Theon had emptied his wineskin as he stomped up to his bedchamber from the yard. He kicked open the door and threw it with full force, aiming for the boy's head; but Wex was too used to his prince's mercurial moods and too nimble not to have ducked instinctively, when he had felt the jolt of Theon's boot crashing into the door a split second earlier.

"You filthy dog's bastard. I had to carry my gear myself!," he yelled churlishly at the boy, throwing down his bow and quivers with great force.

He wanted to fling them at Wex and beat him with the bow, but even now, he thought it ill to take the chance of breaking his best weapon over the truculent boy's backside. The battle had not even begun, and as hopeless as it all appeared, he might as well be a denuded wench thrown up on the parapet, without his bow.

If I'm going to the Drowned Hall before this night is out, it will be with a warrior's weapons, and not just my wilted cock in my hand, he thought, sourly.

Wex tried to skirt around him, but Theon grabbed him by the ear as he tried to dart past.

"And where do you think you're going?" The boy grunted as Theon, breathing his sour wine breath down on him, pulled him face-to-face.

To his dismay, the boy didn't look intimidated in the least; he looked sullen. He held him a beat longer, then let his hair slip though his fingers slowly, and with some measure of sadness. He had remembered that Wex had served him well, and had freely chosen to stay with his prince and not turn and run back to Asha with the rest of the irondogs she had brought him to defend his castle. In just few more hours, when the sun set, he would no doubt be cut down alongside himself. The thought comforted him somewhat.

Suddenly, Theon pulled the boy to his chest and clasped his arm heavily onto his back, standing with him for what seemed a long time, but was only about 10 seconds, in truth. He had never done this simple companionable maneuver in his entire life; not even with Robb. Whenever Robb had been overcome with an affliction of happiness for some new thing, and had gone to hug him, Theon had stiffened and reflexively pushed the boy away with his forearm and a quip meant to shame him. He had always been uncomfortable with such brotherly displays, due to his own father and brothers having not been the kind to show any type of physical affection.

Before now, the first and last person he had embraced in much the same way as Wex, had been his mother, on the day Lord Eddard had taken him from Pyke. As Theon embraced the lad, he flashed on that scene, and it hit him hard. Revived in his memory with all its immediacy, as if it just happened, he saw his mother's beautiful face; she was not classically beautiful, but beautiful to him, with her doe-like black eyes and strong features.

Features that Asha carried, too, and in which Theon now realized he had always been attracted, unknowingly. The noble girls of the north that he had spent half his life around, like Sansa, with their pale eyes and their even paler round faces were pretty enough, but they had not been half as alluring to him as any baseborn wench with strong features to anchor her face. A more prominent nose, a whiskey mouth, or high cheekbones... anything but the bland, soft features of the girls around him. He had never stopped to ponder why; not even after he had fallen so hard for Esgred ...only then to have found out that his sister had played the cruelest of tricks on him. Would you do it to me now, Asha? If you realized, like I have just realized, that I was searching for my mother in every woman's face for the past ten long years? For love and comfort and home? As if a similarity of features, like hers -likes yours- would beget a familiarity which would lead me to what I craved all these years...

He let go of Wex, as the image of his mother letting go of him that awful day played in his mind: the river of silent tears making silvery tracks down her ebony skin, sliding off her lips to soak her bodice as they had soaked the fur in his cloak collar with her goodbye embrace.

Wex took two steps back and stood with his mouth agape. Theon saw that he didn't look sullen anymore. He looked stricken; no doubt by his behavior.

"What? Don't stand there staring at me like a grouper. Go to the cellar and bring me back a couple of sweet red wines."

Wex ran for the door and Theon added, " And one for yourself."

The boy's features relaxed into a melange of relief, confusion and hesitant affection, then sprinted away into the gloom of the castle.

Theon stripped his stinking clothes off and used the basin of cold water to wash the sweat and dust from his face and body. Despite his exhaustion and in spite of the aura of impending doom that hung about him, his cock stirred, and he thought about the prospect of fucking one last time, before everything came to an end. He couldn't hope to have Kyra; she was stuck in the winter town, barricaded in the tavern. And he could think of no other woman in the castle that might be willing; they all smelled the stink of death upon him, and they were all biding their time until his gladly anticipated demise. The thought of using force, now, after everything he had done, made the wine curdle in his stomach.

He moved over to the handglass and looked at himself. Women had always found his countenance pleasing. They'd cooed over his long-lashed eyes; tasted his full lips countless times ; embraced his lean body and caressed his dark skin, comparing it to the smoothness of polished onyx… And I will die alone, in a scant few hours. No one to mourn me. No one to cry over me in sorrow or pity. No one will remember what it felt like to love me; only how it felt to have had me.