Chapter Text
It would make sense to begin with the Wall, wouldn’t it.
It should have been the main thing Theon paid attention to, on his way up.
It was gigantic, foreboding, unavoidable. It loomed over the North; the whiteness of the ice glowing ethereally bright in the sunlight. He had always thought of ice and snow as bleak white; not these multi colors of blues and greys.
But riding behind Podrick on the back of a horse, clinging to the squire like a lifeline, Theon can do no more but emptily stare at the spaces between his fingers, where only the stumps remain. The cut on his left index had been the cleanest, with barely a stub left, whereas there was at least half an inch of his right ring finger left, the end uneven and crude looking.
Of course, most of Theon was quite crude looking.
He wonders what Podrick, or Brienne see when they look at his hands. Maybe they see an unpleasant reminder of what could have been if they hadn’t gotten to Sansa fast enough. Perhaps they, as southerners, only saw the savage cruelty of the North, the confirmation that the Northmen truly were ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’.
And he does not wonder what Sansa thinks, as she rides alone in front of them, her long red hair knotted and matted and beautiful , despite it all. She rides alone in front of the rest, setting a pace that speeds up more and more the closer Castle Black rolls into sight. Her clothes are torn and ragged but she is regal sitting on top of her horse, back straight and chin up like she was balancing a crown on her head.
Theon clutches onto Podrick like he’d die without the human touch, and Sansa doesn’t look back once.
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When they do arrive, almost thirty days after leaving Winterfell, Theon does what Reek does best: he hides.
He slips into the background, not bothering to pull a hood over his face or to try entering through a back door; he simply moves away, following the stable boys as they lead away the horses, leaving his three companions in the courtyard.
Before he disappears into the low rotting stables though, he sees a figure emerge from the battlements, and his heart clenches so hard he thought it might have stopped forever.
The years had been kind to Jon Snow -- kinder at least, then they had been to him.
He is too far away for Theon to see the finer details of his face or expression, but even at a distance there are certain differences he can see:He’s taller now, bearded like Robb had been the last time Theon had seen him, with hair as dark as a raven's wing. He’s broader, carries himself with the certain authority as he’d seen Ned Stark do all those years before. He had always been handsome, that Jon Snow.
Theon flinches, hard, and three impulses shoot themselves like arrows through his mind: The part of him that is distinctly Reek screams at him to go to him, to drop to his knees and beg for his head to be sliced off cleanly, while the part of him that remembers what it was like to be Theon wants to go up to the bastard, to grab him and shake him and rage at him, to ask him why he never came when Robb called. Theon might be a turncloak but at least he’d fought for Robb at all. Not like Snow. Unlike Snow.
But the part of him that was both Theon and Reek decided on the third impulse; To run, to hide. For no matter what name he goes by he will always be a craven, will always resort to cowardice.
So Reek-Theon Theon-Reek do what they’ve always done best and disappear into the stables, into Castle Black and the cold vastness of the Wall.
He wonders what the rats here taste like.
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He doesn’t know if Jon know’s he is here.
The Night’s Watch themselves of course know that he’s here. He takes food from the kitchen and was assigned a room he hardly sleeps in. Sansa makes him sit by her every other night while she stitches by the fire. Brienne nods and Podrick smiles at him every time he passes by them in the yard.
And he’s grateful that most of the sworn brothers are southerners, because they mostly ignore him, in contrast to the insults and hateful glares that the Northmen send his way.
Whispers of Turncloak and Traitor do not follow him; they are spat directly into his face. He prefers it that way really -- in all those rumors and jibes they rant and rage about Theon Greyjoy, which fills him with some kind of broken, mad glee. He’d deal with the words and threats and the half-hearted beatings for the rest of his life as long as no one ever calls him by the other name again.
When he tells Sansa about it, her face twists in a ugly fashion, lips puckered like she just sucked on a lemon.
“They shouldn’t,” she tells him, but does little more. She spends most of her days walking around, Brienne hot on her heels, walking fearlessly through the wildling camps and atop battlements not with a certain purpose, but just to prove that she can.
Maybe Ramsey’s mistake was to keep her locked in that room the whole time.
He sees that her and her brother break fast and hold councils together. Watches the heavy oak door close many times, wondering what they discuss behind it. He creeps through the corridors and the halls, learning the secrets etched into the stone and carried by the rats. He learns to walk them up and down without anybody noticing a thing, a mere shadow on the wall, something the black brothers walk past without notice.
-ek, it rhymes with snea-
He’d like to think that Jon did know, but like Sansa cared too little to do anything about it.
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Someone who certainly knew was Davos Seaworth, who approached him around a fortnight into his stay.
He was standing on the battlements of Castle Black, looking over towards the south over the Gift. The sky is clear and without the heavy snow falling Theon feels like he can see all of the North, feels as safe as he is capable of now being able to see if anyone were to attack, seeing as if they were to, they’d do it from the south.
Of course though, that isn’t completely true, is it?
But the almost dream-like fear he has of this ‘Night King’, and these ‘White Walkers’ will never compare to the terror he has already experienced in his life. In fact, a part of him is almost relieved to hear about these vacuous animals, reanimated ice creatures whose only purpose is to maim and kill.
There is some kind of sick solace he can find in the fact that they are mindless creatures, more interested in picking apart Theon’s flesh rather than his brain.
The Onion Knight has an interesting presence to him, a kind but honest nature that reminds Theon oddly of Dagmar Cleftjaw, more so with his solid sincerity rather than Cleftjaw’s thirst for glory.
Davos approaches him with his hands behind his back and his head lowered, a motion that surprises Theon before he remembers that this man was not born highborn, wincing as he imagines how Theon would have treated him in the past because of this. He tenses.
“Fine evening,” Ser Davos says, head inclined in a voice people had used to call him ‘Lord Greyjoy’ with. Theon’s thankful he didn’t.
Names get confusing nowadays, and not even addressing him by name at all was surprisingly nice. Not Sansa’s exasperated way of saying ‘Theon’, or the growls and sneers of ‘Turncloak’ or even the not-so-faint memory of the name given to her by the man who remade hin.
So maybe it would be nice to maybe not have any name at all.
“I-Yes. Ser Davos,” he answers, his nod more of twitchy jerk than he’d like it to be.
There’s a short span of silence then, stretching out like the wasteland of the North before them. The elder man clears his throat.
“Lotta nothin’ out here, isn’t there,” his voice was gruff, like the sound of thick rope dropping onto deck, “Makes me wish I was closer to the sea,” he huffs, “Or at least somewhere where it wasn’t so bloody cold.”
He pauses, glancing at Theon sideways, like he expects him to laugh. He refrains from doing so. He doesn’t even acknowledge his statement.
The pause stretches into a silence, and if Theon had any social awareness left in him, he would have found it awkward.
Davos turns slightly, almost like he was about to leave, before turning back to him, fixing him with the intense kind of gaze he more commonly associate with Ned Stark -- not for being a lordly look, or the kind of look only a father may have; but the way of regarding Theon as if they understand something they think Theon never will. An unintentional arrogant humility that he might have hated seeing five years ago.
“You know,” Davos begins, “You and I are not so different-” Theon stops himself from snorting. “-Even if it might seem so at first glance. We are both of the sea, for one; Outsiders in this bloody freezing wasteland” The Onion Lord has a nice way of speaking, a calmness akin to sand gently slipping through one's fingers. He relaxes slightly.
“We are both turncloaks.” Now, Theon can’t stop himself from snorting at this. “You are no turncloak,” he whispers, feeling pride over the fact that his voice doesn’t shake.
“Ay,” the Lord says, “You would probably not see me as one. I probably wouldn’t either.” He leans onto the bannister. “But if you were to ask the Baratheon men, now dead and frozen beneath the fields and woods of the North, who I abandoned in their time of need, or the starving women and men of Flea Bottom, of whom which I used to be one before being knighted, you’d find they may not agree.”
Theon frowns. “I thought Stannis sent you away?”
“It doesn’t matter if I left or I fled, in the end they all died and I was not there to help them.”
Before he turns fully and leaves, Theon sees something in Ser Davos’ eyes, and with a jolt, realizes the haunted, regretful expression is one he knows too well.
I should have died with him.
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The wind howls and barks like a pack of dogs, whipping around Theon’s hair and thin cloak as he stands atop the wall he was taught separated the wicked from the good, which he now realizes does nothing but separate those who are alive from those who are not. The night is dark and the only thing that keeps the emptiness from swallowing him whole are the few lamps that dimly light up the pathway on the Wall.
He doesn’t know why he’s up here. He thinks it might be to die.
But whens he steps to close too the edge, all he can feel is the lack of Sansa’s shaking hand in his, can’t quite convince himself that he hears the horses in the yard and the servants im halls, unable to persuade himself that he, like in Winterfell, will fly when his feet leave the floor.
He does not jump, and therefore he does not soar nor fall. He does not step away from the ledge either. The bones that Ramsey had broken hurt in the cold so he aches in his jaw, his arms, his legs, feet, chest, hips and hands.
Then he hears the sound of snow being crushed underfoot.
Jon Snow had been pretty as a boy, sullen and shy but pretty nonetheless. If he hadn’t been a bastard Theon thinks he might have even been quite popular among the pretty maids of the North. Lovely black curls, a homely face; steel eyes. Steels eyes that he now does not dare look into.
There is a moment then in which Theon steels himself for anger or violence, to be ignored or to be ruined. There is no reaction from the bastard, as he stands there atop the Wall, staring at the boy who used to torment him.
The Ironborn exhales shakily then, trying to gather all the courage left inside him( to ignore the hope) to say the words.
„Are you going to execute me, Lord Commander?“ Theon whispers, trying to stop his broken teeth from chattering in the cold.
„No.“ A simple word spoken softly and Theon felt what was left of his heart crack. He giggles, high pitched and ugly. He turns to Jon now, see’s him properly now, see’s him clearly even in the dim light.
He sees the scars and the trimmed beard that hadn’t been there when he’d left all those years ago. Jon’s grown taller now, looks more sure of himself. There’s something authoritative and almost lordly about the way Jon Snow walks and stands, strong Stark brow and stern expression emphasized in the yellow light.
Theon looks ahead, and sees Ned Stark's shadow in front of him.
„W-Why?“ He asks, feeling tears jump into his eyes. It felt like he was floating, tip-toeing the edge of the Wall with his eyes closed. „Why not?“
Jon gives him a long sullen look, that exact look he’d always give Theon back at Winterfell, in the big warm halls of the Great Keep when Robb was sitting next to him, laughing at his bawdy jokes. Theon had always mistaken that look for envy, but-
„Because I fear that’s what you’d want.“
Theon laughs, loudly and shrill, like the sound a rabbit makes when killed. He laughs so hard he doubles over, fat tears slipping down from his eyes and freezing on his hollow cheeks, his face twisted into a ugly mix of disbelief and despair. He laughs and screams and cries, the wind howling as the sun threatens to crawl up from beneath the horizon, painting the sky the color peeled off skin and blood. Until Theon lays kneeling, sobbing on the cold icy floor.
And Jon, for his part, doesn’t look away once.