Work Text:
Asha Greyjoy, it turns out, is more reasonable than her lord father was. Or maybe she’s forced to be, but it’s not Robb’s problem. As Robb lists his terms, she looks straight at him, narrowed eyes. He can see her thinking over each word he says, and when he’s done and she seems to be considering the entire thing, he can’t help it – he thinks about how similar and different she is from her brother. They have the same hair and similar eyes, and he used to hold himself up the way she’s doing now. But that’s where the similarities end – Theon never was one for patience, while she’s taking her sweet time finding an answer. And Robb can’t help thinking that they aren’t the same at all now – her hands, roughened fingers brushing over the table while her wrists are chained, are whole. Her hair is dark, still, and if someone saw them now, they’d think that he was the oldest of the two.
“Lord Stark.” Not Your Grace. Then again, Robb didn’t expect her to use any other term than the lowest she could find. “Forgive me if I might not have understood your terms correctly, but you’re offering me a crown while you hold me in chains?”
“That’s a precaution. I’m not the only one who takes decisions here.” Stannis had insisted, and Robb hadn’t gone out of his way to disagree. Everyone knows that she’s dangerous.
The way her brother isn’t anymore.
“But yes. These are the same terms I offered your father once. Give me your fleet and when the war is over and as far as I’m concerned or as far as Stannis Baratheon is, you can have your crown and you can rule your precious islands.”
“My uncle won that throne.”
“But your kingsmoot can be invalidated if someone who had the rights to attend did not.”
Asha’s eyes narrow again and then her pretty mouth morphs into a sneer. “You have my brother.”
That’s not a question. Robb nods. Everyone knows that, she might be informed as well.
“And that’s how you’re taking your revenge on him, Lord Stark?”
Robb can’t help it – he visibly flinches at that. Asha looks surprised for a moment, as if she hadn’t been expecting that reaction, and Robb wishes that this wasn’t all as wrong as it is.
After all, she’s right. That’s what everyone thinks. That’s what everyone is supposed to think. And that’s what is going to satisfy everyone as well – what’s better, to punish Theon, than to take away everything he had been attempting to gain when he invaded Winterfell?
If only it was true.
“That’s – that’s the way it looks. And it’s – I guess it’s the way it is. But… it’s also not.”
“How so?”
“He wanted me to.”
Her eyes harden at that. “Excuse me, but knowing my brother, I'm not too inclined to take your word for it.”
“Believe me, I feel exactly the same way. But I’m not lying.”
“Oh, you’re not. May I talk to him?”
“Very well.”
Robb calls the guard outside, gives him orders and waits.
Theon gets there maybe ten minutes later. The moment he sees his sister and she sees him, Robb wishes he could just leave them alone to sort out whatever’s not sorted between them. Theon can only look at her for a moment before staring down at his boots, and she has her mouth parted, eyes wide, as if she can’t reconcile what she sees with what she knows.
Robb wishes her luck. He’s had the same problem for a fucking long while.
“Sister,” Theon says first, and it startles her.
“For – he wasn’t lying,” she says looking at Robb and then back at Theon.
Theon snorts while he takes a step forward, putting his maimed hand on the table. “If this is about his terms and you find them acceptable, do it.”
“You’re seriously telling me that you’re giving up your rights?”
“And since when do you all care about that? When I came back, I don’t remember anyone being overjoyed about me reclaiming those rights. I don’t even remember anyone trying to ransom me.” He breathes in, putting his other hand on the table. Then he moves forward, speaking so low that Robb can barely hear him. “I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. I’ll sign that paper so you can try to win that kingsmoot again, and that’s it. I’m not – I’m not doing it against my will.”
Asha walks on the table’s side until she’s standing next to him. Robb wishes he could just fucking leave. He isn’t sure that he should be seeing this. He moves his seat backwards, but it’s not enough – they speak in hushed tones, but it’s still enough to hear them.
“What happened to you?” she asks, and for a moment Robb feels a deep empathy – he knows how she’s feeling. He went through that himself, and she’s still Theon’s sister. He might claim that they aren’t close and never were, but she’s still his blood, after all.
Theon shakes his head – his hands are visibly trembling. “Ask him,” he mutters nodding towards Robb. “I don’t – I can’t do this.”
And then he turns his back on her and almost runs out of the room.
She looks somewhat shaken when she sits in front of Robb again.
“You know,” she starts, “I can’t – I can’t believe that I have to ask you. Then again, he has a point.” She takes a breath, looks up at him again. “What happened to him?”
“Ramsay Snow,” Robb says. “He also cut some of the fingers on his feet. Knocked off some of his teeth, too. And – his chest. Maybe on your islands they care naught for what goes in the rest of the world, but here everyone knows that Boltons flay their enemies. And even bastard Boltons follow the example. That particular bastard wasn’t the best of his lot.” He doesn’t add anything else. There are things that he doesn’t need to talk about, either.
“Are you planning to kill him when this is done?”
“I’m not planning to kill him at all.” No point in lying to himself anymore – he knows he won’t do it. He might as well say it out loud. “Turns out he never killed my brothers and that it was Ramsay Snow destroying Winterfell.”
“Wait. And that’s it?”
Robb shrugs, wishing he had the force of will to put it into words properly. “The terms I just offered you and that I offered your father… they were his idea, and don’t think that this entire deal makes me happy. I’m – I’m not over what he did. But – I get why he did it. And by now, I have no taste for unnecessary blood. I wanted his head and then I saw that he already got worse than that. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.”
Asha nods once, licks her lips. Then she looks up at him again.
“Very well, Lord Stark. I accept.”
“Good. I’ll call for someone to take off your chains.”
“Wait. There’s something I need to ask you first.” She takes a breath, worrying her lip between her teeth. “It’s – I know he’s your prisoner and you have all the rights to refuse me. But… it’s our mother. She wasn’t the same after your father took him away. These days, she’s not well, but she keeps on asking where he is. She won’t live for long, I fear.”
“You want him to go to Pyke with you.” It’s not a question.
“On your terms, obviously.”
The first instinct is refusing. But when Robb thinks about it for a moment, he realizes that it’s not because he doesn’t trust her.
It’s because he doesn’t want Theon out of his sight. He shakes his head, trying to stop himself from thinking about that – he can’t do it right now. For a moment he ponders whether he should go to Pyke, but he has to be back in Riverrun sooner rather than later and him going to the Iron Islands would probably ruin the entire thing. He can’t imagine ironborns being too happy about him being there. And then he thinks about his own mother, who won’t ever miss him anymore and who died slain, and whose hair Ramsay Snow threw in front of Theon.
Damn it.
“I’ll talk to him,” he answers.
“You’ll… talk to him?”
Robb shrugs before standing up. “I never wanted for things to be like this. I never wanted for him to be my hostage. At least for this, I might want to hear his opinion.”
Asha stands up, too, and Robb calls for the turnkey outside the room. She rubs her wrists when he takes her chains off.
“I’ll see you tomorrow to discuss the arrangements,” Robb says. “If I were you, I’d plan my speech already.”
She doesn’t answer him, but gives him a tight nod before walking towards the room where she had been staying while holding the castle.
--
He finds Theon in his own room, not that he had expected otherwise.
“Listen, your sister had a request concerning you.”
“What?” he replies, his tone clipped.
“She says – she says your mother isn’t well and that she keeps on asking for you. And that she might die soon. She – she wants you to go with her to Pyke.”
Theon’s entire body goes rigid at that. “And what did you tell her?”
Robb tries to keep his tone neutral. “I said I’d ask you first.”
“You’d – you’d ask me.”
“Listen, in theory I shouldn’t let you out of my sight. If you don’t want to go back there, I’ll just refuse. But if you want it, I can send someone with you or come up with some lie to justify it, or both.”
“Why do you even care?”
“The last time I spoke to my mother, it wasn’t – it could have been a more pleasant exchange. I was feeling sorry about it, and then I was told that she was murdered at my uncle’s wedding. You still have yours – if you want to see her, I won’t be the one forcing you to stay here.” Not to mention that from what he gathered, Theon’s mother might have been the only Greyjoy on the Iron Islands who had in fact missed his presence, and he doesn’t want to be the reason why Theon never sees her again before she dies. But he doesn’t say any of that.
“What – what did my sister say, specifically?”
“That she keeps on asking for you.”
“And would she even recognize me?” Theon’s voice is so thin you can barely hear it.
Robb looks at him – good question. He certainly looks miles better than he had when Robb found him in that dungeon. He’s still too thin, and his hair is still mostly gray, but he did put on a bit of weight, enough that his cheeks don’t look as sunken as they were. With false teeth and another six months of eating regularly maybe he wouldn’t be too bad off, but as it is, there’s not much that can be done in a short time. And they don’t have six months.
“She’s your mother,” Robb settles on. “If anyone would, it’d be her.”
“So… it could be arranged?”
Robb takes a breath, turning the entire thing over in his head. “Well, I couldn’t go – it’s out of the question. If your sister has to win that kingsmoot all over again, the last thing she needs is me standing behind her. I could – I could ask Stannis if he has someone that I might send with you who would make sure that nothing happens and that you get back.”
“Why asking Stannis?”
“My men know you. I wouldn’t trust any of them with it.”
Theon swallows, his shoulders relaxing slightly. “You know that I wouldn’t stay.” It’s whispered, but Robb hears it, all right.
Robb moves so that he’s standing next to Theon, his back against the wall. “I do. But they don’t.”
It hits Robb all of a sudden – isn’t it how it always was? He remembers his father and mother warning him not to get attached when Theon had just arrived at Winterfell (and he ignored them, in the way a five year old excited for a new presence in the house would), he remembers everyone else reminding him that you should never trust ironborns, he remembers his lady mother warning him that trusting Theon with that alliance was a bad idea.
Gods, and he was just so blind to it all. Looking back on it, he isn’t even surprised of what went down. Who knows what he’d have done if he had spent his life surrounded by people that didn’t trust him?
He hates this. He hates this all. When he reaches down and wraps his fingers around Theon’s, five against three, he feels a pang of guilt (would Jeyne understand this?), but that doesn’t stop him.
“I wouldn’t resent you if you wanted to stay back. But I can’t let you. You know that, right?”
“You already know what I want.”
Robb swallows, wishing he could let this conversation die here.
Except that he can’t.
“Really? Because that’s – it’s not going to change. You can’t be anything other than – than this. Everyone else has to think that I keep you alive out of spite.”
“And is it the truth?” For a moment Robb can hear sarcasm in Theon’s voice, and he almost rejoices, but Theon’s face doesn’t suggest that he’s done that knowingly.
“No.” He doesn’t add the truth is that I can’t hate you. Or the truth is that I want things back the way they were and I know that they can’t ever be.
“Then I don’t care. I don’t even want to know the real reason. It’s enough.”
Robb swallows, that sentence making him hurt in places that he hadn’t know could hurt that much.
“I’d rather you would. Want to know that, I mean.”
“Is that even important?”
Robb is definitely sorry that he killed Ramsay Snow so quickly. “All things considered, yes.”
“Tell me then.” He sounds dejected, as if he’s expecting an answer that he won’t like.
“I don’t need a shadow following me. And I don’t – I don’t want whatever he thought you should be. I’m not keeping you alive so that you can be that all over, except with less flaying. You stupid – I miss you.”
“You what?”
“I miss you. Inappropriate jokes, endless tales about how many women you had in one night and unnerving smiling and everything fucking else.”
“I won’t – I can’t be that person anymore. You know that, right?” Theon asks, voice shaking, and Robb’s fingers grip his remaining ones harder.
“Of course I do. I’m not that kind of fool. And it doesn’t change anything. I don’t know if we can fix it, and I know things can’t ever be as they were, but that’s never going to happen if you think that it’s pity or that I like any of this.”
“He always used to say that I smiled at the wrong things.” No question about who he is.
“Maybe you did, but I always liked it.”
Robb holds his breath as he raises up his free hand, his thumb brushing over Theon’s thin, pale lips. He feels them curving imperceptibly upwards.
--
Robb explains Stannis the situation, even if he phrases it as being worried that his hostage might escape or get killed rather than actually caring about it at all. Stannis tells him that he has the right man for the job.
--
One week later, Asha Greyjoy and her men are leaving from the nearest port. Ser Davos Seaworth, Stannis’s Hand, is on the ship as well, eyes fixed on Theon, who’s standing at Robb’s side.
“See that you come back,” Robb says, loud enough that everyone hears him, his hand around Theon’s arm.
“I’ll be waiting,” he adds under his breath before pulling his hand away. Theon gives him the slightest hint of a nod before wrapping himself in the cloak he’s wearing and walking slowly towards the ship.
As Robb turns his back and rides back towards his men, he hopes that this trip to Pyke ends better than the first one did.