He opened his eyes underneath the water. Everything was grey and murky, but the murk comforted Theon. It reminded him of the waters around Pyke that he had swam in when he was a boy. Mud and dark sediment congested its rocky shoreline, and tendrils of seaweed would reach out to caress your body as you moved in it. Here, it was the murk of the room, as the day had slipped away but a few hours earlier, and the loss of light had left the bathhouse a gloomy tomb.
Eyes closed now, he came up for air and shook the water from his face, and thought how odd that long forgotten bits of his life as a young boy on Pyke were coming to him more these days, even though he was at present encircled by the unfriendly granite walls of Winterfell. It must be because my sister is near. She is the only one left in this world who has any love for me. But even as he thought it, came the niggling feeling: Was it love? Or did she only want to use him, like the others had?
He wiped the water from his bowed head and a familiar chill ran down his spine, one that had nothing to do with the chill of the winter air. He waited a second for the feeling to go away, but instead felt the hairs at the back of his neck stiffen. Something was wrong. He had developed this keen sensor to danger from his time spent at the Dreadfort. Sometimes, then, he could anticipate a visit from Ramsay before he ever heard his footsteps making their way to him. Sometimes, he had felt like he could anticipate it just from a change in the very air ...at least, it had seemed like it, then. But Theon knew better than to believe it for true. Such was the stuff of Old Nan's stories. The stories of second-sight and other magical abilities that ancient women like her dreamed up to scare young boys from touching themselves under the bed skins.
He continued to sit stock still, waiting for the most minute of noises, as the water dripped off his hair and plunked into the bath water. Nothing. He let his breath out slowly, silently. Then he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Not a gleam, so much as the presence of something softly, -barely- shining in the gloom. He made to move his hair further from his face and in his peripheral vision saw the presence of a small form crouching behind a low wooden bench, in the dark, grimy corner of the bathhouse. He thought he could see the dull glow off the side of an eye. The stillness of the form disturbed him, but he was familiar with it, now. Jeyne.
He knew she didn't mean harm, but her presence was disconcerting to him. He went out of his way to avoid her in the sprawling castle. Since the influx of wildings onto the grounds, he was more able to slip around and resume a mantle of invisibility. Or at least, allude her.
Yet despite his efforts, Jeyne would catch up with him every few days. He'd run into her in a stairwell, or maybe in the rubble of the sept as he hobbled about at night, seeking refuge from the night terrors that visited his sleep. A stray untethered image from his most recent nightmare shot through his mind then, and despite himself he shuddered, as if to eject the horror physically from his body. He caught himself mid-shudder, slid down a few inches and let himself drift back to the edge of the tub. He knew the best thing would be to ignore her presence, pretend he saw nothing. The unnatural stillness of her presence unnerved him. How long had she been there silent, unmoving? He wanted to bolt from the tub and make a hasty retreat form the room, but his limbs felt leaden in the water, and the moist-laden air above him suddenly felt like a curtain pushing down on his head. She was too close to the doorway from which he needed to make his exit . The thought of her small, clammy hand coming to rest on the back of his leg made his stomach constrict. I am cold; that is all. I've been in this water too long and my muscles have taken a chill. His thoughts darkened and a subtle look of irritation that could've passed for a reflection from the dark pool beneath him crossed his face. I saved her. Why can't she be grateful and leave me be? Before he could stop himself, he glanced partway to her. He couldn't see anything there, now. It is a trick of the shifting light, he thought. She is still there. I know it.
Still,he could not sit here all night, shrinking. If she appeals to me, I will shake her off, he reasoned to himself. Jeyne. Her name was a dark unfathomable spot in his brain. She has gone insane from her ...ordeal. I cannot help her anymore. I must save myself now.
When her broken body had healed up some, Theon had tried to soothe her rampant fears; at first. Found her snug quarters away from the throng of men that upset her so. He had tried to check on her initially, but he had never found her back at her chamber. Not long after that, he had seen her with another woman, older than Jeyne. They had been holding hands. Theon assumed that Jeyne had found a guardian to look out for her. A woman would be a better nursemaid for the girl than himself, gods knew. He did not have the temperament for dealing with Jeyne. He had tried to coax her out of her interminable crying, and all he got for it from her was more crying. That had worn him out, made him angry, and soon after that, made him get physical with her. When a shake didn't roust her out of her own self-pity, he had used a slap. Which had earned him an even harder slap from his sister's pet, Qarl the Maid. Theon detested the Maid, and not just because the base-born son of a thrall was fucking his sister. He had hated him on sight, when he first took in his sunny good looks. When he met him, Theon had all but goggled. The Maid had looked so fair, his face so unmarred, he had wondered if he weren't a strapping, manly woman, at first. Theon hated him from that moment on, although Qarl had been nothing but pleasant to him. Up until that slap, that is. I used to be comely, once, too. Theon had touched his cheek where the blow had landed and mused what Ramsay would do to Qarl if he caught up with him; it had made the sting of the slap moretolerable.
He wiped a stray droplet of water out of his eye, and catching sight of his mangled hand, his resolve was made up. After everything he had gone through, he was not afraid of a maid- No. Not a maiden, some part of him corrected, and some other part of him, panicked and truly frighted, shut that thought down, tightly. He slipped sideways and hauled himself out of the tub, misstepping on his rise and almost knocking over the rack where his clothing hung. He snatched the flat cloth of weave and hastily patted himself dry, his back to the bench where Jeyne resided.
The anxiety-spiked cacophony in his head had drowned out the approaching footsteps, and he was startled to see a man enter into the cavernous room, bathing towel in hand. Not a man grown, more like a youth, Theon reflected with a second glance; dirt-caked, probably a stable groom. Maybe a few years less than himself, he judged, but healthy enough in form to make him feel intimidated by his presence. Though only the infirm and the babes failed to make him feel intimidated these days, he thought bleakly. No one usually came to the baths after dark; it required picking your way back through an an especially rubble-strewn and isolated part of the broken castle. By reflex, he pressed the cloth against his groin and hunched over scrambling to get his clothes on as fast as his mangled digits would allow. The real potential threat a man, or a youth like this boy, posed to him had put his qualms about Jeyne into sudden perspective. A morbid little tart couldn't fuck him up half as badly as any one who got it into his head that his face would be more pleasing if it lacked more teeth than he already sparingly sported; or worse, who was curious about the rumors and wanted to check them out. He rushed from the room with shoulders rounded forward and wearing only half his clothes; the rest he pressed to himself. Once they have decided you are not quite a man, they despise you, but when they decide you are something other than a man, they attack, Theon knew instinctively. He jerked into his clothing haphazardly as he loped through the passage to the wooden doors barring out the cold night. Jeyne was welcome to follow -at a distance, but he wouldn't be rescuing any girls tonight. Especially not girls posing as stalking wraiths.
Hang Jeyne, he thought, as the first blast of icy wind slapped like iron across his soaked, tender skin and he made his way out into the white and grey of the moonless night.