The Ride That Came Before
By: Phoenixflame
Author's Note: Theon's first day in Winterfell. Ned has returned early. The second time her husband brings back a child not her own, and she's not any less perturbed. Well, perhaps a little.
I know most of my stuff involves violence, sadism, and cray cray, but I promise I sometimes do have the urge to write fluff. Originally a prompt on ASOIAF Kink Meme, filled under the handle Schattenfalke.
Though she supposes even the most vicious kraken must have a mother, Catelyn Stark cannot imagine a kraken child. She also did not expect her husband back so soon, or for him to be returning with yet another child. At least he had the grace to write her first. And at least it is not a bastard but a hostage, the jetsam from a war that killed his brothers.
"If Father fought his father, why is he bringing him here?"
Robb stands next to her, along with Maester Luwin, Jon, and a token host of the household. Three-year-old Sansa convalesces in her room from a small fever and Catelyn's unborn child rests inside her. She wears a cloak of blue-grey, trimmed in silver fox fur. The color suits both her Houses, and Ned always said it made her hair brighter.
Their breath barely draws steam—a warm morning for the North. She still regrets not wearing gloves, an affect she always forgets to take until her fingers are numb. Ned will be here any moment now, his return heralded by hooves and metal. Twining her fingers in the trim of her cloak, she looks to Robb's expectant face and thinks how to phrase the kraken child.
To call him a fosterling would imply him a foster brother, which the Greyjoy is not. The child might be dead in five years if his mad father rebels again. Hostage would be closer, but the word usually implies a cage. Ned had written that the young lord would be raised with their children.
"Theon is your father's ward now." She speaks gently, not because she shies from a hard truth but because Robb would not understand at only six years old. "Think of him as a guest."
Robb nods, fidgeting, more distracted now by the horses trotting into the courtyard. Riding ahead of his men, Ned looks every bit a man who has just been through a war. His cheekbones are harder cut and in need of a month of good food. Theon rides beside him on a soot-colored pony.
The kraken child is a boy of nine or so, lean and dark-haired like most of his family, huddled beneath a black cloak. His eyes stare blank and frozen, and she sees that his hands are also wrapped in his cloak's thick folds. But Catelyn cares more for her husband—she offers a formal welcome, but cannot keep a formal tone. For his part, Ned's voice is its normal unaffected distance.
"I am glad to be home, especially before the babe." She knows Ned is only cool in front of his men, as befits a Lord Paramount. A softness still steals across his eyes, and a bit of humor—she knows she hardly looks with child. He could return in ten fortnights and still be there before her babe cries its first.
Unlike some Northmen, her husband does not clap people on the shoulder. Instead he takes Robb's and gives a small squeeze. "You've gotten taller."
Her son stays collected only from forced restraint. After a few words to Jon, Ned nods back to his ward.
"This is Theon Greyjoy, heir to the Iron Islands. He is our guest now." He glances back at the kraken child and wordlessly prompts him to answer.
The child hops off his pony, face pale. He bows his neck in way of greeting, blank-eyed and stiff. "Lady Stark, Lord Robb." His pony looks more inquisitive.
Catelyn has dealt with enough children to know when they have no wish to converse. She accepts his greeting and returns her attention to her husband. Seeing him for the first time in sixth months, she is glad she barely shows. The night before he left…she smiles at the memory. Though such thoughts are for later, Ned cannot deny they have come far from their awkward wedding night.
"We did not expect you for another few weeks," she says instead. "I planned to take Robb with me to Torrhen's Square, but I will send a raven to Lady Tallhart that we cannot. I only waited in case you wanted to add a word."
Ned smiles and takes her hand, what passes for wild passion in a man like him when there are onlookers. She has missed his quiet kindness.
"There is no reason to tell Lady Tallhart at all. I'll go with you—I want to see Ser Helman."
It surprises her that a man who has just fought a war would want to travel, but not so much when that man is Ned.
"Are you not tired?"
A small chuckle, and his thumb rubs her knuckles. "Just seeing the North is peace enough. But an inn will be better tonight now that you travel with me."
That settled, Catelyn leaves to resume her preparations and Ned goes to visit his daughter. She only learned yesterday afternoon that her husband was less than a day's ride. In truth it takes little time, though now she must also make room for Jon. With Ned here, she knows he will want him to come along. Maester Luwin can manage Winterfell and watch over Sansa. She is happy they can still go—she knows she cannot ride for much longer before Luwin threatens to hide her saddle and bridle.
When she returns to the courtyard, Robb sidles close enough to speak softly. "Why is he so quiet? Does he hate me?"
Catelyn holds back a sigh and brushes his stubborn bangs away from his eyes. She feels no sympathy for Theon's father, but the boy must still be grieving.
"He lost his older brothers and he is far from home. Give him a few days."
Ned wants Theon to ride with them—she anticipated so when she returned to her preparations. Her husband is conversing with the stablemaster when she finds him. Theon hangs close, his wind-rippled cloak the only part of him that moves. From Ned's stiff expression, the stablemaster has said something vexing.
"A problem, husband?" she says as she draws up. As the lady of Winterfell, she takes pride in maintaining the household.
When he turns to her, she sees he is not irritated, just weary.
"Theon's pony lost a shoe—the boy is light enough it did not start limping until a groom took it."
"We do not lack horses, and he is tall enough…"
"We lack ponies."
For the first time, Catelyn sees the boy's eyes lose their glaze and narrow in annoyance, half-hidden by his lanky hair. He thinks Ned questions his riding ability. Insult a boy's skill and by extension his homeland…except she knows better.
It has nothing to do with the kraken-child's horsemanship, or his size. Simply, a horse can outrun a pony, and the ironborn have no honor in regard to oaths. Another reason she thinks Robert was a fool to treat a rebellion like a quarrel over cards.
But neither will Ned want to leave the boy to his own devices at Winterfell. Maester Luwin can only watch him so closely when he has Sansa to nurse and his other duties. She knows, then, what the trip calls for.
"He will ride with me then." She would not leave the child here either.
Ned distrusts him because his father rebelled. Catelyn distrusts him because he is a Greyjoy and worships a squid god. When Aegon conquered Westeros, the ironborn had the Riverlands in a stranglehold. It sounds cruel to lay his people's sins at the boy's feet, but the ironborn are the bloodier part of her family's history. The Tullys and Targaryens drove them from the mainland and were content to never think about them again, but Catelyn knows the trout and kraken likely share blood. Why else the funeral ceremony? What else do the ironborn boast but their appetite for rape and marauding? Distant kin will always turn on each other faster than close kin will defend each other. A trace of familiarity and a corresponding, even greater contempt.
This is why she thinks Robert a fool. If it were her treaty, she would have beheaded false king and his brothers, and betrothed Lord Stannis to his only daughter, who is almost old enough to wed if not already. As for Theon…perhaps that was the only sound thing Robert decided. She would have preferred him fostering with anyone else though, far from her children.
But she forces a small smile when explaining the ride to Theon. She can distrust him later, when he makes good of his heritage. Rancor now will only make him worse.
They make one small deviance before setting off. While the children wait in the courtyard, Ned takes her wrist just as she heads for the great door. The late-morning sun keeps them shadowed, but she sees him without his mask. His hands wind in her hair as he kisses her, his beard coarser than he remembers but his mouth just as soft. It is brief, and a bare hint of what she wants to do to him, but their shared smirk is promise enough. They have come far since their awkward wedding feast, where she spent half the time picking at her food and the other half wondering if he was anything like his brother. Seven years later, she does not care to wonder.
Theon's fox face looks even more sullen when Ned lifts him up to sit behind her saddle. Clearly he dislikes riding double while her husband helps Robb onto his chestnut pony. Her own gray palfrey will not be bothered by the boy's wiry form; she only hopes he has ridden bareback. One time she rode with a friend who had not, and still remembers the girl's nails digging into her stomach and her arms choking her ribs.
When they set out, the family and a contingent of guards, the boy stays quiet, holding the saddle's cantle instead of her sides. Robb tries to speak with him and receives mumbled, half-formed answers, until Catelyn shoots her son a look and he remembers her words.
Soon he son trots up to his half-brother, who has kept his distance from the ward. For once, she approves of Jon's behavior more than Robb's. It will be difficult, Ned surely sees, to raise the boy amongst his own but ensure they do not grow attached. It is hard enough with hunting hounds, let alone a boy. Her husband talks quietly with his sons as they ride, whatever they discuss taking a year of weariness off his face. When Robb's arms grow wild and swinging, she guesses it is the mud fight she barely resisted strapping him for. He has not grown taller since the ironborn rebelled, only better at making excuses that his romping is somehow training.
Theon remains so quiet and still that after several hours it almost concerns her. She met a girl whose family had stood in the throne room when Rickard Stark burned. The boy's blank gaze is almost too familiar.
"The North must be as strange to you as it was to me," Catelyn ventures at last, trying to sound warm.
She thinks he will stay mute, until he speaks softly behind her, his accent still thick and drawling.
"The air is strange here. No salt."
It is her responsibility to welcome him to the household. Lady Stark will not shy from her duty. And she also thought the air was awful when she first came north. So crisp, like it takes a bite as payment for every breath.
"Your lungs will grow to like it, I promise. What do you miss most about your home?"
He fidgets, for her horse takes a skittish step and he grabs her waist to balance. "My sister," he says in a breath. His hands jerk away a moment later.
That at least she understands. Not her sister, but her sweet fool brother. She smiles, though he cannot see it. "When I left Riverrun, I was comforted by the last memories I had of home." Catelyn realizes her mistake the moment after she speaks, just as the boy stiffens behind her.
She thinks she will receive another sullen silence. She almost wishes she had, for his voice is soft and void. "Asha was locking us in her room, making me help her push a wardrobe across the door, after Maron—" Theon snaps quiet just when his voice goes ragged.
"Asha sounds like a very brave girl," she says at last. Catelyn did not mean to send him back to war-torn Pyke. Theon makes no reply, except to bury his face in her cloak. It is disconcerting to have the kraken at her back, but at least he does not cry.
"She is," mumbles a whisper, perhaps only her imagination.
Asha Greyjoy is Balon's only daughter, and Theon his only remaining son. Ned's letter perplexed her when he noted they were all in Balon's keep. The false king made no effort to move them to a safer island. Robert or Ned would not kill them out of hand, but Balon had to remember the Targaryen children. Could Robert just as easily call them krakenspawn and wave away their corpses?
Despite herself, despite Harwyn Hardhand raping her ancestors, she feels a pang of sympathy. One of his brothers died during the siege when a tower collapsed. The ironborn see death in hard battle as glorious, but she doubts a nine year old sees more than his dead sibling.
When she finally rides up to speak to Ned, his mouth is curling in a wry smile.
"That is the most peaceful I have ever seen him."
Catelyn looks over her shoulder in curiosity. Somehow he has fallen asleep against her, rocked by the horse or something closer to gentle thoughts. Only a sliver of his face shows, long eyelashes slack and still. She knows he will tumble off at some point. Lord Balon learning his last son died of a broken neck will not be what causes the next ironborn rebellion. Her husband nudges his horse closer.
"Here, I will take him."
And you will look strange. She shakes her head and offers a smile, not forced. It is a warm noon for the North, and her husband has returned. "Never you mind, I often ride this way with Sansa."
When she halts her palfrey the boy almost pitches sideways. Slowly she turns and takes him by the waist, feeling his ribs. The rocking movement of the horse has made him insensitive to jostling, or perhaps he has hardly slept since leaving Pyke. Though his face is dusty from travel, the skin around his eyes is smeared clean and slightly flushed. In a quick turn she pulls him around and in front of her, caged between her arms and the horse's neck. His legs give him his height; the back of his head settles at her breastbone and a rabbit's heartbeat flutters at her sternum. Resituated, they continue on. Her palfrey does not prefer this arrangement, but she is a good mare and makes no fuss.
"He likes you more than me," Ned says, good natured. At her prodding look, he continues. "I asked him that a few days after we left Pyke. He said he missed being a prince."
She laughs in spite of herself. Even if he feels more at ease around her, doubtless he was just as honest with her husband. Ned smiles, sad and amused at once. "You are right about his sister. They had to chop down her door and fight through a wardrobe of dresses, only to find a skinny girl with an axe guarding the boy and cursing their mothers. Robert wanted to take her as a ward himself."
Catelyn is glad he did not. The Greyjoy lord might well attack Lannisport again if his daughter's fifteenth name day gift is a blue-eyed bastard. For this, she would not be as quick to reproach him.
Leaves crunch as Robb trots up beside her, eying Theon with his curious eyes. He snorts, amused rather than mocking, and does not try to wake the displaced lordling.
She will tell Robb not to grow too attached. That he is not a brother or a fosterling. Theon is a Greyjoy, a kraken. Swept into an unfamiliar sea mayhaps, but a kraken can swim. Robb should not get entangled, and he should not trust, for the grieving boy will never forget he was once a prince.
But Catelyn will tell him this later. She does not want to wake the boy.