Disclaimer: I do not own A Song of Ice and Fire.

Another dragon, another wolf, another stag

Chapter 9: Theon

"Talking"

"Thinking"

(Location: Riverrun)

He was trying to practice with his bow but was finding it hard to concentrate when he had the overwhelming urge to take his bowstring and strangle the Dornish bitch that stood near him with the smug smirk on her lips. It didn't help the fact that Asha also stood nearby, watching everything he did.

After their initial meeting, he went to find her again and found her with her crew. They laughed him away and then Catelyn had all but ordered him to sit beside them at the feast that night. He hated it for every second he was there. Asha had japed and yelled with her crew, leaving him just sitting at the same table. The only thing he enjoyed of that feast was when he managed to insulted one of the Sand Snakes.

He turned his attention back to the target in front of him. His arrow was nocked and drawn. "Breathe in, shoot the target."

"You're going to miss," the Sand Snake said just as he released the taut string, making his fingers jerked. The arrow flew and struck the target off-center. "See?"

"Ignore her," he told himself as he drew another arrow and nocked it to the bow string.

"You're not a very good archer, are you?" she asked him with the same mocking tone she had been using ever since she decided to saunter by just as Asha came by to watch him. The three of them stood alone in that little yard. The bastard stood close to him to speak into his ear, but not so close that he could easily punch her. His sister stood at the wall with her back against it, her eyes watching him and her.

"Ignore her." He came here to practice his archery. Having his sister watch him or this Dornish bastard insult him shouldn't matter.

"It is rather sad to see such pathetic archery," she continued. "I would have thought that a Greyjoy, being a man of ships and sailing, you would know how to handle a bow and arrows. I guess that I was wrong. At least you would be adept at sailing, much like I have learned from my own mother. Oh, wait. You've in Winterfell this entire time. How sad for you."

"Ignore her."

"Wouldn't you agree, milady Asha?" she asked his sister just as he pulled taut on the string. His grip tightened. If he pulled any harder on it, he might've drawn blood on his fingers.

"I think you need to shut up before I have my husband kill you," Asha said shortly.

She laughed at that. "So serious, I guess ironmen look after their own after all."

"You're just annoying. Shut up already and go away."

Her laughter died away and she stared silently at Theon's sister. "Just like an ironman, all bluff and strength, never knowing how truly pathetic you really are."

Asha just scoffed. "If you're trying to scare me, you're going to have to do better than that. Typical of a green lander, always making threats but never able to follow through," she said mockingly.

Theon released the bowstring and the arrow hit the target just where he wanted. He smiled and lowered his bow. "Pathetic," the bastard said with a sneer.

"Like you could do better," he snapped at her, turning to face her. She stood tall and straight, staring at him with a superior look.

"Of course I can. Would you like me to show you?"

"Sarella?" said a voice. He and she turned and saw the eldest Tryell standing at the entranceway, leaning on his cane.

"Lord Willas," she said to him, her voice taking on a respectful tone.

"Your father would like to see you," he said back.

"Now?" she asked.

"Yes, now."

She looked back at Theon and Asha, her eyes holding the disdain for them when her mouth didn't say anything. "Alright, shall we go?" She started walking towards him.

He let her pass by simply standing to the side. When she was out of sight, he looked at them both. "My lord, my lady," he said.

"I am a captain, green lander," Asha told him. "Remember that."

"As you say, Captain," he said with a slight incline of his head. "I bid you both good day." He turned around and followed the bastard out of the courtyard.

Theon turned his attention the target before he was even finished leaving. Most of his arrows were imbedded in the target but some had been off (he blamed the Dornish bitch). He walked up to the target and began pulling his arrows out. It was a quick process, given the time it took him to hunt through the ground to find the ones there, and he returned to his starting point, ready to shoot again.

"She is right, you are pathetic," Asha said before he could even nock an arrow.

He turned to face her. "What are you talking about?"

"She insulted you repeatedly and the only skill you have and you did nothing." Her voice and eyes were filled with disdain.

"I wanted to."

"Then why didn't you? I thought you were ironborn."

"I am ironborn!" he snapped at her. "I just happen to think, that's all."

Her eyes became hard as flint. "Are you calling me soft in the head?" she demanded.

He couldn't hold contact with her eyes. "No—"

"She was just an idiotic girl and a bastard," Asha continued on like she hadn't heard him. "You could have beaten her and no one would have faulted you for it. Yet you did nothing."

"Having me lose my temper would've been exactly what she wanted. If I kept my attention on my archery, she would've given up sooner or later," he retorted. "And that was no normal bastard. That was Oberyn Martell's daughter."

She scoffed at his words. "What's the difference between one green lander and the next?"

"This green lander happens to be the brother to the Prince of Dorne and the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. If you think I would be able to get away with striking one of his daughters, perhaps you are soft in the head!" By the gods, couldn't she see that!?

They glared at each other in silence. "…Hmph, I guess Stark wasn't completely successful in making you a green lander," she finally said. "I just hoped that you hadn't forgotten who your real family is."

"I…I haven't." His anger and irritation began to fade away. In truth, he had forgotten about his actual family, something that he didn't even try to stop from happening. He had been the thirdborn son and youngest of Balon Greyjoy, heir to the Iron Islands. He had despised his brothers for as long as he had known them. The only people he truly remembered fondly were his mother and grandfather. "Have I heard you correctly? Father married you off?" he asked her, wanting to change what they were talking about.

To that, she barked out a laugh. "Father didn't marry me off to anyone. I married myself," she pulled out the axe from the belt around her waist, "to this." The light glinted off the head, showing him just how sharp it was.

He stared at it, his only thought being "It's a good thing I did not ask that in front of her crew." He didn't need to make an ass out of himself in front of them. But out loud he said, "I hope that you will use it to find happiness on many lonely nights."

"Watch your tongue, Theon," she snapped at him.

"You watch yours," he snapped right back at her. "You're talking to the heir to the Iron Islands, remember?"

"Ha! I see a green lander who hasn't been to the Iron Islands since he left. Father has been raising me to be his heir, not you," she said scornfully.

"We are not Dorne. No woman has ever sat the Seastone Chair." He knew the history of his home, the maester at Winterfell had been insistent about it. He didn't want to, not until Lord Stark forced him to learn by marching him into the room with the maester and watching as he took his lessons.

"Better than a woman who has sailed the seas and smelled the salt of the waters. How long has it been since you smelt such a thing, Theon?"

That, he could answer easily. "Two years since the last full moon when I sailed a gallery alongside Prince Viserys."

There was surprise in her eyes at his proclamation but it quickly turned to hate and anger. She clenched tighter on the grip of her axe, almost looking for an excuse to throw it at him. "You sailed with the man who killed Rodrik, your own brother?" she demanded.

"Would that be the same brother who threatened to beat me until I was nothing but a bloody smear on the wall before he left because I told Grandfather the truth?" he demanded back at her. This was why he preferred to forget about his family.

Even though he had her there, she refused to acknowledge it. "And how did you sail on the gallery. Did you command the ship because the captain bowed to your authority of the heir to the Iron Islands?" she asked him, her tone acidic with mockery.

"We rowed."

She stopped and stared at him, her mockery. "What?"

"We did not ask for any privileges. We presented ourselves as common boys and were taken on as such. The two of us rowed the oars from White Harbor to Planky Town to King's Landing. When we didn't row, we scrubbed the deck and other menial tasks ordered of us." He could remember those days clearly. Their arms had been sore when they began but it didn't last and they sailed from North to south and then back. All six months had been worth it.

His sister looked at him silently. Then she snorted dismissively and walked away, leaving him alone in the courtyard. He stood there, clenching his bow. He wanted to go after her and teach her a hard lesson. She was a woman and he was a man! What's more, she was his sister and she treated him with disrespect! He was tempted, really tempted, to put an arrow in her.

"You can't," he told himself before he could make the first step. "No man is as accused as the kinslayer, especially on the islands." He remembered that much from his childhood. He tried to turn his attention back to the target. But his anger and frustration were stopping him from firing true, getting only near hits and misses.

After the fifth arrow, he finally stopped. He stomped across the courtyard and pulled out the arrows, shoving them back into the quiver. He picked up it and the bow too, bringing them with him back to the armory where he found them. Then he chose to go back to his room, having eaten breakfast already. Well, it wasn't his room. It was one he shared with Robb and Dom. They had left everything they brought from Winterfell in that. When he walked through the door, there was a servant girl in there tending to the fire.

She saw him and stood up quickly. "Your pardon, milord," she said, her voice thick with the accent of the Riverlands. "I was just tending to the fire."

"Is that all?" he asked her, leaning against the doorframe with a confident smirk on his lips. She was a pretty enough wench with curves beneath that plain blue dress of hers. Her dark brown hair fell down her back straight and her curious eyes watched him. There was a blush on her cheeks as she stared at him and the smirk only grew wider. He knew that he was handsome and he knew that other women saw it too.

"Ye-yes, milord," she replied.

"Perhaps we should do something about that then." He walked into the room proper, closing the door behind him.

He felt much better after having the girl. It had been a good way to waste away the day. After they were done, she left to continue her work and he left to find something to eat, feeling a little bit hungry. He found the way down to the kitchen and got some bread and meat for his nourishment. He carried it back to the hall, finding a table to eat at.

"Theon!" called out Viserys's voice. He looked up from his food to see his friend come walking over to him with a girl by his side. "Where have you been?" the prince asked as they came to a stop beside his table.

"Enjoying myself," he answered with a smirk. It turned into a playful one when he looked up the girl. "And who are you?"

"Watch it, Greyjoy," Viserys said in a somewhat serious voice. "That's my sister and your princess. You do not use your usual techniques on her."

"Fine, fine, but it's nice to hear admit that they are techniques," he said with a laugh and the smirk still on his lips. They've had this argument before and it was nice to see the prince finally concede it. They sat down beside him and relaxed.

"Where have you been, Theon?" Viserys asked him again.

"I told you, I was enjoying myself," he replied as he bit into a piece of the meats on his plate. It was cooked just the right way he liked it, with barely any pink in it to give him the barest hint of blood. It was a sweet taste to him, one given to him by the North.

"With what?" he asked. "Actually, never mind. I think I know what you were doing," he said, waving his hand through the air like the matter was done. "Dany doesn't need to hear such things from you."

"So if she was sent away, I'd be able to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" the girl asked, looking at both of them. Gods, she was a beauty. Looking at the innocence radiating from those purple eyes made Theon's loins stir again and after being so sated too. Her silver-blonde hair, much like her brother's, framed her face nicely and her body, the gods had truly blessed her with perfection.

"Nothing you need to know about until you're older, Dany," Viserys told her before flashing him a warning glare.

His stirring died away at the sight of that glare, but he found himself amused by it. "Seems like the dragon is a protective creature," he remarked to himself. Aloud he said, "Care to eat something, Princess?" pushing the plate over to her. "You look like you could use something in your stomach."

"Oh, thank you, Lord Theon," she said in reply, taking a piece of beard from the plate. She began eating it daintily, like he had seen Sansa do a thousand times already. She ate like a lady.

"No need to act like a lady here," he told her. "It's not like your brother is going to care."

"Watch it, squid," Viserys said to him warningly. It wasn't the serious kind of warning that he heard moments before when it came to his sister. Rather, it was the kind of warning he was more used to, telling him not to go wherever he was about to with his mouth.

That just happened to be the kind of warning he frequently ignored. "Come now, Viserys. Your table manners are still the stuff of legends in Winterfell. Perhaps I should tell her of the boar meat?"

"What about the boar meat?" she asked, looking at her brother with a curious expression. "Did something happen?"

"No, nothing happened, Dany," he quickly assured her while flashing a warning to Theon.

He ignored it all the same. "Oh, I wouldn't say nothing happened. It was the first night he was allowed to drink more than one cup of wine or mead, I can never remember which one it was, during the harvest festival. He ended up having one too many and rather asking for another portion of the boar that had been hunted for the very feast he was sitting in, he decided to leap across the table right at the creature with it while it was still roasting on the spit. He was truly a dragon in that moment," he told her with a wide grin on his face.

She stared at him with wide eyes before turning onto her brother. "Did you really do that?" she asked him. The piece of beard lay on the table, momentarily forgotten.

"…Aye, I did," he finally confessed, covering his eyes with his hand. When they peeked out from underneath the fingers, they glared at Theon.

But again, he just smiled. "She asked," he told the prince before turning his attention to a piece of bread on the plate. It had been fresh from the kitchen, making it nice and warm inside of his mouth. Just the way bread should be.

"I am going to kill you, Theon."

He laughed at that. "You've been saying that for years now, Viserys. You've yet to come through." The smile on his lips was infectious. He would know because it didn't take long for Viserys to laugh and smile too. It was an old routine of theirs, one that started from them being strangers in Winterfell and only grew stronger when they sailed together.

"Do you miss your home?" Dany asked him suddenly, looking at him intently.

He stared at her for a stunned moment of silence, his hand already reaching for another piece of beard. Why would she ask him that question? "I…I…" Gods, he couldn't even answer her. What was wrong with him? It was a simple question.

Viserys came to his rescue. "Theon, I heard from Willas Tyrell that one of Oberyn Martell's daughters was trying to goad you into a fight. Thank you for not rising to it," he said, swiftly changing the subject.

While it was a rescue from her question, it landed him in another subject that he didn't want to really talk about. "You say that," he told the prince. "My sister would say otherwise." He turned back to the food, choosing to stuff a piece of meat down his mouth.

"Would that be the sister that Tyrell is interested in?"

The meat came back up in a hacking cough, almost choking him before he spat it out on the table, leaving a glob of barely chewed meat on the table. "What?" he said in surprise.

"We saw them talking together," the princess told him. "They seem to be cordial with one another and were actually talking about dogs at sea, not like the insults they were throwing at each other before."

"Trust me, Theon; it was a surprise to see. I would have thought that they would be nasty to one another," Viserys agreed with her.

"I would've thought so too," Theon said. He shrugged his shoulders and chewed on a piece of meat. "But it's not like my father will allow her to marry him."

"You know that for sure? You haven't seen him since he surrender."

"He's ironborn." That was all the answer they needed.

"And so are you," the princess remarked. "It's why you held onto that driftwood for two days in the sea."

Had the cup he was reaching for actually was in his hand, it would have fallen into his lap and made a mess. But it didn't. His hand just froze there as he stared at her. His mouth was agape and he tried to speak. But it was like his voice would not come easily. Viserys looked at him confusion, trying to understand what was going through his head. When he could not find any words to use, he stood up from the table and essentially ran from the hall. "Theon!" he heard the prince shout but he didn't stop.

When he did stop in a corridor, his breath was ragged. How? How could she have known about that? He had never told anyone about it! How could she have known!

"Father!"

"No, no!" he thought to himself, slamming his hand against the wall. The pain was fresh but it wasn't enough.

"Father! Maron!"

"Stay there, don't come up!" he shouted at the memory threatening to haunt him. He would not allow it happen. He had lived through it once; he would not live through it again.

"Asha!"

"Shut up!" he roared at the little boy's voice inside his head. It quieted down but he could still hear it. There was one way to shut it up, a way he preferred.

That was how he found himself at the riverbank with a sack of wine in his hand and a nice warm feeling all around. He knew the feeling only came when he was drunk, having had it many times before. It helped him forget where he came from. He drank heavily from the skin and was in probable need of a new one soon.

He stared at the tourney grounds still being constructed. Gods, they had been at Riverrun for how long and they were still building the damn thing? He had thought they were supposed to be ready by the time people came. "But of course, they don't have to worry about it being ready until the king was here," he thought sourly to himself, kicking his boots off of his feet.

King Rhaegar Targaryen was truly a royal prick if he was taking this long to get to a damn tourney. He hadn't met the man but that didn't stop him from having an opinion about him. If anyone deserved the title of king, it wasn't him or even his own father, Balon Greyjoy. No, it would've been his grandfather, Lord Quellon. Thinking about the old man brought a sad smile to his lips.

He remembered his grandfather as a stern man who commanded the islands with absolute authority, yet treated his grandchildren and family with kindness and warmth (much like Ned Stark did). But even one of his own family going against him would not stop him from inflicting the punishment they deserved. It was later that Theon heard of how he tried to reform the Iron Islands, only for Balon to cast those attempts aside when he took the Seastone Chair.

It was only now he thought that it was too quick for his father to take the Seastone Chair. His grandfather had been old, that was true, but he was still hale and hearty before he died. He would have thought that his father was responsible for his death, but even in the Iron Islands, no man was as reviled as the kinslayer. It didn't matter; Balon ascended the Seastone Chair after Quellon died.

"And barely a year after he took the chair, the Iron Islands tried to rebel and earned nothing but contempt for it," he thought bitterly. His father and uncles had been so sure that the North would join them in attacking the south; they never thought they would be attacked instead, or if they did it would take too long. They lost that notion quickly when the Northern fleet arrived at the Islands and laid siege to them all, especially Pyke. When the rebellion had started he was a prince. When it ended, he was a hostage.

"And the Starks have never let me forget it." It wasn't obvious or cruel in how they did it but it was there. No matter what he did, he still wasn't one of them. The Pack, Winterfell, the North, his friendship with Robb, all reminded him in some way that he wasn't of the North. His closest friend was the brother of the king his father rebelled against, the irony.

He turned his head down to the river's current. The twisting and folding waters paid illusions on his drunken mind. If he concentrated, he could almost see the Starks in the current. There they stood, so happy and perfect. He felt jealous at the sight of them. A hope that his family could've been like that filled his mind. Soon the currents showed his family, even the dead ones. They were all there. He could see them laughing at him or looking at him with disgusted eyes. Anger rose up inside him and he struck the water, dispersing the image. "Fuck them," he decided.

A scream pierce the air from down the bank. "Someone help!" a woman shrieked.

"Wha?" he thought, turning his head to look at the screaming wrench. She turned out to be Dornish and with the Red Viper too. His daughters were all scrambling around the bank, even the bitch. He scoffed inwardly; they must've lost some of their jewels in the water's current. If they had, they were certainly making a large scene about it.

"My daughters!" screamed the woman again, making him go still. "They're in the river! Someone, please help! I can't see Obella!"

He heard those words and he looked at the panic that was on her face and the face of the Dornish around her. He looked to the river and saw one person trying to stay above the current but failing. "No, not again," he thought to himself as he stared, the warmness leaving him and the voices replacing it.

"Father! Asha! Rodrik! Maron, please! Grandfather! Someone, please, DON'T LEAVE ME! COME BACK!"

"NOT AGAIN!"

He didn't remember standing up, he didn't remember dropping the skin of wine, and he didn't remember pulling off his jerkin and tunic. What he did remember was the second he hit the water, it welcomed him with a cold and rushing feeling all around him. The darkness might've been confusing but not for him. He aligned himself with the pull and followed it, swimming fast and strong.

When his lungs demanded air, he broke the surface for a gasp, barely seeing the others standing on the bank before he dived back down. "Swim, you bastard, swim!" he told himself as he swam after the two in the river. The first one he saw was a young girl floating in the water, not even trying to swim to the surface. His heart clenched at the sight. The other one was still trying to keep her head above the surface but she was losing her strength.

He swam down to grab the younger one first and then kicked his legs upwards to grab the other by the wrist. She struggled against him as he broke the surface for, trying to reach around to hit him. "Stop that! I'm trying to save you!" he shouted at her. With his arms full, it was a challenge to swim back to the bank. His legs soon began to feel like dead weights baring him down. But he still kicked, forcing his way back to the bank.

When he did reach it, he pushed the two girls onto it before getting onto it himself. He laid there for a second, breathing hard. "Obella! Obella, wake up!" the elder of the two girls screamed, shaking the younger. But the younger just lay there, motionless with her eyes closed. "No!" the elder wailed.

He stared at the two of them and suddenly was brought back to a memory of better days. His grandfather was taking him to the shore to watch the drowned men preform their rites, taking him so close that he could feel the water in his feet. He didn't know why he was motivated by that memory, but he was already kneeling over the younger girl, pushing the elder out of the way. "Skip past all the ritual parts, Theon," he thought himself. "What did they do?"

The chest, they had pumped away on the chest. But they had done it on a man older than the girl in front of her. No, he couldn't focus on that. Just do what he remembered. He reached out and placed his hands on her chest, pushing up and down. "What are you doing?" he heard the other girl ask. He ignored her, focused on his pumping. "I said what are you doing?" She shoved him but he rolled with it and kept pumping.

But even as he pumped, nothing happened. "What's wrong? What am I doing wrong?" He looked back through his memory. The kiss! The ritual would not be complete without the kiss of life! There were feet thundering towards him, but he ignored it as he leaned to the girl's mouth. "Gods, this has to be the youngest girl I ever kiss!"

Someone grabbed his shoulders but he shook them off. When he pulled back, the girl wasn't moving. "Come on, come on." He started the ritual again. More hands grabbed his shoulders but he shook them all off. He kept pumping on her chest and gave her the kiss of life once more. Her body shook in his hands and he let go quickly. Her eyes opened and she twisted her head to the side to cough out the water she had swallowed. When she was done, she began to cry. It was a cry of terror and relief, mixing together.

"Obella!" the elder girl cried in relief, pulling her into a hug. They held onto each other like they wouldn't let go.

Theon stood up and finally looked around for a moment, seeing the rest of the Dornish standing around them and (much to his surprise) a couple of Asha's men. But his relief at seeing the girl alive quickly turned to anger. He reached down and pulled them up roughly to their feet. "What were you thinking!?" he demanded, holding them by their shoulders.

They stared at him with wide eyes. "What—?"

"What were you thinking!? Did you have any idea of what to do or did you just think that the water looked nice? Do you even know how to swim!?" he shouted at them, shaking them hard.

It was the older one who got her voice back. She looked at him with angry eyes that were also haughty, trying to tell him that she knew better than he did. "Yes, we've learned how to swim at the Water Gardens—"

He knew of the Water Gardens and immediately saw what was wrong with what she was trying to tell him. "That's dead water! The river has a current to it, a pull! Swimming in a river or even an ocean is different than swimming in a pool!" He swung his head around, spraying water droplets from his hair, until he found the bastard who had been tormenting him that morning. "You! You say that you've been trained at sea! You must've known this, why didn't you stop them!?" She stared at him, caught off guard and unable to reply right away. That was all he needed to know. He turned his gaze from her and back to the ones he saved. "From now on, don't go near the river unless you know how to swim proper or I will let the Drowned God take you next time!"

He turned away from the bank, pushing through the Dornishmen. It was only when he was free of them that he saw that Asha had been amongst the people who had gathered. She gave him a look that he didn't back down from. At that moment, he didn't care what she might say about him or what just happened. The look didn't last long and he walked away from her, back up the bank to where the rest of his clothes and that skin of wine were.


At the feast that night, he was forced to sit with his sister's crew again. He chose to ignore them, focusing more on his goblet. The food before him had been eaten but it was for the sake of making sure he didn't wake up with a hungry stomach. All around him he heard the festival with people shouting and music playing. It was a joyous feast and yet, he wanted to leave.

"Hey, Priest!" one of his sister's crewmates shouted down the length of the table. Whoever he was calling to, it was none of his damn business. "Priest!" the crewmate shouted again as he took a drink from the goblet.

When he set it down, he saw that most of the ironborn were looking at him. "What?" he demanded.

"He was talking to you," another crewmate said, pointing down the table at the shouter in question, a grizzled old man who was missing an eye.

He was surprised by that. "I'm Priest?" he asked himself. But aloud he said, "Do I look like I'm a fucking drowned man?"

"You're raising them from the dead, you might as well be," the old seaman said.

"The Damphair would say otherwise," another said in small protest. He looked cleaner than the old man which wasn't by much for an ironborn.

"Aye, he would need a different name," a third agreed.

"I already have a name," he thought to himself. But before he could even say that, they were already debating names amongst themselves. The most ridiculous one he heard Maiden-saver.

It was Asha who broke the argument that was starting to bubble up. "Tidebreaker," she declared, "Theon Tidebreaker. If you're going to call him something, call him that."

"Aye, that'll do," Qarl the maid, one of the crew he actually knew by name, agreed. "The tides broke on him but he did not break to the tides."

He froze at that proclamation, the goblet in his hand and reaching for his mouth. "How do you know that?" he asked, barely able to keep his voice from cracking or breaking.

"Everyone in the islands of the two days you clung to a piece of driftwood in the sea. You fell from your lord grandfather's ship in the midst of the Storm God's rage and thought dead. But you were found and then brought back alive."

"Shivering and terrified more like it," he thought to himself. The story he just heard was barely the one he remembered. He didn't fall off that ship. When an ironborn longship found him, he was terrified of them all. His terror didn't lapse until he had gotten back to Pyke and his grandfather. But he would be damned before the gods before he told them that. These were his people; he could not look weak to them.

"You," a familiar voice said in front of him. A quick glance of his eyes told him that it was the same bastard from this morning. He chose to ignore her even as his sister's crew looked on. "You," she said again. He still ignored her. "Have you gone deaf in the short time since we last saw each other?"

He did choose to speak. "Sister, do you have anyone in your crew named 'You?'" he asked Asha, earning laughs from the crew in question.

"No, I don't," she replied before looking at the stranger standing before their table. "What do you want, bastard?"

"I am not here to talk to you, Captain," she replied, somehow managing to sound both polite and insulting when saying the title. "I am here to speak with your brother."

"Then use his name, surely you are capable of that."

She simply turned her head to look at him. "Theon, my father has asked me to come and extend you an invitation to our table. He thought that you would be bored and alone here at this table." She cast a look at the table with disdainful eyes. The men began to growl and shift their weights to fight.

He was insulted too, even if by association. But they were his people and he would rule them, one day. He couldn't let this pass otherwise he would seem weak to them. "It seems that your mother didn't train you in manners as well as sailing," he remarked relaxed as he reached for the goblet and drank from it. "Or is it your father who has failed in that?"

She looked back at him. "What?"

"You address your betters with the respect given to their ranks. As you call my sister captain, you would call me lord." There were scowls on the crew's faces at his words but he had to keep going on with what he was saying.

The bastard scoffed at that. "And how are you my better? Because you're a man?" she challenged him.

"What is my name?" he asked her.

"Theon," she said instantly.

"And what is the name of my house?"

"Greyjoy," she answered. "And if we are comparing names of houses, mine is Martell."

"You don't have a house, you are bastard-born," he rebuked her, using the same tone of voice he used when mocking Jon Snow.

She recoiled slightly like she had been struck by a blow. But then she scowled at him. "My father is Prince Oberyn Martell."

"And mine is Lord Balon Greyjoy. But my mother is his wife while yours is not. You're not a Martell, you are a Sand. That is how I am your better." He looked past her at the Dornish table. The Martells were watching them with a particular interest. The girls he saved were watching too, them most of all. "And if you're anything like your father, I think I am better off sitting here at this table."

Asha was quiet. So was her crew. The silence felt almost deafening to him but he forced himself to not look at them. He kept his eyes focused on the bastard. She was angry but it highlighted her features, making her more pretty. "You would dare refuse the offer of friendship from a Prince of Dorne?" she asked.

"Coming from you, who seemed content to insult me and my skills this morning? Yes," he replied before taking another drink from the goblet.

"I should have expected this from an ironman," she said with a scoff, "always going on about your iron price. But wait, you're not actually an ironman, are you? You've been in Winterfell ever since your fool of a father tried to rebel." She put her hands on the table like it was hers.

He was angry at the insult but he did not reach out and strike her. Instead, he put the goblet down and picked up the knife instead. He held it in his hand, the metal being shown right at her. He stared at it, moving it around as if to get a better look at it, always making sure she could see the metal. No one said a word, which was saying something an ironborn. Not even his sister spoke.

"You're right, of course," he said finally, stopping the motion of the knife. "The ironborn hold to the iron prince. But though I was raised by wolves, I remember the sea with my eyes, the salt with my nose, and the wind on my face." He moved suddenly, slamming the tip of the knife down between her fingers and missing her flesh by an inch or so. As the blade quivered in the wood, he stood up to his full height looked at the Sand Snake. "I am ironborn, we take what we want. And you have nothing that I want." His piece said, he sat back down and went back to ignoring her.

It was only after she turned and left that he turned his head. The ironborn men were nodding in acknowledgment to him, saying that he didn't do badly and that the Dornish slut forgot who she was talking to. But it wasn't their approval he was looking for. He looked at Asha, his sister and the only other Greyjoy at Riverrun. She looked back at him, her face a mask. But then there was the faintest of smirks on her lips and the briefest of nods, unnoticeable if he hadn't been looking for them. To him, those two things meant something more then what her crew could give her.

He turned back to the food before him, ready to actually eat, when the prince stood up from the high table and cried out "Jon Snow!"

End

Author's note: Thank you for all the reviews you've sent me.

In this story, with the Rebellion happen the way it did, the Iron Islands never got involved. So Quellon Greyjoy lived for much longer. He still died, of course, and his son took the Seastone Chair and promptly planned for rebellion, thinking that the Targaryens were weak and the North would join him. He was wrong.

As for what happened to Theon, you already know some of the details. Details will be revealed later on. I won't reveal everything right away (as I've said before) but I will say what happened ties into his grandfather's death and the rebellion.

I will be perfectly honest and admit that I don't know if swimming in a river or out in the sea is different than swimming in a pool. I just assume that there was and went with it. It played in what happened to Theon when he was young and why he saved the two Sand Snakes. Ironically enough, the experience for him made him unable to bathe in still water. If he wants to get wet, he absolutely has to find a body of water with a current. I don't know there's an actual name for that kind of fear so let me know if there is.

I'll see you all next chapter!