Robb was aware of a dull poking at his arm but he was so tired that he simply tried to ignore it, that was until the poking evolved into a harder poke and then into a soft punch until he woke up. He thought to himself for a moment that it was Theon in bed with him and he was going to roll over and give him a playful kiss but then he remembered that he wasn't there.
"Why….." He groaned as he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep and forget how he was missing his loved one. He then saw it was about 12 at night. He assumed that it had been only a couple hours of sleep. Then his eyes floated down to the day and it was official the final day of Theon's capture.
His eyes opened fully and saw who the cause of him waking up was. It turned out to be Sansa.
"You've been asleep for over 12 hours. I wanted to make sure you were still breathing." She said jokingly but then the joke seemed to have been completely ignored as he looked around for his things.
"Sansa, tell Cat I'm going back to work." With a great jump in his step he sprang out of his bed. Now realising the time and frantically looking around for his keys. He didn't realise that he had slept in that late. He was worried that he had wasted precious time and that something might have happened and he wouldn't have heard about it. If it wasn't for Sansa already being near the ground she surly would have fallen over.
Sansa watched from the door, knowing that there was no way she would be able to stop him seeing as he had the determined gleam in his eyes.
"Robb she hasn't come home yet." She said looking to the side uncomfortable. She had been gone a while and she really just wanted her back so she could speak some sense into her son. It was disturbing to see him being like this.
Robb looked at her like she was crazy. "That's weird." He knew that Cat could be busy with work sometimes but she had said that she only went out for a couple of groceries. It shouldn't have taken this many hours. Even Jon had come back with Rickon and Brandon and it would always take longer now because they had to take into account Bran's wheelchair.
Robb shook his head to refocus himself. He packed a couple of essentials because he felt like it could be a long night at the station. He also made sure that he packed himself a pack of tissues. If they found his body tonight then he knew he would weep long into the night. He had done it so many times before but the reality of seeing his cold dead body would demolish him.
Sansa and her older brother were standing at the door when they heard the frantic knocking, almost banging. Like a wounded animal needed to be let in to be saved from some kind of predator. Sansa was the one to answer but when she saw who it was she wish she hadn't.
Cat was standing there clearly breathless and her head was bleeding and it was clear as day that she had been crying. Sansa nearly screamed and this brought both Jon and Robb to the door as well. When they looked Catelyn up and down Jon brought out his gun to check outside while Robb and Sansa helped their shaking mother inside.
"Catelyn! What happened?" Jon asked concerned for his adoptive mother. She was shaking so badly, everyone could see her hands. It was like she was possessed and couldn't control herself.
They were also able to pick up on how here breathing was a mix between shallow and terrified. When they successfully got her seated Sansa was the first to call the police, she got connected though to Podrick who said that he and Brienne would be at least 20 minutes. She then got some minor medical supplies to help with the bleeding forehead she had.
They all gave her a moment to calm down and try to recompose herself why they all tried to figure out what had happened. Jon had come back inside at this point and he was already trying to figure out what had happened. The main picture forming in his mind was that she possible get mugged and that would explain the bruised and bloody forehead.
When they turned up light they got a better look at Catelyn's dress and it was splattered with blood. Catelyn hadn't even noticed until now and she grabbed a tissue to try and wipe it away but it only seeped into her clothing even more.
Sansa brought out the towel and some water which Catelyn seemed thankful for. As soon as the cooling sensation of the cloth on her head she seemed to be able to speak a little bit. Robb wanted her to save her strength but she had that look in her eyes which meant she was going to do something she didn't want to do but did it anyway because it needed to be done.
"It was Theon…"
Those words stopped everyones hearts at that very moment. Jon's because she had seen Mr X, Sansa's because it meant she had been in danger and Robb's because it was confirmation that Theon was still alive.
It left them in silence for a minute to take in the information. When it had settled in Sansa was the first to recover and began to clean her up again. "Mum are you sure?" Sansa had to be a hundred and ten percent sure that it was true. She didn't want her hopes given up.
"Mister X captured me. He took me to see Theon." She was trying to remember though all the haziness of it. She knew that to be of any help she would have to remember as much as possible.
The other all looked at her but not with disbelief. They knew that Catelyn was a woman of honour and would never lie about anything, especially Theon given the situation.
"Robb, I couldn't…." She couldn't go on as the sound of his screams still were present despite her being so far away. Only know she was thinking of what she could have done to stop all of it. She should have gone in and beaten him within an inch of his life. It's what she could have done but she didn't and he had ended up paying the price.
"What happened? Take it slow." Jon assured her. He then took out his phone and fumbled out until he got his voice recorder app. If he could get a statement now it would be fresher in her memory and less likely to be forgotten when she probably went to the hospital to get stitches. It wasn't a pretty sight but it could have been a lot worse, she could have been forced to stay and play his twisted games.
Catelyn tried her best to recall everything that had happened. Step by step she recalled the whole incident. She began with the first thing she remembered, going to the store and buying chicken soup to keep Robb and Jon's strength up.
"I was getting groceries then he knocked me out. I woke up in his lair-Basement-thing I don't know." As she told them she could recollect the sour taste that overpowered her before she was out of it. She didn't know what drug it was but if she had to guess she would say chloroform. After hearing Ned and Jon talk about it over so many dinners she could assume that all the symptoms matched up. This slightly concerned Jon as chloroform could mess with the memories and if they did bring a suspect in they could say that she was under the influence and confused about who it really was.
"Did you see what he looked like?" This was the most important question to any investigation and if she could give a clear description then they would get closer to catching this son of a bitch.
Cat tried her best to remember the face she saw and what he looked like while he was assaulting Theon but she couldn't remember what the illusive Mr X's face. As much as she tried it was really all a blur to her.
"He defiantly had curly black hair and blue eyes. They were light blue, like ice." She knew she would never forget those eyes. They hadn't blinked once during the entire thing and it made her think she was some kind monster but she already knew that it was true. Jon wrote that down and sent a quick text to get the sketch artist up and get his ass down to the station now. He guessed that she wouldn't give them much else but it wouldn't hurt to get some kind of feeling for what he looked like.
"What did Theon look like?" Robb asked finally piping up. He needed to know how badly he had been treated so he would know how badly he would need to torture Mr X in return.
Catelyn was tempted not to tell him how bad he looked as he could tell his reaction. She couldn't lie to her son when he was in such a vulnerable state. "He was so sickly, he had knife marks and bruises all over his body and…. He had a branding mark." She added on the last part as she only just remembered the X shaped mark that had been left in his skin.
"God…" Robb couldn't picture how Theon would look sickly, he was always kept a nice shape with a combination of Sansa's Lemon cakes and his sister's homemade sea food meals and other various other food. The only time he looked sickly was when he drank too much and would go past his limit, spending the rest of the night in the bathroom with Robb patting his back and helping him get over the worst of it.
She had to take a drink of water before beginning the second half of it. She didn't want to choke up or begin crying again. She needed to be strong for Robb, for her son.
"We were in separate rooms but there was a two way mirror, it belonged to the city police department." From her memory he could picture it in her mind and in one of the times she wanted to look away her eyes focused on a small logo of the Kings Landing Police Station.
This was when Jon and Robb looked at each other with the em 'Oh fuck'/em look. "He has ties with the police? He's someone on the force?! God damn it." This was when Robb first felt anger since they found Catelyn. If it was someone who had been on the team or someone he had worked with he would slaughter them.
Jon and Sansa could tell that Robb was on the verge of losing it so Sansa nodded for her cousin to intervene. Jon panicked but just said the first thing that came to mind.
"We'll get a full, proper statement later but what happened next?" Jon had no idea the mental pain that he was inflicting onto her when he said it. This was the part that Catelyn had been dreading. She knew that telling him he was dead would be the least painful part of it. Robb would have at least been expecting that. Robb had mentioned how he should prepare for the worst as Theon would likely be killed if they couldn't get him.
"He raped him." She saw no point in sugar coating it for him. When they did find his body they would find the marks anyway, there was no reason not to tell him. Except maybe the emotional impact.
Robb who had been pacing stopped as he got to the window. His hand pressed firmly on it to support him. Out of all things that he pictured Theon going through he had never pictured him being under someone else. The reports had never mentioned Mister X doing anything sexual with his victims so he had a small relief that he wouldn't have to experience anything like that. With the knowledge that he had been forced to do it in front of his mother made him sick to his stomach.
Catelyn tried to calm herself. His screams were still ringing loudly in her ears. She was glad that she would never have to hear them again. They had been more bloodcurdling then when she had watched the tape of Ned being killed.
"He made me watch as he was crying and begging for him to stop... I think he thought he was consenting." She said as she tried her best to recount the events. Her not being able to remember anything that could help was adding more to the guilt, it meant that they wouldn't get any closer to finding him.
Robb wanted her to stop talking. He could see vividly the picture of what had went down in his mind and he wanted it to stop. He had heard Theon scream only when he had experienced a repressed memory from childhood or when he had a nightmare about losing Robb. He could just picture what he constantly screaming would be like and how terrifying it would be for him. He didn't work for the special victims unit but he had heard similar stories of how even though they had been forced to do it they still were under the illusion that they had somehow given consent.
There had really only been one other time that was even close to this and that was when Theon was drunk at a bar and a girl started to get a bit to flirty and tried to drag him off to do god knows what to him. Thankfully Robb had been there to stop her robbing him or doing anything worse. It had been scary for the both of them. He never thought that anything worse could happen.
If there was a way that Robb could switch places with Theon and get him away he would do it in a heartbeat. No one should have endured that and everything that happened before hand.
"You couldn't have done anything." Jon said reassuring her that it was a bad situation and what she did meant that she lived and got back to them. Catelyn didn't hear him, she was a little preoccupied at the moment. Catelyn was now the one trying to calm down her son instead of the other way around.
"What happened once he was done that?" Robb said wanting this story to be over with as soon as possible. Catelyn knew what her soon was thinking and got the next part out as soon as she could.
"He…knocked me out again and then he stabbed Theon in the stomach and left him to bleed out. I saw him die. He said that the second week was done and he had grown bored of him. He said he didn't normally do this but he liked to have a witness this time." She was only assuming at this point because she had seen him and she never thought she could fully understand his motivations.
They all looked to Robb at this point. A knife to the chest wouldn't hurt as much as this. Even a barrage of arrows to the back would be less painful. Mister X would be dead where he stood. He didn't care if it took him the rest of his life he would get retribution for what he had done to his family.
Robb's body began to violently tremble. He had prepared how he would feel if it happened but now that the situation was a reality he didn't know what he should be feeling. Bloody red rage was the main one. It was taking centre stage. The others could tell and everyone backed up form him a little to give him some room.
"Why me?" Catelyn asked as she tried to think of a million reasons why she would be the one forced to watch that act. She disliked Theon and couldn't think of why she was chosen. Then again the thought of her son having to go through that would be a psychological shit show.
"Because Mister X couldn't risk kidnapping Robb. He'd be too strong." Jon said. For Mr X even though it would have been for a hilarious laugh to him it would have been a ballsy move and it might pay off if Robb was somehow able to get the upper hand.
Robb was still in complete shock. The guilt that was the worst thing he had ever felt just amplified by at least 50%. Theon was a Greyjoy. He was as tough as iron and he shouldn't have been killed by some random serial killer. He was young too and he should have lived a long life with Robb. He should have spent more time with Yara and the Stark family. He and Catelyn should have at least been given the privilege to talk before he died. Now he wouldn't get any of that.
Cat was halted her silent weeping the best that she could. She could see that her eldest a child was breaking before her. She got up and placed her shaking hand carefully under his chin.
"You will find him. And when he gets to court I will make sure that my testimony will put him away so he can rot in prison. I don't care who I have to talk to I will make sure by the old gods and the new I will get him in prison." Jon said trying to find a way that he could make the situation better but he couldn't find the words.
"I thought you didn't like Theon." Sansa said quietly. Catelyn was guilty of that but then she explained loud and clearly why she did it. "He could have stopped Ramsay from doing it at any time but he told Theon that if he did he would do it to me instead. He went through that to save me." The only thing she wished was that she could have seen this side to Theon sooner.
Robb couldn't love Theon more than he did in this very moment. He didn't like Catelyn but he saved her from Ramsay's wrath. He just wanted to shout out that Theon was a stupid idiot and that he loved him all in the same moment.
Robb had already cried enough over the past couple of weeks. He didn't want to believe that Theon was gone but he had always trusted his mother's word when she saw something as it was always accurate.
Now something else was taking over his sadness. A rage like he hadn't known before. This pure primal instinct. A life that he had held dear to his heart had been taken in such a violent manner. Theon wasn't perfect and he had defiantly fucked up badly a couple of times and he should have thought about what he was doing but none of those were even deserving of what happened.
Thankfully for all of them a knocking at the door. Robb wanting to not think about anything was the first to get up to open it.
In front of them stood Brienne and Podrick. Only about 15 minutes later then they said they'd be. Podrick looked slightly nervous while Brienne was more concerned than anything. "Sorry we would have gotten here sooner but someone got us lost." She apologized while giving a sideways glance to Pod laughed nervously then silencing himself.
"I'm sorry Officer Tarth, I don't go to this area usually." He said explaining himself. It was clear that their attempt to lighten the mood didn't work as they all looked like they had just heard the worst thing they had heard in their lives.
"Anyway where's Catelyn?" Brienne said shocked as she just remembered the reason they were there in the first place.
She saw Catelyn fully and her first though was that she had been stabbed due to all the blood that was on her clothing but when she spoke in a normal tone of voice she knew she was okay. One thing was also visible to her as well. She had been though some kind of traumatic event and Brienne shuddered to think what it could have been.
"Lady Stark what happened?" Catelyn was going to speak but she couldn't find the words. She didn't think that she could describe the event again. Jon knew that there was no more talking out of her tonight. They would do it another time but for now she needed medical treatment and proper rest.
"It's a long story, we'll tell you on the way."