A Short-Learned Lesson
Author's Note: Where the frack did this come from? Somewhere between rum and the ASOIAF kink meme hiatus. Ahem. I guess it occurs in the same universe as If Like Attracts Like and The Ride that Came Before.
The boy has quickly become a disappointment. Roose should have killed his mother and left the babe with her dead husband's brother. Unfortunately the brother is dead too, and Lord Bolton will not be a kinslayer.
He sits in his solar, a cup of hippocras in one hand, regarding the boy of three-and-ten flopped in the chair across from his. All travel-stained, crime-stained, his brown deerskin vest is the only scrap on him not in need of burning. His ear is stuck through with a metal stud, its original color covered by dark red. Most guests have the gentility or instincts to sit straight in the presence of the Lord of the Dreadfort, but his bastard tramples anything resembling courtesy.
Alas, his eyes do not lie. Though set in a wider-boned face, framed by ragged dark hair that begs for a knife, those eyes look back at him every time he passes a mirror. Pity.
"You forced yourself on a farm girl."
"As you did my mother?"
Roose knows his bastard. He is plain, transparent even, only an inconceivable monster of a child because some cannot conceive his lusts. Studying him a moment longer, Roose allows the smallest of smiles.
"You committed a crime on my lands, punishable by hanging. You bit her ear off—"
Ramsay glares. "I know, I was there—"
Roose sets down the goblet before he throws it at him. "You claimed to be my son."
That makes the boy pause. And is the crux of the matter. When a story from the villages travelled all the way to the Dreadfort, about a beastly boy claiming to have Bolton blood, Roose sent a messenger to retrieve him and his revolting servant. Several years ago he thought Ramsay might have his uses. A trueborn son must keep his hands seemingly clean for the sake of appearances. A bastard's hands are stained already. Ramsay's are coated in pitch. So much pitch it will choke him one day.
"I am your son," Ramsay says, meandering toward shrill.
"No." Roose lets the word hang. His frustration begs for some assuagement. "Only my bastard, and a useless one at that."
Ramsay's cheeks color. "I'm—" Lord Bolton lifts a hand to silence him, but it is not a subtlety the boy has come to understand. "—your blood, whoever my mother is. Lowborn she may be, you took her all the same."
"Was it Reek who said that?" Roose looks at Ramsay, curious in spite of himself. So there is someone the boy will chirp after, like an obedient songbird. "Or your mother?"
Ramsay should freeze, as would anyone when Lord Bolton asks about their kith and kin. But he only stares back, simmering, bristling to keep himself more or less civil. But Roose does not miss the way his fingers close around the chair's arms. Regardless, he has his suspicions. Just as the boy is forming his. Pale eyes—his eyes, thrown true—narrow as his son realizes.
"Where is Reek?"
Roose smiles. It is almost a true one, embellished for the boy's benefit. Some quail in pissing terror if Lord Bolton grins, more if he smiles. What few see is a calculation like any other. But any skilled mummer will admit he feels his character's fury, passion, or lust, as long as he has an audience. It abates in moments, but a mummer can act so well he fools even oneself.
Perhaps that is all it is. An act, a passing curiosity. Roose gave up trying to understand why he is different long ago. His lady wife embraces him from time to time, and remarks coolly, respectfully, how passion is an overvalued virtue. Bethany visits her sister now. He would prefer her company to this child's. She is quiet, but he has learned her eyes and mouth say more in a moment than most men say in an evening.
Ramsay has gone silent, glancing out the room's only window, as if remembering the ride into the courtyard earlier this evening. The boy misses little, Roose must admit. Likely he remembers Roose escorting him to his own solar without an offer for dinner, while two of his guards remained in the courtyard with that thrice-damned revolting servant. Roose cannot hear the man's screams, or know what the wretch thinks of as the whips scour deeper into his flesh. But imagination is a far better inquisitor than even he. Ramsay has no lack of imagination for the macabre.
"He's mine to punish!" the boy snarls in a sudden frenzy. "Not yours!"
"Child, I gift your mother coins for your every nameday. Does that make every scrap she buys mine as well?"
"You claim everything is yours," the boy snaps. "What difference does it make?"
"As you say."
Ramsay is restless, but his original enthusiasm at his father offering him wine has left his body in a languor, blasé to his rage. Taking several deep breaths, the boy tries to sound less than rabid.
"Why, Father, did you bring me here?"
"Perhaps I enjoy speaking with you."
He's met with a cocked head, a brow raised in disbelief. The weakness in his son's mouth betrays him. Oh you brash child, you think too much of me.
In a sense, he enjoys speaking to someone of kin and not being filled with unease. Unease…that is understated, even for you. Dread is more apt,those times he sees Domeric. He appreciates how much stake his son puts on knowledge, then feels his guts grow cold when he sees the trust and friendliness Domeric offers as if it is a trinket, something with no price…no sacrifice.
Ramsay will never fall from his own kindness. Roose might chuckle—the boy senses his own vulnerability just enough to stay wary and bare his crooked teeth. He does not see trust as something to be given…he does not see trust, only knows of a few people he expects not to hurt him.
Am I included?
Even creeping into his solar, his crimes swaddled in no defense or denial, Ramsay trusts his father not to hang him for a hanging crime.
And so I break you of your naivety.
At least when they talk the Lord of the Dreadfort can sigh in calm knowing he does not care if his feral child dies on the 'morrow. Not like Domeric. Never like Domeric, all clever smiles and eyes a shade between his parents'.
Roose draws on his glass of hippocras again, hands seeking a distraction.
Ramsay is too brash, like a feral dog that tears through sheep with no regard for the shepherd who can kill him with a well-aimed arrow. A dog is hardly worth the time to break of imperfections, but the boy is, somehow, kin.
"You need a better example, Ramsay. Imagine a bitch in the kennels bred to my strongest hound. The pups are theirs by blood. Any malformed or untrainable are drowned—but most fit their heritage. If my hound found a mongrel bitch in the field, the kennel master would strangle those pups to prevent a pack of wild dogs. Which pup do you think you are, Ramsay?"
The snarl undercuts his answer. "I'm not a dog."
Beast, dog, creature…the boy can choose his own embodiments. Roose has not brought him here to share pleasantries. His son is in need of a lesson.
He stands then, holding out a hand. "Come. You've ridden half the day and must be hungry." Ramsay regards him, all squinty and suspicious. Roose forces a small smile. "You are young. I am not angry."
Roose isn't, not now. Irritated, thinking how the boy's eyes are his curse and his son's salvation, but it feels like any other evening at the Dreadfort. At last, the bastard rocks to his feet, arms loose in their sockets from the wine. When Roose puts a hand between his shoulders to guide him into the adjoining chamber, his bastard is on edge again, tense and stiff-legged. Ramsay does not believe him about being angry, but he wants to—Roose has long warned Domeric of chasing after his wants. Hopefully his true son listens.
The bathing chamber makes the boy stop, gawking in bemused wariness. Likely he has never seen a bathtub built of porcelain, incased in dark wood, long enough Roose can lean back and breathe in the steam—good for the lungs, his father said. There are no windows, only sconces. A table stands nearby, for servants to bring the tray of leeches, or betimes a cup of hippocras. Now there is a goblet, large enough a mad king could offer a drink to his favorite horse. Beside it is a chain of well-worn iron. Ramsay creeps closer, less out of caution than confusion. His distraction, his cup of wine, and his shadow of trust, make him deaf to Lord Bolton sliding the manacles off the wooden table. A scrape, a clink, Ramsay looks back too late—Roose snaps one cuff around a raw-boned wrist. The boy's twisting, snarling, but while he is strong for his age, he has not ridden into battle. Roose wrenches his other arm back, earning a furious cry, and claps it in the second band of iron.
"What are you—?"
Cleaning you. Teaching you. If either are possible.
His backhand sends Ramsay reeling, off-kilter enough that Roose can easily shove him into the porcelain basin. No water, only unspoiled white enamel. Gods, it will need a long scrubbing soon. The boy's arms are bound under his back, the weight staking him to the bottom of the tub. A second chain snaps around Ramsay's ankles, which are hooked over the side, before Roose shoves them into the basin as well. Finally, he removes the dagger from his hip.
Ramsay struggles through his daze, fighting and furious. Surprised, but scrambling, unable to get his arms out from under his back. His eyes lock on the blade and he thrashes harder, iron clanking against porcelain.
As if he has put up with the boy's distemper for so long only to kill him now. Roose grabs his deerskin vest and stained tunic and tears the blade down the middle, exposing the boy's pale chest.
"Unchain me!" Ramsay's voice is seething to the point of incomprehension.
But Roose only returns to the table and picks up the goblet with both hands. It is a cup made for giants, its metal sculpted in the likeness of dragon bones, and filled with dark, gelatinous wine. Of course it is not wine. He steps beside the tub and his bastard realizes what the writhing mass must be.
"Don't you dare!" The boy's pupils are widening, gray rings growing smaller, and blood snakes down his cheek from his broken lip. The bathtub will need a long scouring afterward.
"I am helping you."
"Get those fucking things away from me!" A ragged note, partly from fatigue—but not all.
Roose begins to tip the goblet.
"Father stop!"
At last. Roose offers him a small smile of understanding, of congratulations. Fear shrills his bastard's voice. His eyes are wide and his chest heaves. How good it is to know his son is not completely broken. But there is still the manner of his punishment, for tossing his name around like a purse of gold.
He upends the goblet and the dark creatures pulse over the boy's bare flesh.
Ramsay roars, writhes, but his arms are underneath him and his hips are twisted sideways. Trapped, utterly. His roar turn to screeches, squeals—the leeches are sucking, lancing his blighted blood.
Maesters never use more than ten leeches, yet maesters have never dealt with his bastard. He counted them himself. One hundred and fifty.
Returning to his solar, the door muffling his bastard's screams, he summons the servants who usually attend the leeches. The creatures will be filled to bursting and Roose does not want too many of them dead. While he waits, he continues writing his missive to Lord Stark, offering good will for the birth of his newest child. It is only courtesy.
The boy still squalls his lungs out. Rolling his eyes at the dramatics, he heats the sealing wax and catches sight of his signet ring. Stained in red now, just like that ridiculous bauble the boy wears. Eventually the screams turn to sobs, then slurred yowls for mercy. Roose waits for these to pass, for this is not a lesson of mercy. And so, when he hears little more than ragged breathing, he returns for his bastard.
The leeches have done their work. Ramsay can barely growl at the servants who straighten him in the basin. His lips have paled, even the split one, and his breath has quickened. Yet his lungs find the strength somewhere to cry out when they remove the legion of creatures, those that have not fallen off from their own engorgement. At last, Roose unlocks the bindings, picks him up, and carries him to the closest guest chamber.
Sprawled on the large bed, bloodless as a fish, the boy looks half his own size. He's covered in bloody red stars, stark against his ashen flesh.
Ramsay's rasping breath shifts. "I'm…sorry, Father." His left eye is watery, clouded with blood from the bite of a particularly prodigious leech.
Roose stares at him. "Sorry for?"
The boy turns his head away. "For using your name."
He nods, slowly. "And what is your name?"
Ramsay does not answer and after a moment Roose takes his jaw between his thumb and forefinger, twisting the boy's face back to his. He feels the thrum under his fingers as Ramsay's jaw tightens.
"Snow." The name fights its way from his mouth.
Letting go, Roose pats him on the cheek, hard enough to be a slap. "You should best remember it." Withdrawing his hand, he looks again at the boy's body. Pale and blood-streaked—his thumb felt a rapid pulse when he grabbed his jaw. Truly, bled white, if the white of broken bones and not driven snow. "How do you feel?"
"Dead," answers the groan.
"Purged, Ramsay. Drained of some of your hate. At least I hope." He lets his son imagine what might happen if he is found less drained than desired.
Roose looks at his eyes. They are wide, glazed, somewhat lopsided from the bite. The Lord of the Dreadfort leans against a bedpost. Still imperfect. Already the boy looks less terrified. The lesson will stick with him for months, perhaps even a year. But his son's blood is fouler than pitch. He will forget how sharp terror feels and never treasure its value.
So different from Domeric. Was it Ramsay's base blood, Bethany's easy temper? What part of each did he create? An amusing puzzle. The boy shifts, trying to sit up. Lord Bolton pushes him back as if he's a newborn kitten.
"You will return to your mother in the morning."
Ramsay's eyes narrow. "And Reek?"
Thrice-damned fish-rank servant. Roose is tempted to say the revolting man's head is a foot away from his body, or locked in a cell so deep his cries die unheard. Alas, the servant is only now curled up in the corner of some normal cell, his hide weeping more blood than his tears can match.
"You will leave together."
The bastard exhales, the sound reedy to his father's ears.
Lord Bolton turns and leaves him to his nightmares, though he feels the boy's eyes following him out the door. Now he must have a word with his bastard's servant. He promised Ramsay they would leave together; he said nothing of the servant's condition.
It is a short walk to the Dreadfort's dungeon. Or perhaps he only walks faster.