Chapter 12

Months later, Jon knocked on the door to his former home. He had wanted to see it one more time, thinking that wandering about the grounds would be enough. It hadn't been. Maybe Uncle Benjen was keeping the estate up. The place was mostly deserted, but Jon could see lights on in the mansion.

So long he had imagined coming back. He would see Robb again, Arya again, Bran and their father. He would play with Arya and watch Bran scale the walls like the kid he was. He would walk with Robb and their father about the estate, to the grove that had been in the family for almost a century, a stand of ancient trees and a lake, nature's beauty perfected by someone long dead. He would teach Arya how to shoot the rifle he had gifted her with and go riding with Bran. Everything would be as it was before he had to leave his family behind.

Every piece of mail he received cut out another dream.

Now his whole family was dead or missing, or married. He would never see Robb or Dad, or Bran or Rickon again. He would be lucky to see Arya.

A boy answered the door, a shaggy, filthy wolfhound snuffling at his side. He was young to be working. Jon smiled politely, about to ask for the owner of the estate, that being the polite thing to do, when he spotted a familiar face.

"Jeyne?"

"Jon!" she said, startled. "Shhh, shhh." She pulled him to the side, a finger over her mouth in warning. She waved at the boy to go do whatever task he was avoiding. "What are you doing here? Are you here to see Theon?"

"What? No!" How would Jon want to see Theon, the quasi-brother he had always hated? They had nothing between them now, whether love or hate. Jon had no interest in what Theon did now. His life was his. Jon was over his childhood squabbles.

…and yet, he felt strangely curious. Jon knew he looked good. There would be nothing that would make him happier than seeing Theon had gone to seed.

Theon looked terrible but not in the way Jon wanted him to look. He was thin, emaciated, starved, the look of a man who had lost more weight than he was ever meant to lose. His skin- it sagged. Loose, disgusting and grey. His hair was thin, brittle, a sign of malnutrition.

This was the twenty-first century. No one starved in Britain. What had happened to Theon?

"What happened to you?" Jon blurted out. He was a man of few deep thoughts and he had never needed to dissemble around the Grey heir. Theon deserved all of his disdain.

Theon didn't look like he could take any of it.

"How kind of you to notice, Scott," Theon drawled. His voice was rusty, cracking at the edges. "Don't like my new look?"

"You look like a POW."

"You ever seen a POW?"

"No," Jon admitted. The insurgents weren't organized enough to take prisoners for long. Sometimes they tried to ambush the camp and steal soldiers away, but they always failed. Always.

"Then you don't ken what you're talking about." Theon pressed a key into Jon's palm, his hand deathly cold. "This is for the storage unit. Everything left's there. Your uncle took what he wanted, so I don't ken if there's anything of value left."

"The estate burned three years ago. Why is everything still in a storage unit?"

Theon gave him a funny look.

"Have you been paying the mortgage?" he asked. "Because I haven't. Nothing in this house belongs to me…or to you."

This puzzled Jon. "But…you're here."

"You are a master of wit, Scott. Yes, I'm here. As a guest."

"If you don't own the estate, who does?"

"I do," a deeper male voice said from behind Jon. "It's good to see you again, Mr Scott."

Jon whirled around, only barely keeping from slamming the intruder into the wall. There stood Ramsey Bolton with his fleshy face and lips like two worms pressed together. His hair was tied back, but it had the same greasy, unkempt look as always. A disgusting man.

Jon looked at Theon, asking silently if it were true. Grey just blinked at him dully. A sour, rotten flavour filled Jon's mouth.

Ramsey Bolton owned the family estate. Ramsey Bolton, the tenant Bolton, from a family of cruel, depraved Boltons. More than once the Boltons had been brought to court on animal neglect and abuse charges, everything from starving horses to dismembered dog corpses found on their property. The servants used to whisper of the horrors the Boltons incurred on them and, worse, on their own wives. Ramsey Bolton was the son of Roose Bolton and his maid, a young, married woman.

"Hallo," Jon said, swallowing thickly. The taste remained. He should have been more polite, but he wasn't comfortable enough with the oily man to return the sentiment.

"I heard you were in Afghanistan."

"Just returned, sir."

"See you've still got that military flair," Bolton said approvingly. "Good to be out of the sand, isn't it?"

Jon nodded curtly. He looked at Theon, trying to find something to get them both away from Bolton.

"Can we go see the storage locker? If they're still there, there're some things I'd like to take out."

ØØØ

"Where's the game?" Jon asked Theon. Bolton trailed behind them into the storage locker. He made Jon's skin crawl every time he ran his hands over Scott property. Jon almost wanted to go behind and shake him down to make sure he didn't pocket anything.

He hadn't expected Bolton to follow them, but the storage place was far away and Bolton had offered to drive. Jon had little pity for Theon, but he wasn't going to make the man walk three miles with such an obvious limp. Ewan was going to meet them there later, so Jon would not have to let any more of Bolton's nastiness infect his things.

"Game?" Theon repeated lazily. At least his words sounded almost the same. He walked through the boxes carefully, twisting his feet oddly, like he was stepping over roots. The floor was perfectly level. Strange. So strange.

"Westeros. You were always some sort of sailor, a Viking maybe. We used to play it all the time."

"Oh." Theon shrugged one shoulder dully, making Jon grind his teeth together. Something was deathly wrong with Theon. How many years had Jon known him, ever smiling, ever cruelly amused? Enough to know this was wrong, all wrong. Theon was too thin, too weak, too lifeless. "Dunno. Benjen must have moved everything around."