Chapter Text
Theon stands on the ramparts and watches the sun rise over the snow-covered hills. Winterfell is stirring awake, at his back. Men shout, the first clangs of metal reverberate.
He hasn't slept, but he doesn't mind. That's how things are, now: His bones hurt, he doesn't sleep. He won't complain. Just to be back here, at Winterfell -- alive, dressed in clean ironborn garb, fully out of his own free will -- is much more than he had reason to hope for.
"You don't have to go back there, brother, not really, do you know that?" Yara told him, shortly before he left. She'd already given her approval for his leave. She wasn't speaking as his Queen, but as his sister: Why would you want to do this to yourself? He didn’t have an answer for her, then, and wouldn’t have any now. Only a vague, incoherent knowledge that this is where he must go.
Stupidity it might have been to come back to this place of imprisonment and madness and memory. He won't dwell on it. He wants to be useful and work is waiting.
Arya Stark appears at his front, sudden like a shadow. Theon jumps. He can't help it, he startles easy, ever since. Arya looks at him with contempt.
She is back from beyond the seas, he learned. She came home to find her family and to find revenge, so it's said. She hasn't approached Theon, so far. He's seen her from a distance, at her siblings' side, sharp and lean and deadly. Sansa told him a little bit, of what she is, now. The years have transformed them all.
She is dressed in black leather, hair pulled back like her father's used to be, her small body held balanced like a blade.
Arya draws her sword, quicker than the eye can blink. The pointy end presses against Theon's neck, metal sharp against his skin.
Silence fills his head. He wouldn't mind, he thinks, but it's too early.
"Not today," he begs.
Her expression is unreadable -- and what a contrast that is to the open book her face once used to be -- but after a moment she removes the sword from his throat.
"Not today," she agrees.
It's a postponing, not a revocation.
"My siblings are forgiving," she tells him. "I am not. I have killed men for lesser crimes. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
He understands fully. "Yes," he says.
Arya studies him, gauges his comprehension. Then, with a hint of a nod and the swiftness of a cat, she is gone.
Theon calms his trembling hands and follows to climb down the stairs.
--
They are sitting in the hall, eating food. It's the very same hall where Bolton used to dine, the very same stony floors, the very same tables, but Jon and Sansa wrenched this space back from the Bolton claws, stamped it theirs again. As evidenced by the Stark banners on the wall, and Stark songs in the air, and Stark bannermen crowding the place, and the fact that Reek gets to eat food served to him as opposed to serving food while starving.
Ramsay liked that, having Reek entertain his guests. The hall packed with Northerners, all loyal or feigning loyalty to the Boltons, none of them sympathetic to what once was Theon Greyjoy, their eyes trailing Reek's laboured limp and pained little noises when Ramsay did what Ramsay did. As for the entertainment Reek was meant to provide... Theon bites down hard on his spoon, releases a shoot of pain up his jaw. Don't think of that, he tells himself. Pay attention.
"So how come he isn't on your little list?" Tyrion Lannister is asking Arya Stark, pointing at Theon.
Arya's little list has caused some fascination, this evening.
Sandor Clegane's laugh barks through the room. "Who says he isn't?" Clegane has been on and off the list, as he's been bragging about.
Arya just smirks, silent, and doesn't reveal her secrets.
Theon is on her little list, Theon knows, but she won't kill him just yet. After the battle with the Night King, she will, probably, if they both survived. It's unlikely that they will. But it's unlikely that Reek would sit idle and well-fed right in Winterfell's belly. Who's to say what kind of wonders might happen?
"You're unbothered by this?" Tyrion Lannister asks him. It takes Theon a few moments to understand he's being talked to. It's the first time he is addressed this evening. Theon swallows his soup and it's warm and delicious. "Yes," he agrees, and he finds it to be true.
--
Once, after starving Reek for many days, Ramsay dangled a piece of meat in front of him, from his outstretched fingers. A test, certainly, and Reek waited, obedient, fearful, eyes glued to Ramsay's hand. Come on, Ramsay invited, don't you want it? Eyes twinkling. Come and get it, pet. Yes, yes, yes, he wanted it, he wanted it desperately, and he crawled forward at Ramsay's invitation, hand clutching at his concave belly, tongue on his cracked lips. But just as he opened his mouth to bite, Ramsay removed the meat from out of his grasp and stuffed it into his own mouth. Oops, said Ramsay and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Ramsay's laughter clings to the dark walls like a curse. It echoes from the stone. It follows Theon wherever he goes, makes him stumble, makes him scared of every shadow.
But I'm alive, and he's dead, he reminds himself.
It was such madness to come back here, it really was, but he had to. He had to. And now he's here and what else can he do but be?
Theon has been keeping to himself and to his ironborn, mostly, since his arrival in Winterfell. The North did not forget Theon Turncloak. They keep reminding him of their contempt. They remind him with their glances, with their words, with their angry silences, with their spit, on occasion. He has no complaints. Why shouldn't they hold him in contempt. After what he did, after what he was made to be. Theon is used to contempt.
It doesn't matter. He's not here to be liked.
Theon is making his way through the yard, careful on the snow.
A round-faced young man stumbles into his back, elbow to Theon's lower ribs. Theon freezes at the sudden impact, briefly unhinged, before he regains his composure.
"My apologies!" the young man is saying. Then: "Are you... all right?"
Theon looks up and nods and the young man's eyes widen in recognition.
"You're Theon Greyjoy," he says, with wonder.
It's a dark-haired young man dressed in leather, built solid.
"I'm Podrick Payne," he adds, when Theon doesn't immediately react. "We met, at, uh... " Podrick's voice trails off, unsure.
Theon nods. The hunt, the run, Brienne of Tarth and her squire rescuing them from certain death, or worse. He was so mad from fear that memory is sliced and disjointed, but he remembers.
"Podrick Payne," he repeats. "I know your name."
Podrick is shuffling his feet on the floor, hesitant. "You look quite different, my Lord," he hazards, finally.
Theon laughs. "I would hope so," he says, and Podrick finally relaxes.
"I got better with the sword, I believe," Podrick smiles back, relieved. "But I will never forget you for saving me."
Theon draws a blank, for a second. "Wasn't it the other way round?" he says.
Podrick looks at him strangely. "When I laid defeated in the snow and you killed a man before he could kill me?" he prompts.
A vague recollection. Theon shrugs. "I was crazed from the terror," he admits.
"Well," says Podrick, mildly. "Thank you anyhow."
Reek the saviour-- saving captive wives and soft-eyed squires and even Theon's undeserving skin at inopportune moments. Theon swallows a mad little giggle. Isn't that just the jape.
No need to scare off this kind young man, though. Podrick Payne, he dutifully adds the name. "Thank you, Podrick Payne," he says, as friendly as he can.
Podrick Payne looks at him a bit strangely, still. But with the poise of a man who has lived through a lot of strangeness and always took it in stride, he bows his head and says: "I'll be happy to see you around," and he even makes it sound like he's not lying.
--
Theon crosses a corridor near the kitchens and his eye stumbles over the wooden beams up the ceiling. Ramsay hung him from here, once, tied a noose around Reek's neck so tight Reek had to stand straight on the balls of his feet to not choke himself. "I don't think you earned the right to sleep," Ramsay explained, "and this will keep you alert when I can't watch you." And so it went. Reek toiled in the yard or cried under Ramsay’s attentions by day and choked on the noose at night until everything splintered and shook and yet would never end. Yara once asked him what Ramsay did, beyond the obvious, that is. But how do you explain something like this?
Theon shakes his head. He's dead, he reminds himself for the millionth of time since he came back here. It doesn’t matter now. He's dead. He's dead.
But that’s not the whole truth, is it? The truth is Theon is the kind of creature that would crawl and grovel and lick its master's bloodied boots even after they kicked it half to death, he’s the cowardly dog that begged and sobbed and loved its master so, who betrayed everything -- his dignity, his people -- in the futile hope to spare whatever worthless skin he still had left, that let itself be used in every way imaginable, that let himself be Reek, and the Northeners and their hard contemptuous stares, they know, they know, they know....
"Theon."
It's Sansa. Theon finds himself clutching at the wall, shivering. How long did he...?
"Come, let's walk outside," says Sansa, eyes soft.
He gratefully accepts.
"I wondered," she says, "how it would be like for you, to be back here."
Theon lets out a small giggle. Yeah.
"How is it like for you?" he asks.
Sansa balls her fists. "This is my home," she says, trying to make it true. "It has to be."
Theon nods. Neither press the issue. There's no time to be mad with memory, at any rate. The end of the world is coming, they have to prepare.
Men pass and look at Sansa in deference and respect. They nod at the Lady of Winterfell. They avoid looking at Theon. They won't spit at him, not when Sansa is standing beside him.
"They love you," Theon observes, pleased.
"I want them to," Sansa admits. "I want to be protected. I know no one can protect anyone, but I want them all to try."
Might that just be enough.
"Come, Theon, you will join me for breakfast," she decides, and so he will.
--
“You shouldn’t be here,” he told Sansa, long ago. What of him, then? Winterfell’s walls bleed memory and memory doesn’t agree with Theon.
Winterfell has been scrubbed clean, after the Starks retook it from their enemies. It has been scoured from horror. But there's a door with the wood still cracked were Ramsay bashed Reek's head into, and there's a fire poker Ramsay beat him unconscious with that no one thought to wipe the blood from, and the man serving the food fills his bowl as readily as any other but still sneers at him: Turncloak, and Theon finds himself wondering: Were you one of those that raped Reek when given the chance, or did you just stand and watch?
He tries to ignore his disquiet, he tries to squash it. There's no point in it. He is what he is, things are what they are, he deserved everything and more. If he's lucky, he'll die here soon, sword in hand and protecting what matters and isn't that much more than he had reason to hope for? Isn't that reason to be grateful?
Theon spends his morning practicing his bow.
Ramsay promised him he'd never shoot again, but he was wrong. Ramsay was wrong about so many things, he must remember this, too. Theon can still be useful.
Theon walks to retrieve his arrows from the target. Just when he makes ready to pull, a knife whirs past his ear, between his hands and enters the mark, dead centre.
He turns to see Arya staring at him.
Theon forces calm into his limbs. His fingers tremble just barely. Don't engage, he tells himself. He carefully collects his weapons and leaves Arya's knife. Ignore it. He's been practising this skill a lot, since he entered Winterfell -- ignoring it.
Arya sidles to his side, when he makes to leave.
"Every time I see you get too comfortable around here, I will remind you, Theon Greyjoy," she informs him. "Justice will be served."
Irritation surges too quickly to temper. Does he look comfortable? Let it go, he tries to tell himself, but he hasn't slept in days and the very same men who hooted at Reek's misery keep acting all sanctimonious, as if they were justice incarnate. I know what all of you are, Theon thinks.
"What justice has ever been served here?" he snaps.
"Ha!" says Arya, with triumph.
"Not all meek and humbled after all. I knew you for what you are, Theon Greyjoy."
Theon grits his teeth. Is she playing?
"Then you should know I'd never betray your family again. I'm here to make amends."
"Betray my family?" Arya scoffs. "Here to make amends?" She laughs. "Where I come from this answer would have given me a good whopping with the stick."
Theon stares uncomprehending. Arya won't explain. She looks at him with a mix of amusement and contempt.
"How can I trust someone who doesn't want to know himself?" she accuses.
Unease crawls up Theon's spine.
"I am not here to cause harm," he repeats, uselessly.
"Of course you aren't," Arya says, half disdain half distrust.
"But if you were," she adds. "I'd kill you on the spot."
This promise, Theon can believe. He watches her as she leaves, dizzy and unsettled.
Where I come from, she said. She wasn't talking about Winterfell, was she?
--
"Has Arya bothered you?" Sansa asks.
They are standing on the ramparts. Sansa has her favourite spots to be found in, he noticed, and this is one of them. Just here, close to where they jumped the wall to escape.
"Not at all," says Theon.
Sansa gives him a look, but doesn't comment further.
"She was so young, when they murdered father," she says. "We all were so young." She suddenly looks very sad. Sansa rarely allows herself to look sad, but there’s no need to pretend, with Theon.
Theon was young, too, when they killed his brothers, wasn't he? How can I trust someone who doesn't want to know himself? Arya charged. Theon's head hurts. No, he doesn't care for knowing himself. All he wants is to do something good for once in his life. Is that too simple a notion?
Sansa reaches out a hand for him and he takes it. He clings to it, grateful.
Maybe nothing makes sense and nothing ever will, but what Sansa did for him and what he did for her is a knowledge clear and solid to them both, at least.
--
Theon shoots his arrows and he endures the sneers and the memories and he nurtures his guilt and he trains with Podrick Payne a few times and once Brienne watches them and she never speaks to him but her gaze is devoid of contempt.
Bran is seen only rarely, but when he shows himself, Theon remembers the boy that cried at him to stop, please, please stop his violence. Arya is right to scoff at his promise to make amends. The burnt bodies hung from the gates, Ser Rodrik's head tumbling through the mud, all the blood spilled, none of it can be undone. Theon can't justify his still being alive, and how does one make amends for that?
Sansa still invites him to breakfast, when she finds him roaming in the early morning and he eats, then, belly warmed and filled.
--
They're in the final throes of preparation. Theon is busy readying the bows.
A blade suddenly presses against his neck, cool and deadly, and attached to it is Arya Stark. He didn't hear her approach, but one never does, with Arya.
Theon waits.
Arya stares at him, studying.
"You're not much afraid of this," she decides, finally.
Theon doesn't know what to answer. You don't know, he wants to say.
"I was told you were a coward now," Arya probes.
Theon can't help but laugh. "And what's your verdict?"
Arya removes the blade from his throat and tucks it away into the scabbard at her waist. She shrugs.
"Why are you not afraid?" she asks, and in that moment, she sounds nearly like way back then, ten years old and bluntly curious.
She's not play-testing, he decides. At least, not in that kind of way. She's searching for what's real. They are standing in Winterfell's yard, just a few feet away from the kennels, just a few feet away from countless sites of terror.
"There's worse things than dying," he says.
Arya scoffs. "How can you know?"
Theon hesitates. Sansa and Arya talk, he knows, so Theon assumes Arya must have heard. Sansa has told Jon enough of what happened at Winterfell, that much he's aware of. And then, there's all the talk. Reek was a public spectacle, after all. He has no want to restate the obvious.
"You know," he tells her.
Arya looks unimpressed. "You don't know Death," she corrects him.
Theon half wants to protest, but she quickly adds: "Don't flatter yourself, Turncloak. You know men's cruelty, which is not the same as knowing Death. Don't disrespect it."
Small Arya's eyes bore into his soul and she looks about a hundred years older than she once was. Where has she been? Theon wonders, yet again.
"I wouldn't underestimate Death, if I were you," Arya advices, lip half curled to reveal her teeth.
The white walkers are approaching. A few days left, so it has been calculated. All are readying themselves for glory or extinction. And here is Arya Stark, reminding him, who has been so close to death so very often and yet failed to die, to be scared of Death. He can't help but laugh.
"That's your idea of encouragement before battle?"
Arya doesn’t laugh back.
"You don't need encouragement," she decides.