Day 6. Fic: So Drown Me (And If You Can) (Asha, Theon)
Title: So Drown Me (And If You Can)
Author: unityfic
For: sternflammenden
Characters: Asha, Theon, Ramsay, Balon, Wex, Qarl, Kyra.
Rating: R
Words: approx 4000
Warnings: incest, references to torture, spoilers through A Clash of Kings and a little bit of Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons.
Prompt: Asha/Theon, tension over Balon’s differing treatment of them in the War of the Five Kings.
Her first impression after all these years is conflicted, some aspects promising and some not. She's unable to place him, save where he fits into her family. He is Greyjoy tall, has a rangy frame, and he might cut an impressive figure, except he possesses very little of their father's harshness. Instead she senses something disreputable in him, a languor to his movement, that recalls Euron. That particular kinship makes her feel as if her insides have been prodded with a hot poker, though overall he's too careless to be threatening. Not striking like the Crow's Eye, but becoming nonetheless. She decides he is most comparable to the wild, tempestuous Aeron she remembers from eventful nameday celebrations. If Asha had an eye for noble boys she'd like it.
He turns to her without a hint of recognition and an inviting smile, so she strides towards him with the intent to push that apparent playfulness to breaking point.
Later he is nettlesome, protesting his innocence, spitting “You deceived me.” Her already low opinion of him grows poorer for it.
*
The old kraken hunches appallingly where they say he's still straight backed on his black chair, a law unto himself brewing vengeance. Asha bides her time at a respectful distance, until he uncoils and beckons her forward.
“Come sit by me, my daughter.” She's strengthened by the unmistakable pride in his voice, where the granite rasp of it might chill others to the bone.
“And here I thought I was your son.” She replies dryly, lowering herself onto the steps below the throne.
Balon Greyjoy grumbles disapproval, and Asha waits, safe in the assumption she has nothing to fear from his ire. “What do you think of him, then?”
“He's been spoiled beyond reclamation. He's feckless, decadent, and he holds no regard for us. Other than that, I think he's a fine addition to our house.”
Her father spares her a rare, derisive laugh, confirming she has the right of it. Asha is a loyal subject but Theon is another story altogether, certainly not to be trusted. It's clear he has his own ideas, though whether he has enough courage to act on them remains to be seen.
“In that case you both may entertain me by vying for this seat. So long as you are not the one to disappoint me.”
Asha bows her head. “I'm yours to command, Lord Reaper,” she says, sweeping her arm in a grand, entirely unnecessary gesture.
*
His people are seafarers, warmongers, yet he despairs of them ever completing the task of loading the ships. Skirmishes break out over the most inconsequential of problems and he's going to have to come down hard on that before they land. Apart from axes, spears and long swords, they appear to be armed with a rabid, barely restrained self interest, woefully un-regimented. The only thing they seem to have in common is being half in love with his bitch of a sister.
“You have to earn that loyalty,” she's snarling, “as I did. It isn't just given to you because you expect it.”
Her eyes linger on the particularly charmed upstart known as the Maid, sanguine, otter-agile, nice looking despite the pains he takes to hide it behind a gruff manner.
“Did you tame every member of your crew by bedding them?” He asks, pointedly or nonchalant or somewhere in between. He cares insofar as she doesn't interfere with the men he chose for his own. It's their job to show him what they're made of, and not the other way round.
Asha titters humourlessly, then straightens her face and says, “Those that weren't afraid to get hurt.”
She suspects he's been sheltered, kept without cause to spill much blood or kill anyone; although he told her of the Whispering Wood, he left out the wilding he shot down with one arrow, and now regrets having nothing to show for it.
He couldn't have foreseen the wrath of his father on that account, having forgotten the connotations that bought jewellery carries and therefore upbraided for coveting it like a whore while Asha's supposedly married to the axe, although it's obvious to anyone with sense she's not exactly chaste. His mind strays to the women he enjoys and through force of habit they are rough-skinned, spirited. When he imagines fucking a lady he thinks immediately of his sister, then of Esgred, the shipwright's wife.
*
She's delighted to find he has been allocated a cursed room in the colder part of the castle, even if she needs to cross three bridges to reach the Bloody Keep. Asha is well versed in the art of sneaking around Pyke, and it's easier still to lie her way around her father's guards, those that managed to feign vigilance for him.
The dull shine of the knife by his bedside is a validation that he doesn't trust them, uncomfortable in these quarters like he was at table. She considers stealing it as a parting gift, as a reminder there is seemingly no end his witlessness, or flaunting it in his face on the morrow so he'll know she was here.
Instead she sets the candle down before it burns her hand and studies him as it gutters, her brother unaware of the danger he is in, messy black hair spread out further than her own and long shanks hanging off the edge of the mattress. As she bends down for a closer look his nose twitches and his eyelashes flutter once, but he doesn't see her standing over him, isn't startled into the land of the living. Asha has two exasperated observations, being you really need to work on that, and also they're all just as vulnerable to us in their sleep.
He took full advantage of her on the ride. True enough, he didn't know her for what she was, but she still feels justified lifting the blanket to see what sort of a man her little brother is. She smiles, satisfied he's as dark and untidy as she is and more than passable, which she anticipated from gripping him in the palm of her hand. However the thing that most pleases her is the obvious gloss on his thigh showing that he succumbed to his virile appetite before exhaustion. She wonders if he was rapt in his animosity for her when he did it.
Asha bites her lip and traces her nipple with a blunt thumbnail, remembering when he pulled her up on his horse, his arms encircling her, how he'd felt her breasts. She'd be pretending if she said it hadn't excited her, the boldness and the fact he cared nought for the way it unfolded in front of his little squire. She likes it to hurt, but she also loves to punish presumption.
His arrival shouldn't trouble her so much, because she knew it was coming, and she's seen how he is with people, so amusingly inept and not ready. And yet he's appealing in a different way that most islanders haven't encountered before, and she realizes she must not underestimate him either.
She reluctantly tears her gaze away, snatches the candle up and whispers, “You're a fool.” Asha isn't exactly sure which one of them she means.
*
Esgred returns to him on board Sea Bitch, stork girl form strangely indistinct, her features rippling unclear as if she's wearing a mask. He knows it's her mostly because of the salt on her lips and the strong, authoritative touch she says he's desperately in need of. Theon can't help but respond to it and all his objections are silenced by a sharp thrust of her hips against his. When he tries to nail her down, she evades him like a shade, oil in water.
“I hope you can live up to your boasts.” She crows, “Otherwise you might find I lose my patience with you.”
The situation shifts and now she has him on his back, a fantasy which isn't new, but doesn't feel entirely right to him in practice. He clutches feebly at her flanks, as if to reverse their position and she fends him off with her firm hands, tangling their fingers in a romantic cradle.
“What can I do for you, my lord?”
He gives in and whispers if she wants to please him he would watch her belly swell with his child. The answer is an all too familiar nasty laugh and suddenly she comes into focus, lips inches from his as she says
“We'd only breed contempt.”
He thrashes free of her in a cramped cabin, surrounded by the creaking of ropes, overly hot, hard as iron.
*
Her brother's harebrained plan to take Winterfell works, at the cost of Torrhen's Square. Asha slams her fist on the table at how he's sought to thwart her, not only that, but succeeded in it. It's a scant compensation to convince herself it makes no difference because Deepwood Motte is finally hers, a strategic triumph yet too compact to prowl around, not as many places to hide as her father's sprawling fortress on Pyke.
She climbs higher in this damned corkscrew of a castle and passes Qarl on watch, neglecting his duty in favour of drowsing against the parapet. It's a sharp contrast from how he was the first night they ate in the hall, cheerfully contributing his surplus loot to the pile for dice, eyelids creased in mirth following a jest at the expense of women.
“Stay awake, wretch,” she says, aiming a light kick at him.
He glances up, all the warmth drained from his usually good-natured face, and challenges
“Or what, slattern?” Even bleary as he is, she can see how much he wants to abandon his post and force himself on her. Pin her like a bitch in the main bed chamber and rut his fill, smack her arse hard afterwards.
“Or you're going to get nibbled at by mice,” she teases, then leans down and strokes one soft, smooth cheek with the back of her hand, just to spite him. She expects to pay for it later but it's worth it to know that someone else is riled, thoroughly snubbed and contemplating revenge.
When the letters from her brother do start to come, they request her aid, demanding it as if she is subject to his beck and call. Asha takes great pleasure in ignoring him, imagining him trapped and friendless, presented with no choice but to continue digging his own grave.
*
The men were faithless and unwilling to deviate from his father's command but he was confident, he knew he could do it. Now his own are kneeling at his feet, yet Winterfell rebels against him. He won his prize in the dead of night, and in some respects, he welcomes the insubordination, because it feels like more of an achievement that way. To begin with it is strange being the object of hatred in such a familiar place, but it belongs to him now, so of course he wants the crown to go with that and he requires their submission in kind.
Whatever genuine acceptance he gets, he finds it in Kyra. She is a slippery creature, sly and vulpine, cleverer than most wenches. She knows that she's done well for herself, and she's especially good at giving him the recognition he craves. Theon gorges himself on her and her flattery until it begins to ring hollow in his ears.
“I always knew you'd come back more than what you were when you left.” She says, simpering to amuse him, or maybe to enrage him, he doesn't know, he doesn't feel either.
He lets her undress him, tug his shirt roughly from his waistband and appreciate his leanness, before she's underneath clawing like a cornered animal. Since the wolves went missing, she sleeps uneasily beside him and he cannot blame her for it, just as she cannot understand he encounters apparitions infinitely more terrifying than Esgred in his dreams.
On waking he escapes to the battlements, shuddering either from the cold or from the same unshakeable sense of dread that the peasant Reek is clearly feeding off. Sometimes Wex follows unbidden, trailing his footsteps, and joins him gratingly lively, not yet consigned to die here. It doesn't bode well that his strongest ally in all of this is a feral, twelve year old mute. He cannot afford to have doubts, or appear to be weakening in front of his men. When the army rallies at the gates, he will offer them the choice, and he hopes the boy has enough sense in his head to run.
*
From the look of him it seems her brother is already beaten. He is a picture of lank black hair, waxen pallor and bruised eyes that provide her with a glimpse of the desperation that drove him to kill children.
If he hadn't brought it on himself, she could feel almost sorry for him. The conquest was fairly audacious, but it was his home for ten years, he knew the stones in these walls like she knows the boards in the deck of Black Wind. Riding in, the folk had glared at her with such enmity because they were related, and she saw he'd destroyed any small fondness they might've had for him. However, he doesn't surprise her with his reluctance to give it up.
“I could force you, you know,” she says, wistfully. “Ferry you back home locked in the hold of my ship. For your own safety, of course.”
“You're the one that needs to feel safe.” He hisses, referring to the fact she's about to turn tail and hasten to the relative security of Deepwood, nearer the sea.
“I'm certainly not quite so demonstrative. Did you really think your shameless attempts to upstage me would accomplish anything other than running yourself aground?”
Theon throws her his most condescending stare. “It's not your birthright for me to steal.”
He's unsuspecting as always, so it's hardly difficult to push him against the wall and seize him beneath his breeches in order to possess that rare thing, his full attention, every ounce of it. She couldn't say if she's only doing this to assert herself, or if there are other reasons, intentions buried under her fundamental dislike of him. This infuriating boy that is her brother.
She wants to tell him to forget competition and pride and staying for the sake of it, but those words stick in her throat. Her forehead falls onto his shoulder in frustration. It's the furthest she'll ever get towards cherishing him.
“I ought to have riden like hell to intercept you when you first embarked on this folly.”
Theon's fingers come up to brush the underside of her teats, feather light touch grazing them ineffectually. His gifted, callused hands are shaking, and he can't get a grip like he did before, when he was cocksure and undaunted by her alleged pregnancy. There's too much history between them for such games, now. She makes fast work of his laces and finally slides in against flesh, warm, naked, so open to her even though he knows her for his own sister.
She wraps her hand around and leans in close, capturing his mouth in a bitter kiss, not a tease but real, one that feels like a goodbye.
*
Her father always preferred her but her father's dead now, along with the brother she had almost wanted to admire, after a while. Black Wind has been dragged up the grit-like sand on the other side of the island, and she's changed in ways the thorn-haired lord Tristifer Botley can't accept, yet he'll still stand by her tomorrow, when she will have to affirm her right to rule in front of many who would gainsay her.
Much as it pains her to admit it, even to herself, Theon ought to be here. Instead he chose to remain. Something about it surprised her, in that maybe there was iron there, under all the pretence; he refused to apologize for himself, didn't think twice about endangering himself. It's possible she saw him true when she saw him for the final time.
Now that it's not going to happen, she can bring herself to picture him growing older, slouching on their salvaged throne. He'd have suited that crown, it would have gone with his vicious smile as he dismissed her to do his bidding with a flick of his fingers. She rolls her eyes and thinks it would've been a disaster, he doesn't know us, except he did have something, a singularity, in the way he didn't care to. He was bound to have been impulsive, forceful, reckless, and they'd have lost the old ways but ultimately to the good.
Asha knows full well this is a risk. She believes she can steer the islands on the right course, even if she's just setting her bearings in the opposite direction from the way Euron wants to take them. She agonizes over her plans as it grows late and the moon rises over the bay of Old Wyk.
Then she can't concentrate anymore because she is being loomed over by near six feet of drunk, bloodstained maid, complaining loudly about how every time he plays the finger dance he plays fair yet Eldred Codd remains such a sore loser.
“Why don't you go back outside and scout for me,” she suggests. Her uncle's dogs are still sniffing around and she's confident that even with his ill-advised insobriety, they'd scatter as soon as pick a fight with him. “Your captain is busy thinking.”
He rejects the notion with a twist of his mouth, replying “I think you had better defend yourself, captain.” His eyes have darkened to the colour of storm clouds about to burst, warning her he's about to be worse than impertinent.
Her heart isn't in it and it's somewhat inevitable they become one shadow against the wall of the tent, her arms folded across her chest and the edges of her sex being kneaded by grimy fingertips in amongst coarse black bramble. Pale or altogether colourless fuzz scraping her cheek. She truly doesn't mind suffering for the rest of the night, if it's going to be their last.
They are young but Theon was even younger, barely twenty. He died surrounded by walls he'd thought himself clever to get inside, many miles from the sea, and that might have been kinder, in the long run. A better end than what she'll get, should she lose and jeopardise the lives of everyone that has thrown their lot in with her, the Reader, her Harlaw cousins, Tris and Qarl.
“You can be on top, if you want.” he slurs, so gracious, sweetly perplexed by her compliance, butting his nose insistently into the hollow of her ear. “If you make it worth my while.”
Asha shakes her head. His palms are sweating, and she'll be able to slip her wrists out of his grip by herself soon, given half a chance. “I'm only glad that my little brother was spared all this nonsense.” Or perhaps she's glad that she made it home, and he didn't.
Qarl releases her briefly anyway, fumbling with the cord of the wineskin tangled in his sword belt. His arm snakes back around to restrain her at the waist as he presses it into her hands, conceding “Here's to your brother. He was a precious little shit, but I liked his smile.”
*
He is dragged kicking from a garron, travel worn and disorientated, sick to the stomach. All he can be sure of is that everything's lost and he's tired of being told he'll either walk in an orderly fashion or not at all.
His customary stride is clipped tripping over his own feet, just being shoved along stumbling until they stop. He does his best to stand still and drawn up to his full height as the bandage is unravelled from his eyes. Despite not having been able to see for most of the journey, he is loath to open them for fear of what he's halted in front of. Then he remembers the severe judgement of his father saying at least you are no craven, and he blinks as the gauze falls away. A far cleaner Reek or Ramsay Snow or rather Bolton nods approvingly and says,
“Prince Theon,” soft voice mocking as he bows low, “welcome to the Dreadfort.”
Theon declines to exchange the formality, so his captors push him to the flagstones. He can feel the heat coming through them, and there is an onslaught of scornful laughter, all of it aimed at him.
When it finally subsides, the bastard leers like he knows he doesn't have to be delicate with a Greyjoy, doesn't have to waste time talking terms or honourable conduct. Similarly, Theon knows better than to expect mercy from a so-called Bolton.
Ramsay informs him the smashed imprint of his mail on Theon's face looks ugly, and is met with a storm of insults that only serve to ensure the wound will never get seen to. He's past caring anyway because it's almost numb, and doesn't hurt any more than the rope sores under his torn clothes, or more than the affront of being bound flat into the saddle, blindfolded even though he could not have failed to realize where they were going.
His outburst stirs amusement and Ramsay appraises him in its wake. “Something about the state of squalidness fits him, don't you think?”
He stiffens and has to stand for it. After all, he's often told he's coarse for a lordling, that his general spindly fragility isn't much complimented by his foul mouth. He can see it might amount to justice in some people's eyes for him to be brought so low, or perhaps not, when he was never very high minded in the first place. Theon would rather have died, consumed by fire, gutted by a sword thrust between his ribs or crushed under Smiler's iron-shod hooves.
“Asha's still in the north,” He guesses, clutching at straws. “She's smart, she'll know you took me and she'll not let me rot here, you can count on that.”
He hates her, but the thought of her is oddly comforting and he wishes she was here to call him a baby, to remind him ironborn don't beg, or wheedle, or tremble in the presence of vermin such as Ramsay.
“How touching.” Ramsay says dismissively, then gestures for one of the men holding him to come forward.
“Throw the Greyjoy runt in the furthest cell on the lowest stair.” He instructs, all the time staring into Theon's eyes. “Don't feed him for three days. Take him out on the fourth and offer him slops from the pig pen, see if he'll eat them.”
Theon finds his innate disdain again then and sprays spit, rising as if to spring before he's caught and pulled back.
“I won't.” He says, ashen-faced, brave, battling hard to calm himself. “I'll bite his fingers off, first.”
Ramsay smiles, undeterred or maybe even pleased. “If you refuse, it'll be your own fingers you have to worry about.”
It comes back to him in a rush, standing at Robb's side, identifying the Bolton sigil in the mass of banners, listening to nauseating stories about the ways they mutilate their prisoners. Theon heaves and retches dry, having nothing to bring up. He has seldom conjectured of worse indignities than being mounted, or tricked by his sister, yet it occurs to him he is about to learn of them intimately, the culmination in a long line of extravagant and painful mistakes.
Author: unityfic
For: sternflammenden
Characters: Asha, Theon, Ramsay, Balon, Wex, Qarl, Kyra.
Rating: R
Words: approx 4000
Warnings: incest, references to torture, spoilers through A Clash of Kings and a little bit of Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons.
Prompt: Asha/Theon, tension over Balon’s differing treatment of them in the War of the Five Kings.
Her first impression after all these years is conflicted, some aspects promising and some not. She's unable to place him, save where he fits into her family. He is Greyjoy tall, has a rangy frame, and he might cut an impressive figure, except he possesses very little of their father's harshness. Instead she senses something disreputable in him, a languor to his movement, that recalls Euron. That particular kinship makes her feel as if her insides have been prodded with a hot poker, though overall he's too careless to be threatening. Not striking like the Crow's Eye, but becoming nonetheless. She decides he is most comparable to the wild, tempestuous Aeron she remembers from eventful nameday celebrations. If Asha had an eye for noble boys she'd like it.
He turns to her without a hint of recognition and an inviting smile, so she strides towards him with the intent to push that apparent playfulness to breaking point.
Later he is nettlesome, protesting his innocence, spitting “You deceived me.” Her already low opinion of him grows poorer for it.
*
The old kraken hunches appallingly where they say he's still straight backed on his black chair, a law unto himself brewing vengeance. Asha bides her time at a respectful distance, until he uncoils and beckons her forward.
“Come sit by me, my daughter.” She's strengthened by the unmistakable pride in his voice, where the granite rasp of it might chill others to the bone.
“And here I thought I was your son.” She replies dryly, lowering herself onto the steps below the throne.
Balon Greyjoy grumbles disapproval, and Asha waits, safe in the assumption she has nothing to fear from his ire. “What do you think of him, then?”
“He's been spoiled beyond reclamation. He's feckless, decadent, and he holds no regard for us. Other than that, I think he's a fine addition to our house.”
Her father spares her a rare, derisive laugh, confirming she has the right of it. Asha is a loyal subject but Theon is another story altogether, certainly not to be trusted. It's clear he has his own ideas, though whether he has enough courage to act on them remains to be seen.
“In that case you both may entertain me by vying for this seat. So long as you are not the one to disappoint me.”
Asha bows her head. “I'm yours to command, Lord Reaper,” she says, sweeping her arm in a grand, entirely unnecessary gesture.
*
His people are seafarers, warmongers, yet he despairs of them ever completing the task of loading the ships. Skirmishes break out over the most inconsequential of problems and he's going to have to come down hard on that before they land. Apart from axes, spears and long swords, they appear to be armed with a rabid, barely restrained self interest, woefully un-regimented. The only thing they seem to have in common is being half in love with his bitch of a sister.
“You have to earn that loyalty,” she's snarling, “as I did. It isn't just given to you because you expect it.”
Her eyes linger on the particularly charmed upstart known as the Maid, sanguine, otter-agile, nice looking despite the pains he takes to hide it behind a gruff manner.
“Did you tame every member of your crew by bedding them?” He asks, pointedly or nonchalant or somewhere in between. He cares insofar as she doesn't interfere with the men he chose for his own. It's their job to show him what they're made of, and not the other way round.
Asha titters humourlessly, then straightens her face and says, “Those that weren't afraid to get hurt.”
She suspects he's been sheltered, kept without cause to spill much blood or kill anyone; although he told her of the Whispering Wood, he left out the wilding he shot down with one arrow, and now regrets having nothing to show for it.
He couldn't have foreseen the wrath of his father on that account, having forgotten the connotations that bought jewellery carries and therefore upbraided for coveting it like a whore while Asha's supposedly married to the axe, although it's obvious to anyone with sense she's not exactly chaste. His mind strays to the women he enjoys and through force of habit they are rough-skinned, spirited. When he imagines fucking a lady he thinks immediately of his sister, then of Esgred, the shipwright's wife.
*
She's delighted to find he has been allocated a cursed room in the colder part of the castle, even if she needs to cross three bridges to reach the Bloody Keep. Asha is well versed in the art of sneaking around Pyke, and it's easier still to lie her way around her father's guards, those that managed to feign vigilance for him.
The dull shine of the knife by his bedside is a validation that he doesn't trust them, uncomfortable in these quarters like he was at table. She considers stealing it as a parting gift, as a reminder there is seemingly no end his witlessness, or flaunting it in his face on the morrow so he'll know she was here.
Instead she sets the candle down before it burns her hand and studies him as it gutters, her brother unaware of the danger he is in, messy black hair spread out further than her own and long shanks hanging off the edge of the mattress. As she bends down for a closer look his nose twitches and his eyelashes flutter once, but he doesn't see her standing over him, isn't startled into the land of the living. Asha has two exasperated observations, being you really need to work on that, and also they're all just as vulnerable to us in their sleep.
He took full advantage of her on the ride. True enough, he didn't know her for what she was, but she still feels justified lifting the blanket to see what sort of a man her little brother is. She smiles, satisfied he's as dark and untidy as she is and more than passable, which she anticipated from gripping him in the palm of her hand. However the thing that most pleases her is the obvious gloss on his thigh showing that he succumbed to his virile appetite before exhaustion. She wonders if he was rapt in his animosity for her when he did it.
Asha bites her lip and traces her nipple with a blunt thumbnail, remembering when he pulled her up on his horse, his arms encircling her, how he'd felt her breasts. She'd be pretending if she said it hadn't excited her, the boldness and the fact he cared nought for the way it unfolded in front of his little squire. She likes it to hurt, but she also loves to punish presumption.
His arrival shouldn't trouble her so much, because she knew it was coming, and she's seen how he is with people, so amusingly inept and not ready. And yet he's appealing in a different way that most islanders haven't encountered before, and she realizes she must not underestimate him either.
She reluctantly tears her gaze away, snatches the candle up and whispers, “You're a fool.” Asha isn't exactly sure which one of them she means.
*
Esgred returns to him on board Sea Bitch, stork girl form strangely indistinct, her features rippling unclear as if she's wearing a mask. He knows it's her mostly because of the salt on her lips and the strong, authoritative touch she says he's desperately in need of. Theon can't help but respond to it and all his objections are silenced by a sharp thrust of her hips against his. When he tries to nail her down, she evades him like a shade, oil in water.
“I hope you can live up to your boasts.” She crows, “Otherwise you might find I lose my patience with you.”
The situation shifts and now she has him on his back, a fantasy which isn't new, but doesn't feel entirely right to him in practice. He clutches feebly at her flanks, as if to reverse their position and she fends him off with her firm hands, tangling their fingers in a romantic cradle.
“What can I do for you, my lord?”
He gives in and whispers if she wants to please him he would watch her belly swell with his child. The answer is an all too familiar nasty laugh and suddenly she comes into focus, lips inches from his as she says
“We'd only breed contempt.”
He thrashes free of her in a cramped cabin, surrounded by the creaking of ropes, overly hot, hard as iron.
*
Her brother's harebrained plan to take Winterfell works, at the cost of Torrhen's Square. Asha slams her fist on the table at how he's sought to thwart her, not only that, but succeeded in it. It's a scant compensation to convince herself it makes no difference because Deepwood Motte is finally hers, a strategic triumph yet too compact to prowl around, not as many places to hide as her father's sprawling fortress on Pyke.
She climbs higher in this damned corkscrew of a castle and passes Qarl on watch, neglecting his duty in favour of drowsing against the parapet. It's a sharp contrast from how he was the first night they ate in the hall, cheerfully contributing his surplus loot to the pile for dice, eyelids creased in mirth following a jest at the expense of women.
“Stay awake, wretch,” she says, aiming a light kick at him.
He glances up, all the warmth drained from his usually good-natured face, and challenges
“Or what, slattern?” Even bleary as he is, she can see how much he wants to abandon his post and force himself on her. Pin her like a bitch in the main bed chamber and rut his fill, smack her arse hard afterwards.
“Or you're going to get nibbled at by mice,” she teases, then leans down and strokes one soft, smooth cheek with the back of her hand, just to spite him. She expects to pay for it later but it's worth it to know that someone else is riled, thoroughly snubbed and contemplating revenge.
When the letters from her brother do start to come, they request her aid, demanding it as if she is subject to his beck and call. Asha takes great pleasure in ignoring him, imagining him trapped and friendless, presented with no choice but to continue digging his own grave.
*
The men were faithless and unwilling to deviate from his father's command but he was confident, he knew he could do it. Now his own are kneeling at his feet, yet Winterfell rebels against him. He won his prize in the dead of night, and in some respects, he welcomes the insubordination, because it feels like more of an achievement that way. To begin with it is strange being the object of hatred in such a familiar place, but it belongs to him now, so of course he wants the crown to go with that and he requires their submission in kind.
Whatever genuine acceptance he gets, he finds it in Kyra. She is a slippery creature, sly and vulpine, cleverer than most wenches. She knows that she's done well for herself, and she's especially good at giving him the recognition he craves. Theon gorges himself on her and her flattery until it begins to ring hollow in his ears.
“I always knew you'd come back more than what you were when you left.” She says, simpering to amuse him, or maybe to enrage him, he doesn't know, he doesn't feel either.
He lets her undress him, tug his shirt roughly from his waistband and appreciate his leanness, before she's underneath clawing like a cornered animal. Since the wolves went missing, she sleeps uneasily beside him and he cannot blame her for it, just as she cannot understand he encounters apparitions infinitely more terrifying than Esgred in his dreams.
On waking he escapes to the battlements, shuddering either from the cold or from the same unshakeable sense of dread that the peasant Reek is clearly feeding off. Sometimes Wex follows unbidden, trailing his footsteps, and joins him gratingly lively, not yet consigned to die here. It doesn't bode well that his strongest ally in all of this is a feral, twelve year old mute. He cannot afford to have doubts, or appear to be weakening in front of his men. When the army rallies at the gates, he will offer them the choice, and he hopes the boy has enough sense in his head to run.
*
From the look of him it seems her brother is already beaten. He is a picture of lank black hair, waxen pallor and bruised eyes that provide her with a glimpse of the desperation that drove him to kill children.
If he hadn't brought it on himself, she could feel almost sorry for him. The conquest was fairly audacious, but it was his home for ten years, he knew the stones in these walls like she knows the boards in the deck of Black Wind. Riding in, the folk had glared at her with such enmity because they were related, and she saw he'd destroyed any small fondness they might've had for him. However, he doesn't surprise her with his reluctance to give it up.
“I could force you, you know,” she says, wistfully. “Ferry you back home locked in the hold of my ship. For your own safety, of course.”
“You're the one that needs to feel safe.” He hisses, referring to the fact she's about to turn tail and hasten to the relative security of Deepwood, nearer the sea.
“I'm certainly not quite so demonstrative. Did you really think your shameless attempts to upstage me would accomplish anything other than running yourself aground?”
Theon throws her his most condescending stare. “It's not your birthright for me to steal.”
He's unsuspecting as always, so it's hardly difficult to push him against the wall and seize him beneath his breeches in order to possess that rare thing, his full attention, every ounce of it. She couldn't say if she's only doing this to assert herself, or if there are other reasons, intentions buried under her fundamental dislike of him. This infuriating boy that is her brother.
She wants to tell him to forget competition and pride and staying for the sake of it, but those words stick in her throat. Her forehead falls onto his shoulder in frustration. It's the furthest she'll ever get towards cherishing him.
“I ought to have riden like hell to intercept you when you first embarked on this folly.”
Theon's fingers come up to brush the underside of her teats, feather light touch grazing them ineffectually. His gifted, callused hands are shaking, and he can't get a grip like he did before, when he was cocksure and undaunted by her alleged pregnancy. There's too much history between them for such games, now. She makes fast work of his laces and finally slides in against flesh, warm, naked, so open to her even though he knows her for his own sister.
She wraps her hand around and leans in close, capturing his mouth in a bitter kiss, not a tease but real, one that feels like a goodbye.
*
Her father always preferred her but her father's dead now, along with the brother she had almost wanted to admire, after a while. Black Wind has been dragged up the grit-like sand on the other side of the island, and she's changed in ways the thorn-haired lord Tristifer Botley can't accept, yet he'll still stand by her tomorrow, when she will have to affirm her right to rule in front of many who would gainsay her.
Much as it pains her to admit it, even to herself, Theon ought to be here. Instead he chose to remain. Something about it surprised her, in that maybe there was iron there, under all the pretence; he refused to apologize for himself, didn't think twice about endangering himself. It's possible she saw him true when she saw him for the final time.
Now that it's not going to happen, she can bring herself to picture him growing older, slouching on their salvaged throne. He'd have suited that crown, it would have gone with his vicious smile as he dismissed her to do his bidding with a flick of his fingers. She rolls her eyes and thinks it would've been a disaster, he doesn't know us, except he did have something, a singularity, in the way he didn't care to. He was bound to have been impulsive, forceful, reckless, and they'd have lost the old ways but ultimately to the good.
Asha knows full well this is a risk. She believes she can steer the islands on the right course, even if she's just setting her bearings in the opposite direction from the way Euron wants to take them. She agonizes over her plans as it grows late and the moon rises over the bay of Old Wyk.
Then she can't concentrate anymore because she is being loomed over by near six feet of drunk, bloodstained maid, complaining loudly about how every time he plays the finger dance he plays fair yet Eldred Codd remains such a sore loser.
“Why don't you go back outside and scout for me,” she suggests. Her uncle's dogs are still sniffing around and she's confident that even with his ill-advised insobriety, they'd scatter as soon as pick a fight with him. “Your captain is busy thinking.”
He rejects the notion with a twist of his mouth, replying “I think you had better defend yourself, captain.” His eyes have darkened to the colour of storm clouds about to burst, warning her he's about to be worse than impertinent.
Her heart isn't in it and it's somewhat inevitable they become one shadow against the wall of the tent, her arms folded across her chest and the edges of her sex being kneaded by grimy fingertips in amongst coarse black bramble. Pale or altogether colourless fuzz scraping her cheek. She truly doesn't mind suffering for the rest of the night, if it's going to be their last.
They are young but Theon was even younger, barely twenty. He died surrounded by walls he'd thought himself clever to get inside, many miles from the sea, and that might have been kinder, in the long run. A better end than what she'll get, should she lose and jeopardise the lives of everyone that has thrown their lot in with her, the Reader, her Harlaw cousins, Tris and Qarl.
“You can be on top, if you want.” he slurs, so gracious, sweetly perplexed by her compliance, butting his nose insistently into the hollow of her ear. “If you make it worth my while.”
Asha shakes her head. His palms are sweating, and she'll be able to slip her wrists out of his grip by herself soon, given half a chance. “I'm only glad that my little brother was spared all this nonsense.” Or perhaps she's glad that she made it home, and he didn't.
Qarl releases her briefly anyway, fumbling with the cord of the wineskin tangled in his sword belt. His arm snakes back around to restrain her at the waist as he presses it into her hands, conceding “Here's to your brother. He was a precious little shit, but I liked his smile.”
*
He is dragged kicking from a garron, travel worn and disorientated, sick to the stomach. All he can be sure of is that everything's lost and he's tired of being told he'll either walk in an orderly fashion or not at all.
His customary stride is clipped tripping over his own feet, just being shoved along stumbling until they stop. He does his best to stand still and drawn up to his full height as the bandage is unravelled from his eyes. Despite not having been able to see for most of the journey, he is loath to open them for fear of what he's halted in front of. Then he remembers the severe judgement of his father saying at least you are no craven, and he blinks as the gauze falls away. A far cleaner Reek or Ramsay Snow or rather Bolton nods approvingly and says,
“Prince Theon,” soft voice mocking as he bows low, “welcome to the Dreadfort.”
Theon declines to exchange the formality, so his captors push him to the flagstones. He can feel the heat coming through them, and there is an onslaught of scornful laughter, all of it aimed at him.
When it finally subsides, the bastard leers like he knows he doesn't have to be delicate with a Greyjoy, doesn't have to waste time talking terms or honourable conduct. Similarly, Theon knows better than to expect mercy from a so-called Bolton.
Ramsay informs him the smashed imprint of his mail on Theon's face looks ugly, and is met with a storm of insults that only serve to ensure the wound will never get seen to. He's past caring anyway because it's almost numb, and doesn't hurt any more than the rope sores under his torn clothes, or more than the affront of being bound flat into the saddle, blindfolded even though he could not have failed to realize where they were going.
His outburst stirs amusement and Ramsay appraises him in its wake. “Something about the state of squalidness fits him, don't you think?”
He stiffens and has to stand for it. After all, he's often told he's coarse for a lordling, that his general spindly fragility isn't much complimented by his foul mouth. He can see it might amount to justice in some people's eyes for him to be brought so low, or perhaps not, when he was never very high minded in the first place. Theon would rather have died, consumed by fire, gutted by a sword thrust between his ribs or crushed under Smiler's iron-shod hooves.
“Asha's still in the north,” He guesses, clutching at straws. “She's smart, she'll know you took me and she'll not let me rot here, you can count on that.”
He hates her, but the thought of her is oddly comforting and he wishes she was here to call him a baby, to remind him ironborn don't beg, or wheedle, or tremble in the presence of vermin such as Ramsay.
“How touching.” Ramsay says dismissively, then gestures for one of the men holding him to come forward.
“Throw the Greyjoy runt in the furthest cell on the lowest stair.” He instructs, all the time staring into Theon's eyes. “Don't feed him for three days. Take him out on the fourth and offer him slops from the pig pen, see if he'll eat them.”
Theon finds his innate disdain again then and sprays spit, rising as if to spring before he's caught and pulled back.
“I won't.” He says, ashen-faced, brave, battling hard to calm himself. “I'll bite his fingers off, first.”
Ramsay smiles, undeterred or maybe even pleased. “If you refuse, it'll be your own fingers you have to worry about.”
It comes back to him in a rush, standing at Robb's side, identifying the Bolton sigil in the mass of banners, listening to nauseating stories about the ways they mutilate their prisoners. Theon heaves and retches dry, having nothing to bring up. He has seldom conjectured of worse indignities than being mounted, or tricked by his sister, yet it occurs to him he is about to learn of them intimately, the culmination in a long line of extravagant and painful mistakes.