7: Prince of Mud
genre: angst, romance, heartbreak, hurt/little comfort pairings: robb stark x reader m.list prev, next Notes: WARNING!! Mature content ahead. Read at your own discretion.
The change from the iron-wrought decay of Pyke to the frozen, defenseless heart of the North was a journey marked by the shedding of Theon’s soul, piece by agonizing piece.
He did not wake up one morning and decide to be a villain; he spent his nights in the dark, watching the layers of the "Stark ward" be stripped away by the salt, the wind, and the relentless, grinding mockery of his own kin.
The Iron Islands were a harsh, unyielding place, where the only currency was blood and the only law was the tide.
Every morning, Theon awoke to the sound of waves battering the blackened stone of the cliffs, a sound that reminded him he was not in the quiet, forested halls of Winterfell.
Here, there were no books, no long, thoughtful nights over maps with Robb, no steady presence of a clerk who challenged him with a sharp word or a steady gaze. There was only the brine, the cold, and the judgment of a father who looked at him as if he were a piece of rotting kelp washed up by a storm.
Balon Greyjoy was a relic of a dead age, a man who believed that if you threw enough lives into the sea, the gods would eventually grant you a throne. He paced in his chamber in Pyke, his back hunched like a vulture’s, fingers tracing the patterns of a map that showed only the islands. And when he spoke to Theon, it was with a sneer that made Theon’s blood boil.
"You speak of Robb Stark as if he were your brother," Balon muttered, his voice raspy and thin. "He is a boy who will lose his head before the season is out. And you—you come back here wearing his clothes, thinking his thoughts, praying to his cold, dead gods. You are not a Greyjoy. You are a pet that has been returned to the cage."
Yara, his sister, was even more cruel. She walked the halls of Pyke with a swagger that spoke of true power, her hand always near the hilt of her blade. She treated Theon like a curiosity, a half-trained wolf that had been brought into a den of krakens.
"Look at him, Father," she would say, her eyes flashing with laughter. "He hasn’t even learned how to hold an axe. He’s spent ten years sharpening pens and running messages. The North has broken him."
In the solitude of his chamber, Theon’s mind was a storm. He remembered his childhood at Winterfell, but the memories were being rewritten by his own bitterness. He began to twist his perspective, framing every act of kindness shown to him by the Starks as an act of condescension.
They never wanted me, he thought. They were keeping me. They were using me as a piece to be traded or sacrificed.
The thoughts burned. A fire of his own doing.
He began to despise the very idea of Winterfell, not because he hated it, but because he hated the way it made him feel—lesser, incomplete, a shadow living in the glow of a better man.
Then there was Dagmer Cleftjaw.
Dagmer was a man who had seen too many battles, his face a map of scars and survival. He was the one who pulled Theon into the dark corners of the Sea Bitch, whispering into his ear like a devil in the night.
"They won't respect you, my Prince," Dagmer would say, pouring a cup of sour, fermented ale into a rusted tin mug. "Not until you prove you have the salt in your veins."
Theon downed his own mug in a half-blink. Finding solace in the familiar taste of the ale. The only remembrance he had left of the brothels in the North.
"You talk about raids, about ships, about the Iron Price. But those are just words. Your father won't give you a fleet to raid the coast. He’ll give you a rowboat and a pat on the head."
"Then what would you have me do?" Theon asked, his voice shaking with a mix of fear and cold ambition.
"Take something that is yours," Dagmer said, his eyes glinting in the dim light. A dangerous glint so akin to the kraken that hung on their banners.
"Take Winterfell. The castle is wide open, a gaping wound in the middle of the North. The heir is gone, his men are gone, his power is gone." the man had spitted out, his smile turning sour.
"You could walk through the front gate, and the people would bow because they are terrified, not because they love you."
"Winterfell is a fortress," Theon countered, though his mind was already painting a picture of himself sitting in the high chair of the Great Hall. "It’s built for a siege."
"It’s built for a war that is already over," Dagmer scoffed. "Do you think the servants will fight? Do you think the cripple can defend the gates? You don’t need an army, Theon. You need a shadow. You need to be the surprise that breaks them."
The idea began to consume him. It became the only thought that mattered.
He wasn't just planning a raid; he was planning a rebirth.
If I take Winterfell, I am the man who broke the North.
I am the man who destroyed the Starks.
I am the Iron King.
While Theon allowed the poison of his ambition to ripen in the dark of the Iron Islands, Winterfell was a place of fading sunlight and growing dread. You had become the heartbeat of a castle that no longer knew what it was beating for. The hallways, once filled with the clatter of armored boots and the shouts of soldiers, were now eerily silent, save for the echo of your own footsteps and Gage's shouts for orders.
Your work was an endless cycle of maintenance and care. You managed the accounts, the supplies, and the dwindling hope of a household left in the wake of war. But your true labor was the children.
Bran was the most difficult of the lot. He spent his days in the solar, his world confined to the stone walls and the books you read to him. He was a boy who had lost the ability to run, and now, he was losing the ability to hope.
You often found him staring out the window, his eyes fixed on the horizon, as if he were waiting for a raven that would never come.
One afternoon, the light was particularly gray, filtering through the high, narrow windows in thin, dusty shafts. You sat beside him, a heavy volume of northern history on your lap, but you hadn't turned a page in an hour.
"Do you think he's coming back, Y/N?" Bran asked. His voice was small, but it carried a weight that made your chest ache.
You closed the book, the sound echoing in the silent room. "He has to, Bran. The North needs its Lord."
"The North does not need me," he said, and there was a terrifying maturity in his words that shouldn't have belonged to a child. "I'm just a cripple. I’m a broken piece of a broken house."
"You are a Stark," you said, reaching out to take his hand. Your fingers were stained with ink, a testament to your own labor, but your grip was firm. "And as long as there is a Stark in Winterfell, there is hope for the North. Don't you ever believe anything else."
He looked at you then, and for a moment, the distance in his eyes vanished. He saw you—not as the clerk, not as the ward, but as the one person who refused to let the fire in the hearth go out.
Rickon, however, was a different sort of fire entirely. He was six, younger than you were when your family had gotten the fever pox, and he lived in a world where the only language was instinct.
He missed his brothers, his father, and his mother with a ferocity that manifested in constant, restless motion. He was the one who had Shaggydog growling at every shadow, the one who tried to scale the high walls, the one who screamed when he couldn't find a reason for the world to be the way it was.
You found him in the training yard, his clothes torn and his face smeared with the soot of the stables. He was batting at a wooden post with a stick, his jaw set in a line of pure, unadulterated fury.
"Rickon, stop," you said, approaching him slowly.
"They left," he sobbed, the sound raw and jagged. "They all left me!"
You knelt on the frost-covered ground, not caring about the mud or the cold. You took the stick from his hand and pulled him into your arms. He fought you for a second, a small, wild thing of claws and teeth, before he collapsed against you, his sobs shaking his small body.
"They'll be back," you whispered into his hair, though the words tasted like ash. "I promise."
It was during these quiet moments of survival that you became aware of Osha.
She was always there, a phantom in the corner of your eye. She had started as a prisoner, a wildling caught in the woods, but she had become a creature of the castle, watching from the rafters, moving through the halls with a silent, feline grace.
She stood near the entrance to the yard, her hand resting on the hilt of a stolen dirk, her eyes tracking everything. She didn't trust the quiet. She knew, as you did, that the silence was just the prelude to a scream.
"You're trying to patch a roof with paper, clerk," she said, her voice a raspy whisper that carried over the wind.
"What would you have me do, Osha?" you asked, not letting go of Rickon. "Let the house fall?"
"I would have you prepare for the fire," she said, stepping closer. Her eyes were sharp, filled with the knowledge of a world that didn't know mercy. "The wolves are gone. The crows are coming. And when they come, they won't look for ledgers. They'll look for throats."
You didn't answer her.
You couldn't.
Because you knew she was right. You knew that the thin veneer of order you were maintaining was a fragile thing, and that somewhere in the distance, the fog was already beginning to gather.
The return to Winterfell was not a triumphant procession; it was a slow, deliberate strangulation. Theon Greyjoy moved with the patience of a predator, his ironmen slipping through the marshes and the woods like ink in water. They were not an army; they were a blade in the dark.
As they approached the outer gates, Theon stood at the head of the column, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He looked at the familiar gray stone of the walls, the place that had been his home for ten years.
Every stone felt like a memory. Every gate felt like a threshold he was crossing for the final time.
"Remember," he whispered to Dagmer, his voice low and tight. "We don't need a slaughter. We need the castle. We need the boys."
"The boys will be our shield, Prince," Dagmer replied, his hand resting on the hilt of his weapon. "And when the North realizes who is holding the key to their kingdom, they will bow. They will have no choice."
Theon’s mind churned.
He thought of Robb, of the way he had once stood on these same battlements, looking out over the snow.
He thought of the clerk—your face and your steady, ink-stained hands—and he felt a sudden, sharp pang of something that might have been regret, but he crushed it instantly.
I am not a hostage anymore. I am the conqueror.
The ironmen came in the night, like fog rising off the bog.
There had been no grand horn-blasts to wake the sleeping keep, no orderly line of spearmen forming on the ramparts to defend the ancient seat of the Kings of Winter.
Winterfell had been bled white of its steel, its strength scattered across the fertile fields of the south under the banners of the Young Wolf.
All that remained within the great granite walls were the toothless and the green—old men whose knees cracked like dry kindling in the morning frost, and stableboys whose trembling hands could barely draw the string of a shortbow.
By the time the sun broke through the heavy, iron-gray overcast, the courtyard was already lost. The ironmen moved through the mist like wolves in the sheepfold, their heavy boots caked with black peat, their bearded axes dripping with the dark, thick blood of the gate-guards.
Theon Greyjoy stood on the stone steps of the Great Hall, his silhouette framed against the damp air. The black kraken cloak of his house hung heavy from his shoulders, dark and slick with the morning drizzle. He looked not like a prince claiming his birthright, but like a scavenger picking at the bones of a fallen titan.
Inside the sprawling darkness of the corridors, you moved with the frantic, silent grace of a ghost. You had heard the first scream—the wet, gurgling sound of a guard being dragged into the shadow of the portcullis—and you had known, with a cold, absolute certainty, that the walls had been breached.
You didn't run for the armory.
You had remembered the face of Eddard Stark and his words that he so often repeated to ease the whole of Winterfell.
There must always be a Stark at Winterfell.
You ran for the nursery and the hidden tunnels that only the castle’s mortar—the one who mapped the secret veins of the keep—could navigate in the dark.
"Bran! Rickon!" your voice was a sharp, urgent hiss as you pulled them from their pallets. Bran’s eyes were wide, filled with a terrifying, ancient confusion, and Rickon was trembling so violently his teeth were clattering.
"Where’s Robb?" Rickon whimpered, his voice high and shrill. "Why are the men shouting?"
"There's no time," you said, lifting Bran up onto your back and holding Rickon's hands.
You didn't stop to explain. You shoved them toward the low, hidden archway behind the tapestry of the hunting wolves.
Hodor was already there, hunched and shivering, his massive frame squeezed into the narrow passage, his eyes rolling back in fear. He had been trained by the master-at-arms to defend the boys, but he was a gentle giant caught in the gears of a war he didn't understand.
"Hodor," you said, your voice softening as you placed your hand on his broad, sweating arm. "You have to take them."
"You do not let anyone through." you looked in his eyes then, trying your best to mirror Jon's sharp gaze and Robb's authority.
You had to be brave, like them.
"Hodor!" he whimpered, nodding frantically.
"Go!" you shoved Bran in his arms, watching as the giant vanished into the throat of the dark. You heard the boys’ muffled gasps as they scrambled into the gloom after him. Trying your best to deafen your ears to their little shouts of protest.
"Y/N please don't leave us!" Bran had cried out.
"Why are you doing this? Please Y/N-"
"There is no time for questions," you said, your grip tightening on their wrists. You shoved them toward the low, hidden archway concealed behind the heavy tapestry of the hunting wolves.
Suddenly, a shadow detached itself from the doorway and you had felt your heart drop. But it quickly recovered when Osha stepped into the flickering candlelight, her hand already wrapped around the hilt of a stolen dirk. Her eyes, sharp and wild, raked over the boys before settling on you.
"They're coming," she rasped, the words devoid of panic, only a grim, predatory acceptance. "The Ironmen are cutting through the courtyard. I counted three squads. They’re moving for the heart of the keep."
The Ironmen?
"It cannot be Theon," you shook your head as your heart beat loudly in your ears, "Theon would never do this."
"I saw the banners, clerk! A golden kraken drowning in black—"
"No! No..." your hand came up to your mouth as you tried to stop the sob that fought its way to your mouth. You shook your head fervently as memories of him resurfaced
"Am I your brother? Now and always?" Theon asked Robb, his eyes full of nothing but admiration and pride as he looked at his brother.
"Now and always." came Robb's reply.
"Oh gods, what has happened?" you whimpered and looked at Bran and Rickon, at their little faces who had pleaded you to come with them. Your mind raced as you thought of a million things to say.
"What would you have me do?" Osha's voice cut through your thoughts.
A thousand words and questions flooded your mind all at once. The lack of air in the scullery room added no comfort as your world seemed to turn itself upside down. You closed your eyes and clenched your fists, inhaling a sharp intake of breath as you willed your voice to be bigger than you felt.
I must be brave, like Jon.
"Hide them," you ordered, your voice steadying as you forced the boys toward the narrow stone throat of the passage.
"The boys, and Hodor," your words were firm but your hands shook as you held her shoulders, "Down to the deepest vaults. The ones where the stone is thickest. Do not stop for the lights, don't stop for the voices." your eyes flitted between Hodor and Osha.
Bran and Rickon shook their heads at your words.
"You can't!"
"No. No Y/N please do not do this please–"
"You protect them with your life. Do you understand?" you repeated, louder and firmer, looking in between Hodor and Osha. Hoping that they would be enough. That what you held them to would be enough.
You lunged forward to embrace Rickon's shaking form and you held Bran's head as he hugged your neck.
"You are Ned Stark's sons and Lady Catelyn's pride. Remember who you are." came your final whisper to them and you tugged their hands away, breaking your heart slowly as they sobbed.
"Protect them."
"Hodor!" he wheezed, nodding frantically, his massive hands reaching out to shield the children.
Osha lunged forward, catching your arm with a grip like iron. Her face was inches from yours, her breath smelling of pine and cold earth. "Come with us, clerk. A giant and a girl aren't enough to navigate the bog tunnels. You know the maps. You know the secrets of the stones. We need you."
You shook your head, the motion firm and absolute. Hodor looked like he wanted to lift you into his arms himself if it were not so occupied with holding the boys back from pulling you with them.
"The castle is a labyrinth. If I vanish, they will turn this place upside down until they find the trail. They need a distraction, Osha," a bitter taste of bile filled your senses as soon as the words came out your mouth, and you shivered.
"Someone to hunt, someone to lead them away from the vaults." You looked at her, your eyes burning with the weight of the oath you had whispered to Robb the night he rode away.
Protect them. All of them.
"They need more than a strong back to survive the trek. They need a mind that knows how to hunt in the wild. That’s you, Osha. That’s why you’re here."
She stared at you, her jaw working as she searched for a flaw in your resolve, but she found none. She found in you the same determination that she had just a few weeks ago. A fire of survival. Osha had owed Robb Stark her life. And now she owed you her quiet allegiance.
"Osha please." you whispered.
She nodded her head, a slow, grim movement. "The little lord is all I have, clerk. It would sooner be me than him."
"Then go," you whispered, pushing her toward the dark.
She hesitated for a fraction of a heartbeat, then turned, her movements liquid and silent as she vanished into the gloom after Hodor and the boys.
As the tapestry fell back into place, a heavy, suffocating silence reclaimed the room.
"They are safe for now," a voice said. You spun around to see Maester Luwin standing in the doorway, his chain of office rattling faintly against his robes. He looked older than the stone itself, his eyes clouded with a lifetime of watching houses burn.
"Maester," you said, your breath hitching. "You should go with them."
He smiled a smile that did not reach his ears.
"My girl..." he said and you shook your head.
"Maester there is still time, please go with them. The boys–"
"I am the keeper of Winterfell’s history," Luwin replied, softly cutting you off, picking up a heavy iron pot from the hearth. "And today, it seems, the history is coming to an end."
"Maester..." your eyes softened.
"I belong in these halls, child. Just like you belong beside me," he told you, eyes full of emotion, "After all, what kind of ward are you if you send your master away?" he asked with a bitter smile.
Tears welled in your eyes as you laughed out a quiet scoff.
"My time here is for defending its history." he added.
"And I will not spend it cowering behind walls."
You grabbed a heavy brass candelstick from the nightstand. The metal was cold and heavy in your palm. "Then we do not let it end without a cost."
The doors to the room groaned. A heavy thud sounded against the wood, followed by the splintering of oak. Your heart plummeted as you gazed on what seemed to be a bad dream.
You had hoped what Osha said was not true. That all of this is some kind of joke he had used to make all the time when you were children. But his presence, the unfamiliar glint in his eyes, the man that stood beside him, and the blackness of his house's sigil that enveloped his frame, was a sight you wished you could eradicate from your memory.
Theon Greyjoy stood in the shattered threshold, his face a mask of jagged, broken pride.
He looked at you, then at the Maester, his eyes flickering with a momentary flash of recognition—a ghost of the boy who had once shared his meals in this very hall.
The chamber was an altar of dying light, and the air was thick with the copper tang of impending violence.
"Theon, look at me." You had dropped the candlestick. You stood before him, your hands trembling, not with fear, but with the desperate, jagged weight of a decade's worth of shared ghosts.
You stepped between him and the hidden passage, hoping he would not notice, your voice cracking the suffocating tension. "Look at what you’re doing. This is not a conquest. It’s an erasure."
Theon’s sword was held at a low, defensive angle, his knuckles white against the leather hilt.
"Move, clerk. You have no idea what you’re talking about. This is the Iron Price. It is my birthright."
"Your birthright?"' you stepped closer, ignoring the way the iron-born guards behind him shifted, their spears leveling at your chest.
"You talk of birthrights while you stand in the home that raised you.” Your voice wavered but your words did not.
“Do you remember the yard? The mornings when you, Robb, and Jon would train until the snow turned to slush? You weren't a ward then. You were a brother,” your voice softened as you moved to him, hoping he was still the boy who loved to tease you and make a fool of himself, “You were the one who laughed the loudest when the mud flew."
Theon’s eyes flickered. For a heartbeat, the harsh, predatory mask he wore—the salt-bitten, sea-hardened shell of a Greyjoy—cracked. His gaze drifted past your shoulder to the training yard outside the window, as if he could see the ghosts of three boys running through the frost.
"That was a lie," he hissed, though the word lacked conviction. "I was a prisoner. A pet in a leash of silver."
"You were loved, Theon," you pleaded, becoming the voice of the friend he had once trusted.
"By Robb," at the mention of his name, Theon flinched as if you had already struck him, "by Lord Stark, by all of us.”
“Remember the nights in the solar, Theon. Please.” you were close enough to look in his eyes and search for the boy you had called your friend.
“The way we would talk about the world beyond the Neck until the candles guttered out? You were home." you had begged the old gods and the new that your words could make him snap back to the reality of what he was doing, "You are throwing away a life of belonging for a crown of driftwood and dead memories."
Theon’s jaw tightened. He looked visibly torn, the muscle in his cheek pulsing. The arrogance of the Ironborn was warring with the boy who remembered the warmth of the Winterfell hearth.
He leaned in, his voice a low, strangled whisper. "They took everything from me. They kept me in the dark. I owe them nothing. I am the iron, and the iron does not forgive."
But his hand was shaking. He looked at you, his eyes pleading for you to understand, even as he hardened his heart.
Maester Luwin stood just behind you, his frail hands gripping his heavy iron poker, his face a mask of grief and ancient resolve. He did not speak, but his presence was a silent, trembling anchor beside you.
"I am the heir to the Iron Islands!" he shouted, his voice suddenly loud, a desperate performance for the men behind him. "I swore fealty to the Drowned God and to House Greyjoy! I do not care for your memories or your dead wolves! Winterfell is mine by the right of conquest!"
In that moment of his distraction, the door behind him creaked.
Gage, the man who had been the first to offer you a warm bowl of stew and a kind, albeit rough, word on your first terrifying day at Winterfell—the man who had become the silent, flour-dusted father of your exile—stepped from the shadows.
He saw his chance. He lunged, a heavy kitchen mallet raised high, desperate to end this madness. The Prince was distracted, his defenses lowered by your words. Gage lunged, his heavy kitchen mallet raised high, aiming for the back of Theon’s skull.
"Theon, no—" you screamed, seeing the movement too late.
But Dagmer Cleftjaw was faster.
The beast of a man stepped from the shadows like a wraith, his blade silent and sure. As Gage swung, Dagmer’s spear punched through the cook's back, the tip erupting from his chest in a spray of hot, dark blood.
Gage’s swing went wild, his body collapsing forward onto the stone floor with a final, wet gasp.
The sound of your scream shattered the room. It was raw, unadulterated agony, a sound so piercing that it seemed to vibrate against the very stone of the castle. You fell to your knees beside the fallen cook, your hands pressing against the ruin of his chest, trying in vain to stem the tide of life fleeing him.
"No no no." your voice shook as you desperately tried something, anything, to stop the bleeding.
"Y–You're going to be alright, Gage," your tears fell on the cooks face as your hands pressing against the ruin of the chest that had once welcomed you, trying in vain to stem the tide of life fleeing the only soul who had been kind when you were nothing but a stranger.
"G-Girl," Gage had all but gargled, a trail of crimson leaving his mouth as he continued, "do not... idle." he whispered and lifted his hand to ruffle your hair, a gesture he had done so many times when you were a girl, now left to haunt you as a nightmare than a memory as he wheezed out his last breath.
His final words to you were a mirror of his first—the same gentle, flour-dusted warmth that had first taught you to be who you were, now fracturing into a ragged goodbye.
Theon stood frozen, the silence of the room heavier than any grave. Your scream hung in the air, a permanent scar on the atmosphere and his memory.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a bird trapped in a cage, his breath hitching in his chest. He looked down at your hands, stained deep red with the blood of the man who had brought him bread for ten years, and he felt the phantom of his own soul weeping.
He would remember that sound for years to come. In the quiet of his nights, in the depths of the sea, he would hear your voice—the sound of his childhood dying.
He looked at you, his face a mask of torment. He wanted to reach out, to pull you up, to beg for forgiveness, but the iron in him would not allow it.
He turned away, his movements stiff and mechanical, his eyes fixed on the door.
"Search the castle," he commanded, his voice a hollow shell. "Find the heirs. Bring them to me."
He walked out, disregarding you entirely, but as he crossed the threshold, his shoulders slumped, and for a fleeting, terrifying moment, he looked like a man who had already lost everything he had ever set out to claim.
Theon Greyjoy looked different from the boy who had sat at Eddard Stark’s high table, eating his bread and sharing his japes. The easy, arrogant smile was still pinned to his face, but it had a desperate, rotting edge to it now—a frantic, twitching hunger in his eyes that didn't belong to the companion you had known. He looked like a thief who had stolen a crown and was already waiting for the axe to fall on his neck.
They dragged you out into the square, the rough hands of two ironmen bunching into the fabric of your kirtle. You had tried to run, tried to bar the door to the glass gardens, but the wood had splintered beneath their shoulders in three heartbeats.
Your sleeve was torn completely away at the shoulder where a man with grease-hardened hair and the stench of old salt had seized you, exposing your skin to the biting northern wind. Your hands were bound tight before you with thick hemp rope that bit viciously into your wrists, leaving raw, red tracks across your skin as you struggled against the knot.
Beside you, Maester Luwin was shoved to his knees, his own wrists bound, his chain rattling against his chest—a hollow, funeral chime.
A ghost of his name was called and he pushed himself up to look for the sound. When he looked, the view that met him churned his stomach more than any old stew would have done. Maester Luwin inhaled a shaky breath and turned to look at the clerk beside him and saw you shivering and instinctively shifted, his frail body trying to act as a shield, attempting to block the carnage that awaited.
"Close your eyes, child," he whispered, his voice trembling with a terror he could not contain. "Do not look. I beg you, do not look."
But the cold air died in your throat, and your eyes were wide, unblinking.
Ser Rodrik Cassel was there.
The old knight, the man who had been the iron spine of Winterfell for as long as you could remember, was on his knees before the weirwood stump. He looked diminished, his white whiskers matted with the dried, dark evidence of his struggle, his armor dented and stripped of the Stark sigil. He was broken, yet he remained the only thing in the courtyard that stood straight.
And there was Theon.
The irony was a jagged blade in your gut—the very man whose hands Ser Rodrik had calloused, the man he had once scolded for his sloppy footwork and praised for his quick wrist, was now standing over him with his own blade drawn.
Theon was shaking, a violent, pathetic rhythm. His face was a pale, sweating mask of bravado, but his eyes were darting, terrified of the man he was about to murder.
"'Yer a failure of a pupil, Theon," Ser Rodrik’s voice rang out, gravelly and defiant, refusing to break even as death stood over him. "A shame you could only fight me after your men had made me kneel."
Theon had punched him as soon as the retort came out of Ser Rodrik's mouth. The knight chuckled darkly, spitting out the blood from his mouth and onto Theon's shoes. Theon growled and you could not stop the cry that tore from your throat.
Ser Rodrik looked up at the sound, his gaze finding yours. Despite the horror, his eyes softened—the fierce, bristling duty of the Master-at-Arms replaced by a heartbreaking, fatherly calm.
He had always found you amusing.
The clerk who kept 'stealing' away his students. The one who kept pushing Jon to go to the yard and kept the bastard upright despite getting his arse beaten up. The girl who always teased Robb when his head even so much as threatened to grow big with pride when he won in matches.
The very girl who had tried to sow together a disfigured Ser Rodrik doll out of stable hay and old tunics as a thank you for teaching her how to ride a horse.
But in that moment you hadn't cared if the man had cursed at you and pulled your hair, you wouldn't have cared if he had been the one disciplining you, he could have pushed and pulled you all your life—just so he could stand up and tell you that all of this is a very, very bad dream.
But Ser Rodrik Cassel was not an unkind man. He was strong, brave, and most of all: loyal. The same loyalty that had cost Ned Stark his head.
"Do not fear for me, girl," he croaked, his voice steady as the winter wind. "The world is just... settling its debts." he had smiled, always trying to find his own way of making you feel better.
"I’m off to see your father." he smiled solemnly and all strength had left your body.
"No, please!" you shrieked, the sound tearing from your chest, a primal, broken thing.
Maester Luwin surged forward, trying to pull you down, trying to bury your face into his robes to save you from the sight, but the ironman behind you shoved you down into the muck. Your knees hit the wet mud of the courtyard with a heavy, bruising thud. The cold mire soaked instantly through your skirts, chilling you to the bone, but you felt nothing but the sickening heat of the blade as it swung.
The sound of the Theon's strike was sickeningly wet—a heavy thud of steel against bone that echoed off the grey stone walls, louder than any thunder. The world turned to static. You felt the spray of hot, iron-scented blood mist against your cheek, a warm, horrific rain that marked the end of your world.
First Gage, the soul of the kitchens who had been your first shield against the cold, his apron always smelling of yeast and safety; and now Ser Rodrik, the iron heart of your home.
You were losing everyone who had made this castle a sanctuary, and the grief hit you with the force of a falling mountain. Your breath hitched, turning into a soundless, gasping sob that shook your entire frame.
You looked up, your vision swimming through the tangled, damp strands of hair that fell across your face. Theon stood there, his sword dripping, his knuckles white, his chest heaving with a rhythmic, panicked hysteria. He couldn't look at you. He couldn't look at the body, nor at the head of the man he had destroyed.
"Theon," beside you, Maester Luwin breathed, the name coming out as a fractured, ghost-like plea, stripped of all hope. His voice was small, thin, and hollow. "What have you done? By the gods, Theon, what have you done? You’ve butchered the only people who ever truly cared if you lived or died."
"Robb will kill you," you spat, the salt of your own sweat and a trace of blood stinging your lips as you glinted up at him. "He will hunt you to the shores of your rocks. He will take your head and leave it for the crows to pick clean."
At the mention of Robb's name, something violent flickered in Theon’s face. The smugness vanished, replaced by an ugly, defensive rage. He reached down with sudden, terrifying speed, his fingers bunching deep into your hair and pulling your head back so sharply that your neck cracked and your eyes watered. He leaned down, his face inches from yours, smelling of rancid grease, saltfish, and stale ale.
"And he left you behind, didn't he? He did not want you. Do not think I was blind to not see how he treated you before he rode south. He treated you like a dog under his table. He broke your spirit before I even scaled the walls."
"You should be beside me. Beside me as we break the house down." he said as he caressed your cheek.
You recoiled from his touch like it was wildfire.
"I owe Lord Stark my life," you spat, hissing as your eyes glared at him, "You are an ungrateful snake that grew too big and bit the hand that fed you."
The slap that met your cheeks was instantaneous and hard.
"Robb Stark had left you to rot in this hell you call a home! He left and here you stand defending his name?!" he chuckled darkly.
"Did you always hate him, Theon?" you asked him. His smile dropped into a dangerous frown.
"Y/N..." Maester Luwin's voice had warned, but you paid him no mind. You wanted to ask and he needed to know.
"Did you always hate him?" you repeated, eyes unblinking. "Did you always hate him and Jon who treated you no less than a friend? A brothe–"
He had slapped you again, stronger this time, strong enough for you to taste copper in your mouth.
"Jon Snow is a bastard," he said gritting his teeth, "And he was right to leave." he all but puked the words out as his heart hammered in his ears.
A tear fell from your eye then, a slow painful thing. Theon grinned darkly at seeing it.
"Your precious Robb is a thousand leagues away, playing at being a king while his own kitchen burns," Theon hissed, his hot breath foul against your cheek. He brought his free hand up, his thumb dragging roughly across your lower lip, pressing down with enough force to split the delicate skin against your teeth until you tasted the familiar, metallic tang of iron.
The reminder of Robb's final weeks, the echoing slurs, struck you like a physical blow, freezing the breath in your lungs. You flinched within Theon's grip, your eyes widening with a sudden, helpless terror that made him laugh. It was a sharp, high sound that lacked any real joy.
He released your hair with a shove, throwing you back into the mud, and turned to the crowd of ironmen and terrified smallfolk gathered in the yard. His voice rose into a booming shout that bounced off the gray stones of the Keep.
"She stays in my chambers!" Theon announced, pointing a finger at your shivering form. "The Stark boy thought he could look down on the Greyjoys."
"But I will have his seat, I will have his castle," his voice boomed as he announced, "And I will have the woman he was too proud to keep! From this day on, she belongs to the ironborn!"
The cheers of the ironmen was deafening as it swallowed Winterfell whole. Smallfolk shivered and cried as they looked between their Master-at-arms and the boy that stood in the center of it all, crying wolf.
You did not scream when the guards hauled you up by your bound wrists and dragged you toward the spiral stairs of the Great Keep. You saved your breath, your teeth biting hard into your bleeding lip to keep from giving them the satisfaction of a sob, watching the ancient, gray stones of Winterfell pass by one by one. With every step up into the darkness of the lord's chambers, the castle felt less like a home and more like a tomb closing its heavy lid over you.
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A/N: CACKLED at these pins before writing this chap. i could never form a solid opinion on theon greyjoy even if a crossbow was turned at me. hope you're enjoying so far, my friends!!! 🤗