I Remember

Probably one shot.

Reek raised a shaking hand to lift the latch and crept through the iron door. The cold breakfast tray wobbled on his missing fingers as he laid it on the ground. He didn't dare to look at her stifling her sobs as she lay on the furs, ugly purple bruises blossomed across her pale skin.

But Sansa Stark looked at him. Her back stiffened and her sobs stopped. Slowly, she turned her head, but Reek didn't see. His watery blue eyes darted wildly around the bleak room to avoid her steely gaze. The Stark gaze that Eddard Stark had turned on him so often as a boy-

Reek, reek, it rhymes with weak.

A different boy. Reek never knew him. He had always been Reek.

He trembled.

Sansa had now left the bed and was walking toward him, her pale dress trailing in the dusts of snow that had floated through the open window.

Reek cowered, and began shuffling rapidly toward the welcoming door.

'Theon, wait.'

Reek's back hunched involuntarily and his inside churned, threatening vomit.

'Not Theon, my lady. Reek.'

It rhymes with meek.

'Help me.'

Slowly, Reek turned. Lady Bolton's feet were white, with a little freckle on her smallest toe. Ten.

'You're his wife now,' he muttered.

'Theon,' she repeated more urgently.

His shoulders shook and Reek tried to rip apart the visions of the snowy fabric tearing down her back and her whimpers, spliced with memories of long ago, when she was just a girl and he only a boy.

Now watch her become a woman.

'Do what he says or he'll hurt you.'

'He already hurts me every night. All day I'm locked in this room and every night he comes. It can't be worse,' Sansa said desperately.

Sansa was tied to a crimson wooden frame, naked, as Ramsay, smiling, ran his knife in a fluid silvery motion from her navel straight down. Her screams were muffled by the thickly falling snow. The trees in the Godswood mirrored her bloody tears.

Reek cringed.

'It can. It can always be worse.'

Sansa took one step closer. The words pierced Reek like his master's knife.

'What did he do to you?'

'Please…'

Reek needed to flee from those Stark eyes, to retreat back to the dirty stables and warm scratchy hay, where no one could find him, to where he belonged.

'You betrayed my family!'

No, he didn't. That was Theon Greyjoy, her father's ward. I am Reek.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry!'

Sansa did not hear.

'You have to help me.'

Reek quivered as Ramsay's lips stretched across his teeth. Hold out your hand, Reek.

'He'll see us. You don't know him.'

'My family still has friends in the North. All I have to do is give a signal and they'll rescue me. Climb to the top of the Broken Tower, light this candle, and put it in the window. Promise me, Theon,' she begged.

Reek vomited the words as they spilled from his cracked lips.

'Reek, my lady, Reek!'

'No,' Sansa said.

'Look at me.'

Lady Bolton didn't want to ask twice.

Don't let her ask twice.

Quivering, Reek lifted his watering eyes, face twitching, dreading hers. It was worse than he imagined.

Sansa Stark's eyes, steely grey in her cracked porcelain face, bore into his. He recoiled but was trapped by her gaze, transfixed as though by a Dornish viper. He saw the same cringing fear and horror that lay within his own eyes, but in their cold depths was determination and hope.

'Your name is Theon Greyjoy. Last surviving son of Balon Greyjoy, Lord of the Iron Islands, do you hear me? Theon. Promise me.'

Tears welled in Reek's eyes and he shook his head to shake off the flurry of memories. No, no, Reek mustn't… he was drowning in his head.

He met her penetrating gaze again for the shortest moment and flinched. Reek wrenched the candle from her hands and stumbled out the door.

Reek forced himself through the draughty corridor into the snowstorm outside, his three left fingers wrapped around the brittle tallow.

The staircase of the broken tower wound around and around as Reek's shuffling footsteops echoes in the black stone. His lungs seemed to shrink and he wheezed, coughing as he ran.

Reek, reek, it rhymes with seek.

Reek reached the oaken door and pushed it open to see his master's icy eyes fixed unblinkingly upon his own. He met the stare of the filthy grey stones that lay at his mutilated feet.

'Reek,' Ramsay enunciated slowly, relishing the sharp sound. His lips spread in a wide smile while his ice-blue eyes flayed him alive.

'Have you got something to tell me?'

As Reek scurried from the room, Sansa was free to let her disgust surface. She wasn't sure how she felt about Theon. She couldn't deny her disgust at the cringing, filthy rat, Reek, that the lazily arrogant, confident boy Theon had shrunken into. But every time she came close to feeling something like pity, Bran and Rickon's faces surfaced and she felt a fresh surge of repulsion.

But nothing she felt for Theon came close to the hatred she bore for Ramsay Snow.

In a sick way she almost enjoyed it. Cry, sob, weep, you wounded little bird, sing out just how stupid you are. Fill your eyes with tears so they won't see what is burning behind them.

She was glad that her husband took her from behind each night, so he didn't look upon her face. She smiled even through every cry, her lips drawn back from her teeth. She would wait.

Sansa had spent three years in King's Landing with a sadistic brat, his bitch mother and a 'Lord Protector' as predictable as he was ambitious. She knew brains, cunning and brutality and knew she was facing it again in Ramsay Snow.

But this time she had donned her armour from the beginning. It was stronger than ever.

The first layer was the courtesy that Septa Mordane and Cersei had taught her. Underneath was her true self, the fragile bird with a broken wing. They all hid the direwolf, gaunt yet savage, ready to rip apart the monsters and pretenders.

The North remembers, thought Sansa Stark.

I remember.