Chapter Text
Waking at a more acceptable hour did nothing to assuage Ramsay's discomfort, at finding himself once more in the same, incorrect castle. The unknown boy had dressed himself, and was breaking his fast at Ramsay’s table nonchalantly. Ramsay resisted the urge to yell at him to get out, and stop flouting the rules of propriety by being so blasé. The boy smiled when he saw that Ramsay was awake, and immediately offered him the plate he had prepared. Churlish, but with a stomach protesting its lack of sustenance, Ramsay yanked on the pair of breeches he found slung over a bedpost, and joined the cheery man. He was pleasantly surprised to find a plate filled with his favourite fruits, a good chunk of ham and soft bread with cheese. Suspicious again that the boy knew him so well, he watched the boy eat and make idle chatter about the unexpected snowstorm, before consenting to eat himself.
The boy in his chambers wasn’t the only new addition to the household. Whilst Ramsay was fully expecting to see his brother again, hoping it hadn’t been a particularly lucid dream, he wasn’t expecting to come across said brother in the passageway, a pretty blonde highborn girl clinging to his arm. When she noticed Ramsay looking at them, she scowled at him rudely. Ramsay returned the glare, mostly out of consternation at a second unfamiliar face in his boyhood home, than anything else. She said not a word when Dom greeted him and mentioned the blizzard.
“Well, winter has come,” Ramsay shrugged, before suddenly realising that the statement might not be an accurate one anymore. Here in this strange realm, where his dead brother pranced about with unknown girls, without a care in the world.
But Dom nodded in commiseration at his words, and that was enough. Ramsay felt himself relax marginally, relieved some truths remained.
*
He managed to avoid his father all day, having correctly surmised that he might also be here. Ramsay glimpsed Lord Bolton striding about the courtyard purposefully from a high window, feeling his stomach swoop in fear. Would Roose remember the feel of Ramsay’s dagger plunging into his heart?
Surely I would have awoken in the dungeons, if that were so, Ramsay reasoned.
He kept to the shadows regardless, and sought out another dead confidant. If all the spectres of House Bolton were somehow alive, then surely his favourite hunting companion was also? But her chambers were empty, and when he inquired the kennel master of her whereabouts, he seemed utterly bewildered. Dom hailed Ramsay, before he had the chance to grow irate with the fool.
“Where are you off to?” Dom asked.
“To see Myranda.” Ramsay replied shortly, unprepared for his brother’s face to fall, his countenance growing solemn.
“Aye,” he said, “I’ll join you. It’s been some time since I paid my respects to my mother.”
Ramsay stopped short, staring at Dom, trying to parse another meaning from his words, but finding himself unable to. Wordlessly, he followed his brother into the bowels of the Dreadfort. Far below the dungeons, and the hidden chambers that were always locked, right down to the crypts. He hid his shock that Myranda, a smallfolk girl, had been buried here. Alongside his ancestors and the beloved wives of Bolton lords long dead. Dom didn’t seem to think there was anything odd in Myranda’s tomb being the next along from his mother’s. Idly, Ramsay traced the letters on her final resting place, in the mysterious, chunky lettering of the Old Tongue. All Bolton tombs were decorated in the same way. But Myranda was not a Bolton; not unless he'd been committing even more sins than he'd been aware of, and she was secretly his father's bastard too.
“Remind me what it says?” Ramsay enquired, sure that he must be expected to know it, if Myranda had committed some feat worthy of being interned here for all eternity.
She must have saved my father's life, the thought. Nay, Dom’s. Mayhaps her death is the reason Dom breathes beside me.
Dom cleared his throat, before dutifully reciting: “Myranda Redbolt, beloved wife and mother. Now her bones rest with the blood of my blood.”
Ramsay turned sharply. The strange House name she had been attributed was nothing compared to the word mother .
Dom lead him from the crypts silently, both of them unwilling to disturb the quietus until they began to ascend from the lowest level. Ramsay wanted to ask how Myranda had died and what had happened to her child, no doubt his bastard. Though perhaps not, if she had married into House Redbolt, whoever they were. No Northern House that Ramsay had ever heard of. Still, there were smaller clans in the mountains and the Neck, only the gods knew what all their names were. He considered going to the Maester’s tower to enquire about it, but before Ramsay could state this intention, Dom said:
“Come with me to the sparring yard. I promised our sister I’d watch her shooting since we delayed our hunt. She’ll be thrilled if you join me.”
Ramsay stopped abruptly and stared at his brother. Then stared some more when Dom cast him an enquiring look.
“Our what?! ”
Dom responded with a hard look.
"No matter where half of her blood comes from, she is still our sister, Ramsay," he chided. "No pretense is needed with me. I know you are fond of her."
Disturbed, Ramsay proceeded to follow Dom to the courtyard.
Their sister turned out to be tiny child of no more than six, with more hair than sense, which she promptly revealed by bowling into Ramsay’s legs and clinging onto him as though he were a prized doll. Ramsay stared down at her tiny form with consternation, entirely unsure how to deal with this circumstance. Supremely unbothered by Ramsay’s lukewarm reaction, the redheaded girl promptly abandoned him in order to give Dom’s knees the same level of affection.
She was frankly terrible with the bow. But then she was very little, her tiny hands not yet suited to the stillness of motion required. She managed to hit a hay target after several attempts, causing Dom to clap encouragingly, while Ramsay watched on in bewilderment. Dom nudged him with his elbow, to which Ramsay offered wide-eyed confusion before realising his mistake. He offered a belated: “Well done,” to the child.
She proceeded to beam at him with a gappy smile, teeth missing due to her youth. Wrong-footed, Ramsay shuffled closer to Dom for guidance and protection against this unfamiliar world, where Myranda was honoured and they shared a small sister. At least Dom was the same man, wholly his brother. As long as that remained unchanged, Ramsay would gather his senses soon. He had to.
*
Ramsay settled into his seat at dinner with the ginger hesitation of an uninvited guest. He pressed his lips into a firm, bloodless white line when he noticed the young man - still unnamed - approach. It was infernal, this dogged pursuit. Ramsay could not fathom how anyone could receive his negative responses, yet remain so determined to stay within stabbing distance. After escaping from his enthusiastic, doting sister, Ramsay had returned to his chambers to dress for dinner. There he found the boy doing the same, in clothes that were clearly fashioned for him, hanging in Ramsay’s closet. Ramsay had proceeded to slam about his rooms, furious and somewhat humiliated. Not just a whore, but a live-in whore. Wonderful news. No doubt his father was thrilled by that development.
Looking at the smiling young man seating himself beside Ramsay in full public view, he was even more annoyed. No man at Winterfell would have dared continually raise his ire and hope to remain unscathed. Not for the first time, Ramsay longed for the uncomplicated subservience of his Reek. These cheerful teases he received from the boy, as though every threatening glance Ramsay made was in jest, were unaccountably vexing. But the boy simply sat next to him at the high table, bold as you please, leaning into Ramsay’s space as if he would be unquestionably welcome there.
“What are you-” Ramsay snarled, before biting back his harsh words, partly due to the realisation he was about to make a scene in front of Father, but mostly because Dom kicked him sharply in the shin.
Big brown eyes turned to him in wounded hurt, and Ramsay fought down the urge to lash out. Knowing Father would be unimpressed when there were ladies present. Instead, Ramsay rubbed his smarting leg and smiled his most dangerous, charming, and ultimately cruel smile.
“What are you after this eve? Hare, or fowl?” Ramsay altered the tone of his question unconvincingly, the young man beside him frowning, before reaching for the pigeon.
The sneering young blonde woman was across the table from them, affording Ramsay frosty looks when she deigned to cross gazes with him. But they were also joined by another unknown guest, an older woman, still handsome despite her age, with long red hair and a charming smile. She doted on his Father, who seemed gratified by the attention.
Ramsay tried to parse who she was by listening to their conversation, but all he gained was her first name. It was possible she was some distant relative - Father must have some relations, after all, he couldn’t just have sprung from a frozen puddle, fully formed. But no one ever spoke of Father’s parents. If Roose had any siblings, uncles, aunts or cousins, he clearly wasn’t fond of them, as he never spoke of them. Ramsay and Dom had certainly never met anyone else claiming to have Bolton blood. As he mused on how eerie that actually was, how odd that Father never mentioned his parents and his sons didn’t even know their names, Ramsay decided the foreign woman must be Father’s mistress or wife. In this world a redheaded wife would make sense, taking into account the new sister he’d gained.
As Ramsay observed how attentive she was, without being weakly sycophantic or deferential, Ramsay recognised that this woman was a better fit for Father than timid, fat Walda. What a waste of blubber she had been. Ramsay should have skinned her and boiled down her fat for lamp oil. Alas, he’d fed her to his bitches before the thought ever crossed his mind. It was a shame that quick decisions were necessary in times of war, but one could not be expected to think of everything.
The dinner progressed as they so often did when he was a boy, with Father leading the conversation in that quiet, contained voice of his. Talking about grain, wax shortages from the lack of bees in winter, and the recent death of Lord Whitehill. Ramsay followed Dom’s lead in false sympathy for their bannerman, smirking when Dom rolled his eyes as soon as Father’s head turned. Neither of them cared what men on their land lived or died, as long as they didn’t make any trouble. A peaceful land, a quiet people: that was Father’s motto. Ramsay certainly didn’t agree with all of that sentiment: he preferred screaming, sobbing people.
After they were done with their five courses, Ramsay alighted the table quickly, but not so quick as to escape Father’s unwanted eye.
“You will stay,” Father glared at Ramsay, before settling his cold smile upon his mysterious wife, as she gave him a questioning look.
Lady Gwyn kissed Roose upon his cheek before taking her leave, Ramsay pleading silently with Dom for support, but his brother offered him a commiserating look, the kind that would look fitting accompanied by a shrug claiming inability.
“You were rude to your…. Companion, this evening,” Father stated blandly, once the hall was empty.
Ramsay shrugged, trying to affect an uninterested air. He highly doubted Father wanted to hear any sordid details, but his heart pounded, being so close to a man he had murdered once.
“Growing bored of him at last, I see,” Father said, infuriatingly condescending. “Well, it was inevitable.”
Ramsay said not a word. He wasn’t sure what he felt for his strange new follower, but already his father’s dismissal was infuriating. The boy had been nothing but dotingly sweet toward Ramsay, if maddeningly disrespectful.
“I will not have it,” Roose hissed suddenly, “Set him aside as your whore, if you wish. But I will not have you disparage a worthy member of this household, nor humiliate a loyal man - of which there are too few in this life. You will apologise, and woe betide if we lose his skills as a teacher to your feeble-minded son.”
Ramsay bristled at that. He now had confirmation that Myranda’s child was his own, and he was sure no boy of his was feeble in anything. And Ramsay was surprised to find himself suddenly furious at Father calling his young man a whore.
It’s acceptable when I do it, because he is so evidently mine, he glowered possessively. Ramsay opened his mouth to argue on behalf of his son, but one icy look from his Father stemmed his tongue.
“I do not wish to hear it. Do as I bid.”
Recognising the dismissal, Ramsay gritted his teeth and stomped out of the hall, stalking to his rooms, fury bubbling and blistering on his skin.