chin in between his thumb and first finger and shakes your head roughly.

“No words of gratitude for saving you from the fire? I hear you set yourself quite a fine blaze.”

You are fuzzy from pain, which is laughable now. You still had no idea what pain was, then, though you thought yourself an expert. 

You work up a mouthful of spit and hack it into his looming face. His eyes, that’s what you remember best. How cold and still they went, how even his eyebrows flattened, the hard line of his fleshy lips pressed hard against one another.

“Fucking bastard,” you hiss. Fool. Fool.

He removes one fine leather glove, flexes his hand once, and slaps you so hard that your vision blacks out momentarily. “You will learn my name,” he says calmly, “and you will learn your own. I believe that it’s your turn to reek, my prince.”

“I am Theon Greyjoy,” you say defiantly and stupidly. “What is dead may never die, you fucking backwards northern scum-sucking greenland poxed son of a whore.” It feels good, to have said it, until the hand lays in on your other cheek. 

“My mother was a whore,” the Bastard says cheerfully, “but you'll wish that the dead may yet die again by day’s end.”

He turns to the man who kicked you, and tells him, “Have the boys set up camp. We’re stopping here for the night.” The cruel man, Alyn, grins. “Yes, m’lord.” And then, after a sly moment’s pause, “Will you be wanting Skinner?”

“Only his knife. Would you have a man watch as others eat his feast? The first time is always the sweetest, and the Boltons of the Dreadfort still observe the law of the first night.”

“You are no Bolton,” you spit from the ground. “Those leeches your lord father is so fond of have sucked up more of his blood than was ever in you.” Brave idiot. Courageous imbecile. At least you are no craven, your father had said, five thousand years ago. He had not said, at least you are no fool. 

Cold fury in the Bastard’s voice, now. “Run along and find Skinner, Alyn. And quickly, before I lose my temper and double my responsibilities.” Alyn sets off at a dead sprint. The Bastard crouches down, even closer to you than before, and strokes the side of your face that he most recently slapped, as gentle as a lover. 

“It’s over now,” he promises you softly. “All of that is over. It’s only me, now.” When he puts his fingers in your mouth, you try and bite them. He shoves his meaty fist as far in as it will go in retaliation, until you are choking and heaving. When Alyn and the man who must be Skinner return, with an array of fine knives, he licks his lips and chooses one.

“Have the whores watch,” the Bastard tells Alyn. “A bedding is always witnessed. I’m sure they’ll be grateful; every bitch in that castle hated their own sweet prince.” He kicks you, again. Alyn draws forth the clanking line of women in their chains, shivering and half-naked. You see Kyra, trembling in her white shift. There is still a bite mark on her neck, one that you gave her, standing out livid and red on her warm brown skin. She meets your eyes, and you see that she is weeping.

You start to panic when they spread out your hand, when the point of the knife traces a promise slowly under the edge of the nail on your littlest finger, the one on your left hand. You start to beg when the finger is a quarter laid-bare, and you’ve bitten through your tongue. You start to cry when the Bastard leans over you and licks one long, slime line up your cheek. 

“Say it now,” he croons in your ear. “Say, I am Reek. Say it.” 

You choke. “I am Theon,” you gasp. His mouth twists, and so does the knife. “Wrong answer,” he informs you. Someone watching somewhere laughs. You hope that it isn't Kyra.

You were wrong, before. You still don’t know when you’ve been beaten.

Your first night takes a very, very long time. 

In the morning, they chain you to his saddle and make you walk. You are missing three of the nails from your feet combined and all of the skin from your leftmost little finger, and they’ve taken away all of your clothing except for your tattered and bloodstained breeches. You hobble along, and silently repeat, Theon, Theon, Theon, Theon. You promise that you won’t forget. 

Lying is so easy, when it’s only yourself you are trying to convince.

They let him say goodbye, at the very least.

Theon had been kept in a bedchamber by himself for near on five days, a strange room that was smaller than his own in the Sea Tower. When they brought him meals, he asked what was happening. Your lord father is negotiating with the King, they had told him. They are nearly done. It will not be long now.

On the morning of the sixth day, he was sent for. Theon’s guardsmen wore the direwolf of Stark, and not the stag of Baratheon, which he marked as strange. He thought very little of it, everything that had happened since he was dragged from the doorway had been a blue blur. He felt very dull inside, like the minutes after the tide drew back but before it returned in full force, leaving the sand wet and grey and empty. He went where they took him.

Where they took him was his father’s solar. Theon had been inside only once or twice; this was the domain of his father and his uncles, of his older brothers and their war. His father was inside there, now, with his mother and Asha and two strange men, one broad but handsome and one thin and solemn. A cadre of guards lined the walls, and there was a very long piece of paper unrolled upon the desk. His father was holding a quill. The broad man wore a crown. Theon began to shake.

When they saw him, his mother and Asha broke their stone-still vigil as one and ran. Theon ran for them as well, not caring that the guard closest to him tried to force him to a halt. “Let them,” Theon heard someone say, one of the strange men, but it didn’t matter because his mother had him in her arms and was checking him over brusquely, chafing his shoulders, saying, “Oh, Theon, my sweet baby, my boy,” and Asha was asking him harshly, “Did they hurt you? Did they hurt you?”

Theon showed her the broken and scabbed-over nail on the pinky of his left hand and told her, bravely, “From when they took me from the door. But it doesn’t hurt.” That was a lie, it did hurt, but he wanted her to think that he was strong.

His mother clutched him to her chest. She said, too loudly, “Balon, have mercy. Please, do not take him from me. Do not do this.” His father’s face was stone and salt. 

“What would you have me do, woman? We are beaten. I am in no position to refuse.” Theon’s heart was pounding very loudly; it beat in his ears like the war drum on a longship. “What do you mean?” he begged. “Take me away?”

“Theon,” Asha said, ragged. It was only then that Theon realized she had cut her hair; the heavy braids chopped away roughly to frame her chin in a harsh crop. Who is she mourning? Theon wondered absently. Not Maron, surely. It’s too late for Rodrik. Their mother still had her hands on Theon’s shoulders, but her shoulders were slumped and her breathing was wracked.

Asha said, wavering, “Our lord father is giving you away for hostage.”

Theon’s mother began to cry once more, loud and shuddering sobs. He had never in his life seen her weep so much. Mother was a woman of broad smiles, fierce hands, a loud laugh. The woman kneeling before him now almost frightened him. 

“No,” Theon said, automatically, and then, “Where?” He did not ask, Why? He remembered Maron, jeering down at him. You’ll be the heir. You’ll like that, won’t you?

His father said, voice grave, “Lord Stark is taking you. Up to Winterfell.”

“No, he’s not,” hissed his mother. “He’s not taking you anywhere.”

The thin man, the one who must be Lord Stark, cleared his throat politely. “Lady Alannys, I assure you, the boy will come to no harm. He’ll be an honored ward, a companion to my own son Robb.” His mother barked a hiccupping laugh. “You’ll make a wolf of him, up in your frigid north. Where will he pray? Tell me, my lord, where will he speak to the sea?”

Lord Stark shifted uncomfortably. “There is no sea at Winterfell, my lady. The Starks of Winterfell keep the old gods.” Theon’s mother keened. Stark continued, “But no other gods will be forced upon him, I swear to you. My own lady wife still worships the Seven.”

“You couldn’t make Theon worship your trees if you tried, Stark. He’s a Greyjoy of Pyke, and his way is the Old Way.” Asha spat on the floor. Their father’s voice thundered, “Be silent, all of you!”

His father looked at Theon, then, for the first time since he had been brought into the room. His eyes were very hard, but the lines around them had deepened, somehow. My brothers died, remembered Theon. His sons. Uncle Aeron is lying imprisoned, Uncle Victarion was defeated. They tore down the old tower, they took the crown from his head. And now they’ll take me too.

The broad man, the crowned man, clapped Lord Stark on the back. “Are we done here, then? Damn dreary, this place.” 

A guard began rolling up the scroll on the table, his father turned his back. “When?” Theon begged, “When do I have to go?”

“We depart in an hour,” answered Lord Stark. “Gather everything you wish to take with you.” He paused, and then amended, “No weapons.”

His mother began crying again, if she had ever stopped, and Asha took his hand. Had she ever held his hand, before? Theon couldn’t remember. 

“Please don’t make me,” he blurted. “Please, please don’t make me go. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go, please, please.”

The crowned man, the king, screwed up his face and left the room. Theon felt like he was falling from one of the bridges connecting the towers of Pyke, his stomach all scooped-out, his heart throbbing. Mother grabbed him tighter and pressed him against her. Asha’s grip on his hand was starting to hurt. 

“You will come to no harm at Winterfell,” said Lord Stark again. “You will have companions of like birth, my own children. You will learn arms and letters and sums, how to ride and hunt and soldier. I have even discussed you squiring for myself with your lord father.”

“Don’t listen to him,” hissed Asha. “He's a liar. No harm, he says, but that great sword of his will be chopping off your head within a moon’s turn if he decides we need incentive to keep faith.” 

Lord Stark’s mouth pulled very, very tight. He turned an inscrutable look on Theon’s father, who scowled dismally.

“Alannys,” Lord Balon said, “remove Asha, along with yourself. The last thing my son knows of the islands shouldn’t be your wailing.” The last thing, he said, as if Theon would never come back. Like he would be gone forever. This thing, of all things, was what made it seem real.

“No,” Theon said, “no, no, Mother, Asha. Don’t let them take me, please, I don’t want to go, please, please help me, please.” The room smelled of smoke and mildew. Was the smoke from the fires, from his home burning? It must be, there was no fire in the hearth. Everything was very cold.

His mother cupped his cheeks with her hands. There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks, still, but she was not sobbing any longer. Maybe it had been made real to her, too. She was ironborn, before she was grieving.

“Write to me. Write to the Drowned God, and I’ll give your letters to the sea. He won’t forget you, and neither will I. You have to be brave, now. You have to be iron.” She hugged him, then, and her hands weren’t like talons anymore. “I will see you again,” she whispered. “You will come home.”

Asha tweaked the back of his hair, one of the little braids that stood for a nameday. “Don’t forget,” she told him. “What is dead may never die.” But rises again, the words were right on his lips. Harder and stronger. After Lord Stark’s great cold sword sliced through his neck, would Theon get back up again? Would he rise, harder and stronger? Theon said nothing.

Lord Stark gently separated him from Mother and Asha, and righted him when he stumbled. The numbness was coming back, the dull shock, wet-gray sand feelings. Stark’s hand was heavy, so heavy, on his shoulder. Theon’s mother stayed very still, kneeling on the floor as she was, hands held out like Theon might be allowed to run back into them. Asha was standing very still as well, eyes trained on the ground. She must have been disappointed in him, Theon thinks now, for not remembering the words.

I remember, he would say to her now. Gods know I’ll never be fortunate enough to forget anything, ever again.

They were almost to the door, Stark towing Theon back like the guardsmen in the Sea Tower had after the siege. Everyone stopped, though, when Theon’s father spoke.

“Don’t you bury my son in your dead Northern soil, Stark. Send him back to us by sea.” He was not looking at Theon when he said it.

Lord Stark said nothing, but his fingers tightened minutely on Theon’s shoulder. When they took him through the door this time, Theon didn’t try to hang on. He still felt, all too sharply, the pain of his last attempt.

Nobody came to the docks to see him off, not even his father or Dagmer. Theon wondered if his mother hadn’t been allowed, or if she hadn’t wanted to look at yet another dead son.

You are struck with the singularly childish longing to go home.

He took the first toe yesterday, or the day before, or the day before. Or maybe it was always gone, and you had only dreamt it was there. You dream, in the fitful red dreams you manage to have, of the knife, and of home.

Not the home that had greeted you upon your return; no dead stone Pyke, no lying sisters, no cold fathers, but the home of your childhood. There were ships in port, and uncles that laughed, and the sun shone, sometimes. You walk along a grey sand beach, in your dreams, limping. You leave prints of blood behind you.

You dream also of Asha.

She comes for you, in those ones, and opens the bars of your cell. The keys dangle bright and silver from her tattooed fingers. She leans against the doorway and smiles at you. She asks, wryly, “Will you let me take you home now, little brother?”

It is from one of these dreams that you awake to Kyra’s terrified face hovering above you in the darkness. The keys are bright and silver in her hand. Take me back to Winterfell, m’lord. You are confused; for a moment, you thought that she was Asha.

If I make them angry, they’ll do it.

Theon knew how easy it was to make people angry. He remembered how many people were always angry at him, how one woman, very soon after his arrival in Winterfell, spit at him when he walked by. He asked Ser Rodrik about it, afterwards, and was told that the woman’s husband had died putting down Balon’s rebellion.

Good, Theon had thought savagely, but hadn’t said. If I make them angry, they’ll do it.

Once, on Pyke, Maron had pushed him down the stairs of the Sea Tower, and Theon walked around with a big fat scab on the underside of his chin from where he scraped it on the rough stone for days and days. Rodrik had made fun, had asked him if all the crusty brown on his face was his dinner the wetnurse forgot to wipe up. They were angry at him. People were always angry with Theon.

Asha tugged, sometimes, on the bit of hair right next to his ear, where it hurt the worst. She was laughing while she did it, though, and Theon guessed that he might have been supposed to tug on her hair back. He never did.

If I make them angry, they’ll do it.

People die all the time. Rodrik and Maron, they died. Even if his father didn’t rebel, even if he stayed put on Pyke and left everyone alone, Theon knew that he could still die there in Winterfell, far from the sea. If he makes Lord Stark angry enough, if, if. 

He is very good, he has learned, at making people angry.

During the voyage from Pyke to White Harbor, Theon had cried. Lord Stark asked him if he was seasick, and Theon started laughing instead. “I’m ironborn,” he told the stern Northern lord, “the sea is in my blood.” He had felt very adult and very victorious when Lord Stark grimaced and excused himself, but had started crying again right after.

You will have companions of like birth, my own children, Lord Stark had said when he took him away. What a joke that turned out to be; all of his children were babes. Robb was endlessly fascinated by Theon, by the braids in his hair, by the ring in his eyebrow, by the beading on his clothes. He would toddle around after him, a babbling shadow. The little bastard was also walking but couldn’t care less, baby Sansa still drooled on rattles, and the tiny Arya had only been born two months before Theon came. 

Theon was ten then, and felt a thousand years old, and twice as lonely. Twice as miserable, too, but nobody ever asked him about that.

The day you died was when Ramsay took your teeth.

“I’m tired of seeing them,” he told you. “Every time I see them, I think about your smile. That smile was nearly your death, didn’t you know? I almost skinned you for it five times over, when I was you.”

It has been two days since you have had any water, and what you had been given then was stagnant and fetid. You stare up at him, blearily, from where you’re arranged in your habitual curl on the filthy ground. 

He nudges you with one booted foot. “Come now,” he implores, “give us one last smile with those pretty white teeth. Do it.” Your lips, impossibly, stretch until they crack and bleed. You would lick the blood up for moisture, you’re that desperate, but he hasn’t given you leave.

“Oh, very good, Reek. Keep it like that for me.”

There is a flash of metal in his hand, and you think, deliriously, Kyra with the keys, but no. He has a hammer, a nice one, worked expertly in steel, that he is slowly rotating in one fleshy palm. Those worm lips are shiny with spit and excitement. He warns you, “Don’t close your mouth,” and swings.

Don’t close your mouth, but how can you not? You are still alive, somewhere down in there, and that living worm inside you shrieks and writhes in agony. Your right hand is useless, he flayed a finger yesterday, but your left has ragged yellow nails like talons that you scrape against him. His bulk is on top of you now, a sickening press, he straddles you and holds you down.

You haven’t had water in two days; you aren’t going anywhere. 

He shoves the head of the hammer inside your mouth, pushing it to the back where the cold metal chokes you. The wooden shaft scrapes against your shattered teeth, and you wail. Ramsay leans in close and whispers damp in your ear, “When I tell a bitch to sit and stay, I expect it to sit and stay.” You gag around the hammer.

He extricates the thing and brings it down once more. You must faint from the pain; when you awake, he is fumbling frantically with the laces on his breeches. He sees that your eyes are open, and he must like whatever is there because he smiles at you. He shuffles his mass up to the pulsing, weeping, shattered cave of your mouth. His hand cups your cheek almost tenderly.

“If you bite me,” he tells you, “your own cock is next.” 

Your mouth is full of splinters. You don’t try to bite him, but he scrapes up against you anyways.

Robb Stark took Theon to see the crypts on his fourteenth nameday. 

“It’s a special place,” he told Theon, his pudgy baby face somber, “a Stark place.” He would have been, what, nine? Ten? He was then about as old as Theon had been, when he was taken. His head was a mop of floppy auburn curls.

I had a place, too, Theon thought. A Greyjoy place. Your father and all of his friends went there and burned it down.

Instead of saying this, though, he smiled and motioned the young Stark ahead of him. “Let’s see these dead kings, then.” Robb forgot that he was supposed to be serious and ran ahead, checking over his shoulder constantly to make sure that Theon was really following.

That was Theon’s fourth nameday in Winterfell. There was no one to braid his hair, but he had tried to do it himself for the first three. His attempts were lopsided and ugly, and anyways it didn’t really count if someone didn’t do it for you. This year he hadn’t even made the effort. What was the point, when no one knew what they meant?

He had wanted to tattoo his fingers, too, like his father and mother and even Asha, but Lord Stark had said no. Really, he had said, I don’t believe that to be a good idea, Theon. There’s no one here who knows how to, even so.

Luwin could try, Theon had started, but Lord Stark said that Luwin had more important things to do, and then he had started shifting awkwardly in the way that meant he wanted Theon to leave.

That was true enough, but it still stung. What would happen when he went home, with his hair unbraided and fingers as bare as the day he left? They would know that Stark was cruel, to deny him so. That was what Theon tried to tell himself, anyway.

Robb bobbed along in front of Theon as they walked. They passed people, all of the folk of Winterfell, the guardsmen and serving girls, cooks and stablehands. Some of them nodded to Theon as they passed, but they all smiled at Robb.

Some of Winterfell had warmed to Theon in the years since his arrival, and as the memories of the men his brothers had killed faded and lost their teeth, but no one ever offered themselves as a true friend. They all loved their tiny lord, though. Every one of them mooned over Robb’s curly little head like he was blessed fucking Baelor come again.

No one said anything about his nameday. Theon doubted that anybody even knew.

They acquired a shadow about halfway through the journey to the crypts; Jon Snow silently attached himself to their little band and followed along like he had always been there. 

“Jon!” exclaimed Robb. He was always glad to see his bastard brother, even if his lady mother wasn’t. “I’m taking Theon to see the crypts, for his nameday. Do you want to come?” 

Jon scowled. It looked stupid on his long child’s face. “You shouldn’t do that,” he warned Robb. “That’s a Stark place. He shouldn’t go there.”

Theon had to laugh. “Last I checked, you’re not a Stark either, Snow. Should the doors be barred to you, as well?”

Jon’s brown face reddened. Robb sighed exasperatedly. “Must you always fight?” It was funny to hear him say in his high young voice; he had the frustration of a much older man in him. Theon wondered what he would sound like, when he was old. It was so hard to picture him grown then, with a beard and a big fur mantle in his father’s style.

“It’s not like I have any great interest in seeing your mouldering dead, Snow. The Greyjoys of Pyke have no need for crypts; our kings are buried in the wide open sea, to feast with the Drowned God in his watery halls. Your kings rot in the dirt, and who knows whether or not your Old Gods spare them a scrap of food.”

“And when was the last time you were in Pyke, Greyjoy?” 

Rage lurched up into the back of Theon’s throat. “That was cheap, bastard. How would you like it if I asked you when the last time you saw your whore mother—“

Jon punched him. Or, rather, he tried to. Robb threw himself between them and grappled Jon’s fist. “Stop!” he demanded, “Both of you, just stop!” Theon had raised his fists in his own defense, but he used them now to shove the conjoined brothers away.

“Don’t you say anything about my mother, Greyjoy.”

“And don’t you say anything about Pyke, Snow,” Theon fired back. “I’m a hand taller than you, and iron besides. Is that a fight you want? I’ll give it to you, if you ask nice.”

“Jon,” said Robb levelly, “it’s ill to pick a fight with someone on their nameday.”

“Pick a fight!” echoed Jon incredulously. “You heard what he said to me!”

“And I heard what you said to him, and first. Would it be so difficult to be civil? It isn’t like Theon is leaving any time soon. You’ll have to deal with him for a while yet.” That was pain, but Theon forced a smile overtop.

“Listen to Robb, Snow. Learn to live with me.” Jon glared at him, but didn’t respond. Robb sighed, and pushed Jon onwards. “We were going to the crypts, weren’t we?” Jon shuffled onwards, followed by Robb shepherding him along, and then Theon trailing behind. When they came to the entrance of the crypt, Robb turned around to face him.

“This is where the Kings of Winter sleep,” he intoned lowly. He was serious as only a child can be serious, at least until Jon shouted back over his shoulder, “Are you coming?” and his face screwed up and he bellowed, “Yes, hold on!”

And so they entered, single-file.

The air got cooler and drier as they descended. Theon had the uncanny notion that the stone was swallowing him, that he might never see the surface again, but he kept his eyes trained on Robb’s red hair until the darkness leached all color from his curls.

When they reached the lowest level, Theon shivered. Robb turned back to look at him, and the low light of the single candle he had brought with them caught in the white of his eye. “Are you frightened?” he whispered. Theon scoffed at him, but it echoed flat in the heavy air of the crypt. “What’s there to be frightened of? Stone kings?”

A scuffle from up ahead, Jon poked his head around the corner. “Are we doing this, or not?”

“We are,” replied Robb. He reached back and tugged on Theon’s hand, drawing him along. “Come on, there’s one I want you to see.”

They pushed forwards into the throat of the earth. Stone kings watched them as they did, with impassive and hard faces. Robb walked ahead, studying each face intently, obviously looking for something. Jon was far ahead of them, swallowed by the gloom. Robb drew in a sharp breath and stopped, suddenly; Theon almost mowed him down.

“Stark!”

“Sorry,” Robb hissed. “But, look!”

They had halted in front of another statue, a stone king indistinguishable from the rest. He had a gaunt, thin face, and he sat leaned forward on his chair as if ready to leap into action. His hand gripped a withered iron rod that once might have been a sword tightly. Theon asked Robb, “What’s special about this one?”

Robb smiled at him. “That’s Theon Stark. The Hungry Wolf.”

Oh.

Theon stepped closer, boots scraping against the dank earthen floor, leaning in to get a good look at the starving king. Robb said, behind him, “You always get sad around your nameday. I thought it might make you feel better if you found another Theon in Winterfell.”

The sweetness of childhood. Theon tasted it bitter in the back of his throat. 

He said, “I do not get sad around my nameday.” He never wept where anyone else could see it; he had to be iron.

Jon came back around the corner, evidently done exploring alone. “You do, though. You spend more time alone in your room, and you pick more fights, and your eyes get tired circles underneath them.”

Theon shoved him. “Nobody asked you, bastard.” Jon stumbled back, almost tripping into the arms of the stone king.

Robb hissed, “Not here, Theon, are you mad?” Theon wasn’t sure whether he was referring to the fighting or the word bastard, but he bit the inside of his cheek and scuffed his foot against the floor.

“What did this other Theon do, anyways?”

Robb’s little eyebrows pulled together in the middle of his face, evidently trying to recall a long-ago lesson. “War, mostly.”

“Ah.”

“I know,” declared Jon. “He fought the Andals when they came, and conquered the Sisters, and he helped the Night’s Watch fight the wildlings, and he expelled Harrag Hoare, King of the Iron Islands, and killed his son.”

He seemed to realize what he had said, and to whom he had said it, because his face reddened once more and he drew in a sharp breath. Robb was chewing on his lip, Theon could see.

“I forgot about that part,” Robb admitted. “Sorry, Theon.” 

Robb was the only Stark who ever apologized to Theon for anything. Theon stood for a moment, looking at his namesake. “He does look hungry,” he admitted.

“You do too, sometimes. When letters come for you from the Islands.” Robb was looking up at him so earnestly. Theon felt uncomfortable, having his desire for word from home stated out loud. He said, a little too harshly, “They still want me to come home.”

His father had never written anything of the kind, and his mother’s letters had tapered off in the past year. There had been no nameday well-wishes for a while now. Theon was beginning to fear that they had forgotten him.

Robb’s lip was still bright red from where he’d been worrying at it, but he bit it again when he asked Theon, “Do you truly hate it so much here?”

“You said it yourself,” said Theon, staring into the eyes of the Hungry Wolf. “This is a Stark place. I’m not supposed to be here.”

“But isn’t here better than where you come from? Everyone says that the Iron Islands are hard, and they breed evil deeds in the people that live there. Aren’t you lucky to be in such a good place as Winterfell, instead?”

“Hard places breed hard men. And—“ My family is there. Mother, and Asha, and Dagmer. My lord father, my uncles.

“And I’m sick of looking at Starks. Let’s go.”

He turned without checking to see if the younger boys were following and marched out of the crypts. Being expelled into the fresh air felt like a birth; Theon could cry from the relief of it.

Blinking in the light, Robb stretched. “We could go riding,” he suggested. “Or train in the yard.”

Theon was already walking away. “Sick of looking at Starks, I said. That means living ones, too.”

Robb made a wounded noise behind him. “But–” Theon heard him start, and then there was a shuffling sound and Jon was saying, too loudly, “Just leave it, Robb. Why do you keep trying with him? He’ll never change, you know he won’t.”

Theon was far enough then that he didn’t hear Robb’s response, or any other part of the exchange. He had to keep walking.

Be iron, he told himself. Ironborn don’t weep in the company of greenlanders. He made it all the way back to his chambers before the tears came.

“My Lady,” says Ramsay, slick with satisfaction. “Meet my most favoured hound.”

Jeyne is so slight beside his bulk it could be comical, if it wasn’t so sickening. Bird bones, you think, hollowly. Would that she could fly away as easily.

“A hound, my lord?” The fear in those brown eyes. She is looking around desperately, probably trying to find the dog that her husband-to-be is speaking of. There are only two beasts in the room; you, and the one that you belong to.

“You must forgive me, he is far cleaner than any dog has a right to be. My lord father’s doing. Stand up, Reek, and bark for my lady.”’

You rise to your feet, slowly. You had been changing rushes on the floor of your lord’s chambers, the most menial servant’s job. Once upon a time, you would have felt the insult of that, the sting of the indignity. Now, you would get down on your aching hands and knees and kiss the ground your lord stands upon. To be indoors, in a room with windows and a hearth, to have clothes, to be as clean as you are now, all of these things are miracles.

“My lord,” begins Jeyne, “I don’t understand. The serving man?”

“Take a closer look. You knew him once, though he looks much changed. Think back to your childhood here in Winterfell. Think on it hard, my lady.”

A test, you realize. You want to shake Jeyne as she bites her lip and studies your face. A test, you quivering idiot! The real Arya would know me. Figure it out, and quickly, before he takes my next finger.

Bark, Ramsay had said, so you suppose speaking is permissible. “My lady Arya,” you whisper. “How good it is to see you once more.”

It is the voice that does it, as you had hoped it would. Those brown eyes grow wide, and she takes one trembling step back, a hand flying to cover her mouth. “Theon?” she breathes. You are so relieved you almost fall over. The test, she passed it! You could sing.

Ramsay laughs. “For the nonce, my lady, though you should have seen him a moon’s turn ago. No one could have known him, then.” Jeyne shakes her head. “But, what– how–”

“I avenged your brothers, the ones he slew. He’s tasted of my kindness, hasn’t he?”

You must speak now, so you say, “Yes, m’lord. You are merciful, m’lord.”

“Careful, now. We wouldn’t want my lady to believe that I treated the man who murdered her brothers too kindly.”

“No, m’lord. I have been punished, m’lord.”

Annoyance in Ramsay’s voice, now. “You needn’t tell me. Tell my lady how you were punished.”

You turn to Jeyne instantly, feeling as though you are in a dream. You keep your eyes trained on the fresh rushes below you as you obey. “Lord Ramsay took three of my fingers, m’lady. He took four of my toes, m’lady. He whipped me, m’lady. He took skin from me, m’lady. He took my teeth, m’lady. He gave me my name, m’lady. He kept me in the dark, m’lady, without food nor water.” There is one more thing that he took from you, but you falter before you can say it.

Ramsay’s smile curls. He prompts you, “And what else have I done to you, Reek? Was there some other thing that you lost?” You open your broken mouth to mumble it out, but Ramsay’s hand is on your jaw, forcing your head up. Your eyes meet Jeyne’s, those big brown eyes. They are filled with tears.

Does she cry for you, or for herself?

“Lord Ramsay cut me, m’lady.”

A crooning in your ear. “Cut you where, Reek?”

“Between my legs. Where I was a man.”

“Should we show her? Should we let her see the mess you are there, now?” You keep your head very still. You have no idea which answer will bring you the least pain, so you do your best to give none at all.

Ramsay releases you. You had no idea he was holding up so much of your weight with the one hand on your jaw, you stumble and fall to the floor.

“No,” decides your lordship. “I believe she’ll be seeing that soon enough.”

Jeyne is hiccupping tiny breaths, like the ones you remember rabbits gasping while your arrow did its work. Not you! The other one, you have to remember. You have never held a bow, never killed any animal but a rat.

You feel her eyes upon you, even as Ramsay grabs her arm and hauls her back towards the hall, towards her chaperones. There will be no chaperones after she’s wed, you know. At least there will be no keys this time, no games, no daring escapes. There will be no chances taken with Lord Ramsay’s claim to Winterfell.

That night, laying awake, you think, maybe it’s for the better that I never got to tattoo my fingers. If I had, Ramsay would have taken them all.

Lord Stark had made him start carrying the sword when he was two and ten.

That was the year Theon saw his first beheading, as well, and the first time he touched Valyrian steel.

“It will keep an edge,” warned his gaoler, “but you must whet it often anyhow.”

Theon sharpened that sword fervently, as often as he had ever prayed to the Drowned God back home. He developed something of a fixation on it; he was obsessed with the idea that the sword would become dull, somehow, and when the time came for it to remove his head from his neck it would take ten full swings.

If I go, I want to go fast, he thought, and so he kept the sword sharp.

He needn’t have worried; Eddard Stark did all his killing cleanly. All of the killing he did with his own hands, at least. How long had Maron lived, crushed under the weight of the old tower?

Not long, Theon hoped. Not long at all.

By the time you’ve hauled the water for Lady Arya’s bath to Lady Arya’s chambers, it’s gone tepid.

You have men to help you, though that help is decidedly begrudging, yet the single bucket that you yourself are laden down with is enough to have your ravaged limbs trembling. You used to ride with this body, you used to shoot arrows with these arms. No, you savagely remind yourself. Not you. The other one. The one who lived here first.

“Lady Arya,” you call through the door. “I have the water for your bath.” Your arms are busy with the buckets, so you kick one maimed foot weakly at the door in lieu of a knock. There is a long, long moment, before the tremulous voice cries, “Enter.”

The men with you, Dreadfort men, drop their buckets with little care and practically bowl over each other to exit the room first. No one wants to look at the weeping Arya for long. 

You don’t either, but what you want doesn’t matter. You set your own bucket down as gently as you can; cooling water still sloshes over the rim and wets the stone floor. “My lady,” you say softly. “Come now, and bathe.”

She is sitting dead-eyed on the bed, slumped over like a forgotten doll. There were blankets over her shoulders, once, but those have fallen down around her waist. All she wears is a white shift, one strap of which has slipped down over her shoulder to reveal a yellow-purple bruise. You know what that feels like; you have had your own bruise, in that exact spot. He likes it there.

Jeyne looks up at you. “Theon,” she says, but the dead eyes don’t take on any more life. 

“No,” you correct her. “Just me.”

“Please, don’t make me. Please, please, Theon, please.”

You feel a flash of rage. That’s wrong, hounds have no right to rage. They only savage whatever their master points them at. You begin to slop water into the tub. “You had best disrobe, m’lady.”

“Theon,” Jeyne says. “I want to go home.”

“Look around you. You are home. Where else is home? This is where you were born, where your brothers were born. You are lucky to be home. Some of us never get to go back”

Her lips are cracked, her cheeks hollow, her undereyes dark. She has a split lip, a black scab like a beetle hangs off of the edge of her mouth. She is so young. She whispers, “This isn’t your home. You could take me with you to the Islands. I would go. Anywhere but here.”

“There isn't anywhere but here.”

“There is,” she tells you. “There’s an entire world outside of here. It’s just so easy to forget. Please, Theon, please, I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die like this.” The faint tracery of whip marks claw up her bare shoulder. “He’ll make you hurt me again. I know you don’t want to do it, I know. Help me.” She was crying again, but that was wrong. She shouldn’t cry. She was home.

“When I left home,” you say, waveringly, “my mother wept.”

Jeyne stands, clutching her blanket to herself like the train on a great lady’s dress, and crosses to you. She’s limping slightly, but so are you. All of you, stumbling around on your broken feet.

“Theon,” she said once more, tentatively reaching for your arm. You wrench it away from her. “That’s not me,” you hiss, “I’m not him. He’s dead, he was never real.”

You are supposed to stay and attend to her in the bath, but you flee instead. You are not so good at fleeing, anymore, not as good as you used to be. You lurch like an old man. You think that you are supposed to be twenty and two, but that isn’t right. Both you and Arya are older than you’re supposed to be. 

That is the last time she calls you Theon, until the day you fly.

Theon dreamt, up until his very last days, up until he was the Prince of Winterfell, of Pyke afire. In his dreams, it is always all his fault. 

The worst part was that it still felt true, after he woke up. 

After that, he dreams of flying, and that comes true too.

In the end, Asha doesn’t ask if you want to come home with her. She just takes you there.

The escape is a haze; you remember clinging to her and Jeyne clinging to you. Horns blowing, cries of Bolton and Stannis and Stark! Stark! Stark! You think that your little band, all ironborn and one wretch and one whore, had come face-to-face with Asha’s bear-faced minder. “Go,” she had roared at Asha, and you went.

There was a ship. There is still a ship, the one that you’re on, the cabin that you share with Jeyne. She spends most of her time staring at a wall, rubbing one thumb over the other in repetitive little circles. 

The crew, all of Asha’s ragged remaining ironborn and the rest of Dagmer’s, avoid you. All except for Tris Botley, who once touches his forehead in a strange salute and intones, “What is dead may never die.” It has been so long since you heard the words, you stare at him in a strange sort of wonderment until he smiles oddly and sadly and wanders away.

Asha comes by and tries to feed you, succeeds in feeding Jeyne. Jeyne likes her, which is good. After seven days at sea, Asha has roped Jeyne into the effort of keeping you alive. You have to eat, they tell you, you have to sleep and bathe. You do these things to make them happy.

You laughed on Stannis’s wall, but that’s over now. You saved Jeyne, but that wasn’t even really your doing. She loves you for it, though, which makes everything worse. I wouldn’t have done it, you want to tell her, but for those mad washerwomen, for that damned Abel.

You do tell her this, once, after they’ve forced first stew and then wine upon you. She gets this faraway look in her brown eyes, and says very softly, “I don’t think that’s true.” You open your mouth to fight her on it, but she continues without looking at you. “Or, I suppose I don’t want to believe that it’s true. Don’t make me believe it, please.” You leave it alone, after that.

Asha doesn’t take you back to Pyke.

“You’re my latecomer,” she tells you one evening. “I need you. And, Drowned God help me, I love you. So I’m taking you to Harlaw.”

“What’s on Harlaw?” you ask her.

She says nothing, but looks at you for a good long while.

It is still sailing for a long time after that. 

Jeyne sleeps beside you in the bed, curled up on herself like she’s guarding her ribs. You know that they still hurt her, but whenever you ask about them she just shakes her head. A woman everyone only refers to as Hagen’s daughter takes a liking to Jeyne, lets her trail her about the ship, explains how sailing works. She is brash but kind, and Asha says that they’ll be fine together. Jeyne starts staying on a cot by her at nights, instead of you.

This leaves you with much time to think, and more time to get out of thinking. Asha lets you sleep in her room sometimes, on the floor, when she isn’t sharing it with Qarl. That’s good of her; you can’t sleep anymore without animal noises to keep you company. 

It is a long way back home.

And yet it doesn’t feel real until you are ascending the steps of the tower, smoothing down your hair, prodding at your ruined teeth. You ask Asha, in a sudden blurt of panic, “Will she know me?”

Asha looks you squarely in the face and squints her eyes, assessing you. “Baby brother, I cannot begin to know. Will you find out with me, anyways?”

You enter the room alone. 

She is sitting in a chair facing an open window, long grey hair stirring in the wind off of the sea. At the sound of the door opening she shifts minutely, her head turning. When she sees you, her eyes go very wide and very shiny. There is a heart-pounding moment when you think that she might begin to cry, but instead her face breaks out into the most radiant smile you have ever seen. She rises, painfully.

Her wrinkled face is made young again with her smile. “You came back,” your mother says, wondering. 

You say nothing, you can think of nothing to say.

“They all told me you weren’t coming back, but I knew they were wrong. I told him, I said to them, I told him that he would come home.”

You take one step forward, and then another. She holds out her arms to you.

“Theon,” she says. “My baby.” 

You let her cup your wasted cheeks in her palms, turn your head this way and that. She slides her hands down your shoulders, feeling the hollowness in your frame, until she makes her way to your arms and to your hands. When she reaches your fingers, she grips them in her own and inspects the gaps where once you were whole. Her lips purse.

She asks you, eyes narrowed, “Have you been fingerdancing?”

You burst into tears.

“Mother,” you say.

She pulls you in close, and does not let you go for a very long time.