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The cloying scent of something vaguely earthy filled the air. Perfume? Or maybe incense? The girl couldn't be sure. She tried to avoid taking a deep breath, wanting to block out her senses until she couldn't feel or smell or taste or hear or see.
But it never worked.
She could close her eyes, cover her ears, lock her jaw, pinch her nose, but she could never not feel.
She could feel the slippery sheets that covered a down mattress...or maybe it was a wooden cot with a scratchy mattress on top. She could feel the harsh cotton weight of her clothes or it might have been thin silks that left her exposed. She could feel every sting, every bite, every slap, every r...everything. Because she hadn't quite learned how to stop herself from feeling.
Horror and shock and her youth kept her safe for the first few months, maybe for a year, back when she could remember her childhood without an aching pain that tore through her body like a blazing fire. But she learned very quickly that there wasn't any real safety in the world, and certainly not in the small dingy corner of it she had been thrust in to.
When times were better, she heard a voice telling her to be strong, but she was never able to recognize it. Sometimes the voice sounded like a young girl's, the image of red hair and a godswood flashing through her mind for a brief instance before quickly fading away. Other times it was a man's, deep and authoritative, someone who might have been like a father to her, but not her actual father - she would never forget his voice or his screams. The best times was when it was a boy's voice, one that was not quite a child but not yet a man, and every time she heard that voice telling her to stop being a silly girl, she felt lightness for the briefest of moments as dark eyes and a cocky smile filled her mind's eye.
The voices never stayed though, and she wasn't quite sure she wanted them to...it might have been a sign that she was going mad.
Everyday as she opened her eyes, she never really remembered where she was. Was it a brothel or a sept? Was she a whore or a Silent Sister? How long ago was the last time she saw the sun? How long had it been since she was in King's Landing? Two days or two years? Or was she still in the capital?
She steeled herself, trying to draw on the courage of wolves and krakens, letting her brown eyes open, hoping there was someone out there who remembered her.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
The girl looked up, schooling her features into a blank mask, no one would see her in these moments when she tried to remember a girl with red hair and an annoying little sister, a young man who danced with her and was the recipient of the sole kiss she had ever given freely, and a place where it was cold even in summer but felt like home.
Jeyne Poole had long stopped believing in songs, but she never stopped wishing that with every breath, she was one more breath closer to finding her way home again.
Theon Greyjoy - former heir of the Iron Islands, Theon Turncloak, Reek, some kind of bastard between a kraken and a wolf - was going to die a good man.
The very concept felt almost foreign to him, but deep in his heart, as he took a deep breath as he faced the Night King, he felt like it might be true. He was going to die defending the boy he had once tried to kill, a boy who had come back less human and wiser than any boy of seven-and-ten should be. He certainly wasn't at that age...but then again, he didn't have to worry about carrying the weight of the world's memories in his own mind.
He just had to make his last breaths matter.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
He barely felt the skin break as his own dragonglass sword pierced his side, Ramsay's torture had drawn out his pain for hours, so a quick, efficient stab hardly registered. Tears leaked out of his eyes, but he wasn't aware of them until he could taste the salt mixing in with the blood at his lips.
Taking a shaky breath, he found himself clinging to life for a brief moment further. His lungs aching and his blood leaking into the cold snow, and he found himself wanting to live.
For years as Ramsay's prisoner, he had wished for death because that would have been better than being alive and Reek. The instant he volunteered to guard Bran, Theon knew that he was not going to survive the night and he remembered wanting to welcome the opportunity to die with a little bit of his self left.
But when he had returned to the godswood, he was reminded of the last time he was here: Sansa's wedding to Ramsay. Back then, he had been less than a man, unable to fight against his own fear, his own mind, and had escorted a girl he'd known since she was a child into Ramsay's clutches.
He had remembered his promise to her, that he would find Jeyne Poole and bring her back home. He had looked at the face in the weirwood tree and renewed his oath to find the steward's daughter if he managed to survive the fight. For a brief moment, he had considered asking Bran, all-seeing all-knowing Bran, where she was or if he was even capable of saving her, but in the end, he had held his tongue.
I don't think I would have liked the answer very much, Theon wheezed, the tell-tale rattle of death shaking his body.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
When Sansa had asked if he would have saved Jeyne if she had been the one married to Ramsay, he hadn't known how to respond, other than with a deep-rooted feeling that he desperately needed to believe that he would have.
But then he remembered her big, brown doe eyes, and he had little trouble remembering the rest of her with her bony elbows and upturned nose. When they were younger, she might have passed for Arya, except for the Stark girl was usually covered head-to-toe in mud and Sansa's friend would never have been caught so filthy.
And her eyes were the wrong color.
But he had known, when she demanded he tell her why, that he would have seen the girl from that one dance they shared at a feast: alone and hopeful, and he would have saved her given the opportunity. He didn't know what she looked like now, but he would hope that she had held on to a bit of that defiance he had seen when he asked her to dance.
"Why do you want to dance with me?" She asked, her thin arms crossed in front of her, but her brown eyes were bright.
Theon had already had a few cups of wine to drink, so his head felt light and her high voice was starting to give him a headache. He had his eye on one of the more comely serving maids, but Ned Stark had pulled him aside to practically order him to ask Sansa's friend to dance. Of course, noble Robb couldn't do it since he had been similarly coerced into dancing with one of the Manderly girls.
"Do you want to or not?" He growled, getting impatient, and stuck his hand out expectantly. "Well, I'm not going to wait around all night for some silly girl to make up her mind.
Her face crumpled, showing her youth, and even though she was three-and-ten, he could tell that she was going to grow up to be beautiful. Something about the look in her eyes - maybe it was the tears she was trying to hold back behind a layer of anger and stubbornness - that broke through his wine-addled mind and made him want to never see that look directed at him again.
"I'm sorry," he apologized, the words sounding foreign on his tongue. The ironborn were not made for apologies, all of the softness and weakness was bled out of them from birth, because what is dead may never die. But Theon was not a true ironborn anymore, he had spent too much time away from his people, yet he wasn't one of the honorable Starks either, but some awful bastardization of the two. "Will you dance with me, Jeyne?"
She smiled shyly, a light pink blush coating her cheeks - a reaction that Theon was much more accustomed to - before accepting his outstretched hand.
Theon didn't quite know why he was latching on to the memory of Jeyne Poole in what were his last moments, but he found himself remembering that dance. He had spun her around the dance floor as deftly as he was able, but between his mild drunkenness and her apparent two left feet, they had simply ended up stumbling in a circle for five minutes.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
She was the kind of girl he would have ruined given the chance, if the world didn't get to her first. He had stolen her first kiss the next year when he was seven-and-ten and she was four-and-ten, only a few days before King Robert had come to Winterfell. It had been a chaste thing, hidden in the halls of the castle they both called their home. He had been an arrogant prick, taunting her for a kiss because he wished to see that pretty blush coating her cheeks again, and she had been a stubborn girl with a fragile heart.
He hoped she was alive somewhere, getting kissed by more worthy men than he.
He might never able to fully erase the debt his mistakes had wrought upon the Starks - the Starks who had taken him in and called him family - but he hoped they had forgiven him.
That Ned, who had taken him as a hostage at first, but along the way, had become a truer father than Balon, whom he had never truly appreciated him for the man he was until he was gone, would understand how much he regretted never calling him "father."
That poor little Rickon, whom he had terrorized as a child when he took Winterfell, and who had met his end, like so many had, at the point of one of Ramsay's arrows, knew that he regretted not being able to protect the Stark boys.
That Catelyn, who had always treated him - maybe not with kindness, he was a truly awful child - with a kind of respect, but even that fractional amount of a mother's love, more than he ever deserved that was not enough to keep him from betraying her and her son, didn't judge him too harshly for his choices...he regretted them almost the moment he made them.
And that Robb...Robb who was his brother in all but blood, and who he had betrayed because they weren't. That Robb, who he called "King in the North," who he almost warned about Balon's decision to take the Iron Islands back. That Robb, who he should have died beside at the Red Wedding, forgave him for all of it.
That maybe dying to protect his brother and home might be enough.
And yet, in the end he might have tipped the scales towards forgiveness. Maybe the ones he loved would call him a hero or a liar or a villain or even a fool, but he hoped they would remember him as a man.
He hoped Sansa wouldn't curse him for breaking his promise - he had really tried to fight to survive - but the look in Bran's eye as he told Theon he was a good man meant that he wasn't going to live to see the dawn. He wouldn't be able to save anyone...not Jeyne, not Sansa, not Yara, not Bran.
Bran was defenseless, but if the younger man knew the outcome of the night, maybe there was some hope that his death wouldn't be in vain. His sisters and Jon were strong, maybe they would find him, so maybe there was a chance. He hoped Bran had truly forgiven him for the torment he put him and his brother through all those years ago.
Yara would be safe. That was all he could think about - his sister was safe on the Iron Islands and braver than he would ever be. She would have charged the Night King without hesitation and run him through with her axe before he had the chance to lift his own hand. She would never cry over her lost baby brother, but he hoped someone would tell her that he died nobly.
Sansa...brave, strong, gentle, lovely Sansa...he didn't know where she was.
He had caught a glimpse of her interaction with Podrick Payne right before he found Bran and had beamed internally at the thought of the eldest Stark girl finally finding a modicum of happiness in a world that had denied her that for so long. He remembered the young squire from their time travelling after him and Sansa escaped from Winterfell, and even then, the dark-haired young man seemed in awe of the redheaded girl. Before Ramsay, Theon would have had no trouble taunting the younger man for his clumsiness and clear mediocrity with a sword - a sure sign that the squire was a decent and good man.
But after that brief glimpse of the girl on the landing, he had not seen Sansa again...he would not see her again.
She had once reminded him of his duty to her family and of his conscience. She had threatened and forced him to help her, but he didn't blame her for doing so, it was what he needed to find that piece of himself that was Theon again. If I'm going to die, I want to do so while there's still some of me left, she had told Myranda, and Theon - he shuddered at the thought - hoped that if his chosen-sister joined him in death tonight, she did so as herself.
And he hoped Robb would forgive him for failing to protect his little sister.
He never got to tell her how much he appreciated and loved her for giving him the chance to finally die as himself.
And his mind went back to the steward's daughter once more, a girl that now, at the very most, one soul remembered. He saw the face of that girl no more than four-and-ten, her big brown eyes sparking with mischief and a kind of spirit he hadn't seen in another since she rode south with Sansa. She twirled clumsily in his arms, the smile on her face only highlighting her innocent beauty, a blush coating her cheeks as he flashed her his own signature grin.
He would never know what happened to her, and he was ashamed that he had completely forgotten her face until Sansa had mentioned her name. He would never find her and see what horrors the world had thrown at her, because the world liked to ruin kind, spirited, young girls like Jeyne Poole, and he wouldn't know if she had broken under that weight. Selfishly, he would never know if she still thought of her kraken knight, a title he might have finally been able to live up to.
Theon would always remember her as that innocent girl he danced with and stole a kiss from.
He had paid for his crimes, for all that he had done, with his blood, with his sanity, but dying for Bran...that felt like redemption. He wouldn't die as a turncloak or a betrayer or even as the heir to the Iron Islands...he would die as Theon.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe ou-