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Theon Greyjoy dies on a moderately sunny morning, stabbed in the back by his own men, his body left to rot in what remained of Winterfell.
That was the story they told to the young man in charge of the soldiers with whom they had made the deal, Roose Bolton’s bastard son. The bastard isn’t happy at all with the outcome – he had said explicitly that Greyjoy had to be left alive.
But when he enters the castle, figuring that at least he might take the body and send Robb Stark the head – he figures that the poor idiot might get some pleasure in seeing it before he dies, and his lord father will see to it –, he finds out that the story might not have been true.
If only, because while there’s a pool of blood where the men said it would be, there’s no body at all.
If only Ramsay Snow had paid attention in the last few months, whenever the Wall was discussed and whenever ravens from the Night’s Watch reached (uselessly) the Dreadfort, he’d have known what had really happened.
Sadly for him, he hadn’t, in fact, paid attention.
--
“First you said you’d give him to me alive and then you can’t even kill him properly?”
That’s what a young man with dark hair and a horn in his hand is screaming towards men dressed with kraken sigils, all standing in the yard.
“Damn you all. Now my plan goes in bloody flames. And I’ll need to tell my father that I couldn’t even do this right when he needed Greyjoy captured so that fucking Robb Stark wouldn’t suspect anything. I wouldn’t think that knocking him on the head would have been that hard, or was it?”
Standing behind the door leading into the castle, someone is listening.
That someone is Theon Greyjoy.
Or better, he would have been Theon Greyjoy if he hadn’t died not long ago, but since he’s nowhere like the creatures named white walkers by the Night’s Watch, there’s no reason not to use his given name.
Theon is listening and watching as he stands, a dirk planted right where his heart once used to beat. His hands are noticeably paler than they used to be.
There’s a part of him that’s saying what are you doing here, get out, kill them all, come North, come with everyone of us, come home, we’re waiting for you, you need to come North, beyond the Wall, comecomecome.
Another one is saying that’s the hornblower you said you’d kill, he’s saying that Robb Stark is falling into a trap, he’s the one who bribed your own people so they’d betray you, get out, kill them all and go South because Robb needs to know and you wronged him but you can make up for it now, your home isn’t beyond the Wall it’s with him, gogogo.
Theon reaches up and takes the bloody dagger out. The blood’s color is a red so dark it almost looks black.
The second voice is a lot louder.
Theon steps out of his hiding place and walks forward.
--
He keeps the hornblower for last. When he tries to speak he finds out that he can’t quite articulate words the way he once used to, but repeating Robb Stark and your plan seems to do the trick well enough, never mind that he also has a hand around the man’s throat.
For all he boasted, he’s quite quick to relent.
Tywin Lannister, he says. And Walder Frey. And Roose Bolton. They’re planning to lure Robb into some wedding that he should attend because of some obligation. The wedding will be at the Twins. That’s all Theon needs to know, and so he snaps the man’s neck before standing up and heading out of the castle.
He can’t quite remember how far the Twins are, but he knows the road. He just does.
So he walks.
--
“Good gods,” Maester Luwin breathes when he finally finds the courage to step out into the yard. He had seen most of it, thought he hasn’t heard one thing – then again, it’s not like he can warn anyone, not when they don’t have ravens anymore.
The entire yard looks like a battlefield. Everyone that had been standing in it is dead, most from a broken neck but others from having been stabbed in the back or… well. Stabbed open in the stomach. When Theon – or whatever that was – had left, all of his clothes had been red.
On one side he shudders and thinks what if he has gone to look for Bran or Rickon, but when he reaches the door, he sees a lone form walking slowly but steadily towards – towards the Kingsroad.
No. He’s going south.
And he hasn’t even tried to find Bran and Rickon, or him for that matter.
As he heads for the crypts, he prays that he’s right in his assumptions and whatever Theon is out to do, that it doesn’t harm Robb.
--
He can’t run. On one side, it’s frustrating. On the other, he finds that he might not be able to walk fast, but he can go on without stopping. He walks for an entire day without meeting anyone along the road and without needing to stop for anything – food or drink or sleep. He doesn’t even feel tired. If he wished, he could probably go as far as the Twins without ever needing to stop.
That’s not what happens, though.
What happens is that when he passes through a village people run away screaming even if he never raises a hand towards them – then again, why should he? He’s not out for their blood.
Like everyone else back when you were alive, that first voice (that’s becoming fainter with time) tells him. Why are you going south? Come north. Come beyond the Wall. Come with us.
No. Not like everyone else. He never was like that. And you betrayed him. And you have to make it right. Go to him.
He goes on.
At some point it occurs to him that maybe people scream at his sight because his clothes are soaked in blood. But then again he can hardly ask for clothes, can he? So he keeps on walking.
--
The first time he runs into a group of soldiers with the Bolton sigils, he realizes that these people are all potential traitors. Or potential soldiers that might help kill Robb at the Twins.
It’s not that large of a group. Barely larger than the one he offed in Winterfell.
Theon smiles and decides that he will take care of it.
--
When he leaves another carnage behind, his clothes are soaking in dark red liquid and there’s an open slash on his side. His own blood doesn’t out of it. It doesn’t quite heal, though, but after he sits and rests until the sun is up again, it’s… not an open gash anymore. The two pieces of flesh are definitely holding up. And there’s no rotten skin or anything – just a dark red scar.
It’s going to have to do. He stands up and keeps on walking.
He has to go to the Twins.
Now.
--
“Your Grace, there is just one thing that we would like to make clear before we go back home and share the good news.”
Robb gives Lothar Frey a nod, hoping against hope that it’s nothing that might jeopardize the alliance, not when the situation is this delicate.
“By all means, my lord.”
“Does your side have anything to do with the quite not honorable killings of Frey men that have happened in the last few weeks?”
“Excuse me?” Robb had honestly no clue that something like that was happening at all. Killings of Frey men? “What are you talking about specifically?”
“We have some men guarding the area around the Twins, and obviously some of them used to be in your army. Well, it’s happened three times already. They were supposed to get back to the main camp and they never showed up. When they were found all of them were dead. Of quite gruesome deaths. The only camp I have witnessed – well, it seemed like Gregor Clegane himself had swung the sword. But I can see that you never heard of that.”
“I – I never did. And believe me, even if you had withdrawn your support… well, I would hardly send someone to kill your men in such a way if I wanted to gain it back, wouldn’t I?”
“His Grace has a point. Well, I suppose we will see you at Lord Edmure’s wedding, won’t we?”
“Of course,” Robb answers.
When they’re gone, he tries to inquire about these supposed killings, but whoever it is perpetrating them, they’re definitely not in his army.
--
A raven from Winterfell saying that his brothers are both alive and well and warning him about Theon’s condition arrives at Riverrun the day after Robb Stark leaves for the Twins.
--
That same day, Theon runs into thirty Lannister soldiers headed in his same direction. He knows they’re Lannister soldiers because he hears them talking, but they have Frey banners. He runs into them as they walk along the Trident.
More people going to the wedding.
Theon wraps his cold fingers around the hilt of a sword he stole the first time he left a carnage behind him, and smiles just slightly as he walks towards the group of men.
Not long later, he’s kneeling among the corpses, spitting out a piece of flesh – sometimes he has to bite them in order to stop them, but he doesn’t like the taste at all. When he does, he always cuts off the head later. He doesn’t know why, but that feeble voice he still hears sometimes tells him not to, and so he does because he knows that voice doesn’t mean anything good.
He stands and goes towards the river, looking at himself.
Oh.
His face is splattered in red, but at least some pale skin is still visible. The rest of him is covered in blood. His clothes are half-torn and crusty with it, and all his scars haven’t faded at all. The sight doesn’t make him recoil, but then second voice, the loud one, has something to say.
Look at yourself. You used to like being presentable and wearing nice things once. He’s never even going to recognize you if he sees you like this. It’s not far. Just take a bath.
He shouldn’t. But – the voice has a point. He knows, deep down, that he’s not the way he used to be. He doesn’t want Robb to look at him as if he was a complete monster when he comes to warn him.
He goes to the nearest body with the cleanest garb. He strips the soldier off his clothes. Then he throws away his own and steps into the river.
The water comes away dark pink, and wearing Frey colors feels wrong, but it’s fine. Probably a better disguise, too.
Theon grabs his sword when he’s done with the clothes and starts walking again.
Robb. He needs to find Robb.
--
He shouldn’t have taken the bath, he realizes faintly when he finally arrives.
The moment he sets foot in the camp – unseen – he hears music coming from above and suddenly Frey men are standing up and killing Stark soldiers.
Had he been human, he would have panicked.
Instead, he realizes he can smell Robb’s wolf. He’s not far. He’s also constrained.
Theon smiles and hacks his way through the camp, not minding if he’s slashing at Stark soldiers or Frey ones, until he reaches the cage. There are four men outside with crossbows.
They never manage to shoot – he’s killed all of them first.
Then he walks to the cage and opens it – Grey Wind growls as he runs out of it, teeth bared, but when he looks up at Theon, he stops at once. For a moment they stare at each other, and then Grey Wind licks the bloody hand Theon had extended in his direction.
“Robb,” Theon rasps.
Grey Wind looks at him as if he’s agreeing, and then leaps towards the camp, opening the way for him so that they can get inside the castle.
Theon takes a moment to grab a cloak from a dead Stark soldier – he throws away his Frey one and puts it on.
It feels good. He knows it’s something he’s always wanted to do before.
So why not now?
--
There’s screaming coming from the barred main hall.
He tries the door, but it won’t open.
Then again, he wasn’t trying that hard. He feels Grey Wind at his side as he concentrates just a bit and pushes.
It’s not effortless, but it’s not hard either. He just has to push – it’s like walking that much without stopping. The more he pushes the more it gives, so he just keeps on doing it until he feels the wood snap in twice and the door opens.
The hall is littered with dead bodies, and Robb is kneeling over one of them – Theon sees someone trying to shoot at him, but Grey Wind is on him a moment later, so he doesn’t worry. Lady Stark is standing in the corner, holding some girl with a knife to her throat, and Walder Frey is sitting on a chair that Theon vaguely remembers having seen a lifetime ago. When he walked in, he was laughing, but now he’s not.
Now the entire hall is staring at him, Robb included. Theon can see that he has an arrow in his shoulder – nothing life-threatening, though – and that he was kneeling at the side of a woman who’s most definitely dead. Roose Bolton is looking at him as if he’s just seen a ghost.
He would. Hadn’t he ordered his capture?
So maybe he was a bit late.
But not too late, or so it seems.
“You’re dead,” Roose Bolton says, breaking the silence a moment later.
Theon smiles. His teeth are probably bloody. He doesn’t really care.
“About that,” he rasps. “You can blame yourself.”
He grabs that dirk he’s kept until now, the one that killed him, and takes a step forward. And then another.
He trusts Grey Wind to make sure Robb is unhurt, and makes his slow but steady way towards Roose Bolton. He feels at least ten arrows hitting him, but they barely sting. Everyone that comes too close, he kills. He has left a trail of at least fifteen bodies behind when he reaches Bolton and plants that knife in his heart before twisting.
Then he sees someone walking behind Lady Stark, not far from him, a knife in his hand.
That wouldn’t do, and so he pushes Bolton’s body out of the way and throws the bloody knife at the man’s arm – it’s enough for a distraction and like this he has time to get in between them and snap his neck.
He falls down on the ground a moment later.
When he turns his back on the corpse, it’s to Lady Stark staring at him with her mouth open. She looks more surprised than scared, though, and her eyes are red with tears streaming down her cheeks, and for a moment he thinks that maybe this is the way he always wanted her to look at him once upon a time – somewhere in there, there’s admiration.
He moves in front of her, and assesses the situation. Robb is standing behind Grey Wind, and he’s on his feet and not hurt any further. Good. Some Stark soldiers are still on their feet as well, though not many – he really was a bit late.
The girl that Lady Stark was holding hostage before is screaming her lungs out. Walder Frey looks pale as a ghost.
Maybe Robb would like to kill him on his own, but it’s not worth the risk.
Theon walks up to the chair, slowly but surely.
For a moment he ponders if he shouldn’t make it more painful, but that part of him who wanted to just be back where Robb was is getting antsy. He doesn’t want to waste time with this filth anymore if there’s not the need. So he reaches forward and snaps Lord Walder’s neck as well – the sight of the corpse falling down from the chair at once doesn’t make him feel a thing, one way or the other.
For a moment there’s just complete silence. Then he turns his back to the corpse, not feeling the arrows still stuck in his back or the open wounds on his chest and legs. His clothes are torn all over again.
He might not have felt a thing until now, but for a moment a familiar sensation creeps up on him – what if he thinks that I’m a monster? Because that’s what I am, right?
Robb is still standing up. And is looking at him. First he’s just – well, floored. He can’t describe it another way.
But then – oh. Then the corners of Robb’s mouth curl up in a very shaky but very real smile, and he tries to move towards the chair. But he has an arrow also in his leg, so it has to hurt.
He walks down the few steps separating him from the floor.
Robb is still looking at him like that and – that pull he always felt, even faintly, telling him to go north is gone. Not there at all.
The expression doesn’t change even as he moves closer and Robb can actually see what he looks like now.
“Oh gods,” Robb whispers, “so it was you all along, wasn’t it? Killing the Frey soldiers.”
He nods, not trusting himself to speak. But then – he clears his throat. He could try. “I knew,” he replies. Maybe later he can explain. If Robb will have him, of course. He looks down at Robb’s bloody hands staining Grey Wind’s fur in red.
Robb’s eyes fall to the scar on his heart. That very first one.
Then he reaches out and brushes his fingertips over it. Theon shivers abruptly – no one’s touched him since he changed, of course, but it’s still so very gentle and he can’t remember the last time someone ever did that to him. All of a sudden, he feels tired. So very tired. And there’s something he’s wanted to do since even before someone stabbed him in the back, and now he can and he doubts that anyone is going to stop him.
He falls down on both knees, hoping that Robb gets it, because he can’t speak at all right now.
When he feels a hand touch his hair, so very gently, he lets his head fall forward until it’s pressed against Robb’s stomach, against warm living flesh that feels nowhere like his own.
Then Robb speaks and maybe dead people shouldn’t feel happy, it should be an entirely wrong notion (same as a dead person being alive the way he is), but why should he even care?
--
There weren’t many living people in the main hall at the Twins during the Red Wedding. The ones who get out of it alive don’t like to talk about what happened at all.
Catelyn Stark will later tell her uncle that the moment her son had said, with all the calm in the world, of course you’re my brother now and always, she had realized that something had gone very, very wrong.
Then again, she will remember that the moment before the door slammed open and Theon Greyjoy stepped through in all his not-living self, she had thought if they kill Robb in front of me I’ll go mad with a clarity that makes her shudder just by thinking back again on that moment.
“Didn’t – didn’t they stab his wife in front of him? And wasn’t she pregnant?” Her uncle will answer. “It probably went wrong then. And – I hate to say it, but…”
“I know,” she will say. “I know.”
By then, it won’t be a mystery that something in Robb had snapped at some point during the wedding.
It also won’t be a mystery that Robb Stark not only is entirely back in the game. By then, he’ll be this close to winning it.
She’ll clutch to her chest that raven telling her that Bran and Rickon are safe at Winterfell, she feels grateful that Arya was returned to them not long after the wedding, and she won’t resent Robb for having left her behind at Riverrun. She won’t even want to know how Robb is winning the war, but she knows she’ll never resent him any method. Because maybe something in him has snapped, but she had come this close to it, too. She’ll understand even too well.
--
A story that Robb Stark has made some kind of evil deal with some unknown god so that he could have a soldier in his army that never dies and is worth one hundred has spread through all the South not long after the Red Wedding.
By the time enough people realize it’s actually true, the northern army on the way to King’s Landing just encounters empty villages most of the time.
Of course, the story is only halfway true – Robb Stark never made a deal, with a god or not.
Also, the northern army never kills civilians. So it’s not long later that another story spreads – that Robb Stark has a look to him that’s worthy of a Targaryen. A Targaryen both great and mad, for that matter.
Then again, most people who tell that story add, who would survive the Red Wedding without even a consequence?
--
“Stay still,” Robb whispers as he tries to remove a piece of arrow tip from Theon’s shoulder – not that it’s that hard of a job, since no blood ever comes out of his wounds and he can’t exactly risk killing him if he does it wrong, but still, he doesn’t want the scar to be bigger than it has to. Theon stops moving at once, letting him do his job without making a fuss. He cleans the wound until he can only see scarring red skin, then he stands up to get a clean shirt.
It’s probably a good thing that they hardly fight battles anymore, but after having gotten out of Theon the entire story of what happened between now and when he left for Pyke (and it had taken days) he’s made a point of handing him clean clothes if they fight – so maybe he’s what he is, but it doesn’t mean he should walk around covered in blood. Sure, for Theon it makes no difference, but for him it does.
It’s not that he fools himself into thinking that it’s exactly like before, but it could be entirely worse. (For one he could be dead.)
Theon puts on the shirt mechanically, same as he had done with the breeches he’s currently wearing right now. He never speaks if it’s not necessary, but he looks quite pleased with being in clean (and decent) garb. Really, if it wasn’t for the opened wounds on him that don’t bleed and for his extremely pale skin, you wouldn’t guess that he has died and come back to life, but even with those, Robb doesn’t care at all. Not when he was just about ready to give up on everything for good a moment before Theon walked into the Twins. (Of course, he does a lot of things now that he hadn’t even pictured back then. But you change when you see what he’s seen. And you keep close what people you can.)
“How long?” Theon rasps after lying down on the bed Robb has in his tent. (So not a lot of people know what to make out of Theon sleeping in there. But Robb is past giving a damn.)
“To King’s Landing? A few days.” Robb has thought about just seizing the throne, but then again it’s too much work. And he doesn’t want to stay in the South. He has in mind to make a deal with Stannis when the latter won’t be able to refuse – he hardly has any other options, and Robb highly doubts he’d be in a position to refuse him anything – and then they can go back North and leave this mess behind. For all that matters, he might just make his sister regent – or his mother, or both, he’ll see to it later – and stop with this entire ruling business himself. He hadn’t asked for it before and considering where it brought him, he’s not sure at all that he wants to do it until the end of his days.
Also, the two of them need a long rest.
He lies down as well, moving so that he has his hands on Theon’s waist, and when Theon curls into him a moment later he brings a hand up to his hair. It’s weird that there’s no heartbeat and that he doesn’t breathe, of course, but the rest isn’t really that different from how it used to be.
Not in the ways that matter, anyway.
--
He hasn’t heard the voice saying go North since that day at the Twins. He’s quite glad for that – not that he ever considered it, but it was a nuisance.
Sometimes he wonders what was he thinking, before, when he decided that picking a side that wasn’t Robb’s was a good idea. He’s just glad that he had a second chance to fix it. Robb says that he can’t wait to just go back home, and Theon wishes he could put into words that as far as he’s concerned he’s home already, but he doesn’t think he needs to say it. He never sleeps, he can’t, but still, if he closes his eyes and feels Robb’s heartbeat… then it’s the next best thing.
He smiles and lets himself bask in the feeling that everything is finally right.
End.