Sorry for the long gap. I'm rather sick at the moment with the virus.

Eddard

"The preparations have all been made, My Lord. Young Theon is to leave a fortnight from now, alongside the Captain of the Guard, and an escort to Seagard, where his kin will welcome their new lord back to the Iron Islands. If they are to be believed, transportation will be handled by them. The girl will come with Jory to the North, wherein she will… She will…My lord?"

A soft hand tapping against the side of his face dragged him to awareness. A few moments of disorientation later, Ned Stark was fully conscious. Those in front of him made up a significant fraction of the people he could fully truth, his wife and his Maester. Both gazed at him worriedly, far too aware of their place to seek a second reassurance beyond the instinctive nod Ned had given them upon rousing. He flashed them a grim smile that ought to have held assurance but instead rang as hollow as Brandon's tomb in the dank darkness of the crypts. The Maester hesitantly cleared his throat and made to speak when a small sign of dismissal from Catelyn had him silence himself and quietly leave.

She let the silence run; a choice Ned inwardly pleaded for her to overturn. Seeing no change in the situation, he cleared his throat.

"Forgive me, my lady. I-"

"There is no need for that, Ned. Exhaustion is a most silent thing." He barked a startled laugh, eyes brightening ever so slightly in mirth, "Aye, it is. It creeps up on you like a fine mist and strikes when you most have a need for your strength. I lost more men to exhaustion than I ever did to skill." Ned cursed himself just as the words left his mouth. To bring the topic of death and despair helped nobody, and simply served to cast a pall over the room. Catelyn, in her kindness, chose to avoid it, instead choosing to walk over the window and pull closed the shutters letting in the frosty wind. Years in the North yet hadn't managed to completely wean her off Southern climes.

The silence that returned upon her arrival to the seat before the desk was more amiable, more generous. The sound of the crackling fire that had earlier seemed almost hostile now reminded him of old friends and welcome comforts. And welcome it was, as was any comfort that Ned could obtain in this moment of strain. Not that the strain was anything new, quite the opposite. In all truth, it itself seemed to be an old friend, an ever-present entity that at all times tested him. And as was the malady familiar, so was the cause for such.

Before the madness of Aerys, Ned always knew that Brandon would one day be Lord and that he would his older brother's most loyal bannerman, with a keep and wife of his own. Their children would be friends and would follow the tradition set by their father's. That was all Eddard Stark had ever wanted for himself, but the Gods saw fit to decree otherwise. Now, he was Lord with bannermen and children of his own.

Ah, children.

Though the Gods had taken his family from him, they gave him another, a blessing for which he was intimately grateful. Catelyn had given him four children, each of whom he loved. Powerful, intelligent Lysara. Kind and shy Robb. Sansa, so childishly formal and his youngest, Arya. The very opposite of Sansa, she was wild and brooked no hint of ladyship. They were all so vastly different, yet bonded together with blood and honour, an association Ned prayed would never be lost.

To the world, Torrhen was yet another one of Eddard Stark's children, with the unique property of being the only one born out of the wedding bed.

Every word of that was false.

For years, he had raised another's child as his own, and for years he stood by and watched as a woman who could've been the boy's mother shunned and unjustly maligned him. All of the trouble that had befallen their house, for Robb's condition to Lysara's earlier unnatural nature, had been blamed on the boy, who had somehow taken it remarkable grace and patience. Any other child would have broken or grown increasingly bitter. Not Torrhen.

And perhaps, Lysara.

There were grown men in his service and across the Seven Kingdoms not half as sharp as his daughter, and Ned Stark counted himself among those men. And in the face of such radiant brilliance, the earlier years had all but been forgotten. But not completely. Never completely.

No matter how proud he was of his daughter, Ned Stark would never forget her earlier misery and the shroud it had cast over their family. Be that as it were, her friendship, her bond with Torrhen was one he was eternally thankful for. He had worried for the boy a long time, knowing that Catelyn was always going to judge him for a presumed sin and that she would likely turn her children against him.

Fortunately, Lysara had always been free-minded, be it in her education or choice of playmate. And it really was inevitable that the two should fall in together, what with their unnatural dispositions. A girl who had not cared for life, and a boy born of war.

Torrhen

It seemed as though Greyjoy's departure from Winterfell had not been one entirely foreseen, given her less than sane reaction upon hearing of it. The news of Lord Maron Greyjoy's death had been announced at supper, as well as Theon's imminent departure to the Iron Isles. Apparently, the now-former Lord Greyjoy had been enjoying the company of a woman in his chambers when she revealed a blade and stuck him like a pig. The injuries he had suffered at the Siege of Pyke meant that his mobility was severely hampered, not to mention his… relaxed state. All of this Torrhen was able to piece together in the following days, with the information coming from the gossip of servants and guardsmen alike. Lysara had had not spoken to anyone for days, staying in her chamber saying only that she was sick. And for all her supposed genius, that coincidental timing of her sickness and the announcement had not gone unnoticed. And just as they were beginning to die out, the rumours began all over again. Was she in love with Greyjoy? Was he her lover? Had she given him her maidenhood?

It was the last one that broke Torrhen's hold on his wrath. The boy who had whispered the filth was a stablehand, carrying a seniority in age but entirely deficient in any fighting ability. A simple beating would've meant Lord Catelyn eventually coming to know of it, an occurrence entirely undesirable, given the woman's paranoia. Down the rabbit hole she would go, suspecting immorality all the way, a supposition that all would dismiss as completely ridiculous, had it not been true. No, no. A blade would bring the investigative wrath of Lord Eddard, and the attention that it would bring was wholly disagreeable. Poison? While it wasn't beyond his abilities to do as much, the act itself presented significant difficulties, the foremost of which being that he simply did not have the required ability to accurately dispense the agent. That too was not to be taken into consideration.

It would have to be something plausible, if unlikely. Now that the parameters were set, all that was left was finding a solution. And it was that final piece that eluded Torrhen, driving him to wrath, a fact that also did not go unnoticed by those in Winterfell. His training in the yard had always been widely approved of, what with his easy and dedicated approach to the blade. Once the hunter who waited for his opponent to falter or for an opportunity to present itself, he was now the wolf, the beast who knew of the hunter and amused himself by tearing to shreds the other with sheer speed and savagery. Where there was once a cool satisfaction in watching an opponent submit or be proclaimed the loser, there could now be found a dark amusement in his eyes as he watched an enemy writhe on the ground in abject agony. Humorously enough, Greyjoy's last days were filled with an odd dichotomy. Half his time was spent with Lady Stark, who was trying her best to not collapse every moment she was in the boy's presence, while the rest of the time was spent recovering from the vicious blows suffered at the yard.

All of this, of course, did nothing to help Lady Stark's temperament, already fraying at the prospect of Theon leaving.

A fact Torrhen simply did not care about.

Years upon years of cold shoulders and malignment meant that he had simply become entirely indifferent to Catelyn Stark's decisions and bias. He didn't care either way, and the effort required to appease the bitch at every turn when it was her own son who was little but a cripple was beyond the reward provided. Let her think what she wanted; it was her daughter who was... most opposed to her point of view.

The chosen method for killing the stablehand came to him in a flash of inspiration that left Torrhen in a state of disbelief over his stupidity for hours. A stablehand worked with horses, beasts almost notorious for their powerful legs which allowed them to travel great distances and carry large burdens, a task made easier by the implementation and continued usage of horseshoes.

And there always was a spare horseshoe or two around.

Lysara

She had been a damn fool, and was most certainly suffering from the consequences of her idiocy. The retreat into her chambers had then been rationalised as an attempt to alter plans and prepare contingencies. Upon regaining a fuller hold over her senses, it became clear to Lysara that the move had been both ill-advised and more importantly, dangerous. It created a link between her and Theon, a most unpleasant rumour that she knew would not easily abate. The truth was far from the topic of most import in matters such as these. It was the information in circulation that shaped the narrative, and in her absence, the narrative had slipped from her grasp, an assuredly unfavourable course of events. Worse of all, those most useful to her had taken note as well, and none had taken it as worse as Torrhen. Her brother had not taken well to her reaction, aware as he was that she carried not a shred of affection for Greyjoy and yet, his sheer possessiveness and jealousy overrode every last intelligent instinct he had available to him. That anger was certainly going to be of use to Lysara in the future, but even then, she would have to be wary of it. Many initial beliefs and hypothesises about his patience and large parts of his character were proven to be incorrect, principally his restraint. The murder of the stableboy was stupid and in doing so, Torrhen had taken an unnecessary risk. One that could have ended the game before it had time to properly get going. Lysara made certain to make that clear with her brother. It wasn't an act of chivalry, or of honourable vengeance. It was simply the act of a brash idiot with too much time and training on his hands.

Foolish reckless boy.

Regardless, Theon leaving had not been as big of a blow as she had first imagined it to be. For one, Theon's loyalty was now finally entrenched in the Northern Camp, and more specifically with Lady Stark. Lysara did not doubt that the newly invested Lord Greyjoy links to Winterfell were particularly strong and that those links would hold for and throughout the wars to come. And for all she had disliked Theon Greyjoy, Lysara could not help but be relieved at the removal of an enemy from the Cyvasse board, optimistic as that presumption may have been.

And what was more, as one Greyjoy left, another arrived.