When he reaches the closest town, Theon is walked weary of two weeks' foot travel, in dire need of a good mattress and someone to share it with.
Seagard evaded him many days before, tripling his time on the road without any luck. Either the accursed town grew legs and joined Greywater Watch in its elusive ways, or Theon is the worst navigator to ever come from an island of seafaring warriors. The latter, to his dismay, grows more likely with the passing days - he can't even rightly say that he's still in the Riverlands, with how far he's walked.
(Or, perhaps, the sailor dropped him on the wrong side of the bay - he chooses to believe that, for the sake of his pride.)
His luck with water thus far would also have been the laughing stock of every reaver on Pyke - though his waterskin runs painfully dry, the last of his food was ruined in a flash rain the night before. That he hadn't the time to fetch his bow before Asha smuggled him away, he woefully regrets - each passing hare is a great taunt to its absence.
It all leaves him quite hungry, even more wet, and absolutely sure that the Islands would have worn him in, had he stayed. At least this water has no salt to it. The rain leaves no burn in his eyes, no stains on his leathers. He'll be dried and done of it soon enough, and once he reaches Robb again, he'll have some strong words for Lord Mallister about his wandering castle.
But that's for later - the town ahead of him is worrisome enough for now.
The small settlement is damp and lonely, its inn a mere fraction of the one in Wintertown. In truth, it's hardly a town at all, barely even a village. The inn at the center of the forest's clearing, overrun with moss and with an unsettling lean, makes up the bulk of it. By comparison to the rest (a small stable off the road, an even smaller dock where the river cuts by, and a couple ramshackle structures of whose purpose Theon has no right guessing), the tipping structure is a castle.
But anything is better than another night with roots beneath him and bugs making a home of his hair, so he jogs forward with the last of his strength, and pays no greater heed to its shortcomings.
Inside is slightly better, by virtue of a small hearth fire that brings the room from dismally chilling to bearable. Two common-looking men hover around it, speaking in hushed tones over their flagons. A couple homely serving girls titter about, taking a rag to window sills and shuffling away to a back room with empty plates and drained cups. None of them suffer him so much as a passing glance.
The innkeep looks about as lively as her languid establishment, which is to say only marginally more so than her meager clientele. She receives Theon with as much courtesy as he warrants - a tired once-over and a curt greeting of, "Just the bed, lad?"
"Aye," he yawns, slapping an uncounted handful of stags on the counter. His purse is running dangerously low, he notes, but doesn't bother mitigating the fact - he slaps another coin down a second later. "And some wine, if you have any."
She has no wine, but the Innkeep spares him some too-bitter ale and a bowl of watery stew, then shovels him off to his quarters without another word.
The small room, with three vacant beds aside from his own, is no more up-kept than the common room. Nevertheless, Theon lets it bother him none, drinks down the stew and ale in mere minutes, then all but dives onto the closest bed.
It's no surprise that his pillow is pungent with mildew, his mattress lumpy and… greenish? - it is exactly his money's worth, which was about as much as the cheapest of Wintertown's whores (and just as pleasing, too). Even still, it's the most comfortable Theon has been since leaving the warmth of Robb's bed all those months ago.
But nothing could ever top the bed of a lover - even the shitty pads of straw they excused as mattresses during war became downy and plush when heated by the acts of intimacy. Even when the heat grew too much, when arms grew numb from being laid on and sweat glued their skin together in the night, nothing would ever be so special as waking to a smile and a kiss and likely more , when given the time-
Right, he remembers only too late, once he's already stirring in his breeches. I wanted a whore.
He sighs, wondering if either of the serving girls will be willing to play the part of one. Neither of them were that pretty (or red-haired, or freckled, or particularly lordly, or-...), but the face is never the important part once the clothes come off, after all.
His father's jeer suddenly springs forth, out from the silk-thin threads of willpower that Theon had roped it back with.
'Is he your little personal whore, or are you his?'
Had he been less flustered at the time, Theon may have wondered if his father even knew the half of it, or if the words were another of his baseless taunts. To call it truth would be to dignify the old shit, but it's impossible to look at his past and call the latter half a flat lie. Theon does indeed have a reputation, whether his father knows it or not.
And the other side of that question: Robb.
It scares Theon, sometimes, to bring him into the mix. There has never been a bedpost more notched than his, after all; turning Robb into one more chip threatens to collapse the whole tattered structure. But how can he avoid that? After Robb weds, is he never to fuck again? Should he be heading north, instead, to preemptively take the Black and force a resolution on that matter?
Throwing his boots back on, he compromises to buy another ale, and let that decide his moral compass for the night. Robb will understand, he tells himself. Once he marries Walder Frey's hideous daughter, he will have to understand. He can't keep all of his promises, either. If the thought tightens something in his chest, well, the ale will help with that, too.
The inn is no busier than an hour ago. While the serving girls are nowhere to be seen, and the men have left the hearth vacant for the taking, it's no emptier either. Although, the men that have filled their space are much less to Theon's liking, wearing swords at their hips and crimson cloaks embroidered with golden lions.
On instinct, Theon flattens himself to the staircase wall, well within a shadow. All thoughts of sex vanish as quickly as they came.
Shit. Gods fucking dammit.
He must have wandered farther south than he thought.
From the look of them, the group just came from a fight, likely stragglers or deserters. If their battle is the one Theon thinks it is, he takes this as a good sign; men only desert from losing sides.
At this distance, Theon picks up the tail end of their conversation. One man, dried blood on his surcot and skin plastered with mud, confirms his suspicions.
"Bloody wolf was the worst part," he scoffs. "The animal, not the boy - monster, more like. Tore apart ol' Trev, it did! And for what? The lad went down fast enough even with that damned beast."
Theon feels his knuckles tighten on the doorframe, before he even registers what the man means - a second, equally haggard man makes it clear enough before he gets the chance to. "Still won, didn't he?" the soldier grumbles, stabbing at his stew. "Getting shot didn't kill him none."
A third man, visibly drunker than the other two, chimes in. "No, he's good as dead - I saw the bolt hit 'im. Give it a week, Nik. No boy's living through that."
The room suddenly runs cold, very cold, the doorframe turning to ice beneath Theon's fingers. All heat flees his body, too, a breath choking in the motion. Of every fear he'd harbored these last few tumultuous weeks, of every scenario he'd run through. Dying. He hadn't even considered…
The man, oblivious, eyes his friend and shrugs. "Eat those words or we'll still be fighting wolves a year from now - boys and beasts alike."
Theon has never hoped for something more. The rest of the conversation is drowned out by his ever-crescending pulse, blaring like a war cry and deafening him to all else.
When he slips from the room, none of the Westmen are any the wiser.
"Innkeep," he calls (barely even able to get that much out), and rests his hopes in the extra coin slid to her earlier. "Have you any idea how long a ride to the Crag is?"
"The Crag?" she questions, almost dismissively. "Lookin' to be camp follower, lad?"
In a sense. The map of his intended journey has already re-drawn itself, without him even thinking about it. A lie leaves his mouth. "I'm looking to avoid the war, however possible. This lot," he gestures to the drunken lions in the next room, "makes me fear that I've caught up to it."
The woman puts down the ledger and pulls her mouth to the side in thought. "Well, you've done a piss poor job, to be certain," she confirms. "Crag's only a two day's ride south, if you follow the coast."
She mumbles something else about riding even further south to Dorne if he's so sure on avoiding the thrice damned war, but it gets lost among his shock. That close!? How had he missed passing this far into enemy territory!
Lord Mallister won't hear the fucking end of it.
"My thanks," he offers the innkeep, a new idea already piecing itself together as he runs from the weathered building. He sprints to the stables before he even knows what that idea truly is (though he suspects it involves thievery and horses).
The Westmen left steeds in the stables. Very fine steeds, still saddled and blissfully unattended. And, as it turns out, he really is stealing a horse. He cannot decide what to make of that - his unconscious decisions are never the most honorable, true, but even this seems too far, somehow.
Would Robb think so? That has always been a reliable model to test his honor against. Robb, bloodied and dying. Would he give two shits if Lannister deserters are one horse poorer?
The answer comes without hesitation, and he unteathers a young, strong-looking mare with shaky hands, stripping her of all crimson-and-gold insignia, even tossing aside a forgotten coin purse in his haste.
It's a two day's ride ahead of him (one day, even, had he no mercy for the horse), and it costs nothing to sleep on the road. Or, to camp at least. He won't be sleeping.
Theon hoists himself into the saddle without another thought and bounds southward.
...(Months Ago)...
They didn't die in Whispering Wood. Rather, Theon cannot recall a time he ever felt more alive, surrounded by felled men but somehow still standing. The Gods (not his, but someone's) had headed his prayers; for once, Theon had been allowed to keep a promise. Across the carnage, Robb wiped the lingering blood from his blade, looking half-dazed and half… stirred, he supposed, was the best way to put it. Like a dormant hunger had boiled to the surface with the heat of war, making his eyes glimmer with something so unlike Robb that it took him aback.
A wolf indeed.
Those eyes met his, a dangerous grin stretched Robb's cheeks, and Theon realized what that glimmer meant. This cannot go too far, his brain tried to warn, even as his feet began to carry him closer and his blood picked up pace.
Theon realized, too, as Robb whisked him away from the chaos of the field, that the two of them failed to ever establish what, exactly, too far entailed. Surely, they had already crossed several important lines with the groping and kissing and promises made the night prior. If falling asleep naked and half-debauched with a man betrothed was not far enough, Theon was anxious to find out what was.
Robb wasted no time in settling his curiosities.
His back hit a tree once the field fell out of sight. The bark was rough, even through his padding and leathers, but Robb was rougher. Battle, he could tell, still flowed through the young lord's veins. He tasted of it where their mouths met, all intent and no patience. He smelled of it, like the blood of a thousand men and the sweat of two, filthy and beyond intoxicating.
Maybe it was the echo of their anticipation bouncing off the trees, maybe it was the lingering metallic taste they shared between their tongues, or maybe it was something else entirely, something deep in the boiling of their blood - the moment soon became a battle of its own. Robb would have him there, pressed to the tree, he did not doubt that for a minute. As would Theon to Robb.
Neither knew how the other wanted it, and careless caresses became hands wandering beneath armor, beneath laces, as Theon challenged his lord to one more ploy of control.
Robb faltered for a moment as Theon's thigh pressed his straining breeches, just so. He took advantage. In a split moment, the lord was pushed back and flipped around, his chest and cheek smooshed against the rough bark. Their duel was over in an instant, and Theon had his lord relenting to him with no more than a needy gasp.
The victory of battle may have been Robb's that day, but there, against a tree on the outskirts of the aftermath, Theon claimed his own.
It wasn't nice, with none of the gentle touches and deliberate, descending kisses of the night prior, but they needed it like this. They needed to lose themselves in something raw, ruthless, and careless to consequence, rough enough to leave them aching and bruised come morning. After a battle, no one would bat an eye.
At least, they would have had it that way.
No sooner had breeches been opened and spit spat on Theon's fingers than a large, blood-coated figure loomed out of the bushes.
He might have pissed himself in fear (which, undoubtedly, would not have ended well for Robb), if the muzzle weren't immediately familiar - there aren't too many six-foot-tall wolves south of the Neck, after all. This one's ears perked up to see them as he trotted jovially towards his master, unaware of his own spine-chilling stature.
Theon suddenly felt very naked indeed.
Grey Wind nudged Robb's face with his bloody muzzle, like an impatient child urging a parent towards supper. Where have you been? He seemed to ask. Come, we have work to do!
And then, it was as though a light had been cast upon their situation. Robb looked about himself, to Grey Wind and the blood on his muzzle, to his discarded weapon and (most ashamedly) to his bare lower half. The color bled from his face in an instant.
"Fuck," he spat. Faster than Theon thought possible, his breeches were thrown back on. "What am I doing?"
After a speechless moment, Theon reached to pull Robb back towards him. "Excuse me," he started, "we're already occupied with something."
Instead of heeding Theon's words, he answered his own rhetorical question. "Dishonoring myself against a tree, that's what!" The lord smacked his forehead. "Fuck! Fuck me!"
Well, I was trying, Theon thought, but knew better than to give voice to it - he couldn't imagine that it would help Robb's sudden bout of clear-headedness at all. Instead, he grew irritated as Robb scrambled for his few discarded armings, their moment obviously over despite the blood still singing in his veins.
"It's hardly dishonoring," he argued, knowing it was fruitless. "Can you not stay back another five minutes?" Indeed, Robb brushed off his attempt with no more than a disbelieving look.
"Any camp follower will be happy to have you, Theon. But I have a war and a hostage to deal with," Robb muttered, eyes locked ahead, already making his way back into the storm.
(Theon had never been more disappointed that the hostage in question was not himself.)
The irritation dulled as Robb disappeared among the trees, his wolf leading the way, but it left behind something pessimistic and foreboding. For some odd reason, be it the taste of autumn on the wind or the knowledge that they had entered this war in truth now he could not tell, but something loomed over his back as he gathered his spilled arrows and cleaned the clearing of any evidence of the love-making that could have been. Something gray, something impassive, something that made him deeply uneasy about things to come.
Even deeper down, he suspected it had to do with his lord, and love to be lost between them. He banished the thought, though its residue lingered like sap on his fingers.
There was no more time to wonder over the affair, after the dust settled - only days later, Robb was named the King in the North, thoroughly quelling any discussion on the matter and complicating things well beyond resolution.
(Months later, he still cannot decide if it's the best or worst thing to happen to their relationship.)
...(Now)...
Theon arrives at the Crag to little fanfare, just the occasional confused glance from bannermen who likely never thought they would have to suffer him again. Most of the men just look tired and haggard, not in a state to care about an unmarked horse and its panicking rider. There is a gleam of reassurance, at the very least, in the direwolf waving proud above the half-ruined castle's half-crumbled ramparts; there has been a victory. A Stark is still alive to fly that banner.
The king's tent is quick enough to spot, easily double the size of the next biggest and flying a white-and-gray flag of its own. Theon's heart doubles its pace at the sight.
Had he been paying more attention, Theon might have thought to question why Grey Wind was chained back with a collar just outside. The wolf looks wildly around himself and whines frantically upon seeing him. That should have been his first clue for what was to come (and he does not pity the man tasked with collaring the direwolf, if he still lived, for surely it was not Robb).
His next clue should have been the lack of guards around the tent's entrance.
But he is not thinking, just moving - running - to the tent, faster than his depleted energy should allow. He passes Grey Wind by, for now ignoring his desperate keens.
Only, there is no king in the king's tent, a fact Theon wished he'd known before throwing himself through the flaps with a yell of " Robb! " only to be met with the startled faces of all of the king's lord bannermen.
Whatever discussion they may have been arguing their way through immediately dissipates, Grey Wind's whines louder than ever against the silence.
"...Greyjoy?" Wendyll Manderly attempts the greeting after too long a moment. "We weren't made aware of your return."
"I didn't expect you to be. Where's Robb? Why is Grey Wind chained down?"
The lords all look among themselves. More silence permeates the tent, all of the men eying Theon in such a way that he suddenly understands what this might look like. They all thought they had seen the last of me, he realizes. Not a raven had reached them since his departure, either. And now I've come back in commoner's clothes and without a coin on my person. Seven Hells, what must they have thought I was doing for all of this time?
The silence stretches on for so long, Theon briefly wonders if the men forgot how to speak over the few months he's been away. It makes no difference, he posits, when their eyes scream distrust more eloquently than their words ever could.
A spike of nerves and a cold sweat run through the skin of his back.
Eventually, Lady Mormont seems to take pity on him. "The beast has grown frantic. It scares many of the men - we thought this the safest option. His grace is wounded and ill, but alive. Lord Westerling's eldest daughter spared her chambers as a sick room." Gods, that helps nothing! "We have not heard a word from you for months, Greyjoy," the woman continues, approaching and grasping his arm in her bear-strong grip. "Have you men and horses? Ships? There is some talk of reaving along the western coast, what of that?"
He blinks. "Reaving?" Already? But hadn't they still been building the ships only weeks ago?
The others share not a word between them as Theon parces it all out, only having eyes for him (and sharp, accusatory eyes they are). Their worries are clear, and they bode poorly for Theon. Fine then, he thinks. Better to lance the wound quickly.
"The mission was a failure. Balon Greyjoy will have nothing to do with our cause, but he still claims a crown regardless." He yanks his arm free. It's not that hard a feat as Mormont's grip slackens in dread. "I have nothing to do with it. With them . I chose my king, and, if it pleases you, I would go to see him now."
It's not as simple a request as it should be, taking a promise to leave his weapons (a small knife) in the tent and for one of their own to monitor him for the duration for all of the bannermen to finally relent, but soon enough, the She-Bear is leading him by the arm to Robb's sick room.
If the innkeep's watery stew still sits in his stomach at all, it is churning by the time they stop outside of a shut door three turns up the castle's least crumbling tower, and is crawling slowly up his throat when the She-Bear grabs the handle. She gives him a wary glance and a pat on the shoulder.
"This talk of rebellion is not over, Greyjoy," she whispers, "but I will see what I can say to the others to keep that head on your shoulders for the time being."
With that, she creaks the door open and shoves Theon (ready to vomit) into the proceeding chamber.
It's dark in the room, despite being the height of noon beyond the heavily curtained window. But Theon can make out a bed though the candlelight, and the barely moving lump beneath its covers. The lump quivers, groaning painfully with every breath, and Theon is glad for it, in a morbid sort of way - without those few, worrisome indications, he would have passed off the unconscious king as dead.
Robb is not alone in his sick room. A girl (likely Gawen Westerling's daughter- the chamber is hers, after all) stands at a bowl just a few paces away, a discolored rag wrung between her slender fingers. She does not notice Theon hovering by the doorframe as she scurries back, pulls the covers down, lays a hand tenderly on Robb's chest, and dabs at his wound. Her large, doe-like eyes, though currently turned only to her efforts, look kind and soft and concerned for the wounded man between her sheets.
Something jealous lurches in Theon's gut. How dare you touch him, he finds himself thinking, as though his attempts at nursing would be any better. Robb doesn't even know you. What have you sacrificed for him? What gives you the right? The next second he is clearing his throat with more volume than strictly necessary.
The girl jumps, her plump little lips parting in a gasp as she meets his eye. "Goodness! You startled me!"
Good. The anger is unbidden, he knows, but there is nothing for it. Giving the girl a testing glare, he finds a stool at her dresser and drags it to the opposite side of Robb's sickbed.
He looks even less alive up close, and it does nothing to settle Theon's stomach. Never in his life, even in his worst moments, could he have imagined a bleaker image - Robb, the summer sun contained within a man, all dim and papery and wan, like the light had bled out through the deep, jagged (and clearly infected) wound that the girl daubs at. It's wrong, so wrong, and Theon finds his fingertips tracing along the pulse point of Robb's neck, just to make sure she isn't actually tending to a lifeless body.
A weak pulse tells that worry to be rid of itself. Even still, it frightens Theon that the only thing he can liken his lover to now is a corpse.
He has never been one for heartfelt demonstrations, but a thousand comforting touches and declarations through tears all feel right to burst from his skin in moments.
But the girl clears her throat, giving him a wary side eye, the only reminder he needs that whatever display of affection he'd been planning would be an especially stupid move. Very pointedly, she nudges his fingers away and continues her prodding.
"If you don't mind, I am a little busy," she says, dryly, as though Theon was just some random man intruding on something entirely inappropriate for a maiden and a man betrothed.
He bristles back. "And I was invited in."
And that's what's really inappropriate, in his mind - who is she to be questioning his position here, to make him feel like the accessory in the room?
But question, she does. "And you are…?"
"Theon."
Her doe-eyes widen further, as though in recognition. "...Jeyne," she answers back, hesitant enough and suddenly unable to meet his glare. "I have heard of you - Greyjoy, isn't it?"
Of course. She would know his family - keeps on the Western coast often did. Likely she'd grown up with tales of their brutality, if she hadn't witnessed it herself, and even more likely she'd already passed her judgements on him accordingly.
"Used to be," he answers. And maybe that's a more sensitive topic at the moment than he'd care to admit. His retort comes unbidden and sharp,"But not anymore, so you can stop glaring like I'm here to reave your lousy castle."
Silence falls, thick and stagnant between them, cut through only with Robb's feverish wheezing and whimpers. Jeyne wants to say something. It's written in her expression, as clearly as the way she worries at her bottom lip and tenses her brow.
She is a pretty thing, he notices, even in her state of indecision. Probably kind, too, and ever so innocent with those big brown eyes. A proper lady, nursing an enemy back to health. It's something Robb would do, he thinks. She reminds him too much of Robb. It only makes the green twisting in his chest tangle tighter when he imagines how well the two would fit together, given any other scenario.
And maybe there's a jealousy of her own when she rushes out her next words. "You're his lover, then?"
That clears his thoughts quickly enough.
A panicked cough replaces any denial he might have spat, his throat both dry and choked with saliva simultaneously.
Jeyne just blushes and Gods if she doesn't leave right now Theon is going to strangle something. (Her, preferably.) "His grace speaks in his sleep," she mumbles. "His dreams are fevered, for sure, but... graphic, going by his words. He oft mentions you and, er, there's a… reaction. If you understand."
Oh.
If it was obvious enough to a near-stranger by only fevered ramblings, what did that say about any man who knew them better, who might use their own proclivities against them? This girl is still an enemy! His conscience is screaming. And how long has she been treating Robb, alone and asleep and vulnerable? What if word got to the Lannisters? To Father?
He decides he hates her, this saccharine, perceptive young lady.
Jeyne has no mal-intent behind her eyes, though, only empathy and not a small amount of bashfulness. Hope, maybe, that her hunch will be proven wrong and she still has a chance with her wounded ward. She asks, with this same fickle hope, "Forgive me if I pry, but you are, aren't you…?"
You do, in fact, pry, he doesn't say. Instead, he gives her a long look, brushing a damp curl away from Robb's forehead (and fucking hell, it's much more feverish than he had anticipated).
"His grace is betrothed to a daughter of Walder Frey." If that's a reminder for the clearly infatuated young lady or for himself, he does not know. "Is that what I look like to you?"
Jeyne's subsequent sigh tells Theon that she takes his meaning well enough, and she asks nothing more. Her tending is finished, too, and she seems suddenly quick to make herself scarce.
"Right. Of course. I shall leave you be, my lord." Almost as a last though, she tacks on, "I promise you, no one will hear of this."
Theon wants to believe her.
The door shuts gently behind Jeyne, the bloody bowl and the bloody bandages and the bloody rags all with her. However, that leaves Theon alone with a bloody, fevered Robb. This close, his skin is less so pale but downright translucent, aging him well past his years and darkening the circles below his eyes into blackish, bruised crescents.
I swear, Robb, to every stupid God you greenlanders have made up, if you die from this I will never forgive you.
His hands have never felt as useless as they do now, reaching to hold him but doing nothing to help. He finds clammy fingers between his palms, and thinks it will have to be enough. He pushes his dread as far back in his mind as he can and holds the fingers to his lips for far too long a moment. "I'm back, Robb. I kept my word," he whispers into them. Though it might have just cost me everything, he does not.
