Author's Notes: Written for the asoiafkinkmeme prompt: "Jon/Robb, Robb/Theon, Jon/The Wall. Theon's unrequited feelings for Robb, Robb's hidden, shameful yearning for Jon, Jon's longing to be a hero." This seemingly takes place in a confusing amalgamation of book and show canon, where both Jeyne Poole and Ros exist. But most of the details are vague enough you can slot those in as you like.
Theon wakes in the night sometimes, gasping and hard, tears running down his cheeks. Salt, he thinks as the water washes his mouth. Tastes like the sea.
He smirks bitterly. That would taste like salt too.
Robb never sees, because how could he, staring straight ahead into his future, a dawn so brilliant it's a wonder he's not blind yet. The light barely reaches Theon, deep in the Drowned God's watery halls, but sometimes Robb lets him hold his hand and if Theon squints, he can see it. He knows he shouldn't want to.
Robb does not literally, physically hold his hand.
Sometimes he thinks everyone else sees. Lady Catelyn, who has never liked him, a Riverlander who could never trust an Ironborn (and Robb looks just like her) – her eyes warn Robb not to love him so, not to love him back. Lady Sansa, with her songs and her silks (Theon wears as much silk as Sansa ever has, and it would disgrace him to be a lady but he would, he would be Robb's lady), if anyone would know when one man loved another it would be her. Ros looked at him once like she pitied him, like she knew, and she with her auburn curls and her arse he takes from behind and her name, how could she not know?
And then there is the bastard.
They have always hated one another, as much as they can when there is no real reason to, and perhaps it is not each other they hate at all but a bastard and a hostage, it's perfectly safe for them to hate one another. No-one will go to war for them. Perhaps it is Robb they hate. Robb who they love so much but who will always be better than them, always too far away, out of reach.
The bastard is Robb's brother. Theon could say otherwise but it would be a lie, and he knows how to lie but he won't right now. He will always be beneath Robb but it doesn't matter because he will always belong to Robb, he is a Snow, he is of the North, and all the North will belong to Robb one day.
He must know. He sees Theon, sees him in a way Robb never could. They have fought for years over who loved Robb the more. Theon is not Robb's brother, not even a bastard one, and he cannot love him like a brother so how else could he love him? The bastard must know.
Robb knocks on his door at night and asks if he's alright. Theon tells him to fuck off and he does, but he knocks. He lets Theon hold his hand. He lets Theon see the sun that shines upon Lady Catelyn's rivers. He lets Theon love him so much he fears he will drown in it (no true Ironborn fears drowning).
So Theon wakes, and he fucks Ros, and he dreams of fucking Lady Catelyn, and he dreams of marrying Lady Sansa. And he hates Jon.
Theon will never be Robb's brother, but Robb is still his. Robb is the only brother he will ever know. Theon would never. He could never.
Jon is dark against white snow, and Robb wishes he could say that is the reason he always sees him so quickly, but it is a lie and Father has warned him against lies.
Jon prays in the godswood and Robb prays in the sept. He knows he should pray in both, but in the godswood he can only ever think of Jon and commit the sins he is praying for forgiveness over. What would my mother think, and he knows what Mother would think: she would blame Jon, claim he had seduced her son somehow, and so Robb will never tell her. He will lie to her, because he has no choice. Everything he does is a sin or a lie, and to lie is a sin.
The godswood is the north, with its red eyes ever-watching (red like his hair) and the North will belong to Robb one day but he will never belong to it, not fully. He is too much his mother's son, her seven gods and seven hells and bright blue eyes like a sky that never comes to the North, not even at the height of summer. He is of summer, and winter is coming.
Jon is of winter, and seven hells how Robb would like to see him come.
Jon goes to the wall and Robb thinks The Starks have manned the wall for thousands of years, because Jon is a Snow but he is more Stark than Robb will ever be. He has no choice, he has no mother, he has nothing else to be. Robb's mother has made sure of that, made sure Jon could never be hers, and perhaps that is the Mother's mercy because Jon will only ever be half his brother, and Robb will only ever be half an abomination.
Wearing black Jon goes to the wall, and Robb thinks it was always his colour. It is the complete opposite of the snow that surrounds him, Stark white, but it does not clash and when Robb looks in his eyes, they are the same sharp grey. White and black and grey, they are not colours at all, the North is not a place for colour. Robb is all colour, red like dragonfire and blue like his mother's rivers (red like weirwood sap and blue like the sea, the sea that belongs to North and South alike and to no-one more than anyone else, except perhaps for–)
Jon goes because he thinks he does not belong here, and truly it is not Jon who doesn't belong here but Robb lets him go anyway. He thinks of his mother's eyes (his eyes), cold with hate (cold as winter). How bastards, they say, are deceitful and dishonourable. Perhaps I am the bastard, and Jon is the trueborn, he thinks, not for the first time. He is dishonourable (he dishonours Jon with his mind every night), and he is deceitful (he lies about Jon every moment he is not kissing him), while Jon has never been either – and their father makes it clear to be a Stark is to be honourable, and to be true. Robb knows who is truly Father's heir.
He went to the crypts once to see his Uncle Brandon, to see this man who should have been his mother's husband; who should, it follows, have been his father. He looked up at the face carved in stone, a face that may have had colour or may not, but he would never know. It did him no good. His uncle Brandon was nothing like him, was nothing like anyone Robb knows (except perhaps for–).
Robb lets Jon go and it is a lie, it is a lie to let this happen like this is how it should be. But he cannot tell the truth. He cannot tell Jon he cannot go, for he is a true Stark, and Robb is a bastard born of lust and betrayal (he betrays Jon with his mind every night). His mother would never let him. He feels her eyes when he hugs Jon goodbye (his eyes).
Robb lies for honour, what little of it a bastard has. Jon goes because he thinks he is not loved. But, Robb thinks, better not to be loved at all than to be loved like this.
Jon does not feel like he belongs on the wall. But he has never belonged anywhere, so he barely notices the shift. He looks around and no man here looks like he belongs – not even his uncle Benjen, who has been here longer than Jon remembers. This is a place for bastards, crooks and seventeenth sons, men whose lives are forfeit – or men who would forfeit their lives. No-one here belongs anywhere. Here is as good a place to not belong as any.
He thinks of little Bran, his dreams of becoming a knight of the Kingsguard, wrapped in a white cloak and royal splendour (he thinks of little Bran, asleep as Jon said goodbye, perhaps never to wake). Jon wraps himself tighter in his black cloak. He won't pretend his dreams were any less childish than Bran's. To belong to the realm like he could not belong to his own family. To find honour in never being thought of again. But it is not a fantasy anymore, he is here now, and truly he is still a child but after all, what is a bastard but someone's child?
He thinks of how happy the Starks must be, now the one blight on their honour is gone (now Bran is hurt and may be dead, now Father and Sansa and Arya have all left the place they belong, now Robb is warden of the North and he is not ready, Jon knows he isn't). He thinks of Lady Catelyn, how her blue eyes must fill with joy every time she remembers he's gone. Those same eyes worn by Robb, and Sansa, and Bran, and even little Rickon – they all wear those eyes with nothing but hate for him, and perhaps he could never truly love any of them, if they could never truly love him.
(But he knows he does love them, truly, and that they love him too.)
Arya does not have those eyes, and she loves him best. He loves her best as well, but he does not think she loves him truly. She has his grey eyes, his dark hair – the Stark look, and Jeyne Poole calls her a bastard for it. Arya is his sister, he is her brother, they look the same – but he is a bastard and she is not. Arya doesn't know that, she lets Jeyne's words sink into her skin until they run through her blood (Stark blood) but Jon knows it all too well. Jeyne is just a child, really, but so is Arya (but so is Jon). Jeyne doesn't know what it means to be Arya any more than Arya knows what it means to be Jon.
For some reason, Jon thinks of Theon Greyjoy, who is not his brother (but who is Robb's, and perhaps is Sansa's and Bran's and Rickon's and even Arya's – Jon cannot be sure). Theon does not wear Lady Stark's eyes either, his eyes are green like the sea (the sea is not green, Jon thinks, and then realises he has never seen the sea). His eyes must be as happy as hers though. Theon has always thought himself Robb's true brother, far truer than Lord Stark's bastard, and now with Jon gone and Bran perhaps dead and Rickon little more than a babe, he is Robb's truest brother. That must please him.
Or perhaps not. Jon does not know what he knows, but he resolves not to know it. He has no interest in Greyjoy's secrets. Greyjoy thinks him a bastard, without honour, and Jon thinks someone scraped all the honour there was in Theon out – it was Theon who gave him to that woman, Ros, with red curls (Jon does not know what he knows) and Jon could not go through with it, but he knows Theon goes through with it all the time – but Jon can honour him. Even if Theon doesn't deserve it. Even if Jon is only doing so to prove a point.
(Sometimes he wonders how much honour he would have if he did not have to prove he had any.)
Jon wraps his black cloak tighter once more. He is a man of the Night's Watch now, except he is no man yet and he does not think you are ever of the Night's Watch. You are merely in it. You cannot belong to it, for it is nothing to belong to. But Jon will never belong to anything else, will never find glory or honour or love in anything else.
(He has found love, he has always been loved, but not enough. The love has never been better than anything.)
Jon wraps himself in black and honour and childish dreams. They are nothing. And he has chosen nothing.