Archive of Our Own ^beta

From the moment that his father knelt for the king and swore him fealty and gave him Theon, too, as if the prince of the Iron Islands was an extra crab thrown on the heap to sweeten the deal, to thereabouts the hour of the owl of the same day, Theon fought the Northmen. He made an excuse to go to the privy and ran up to the armory and barricaded himself in pushing all the plate armor he could find against the door, he gathered up the damp of the walls in a helm to drink and picked up a bow and arrows to attack whoever came ramming in, declaring he would not be taken alive. From when he was pulled out until the hour of the bat he curled up on the windowsill of his own room and listened to the guards pacing outside, shivering. From the hour of the bat until mid morning he was very good, he had a small nap, he played at the finger’s dance for the last time with Asha and at dice with Alyn and Qarl down in the kitchen and broke fast with his father and mother and listened to the words Lord Stark had for him, all smiling. Then for the rest of the day he was terrible and mostly sobbed and trembled and at one point made mention to a passing guard that his mother had not been entirely honest with her sovereign on the subject of whether Asha was or not flowered and old enough to wed.

By the following hour of the owl however he couldn’t tell why he had done all that. He woke from his second small nap feeling very at peace and very brave. He looked from his window at the crumbled South Tower and all the corpses it held like baby-dunlins in their buried eggs, and thought that on the following evening that view would be replaced by the lovely open sea. He laid his ear against his parents’ bedroom door and thought he would never again hear them quarrel. The funerals, the weeping, the ransoms, the loud debate on whose fault it was exactly and in what way that they had lost the war, all of that would be none of his business! He descended the stairs, smiling, holding his hands tight over his chest so he could feel it in advance if he suddenly decided to stop being brave. There was nothing that could be done about it all, that was the thing, and he would never send Asha in his place, not for real - at least if they made him have babes with some Northern girl he could still just decide to leave, while a mother couldn’t do that as easily. He remembered a thing he’d heard at Harlaw from his aunt Rohanne of the Silverhill, that on the greenlands often boys would be sent very far away from home to live with some other lord for years and years, far longer than it took to just have a simple voyage on someone else’s ship as Theon and his brothers had when they each were seven to get to know the other men of the islands and go from babes to young men, which as far as he could tell seemed to be the purpose of this greenland tradition. He remembered that everyone had found that a very cruel and foolish thing to do with one’s children, thought it hadn’t felt right to Theon that on the greenlands they should do something that was harder and braver than what they did on the islands, given everyone was always bragging so much of the contrary. Now he was going to have done both and prove there was nothing that a greenlander boy could do that an ironman couldn’t accomplish with much less fanfare and tears - he assumed it took more than a day of crying for most of the greenlander boys, anyhow.

“Theon,” someone called him softly from the shadows. He turned abruptly and one of older Botley brothers emerged from a guest-room door, his hair ruffled from sleep and shiny in the torchlight. “Go to sleep, laddie, you’ll run into the guards. You’ll have a row.”

“But I decided I am not going to fight them anymore. I’m just having a walk in my own tower,” he said haughtily, then rethought the sound of that and how much anyone would care that this was indeed his own tower. “I won't go down any further,” he promised instead.

“Come in our room, then. You have a long journey to go on tomorrow, you shouldn’t be out barefoot in the cold…”

Theon looked down and found that he was right, that he had indeed put nothing on below the edge of his night shift. He also found that Tristifer had snuck his hand into his when he wasn't paying attention, in his wily older-brother ways, and was pulling him gently. ”I’ve slept very well already tonight,” he said, crossing his arms very tight against his chest where he could see them. “Whole hours and with no nightmares. And…” It will be colder where I’m going. He bit his lip. “It's not so cold. It will be summer soon.”

“That’s true,” Tristifer said softly. “That's something to look forward to, I suppose, even if our spring ended so badly.”

Theon shuddered. As the older boy looked away for a moment to rub his eyes, he took the couple steps that separated him from the doorway to look inside. There were four Botley boys in two beds, the oldest being with the rest of the wounded and the youngest in his mother’s bed. He could see six-year-old Vickon curled up like a puppy near the warm indent of his brother's body, and only faintly the outline of the older two in the next bed over. He did not want to see, he realized. He didn't want to wrestle or sing or swap scary stories or even just curl up to sleep with his friends, he didn’t want to become bad all over again. He didn't want any more goodbyes but the last, the one that could be relied upon to be miserable enough that he would feel nothing but impatience for it to be over the whole time.

He hit the older boy’s chest as he scrambled back, and instead of running off as he wished, sank his fingers like a talon into his arm and dragged him down to sit with him, pressed against the wall. Tristifer sighed and put his arms around him. Theon started to shiver again, and it didn't help when he shoved his bare legs under the other’s dressing gown.

“The way I see it is, I know it’s scary. But it doesn't have to be for very long. Someday you will have to marry. Maybe your father will find someone to exchange you for… Maybe you could run.”

“I could,” Theon mumbled. He wondered why he had not thought about that before and whether anyone else thought he should.

“Sure enough you have some experience. I remember how you used to turn up in the middle of the night, in Symond’s bedroom as if you passed through the walls like a ghost.”

In truth Theon usually just asked the guards openly to be let in at Lordsport - it was out of his own home he snuck out, where nobody was usually paying him any attention, and through the moors across the islands, where he always rode faster than anyone else on it, so nobody could see his face. He was surprised Tris remembered, anyhow, given saddling himself with someone else’s older brothers was about the opposite of the reason he went all the way to Lordsport.

“I really could,” he said, growing more excited. “I’m a better rider than anyone here, I only need to go down a road once to remember.” He remembered being told that a lot, he remembered a lot of smiles and compliments on how brave and independent he was growing up to be and how much better that was than going to complain at mother’s skirts, even from his father, but after a few times it had gotten old. He had thought that with the waning of the winter people were just finding it less impressive, or that now he was ten they expected him to try to hit his brothers back when they made him cross instead of leaving - now he realized everyone was just beginning to be preoccupied with the rebellion, which was better, since it was not his fault. “It will be longer, but there will be trees for cover, so I think it’s about as hard.”

“You are, remember though that to Winterfell you will be going by boat, so you won't have a road to remember,” Tris interrupted him, suddenly sounding nervous.

“Only a small bit by boat. Winterfell is very very far from the sea, it won't make sense to go by boat any farther than the Neck.” His mother had pointed out Winterfell to him on a map at breakfast, though she had not bothered to ask what he thought of it before the screaming match resumed. He had fixed his eyes at the dark yawning forest surrounding the castle and let himself daydream of riding, climbing pine trees and hunting snarling bears taller than Pyke's gatehouse, still smiling.

“Ay, that’s a very good plan then. Only maybe wait for it to be summer, I’ve heard in winter the snow never melts all the way to the Rills.”

“It will be already summer when I get there!”

Tris had a little twitch around him. “Do not take this badly, Theon, but it might be an easier journey when you are not ten.”

“So do you want me to run or not?” Theon snapped, feeling his eyes burn again. He was the one who had brought it up - Theon was doing just fine with his own dreams before he’d run into him, and he certainly wasn't going to turn to any daydream as fantastical as marrying or being saved.

Tristifer raised his palms for peace, and then put them around his face to pull him close and kiss his forehead. “Sure I do, Theon. Everyone wants you back as soon as can be. If that’s in three years or five, or…”

“ Fine. He curled onto himself, pouting. “It’s only a long time.”

“I know that. But truly, I do not think it will be so awful. A lot of things will be changing, I bet you won't find the islands any stranger on your return than we already will. Did you know your mother asked me to stay here for a while?”

Theon rolled his eyes . That had been another screaming match. “Until you’ve rebuilt your castle. I know…”

“My family, of course. But me, she has asked to stay a bit longer, as a sort of… long visit. To keep your sister company. She was thinking of inviting some other boys as well. I - I am glad to be of help. I cannot imagine how it is, to lose a brother, nevermind t-two…”

He did not pay close attention to the rest. So he was not going to be the only one to be like a greenland lordling, though there was no doubt he had the bravest and hardest journey before him either way. It was like his mother to decide that if Theon didn’t get to remain home, then other boys shouldn't either - even though he had at present very few warm feelings for anyone who had a hand in their doomed uprising, the thought gave him a little flutter in his heart.

“Will you have my room?” he thought out loud suddenly, frowning.

“I didn't think it delicate to ask…”

Theon thought again of the mold patch spreading under the increasingly too-small-for-him bed and the lovely bird’s eye view on the South Tower, the best in the whole castle, and wondered why he was finding it so hard to banish this shite from his heart for good. “I absolutely want you to have my room,” he amended. “And my…” He was not about to leave Botley his bow and none of his clothes could reasonably fit a young man of three-and-ten. “My axe. My trusty axe and dirks, for you were a true friend to me,” he resolved, trying to sound like Dagmer did on his ship when he wanted to give encouragement to some oar boy who really needed it.

Tristifer smiled, a little bit the way he had been smiling all day and yet not quite. “Thank you, Theon.”

“I will not need it.” He feared that was very literal. Lord Stark had very carefully avoided the topic of him having any right to weapons of his own.

As he rose up Tristifer leapt up after him and grabbed him, not as he had the whole night, poking at him like a babe in arms, but grasping his forearm the way warrior brothers on the same ships would, the way Theon would now never be touched. “I’m sorry, Theon, I hope it will ease your mind that I will look after your mother and your sister while you’re gone. I’m sorry that I was not much comfort to you tonight. The truth is I cannot imagine...”

Theon blinked the burning in his eyes away. “It’s not like there was anyone else,” he said, and that felt like the first thing he’d said in the past two days that was not a lie even a little.

~~~

He awoke the morning of execution to smoke in the air, roaring drums and the customary splitting pain in his arms. It was getting harder and harder to fight through it to lucidity, and he drifted for a while before his eyes were able to catch a third worrisome sign: a bloodied figure standing at the entrance, outlined deep orange in the torchlight. It closed the width of the tower in three graceful leaps, resting its hand on Theon’s chain.

“Prince Theon,” his sister’s pup Tristifer Botley said. “The Freys have attacked. Your sister has sent me to bring you home.”

Theon stared, wondering if he was dreaming, except this was such an undreamy way to be saved. Tristifer looked up to the top of the wall where the restraints were anchored and jumped up to reach it, then attempted to pull himself up from a nook among the stones. He circled around the tower and picked up the king's chair, but set it back down immediately. Instead he took three steps back and threw his axe at the ceiling. The dawn light had begun to fill the tower and Theon saw clearly the swift graceful way his arm turned and the fierce look that flashed through his eyes, as if the simple gesture was sufficient to turn the pup back into reaver, as naturally as birds fly and fish swim. Then the chain fell apart and his vision went black and red as he dropped down lopsidedly, moaning. Tristifer ran to catch him around the waist and pressed him back against the wall while he attacked the other restraint, the effort of throwing with the wrong arm bringing the soft phantom of a battle cry to his lips.

Theon was on the ground, his arms hanging limp around the other’s neck, but the pleasure of having both his legs on the ground and moving again roused him enough he managed to walk outside with barely any help.

“Take a long step,” Botley warned as they crossed the threshold; Theon looked down at the two dead guards at his feet and couldn't help but giggle.

The blizzard had abated and he was burning too much to feel the cold. He lost himself enough in the pleasure of being in the free air again that the thought took too long to come to the surface, but when he did it froze him on his feet. “We have passed the home where they keep Lady Arya.” He pointed out to Botley, stammering, still half-convinced he would take his presumption badly and smash his head in.

“Lady… the queen did not mention taking her with us. We are short on time and surely…”

“Ramsay will come back for her. I won't leave without her.” He buried his boots so firmly in the snow his toes started to hurt again. Sighing, Tristifer began to pick the locks of his restraints and pressed fresh snow on his flayed wrists. Theon closed his eyes and steeled himself not to show the weakness of relief

“She has the lady Mormont with her, and plenty of guards. We must take this chance now we can.”

“I will not come, if you’re so whipped for my sister you’re welcome to stay here with me, for all she will care! I’m not-”

“I have orders about this, I can't just leave you here because you made me angry if that’s what you're trying, my prince.” He sounded half confused and half diverted. Theon wanted very badly to punch him in the face, though no part of his body was responding to him.

“Well, what’s taking you so long?” Asha burst into the clearing, leasing three horses along and flushed with excitement.

Tristifer looked flustered. Theon spared him the embarrassment of having to answer. “I will not leave without Lady Arya.”

“The girl? Theon, we have no time. I don't see what business she would have to come with us anyway, Stark’s daughter…”

“Ramsay’s coming for her. He’ll know I left her all alone, he will flay her, he will hunt her through the woods...”

“Theon!” Asha grabbed his arms, carefully over his jerkin and keeping her distance. “Do you see even a single Bolton in this village? He’s not winning this battle. That means also, if you care about what happens to the rest of us at all, that Stannis might have the time and the men to spare to pursue us, if he’s so inclined, and he can't just pretend we never existed if we have the heir to the North with us. You won't be the only one being burned for the gods. She has Aly with her. She will be fine.”

It was the longest Asha has spoken to him since they met again, and it was mostly screaming. Tears started to spill out of his eyes. “I promised not to leave her alone. She will hate me.”

“I don't know what you have done to her for her not to hate you already,” Asha said, as if she had not flinched like the most wilting maiden at the sight of him enough to know what Ramsay was and what being saved from him was.

“I saved her. I can't abandon her,” he said for the sake of not giving up too easily. He saw very well however how much of a choice he had in that.

“I don't understand how you can do this to us after we’ve gone the trouble of breaking you out, all for the Stark’s brat! Don't you want to come with me, to go home? Was Father right, then, has a new foster sister taken my place in your heart and that's why you'd never write?”

He had something to say to that, plenty of things, actually about everyone’s assumption that he was doing what he needed to survive at them but it was all too much, picturing someone saying all that to a twelve-year-old girl. He burst out laughing.

Asha shook her head and mounted. “Well, Theon, I will tell you then that it’s not for the pleasure of your company that I’m rescuing you and so making yourself as hateful as possible will not persuade me to leave you here: you can spare yourself the efforts.” She mounted and rode away, not looking him in the eye somehow even more than she already did.

“Can you ride, my prince?” Botley intervened, sounding like he deeply deeply wanted to be pretty much anywhere else.

“I don't see why not. I rode to Moat Cailin,” he said, flashing his horrid smile, which was yet another waste of his efforts, because Botley did not know the horror that had been Moat Cailin.

It was not true. His legs remembered the right movements, but his arms could not pull up his meager weight. Stannis had ruined him for anything useful more thoroughly in a week than Ramsay in a year. He fell on his knees pressed against the warm flank of the horse, adding this to the many reasons he currently had to laugh hysterically. Tristifer lifted him on his own horse instead and climbed behind him, supporting him and leading the spare horse along.

“See, sweet sister, someone here has the courage to touch me,” he cried out into the wind. “And not the way Esgred likes either.”

There was no answer. As they met with Qarl the Maid and the other two men, Theon thought to change strategy. “What does Asha mean, that she didn't rescue me for my sake?”

“She didn’t mean it, it’s only the tension is high and we all are speaking foolishly,” Tristifer said, biting his lip. Tristifer would not have any fingers or toes to speak of, had he been where Theon had been, for he could not tell a lie.

“Are you calling your queen a liar? Are you calling me the greatest fool in the realm to believe this?” He let his voice rise and his tears pour - he feared there wasn't such a thing as keeping an appearance of dignity with this one.

“Well, before we were captured she and I had talked about Torgon the Latecomer,” he confessed. “Perhaps we may do something like that when we return, call another kingsmoot with the excuse that one heir was absent. But that’s faraway in the future, and I’m sure Asha would have had easier ways to accomplish it if that was all, truly, she had been petitioning Stannis for an alliance…”

He snorted at the thought. “That’s all very well. Thank you for your honesty.” His heart gave a painful squeeze at first, but thinking about it was very natural. It was easier to be wanted as a thing again, as Ramsay had, and it was not always easier to be a prince than to be Reek either. "Lord Botley, you once promised to take care of my sister in my absence, and I see you have done so. Will you ask her to stop and hear me once more? I've just had an idea." "You sadly overestimate my hold on the queen, I fear," Botley sighed.

“Please, my lord, I must speak to her, make her stop!”

Botley called for a halt, wincing. Theon noted being loud seemed to be the one slight weapon he still had and wondered if that would hold true even more, once the battle had died down and they were pursued.

Asha turned her horse towards them, looking exasperated, and Theon let himself tumble off his own, falling limp on his knees, sinking in the snow. “My queen, I apologize for lying to you.”

“Theon…”

“The truth is Lord Ramsay never wed the real Arya Stark. Jeyne was just the steward’s daughter and they made her pretend, and I pretended for her too. She's not the heir to anything, nobody will care to save her, we will not be pursued, just please, please let me go back for her, I'll go alone if necessary."

“God.” Asha ran a hand through her hair, squinting to focus. “Theon, you can't expect Stannis to believe us now. What, would we just leave a note? Maybe if you’d told before…”

“I lied to protect her!” He hid his face in his hands to hide his tears. A prince had no right to weep. Had he truly advised her wrong? Had he betrayed her trust once again, when she looked to him as the only man grown she had to turn to? “We can't leave her there. Jon Snow will not want her when they find out, nor Stannis, and she won't keep lying, she's so tired, she's little, she has just me…

“I know Stannis was planning to execute you, but he is not… a wholly evil man.” Asha said, starting to fidget with her bridle. “He will find some sort of safe place for her, a motherhouse…”

“But Jeyne keeps the Old Gods,” he remembered. “Sansa always wanted to take her to the sept, but she hated it, she'd make excuses. I gave her some of mine, once.”

“I am sure Jeyne will adapt to what she needs to do to survive, as you always have,” she snapped, then softened. “I do not think you need to worry about her. She did survive that jump. That’s not something a weak girl does.”

People never say that about a happy person, do they.” >

~~~

“We should probably get this done before he warms up and regains some feeling,” Asha said once they had all descended from their horses.

Tristifer nodded, Qarl the Maid stalked to Theon’s other side, resolute and feather-light, and he felt a sudden pain in both shoulders that blotted the world out.

He lost more than a day, at least he thought from how far they’d gone when he woke shuddering by the open fire. He dreamed of Jeyne freezing slowly and prettily in the snow, a pale doe-eyed snow maid, and her burned face on Dragonstone's walls, flanked by snarling dragons. He dreamed of Ramsay’s laughing eyes and as if he were twelve years old, of the South Tower’s fall and the crunch of bones underneath.

There were other things he didn't dare wonder if they were dream or reality - the howling of wolves in the distance, Asha’s sad eyes over him as she stroked his hair. But in the midst of it all he very clearly saw and felt and smelled Tristifer Botley crouching by him to hand him a bowl of thin muskrat soup, holding it to his lips when his arms couldn't hold it.

“I know it doesn't help now,” he whispered, his breath drawing clouds in the morning mist. “But I truly believe it’s best to leave your Jeyne here, safe with lady Mormont. To bring a little girl to the Iron Islands, with Euron there… She too will understand it wouldn't be a kindness.”

“I bet Asha would prefer you didn't bring that up again,” he said, not in the mood to be reasonable and grateful.

“Maybe so,” Tris admitted. “But I don't see the point. I don't think it’s something you could forget.”

“Thank you,” he whispered, closing his eyes in the rising sun.

~~~

Even now he could generally walk, and use his hands if not lift much weight, Botley would bring him rags boiled hot in snowmelt water and wrap them tight around his shoulders whenever they stopped.

“It’s only a common trick oarsmen do to relieve their sore muscles,” he shrugged when Theon thanked him.

“Then it's not simple nor common for me.” He tried to stretch and thought better of it. “In Winterfell we would soak in the hot springs when we were sore from training. Would like to be there right now.”

“Would love to be anywhere with walls,” Qarl the Maid mumbled sleepily from tree where he was standing guard.

He laughed, feeling only vaguely sorry for what a dreadful spectacle it was. “Not the reception I expected for that on the Islands.”

“Mhh?” Tris hopped closer to share in the blankets.

Theon closed his eyes, remembering. “I used to have this dream when I was a boy that I ran from Winterfell. I came home, all the way on foot in the cold, I went back to my house, I was at dinner with my family, and I said I was tired and would like to have a soak in the hot springs. Thus my father would tell me if I had liked Winterfell so much, I could just go back there and put me on a longship directly back North without letting me have a night in my own bad.

Tristifer laughed. “Children have the strangest sorts of fear.”

“It was easier to have nightmares about it than sweet dreams and wake up disappointed.”

Tris laid his hand very lightly on his shoulder. “I’m sorry that I might have given you false hopes at the time,” he said, sheepish. “It’s the curse of elder brothers. I felt to have a lot of wisdom to give my juniors, but in truth I don't think I was ever a bigger fool than when I was three-and-ten, before or after.”

Oddly, he didn't think of his own elder brothers - well, elder siblings by now, since Asha was not proving to be much better than them. Instead he idly thought of Robb and how he was only two years older than that when Theon last saw him and how he would never have time to come to that realisation, and then he wrapped his hand forcefully around Botley’s, trying very hard to think of anything else. “I will never hold anything against you,” he scoffed. “You were the only one to comfort me then, and now you’ve saved me.”

Tris raised an eyebrow. “You should not say I alone saved you. Asha sent me to you, and we all made the plan together, you should try to forgive her as well.”

He spat. “Jon Snow sent the spearwives to save Jeyne and Abel came up with the plan, but when it came to it I was the one to take the fall. I say I’m the one who saved her. I could maybe allow the girls just because they're dead."

Tris laughed. “Certainly, my prince, I didn't do anything as heroic as jumping off a wall, though.”

“Jon Snow and the wildlings wanted to save Jeyne because they thought she was Arya, too. Only I saved her for herself.”

“You know, if you think Asha only wanted to save you for the kingsmoot there’s no reason not to think the same of me. Euron killed my father and gave our lands to our uncle, he broke my family apart.”

“Then maybe I should no longer speak to either of you,” he sniped. He did not like the sinking feeling the very thought gave him. “What will you do when we oust Euron, then?” he asked him instead.

“First, I must get my brothers out of my nuncle’s house,” he began, his voice resolute and worried and tender as he went through his plans. Theon fell asleep to the sound of it and had no nightmares at all.

~~~

One day at the Southron edge of the Wolfswood he went for a piss and found his sister hurling in the snow with an abandon that would make you doubt that none of them had seen so much as a skin of wine in the past fortnight.

“Theon,” she said, looking up at him, greenish and miserable. “I want you to know that it doesn't matter what Father told me, I never stopped wishing you would return. I wish we had a better return. I wish we could get another.”

He shuddered. “You’re avoiding very carefully to say it was your fault.” It was unfair and cruel but he couldn't help it. He’d had to say it enough for several lifetimes, why couldn't someone else spare him for once!

“I will not!” The anger gave her the strength that the peacemaking must have sapped out, springing up on her feet. “I’m not going to, no matter how many times you make some terrible joke about it. You don't feel guilty for threatening to marry me off, what do you think happens in the marriage bed? Not just a little poke of the cock, I will tell you-”

He closed his eyes against the words. “I do feel guilty about it, now.”

Whatever look she gave him as he turned away, he didn't care to see.

That night, when Tris knelt down next to his bedroll to check his bandages, he reached for his lips. He gave in for a split second and then sprang back as it stung. “Your sister has not loved me in eleven years,” he said. “Stealing me will not be helpful in making her suffer.”

He bristled because he was not nearly as right as Theon wished he was. “You’re very suspicious for someone who has been badgering me to think well of people since the second you cut me down the wall!”

“It’s just one thing that I don't think I can ever be trusting about again.” He said. “I’m sorry.” The worst part was he looked like he sincerely meant it.

Theon closed his eyes and leaned his head on Tris’s shoulder as he finished, every other part of him present and absent tingling with longing he didn't deserve to sate.

~~~

When they finally reached Dagmer at Torrhen's Square the poor man was so distressed to see his current state Theon felt genuinely guilty about it - a feeling he should probably be saving for other sins, but he didn't care. Dagmer deserved it.

Unlike Asha, though, he immediately enveloped him in a hug so tight his shoulders hurt anew and he feared he meant to carry him up himself, and gave him the best bedroom in the castle, all by himself. It took Theon a while to recognize whose it was, even after he recalled what he knew of the Tallhart family.

“I killed the boy who slept on this bed,” he mumbled, dizzy from milk of the poppy and being once more in a room with a fire.

“Aye,” Dagmer nodded from his corner. “The one with the song and the rabbitskin.”

“My first and last glorious deed.”

“Don't say it like that, laddie.” He came closer to ruffle his white brittle hair as if he were still a ten-year-old boy with beautiful curls. “You’ll always have Winterfell for a deed even if you don't have It for a holdfast.”

He scoffed. “Do you think anyone will agree with that, Dagmer? Do you think they will call me for a king, in this state?”

“As far as your sister’s told me, you don't need to be voted, just to be there. I think that your arms will fix, thought, and that you will have an ironman’s colors again once you’re back by the sea. I think you have more teeth than me and more fingers than most that took that Seastone chair.”

He squeezed his eyes shut so they wouldn't water. “It’s not very manly, is it? That I let Asha use me as a puppet even though she saved me just for that. But I must do it, I must try to fix at least something. I brought so much trouble to the Islands…”

“There's lots of folks who brought trouble to the Islands of late. You’re not the first on that list, I can tell you. But Theon, we wouldn't be in this if anyone in your bloody house could make peace among brothers. That girl is stubborn and she has her own worries, but you cant look at her in the eyes and not see she’s happy you're not dead. You must find a way to trust her.”

“So sweet of her,” he drawled. He wondered if she was getting an equal amount of pestering by whoever was bold enough to do so, because even as he realised Dagmer was right he was beginning to find this a bit unfair.

“And Botley…” Dagmer went on. “Look, laddie, on a ship you don't bother to keep certain things hidden, do you get me? I can tell you I saw him so lovestruck eleven years past, and even with that big great beard his face’s not much changed.”

He grimaced. “Then you know also that he doesn't have much of a reason to trust a Greyjoy again.”

“Maybe so, but…” his familiar, sweet dismal grin spread over his face. “Aye, Theon, he never struck me as a very reasonable lad.”

~~~

He ran to Asha’s room and embraced her that very night. If a screaming match followed, that was at this point really just their only way to talk for more than five minutes straight.

He didn't seek Tris out the same day, though. He did not want it to be dealt with as soon as possible to face the pain head on and end it, the relief of a flayed finger cut off. He wanted it to happen slowly and sweetly.

~~~

They bathed in the bay of Harlaw the very first day they arrived. Tris knelt in the shallow water and scrubbed his face furiously, laughing. “I’d never been far from the sea for so long before,” he confessed. “I think I see now how it must have felt, the last time you returned. Why you’d want vengeance so much that…” he trailed off, reaching for his hand through the weaves instead.

Theon had not bathed in the sea when he had first returned, anymore than he had gone to see his mother. He treated his home like it had nothing to offer him but war and a false delusion of strength - it shouldn't have taken Tris to make him realize why that was wrong, but he did make it easier than anyone else.

Theon set out gingerly, trying his still-fragile arms in the calm water, then flipped over to flop in the sun. He could hear Tristifer pray softly beside him, glimpse the pearls of saltwater lingering on his eyelashes, and he felt he believed more than he had ever before. The Old Gods know my name. The Drowned God has arms to hold me and gave me someone to kiss.

He found he could live with being happy about both.