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Chapter Text

ALERIE

“Table 13 has multiple bees in her bonnet.” Caryse announced, sliding two licked-clean plates into the murky dish-pit. “I’ll take care of her, she can smell fear.”

Alerie glanced into the dining room, at Table 13, a middle aged Dornish woman was picking at her egg white omelet and scowling into the middle distance. The chunky blonde highlights in her brown hair and the stack of charm bracelets on each wrist reminded Alerie of her problematic aunt who was notorious for antagonizing defenceless baristas.

“I don’t know why people like that eat out if they can’t stand to be around employees.”

“I think it’s the rush. I mean if the only satisfaction I was getting was six minute long scheduled missionary with Todryk The Beer-Gutted Accountant, I’d take it out on a starving college kid who can’t talk back.” Caryse smirked, “anyway, we’ve got a walk-in at Table 7, so I’m pawning it off on you, they’ve got menus, I need a dart.”

“Okay. Enjoy cancer in four years.”

Caryse grabbed a pack of Valyrian Blues out of her coat pocket and grinned. “You know I always do.” she slipped out the screen backdoor into the alleyway, letting it bounce off the frame.

The guy was big and pale and the girl was dark and tiny. He had the menus shut and set aside and was on his phone while the girl sat perfectly still, hunched over. Alerie didn’t know why but he gave her a weird vibe, grimy almost.

“Hi, what can I start you off with?”

“Hi. Yeah. We’ll both have pancakes. And just… water.”

“Do you want to add anything to the pancakes? We can add blueberries, chocolate chips-.”

“Sure, we’ll do blueberries, why not?” he switched his phone off and looked up at her. There was something about his eyes that was just… off. They were so pale grey and slightly bloodshot. His hair was shoulder length, dark and greasy, and his skin was gross. The girl was scrawny with her hair chopped to just below her ears. It was flat and unkempt. She had the same golden-brown complexion as Alerie and every other ethnic Northerner but there was a bloodlessness to it, like she was sick. Her eyes were big and brown and glassy.

“Good choice. I always add blueberries to mine.”

“Vitamins are important. Sometimes I go months without eating a vegetable.” he laughed and the girl stared at the teal formica tabletop.

That’s… concerning, Alerie thought to herself, taking a step towards the table and picking up the stacked menus. The girl’s foot tapped against her ankle, right where her jeans ended and her skin began. She leaned forward a bit and Alerie met her eyeline. She stared for a few seconds, then looked at the man then back at Alerie.

“Okay. I’ll be right out with those.”

“Great. Thanks- oh wow.” he trailed off, “sorry, this is so weird to say but you have the most gorgeous hands.”

Alerie forced a customer-service smile. So I guess they’re not a couple. Kill me. “Thanks.”

“Doesn’t she have nice hands, Arya?”

The girl looked up, locked eyes with Alerie and nodded. Under the table, her napkin fell slowly to the floor, settling on her left foot. Something that looked almost like regret came over her face.

Table 13 was paying when Joren started the pancakes, shuffling through a pile of small change. Caryse was washing the smell of smoke off of her hands in the back so Alerie rang her through. She could always tell when a customer was about to unload all their personal issues onto her and from the look on this woman’s face she was either about to request a manager or announce that she was taking her business elsewhere, as if she would be missed.

“The girl who served me was absolutely clueless.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll be sure to bring that to our manager’s attention.” The woman glared over Alerie’s shoulder into the kitchen, Caryse glared back.

“I’ve been coming here for fifteen years.”

“...Okay.”

“That’s all you have to say?” the woman picked her purse up and made an indignant noise. “Well, you just lost my business.”

What am I supposed to say to that? I’ve never even seen you before. “Have a nice day.” Alerie smiled. She turned and left without another word. Caryse mimed a kick in her direction and Alerie turned to face her with a saccharine grin. “Someone’s not very happy with you.”

“Bitch, I AM the manager.” Caryse growled in the direction of the door, she held up the tip jar, “no tip either. Lovely.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, Table 7 complimented my hands just now so we might have a new Sweatervest Guy.”

“Wonderful.” Caryse frowned. “You do have nice hands though.”

“Stop.”

“Delicate. Like little mouse paws.” Caryse smirked. Joren slid two plates of blueberry pancakes onto the shelf above the grill. “As your immediate superior, I give you permission to kick him in the stones in self-defense but only as a last resort.”

“That’s comforting.”

“What can I say? I take care of my employees.”

Table 7 was on his phone again and this time Alerie caught a glimpse of the Facebook post he was in the process of angry-reacting.

First Lady Margaery Tyrell Spotted Reading ISM Manifesto at KLTC Station-

“Okay, here we go.” Alerie’s customer service voice took over as she delivered the pancakes to Table 7, the guy looked up with a forced grin and the girl eyed the plates suspiciously.

“Those look amazing, what do we say, Arya?”

“Thank you.” the girl choked out, picking at her cuticles. Alerie noticed blood under her fingernails but tried not to dwell on it, remembering that one customer who had come in soaked head to toe in vomit and tried to pay with a Yi-Ti Express gift card. She had just begun to back away from the table when the girl swept her cutlery off the table with the back of her hand.

“Arya!” the guy snapped, “what was that about?”

“All good.” Alerie smiled, “I’ll go get you some clean-.” Before she could finish the girl grabbed her by the wrist, she was way stronger than she looked and Alerie’s first thought was ‘if I have to use my Caryse-sanctioned self defense on this kid…’, the girl stared at her with glassy brown eyes, Alerie couldn’t help but notice a purple-green shadow where her left eye ended and the side of her nose began. She stood in stunned silence, maintaining the most agonizing eye contact she’d ever had to suffer through. The girl mouthed something that Alerie couldn’t make out.

“That is enough, Arya.” the man said in a tone that made Alerie’s skin crawl. The girl softened her grip and her hand crept slowly back into her lap. He looked up at Alerie, his expression visibly shifting from anger to a fake smile. “I am so sorry.”

“Oh, it’s okay.” Alerie turned to the girl, “did you need something?”

The man stared at the girl, Alerie could have sworn she saw his lips move and the girl lose about an inch of height. She shook her head, staring back at her plate. “I’m so sorry, she-.” he sighed, “I’m a social worker. I work with mentally challenged youth, we, uh- as part of their occupational therapy we do these ‘community integration outings’, but-.” he laughed emotionlessly, “-as you can probably tell, Arya’s struggling a bit.”

That explains… nothing. “Oh, I see. Well, it’s okay. She’s learning. I’m not mad.”

“Well-.” his teeth clenched, “yeah, we’ve been working with her and-... she’s anxious, uh, she doesn’t really have impulse control, I- I’m sorry, it’s been a long day for her.”

It’s not even noon yet…? “All good. You’re both doing great.” Alerie forced a congenial laugh.

“It’s a challenging job, but so rewarding.”

“I bet.”

She was cleaning the counter for the third time in an hour when Table 7 came up to pay. He was holding onto Arya by a strap around her wrist. Alerie cringed, she already found it weird when people used those on little kids, but come on, she’s, what, 15?

“How was everything?”

“Ugh, so good. Always satisfied when I come here. How much?”

“17.”

“Worth every cent.” He pulled a wallet out of his pocket with his free hand and pulled out a beat-up debit card. “And we’ll do… 20% tip…” the receipt began to print. “Go through okay?”

“Yeah. You’re good to go.”

“Thanks. Uh, one more thing.” he pulled a stack of a few papers out of his jacket and set them on the counter. Missing- Theon Greyjoy, 21, eyes-green, hair-black, race- Ironborn- “I noticed you have some ads posted out front, do you mind if I put one of these up?” he lowered his voice, “he’s a family friend. He’s been missing a while, we’re, uh… we’re pretty much looking for a body at this point.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Of course, feel free to put one up.”

“Yeah. It’s been hard. Hard on Arya, she doesn’t really understand the concept of death. So, you know, she doesn’t get why Uncle Theon doesn’t come over anymore...” Table 7 shook his head. “We’ve all kind of been dealing with it.”

So, a Northern girl with an Ironborn uncle? “Are you… family?”

“Oh.” he laughed, “not by blood, unfortunately. Arya’s dad dropped her off at the center when she was like 10, we don’t know if she has any family. I kind of took her in, more or less. I mean, don’t tell anyone, but she’s probably my favourite client.” He pulled Arya in front of him and hugged from behind, she kept her eyes fixed on the floor. “This kid saved me. Clean and sober, five years. Someone somewhere was looking out for me, weren’t they?” her face was still completely emotionless with a slight downward twitch at the corners of her mouth. “You’re in a weird mood today. Normally she’s not this shy, I don’t think she slept well last night.”

“Well, I’m happy for you both.”

“It’s not an easy job but someone has to do it. Nothing more rewarding in the world.” he reiterated, kissing the top of her head. “What’s your name, by the way?”

Think of a fake name, think of a fake name, think of a fake name, “Alerie.” Really?

He grinned. “Wow.” he shook his head incredulously. “That was my mom’s name.”

“Aw, that’s nice.” Aaand a new work stalker has entered the pantheon of work stalkers...

“Yeah, we lost her last year. Stroke. She was… such an amazing woman.” he extended a hand, Alerie shook it. It was clammy and his grip was hard, “My name's Domeric. Domeric Snow."

Chapter Text

WYLLA

“Attention passengers, this is your captain speaking, we’re gonna be starting our initial descent into Pyke’s Seastone International Airport. For your safety the seatbelt sign will remain on until we are on the ground.”

The speaker clicked off and the guy sitting beside Wylla clipped his seatbelt back together and sighed loudly. She began to stack the small pile of garbage she had accumulated throughout the six hour flight.

“Captain’s orders.” he said, Wylla couldn’t tell if it was to her or to himself, she prayed for the latter. He looked her way, “so what brings you to Pyke on this fine day?”

“Just work.” She looked out the window over the flat, slate-grey ocean, Saltcliffe and Orkmont sprouting out of the water like little patches of grass emerging from melting snow. She could feel him wracking his brain for some way to keep the conversation going, she began shuffling in her bag trying to find her headphones but by the time she remembered they were around her neck he had started talking again.

“Me, I’m here visiting. Trying to get back into surfing.” he shifted in his seat and started to rhythmically flex his measly calf muscles, easily visible through his slightly loose workout pants. “I was a menace back in the day. Yep, I go to Pyke for the waves and the seafood.” He trailed off, rolling his ankles with a nauseating crunch, “-and I’m not talking about the lobster.”

Wylla resisted the urge to slam her head repeatedly into the plexiglass plane window.

She had no choice but to fly in through Pyke, the Harlaw airport only had domestic flights and the occasional red-eye to Seagard if the weather was good. From what she could see, Nagga’s Highway was mostly bare that morning save for the omnipresent Crownlands Military trucks that patrolled the area as a constant reminder of the mainland’s grip on the Islands, starting at the top of Great Wyk and through to the end of Harlaw. I should be there by early evening. Seastone Airport was the one speck of warmth on the whole island, the heavy scent of seafood and butter filled the terminal from nearby fast-food kiosks, families holding up signs with a loved-one’s name written on it, passengers glaring at Crownlands soldiers as they skipped lines and hovered over security checkpoints, underpaid Ironborn checkpoint agents reminding tourists over and over to please remove their shoes and place all laptops in a separate bin. The political turmoil was hard to ignore, middle aged men in shirts that read things like ‘EURON IS IN OFFICE; DEAL WITH IT OR GET OUT’ or ‘MAKE THE ISLANDS IRON AGAIN’ shot mocking looks at students with #VictoryAndAsha pins on their bags and jackets. Wylla began to contemplate whether things would get better or worse when Euron’s first term ended, if Asha would run again with a stronger campaign, if Victarion would… do whatever he did before. But I won’t be here, Gods be good. Balon was never a good chancellor but the one thing Wylla could say for him was things were a lot more stable when he was still in office and she highly doubted either Asha or Euron had ‘do something about the astoundingly shitty public transportation system’ very high on their respective lists of priorities.

She bought a lobster roll from a Taste of Saltcliffe kiosk and choked it down in the parking lot as she watched her car inch closer and closer on her WeelHaus app. The air was still wet from the storm that had passed over several hours prior, almost delaying her flight but clearing up just in time. A middle aged Dothraki couple who were cartoonishly over-dressed for the weather were arguing a few meters away as they packed their rental car full of suitcases, trying to fit everything in, rearranging their set-up with disappointing results. Their lanky, bespectacled preteen daughter sat on her suitcase and watched them as she inhaled crab nuggets and scrolled on her phone, occasionally throwing in comments in their throaty, melodic language, her parents would shush her and go back to trading what Wylla assumed to be passive-aggressive snipes. The father dropped a bag, the mother threw her hands up and went to sit in the car, the daughter handed him her own suitcase before climbing into the back, leaving the door open and staring at Wylla through her thick glasses. A stocky Crownlands soldier smoked by the exit, occasionally shooting glares at a small but energetic group of Ironborn high schoolers returning from a class trip to King’s Landing, their exhausted-looking teacher trying  and failing to take attendance. Two girls broke off from the group and the teacher shouted them back, chiding the group with a ‘I can wait here all day if I have to!’.  An older Ironborn man in a three piece suit waited for a cab with a statuesque, dead-eyed Lysene woman stumbling on painful-looking heels, beside them, another Crownlands soldier propped his phone up against a suitcase to take a video of himself showing off all his machinery, a passing Northern flight attendant stared at him and stifled a laugh. A cab pulled in for the old guy and the hot girl, it had a bumper sticker that read #VictoryAndAsha. Wylla put her headphones in and resumed her podcast.

“This week on Tears of Lys True Crime we’ll be covering a case as convoluted as it is disturbing. The last surviving son of an Ironborn politician seduced by an enigmatic stranger, a Northern teen who slipped through the cracks of social services into the hands of sex traffickers, a wedding, a window, a basement and a blog. This week we will be unpacking the horrifying case of Theon Greyjoy, Jeyne Poole and Ramsay Bolton. Tears of Lys True Crime is hosted by Jorelle Flowers and Carmyne Stone, with sound editing by Shalyse Kenning and music by Jeyne Forrester. This week’s episode is sponsored by Highgarden Harvest Meal Planning, from the Jade Sea Juice Cleanse to the Dothraki Diet, summer bodies are made in the winter, use code TEARS-OF-LYS for 50% off your first order. Before we begin, this podcast covers disturbing real-life incidents. This case will feature graphic discussions of violence, including violence inflicted on a child and animal abuse. Listener discretion is advised.”

Wylla had been elbow deep in dishwater when the story broke two years ago.

Two officers from the Winterfell Police Department had been on a particularly dull night shift when the blizzard hit. It was bad, they’d been calling it the storm of the decade as it moved inland from Skagos. People on Twitter were absolutely losing it now that winter is definitely on its way back.The officers were sitting in their car, waiting for the wind to die down before they started moving again when one of them saw something stumble into the road ahead of them. 

The news had been on full blast as the White Harbour Capon Pit scraped through the dead period right after lunch. The dishwasher had fucked off for his first smoke break of many and Wylla, being half a day into her first training shift, was next in line for the responsibility of unclogging one of the most horrific sinks she’d ever seen. She had spent the majority of that shift listening to her supervisor as she droned about the most efficient way to clear a table and what to do if your hands are full and you have to sneeze. (‘drop them! No, I’m just yanking your chain, but seriously, hygiene is a big deal here at the Capon Pit-’) As she wrenched a brick of congealed bacon fat out of the drain and a mixture of tomato paste, dishwater and oil splashed up all over her, the anchor began to give a rundown of what exactly had gone down. The dining room went completely silent, a woman waiting for takeout looked up at one of the TVs mounted on the wall and screamed.

The woman sitting across from Wylla was not the politician she remembered from the debates that choked her Facebook feed for several weeks three years ago, buttoned up, tattoos obscured with foundation, hair straightened, red lipstick, glasses she didn’t need but her PR team thought would look professional. She more closely resembled the enraged next-of-kin who had berated the press as they tried to gain access to her brother’s hospital room, the string of profanities was so tightly woven it had to be obscured by a 17-second-long beep that ended with an ‘absolutely *beeping* disgraceful’ and a slammed door. Wylla knew her more intimately as the woman who had lit a cigarette in the courtroom and had made it very clear that she had next to no reservations about physically assaulting the ‘greasy sack of lard over there’ if he glanced over at her again. She was made of the same organic matter she’d always been; tan and willowy with thick black curls that were just starting to pass her shoulders in length, pale green eyes like the colour the ocean had been as Wylla's flight passed over Seagard. Her eyelash extensions were starting to grow out and her brows needed to be waxed, the only makeup she had on was a dark plum lip gloss and a highlighter a bit too yellow for her skin tone. She was wearing leggings with a hole in the left knee and a decaying Lordsport Prep sweatshirt. Without even asking, Wylla could see the toll the past two years had taken on Asha Greyjoy. 

Her phone rang before Wylla could get into the questions she’d written on the plane. She planned on starting simple then getting more specific as time went on. 

“Shit, sorry, it’s my fiancé.”

So she’s engaged. Of course she is. “Oh, go ahead.”

“Hi babe. I know, you’ll be fine. Qarl, she knows how to drive, she passed the- you’ll be fine. I promise she won’t crash. I don’t know, ask him. Okay, love you, bye.” She hung up, looking nearly homicidal. “Sorry. He just got his wisdom teeth out and I had to send Jeyne to pick him up, she, like, just got her license and she drives like a crazy person.”

So she’s engaged to a man. Kick me while I'm down. “Yikes.”

“Yeah, my stupid driver’s license got suspended.”

“Can I ask why?

“I had to go off my medication, that and I’m kind of, you know, keeping a low profile.”

“Yeah, of course. Understandable.”

"I mean, you've seen the shit my uncle does. I mean, I'm assuming you have, I don't know if you watch TV." She took a tall glass bong off the windowsill overlooking a placid bay. She lit it, breathing in so deep an L-shaped vein rose at the edge of her forehead. "I guess the thing is he's not good at being a terrorist. So."

She opened the window a crack and exhaled. Wylla tried not to stare at the platinum forearm crutches leaned against the wall or the subtle outline of plastic leg braces from shin to ankle underneath Asha’s leggings. The conversation around Asha’s pre-existing physical disability was a spicy one during the trial, with Ramsay Bolton’s lawyer insisting that the congenital complications primarily affecting her legs and spine could have some effect on her judgment. He asked her repeatedly to explain what had caused it, each time she ignored him. When she noticed Wylla looking, the redirection of her attention to the carpet wasn’t subtle. Asha smirked. 

“Tried to scissor a shark.”

“Hm?”

“That’s why I have those.”

Wylla hadn’t been following Islandic politics before the trial. They were so far away it didn’t make sense to and the mainland had made absolutely sure they’d never try to secede again. It had always been something someone on Facebook would either share in tentative support of the Islandic Separatist Movement or decrying the Ironborn as a violent, backwards society that never fully gave up the idea of a monarchy. She had remained neutral, never bothering to look into it. They were far away from White Harbour and had been all but neutralized by President Baratheon. Easy to ignore.

Her 10th grade class had picked The Rebellion apart for a solid 3 months, culminating in an assignment in which the question ‘do you think the Iron Islands should have sovereignty? Why or why not?’ was posed. Wylla agonized over it for a week before getting stoned and banging out a 500 word non-answer.

Wylla only had one Ironborn kid in her class. Lavinya Stonetree. She and Wylla had kind of been friends but never made the effort to talk after high school. She did a whole presentation about The Rebellion which included the entirety of Ned Stark’s press conference following the removal of Theon and Asha from the Pyke estate, Asha being placed with family on Harlaw and Theon sent North.

“This has been decided upon by child protective services.” he had announced to the sea of mainland reporters, “Chancellor Greyjoy will be re-evaluated following his completion of a federally mandated-.”

“Can you speak on the hypocrisy inherent in these proceedings?” someone in the crowd shouted, VP Stark waved a security guard over.

“I can assure you that the tensions in the Islands have been diffused and there is no cause for alarm.” he explained, a calm expression on his face. Beside him, a 9 year old Theon  stood silently in an oversized green sweater, pale and wide-eyed with braces on both upper and lower teeth and red divots on his wrists where he’d been cuffed. “I know many of you are concerned, but the conflict is no longer an international threat and the military of both the Crownlands and the North will be enacting relief efforts from this point onward.”

“Can we hear from Theon?” someone else called out. Stark shrugged and lowered the mic, Theon glanced around before leaning in.

“What is dead may never die.” he choked out, the crowd went insane. A bodyguard grabbed Theon and swept him offstage as Stark tried to salvage the conference to no avail.

Wylla knew there had been bombings on both the mainland and the islands, the last straw being the Lannisport attacks. When a series of bombs were let off in the harbour and half the military ships were incinerated completely, the other half damaged beyond repair. It didn’t take long for the mainland to hit back harder, almost levelling the entire archipelago. 

It was all over the news for the next few years as the Crownlands military tightened their hold on the Islands. The ISM disbanded, news channels released pictures of Ironborn families displaced by the mainland’s military efforts. Families with children as young as infancy squatting in the smouldering shells of office buildings, soldiers with the Baratheon family crest sewn onto their uniforms pacing the aisles of school buses, dead-eyed fishermen displaying diseased fish, poisoned by sulfur and ash. 

Relief arrived from Essos in short bursts. The Coalition for the Empowerment of the Grass Sea Nations sent medics, the Environmental Association of the Free Cities led clean-up efforts and erected fish farms. Slowly the mainland loosened their grip. The Northern government issued a formal apology for the missile strikes they had green-lit, one of which nearly levelled a high school. The Lannister Foundation begrudgingly paid for the two older sons’ joint funeral. A weird placid period followed. It was like everyone was holding their breath until Ilyn Payne put a bullet in Ned Stark’s head.

“It’s my uncle’s beach-house.” Asha had filled Wylla in as she gave a half-assed tour of the long one-storey built into the side of a small cliff. Four beds, two baths, a kitchen, a den and a dining room. Wylla couldn’t help but notice all the framed pictures, skinny, swarthy, green-eyed kids in expensive clothes. Rodrik and Maron eating grapes on the beach. Alannys Greyjoy as a dead-eyed, lip-ringed ex-debutante teen mom with Rodrik on her hip and Maron in her stomach. Rodrik and Maron dragging a boat to the water while Asha sat in the boat holding a horseshoe crab by the tail. “We would come here to disappear. Unlisted address, hard to find… I don’t know, people have been starting to ask questions…”

But it’s safe. Not a lot of people here sympathize with Euron Greyjoy’s particular brand of crazy, Wylla thought to herself, possibly by way of reassurance, noticing the TV in the living room had been on since she arrived, set to the news and muted. Asha saw her glance towards it.

“If he starts blowing shit up, we need to know if he’s close.”

Wylla hadn’t known what to expect when she saw Jeyne Poole. She was almost unrecognizable compared to the pictures taken after she was found. Taken on a smartphone in the middle of a blizzard, the smartphone camera’s flash bathed her in abrasive white light; an emaciated, crazy-eyed 16 year old hooker, frostbite ripping through her nose and down to her upper lip, lips peeled back in a terrified scream over rotten, broken teeth. Her extremities were blue under a crust of dried blood and her hair was greasy and matted. Wylla had seen that picture a million times. She would never have picked this Jeyne Poole out of a lineup.

Her eyes were notably un-crazy, surrounded by a light layer of reddish brown eyeshadow and black mascara. They were focused, Wylla remembered when she had streamed the trial on Wynafryd’s laptop, how Jeyne kept glancing over her shoulder as if she was trying to watch out for someone who wasn’t present. At 18, she had colour in her face, a healthy BMI and thick, dark brown hair parted down the middle and passing elbow length. The frostbite on her nose was gone, replaced by a long but relatively subtle white scar that gave the impression that she had maybe had a slightly messy nose job. Wylla noticed a small V-shaped tattoo right at the middle of her hairline, with a slightly smaller dotted V just above it. Right below her lips, stretching down to the base of her chin were three straight lines. Six small black dots were aligned across her cheeks just below her eyes. Those are regional, Wylla ascertained, thinking of her own tattoos. In White Harbour, where the Bite Inlet tribe settled, they were a rite of passage. Once she hit puberty, Wylla had been given two tiny hollow circles above her eyebrows, four vertical lines at the corners of her mouth, and one on her chin where Jeyne had three. Inland, between Winterfell and Hornwood, where the Long Lake Confederacy had originally formed, some were rites of passage and some were to signify some kind of triumph or unlikely survival. Wylla could tell from the fading redness and slight shine of lotion on Jeyne’s forehead which one was the most recent and why.

She slid out of the high driver’s seat of the decrepit grey pickup she was driving, her thick sweater rode slightly up. Wylla stared at the ground as the purple scar tissue of Ramsay Bolton’s brand loomed ominously over the high waist of her orange corduroy pants, a sick shadow against the warm brown of her skin. She waved to Asha and circled around to the backseat of the cab, opening the door for a lanky blonde man in dark wash jeans and a similar sweater. He looked… out of it and had several bloody cotton balls shoved in the corners of his mouth. He stumbled when his feet hit the ground and grabbed Jeyne’s shoulder for balance.

“Babe, what did they do to you?” Asha smirked, a hint of baby-talk creeping into her tone.

“Qarl?”

“Minus four teeth.”

Qarl leaned on the rail of the porch steps, “I feel like a bucket of ham.” he looked up at Wylla, “hi, White Harbour, I’m not gonna remember any of this in a few hours.”

Asha cringed as Qarl planted a bloody kiss to the bridge of her nose and slunk inside. “We’ll catch up later. He really can’t hold his laughing gas.”

Jeyne walked up towards the porch, smiling awkwardly when she met Wylla’s eyeline. She knit her fingers together around the post of the railing. “Was I that bad when they did my veneers?”

“You slept it off mostly, Theon was stoned to the bone but neither of you said you felt like buckets of ham.” Asha shook her head, “I’m gonna go keep him away from sharp objects. You guys can…” she bit her lip, “-get acquainted.”

Jeyne watched her go inside with a reserved smile.

“They’re a cute couple.” Wylla broke the silence.

“Yeah, I’m glad they’re so happy together.”

“I’m Wylla Manderly, by the way.”

“Oh, I know. We’ve met before. It was a long time ago, you probably don’t remember. At the, uh, Karhold Cultural Symposium, like… 7ish years  ago? I was with Sansa Stark, she was dancing Northeastern Fancy and I was dancing Long Lake Cloth. I was the chunky kid with the blue regalia. I tripped over my dress and face-planted into the adjudicator's table…?.” 

She’s looking at me like I should remember but I genuinely have next to no memory of that symposium…?  Wylla had been loopy off painkillers for a sprained wrist and her only memory of Sansa Stark from that day was how she kept harassing Wynafryd about allegedly making eyes at her brother.

“Yeah, all I remember from that was chugging yellow Vhagarade before grand entry and puking all over my septa.”
 
Jeyne laughed then stared at the ground, shuffling some gravel around with the toe of her boot. She pushed her hair back, her two thin rose gold bracelets clinking together. Wylla caught a glimpse of a tattoo on her wrist that looked like Dothraki syllabics. 

“And, uh, thanks. For coming all the way out here, I know it’s quite the schlep from White Harbour, you must be exhausted.”

“Oh, it’s my pleasure. I’ve been following this case for a long time, it hits close to home for me, the least I can do is get to the real, unfiltered truth of it.”

Her face went dark, she picked at her earring, flat-stitched with dark blue beads and a clamshell center. “There’s a lot of information that didn’t come out during the trial. The sooner it gets out the better.”

Jeyne glanced over her shoulder back at the truck. In the passenger seat, Wylla could see a scrawny man drowning in the neckline of a sweater similar to Jeyne’s. His wide hazel eyes were glazed over, staring at nothing. His black, cheekbone length curls looked like they had been hacked off quickly and sloppily. He hasn’t changed as much, Wylla observed, hadn’t gained as much weight, hadn’t gotten the stable aura back. He looked a lot better than he had, but Wylla would recognize him anywhere.

She remembered with painfully specific detail Theon Greyjoy’s part of the trial. Everyone was shocked at the fact that he was testifying the minute he was stable enough to leave the ICU. The looks on the jurors’ faces had been something between incredulous and nervous when his hospital bed was wheeled into the courtroom but Ramsay Bolton’s expression switched from a satisfied smirk to almost scared when he realized that there was someone who remembered just about everything he had been doing for the past two years, even after the extensive brain damage and surgical experiments he had meticulously orchestrated. The trial was of course before the long and tedious year of speech, physical and occupational therapy he would end up going through and before the gradual scraps of progress he would make. Re-watching the trial, Theon painstakingly typing out his victim impact statement and looking like, for lack of a better word, roadkill, Wylla felt a new sense of gravity and respect for the balls it must have taken to do that in such a vulnerable state. Nobody thought he would survive and everybody could hear the way his heart monitor sped up every time his abuser spoke, but he remembered more than anybody thought he would. And Ramsay Bolton was rotting in jail. Wylla couldn’t fathom how good it must have felt watching him get all those sentences on top of each other; several counts of murder both successful and attempted, several counts of rape, forced imprisonment, possession and distribution of child pornography, torture, animal cruelty…It equaled out to 50-ish-something years with no conceivable possibility of parole. That was the best part for Wylla, the look on Theon’s face when the sentences were given. Everyone else started cheering, Asha was sobbing and cackling obscenities, hugging Jeyne so tightly it looked like she was going to break her in half. Theon just watched him go with a subtle upward twitch at the corner of his mouth, unmistakable even behind the oxygen mask over the lower half of his face. The heart monitor levelled out, he laid back and exhaled heavily, his shoulders unclenched. Wylla had been watching it on her phone on a bus on the way to Wynafryd’s birthday party. She could physically feel the tension leaving the courtroom.

From that point forward, the true crime subreddit that had been lit up since Bolton’s arrest was nearly silent. The silence lasted six months.

Wylla had been hungover slamming Vhagarade after Vhagarade on Bessa Whitewater’s couch when she saw The Oldtown Times Instagram story. She remembered breaking into a cold sweat and frantically clicking for her Reddit app when she saw the headline; Theon Greyjoy Hospitalized After Broadcasting Suicide Attempt Via Livestream. She didn’t realize at the time but she kept saying ‘seven hells’ over and over again with gradually escalating intensity, the guy Bessa had brought home poked his head out of the kitchen and nonchalantly asked who died.

The livestream was from a burner account with the handle @_______reek, Theon put the phone in hands-free and balanced it on a desk. He sat at the desk and began to polish off a vial of prescription sleeping pills in 3-pill intervals, punctuated by sips of the very same flavour of Vhagarade that Wylla had been drinking. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept in several days, his eyes were bloodshot with deep purple shadows beneath them. Each dose he took, his sleeve slipped down to reveal bandaged wrists.
Jeyne had been the one to turn the livestream off when she found him unconscious in a pool of vomit, the frame froze on her terrified face and the stream remained public for 24 hours. A week later, while Theon was recovering, on suicide watch, away from all technology, someone got into Asha’s cloud account and leaked the document that had been open on his laptop.

To whom it may concern,
I feel bad about this, I didn’t think it would come to this but it has. I’m very sorry to whoever finds me, I hope it’s clean and I hope you can get the image out of your head. And I’m sorry if this upsets anyone, I know you all felt like I was getting better but the truth is I won’t ever get better. I’ve been having a notably very bad time for the past month, I realized last week that I had just been letting everyone think they were helping when in reality nothing possibly could. Medication doesn’t work, therapy doesn’t help, there is absolutely no way to erase what has happened to me and Jeyne. At least now she can heal without the additional burden and the additional reminder. My body has been through too much to ever be healthy again, I don’t see myself living past my mid forties and even then I don’t see myself contributing anything. I’ll never be able to work again, I can’t reproduce. I don’t want Asha’s children growing up sharing their mother with a grown man who can’t take care of himself. I don’t want my mother to see me like this after everything she’s been through and all she’s lost. I should have died down there, I pulled through because I needed to testify and put him away. He’s away. And I’m so tired. 
I don’t really care what you do with my belongings, Jeyne gets my inheritance and my last Disability cheque. If possible, I would like to be cremated and have my ashes scattered on Ten Towers Beach. If not, I trust my sister to make the decision.
Be kind to each other, goodbye and I’m sorry
Theon Lyändr Greyjoy

Having only watched the trial, Wylla couldn’t have been prepared for how extensive the mutilation actually was. Looking at him now, sitting across from him at the dining room table lit by the wide window overlookg the ocean, she couldnt see not only how brutal it was but more than that how unnecessary. His face was mostly fine, all the features intact and in the right place but covered in slash scars of varying sizes. The largest one stretched from his hairline down the side of his face to the corner of his mouth, raised, a weird shade of purple against golden brown. Another one reached from the middle of his upper lip to his left eyebrow. Wylla remembered the picture of the brand from the trial, a huge X on his lower back where a tramp stamp would be.  Most of his teeth had been broken and some ripped out entirely. Wylla remembered right after the trial when every cosmetic dental surgeon within a 50 mile radius wanted to offer him free dental work for good publicity. It took 8 surgeries for his teeth to look some semblance of normal again. 

The phrase ‘don’t go to the Flayhouse’ became something of a fucked-up meme in certain online circles, tempting people to look it up only to be greeted with a banner that read ‘Just A Guy Playing Doctor With His Friends’, followed by the most recent upload. The first time Wylla experienced Ramsay Bolton’s depraved brainchild was at one of Wynafryd’s weird friend’s houses. They’d all been absolutely off the shits on a strain of weed that Wynafryd’s boyfriend called ‘Asshai Crack’ (that had actually come from a backyard grow-op in The Vale) and wanted to see if it lived up to the hype.

It was bad. In retrospect the worst part would have to be that it wasn’t just Jeyne and Theon on there. People with different hair colours, builds, skin tones, tattoos. There must have been at least six, most of them women, besides the two who were eventually found alive. The woman Wylla saw that day was definitely not Jeyne. She was Andal and heavily tattooed, with freckles and curly blonde hair. Her fingers... weren’t fingers anymore. Her face and tattoos was pixellated, as most noticeable details were. Bolton’s main screw up came in the form of a tattoo of the Greyjoy family crest with the word ‘FOREVER’ written in cursive underneath. He’d been holding it in his hand, the blood beginning to dry. It was captioned ‘got some new ink today. Thoughts? Think it might look better on my girlfriend but sewing is a pain in the ass’. The artist who had done it called in an anonymous tip, ruling out three tan, dark-haired Jon Does. 

Wylla got the impression that the seemingly endless mockery directed at the Ironborn on the mainland didn’t evaporate past the coast of Seagard. It certainly didn’t help the public reception of the case, even though Ramsay Bolton had rightfully become one of the most hated men in the Seven Kingdoms. While it became widely accepted that joking about the case was in bad taste, the stereotypes about Ironborn being pervasively dishonest, unintelligent and impotent continued to permeate. The phrase ‘Don’t Go To The Flayhouse’ went from fairly obscure to surface-level edgy and Wylla would have been lying if she said she’d never seen someone getting cancelled on Twitter for showing up to a Day of the Stranger party in nothing but underwear and a dog collar, covered in dirt and drawn-on injuries. One guy even included a splatter of fake blood on the crotch area. It took three hours of enraged retweets for him to lose his job.

“I really wanted him to be okay.” Asha confessed, taking a seat at the kitchen island and wrenching the cork out of a bottle of Arbor Red. Qarl was passed out on the living room couch with a half-full bowl of soup on the coffee table, Jeyne and Theon were on the porch just out of sight of the screen door but Wylla could almost hear Jeyne’s voice, unable to make out individual words. She swirled her wine in her class. It was one of those souvenir wine glasses, speckled with dark blue and lime green with a yellow stem, across the bowl it read ‘Someone Who Loves Me Went To Naath And All I Got Was This Lousy Wine Glass’. Asha took a long sip of her own. “We tried. We tried everything. But whatever happened, there’s no coming back from it.” Wylla wrote that down. 

The kitchen was clean and minimalist with one of those fancy sinks with a weird flat faucet. Wylla noticed a post-it note on one of the cupboards. It read ‘I love you’. Another one on the fridge read ‘you are doing amazing’. A third, on the side of the toaster read ‘you are safe here’. 

“So, what has been the hardest thing to deal with since Theon’s suicide attempt?”

Asha forced a mirthless laugh, “Gods, you’re asking me to pick one? Uh, aside from the obvious, probably how public it was. And still is. I mean, I knew the trial would be a big deal, Balon Greyjoy’s kids versus Roose Bolton’s… spawn. I guess the worst part is the fact that people are still running with it. Do you know how nauseating it is to go to the grocery store and see your brother’s face on a tabloid with some disgusting headline? There are conspiracy theories, my email keeps blowing up with people seeing if I’m interested in a book deal. Everything about this is so deeply fucked up and people get off on that. It makes me hate humanity.”

“Seven hells.”

“I know.” Wylla could see she was holding back tears, ploughing through her wine like it was the last drink she’d ever have. “He’s never gonna go back to normal, you know. I used to always want him to be different. I hated his clothes, I hated his music, I hated his lifestyle, I hated how Un-Greyjoy he was. I’d give my right arm to have that guy back for five minutes.” Her voice started to break, “Gods, I was such a bitch to him.”

Wylla tried to press on with the questions, “what’s with the stickies?”

She motioned to the I Love You on the cupboard, Asha’s eyes flicked skyward as if to let gravity pull her burgeoning tears back in. She sniffled and topped off her wine.

“It’s a grounding technique Theon’s therapist recommended. It stops him from dissociating. I just wrote out some things I thought he needed to be reminded of.”

“Do you find it works?”

“Weirdly enough, yeah. It’s one of the only things that...” she trailed off...

“Tell me about Theon’s progress, from when he was found to right now. Do you think he was given the support to make a full recovery?”

“I mean, trying to kill himself was a huge step back. We did have a lot of support though. That was the only upside to it being a high profile case, there were a lot of people who wanted to attach their names to it. But, you know, he got the best therapy available. He’s done incredible. They didn't think he'd... function again. I mean, I didn't think he'd... like, you saw the... pictures, those were full-on medical procedures in a shithole basement by a crazy person."

"Yeah. They were pretty bad."

Asha shuddered. “Fucking depraved. But he’s made progress, I’m really proud of him. The thing is, it looks like he’s made all the progress he can. He won’t be able to live by himself, if Jeyne ever moves out, he’ll have to stay with Qarl and I. But that’s a big ‘if’, I don’t see Jeyne leaving anytime soon, they’re, like, inseparable.” Are they...a couple? That’s got to be an uncomfortable dynamic, but as long as they’re happy, I guess. Asha smirked as if she could see the gears turning in Wylla’s head.

“Don’t try to analyze it. I don’t. It works and that’s all that matters.”

“So you’ve become Jeyne’s legal guardian?”

“Correct. I mean, she’s 18 now, she doesn’t really need a legal guardian but everyone needs that support system. You know, I see her as, like, a little sister. It’s nice to have another woman around who isn’t my aunt or my mom.”

The sliding porch door clicked open as Jeyne came back inside. She handed Asha the phone as she came into the kitchen.

“It’s Tris.”

“Seven hells.”

“Is it a bad time?”

“Kind of, what does he want?”

From the phone, Wylla heard a male voice shout; ‘Asha, I can hear you, don’t pretend like you-’.

Asha put the phone to her ear, “what do you want, Tris? Well, yeah.” she rolled her eyes and mouthed ‘I’m so sorry’ in Wylla’s direction. “We kind of have company. That journalist lady from White Harbour... I’m not going to ask her that, freak. Well, I was gonna make-.” Her facial expression switched from annoyed to intrigued. “Oh. Okay. And it’s big enough? Are you sure? Because I don’t know if I trust you to gauge portion sizes, that grouper you caught was pathetic. Well, bring it over anyway, if it sucks I have shrimp in the freezer. Really it’s only for me, you, Jeyne, Theon and our guest, Qarl’s mouth is all… they sliced him up like a fucking- not while we have a guest here you won’t.  And don’t marinate yourself in body spray this time. Okay. See you soon.” she hung up and gave the phone back to Jeyne, groaning with exasperation.

“What was he on about?” Jeyne asked with a raised eyebrow.

“He got a swordfish, he’s gonna bring it over and grill it.” she looked at me, “do you like swordfish?”

“I’ve never had it but it sounds good.”

“Okay, good. And I’m sorry in advance, he’s a family friend, really horny and socially inept. If he hits on you, tell me and I’ll tell his mom.”

Chapter Text

WYLLA

Nobody on the other side of things really even knew how to testify when it came time. Roose Bolton gave one-word answers, insisting he had no clue what had been going on under his own roof for upwards of two years.

“So you never bothered to check what was going on in the basement?” Alysane Mormont had pressed him, she had been Theon and Jeyne’s lawyer, took the case pro bono. Wylla remembered her as one of those ‘fuck with me or any other Northern woman and I’ll rip your dick off, liquefy it and give it back as an enema’ Northern women who’d become friends with Asha in university. “Or the shed? Or the attic? Didn’t check?”

Roose shrugged. “My son is an adult. Besides, I work a lot.”

His wife broke immediately, saying she knew about Jeyne but not Theon, but that she suspected something after she started feeding Jeyne and noticed that Jeyne would only ever eat half of what she was given. She was sentenced to a year for obstruction of justice. She had sobbed and apologized as she was taken away. Her book came out nine months later; Bolton Bystander by Walda Frey. The Oldtown Times called it ‘chilling and disturbing’, Cersei Lannister promoted it in an interview on Here’s The Tea With Sybell Spicer between talking about her juice cleanse and a 27 minute long tangent about how to sneak ground kale into brownies. 

“Walda is a boss babe and Tommen is chock full of leafy greens, we’ll be right back!”

Ramsay Bolton had been an active member of a Facebook group called DROWN THEM AGAIN- WESTEROSI PATRIOTS AGAINST ISLANDIC TERRORISM! The header of the page was a platter of boiled squid tentacles seasoned with butter and lemon slices. He also seemed to have odd takes on living in the North as an Andal despite being born and raised there, taking to Facebook on occasion to proclaim his disdain for the Northern Cultural Revival Society and his intense admiration for innovations credited to Andal colonists, such as the Faith of the Seven and… the Internet, allegedly…

Two Flayhouse screenshots had been displayed onto the courtroom monitor above the stand as Bolton explained what Drown Them Again actually entailed. Theon’s face, a close-up, two black eyes, splintered teeth, slash and bite marks all over. In his mouth, a gag made of a severed index finger and a leather belt. The second one Wylla never actually saw, it had been pixelated for TV, only showing a mass of red and beige, the only things visible were two cuffed hands with seven fingers in total at the top of the frame. Apparently it was so shocking jurors started walking out. Qarl had covered Asha’s eyes with his hand, after she pushed it away she threw up over the back of the bench, narrowly missing Aeron’s shoes.

“I believe in secure borders.” Bolton said plainly, shooting a smirk at Asha as she dry-heaved into a plastic bag supplied by a juror, Qarl glared back as he gathered her hair away from her face, “I haven’t forgotten The Rebellion, you know.”

“You live in Winterfell.”

“That’s correct.”

The judge raised his eyebrows, “closer to the East coast unless my geography is off.”

“I live by the airport.”

“Does that warrant commenting ‘I want to strangle that dusty old bag with my bare hands’ on this picture?” The monitor switched to a picture from the WIIBC-Pyke news channel’s Facebook page of Alannys Harlaw at 18 during a press tour compared to a current picture, captioned ‘Ironborn women age like fine wines! Happy 62nd, First Lady!’ . Bolton had begun a shrug that implied a follow-up of ‘I never said that’ but he was cut off by the judge. “You surrendered your passwords when you were taken into custody, we’ve seen everything.”

A big part of Jeyne’s testimony during the trial kept circling back to how and why she came into contact with Ramsay Bolton in the first place. She kept getting cut off and inundated with questions about her late father’s alcoholism and her rumoured drug problem after Bolton’s lawyer noticed track marks on her arms. Her mental stability was questioned after she broke down on the stand and from that point on the only thing she was allowed to talk about was the ‘marriage’. The defense painted a picture of a socially oblivious addict turned prostitute who married Bolton on a drunken whim, then of a crack fuelled temptress who provoked her unstable husband to fits of anger. Bolton was framed as a mentally ill loner who just wanted a warm body in his bed after the murder of his late girlfriend, Kyra. Bolton’s lawyer concocted a sob story of a broken man who lashed out at his new wife when he discovered she had married him for easy access to drugs. When they brought this up, Jeyne started sobbing so hard she almost hyperventilated. Bolton’s lawyer shrugged and mumbled something about ‘I’d be embarrassed too’. It took four men to hold Asha back from ripping his face off. The judge banged the gavel and said, “Ms Greyjoy, while I understand your exasperation this is your final warning before I hold you in contempt.”

Bolton’s lawyer tried to play off his dive behind the bench like he had been going for a binder and gesticulated with it as he spoke. “Your honour, this woman is clearly out of control!”

“And you’re overruled, sit down, Baelish.”

By the time he died, Vayon Poole had been five years sober and volunteering at a safe injection clinic in his free time. Jeyne had been injected with heroin by her traffickers to keep her docile and all kinds of random crap by Bolton because that’s just what he did. After she detoxed in the hospital, she didn’t drink for seven months.

Tristifer Botley was, in fact, both horny and socially inept. 

To be fair, Wylla had been expecting worse, bracing herself for abrasive, unhygienic, possibly misogynistic. He reminded her of Wynafryd’s ex, this guy from the outskirts of White Harbour who worked at The Capon Pit during her first week there who everyone really liked and got fired after he saw a customer trying to grab a female server’s ass and threw a drink in his face. Tris was the kind of guy she would have told everyone she was into in high school before she completely abandoned any notion of heterosexuality. On the high end of average-looking, the scrawny side of athletic and the pale side of Ironborn. His thick brown hair was parted on the side and nearing cheekbone-length and he kept flipping it over to the other side every time he was concentrating on something. His bone structure was unmistakably Ironborn with high cheekbones, a long, sharp nose and full lips over prominent teeth, he had the same olive skin and dark brown freckles as Theon and Asha, but his eyes and hair were both mousy brown. He was definitely horny, definitely socially inept, and definitely an awkward conversationalist, but he gave Wylla a good vibe. He didn’t have the… seedy edge that most horny men do.

He’s really into cooking this fish , Wylla ascertained as Tris paced around the spit he’d mounted the unfortunate sea creature on, excitedly slapping slices of lemon onto the pale flesh. There was something about people who got really performatively into cooking that pissed Wylla off for some reason, it reminded her of her grandpa berating waitstaff when his steak was the tiniest bit overdone and making her observe as he inspected every single item of produce at the grocery store and explained the shortcomings of each individual head of lettuce. If he does the finger kiss thing when he’s done, I’m leaving. Jeyne stood just out of view of the kitchen window, smoking a cigarette she’d stolen from Asha and observing the process. Theon never went more than three feet away from her, sitting on the porch steps, his eyes darting from Jeyne to Tris to Wylla to Jeyne again. He kept both hands wrapped in the edges of the sleeves of his thick sweater, picking at loose strands of wool.

“Caught this fat fuck out between Pyke and Saltcliffe.” Tris announced, stepping back from the fish and crossing his arms triumphantly. “My dad didn’t think I’d catch anything…” he lowered his voice slightly and raised his eyebrows, “-who’s laughing now?”

“Aren’t they migrating or something right now?” Jeyne ground her cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray on the porch railing and sat two steps below Theon, wrapping her arms around his shins. 

“Everything’s migrating for winter. I’m not sure about swordfish but I would assume in a few weeks they’ll all be headed down to Dorne, so I’ll have to try again when they start moving, grill one, pickle one, freeze the rest.” He took his phone out of his pocket. “Seriously? Right now-?” He put the phone up to his ear. “Why are you calling me, just come outside. Asha- I am not- okay, I don’t have unlimited minutes, I can’t do this, I’m hanging up-...Bye.” he hung up. “She’s driving me crazy. I know how to grill a damn fish.”

A banging noise came from the kitchen window and Asha’s face came into view.

“You have to rotate it!” She yelled, her voice muffled by the glass and the distance. 

Jeyne smirked, “you have to rotate it , Tris.”

Tris rotated the fish, yelping as a lemon slice slid into the grill. He turned to Wylla. “Is the fishing good in White Harbour?”

“It’s alright. We have, like, salmon, herring, mackerel, tilapia, coldwater fish. Sealing season is a pretty big deal.”

“Yeah, seals aren’t really… a thing down here, I mean, we have them but we don’t eat them. I mean, I’m sure at one point we did but I’ve never- you know what I mean.”

“It’s really good. They’re overpopulated in the North so we have to take out a certain amount every year to keep the fish from disappearing.”

“I haven’t had seal in a long time.” said Jeyne. 

“Maybe Wylla and I can catch you one.” Tris smirked. Jeyne eyed him, Theon stared at the ground.

“Wylla’s family owns Manderly’s Meat Pies.” Asha mentioned to Tris as she began to take cutlery out of a drawer by the sink. 

“No shit.”

“Yeah. It’s. Yeah, the family business.” Wylla felt herself smile awkwardly.

“Yeah, I’m, like, addicted to those things.” Tris grinned, “when the Marvelous Mushroom was discontinued I pretty much went into withdrawal. Worst week of my life.”

Asha adjusted a sticky note that was beginning to peel off the wall, it read ‘you are worth the oxygen you breathe’. She leaned over and whispered to Wylla, “He hasn’t had a very hard life.”

Tris got a slightly offended look on his face but powered through with a forced smile. “Speaking of which; I’m gonna swing by the outlet mall in Central Pyke later on this week. So give me a list and I’ll pick you guys up some stuff.” 

“I don’t need anything.” Asha gave him a weird look. “You know you don’t have to do this, right?”

“It’s fine, I’ll save Rodrik the trip. I think Jeyne mentioned she needed something, I’ll ask her later- here, let me get that.”

“Tris, please.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“I have two hands, Tris. It’s just cutlery.”

He picked up a stack of plates in one hand and held out the other one, Asha stared at it like it was going to explode. “I’m heading in there anyway, one trip.”

She glared at him. “Fine. If you’ll stop bitching about it.” she handed the cutlery over, watching him as he went to go set the table. She turned to Wylla. “He’s been like this since we were kids.”

“He seems eager to please.”

“That’s a nice way of putting it.” she shook her head, “uh, so the article’s off to a good start?”

"Yeah. I got to talk to Jeyne some, I’m gonna be putting together some more questions tonight. Turns out we’ve actually met a couple times.”

Asha laughed, “yeah, Theon was telling me about those cultural symposiums, from what he told me, everyone kind of gets to know each other through those.”

“I mean, the North is pretty sparsely populated compared to other places, so…”

“Yeah. Something like that could never work here. Not only is there no room but everytime a bunch of Ironborn gather in one place… Well, you know.”

Is she referring to the Orkmont harbour bombings or the Lordsport airstrikes? “Mm. Yeah.”

“Sorry.” she pinched the bridge of her nose, “not trying to be weird and patriotic, I’m just, like… decently inebriated and now I have to deal with-.” she gestured into the dining room, where Tris appeared to be testing the structural integrity of the liquor cabinet by banging on it with the heel of his hand. 

“What’s he doing?”

“I stopped asking that question when I was eight.” she rolled her eyes and began to top off her wine, “I hope I only have daughters.”

The worst picture was probably the first one of Theon, right after the ambulance pulled up to the field where they were found. Unconscious, face mangled, blood all over the snow. He was draped across Jeyne’s lap and she was screaming, her mouth frozen open in the picture, teeth broken and rotten, eyes crazy. 

The assumption of what happened, based on testimony from Jeyne, Theon and the paramedics, is that the stress of the escape exacerbated an existing head injury which led to a brain hemorrhage. Jeyne had sobbed hysterically when she talked about it in court. He’d been carrying her through the blizzard, she had four broken ribs and a shattered kneecap, his shoulder was dislocated and his hand was broken. It broke when he realized he was going to land on top of Jeyne and cupped the back of her head so she wouldn’t hit it off the frozen ground, he eventually remembered. Not that he had much of that hand left to break. Jeyne explained how he had half-set her down, half-dropped her and she figured his adrenaline rush was beginning to wear off. He looked at her, put his hand up to his forehead and keeled over. Jeyne thought he was dead. 

If the hemorrhage didn’t kill him, he was in just as much danger of dying of exposure, or the various infections coursing through his body or the unpronounceable side effects from all of Bolton’s sloppy amateur surgeries and cocktails of different intravenous drugs.

“I wouldn’t have made it if Theon wasn’t there.” she told Wylla, taking a sip of her coffee and crossing her legs in her deck chair. The subtle smell of gasoline reminded Wylla of the North, going out for firewood on her dad’s ATV, that one time Wynafryd’s boyfriend took them seal hunting with his cousins. With the gasoline came the smell of sea, sea and sand and recent rain. “He told me what to do, what not to do, what Ramsay liked, didn’t like, you know. It was his idea to escape when we did, he knew how sick he was, he knew he didn’t have a lot of time left and he wasn’t about to let himself die there.” She looked at the ground and bit her bottom lip, curving her tattoos inward. “I think a lot of people write him off now because he can’t really communicate but he’s always been the smart one. He took care of me back there, I’ll give him whatever he needs now.”

Wylla typed that down, Jeyne inhaled deeply.

“That’s good… I want to get as much of your perspective as I can. Do you think Theon would talk to me?”

“Yeah, we try not to talk about legal stuff or Ramsay around him because we don’t really know how he’ll react. Sometimes he’ll bring it up and we talk about it then. He tends to save it for his therapist but we don’t hear about any of that because it’s confidential. Which is good. I’m okay with that. But I know if you’re doing a story on this he’ll want to give his side of it.” Jeyne nodded as if to drive her point home. “Thing is, it might take a while.”

“I’m okay with that, I have time.”

Jeyne’s knee bobbed up and down with restless energy, she sipped her coffee and looked back at Wylla.

“Sorry if last night was kind of awkward.”

“It was fine.”

“Tris and Asha get into it every time he comes over. I mean, I kind of get it, he can be kind of insufferable sometimes and he’s very…” she gestured vaguely, “he can be a lot and Asha's totally overextended. Qarl usually diffuses most of the tension but he was really out of it. I don’t know. I know they both had a lot of shit happen when they were kids and it kind of just culminated in…” she shook her head. 

“What kind of shit?”

Jeyne gave Wylla a knowing look. A soft crackle began to sound from the end of the driveway as tires compressed gravel. A large, expensive looking car began to creep up the driveway, a new Meraxes All-Terrain in greyish blue with vanity plates that read H4R-L4W. Jeyne waved to the driver, who Wylla couldn’t make out through the tinted windows. It slowed to a stop and a 50-something-ish man got out. His clothes were expensive-looking and he was holding a paper grocery bag. He was tall, skinny and dark with salt-and-pepper hair and green eyes slightly obscured by thick glasses, he looks like an older Theon, minus the whole extensive-disabling-trauma thing...

“Hey Jeyne. Is my niece around?”

“She and Theon should be getting back from his appointment soon, Qarl’s at work.”

He looked at Wylla and smiled. “Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. Rodrik Harlaw.”

She shook his hand. “Wylla Manderly.”

“She’s the journalist that Asha was talking about last weekend.”

“Oh, okay. You freelance?”

Wylla froze, what in the goddamn Seven Hells does that mean? Does Youtube count as freelance?   She could feel Jeyne staring at her waiting for an answer. 

“Yes.” She was sweating. “Freelance.”

To her immense relief, Rodrik smiled. “That’s what I like to hear. I started off doing freelance too, ghost writing primarily. Rhaella Targaryen’s first memoir?” He pointed at himself, “took me 12 hours.” He turned to Jeyne, “you mind taking this inside, hon? Just… groceries, Gwynesse has decided to start the ‘Dothraki Diet’ so she’s having me purge everything remotely palatable out of our fridge.”

“What’s the Dothraki Diet?”

“Wild caught horse meat, mainly.” Rodrik grimaced and shook his head, “she’s shipping it in with one of those meal planning programs she heard about on a podcast and, yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds. Do you know how demoralizing it is to walk out your door and immediately trip over a crate of horse meat?” he shuddered and took two more bags out of the car, holding one under each arm. Jeyne propped the front door open with her foot.

“I give it about two weeks.” Jeyne said with a slight strain in her voice from the weight of the bag.

“That’s optimistic.” he replied, “I give it four days.” Jeyne laughed and set the bag down on the kitchen island, Rodrik set his beside hers. “So, Wylla, you like it here so far?”

“Yeah. It’s nice, this is a beautiful house.”

“Yeah, my dad built this house with a couple of my uncles when my sisters and I were kids. It’s kind of always been the Harlaw Home-Away-From-Home. I expect it’ll be in the family for a very long time.” He stared into the middle distance in that very specific Nostalgic-Dad way then snapped out of it and began to unpack one of the bags. 

“How was Pentos?” Jeyne inquired as she started to rearrange the fridge.

“I mean, it’s always nice, but I find it’s not… Pentos Pentos anymore. Crawling with tourists and drunk college kids. Anyway, it was nice where we were staying.” Rodrik turned to Wylla, “my sisters and I recently got back.”

Jeyne leaned on the counter and smiled. “I want to go sometime.”

“Oh, of course I’ll take you. Soon, most likely. Once it gets colder, I think we’ll all head out there for a few weeks, maybe a month and a bit. Harlaw winters are something else. The maritime climate… helps but it’s no Essos. My biggest concern is Alannys, obviously, whether or not she’ll be able to handle it.”

“Yeah. I saw the pictures you posted from the resort, she looks good.”

“I have to say, I thought the whole ‘neuroplasticity treatments’ were a scam but she’s been doing really well. You know, she’ll always be a bit out of it but I’m pleased to report she didn’t call me ‘Balon’ once for the entire trip.”

“That’s good.”

“Gods, Balon of all people. Bad enough my own sister is forgetting my name but really? I mean, I will say, he was… passable as a politician but as his former brother-in-law, I’ll tell you right now, that man had the personality of a week old three bean salad.”

Jeyne laughed. “You’re feeling generous today.” 

Rodrik rolled his eyes. “I could excuse the lack of personality and complete self-absorption if he hadn’t been such an asshole. But what can you do, right? I guess some people are just… duds. Anyway, Pentos was great, beaches, wine tastings, all that. You know, I want Alannys to travel as much as possible while she still can, and she had a great time. The one thing that killed it was watching Gwynesse hit on our 23 year old waiter.” he looks at his watch, “they sure are taking their sweet time, aren’t they?”

“Tris is driving them, he’s probably stuck in the Yi-Ti Express drive-through again trying to order off the secret menu.”

“Secret menu?”

“Secret as in he saw it on Facebook so it must be real.”

Rodrik cracked open a can of Haystack Hall Amber Lager before handing one to Jeyne, one to Wylla and packing the rest into the fridge. “That kid… Makes me appreciate Qarl a hell of a lot more. I sleep better at night knowing Asha is engaged to someone with two brain cells to rub together.”

Jeyne laughed. “He’s not that bad.”

Rodrik shrugged. “I know he’ll figure himself out sometime. I just wish it would happen sooner rather than later.” He paused, scanning the third shopping bag and opening the freezer. “How’s Theon doing?”

Jeyne bit her lip, lacing her fingers around the can. “...it’s not that he’s not doing well, it’s just… He knows the thing has to happen and he knows everything will be better once it does, but it’s… hard. It’s a hard thing to be… figuring out.”

“Yeah. I knew once that whole… issue was brought up it was gonna be really challenging. I mean, if I was in his position I’d be an absolute wreck, I’d feel completely emasculated. It’s a sensitive...” He paused, like he was wracking his brain to come up with the next word, “-topic.”

“Sorry…” Wylla cut in, “if you don’t mind me asking-.”

“Oh, right.” Rodrik took his glasses off, “Theon has a surgery coming up, it’s a pretty major procedure, it’s been built up to for a while and we’re all kind of… stressing about it.”

Wylla leaned over her notes as if to look more serious, Jeyne had a tense, nauseous look on her face. “A surgery?”

Rodrik shut the freezer and ran a hand through his hair. “A phalloplasty.”

Chapter Text

THEON

The smell of mint was almost acrid but it felt clean and the lavender took the edge off of it. Jeyne had abandoned her phone on the edge of the sink and was now reading the label of said Epsom salts.

“Activated charcoal. That explains the black chunks. It's supposed to be good for you, people drink it. Asha was telling me about this Day of the Stranger party she went to and the host put it in the sangria to try and make it look creepy but it just absorbed everything everyone had eaten and they all got really drunk really fast.” she paused. “How are you feeling?”

“Better.”

“Good. Yeah, we’ll just go to bed, maybe watch something. We can just write this day off.”  she put a hand on his knee and brushed her thumb back and forth. Theon found himself staring at the scar on her nose, following it up to the bridge where it ended several inches below the scar on her forehead from when she got kicked down the basement stairs.

“I just…” the words caught somewhere in the back of his throat and the breathlessness that followed was the same as it always was. It wasn’t slurred or disorganized speech but the complete absence of it and every time his speech therapist told him to push through it he would pray that he could come up with something along the lines of ‘if I could push through it I wouldn’t be here’. “Too… many…?” he felt himself make that face that always followed the pushing through, half-cringe half-flinch and Jeyne responded with the matching confused lip-bite.

“Like… you’re overwhelmed?” Yes, thank you . “Yeah. You’re doing well though. I know it doesn’t feel like that all the time but I notice. We all notice and we’re so proud of you.” she lowered her voice as it broke slightly. “I know it’s a lot. Especially with-.” she took a deep breath.

“I don’t… know…” he leaned his head back against the wall above the bathtub, “-about…” he waved a hand nebulously over the juncture of his thighs, trying not to glance down at the clustered catheters that broke the cloudy surface of the bathwater like depressing plastic tentacles. Jeyne nodded and folded her arms on the lip of the tub.

“I mean, it’s all up to you. But personally, I think it’s the best choice. I think you’ll be a lot more comfortable. I think you’ll feel a lot more normal. I know I’d be sick of having tubes sticking out of me after two years.”

“It’s just… the…” he dragged his index finger along his arm, Jeyne gave him a quizzical look, he signed C-U-T. 

“Yeah.” she shuddered. “Believe me, I know.”

The bathroom light had a yellowness to it that made his scar tissue look almost green, it made him feel diseased. It didn’t do it to Jeyne as much, maybe because she was darker, maybe she had a different undertone. He slid his arms under the water and stared straight ahead. Jeyne’s phone vibrated, she ignored it, her eyes drifting down from Theon’s face to just below. The scar that ran down from his sternum, the mess of chemical burn scars along his ribs, the space where his right nipple had been and the tattoo that was supposed to cover it but didn’t. 

Most of them didn’t have an objective. Ramsay would cut skin just to see it bleed. Amputations were slow and gradual and sometimes a week-long occasion as he let rot set in and pain linger. He remembered trying to coach Jeyne through it as what was left of her middle toe changed colour, the way the supernova of pain between his legs transitioned from agonizing to simply frustrating. He remembered as it slowly broke him, the switch from anger and defiance to conscious subservience and finally dissolving into something else entirely. There was a weird irony to having a diagnosis of PTSD but remembering so little from that time. It felt like it had been something he observed. There were some scars he knew the precise cause of and some that seemed to have just shown up one day. There were some on Jeyne that he had been forced to make and her on him. He remembered the day she had pulled out his tooth with pliers as Ramsay trailed a hot curling iron along her inner thigh, the way she had sobbed her apology, the way she had been rewarded with the opportunity to wash her hands.   

He remembered watching them pass her around every Friday night. Sometimes he’d be in the cage, sometimes he’d be in the cage drugged, sometimes he’d be in the cage withdrawing, sometimes he’d be laid on the coffee table. He’d always be watching her. The first few times when she had tried to fight back, the period where they would have to drug her, then all the rest. He remembered watching as she sat on Ramsay’s lap wearing some perversion of a school uniform, her greasy, grimy hair in two pigtails tied with pink ribbons. He had been in the cage when she locked eyes with him, her nose bleeding, her left eye swollen shut, her two upper middle incisors cracked. He had known all week but that was the final straw. Damon had lifted her up, kissed her on the neck and laid her on her back on the coffee table. She maintained eye contact until Damon grabbed her by the pigtails and yanked her head up to look at him. 

“I know you’re jealous of her, Reek.”

He didn’t remember the first month in the hospital. She had been discharged a week or so after he came to, staying at the Grand Valyrian Hotel by the Winterfell airport with Asha and Qarl. Uncle Rodrik had flown in, Theon remembered Jeyne and Uncle Rodrik and Aly talking about testimonies or victim impact statements or something like that, Jeyne had been feeding him spoonfuls of something. He’d been too out of it to taste anything, too out of it to feel humiliated. He remembered seeing Jeyne in new clothes, an intentionally oversized black cashmere sweater tucked into long beige silk pants. She had a delicate gold necklace and red beaded earrings the size of apples. She had placed his hand on the sleeve.

“I’ve never had anything this nice before. When Asha found out I didn’t have any clothes she just…” Jeyne laughed, with a hint of confusion, “-gave me her credit card and told me to order whatever I wanted. Aly thinks it’s better if I look nice for the trial. Soft, right? Do you like it?” It’s warm and it’s clean and it’s not a costume from a porn store. I don’t care what it looks like . He had nodded and she had kissed him on the forehead. “Once you’re strong enough, you can testify. They have all the evidence, they just need to hear us say it. We don’t have to be scared of him anymore. We’re gonna have to see him but he’ll be cuffed and we’ll have security.” She sounded like she was trying to reassure herself. “And we’re gonna go back to Harlaw and he’s gonna rot in a cell alone.”

She had been cut off by the sound of a door opening and the soft click of crutch tips on tile. Theon flinched. 

“Jeyne-.” said Asha, “-we have to go to the courthouse now.”

Jeyne smiled and kissed him on the forehead again. He wanted to keep her from leaving but he couldn’t speak or move.

“I’ll be back tonight. Go to sleep and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

He remembered when she would recite Arya Stark’s social security number, the way she had mouthed it as she tried to set his wrist with a torn off piece of the agonizingly short kilt she wore every time Damon had a turn with her. She had looked up at him and smiled and she had looked so horrifically young. He had next to no concept of time anymore but it had dawned on him that she was probably no more than 15. “ Zero-seven-eight-seven-four-one-nine-... ” 

If he asked her and she got it right, she would get scraps. If he turned his back for long enough, she would be able to sneak some of the scraps downstairs. If she got it wrong he would hit her. She needed to know things about Arya Stark. Middle name Nvqaaq, went to SingingWolf Northern Traditional Nursery School, then Torrhen Stark Elementary. Held the title of Miss Northern Tiny Totz from age 3-4 for competitive Long Lake Cloth dancing, had a tree nut allergy, was left-handed and all the other Arya Stark trivia that had been meticulously gathered, compiled into a notebook and turned into a bargaining chip for some scintilla of dignity.

Theon knew a decent amount about Arya Stark. He had always liked her a lot, she reminded him of Asha at that age, rambunctious and opinionated and kind of unhinged. He wondered if he could have ever been like that as a kid, maybe if Dad hadn’t been so enthusiastic about corporal punishment or his brothers hadn’t been… whatever the hell was their problem. 

His first month in the North had been the worst of his life. His caseworker had heavily implied they’d be together for the first little bit and that had been the first glimmer of hope Theon had, sitting in her office at 2 am, long past his bedtime. His cup noodles had been cold for a solid hour but he still picked at them listlessly, his eyes flicking between the nameplate on her desk, Ranya Kenning, Child and Youth Worker , the bowl of mints next to it and the spines of the books on her shelving unit; Navigating Childhood Schizophrenia-About Incest-Children of Addiction-

“Why can’t I go with Asha?” he had begged, Dr Kenning sighed and took her glasses off.

“I don’t have the answer to that.”

“But she gets to go to Tris’s house.” he was crying again at this point, a tear fell into his cup noodles, breaking the now filmy surface of the soup. He thought about Asha and Tris, the fun sleepover they were probably having, the dinner Mrs Botley had probably made them, the breakfast she would make them in the morning. He had overheard someone say Asha needed to be close to her doctors but it wasn’t like Theon needed to… avoid her doctors…? Dr Kenning looked sad. Theon wanted a hug but didn’t know how to ask for it. He wanted Mom, he wanted Asha, he’d even settle for Dad if it meant he could go home. Dr Kenning sighed again.

“Your sister has medical concerns that-.”

“I have medical concerns too!” Theon sobbed, wracking his brain for something that sounded like a big deal, “I’m allergic to dogs and coconut and I have asthma and cluster headaches!”

No more tears would come out, Theon wanted a drink but didn’t know how to ask for one. He knew Dr Kenning had juice boxes and he knew where, having already stress-drank three. He wasn’t that into grape (any idiot knew apple was the best kind of juice) but he’d have to suck it up. Speaking of headaches, he could feel one coming on. They came with stress and when they did Mom would turn off all the lights in his room and close the blinds. She would give him chips and apple juice and he and Asha would play Connect-Four and Candyland until it was gone. Sometimes they would happen at school. Mr Wynch even put a star next to his name on the attendance so if there was a substitute they would know that he was allowed to go home. That wouldn’t work here. All Theon wanted were chips and apple juice and board games and his sister.

“I’m going to help you with this transition.” Dr Kenning had promised, which Theon realized was BS when he looked behind him on the boarding bridge of their Northbound plane and realized she was gone. He had begun to retreat but that Cassel guy picked him up and kept moving. Ned Stark walked just ahead of them, the braid that hung down just past his shoulder blades was skinny and looked greasy. Theon stared at it with more contempt than he normally would. Some guy from Vaes Dothrak had come to Theon’s school to give a presentation about saying no to drugs and his braid had been probably the width of Theon’s arm. If my hair ever gets that long I won’t have a skinny braid … He and Asha both had thick curly hair like Mom, Dad’s was pin-straight and thinning, if he had a braid it would be skinnier than anything anyone had ever seen. That almost made Theon smile, but it didn’t last. He cried the entire plane ride, from watching Pyke turn to a tiny speck in a vast grey ocean to staring desperately at the solid sea of clouds at sunset to landing late that night. It was his first and last time on a private jet and he hated every second of it. Ned Stark must have known then that he was too exhausted to fight it anymore and carried him off the plane, through customs and all the way to the car. He got to sit in the front, his first and only small victory of that day.

There were two booster seats and two baby seats in the back of the car and a colouring book in the glovebox but no crayons. Stark saw Theon inspecting it, then glancing back at the seats.

“Those are for my kids. You can colour if you’d like.” Theon secretly would have liked to but at 9 had something of a complex about appearing mature.

“You have kids?” his throat was raw and his voice cracked, Stark smiled.

“Yeah, I have Robb, he’s 7, Jon is 6, Sansa just turned 3 and Arya is 9 months.”

I’m the oldest , Theon had realized as he looked over his new foster siblings, lined up in Ned Stark’s enormous living room. He liked Robb immediately, he was dark like his dad but had his Mom’s curly red hair. Jon was full-blooded Northern and had kind of a weird vibe but Theon put his reservations aside because they would be sharing a room so he’d have to deal with it. Mom had packed a bunch of different Islandic snacks that were only available back home that he could share with the Stark kids and Sansa seemed more interested in those than him while baby Arya seemed to have no bearing on what was going on at any given time. He observed them over the next few days, trying to decide if he trusted them or not. Sansa made short work of the bag of shrimp chips but didn’t seem into the saltwater taffy which Robb gleefully took off her hands. Arya licked one shrimp chip for an hour and stared at him. He had been there a week before he saw the two girls teaming up to breach the baby-gate that stood between the back porch and the yard. You’re not going to get very far … he had thought to himself as Catelyn had swooped in and picked Arya up, leading Sansa over to the Naughty Stair. 

“I’m sick of my sisters.” Robb had confessed to him one day when they were splitting a stolen grape soda on the climber in the backyard. “Nobody pays attention to me anymore.”

Theon thought of Asha, when she wasn’t having surgery she was bringing home academic awards. When she wasn’t being fawned over she was being celebrated. Mom would always tell everyone how ‘we didn’t think she’d make it to a year, now look at her!’ and Asha would sit there and smile and ‘restore everyone’s faith in the resilience of the human spirit’ or whatever the hell Dad had said that time the news came to their house and everyone would forget about him again until he had a cluster headache. Robb looked over at Sansa, who was tossing gravel at a nearby squirrel. He wondered what Asha was doing. He knew the time zones were different but not what time it was back home. He pictured her having dinner with Tris and his family, doing homework at the kitchen table under the weird glass chandelier that he was always a little terrified would snap off it’s chain and kill someone. Dad vocally disliked it and he would always complain about it, eyeing it suspiciously like he was concerned it would attack him. 

“I don’t trust that thing, Sawane. Looks like shards of glass are gonna come-.” and he would gesture cartoonishly, “-cracking off and-.” and he would mime something falling onto a plate. 

Theon wondered if Sawane and Noreah would have their annual Day of the Mother party, if anyone on the Islands was celebrating anything, if they had anything to celebrate. Mom let Asha have wine at the last one, just one little glass. Asha said she didn’t feel any different and drank Dad’s glass after he left the room to pace around the basement eyeing Sawane’s collection of LPs and bragging to anyone who would listen about how he was at the first Lannisport Frequency Festival before it was ‘overrun with yuppies and hipsters’ and he saw Malryk Blackwood in concert before he overdosed. Theon secretly liked those parties even though every year he would complain that he didn’t want to go. He liked the virtually unlimited soda, the bowls of chips in the basement, that late part of the night when he and Symond and Harlon and Vickon would all fall asleep on Symond’s bedroom floor on a pile of adult jackets. He liked when Mom carried him to the van. One time he had woken up on the highway with Maron trying to stick various items in his mouth as he slept. Asha kept whining at him to stop and Rodrik was glancing in the rearview as Dad drunkenly tried to coach his driving from the passenger seat. In a confused rage he spat whatever was in his mouth into Maron’s face. Four grapes, a rock and an eraser landed in his lap as he threw a few lethargic punches. Maron shouted “Mom! Theon spat!” and Rodrik swerved, getting a delayed yelp out of Dad. Mom reached forward and grabbed Maron by the shoulder. 

“What is wrong with you?” she snapped, “he was sleeping, why would you bother him?!”

“It was a joke.” Maron grumbled.

“I don’t understand why you act like this. He’s seven years old and you’re sixteen, smarten the hell up. Asha’s more mature than you.”

Maron went quiet. Asha smirked. Dad rolled his eyes.

The Stark kids never fought like that. They’d smack each other here and there or get into minor arguments but they never did things that were actually cruel . Theon knew everything that he got from Rodrik and Maron was his serving of Younger Sibling Hell combined with the half of Asha’s that they just couldn’t get away with inflicting on someone like her. They still antagonized her, one day a dead fish in her bed, another day a hidden item of homework, but never physical pain. He didn’t know why his brothers were like that, why they did things like that to family but nobody else, why they acted so nice in public, why everyone thought they were Upstanding Young Men or whatever Rodrik’s principal had called him at his graduation. 

He didn’t know they had died until Dr Kenning told him. He had known he wanted to be sad but when he searched himself for the feeling he never found it. At 23, he still wasn’t clear on the exact details of what happened to them. He didn’t know if he wanted to find out.

The Skype call came in the middle of the night. Early evening Pyke time. Asha was sitting in front of a white wall, her hair had been straightened and she was still in her school uniform. It took Theon a minute to realize that she was, in fact, at school still.

“Is there a recital?” he had asked her, “Did they let Dad out of jail to come see?”

“Theon-.” she choked back a sob, “there was another bombing in Lannisport.”

“So?”

“So the President sent an airstrike.” Theon could hear a commotion in the room she was in and a boy-shaped shadow fell over her, she looked up at him then back at Theon. “We don’t know if-.” she covered her face with her hand and started crying, the source of the shadow sat down in the frame and wrapped his arms around her. 

“Hi Tris!” Theon tried to lighten the mood, Tris smiled stiffly and stroked Asha’s hair. It looks weird straight, was it picture day today? Theon considered, thinking of the last picture day, when Mom had woken Asha up early to flat-iron her hair and made him wear a tie. He lost it an hour before the pictures were supposed to be taken but fashioned a replacement out of construction paper and masking tape. It didn’t go as planned and Dad had refused to hang the picture up. Tris had a ketchup stain on the sleeve of his shirt and a loose thread in his Lordsport Academy sweater vest, if it was, in fact, picture day, Tris’s would not be going on anyone’s fridge. 

“We’re gonna be fine.” Tris said as if to fill the silence, but the room wasn’t silent. Theon could make out distant sirens and the commotion in the room was only getting louder. Asha wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving black smudges. Is she wearing makeup? He didn’t like seeing Asha cry. He’d only seen it twice before. The first time was when Grandma Harlaw died and the second time was when Dr Kenning had taken him away. 

“I just wanted to tell you that I love you and I’m sorry about everything.” she choked out, “you deserve a lot better than this family.”

Why are you- what do you mean, wh-.” he felt a lump in his throat.

“I want you to know in case I don’t make it.” Theon felt a stab of fear in his gut. He looked at Tris to try and reassure himself but Tris was tearing up too at this point.

“Asha, you’re not gonna die.” he pleaded, more to convince himself, “it’s probably just thunder or maybe it’s-.”

“No, Theon, it’s an airstrike.” she almost snapped, he voice cracking. “I’m sorry. I love you so much, okay? You’re such a good kid and you deserve the whole world and-.” a deep rumble shook the building, she yelped and almost dropped whatever she was Skyping him from, the dull groan of a distant explosion came through as an ominous buzz on Theon’s end. It was followed by dead silence as she and Tris stared at a point just out of frame in the distance, followed by a loud crack and a flash of light. Asha let out a strangled sob and turned the call off, the screen froze on her bloodless face before switching to a screen that read ‘call ended’. 

Three kids from Lordsport Prep were treated for burns, one for a head injury from debris that came loose from the classroom ceiling. Forty kids, including both Tris and Asha, were treated for shock. 

Theon saw Tris’s mom on TV, but the graphic at the bottom of the screen read ‘Noreah Botley; Chief Medical Examiner of Health for the Islands of Pyke, Saltcliffe and Harlaw’. Tris was standing beside her, Asha beside him and Mom on the other end. He had been in Aegon’s Appliances with Robb and Catelyn looking for a new stove when he saw her and went over to the TV section. Mom had a graphic with her name too, ‘Alannys Harlaw-Greyjoy, First Lady and Chancellor Regent of the Sovereign State of the Iron Islands’. 

“-absolutely despicable to involve children in the conflicts of adults, to force responsibility on them for the wrongdoings of their parents. The attacks on Lannisport have nothing to do with Islandic Separatism and Ironborn children should not have to answer for them.”

“Boo hoo.” said a voice behind Theon, he looked around to see a beefy Andal man shopping with a Northern woman, “don’t like it, don’t fuck with Westeros.”

“They shouldn’t have done it so close to the school.” the woman chided, “the one in Lannisport was near a mining rig, there were no kids close by.”

The man made an indignant snorting noise and turned back to the sound system he and the woman were debating purchasing. Theon slunk back over to Robb and Catelyn. Catelyn was testing the door of the oven and hassling an employee about child proofing. Robb asked  Theon what was wrong. He didn’t say anything. 

Lordsport Prep was first through twelfth grade and Theon had loved it. Everyone had been nice to him there, his teachers always said nice things about him on his report card and he had a lot of friends. He’d stopped going to school when things had gotten bad and Dad and Rodrik and Maron and the uncles had started having Office Time more frequently and for longer periods. He and Asha would always sit outside the door trying to hear what was happening on the other side. Uncle Vic would yell a lot, and so would Dad, and a smell would always seep from underneath the door. A smoky smell, tangy and chemical. It always made Theon sick, even sicker than cigar smoke and he would always get a headache within the hour. That was the week Mom told him he and Asha wouldn’t be going to school for a while. Every day Tris’s brother would drive their homework over, sometimes Tris would come and he would tell them everything that happened at school. Mom would make snacks. Dad would be having Office Time.

Two weeks went by and things started happening on TV. Theon would hear someone saying Dad’s name over the kitchen radio while Mom was making dinner, she would always run to turn it off, switch it to some random station. Mr Wynch called the house and so did Asha’s teacher, Mom would always lie and say they were ‘visiting family indefinitely’, she would say someone was sick and not to call this number again. One day when the principal called, she broke down crying on the kitchen floor. Theon had been sitting at the kitchen table and he could hear the principal over the phone;

“Alannys, I need you to breathe. Are you safe? Do you need me to call someone?”

Mom had looked at Theon and put her hand over the receiver.

“Go to Asha’s room.”

“But Mom-.”

“Theon Greyjoy, don’t argue with me. Go to Asha’s room right now!”

He backed away down the hall as she went back to talking to the principal. He realized he hadn’t been walking fast enough when she threw a tomato at him. All he’d been able to say when he got to Asha’s room was;

“Something’s wrong with Mom.” 

She was laying on the floor, Helya kneeling beside her holding her extended right leg straight and vertical. Theon always wondered if physiotherapy hurt but when he’d asked that one time Dad had whacked him in the arm with the newspaper he’d been holding and said “of course it hurts, genius. Your sister is in pain all the time. And do you ever hear her ask stupid questions? No? Of course not.” Then he would scoff something in Islandic that Theon knew was a jab at his intelligence even if he didn’t know what the exact word was.

Asha looked over at him and began to say something but her eyes went wide as Mom slammed the door behind Theon and locked it.

They were in there for a few days. Helya would leave to bring them food from the kitchen when Mom let her, they all used Asha’s en-suite bathroom, Mom read them bedtime stories through the door but could never finish them because she always broke down. Asha barely slept, she just sat by the door listening to Dad and Uncle Euron and Uncle Vic and Uncle Aeron yelling at each other. Sometimes Tris’s dad or Rodrik or Maron would enter the mix, sometimes Uncle Rodrik, sometimes Aunt Gwynesse and sometimes Mom. Asha just listened with no expression on her face. Sometimes Helya would pick her up and carry her back to bed, but Theon always saw her listening by the door when he woke up. 

The police came after three days. They handcuffed Helya. They had to pry Asha off of him, one got a kick in the face, the other came away with deep bite marks in his forearm. They handed him off to Dr Kenning and that was it.

The Stark kids all went to public school. Ned thought it was ‘important for their social development’. Theon thought that was the stupidest idea he’d ever heard. Lordsport Prep was a private school, so only a certain amount of certain people were allowed to go there and his family was one of the top donors so there was a certain amount of respect that came with Greyjoy being your last name. At Weirwood Heights Junior High School, it was the exact opposite. Everyone hated him because everyone knew about what Dad did. They called him a terrorist, said he smelled like rotting fish and said horrible things about his family. None of the teachers did anything until 9th grade, when he came home with a broken nose and Ned started asking questions. He had parked the car that day instead of just dropping Theon off and walked into the school, banged on the principal’s office door and refused to leave until someone explained to him what had happened. Theon had to give him that, at least he pretended to care. He thought it would get better after that but it got worse. Everyone said the same things but never to his face and 9th grade dragged on, cruel and cold and silent. 

Theon was 15 the first time he met Ramsay Bolton. 

Robb, thank the Gods, ended up skipping 8th grade and ended up in the class immediately below Theon. After his first year of high school had found him friendless and socially inept, having someone to sit with at lunch who would vocally defend him everytime someone called him Irontrash or Shrimp Dick was like a lifeline, especially when it was Ned Stark’s son and everyone worshipped him. 

Theon wasn’t sure he trusted Jory Cassel, especially after he had laughed when Rickard Liddle had reached around Theon in the lunch line to grab Viviyan Blackriver’s ass and announced ‘Theon, what the fuck, you’re not on Island time anymore, we don’t do that shit here’, earning Theon a slap in the face from Viviyan and a week’s suspension. But he’d never been invited to a high school party before. He took immense comfort in knowing Robb would be there and wouldn’t let anyone do anything stupid, then immediately felt ashamed that he was essentially hiding behind a 13 year old. He spent an hour in the mirror agonizing over his hair and his damn shirt collar not staying in place until Robb zipped his backpack shut over the cartoonish amount of alcohol he had procured from one of his older friends and announced that they were leaving. 

Jory was the one to answer the door, hugging Robb and greeting Theon with a tight-lipped, awkward smile and a ‘hey man…’ then a forced, possibly sarcastic ‘...nice shirt’. It was an indigo herringbone button-down embroidered with Islandic syllabics from back in the day, before the language all but died out. It had been a birthday gift from Uncle Rodrik who would always tell him how important it was to dress nicely. Everyone on Dad’s side of the family made fun of him for it but looking around Theon was starting to appreciate it more and more. Half the people here look like they just woke up and the other half look like they’ve been wearing the same sweats for a week… But then there was the guy at the back of the living room in the red silk button-down...

The first thing on Theon’s mind when he saw him for the first time was ‘ oh Gods, haven’t you ever washed your face? ’ He had breakouts on top of breakouts and he was glistening with grease… he looked about fifteen times worse than Asha had before she started using all those weird exfoliants and serums. His hair was dark and straight and overgrown, at that awkward interim stage between long and short, just reaching the shoulders, and it was greasier than his face. His eyes just seemed... wrong, Theon had never seen eyes that pale before and he hoped he never would again. It seemed like it was a weird symptom of some obscure disease, he didn’t like looking at them but he couldn’t stop, as the owner of the eyes stared him down from the corner of the living room while he and Jory and Robb loaded the contents of Robb’s backpack into the fridge. 

Looking back on it he should have just left, he should have read the room and fucked off. Nobody there liked him except for Robb and nobody seemed to have noticed him yet… it wouldn’t take much effort for him to just walk out the door and hail a cab…

He lost his train of thought when Robb thrust a red plastic cup full of a mixture of lemonade and whiskey into his hand.

“My dad says high school is the best four years of your life.” he announced, taking a sip of his own drink, “I hope he’s right.”

Jory shrugged. “It kind of depends but I think you’ll be fine.” Fuck you, Theon thought to himself, you and your asshole friends are making it the worst four years of mine … He sipped his drink and accidentally locked eyes with Jory, who immediately looked at the floor. 

“Let’s, uh… let’s go walk around.” Robb offered, then frowned. “You look nervous.”

“I’m not nervous, I just… I don’t really know anyone and I-…”

“I’ll introduce you!” Robb grinned. Stop smiling like an idiot, you’re too nice … 

Half an hour went by before Theon got a good look at him. He was dripping despite it being sweater weather outside and it looked like he’d been beating off and crying for an hour. His red button-down now had the top three buttons open and the collar popped. He looks like one of my Irontrash cousins … Theon thought to himself, remembering a several-times-removed Harlaw who had been off the shits on bathtub wine and coke at Mom’s birthday dinner and spent the majority of the night trying to bench-press his girlfriend in the driveway before Uncle Vic chased them both down the street with a broom and locked them out.

“Hey Robb.” he said.

Robb stared at the floor. “Hi Ramsay.”

“Sorry my brother couldn’t pick up for you.” he smiled, “he’s not feeling so good.”

“Yeah. I heard. Tell him I hope he feels better soon.”

Ramsay leaned forward, “yeah, I’ll let him know.” His creepy eyes flicked over towards Theon. “Who’s your friend?”

“Theon.” Theon cut in. 

“My dad adopted him.” Robb grinned, “so he’s like my brother but we got to choose him.” Why do you say shit like this?

“So he’s not your boyfriend…?” said a guy sitting on Ramsay’s left side who looked like he was on something.

“Alyn, shut the fuck up.”

“Well, he’s my friend and he’s a boy, so-.” Robb began, Theon punched him in the arm to get him to shut his mouth.

“Wait, you’re Theon Greyjoy, right?” Ramsay observed, Theon flinched, “as in Balon Greyjoy?”

Theon felt every head in the room turn to stare at him. He wanted to disappear. He turned and power-walked down the hall to the back room, where a few eleventh-graders were smoking and watching some movie with the sound off. Robb ran after him, nearly tripping over a plastered ninth-grader who was trying to do a body-shot of whiskey off her friend.

“I want to go home, Robb.”

“No, it’s fine. Just ignore him.” Theon could feel his heart battering his ribcage and frigid sweat dripping down the middle of his back, his stomach was churning.

“Everyone hates me here.” he felt his voice crack and he hated himself for it.

“Nobody hates you, they just don’t know you yet. If they just talked to you they would-.” Robb was cut off as two girls turned the corner and waved to him, he waved back and blushed. “Just drink that. You’ll be less nervous.”

“Maybe it’s better if I’m nervous so I don’t do anything stupid.”

Robb smiled, “I won’t let you do anything stupid.”

Theon thought of Asha, thought of all her friends from Lordsport Prep, the parties she would get invited to where everyone knew her and liked her. She must feel how Robb feels, Theon seethed, everyone knows who she is and everyone wants to be her friend because she’s at home where she belongs with Tris and all her other friends and I’m stuck in this frozen hell with all these-...

“Hey Robb.” said a female voice, Theon didn’t bother looking up.

“Hi Kyra. Having fun?”

“Ehh, I don’t know. I can’t find Bessa and she already had too much at the pre.”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen her, sorry.”

“I don’t think we’ve met.” said the girl, a small brown hand with a turquoise ring on the index finger and orange-painted nails slid into Theon’s line of sight. “I’m Kyra Snow.”

Theon reached out and shook the hand but didn’t look up. “Theon.”

“Oh right. That’s where I’ve seen you before. You’re in the Civics class right before my Careers class. If I have another class with Mr Ryswell again next year, I’m setting myself on fire.”

Theon nodded and forced a dry laugh and continued staring at the ground. 

“Well, I hope you find Bessa,” Robb cut in, salvaging the conversation, “if I see her I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

“Thanks. I’m gonna keep looking.”

“See you later.”

“You too, bye Theon.”

Theon felt himself mouth ‘bye’ but no sound came out.

“We sit together in math.” Robb smirked, “she seems into you.”

“Yeah right.”

“Yeah! Right! She was staring at you like-.” Robb widened his eyes and dropped his jaw

“She was probably just looking for the nearest exit in case I start blowing shit up.” Don’t say that, someone might think you’re serious, idiot …

“That’s not true. You could pass for Northern. Maybe. From really far away. Maybe like… half Andal half Dornish.”

Theon laughed. “Robb, no-one thinks I’m Dornish.”

And Robb laughed, trying to generate some scrap of levity. “Yeah. They don’t.”

That was the first time Theon ever got properly drunk and it hit him like a freight train. There were a few hours he didn’t remember, only that Robb was laughing and he was laughing and the others were drunk enough to tolerate him and Kyra was sitting beside him with her hand on his leg. He had finally gotten a good look at her between his third lemonade-and-whiskey-thing and his first beer. She was fucking stunning. Full-blooded Northern, she told him her mom was descended from some Skagosi nation with a name he wasn’t about to try and pronounce and that her parents met at a Northern Cultural Symposium three years before she was born and that they were very traditional and would kill her if they knew she was 1. Drinking 2. Hooking up with a non-Northerner. She had a V-shaped tattoo at her hairline and two lines reaching from her chin to her bottom lip. She was shorter than Theon by about two inches and she was curvy, with thick black hair down to her waist and round brown eyes like a deer. He couldn’t stop staring at her, wracking his brain to figure out why she even wanted anything to do with him. Is this part of some weird elaborate prank? he wondered as Kyra laughed drunkenly at some stupid joke Jon Umber Jr had stuttered his way through, dropping her head to his shoulder and brushing her lips against his neck, should I… stop her…? No… I’ll just see what happens.  

What happened was Kyra getting them two more beers each from Jory’s fridge and slipping them into her purse. What happened was her half-carrying him up the stairs to Jory’s parents’ room and shutting the door. What happened was her looking through Jory’s dad’s collection of LPs, which was much smaller than Sawane Botley’s, and putting on a Malryk Blackwood record on a low volume.  

“I love this song.” she said, turning to face him as Malryk’s hoarse baritone came in over a guitar riff. Theon did not love this song. In fact he kind of hated it. He always associated Malryk Blackwood with Dad, especially this album, which Dad had been blasting in the car that day when Theon was 8 and Asha was in that play at school and Dad kept ranting about ‘you will not ruin this day, do you hear me? Your sister has come so far, she’s a miracle, you will not fuck this up the way you always do- are you listening to me?!’ Theon tried not to think about that as Kyra pushed him down on the bed and knelt beside him, kissing his neck again.

“Are we-.” she pulled back, “are we about to have se-.”

“No.” Kyra said matter-of-factly. “We’ve both been drinking, we can’t do that... I thought we were just hooking up.”

“I c-... I-I can hook up…” Theon stuttered, “let’s hook up.”

Is hooking up just kissing? Because that’s what’s happening. After about a minute or so Kyra pulled back again and stared at him.

“I’m really sorry about the way everyone at school treats you. It’s not your fault your family has issues.” Great, so she knows about all that shit… “I’m sorry I never said anything. I was just scared to speak up.” she kissed him again, “you’re a good person. And I always wanted to talk to you but I didn’t know how.”

What do you mean always? You’re a year below me, you’ve known me for a month and a half …

Theon didn’t know what to say. “You’re beautiful.”

Kyra’s fingers laced together with his and she blushed. “You think so?” Theon nodded. “Theon... you’re so sweet.” she kissed him again and leaned forward, whispering in his ear, “-and when we’re sober, swear to the Maiden, I’m gonna rock. your . s h i t... ” 

Theon felt an uncomfortable tingle and kissed Kyra hard, placing a hand on her neck. She smelled like lavender and her lip gloss tasted like strawberries, he didn’t know how long it had been going on for when they heard the girl outside. Kyra froze and sat bolt upright, her eyes fixed on Jory’s parents’ bedroom door.

“I’m really okay, I can find her myself.” said a female voice.

“You sure? It’s a big house.” said a male voice, “let me help you look.”

“I just need to, uh-.” the girl laughed nervously, “-I just need to go where the alcohol is, haha, I bet she’s there. I’m just gonna-.”

The guy exhaled heavily, “you know, if you don’t like me just say so.”

“No, I- I just need to find her-.”

“What’s her name again?"

Theon heard a door squeak open and slam shut, Kyra flinched. 

“Oh fuck.” she choked out.

“You okay?”

She turned to face him, “that sounded like Bessa.”

Every time he replayed it in his head the bathroom seemed longer and he seemed slower. Bessa’s skinny brown legs hanging over the lip of the bathtub, Alyn standing over her, one foot in the tub, the other stepping in, the sound of his belt unbuckling and Bessa begging him to let her go, her white cotton culottes around her shins. Before Theon could do anything, Jory swept past him and grabbed Alyn by the collar, dragging him outside and throwing him down on the shag carpet. He remembered the sound of blows and profanities being exchanged as Kyra pulled Bessa to her feet. A long, hollow moment of stillness as the three of them stared at each other, broken when Bessa vomited white wine into the sink. 

It was Jory’s neighbours who called the police. 

Robb had held Bessa’s hair back as she vomited into the gutter while they waited for Kyra’s sister. Theon traced tight circles between her shoulder blades with his palm as she sobbed, trying to keep his lemonade-whiskey-concoctions from coming back up. 

“I’m sorry tonight didn’t end well.” she finally choked out.

“It’s not your fault.” he wracked his brain for what to say next. He could hear Robb trying to make one-sided small talk in the vein of ‘be sure to drink water when you get home’ and ‘eggs are also good, I think there are certain brunch places that deliver, Poached at the corner of Jahaerys and Manwoody has really good bacon’ . Bessa continued puking, gripping the bottle of Vhagarade Jory had given her. “Do you want to do something next weekend?”

She looked up and smiled. “I’d love that.” A beaten-up blue Valryon pick-up skidded to a halt with an irritated-looking Northern woman in the driver’s seat. “Well, that’s my sister.”

“I’ll see you at school.”

“Yeah.” She kissed him stiffly on the lips and took Bessa by the hand, leading her over to the truck. Before she got in, she turned back and waved. 

He fell asleep that night staring at the ceiling with the room drunkenly swaying around him. He hated the North and he hated his school and he hated his life, but he had Kyra and Robb and maybe they were the only people who mattered.

Jeyne stirred in bed next to him, he pulled her closer as she began to whisper Arya Stark’s social security number. 

Chapter Text

Asha was 16 when her eleventh grade class at Lordsport Prep took that trip to the war memorial. 

That was the year before she transferred to Seastone Alternative, a year that felt like three years as she felt herself become more and more alienated from her peers with every press tour, public speaking engagement and TV interview that Dad suckered her into. He would make empty promises to justify it; additional freedoms, later curfew, access to the liquor cabinet, et cetera. Eventually he settled on up-front bribery and Asha took it, swallowing her pride and regaling whoever she had to regale with graphic details of whatever traumatic event they wanted to hear about. It always started with the bombing at school and always, without fail, ended with her medical history. It was a fucked up year, marked by her return to the Pyke estate after Dad was fully and certifiably off of all substances (or so his parole officer thought). He started giving her more independence, either due to drug-induced apathy or genuine respect for her maturity and personal space and for the first time Asha felt like she could develop an identity for herself. It was weird at first, for the six months she’d lived with the Botleys she had been too distracted by the hellscape unfolding around her to think about anything like that, the two-ish years she’d lived with Mom and Uncle Rodrik she’d been a Perfect Little Islandic Socialite with an adorably fucked up cerebral cortex, no friends and very sporadic Internet access. When she got back to the Pyke estate with half her hair hacked off and an infected stick-and-poke she had given herself with a sewing needle and a pen, she found a stack of bills laying on the table and heard Malryk Blackwood’s Greatest Hits blaring from the third floor. With no-one to stop her, she redecorated her childhood bedroom with the only three things she had been thinking about at the time; Lhazareen thrash metal, the Islandic Separatist Movement and the eating disorder she had developed after Shyla Blacktyde told her ‘I love how you just eat anything’ during a sleepover in 8th grade. She slept under a weird patchwork canopy of Ahesso Vaz Y’zhaan’s tattooed six-pack taped up next to garish thinspo she had printed off at the Central Pyke Public Library, (the Quellon Greyjoy Branch, ironically one of the only places she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew) taped up next to the ISM Manifesto. It was the perfect breeding ground for an adolescent superiority complex and Asha let it percolate and simmer in her brain, mixing with the spoils of her illicit trips to the wine cellar, prescription painkillers and her seething hatred of Lordsport Preparatory Academy For The Empowerment Of Islandic Youth. 

Mrs Codd had pestered Asha for most of the bus ride, after Tris turned around to respond to a tap on the shoulder from Sharyse Goodbrother, about how she had watched a documentary about kids who had diseases and how inspired she was and if Asha had ever considered being in a documentary. Asha had indulged her, knowing full well that Dad would probably be even more disgraced as a politician if a camera crew ever became privy to the sheer amount of weed and vodka sodas she consumed on a weekly basis and that disabled teenagers often cease to serve as inspiration porn once they became jaded and resentful. Finally, Mrs Codd was distracted by a yelp from the back of the bus and Asha put her headphones in, turning up Graddakh Vikeesi as loud as possible, praying that Ahesso’s guttural screaming would repel anyone sitting close enough to hear it. 

The sea was grey and choppy when they arrived at the crater where the Crownlands’ first attack had made landfall and dark clouds were beginning to fill the sky. Tris was one of the only ones paying attention, staring at the over-enthusiastic tour guide with his mouth hanging open, nodding and making sounds of interest occasionally. Asha stared at the plaque on the enormous statue of a kraken in the middle of the pit, fixated on the upper corner where Rodrik and Maron’s names were emblazoned. Two scrawny cormorants were sitting on one of the tentacles, shrieking here and there, the tour guide would always stop talking when they did, glare at them, then resume. Asha wanted to think that her brothers would be obnoxious enough to come back as cormorants and derail the presentation just to be annoying, maybe to show her that they were okay, but she knew better. They were in pieces somewhere on the seafloor on the other side of the island. Someone tossed the cormorants an onion ring and they fought over it, fluttering and squawking and swooping down by the partition that kept the general public out of the pit. The bigger one was eventually able to grab it and fly up to one of the higher tentacles while the smaller one pecked at the crumbs left behind. Asha heard Mrs Codd announce ‘I will find out who threw that!’ and then apologize profusely to the tour guide. Tris turned to her.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine, Tris.”

“You just look a little pale.” 

She felt nauseous but wouldn’t say anything, she had once made the mistake of mentioning that she had a headache within Mrs Codd’s earshot and the resulting panicked phone call had interrupted one of Dad’s monthly benders. He had shown up red-eyed and tweaking for an alleged seizure that turned out to be hangover-induced photosensitivity. Asha could laugh about it now but the humiliation of her coked-out father imploring the school nurse to ‘call me when she’s dying’ had been entirely too much to deal with at 16. She stared past the statue at the churning ocean, Tris put an arm around her shoulders, she didn’t bother to shove him off. 

They walked back along the pier, along the little channel that separated the city of Lordsport from the manmade island that held Seastone International Airport, the Dolphin Plaza Hotel with its adjoining decrepit shopping centre, the mineral refinery and Seastone National Park. Asha remembered when Dad would take the boats around the island, passing through that channel sunburnt and lethargic, listening to Theon scream-sob as Rodrik dangled him over the edge of the boat, Mom scolding and Dad laughing and Maron trying to take a drag off his one-hitter without either of them noticing. It had always been crowded then, boats from all over the place, license plates from Lannisport and Braavos and the Summer Isles. Sometimes boats would be packed shoulder to shoulder, close enough for Asha to smell what people were eating, to reach across the gap between boats and pet their dogs or talk to other kids. Dad’s weekender was always one of the bigger boats in the channel and it made Asha feel important, she liked sitting on the prow and waving to people, never genuinely believing that she would become Chancellor, just enjoying the idea that it was possible.

It was empty that day except for a crab boat, a weekender from Faircastle, a police boat and two dinghys, all spaced out and distant. Dad didn’t have his boating license back yet and Asha still had two years to go until she could get hers, provided her anti-convulsants continued to work. At first she had figured Dad’s money would get her out of any disputes with the coast guard should she be caught without a license, but soon came to her senses. The family couldn’t afford anymore controversy. 

At the front of the group, Shyla Blacktyde was yammering about her dad’s new boat. Nayima Merlyn and Veena Tawney walked on either side of her. Asha detested all three of them. It had started off as mild spite and jealousy in elementary school; their hyperfemininity, which Asha would never be able to fully replicate even if she wanted to, their popularity, their complacence, their effortless adherence to social norms and the constant attention they received. Eventually they became privy to her detestation and began to reciprocate it. A gull swooped down in front of them, Shyla screeched so loudly Mrs Codd visibly flinched.

“I hate her.” Asha complained under her breath. 

Tris humoured her, “she can be a bit shrill.”

Veena had been the better of the three. Where Shyla was pure evil and Nayima’s only personality trait was being a judgmental demon, Veena was mostly just stupid. Sure she’d slung her fair share of insults and forcibly waxed Asha’s upper lip on that one overnight trip in 8th grade, she had never been cruel. The turning point came at a Seastone Alternative party that Veena’s cousin Symon had hosted, when they accidentally sat next to each other on the living room couch. Veena offered Asha a beer after an agonizing ten seconds of silent eye contact. Asha smirked.

“How do I know this isn’t poisoned?”

Veena laughed. “If I wanted to poison you, I would have done it by now.” they both smiled and she continued, “I don’t actually think you look like a man.”

“Well, I don’t actually think you have radioactive chlamydia.”

Veena snorted. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong.” then followed up with a loud OH-MY-GODS-I’M-TOTALLY-KIDDING-YOU-CAN-CHECK just so as not to spoil her potential hookup with the stoned snapback-wearer on her arm that Asha hadn’t met yet. 

Asha hadn’t remembered the audible gasp that had come out of her when Veena’s name came up on the list of victims, but judging by the way everyone in the courtroom turned to look at her, it had definitely been audible. 

The police had found her dumped in the Weeping Water, butchered beyond all recognition except for one tattoo and her fingerprints, which had been entered into the database after she applied for Astapori citizenship. She had been in Winterfell on a buying trip for the clothing store she had started with her sister after graduating from Lordsport Prep, she left her newborn son at home in Lordsport with her husband. Her mother had broken down at that point in the victim impact statement, Bolton had stifled a laugh, Veena’s mom spit in his face with impeccable aim and was escorted out as she screamed insults in Islandic. The courtroom was silent. The monitor switched from a picture of Veena holding her baby to a Flayhouse post of Theon’s bloodied hands.

The fresh-faced surgical intern tasked with keeping Asha updated had started sobbing when she informed her that they hadn’t been able to salvage what remained of Theon’s ring finger. The infection had been too severe and the exposed muscle had become too toxic to remain attached to him. If they had waited any longer, he could have lost the arm below the elbow. Asha inquired in a choked whisper if the hospital had a prayer font, the intern blanched and said no, suggesting that she try the Islandic Community Center three blocks away from the hospital. She took a cab, insisting on constant updates from Qarl via text. The font was agonizingly low and her back was already destroyed from the pushed-together waiting room chairs she had bribed a nurse into letting her sleep on past visiting hours. She filled it, mentally rehearsing how she would phrase her prayer, wondering if anyone was listening. She dipped her face in the inch and a half that she was capable of, her mind went blank, she screamed underwater until she ran out of air. 

“We should show Wylla around while she’s here.” Tris announced through a mouthful of fries, “I’m thinking the Saltcliffe Maritime Museum, one of those mine tours maybe, the war memorial…”

“I’m not going all the way to Lordsport to show Wylla a hole in the ground.”

“It’s a very patriotic hole. A sovereign hole.”

“It’s a hole.” Asha looked back out the window as they pulled up to a stoplight right between the bombed-out skeleton of what had been the Harlaw University geology campus and a statue of Visenya Targaryen that had ‘COLONIZING WHORE’ splattered across it in red paint. Underneath that, someone had scrawled ‘positive vibes only’ with a white marker. Beside that, a penis. She stared instead at the Barrowton Roadhouse sign at the end of the block, Theon’s eyes searched for hers in the rearview, they looked almost minty grey in the overcast early afternoon sun, the skin underneath stained a grim purplish. The angry glow of irritation was beginning to creep along his hairline, a side effect of obsessive washing. In the natural light, the scars on his face were big and dark, ragged strips of a colour Asha couldn’t even try to name interrupting smooth golden brown and ripping through sporadic freckles like someone had run a finger through a patch of loosely scattered coffee grounds. She choked on the scent of hand sanitizer and opened the window, endlessly annoyed by his compulsion to drench his arms from elbow to fingertip. 

Tris glanced at her, his eyes focusing on her neck

“Nice hickey, btw.”

An attempt at a dry laugh forced its way out of Theon in the form of a hard nasal exhale. Tris grinned.

“It’s not a hickey.”

“Ahh, so just a mouth shaped bruise, I see. You know you can put makeup on those.”

“Figured I’d leave it. I know how jealous you get.”

Tris got a flustered look on his face. “I’m not- ugh, okay, sorry for trying to have a conversation.” 

He turned into the parking lot of Yi-Ti Express and continued to the drive-through. 

“Are you serious? We already stopped.”

“Trissy hungies…” he said in a babyish whine, smirking when Asha cringed.

“I’m literally going to bite you if you say that again.”

He pulled up to the speaker post, a crackly female voice welcomed them with a ‘welcome to Yi-Ti Express, how can I spice up your life today?'.

“Hi, Rhaenys, I recognize that voice anywhere. How’s your day treating you?” Tris grinned.

The employee sighed. “Bad now that you’re here. I can’t do any of those weird substitutions, okay? My boss keeps getting mad at me.” 

“It’s not a ‘weird substitution’, it’s a secret menu. It’s like a menu-.”

“A menu that’s secret? Yeah, we don’t have that.”

“And how would you know that?”

“I work here!” Rhaenys groaned, then continued in a defeated voice. “...you’re gonna have to pay extra.”

“I know.”

“...lay it on me.”

Tris grinned and leaned into the microphone. “You’re gonna do a kid’s size portion of the Number Nine and a kid’s size portion of the Number Twelve, mix ‘em up together. Then you’re gonna take the RED curry sauce from the Three and slap that on top- are you writing this down?”

“Yes.” 

“Lime wedge, no lettuce, add in the mango syrup that goes in the smoothies, the diced pineapple from the Number Six and the peanuts from the bottom of the bag…? They’re smaller and they mix in with the sauce to give it a smoother flavour-.”

“I hate you.”

“I know. Oyster sauce, cilantro sauce and extra plum sauce. The plum sauce is crucial.”

“Anything else?”

“Aaaaannd a sprinkle of cinnamon. So yeah, lemme get three of those.”

“Tris, Theon and I ate already. And even if we hadn’t, we don’t hate ourselves enough to-.”

“They’re all for me.”

Of course they are. “You can’t eat all that.”

“Obviously. I freeze them and nuke them later like TV dinners.”

Rhaenys came back on. “Please proceed to the next window.”

“Thank you, my Rhae of sunshine!”

“You’re an ass, don’t come back.”

Tris cackled under his breath and drove up to the next window. Asha feigned gagging.

“That sounds like the most horrible combination of flavours.”

“It’s life-changing.” he drove up to the next window and tapped his card.

“What do you even call that?”

“They call it a Dornish Gang-Bang. Because of the red curry.” Tris drove forward to where an employee was waiting on the third order to be completed. She glared at Tris. “Wait until you smell it.” The employee handed over three bags and slammed the window shut so hard it made Theon flinch. A prickle of rage made its way up the back of Asha’s neck and she reached back to place a hand on his knee, brushing her thumb back and forth. Tris got back onto the road and stopped by the sidewalk to open the first Dornish Gang-Bang. “Seven Hells, she forgot the plum sauce.”

“If you turn the car around I will murder you.”

“No need. Theon, there should be a thing of plum sauce in the cup-holder on the passenger side door, can you pass it to me?” Theon leaned over and retrieved the sauce, handing it to Tris. “Thank you. See, Rhaenys thinks she can outsmart me but I’m always prepared.” he poured an obscene amount of plum sauce into the package and handed it back to Theon. 

“You can’t just order orange chicken like a normal person?”

“This has orange chicken in it , that’s the ‘Bang’ part. The Number Twelve.” he started the car again and proceeded down the street. “You have a lot to learn.”

“I guess I do.” Asha stared back out the window as their destination got closer and closer.

Tris took an agonizingly sharp turn into the Barrowton Roadhouse parking lot, one of Asha’s crutches slid sideways and almost knocked over his coffee. One more inch and he would have been soaked … “Want me to come with you?”

“I don’t need a chaperone to buy weed, Tris.”

“I’m just saying-.”

“You know, you do this weird chivalry thing, and it really pisses me off. We’re not in middle school anymore, you’re not going to get any more volunteer hours for taking my notes and carrying my shit.”

He went red. “Sorry for trying to be helpful.”

“Apology accepted.” Asha opened the door as he pulled around the back of the building, Aldyn and Sharleen were on their lunch break. Aldyn was drawing something on the side of the dumpster in marker and Sharleen was across the parking lot screaming into her phone, gesticulating aggressively with the sandwich in her free hand.  Aldyn took notice of Asha when she shut the door. In the backseat, Theon looked over with a mixture of apprehension and mild interest. 

“You’re late, I was getting worried.” he quipped, pulling a rolled-up plastic bag out of his sweatshirt pocket. 

“Tris’s fault.” Asha handed him a 50 and a cigarette as he placed the bag in her other hand.

“Want me to weigh it?”

“I trust you. What’s Sharleen’s damage?”

“Some girl from school, they’re supposed to meet up and kick the shit out of each other later.” he shrugged and lit the cigarette, “I don’t know why. I think they’re both crazy.”

Sharleen hung up angrily and started towards them. 

“How’s school going?”

“It’s going.” he took his beanie off and ran a hand through his thick black curls, he reminded Asha so much of Theon it almost made her sick. “We beat Lordsport Prep in quiz-bowl last week. This one rich kid, his last name was like… Saltcliffe or Wynch or Stonetree or something fancy, he fucked up his designated question so it went to me and I got it right.” 

“What was the question?”

“How many seats in the Lhazareen Parliament. It’s 14.”

“Why do you know that?”

He smirked. “Lucky guess.”

Sharleen crept up behind Aldyn and grabbed his ass with both hands, he yelped.

“That crackhead cancelled on me again. Hey Asha.”

“Is the crackhead who you’re scrapping later?”

Sharleen grinned. “Not scrapping so much as deleting from this mortal coil.” she twisted her headphone wire around her finger. “Not today though apparently. You look nice.”

Asha looked down at her decaying leggings and the threadbare Deepwood University t-shirt she had stolen from Qarl, the collar of which was almost its own entity at this point.

“Thanks, Sharleen.”

“Who’s that with Tris?”

Tris waved when he caught them looking, he had plum sauce on the tip of his nose. Theon was staring out the window on the opposite side.

“My brother.”

“Oh right.” Sharleen lowered her voice, “is he okay?” she got a grim look on her face and chewed on her lip ring.

“Yeah.” Asha lied. “He’s good.”

“There’s this girl in my history class who’s, like, really into serial killers… what do you call that again…? Prison groupie?”

“Hybristophile.” Aldyn interjected.

“Anyway, she has this whole plan that she’s gonna fuck that shitbag when he gets out of jail.”

A cold bead of sweat dripped slowly down the middle of Asha’s back.

“Sharleen, why would you even bring that up?” Aldyn groaned, “sorry, Asha.”

“He’s sentenced to life.” When she said that, they cringed and looked at each other, “without the possibility of…”

Aldyn stared at the ground. “You didn’t see the news this morning, did you?”

Sharleen scraped the heel of her shoe along the pavement in front of her, biting her lip.

“Well, my break’s over.” she grimaced. “Bye Asha.”

Chapter Text

ALYSANE

“Winterfell today, Bear Island tomorrow, Harlaw by the end of the week, Lys and margaritas and parasailing when I shut this bullshit down.”

“Very organized.” Davos had quipped around a mouthful of Tyroshi takeout. “I don’t even know what I’m doing when I get home.” He glanced over at her with a look of mild trepidation. “Want me to come in with you?”

Even in cuffs and an orange jumpsuit, Ramsay Bolton was as slimy as ever. That very specific brand of misogynistic shut-in where all the rot on the inside starts to seep through the pores. The worst part was that Aly got the impression that jail had been good to him. He was bigger than she remembered, more solid, with the greasiest jail buzzcut she’d ever seen. He was covered in tattoos, most of them various Andal supremacist symbols including one… lovely piece that simply read ‘DROWN THEM AGAIN’. He seemed confident, moreso than during the trial, probably because he knew Aly couldn’t snap his neck through the sheet of glass separating them. 

“So how long is this going to take?” he demanded, “I’m kind of… over this whole thing.”

“You give the information you have to the police, they investigate the suspects through the Rhaego Foundation-.”

“The fuck is the Rhaego Foundation ?” a red shadow began to advance up his neck, “I was under the impression that-.”

“I’m not here to talk about that. Unlike you, I have plans later, so you’re gonna comply or this process is going to be much slower for you. We clear?”

He leaned back in his chair, raking Aly with his pale eyes. “Crystal, Alysane.”

She continued, reading off of the form she’d brought. “You’re on the No-Fly list. You are not to be within five hundred feet of Theon Greyjoy, Jeyne Poole, or any member of their-.”

“Wait, wait, slow down… who ?”

“Theon Greyjoy. The man you drugged and raped before you abducted him and kept him in your basement, the one you posted pictures of to your-.”

“No, no, I remember that one… Jeyne Poole? The… Oh shit. Right . Baelish’s little crackhead.” he licked his lips, Aly gritted her teeth and imagined his greasy ass sizzling and popping like bacon on the electric chair. “There. I just gave you a name.” he prodded, pressing a meaty fist against the table so hard his knuckles went white. “You don’t wanna be here, I don’t wanna be here. Petyr Baelish. First off. Sickest of the sick.”

“He was your lawyer.”

“And he screwed me-.”

“So what are you gonna do? Plead insanity? Not guilty? There’s a file with every single picture you posted on that little website of yours. You wanna try defending that shit to a judge, you can be my guest-.”

“Are you getting something out of this?” he smiled, “did Reek’s sister arrange this whole thing? I don’t want anything to do with her, I’m into some weird shit but not whatever that is.”

“I’m here to make you aware of how many hoops you’re going to be jumping through for even a chance at the possibility of a review of your sentence. Let’s say for the sake of argument you end up eligible for parole-.”

“I am going to eligible for parole. I’ve sobered up, I’ve had a long couple years to think about the error of my ways .” There was something off about the way he said ‘error of my ways’... “I was mentally ill. My girlfriend had just died.”

“Kyra Snow?”

He shook his head in an attempt at a display of genuine grief. “They never investigated him. It said right there, in the email, Theon Greyjoy-.”

“You wrote that email, Bolton.”

“Why would I write that email?”

“Why wouldn’t y- Look, I’m not playing this game. Unfortunately I’m not the one you need to win over. I’m here on behalf of my clients. You’re never going to be able to get a job again, that is if no-one decides to give you a taste of your own medicine. You’re one of the most hated men in Westeros, you’re looking at a more rewarding life in here.”

“I have friends where it matters.” he raised an eyebrow that was somehow simultaneously ashy and greasy. “Speaking of your clients, how’s Reek doing, I’ve been dying to know.”

Aly tasted vomit in her mouth. “How is who doing?”

“Don’t play dumb, Aly.” he leaned forward grinning with teeth that had been white-stripped to hell and back, unevenly so the edges were still stained. “I saw his little video. He looked sad. He needs someone telling him what to do, there’s n othing in that brain.”

Aly swallowed an angry lump in her throat. “You’re never going to see him again.”

Bolton didn’t respond, just put the phone down and licked his lips. When Aly got home, it took her an hour and a half to shower him off of her.

“Seven Hells.” Lyra announced as she perused one of Aly’s many evidence folders. Spread out on Mom’s office carpet, organized by colour, full of things that Aly had already seen hundreds of times over but still made her sick.

“Don’t go through the green folder, you’ll completely lose your appetite.”

“So this guy’s like… bad .”

“Yes. He is very bad. And don’t leave these laying around, there’s scary shit in here, I don’t want the little ones getting into them.”

Lyra paused, her eyes raked Bolton’s slimy mugshot. “Andal supremacist.”

“Yep.”

“That’s why he sterilized them.” she said, almost casually. Aly raised an eyebrow. “Oh come on, Aly, I don’t live under a rock. I’ve been doing some… research.”

“You don’t have to worry about people like that out here.”

“I’m not worried, I’m just being cautious. After what happened to Dacey…” Lyra trailed off. The room went silent except for the soft shuffling of papers and the soft groan of the furnace. “Mom’s glad you’re home.”

“It’s good to be back.”

“You excited to see Asha ?” Lyra smirked.

“If you don’t shut the fuck up-.”

“Hey! I see the appeal! She’s pretty, in, like, an I’m-Not-Above-Biting-People-If-Necessary kind of way.”

“She’s engaged and going through a crisis right now, this trip is purely business.” Lyra grinned and raised her eyebrows. “You didn’t inherit your homewrecking ways from me.”

Lyra raised a finger, “hey, no homes are being wrecked. He’s in an open relationship. And it’s… literally just sex. Sometimes he drives me to work.” she paused, picking at her nail polish. “He’s Andal .”

“So? I’ve dated Andals. Dated Ironborn . You know I have a thing for Dothraki girls-.”

“Mom doesn’t like Andals.”

“It’s not like you’re bringing him home.”

“Yeah, but…” she shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess it’s just my tradish guilt acting up again.”

“I hear you. If she gives you any shit… just bead her something.”

Lyra laughed. It was a dry laugh that Aly had always loved because it reminded her of Mom but now it made her nauseous because it reminded her of Dacey. Lyra was a carbon copy of Dacey, tall and delicate but scary when she wanted to be. A warm, loving smile that could switch to frigid RBF in seconds. She made Bear Island look good. 

The living room smelled like burning cedar and the rich, bloody scent of the long portion of bowhead whale that Jorelle and Lyanna were hacking at as Mom split her attention making sure nobody lost a finger while keeping her soup from boiling over. Outside, the orange and red clouds of early evening were beginning to give way to icy blues and darkness was beginning to settle over the woods. It smelled like home and Aly tried to inhale as much as she possibly could through every window and screen door she passed by, tried to coat her lungs with the scent of cold air that brought with it pine and smoke and saltwater. In the distance, ravens called back and forth to each other, a foghorn sounded, a motor ripped through the water on the other side of the inlet. Aly tried to avoid eye contact with the framed picture of Dacey on the wall, her sister’s warm smile now just felt accusatory, the freshly caught seal limp and bleeding on the snow in front of her felt like foreshadowing. Aly’s stomach churned and she imagined smashing Ramsay Bolton’s face into that plexiglass window until they had to use fingerprints to identify his body. 

“Salmonberries in the freezer.” Mom whispered down the back of her neck as she pulled her in for one of those oppressive hugs that only Bear Island women are capable of. “You should take some with you."

“I’m not sure if I’m allowed to take fruit on a plane but I’ll have some tonight.” Aly stole a small cube of bowhead out of one of the bowls Lyanna had filled and dipped it in the bowl of fermented oil in the middle of the kitchen island, Mom opened two beers.  

“Wyman and Nyra Nuviq brought that over.” she jerked her head in the direction of the slab of meat that had once been part of a whale, now mostly reduced to tiny cubes. “And some char, that’s in the freezer. We can dip into that when you get back.”

“I don’t really…” here we go … “I don’t really know when I’ll be back.”

Mom’s face hardened. “Aly, how long can it possibly take?”

“Well, if we go to trial again-.”

“Seven Hells, he’s guilty, everyone knows that.”

“It’s getting complicated. He’s trying to bargain his way out, apparently he has some dirt on-.”

“And this is your problem why?”

“Because I’m their lawyer. It’s my job.” Mom stared at the wooden surface of the kitchen island, gritting her teeth. The TV droned in the background, one of those renovation shows but for cottages. Crisp, flannel-clad Andal couples commissioning sprawling plywood nightmares for whatever unfortunate acre of stolen land they’d lucked into, usually somewhere around Long Lake or Sea Dragon Point. Aly had seen them along the Northeastern edge of Bear Island, bleach blonde housewives at the gas station corralling a soccer team’s worth of offspring while their husbands worked at the oil sands. At the end of every week they congregated at mega-septs and drove cartoonishly large trucks and were all either performatively carnivorous or militantly vegan and across the board vehemently opposed to the hunting of seals and whales and they fascinated her to no end. She took another cube of bowhead from the bowl, meditated on the salt and the texture and tried to conceptualize how long it would be until she was back. Part of her hoped the whole mess would resolve itself quickly, part of her wanted to be gone forever.

She had first noticed the unique white-collar dysfunction of the Greyjoy-Harlaws in university, the frequency with which Asha’s phone would vibrate and light up with with a foreboding caller ID- ‘ Dad- DO *NOT* ANSWER IF INEBRIATED ’. Everytime he called Asha would apologize and sneak off to be ranted at for an hour or so. She would return seeming out of it, Aly knew better than to pry. 

She understood it better in the ICU of Cerwyn Memorial. Asha abandoning any attempt to feign composure. Rodrik with his loving condescension and swampwater wellness shots. Theon in a constant feedback loop of seizures and sudden drops in heart rate and the nauseating drone of the ventilator trying to force air into failing lungs. She remembered watching him and thinking maybe it was better if he didn’t make it. Contemplating if she’d want to be kept alive like this and what was waiting on the other side if he ever started to improve. She remembered Jeyne standing over him, gaunt and frail and leaning on her IV pole and the day she decided to take her to the Godswood behind the hospital. She knelt at the base of the weirwood, tilted her head back and screamed, a guttural scream that made Aly’s blood run cold, and they stayed there until it got dark. 

She sat with Asha while she chain-smoked on the designated balcony overlooking the GWA, from Downtown Winterfell to Central Winterfell to Upper Winterfell to Cerwyn to the line where Cerywn became miles of fields and Torrhen’s Square began to sprout up along the horizon. She didn’t say anything, just watched as Asha stared with empty eyes at the grey sky and the greyer expanse of city and suburb and everything else. Sometimes they would go over testimony, sometimes review what they had on Bolton, but more often than not Asha would just stare and Aly would watch her stare, wondering what the fuck was going through her head. 

The weirdest memory was how they left it off eight months later. 

Aly had been thankful for the armed guards that walked them through the Winterfell airport, thankful for the medevac that would get them home discreetly. Asha was the last person she said goodbye to, after she knelt to meet Theon’s half-comatose eyeline and implored him in a tone that bordered on condescending to ‘keep up the good work, okay?’. The hug lasted a few seconds too long but she didn’t care, she just tightened one arm around Asha’s waist and stroked her hair with the other hand.

“Thank you.” Asha whispered into her shoulder. “Seriously. Thank you.”

“I’m just a phone call away.” she replied. “Anything you need, I’ll get on a plane and haul ass out there. Swear to the Mother.”

Asha pulled back and dried her eyes with the collar of her sweatshirt. She smiled, Qarl wrapped an arm around her and kissed her on the forehead. And they boarded and Aly stood there for what felt like hours. She drove home, ordered in and got drunk by herself, listening to her downstairs neighbours have a screaming match that soon devolved into angry makeup sex. She woke up to a text from Asha. 

Just realized I forgot to let u know when we landed. Got Theon settled at Volmark General and we’re going to be staying with Rodrik. It’s looking like he’ll be able to come home next month, physio and speech therapy soon. Feeling slightly more optimistic. Just wanted to say thank u again, from all of us for everything. 

Three pink heart emojis.

She had scrolled through the entirety of Asha’s Instagram while she waited for her flight to start boarding and the tagged pictures while she waited for her luggage. Various group pictures of drunk Ironborn women in dimly lit bars that Aly would have to search for her in, Qarl’s saccharine Wife-Guy posts with captions like ‘ happy 26th to the love of my life and the only person I know who looks hot while eating crabs ’, Rodrik’s meticulously dated photo albums. 

Once she got two years back she started seeing posts she recognized, nervous every time she scrolled down to one she had liked when it was originally posted, checking to make sure she hadn’t liked it just then by accident. A sunset from a hospital room window, Asha’s hand holding a fleshless, slightly larger hand with only four fingers pin-cushioned with IVs against toothpaste-green hospital bedsheets, captioned with a single red heart emoji, the comments turned off. 

Tris pulled up in a shapeless orange sweatshirt that read ‘I CONQUERED THE LONELY LIGHT LEVIATHAN AND AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE!’ and below that, ‘Greyiron Grill- Lonely Light, I.I.’ He grinned when he saw her.

“There’s my favourite ambulance chaser!” he took her suitcase and tossed it haphazardly into the backseat of his car, it landed between a gym bag and a graveyard of Yi-Ti Express wrappers. “How was your flight?”

“Not so bad. I conked out for most of it, hence the weird mascara smudge.”

“Hmm…” he gave her a quizzical look. “Makeup. On Aly. For a flight.” he smirked, “gotta look cute for your girlfriend .”

“Tris, I’m warning you.”

“Hey, I think the hall pass thing was a good idea.” he started the car, “if I was in a relationship, I would want to be confident enough in it that I could sanction a good, solid threesome. Qarl doesn’t even see Tuna Commercial Guy that much so it’s working out. And I know for a fact that  Asha has been-.”

“Tris, I’m not here for that.” he raised an eyebrow, “I’m serious. I mean, Asha’s great, I’m glad Qarl’s good with our... arrangement but I’m here for Jeyne and Theon. Okay?”

“Yeah. That’s… that makes sense. Hm.” He began to pull out of the airport parking lot. “So it’s an okay flight from Bear Island to here, yeah?”

“Oh yeah. six-and-a-half-ish hours. Podcast, one of those little plane wines, felt like six minutes.” Aly eyed Tris’s sweatshirt. “What the hell is the Lonely Light Leviathan?”

“Oh, haha-.” Tris glanced down at his sweatshirt. “You know those things… where if you eat it in under a certain time-frame it’s free?”

“I’m familiar.”

“Well, this… It’s like... a maritime turducken? Squid rings around a lobster tail inside clam chowder in, like, an egg-in-a-hole format inside a tuna steak inside a swordfish steak inside a whole albacore.” he grinned, “time limit is 15 minutes, I did it in 7. Threw up on the drive home.”

“That sounds horrifying .”

“Oh, it was. Tasted like absolute ass. But that much seafood is expensive and… I was coerced.”

“Seriously, you’re like a raccoon. I feel like I could feed you a shoe and you wouldn’t even flinch.”

He turned on the radio on a low volume, some indie station. “I have swallowed a wrapper or two in my day.” There was a pause, Aly stared out the window as Tris turned onto the bridge, the ocean was a deep, frigid teal, churning as the wind swept up a fine layer of mist.

“So, um…” Aly pinched the bridge of her nose. “How are they taking it?”

Tris took a deep breath. “They’re okay. Yeah. I mean, all things considered. Like, we’re not at the worst case scenario yet. But I mean, I don’t wanna speak too soon, I feel like they could still be processing it.” Aly saw his face tense up. “I’m- we’re all really glad you’re here.”

“Yeah.” Aly knit her fingers together in her lap and stared at the horizon. “Me too.”

Chapter Text

THEON

Theon was 17 the first time he had kissed Robb. They had been thigh deep in Ironman’s Bay as the sun was going down.

He wanted so badly to hate the excess that the Stark family enjoyed but then he remembered the two Other Homes his own family had plus the two private beaches that came with them and the stupid amount of boats and swallowed his annoyance. The Starks had a lake house and a beach house and Theon’s third year with them involved three weeks spent at the latter, and there was no bigger fuck-you the universe could have delivered to him than the fact that it was in fucking Seagard of all places.  He cycled through a myriad of emotions as they pulled into the driveway, he could see Ironman’s Bay lapping at the sand from the backseat of the minivan. The sand was the same colour and consistency of the sand at Ten Towers Beach, and knowing that Harlaw had been right up against Seagard however many millions of years ago before the shifting of tectonic plates pushed the Iron Islands out into the ocean almost made him sick. He didn’t say anything the whole first day, just sat in silence as the other kids ran around the house, followed Robb and Jon down to the beach, stared despondently at the horizon. He couldn’t tell if the tiny smudge he could see at the edge of the seemingly endless bay was Harlaw or just a mirage. The smell of the ocean felt like an insult, like someone was dangling it in front of him and taunting him with it. 

Every year the Starks went to the same restaurant on their first night in Seagard and sat at the same table on a patio overlooking the Bay. It was called The Salubrious Scallop and Theon could practically smell the well-meaning condescension dripping off of Cat as she fastened his bow tie and slicked his hair back and explained that ‘this is a five star restaurant so it’s very important that we dress appropriately. Did your family ever take you out for nice dinners?’

Theon just smiled and nodded. He wanted to say that yes, of course they did. We’re rich back home. Dad is the Iron Chancellor so of course we did . He remembered Mom’s birthday dinner four years ago when Dad did a line off his menu and Maron had to drive home, then Asha’s birthday the year before that when Uncle Vic fought a line cook in the parking lot and lost, then his own birthday the year before that when the waitress forgot to take his order and didn’t come back for another half hour so he ate after everyone else and found out the hard way that he was lactose intolerant. 

The foyer of The Salubrious Scallop was the same each year, the same seashells and seahorses and starfish painted all over the walls and the same blue shag carpet that only seemed to get grimier as time passed. The same smell of seafood that always seemed weaker than it had been  back home and… the painting. Theon noticed the painting right away as the hostess brought them to their table; an old-timey painting of an Andal knight in boiled leather, a breastplate and a kilt thrusting a longsword through the chest of a swarthy, axe-wielding man draped in a pony-hair blanket belted at the waist over shark-skin breeches. Blood dripped into the shallow water they were standing in, a stingray circled the Ironborn man’s bare feet as he died. Theon felt an unfamiliar jolt of shame in his stomach as he stared at the painting, the way the features of the man who looked like him were painted in contrast to the features of the man who didn’t. The long, exaggerated nose, the wide mouth with bee-stung lips and cartoonishly prominent teeth, the wild eyes and the unkempt hair and beard matted with seaweed next to the stoic, noble Andal who maintained his dignity even with blood on his hands. He stared at the painting for so long everyone else had already sat down. He was so fixated on it the only thing that brought him back to reality was the scent of Cat’s perfume as she took him by the hand and half-dragged him over to the table. His snow crab entree was scrawny and tasted slightly off, the butter watery and the vegetables limp. He didn’t say a word for the entire meal except to excuse himself to go to the washroom to throw it all up. He stared at himself in the mirror for a good fifteen minutes, trying to analyze his face through his tears. His nose, his lips, his eyes and teeth, his shoulder-length black curls, olive skin and dark brown freckles. Everyone had always said he looked like Uncle Aeron and he had always been proud of that until now. Now all he could see were crazy eyes, a huge nose, swollen lips and equine teeth, and all he felt was rage.

He wondered if anybody knew who or what he was as he picked at his dessert, watching the other kids gleefully inhale theirs, watching as Cat fed tiny Bran little spoonfuls of ice cream and Arya fell asleep in Ned’s lap. He thought about the wary look the hostess had given him, the way the waiter set his plate down a little harder than everyone else’s, the way that older Andal man in the washroom had done a double take and said ‘what are you doing in here?!’ He didn’t say anything the entire drive home and when Cat came in to say goodnight he didn’t answer when she asked him if something was wrong. 

That was the night he heard Ned talking to Jason Mallister on the porch. 

“He’s a good kid.” Ned said after a long drink of wine, “I was worried at first, you know. I mean, aside from the obvious, his medical transcript was... interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

“Well, he’s autistic, for starters. They don’t really have services for that out there so I guess he’s lucky to be where he is… something’s wrong with the sister too, I’m not sure if it’s genetic, but I wouldn’t rule out the both of them having come in contact with… something… in utero.” he paused, “they found a meth lab on the property-.”

“Seven Hells…” Mallister took a drag of his cigarette, “well, you know Ned-.” he exhaled smoke into the glow of the porch light, it curled slowly upwards, “-now you know I’m not xenophobic. I mean, look at me, I’m half Andal-half Rhoynish, you’re Northern, you’re one of my best friends, but…” Mallister looked around, Theon tried to breathe as quietly as possible, “-it’s… out there, you’re… you’re dealing with an average IQ of about… I wanna be nice and say 85? The best thing you can do for that kid is keeping him with you.”

“Okay, now we’re getting into numbers and-.”

“Numbers aside. Look at where you are. The whole reason Seagard exists is because there was something in the water that needed to be kept there.” he took another drag, “he’s young still, maybe you have a chance to… I don’t know, man, I’m talking myself in circles.”

“No, I hear you. I worry about him. I’ll say it again, he’s a good kid from a fucked up family but I know certain things run in families. I worry about addiction, behavioural issues, I worry about him maybe… idealizing… the ISM. We’ll just have to see.”

“Yeah. Gods… You’re doing the right thing.”

Theon didn’t know if the trips got easier or if he just learned to grin and bear it. The sign on the neighbour’s cottage door that read ‘Beware of Pirates’ in a weird font meant to resemble tentacles, the food trucks that patrolled town serving watered down ‘Islandic’ cuisine, the sign at the marina that read ‘Drowned Men Tell No Tales! Wear a Life Preserver!’ with a crude drawing of a Drowned Priest wearing a life jacket, same bulbous nose, inflated lips, buck teeth, feral look in his lime green eyes...Theon always wondered what would happen if he were to draw a mocking caricature of an Andal septon with stringy blonde hair and pinched, tiny features or R’hllor getting sucked off by a weirwood, its mouth dripping with red sap and redder semen. He had smirked at the mental image until Arya laughed and announced;

“Theon, that looks like you!”

He smiled as he choked back sub-par fish that no self-respecting Ironborn would ever serve, he grinned as Andal cottagers stared at him slack-jawed and followed him around stores waiting to catch him stealing something, he wore the few items of traditional clothing he had to the beach and inquired about spear-fishing lessons at a local tourist trap, making sure to throw in a jovial proclamation of ‘Ah yes, just like we used to do back home!’. He even tracked down the guy responsible for the painting at The Salubrious Scallop. He was a local artist named Alyx Rivers who had been dead for about ten years. Theon ascertained that the painting was entitled ‘Defending Seagard’ and the majority of this guy’s other paintings were mainly limited to inoffensive sunsets, fish and lily-white Andal fishermen. Theon felt a weird blend of relief and annoyance, how are you going to paint that and then just churn out a few half-assed landscapes and a bunch of sharks? If you’re going to be a racist dick at least own it .

And every year, after they had packed the car to for the two day road trip back to Winterfell and were sitting down to their final dinner in Seagard at a slightly more casual backyard restaurant overlooking the water called The Seagard Docks, Ned would ask each kid what the highlight of their trip was and every year Theon would answer ‘just being here’ and every year without fail Ned would smile and say ‘we’re glad you’re here too, Theon.’ and every year he hated that it always made him feel slightly better. 

The day Theon kissed Robb had been the hottest one of that year. It was the first time Cat had ever turned the air conditioning on at the beach house and she had to call her brother to have him explain it to her. Theon and Robb and the other kids spent the day getting pulverized by the frigid waves of Ironman’s Bay and every time Theon got an accidental mouthful of saltwater he thought about how it would feel to choke on it, to suffocate on an endless supply of ice-cold sea until everything went black and it was all over. It was their second-last day at the beach house, a week before school would start again. That was the one of the years Jeyne came with them. It was weird, in retrospect. The way they both knew they didn’t belong there but just went with it, everything between them that was unspoken, and everything unspoken now.

It happened out of the blue but that was the only time it would have made sense. Theon was almost prepared for it, he couldn’t explain why but he felt like it had to happen right then. There was something about the wind and the water and the way the sunset burned his eyes and seared his face that made it all make sense. Robb’s damp arm wrapping around his waist and his wet hand coming up to cup his cheek and the taste of dill pickle chips and the beers they’d stolen from the fridge on his lips and the feeling of wet skin on wet skin as they wrapped their arms around each other and Robb’s head dropped to Theon’s shoulder and Theon’s cheek to Robb’s forehead. He didn’t know how long they stood there for, but it was long enough for the sun to dip three quarters of the way into the water and for the heat to dissipate.  They kissed twice more before Theon whispered;

“Robb?”

“Yeah?

“Don’t tell Kyra, okay?”

“I won’t.” Robb hugged him tighter. 

“It’s different with you.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Theon bit his lip, stared at the shuddering reflection of the sun on the pale green waves. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They stood there for what seemed like forever before the silence was broken by the sound of limbs slicing through water.

“What are you guys doing?”

They turned around to see Jon, Jeyne and Sansa standing there. They jumped away from each other. 

“We were just talking.” Theon covered, “why? What are you guys doing?”

“Mom says come inside, we’re gonna watch a movie.” Sansa said in that authoritarian tone exclusive to eleven-year-old girls, “she made lemon cakes and she said it’s getting dark soon so come inside right now .”

“ Yee-aah .” said Jeyne. There was something cruel about that memory, the way her mouth had been learning to move around her new braces. Theon had had braces from when he was 8 to 12 and Jeyne would have them up until a week after her wedding and thinking of it made him sick. Thinking of how they would eventually be ripped off with a fork, the money Vayon had to scrape together so she could have straight teeth, thinking of the teeth she would lose and the pristine fake ones that would take their place, paid for by an anonymous donor.

He couldn’t remember what movie it was, only the way his legs tangled up with Robb’s under the blanket on the couch, the exhaustion from a day of swimming and oppressive sun and the way his vision tunneled as he began to fall asleep halfway through the movie and the way Robb had been stroking his hair. That was the last time things had been easy and there was something in the back of Theon’s mind that told him ‘ enjoy this, because you will never feel like this again ’. Next year’s Crone-Smith Break would find Theon spending one awkward drunken week at the beach house before driving himself back to Winterfell for frosh, and the following year Ned would have his brains blown out by Day of the Maiden and some eight-ish months later Theon would be elbow-deep in humiliation and credit card debt with Dagmer yelling at him over FaceTime to ‘ stop this shit right now, you have no fucking idea what you’re doing, this is a suicide mission- ’ and everything after that just tasted like tears and blood and semen and tooth decay and starvation and it made him want to scream. He remembered Jeyne staring blissfully at the TV, whichever movie it had been, she and Sansa had picked it, and her big brown eyes swimming with the reflection of the screen. He remembered the way she slowly raised each forkful of lemon cake to her mouth and ate it so carefully with her newly cumbersome teeth while Sansa dozed off, they shared an armchair that was large enough to fit them both and wore matching pyjamas. At the time he had thought it was cute. Looking back on it now, the innocence filled him with angry nostalgia so intense that the migraine it always brought on could take him out for a day or two. He wished he could have told her what his subconscious told him, he wished he could have picked her up and shaken her, he wished everything could have been avoided.

Every memory of Jeyne from back then was a little bit painful. Theon had always liked her, she was less abrasive than Arya but more rambunctious than Sansa. He remembered when Kyra told him they’d been paired up for tutoring and always enjoying dropping Kyra off at Jeyne’s house. He liked seeing Jeyne watching at the front window and answering the door all excited. It was a small house in a slightly rough neighbourhood, Jeyne and her dad weren’t dirt poor but they didn’t have any semblance of disposable income. Theon remembered the way Jeyne would walk around the Stark house like she was in a hotel or an art gallery and the way Sansa would obsess for days over getting Jeyne the perfect birthday gift because she knew Vayon kept Day of the Father and Day of the Mother very modest. Theon always thought it was stupid how he would refuse financial support when Ned and Cat offered it but as he got older he realized it was a pride thing and he’d felt it on occasion too. They found ways around it; sending Jeyne home with containers full of food, bringing her on trips, sleepovers with Sansa that involved some kind of frivolous activity. On the rare occasion that Dad would actually send his mandated child support payments, Theon would buy her something small and slip it into her backpack when she came over, lip gloss here, nail polish there, things she might have thought she had misplaced and forgotten about. When she caught him planting a bag of her favourite chips between her lunch box and her math textbook, she stared at him silently for a good minute before whispering;

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I had extra.” he lied, shrugging and smiling awkwardly.

And Jeyne gave him a weird look and just said, “okay. Thanks.” and Theon prayed she wouldn’t see fit to question it or try and return the favour.

She had been such a good kid, she was just so fundamentally good and she and Sansa had loved each other so much. Her Missing Person alert had been such a fucking gut punch to everyone in the neighbourhood, especially Kyra. Theon remembered sitting in Kyra’s car holding her as she sobbed, staring at a Facebook post of Jeyne’s eighth grade school picture, her long braids tied with one pink elastic and one yellow, her floral overalls over her lavender turtleneck, her smile and her blue braces. He remembered how sick he’d felt, staring at the empty sidestreet they had parked on, the asphalt pale grey with salt stains and the skeletal trees sprouting up from dry, dead lawns. The city of Winterfell alone was big enough to lose someone in, the GWA on top of that, The North itself. People went missing back home all the time, usually washed up on beaches or in harbours and the surface area of the Islands could probably fit inside the GWA easily. Jeyne was microscopic. 

That was the one thing about getting out, the one lingering insult was how small his own world had become. It had grown, he could say that, but it would never be the size it had been when he was 19 and he couldn’t even chock it up to life experience. He tried not to think about that most days but sometimes he did and it made him nauseous. 

The scale of the world had grown from a stygian pit so miniscule that the only things he could fit into it were disembodied voices and a constant, frigid ache. It cracked like an egg into acrid white light and different types of pain that lit up different edges of what he had assumed, at the time, to be where what was left of his flesh began or ended. The voices were louder and sounded like individual words and possibly attached to individual people, he tried to replicate them but just felt a raw sting in what he assumed was the base of his throat. Sometimes he felt hands and he couldn’t figure out who they belonged to so he would try to fight them but he couldn’t say for sure if he ever moved. Sometimes he could make out the sensation of something engaging or contracting or happening and usually it was followed by a long stretch of absolute silence. 

He knew the beach house was probably as big as it would get. The beach house, the car, Uncle Rodrik’s house and sometimes various medical settings. Medication made it feel smaller, like a warm, blurry tunnel lined with the same soundproofing foam that had been on the walls of his piano teacher’s studio when Mom had tried to pull some scrap of talent out of him. Some days pills felt like checkpoints, little stops between blurry stretches of time that could either be hesitantly comfortable or disastrous, the ones that signalled the end of the day were his favourite. Sometimes it felt like everyone was waiting, watching until he caused their next problem. Sometimes he just waited for it to get bad so the waiting would be over. He’d been laying supine in an MRI when he overheard the radiologist speculating to a neurosurgeon about his quality of life and realized that they didn’t know he could not only hear them but also understand. That night he had stared at Asha, asleep under her jacket in the chair beside his bed and wondered if she too would kill herself if she was in his position. He thought of Mom giving birth to her at 28 weeks, what Mom had been thinking as she looked at newborn Asha in the NICU, he thought of the tiny pink pincushion of IVs in Uncle Rodrik’s photo albums and thought to himself, nauseous, that he was now the worst case scenario. 

Sometimes he had dreams about the beach house, about the long hallway between the kitchen and the living room lined with pictures of Cat’s extended family. Their glassy blue eyes staring down at him, eyeing his every move from their decorative gold cardboard frames. He would walk down the hallway, hardwood popping under his feet the way it did when he and Robb and Jon would sneak downstairs after the adults had gone to bed to slowly, painstakingly, open the liquor cabinet door, slip an arm in and grab something that they could mix with cream soda. He remembered the last year he’d spent at the beach house, when he decided it was time to replace that one forgotten bottle of rum that was mostly water. Ned had walked in on him swapping out the bottles and Theon had braced himself but Ned just started laughing.

“You sneaky little shits.” Theon remembered him saying, bending over and leaning against the fireplace to catch his breath, “I thought that rum tasted weird.”

When he reached the end of the hall, every time without fail he would pull back the curtain from the glass doors that led out onto the beach, open the doors and step out onto the porch. It was always midday, the sun was always brutal, and the water was always choppy. As he made his way down to the waterline, he would see it right where the waves met the sand, washing up like garbage. He would pick it up and run his fingers over the burly Andal man with shoulder length black hair and impossibly pale eyes wearing a police uniform. In his hand, he held a longsword. Impaled on it, every single time, was a thin naked man with light brown skin and wide green eyes, his mouth spread open in a silent scream, blood pouring from a wound in his chest and a wound between his legs. The thin brown man knelt in painted water, three bodies floating around him. An Ironborn woman with short black hair and limbs covered in tattoos, a Northern girl in kiddy overalls and braces, a boy with brown skin and red hair in a suit that was a size too big for him, all of them cold and dead, garbage wrapped around their throats, their skin slick with spilled oil, shrimp crawling out of their mouths. Only when he felt bodies knocking against him in the shallow water and looked up to see pale grey eyes and a Winterfell Police Department badge and feel a sharp explosion in his chest would he wake up, fighting for his life against Jeyne’s arms pinning him to the mattress.