ASHA
Wierwoods are considered sacred among the followers of the old faith, Asha thought numbly as her legs carried her through the small clearings between the tall, white trees with leaves as red as blood and wine. It was a dull thought of common knowledge, a space filler to keep her legs moving. Asha wasn't alone; there was a jumble of small lords and ladies, not to mention a few men of Lord Stannis's camp following behind her as she moved along the uneven, ageless ground. She would not thinkhisname, not until she saw him there.There on his knees in front of the block, her mind whispered. Asha mashed a clothed hand across her face to fight the tears; when she pulled her hand away from her cheek, it had been rubbed raw.
Towards the center of the grove, Asha stopped, aware that her legs and shoulders shook. Her face was emotionless, but her heart thumped hard against those iron ribs of hers. Asha found herself clutching her shirt, catching her fingernails in the steel rings of her under armor. Breathing hard, she started again, seeing Davos Seaworth standing idly; Asha supposed Seaworth's body blocked the scene that awaited her.
"Lady Greyjoy," Seaworth said. As it rung in her ears and through the trees, Asha thought she heard a softness in the man's hard tone. "Onion Knight," she answered, trying to pull her lips into the casual smirk she had once worn so well. Davos coughed lightly. "I meant no offense," Seaworth started, his eyes shifting from her boots to her face. "King Stannis asks that you join him, youalone." Seaworth's eyes turned back to the twenty or so men and women following Asha. She said nothing as she side stepped Seaworth, nearly pushing him to the ground by the might of her trot towards Stannis.
The man,Asha thought,he has never stood more stiff, her jaw tightening at Stannis's dark eyes on what she supposed was her brother. She couldn't look at Theon, not just yet.Theon, Theon, Theon, her mind chanted, afraid of what he had been made into. For many nights, she had slept alone in her chambers, refusing to believe the words that had been written about him. In letters, in physical words, they all seemed to be of some truth. No matter how many times Asha heard about Theon, they were of the same accord, but they passed right through her. She couldn't possibly believe that the little boy taken from Pyke as a ward could be anything other than the boy that came back so many years later.
A grimace took up her face as she met eyes with Stannis Baratheon; he looked to be running ragged himself. The purple bags under his eyes looked to be weighing the rest of this thin face down. Stannis stood tall and straight, the sword at his side paled in comparison to the rage in his eyes. Something was painted in the reflection of the sword's blade – the wooden block… Asha ripped her eyes from the sight and stopped short.One of his eyes have gone grey, blinded by illness, she thought, an ice cold dagger ripping up her spine like lightning. She could feel the hair on her neck raised as she spoke to Stannis, as coldly as she could. "I'll have my moments with him now." Stannis merely nodded at her, but she found she couldn't turn.
All the nights I spent pretending I was harder, stronger than the iron in my blood,Asha thought, turning slowly, looking at the red leaves, taking them in. Her heart raced, studying the face on the tree behind the block and the shell… The shell of her brother, the bones and rags that ones held a soul, and the mind of a lordly boy who didn't know any better.I bet he knows now, Asha thought, a kind of wicked part of her mind laughing in the stress. The Wierwood behind Theon appeared to be laughing, too; the eyes had collected the wine colored sap, and had dripped down the tree's cheeks, but its mouth was open wide and set in a joyous fashion.
She broke there, her eyes finally meeting Theon's form. Her legs collapsed under her, but she moved forward, the previous season's rotting leaves lapping at her hips like the sea. He gasped at her movements, shoving himself away as if her touch might crush him. Theon's face pulled into a sagging, silent scream as Asha kept crawling toward him, her hand out as the senseless tears sped down her face. "Theon," she croaked, her hands slapping hard on the block, trying to bring him back. Theon's good eye shifted hard around her face. "A-Asha," he stuttered, his mind a buzz with confusion. "T-they saw they will take my h-head," he breathed to her, his tongue scraping against the roof of his mouth like sand paper.
Asha crawled around the block slowly, a silent cry in her throat, her face still twisted in sadness. With her mouth open wide, her head fell and she cried into the sleeve of her shirt. She came up nodding, her eyes tracing her brother. His hair was long and grey; the many lines on his face made him look at least five decades older than he was. His good eye stared right back at her.The shine, the shine in his eyes, it's gone, her mind screamed. She chanted it like a mantra until she was sure she had lost her mind staring at him, the bones sticking out like knives from under his clothes.
"So far from the sea," Theon groaned, shaking his head; an audible popping came of it. Asha tried to calm herself by taking breathes. Sitting adjacent to Theon, Asha wrapped her arms around him – the arm she wrapped behind his neck to hold his head against her looked like a slab of meat in comparison to the thin, white thing that became his throat. Asha counted the veins under his nearly translucent hide. "You've made so many mistakes, Theon," Asha whispered so quietly that she wasn't sure if he could hear her. Kissing his gaunt cheek, the bone felt like it would cut right through to her lips. Underneath it was empty space from which the bastard had taken his teeth. "But… None of them matter anymore," she continued, hugging him hard to her. The few fingers he had left intertwined with her snow wetted hair.
Stannis coughed loudly. Asha pulled roughly away from her brother and shot a look at the king. He made no movement in reply, but she was sure the face she made wouldn't be taken too kindly later. Asha held onto her brother's shoulders and looked at him. "I will thank Stannis later. I need to hear your last words," she said stiffly, knowing Stannis would gladly take her head as well. "B-but I haven't seen you in so long," Theon whispered dumbly, his eyes closed as the tears ran down his face, ruined by the passage of time and a bastard boy. A gasp took her throat, and Asha wrapped her arms around him again, trying to maintain it. "I will bring you back with me, no matter what, baby brother," she cooed, a delicate rasp that hadn't even sounded like her. She kissed his forehead, his cheeks, the white stubble on his thin but square jaw. When she pulled away, a grotesque smile had grown on his pale rose colored lips.
"It won't always hurt this w-way," he stuttered softly. "Take me home, tell them T-T-Theon is home, ready to rest beside the gr-great salt sea." His eyes hadn't opened, but Asha was left colder than she had been. "I hadn't always told you, but I do love you," she whispered, getting up, not wanting to hear his reply. Asha walked stiffly, a kind of terror entering her heart and tying her belly in knots. She said nothing to Stannis, who walked swiftly passed her, his eyes trained on Theon, the last surviving son of Balon Greyjoy.
Stannis had started his lordly speech, but Theon simply waved it away. "I am not done," Theon whispered angrily. "I am Theon Greyjoy. That is my name; the one I was born with, and the one I have been blessed to die with," Theon started, trying to make his voice louder than the wind whispering through the bloody leaves of the sacred Wierwoods. "I am not afraid of this moment, not anymore. Childishly, some years ago, I would have denied that I could end my life here." His good eye watched Asha, and he tried to let her know he was only speaking to her. "But as I cannot lift a sword on my own, I suppose this will have to do." Theon let out a thing that rattled Asha's bones, a ragged laugh of sorts.
"Prepare the pyre," Stannis said absently to Seaworth, who nodded and went off the meet the party; Theon raised an eye to Asha, whose brows furrowed in anger. Stannis raised his great sword, mumbling the speech he had planned earlier. Without the warning Asha had asked for him to give, the sword came down hard on Theon's neck, his head sent rolling into the leaves. The air smelled of excrement as Asha screamed, clutching herself. Stannis stumbled backward, taking the sword with him and dragging blood over the ground.
Asha fell forward, trying to stay on her feet, grabbing up her brother's head.Stannis is just as much of a liar as all others, she thought, her vision becoming blurred through the fresh tears that traced her cheeks.He's not going to allow me to take him home, so Iwillsteal my brother back.Many tried to stop her and take back the head wrapped so tightly in her arms; many took tufts of his grey hair but none could take Theon from her.
They can try to burn him, they can try and erase him, his life, but by the sea his head will remain, she thought, out running the party as brilliant white snow fell from the northern sky, but the harbor was never so far away until that moment Asha reflected silently as she ran, her brother's head locked between her arms.